Social Media Marketing

To Tab or Not To Tab

It’s raining Smartphones and Tablets since last one year, isn’t it? No wonder, everyone out there is considering investing in it. Off-late, We received mails and lots of queries from our members asking us many questions about tablets, of which the core and most frequently asked ones were:

• What will I really be able to use it for?

• Is it worth the hype and the cost?

• Its priced High, why would I not go for a laptop instead?

• It seems to be only a quarter the size of my laptop but claims to do more than my laptop can do for me. Is it true?

Worry Not! In the due course of this article, I will try and lay at rest at least some of your core queries to a great extent, while also trying to answer the most vital question of them all: “Do I really need a Tablet?”

When we hear the words Tablet, few names immediately spring to our minds from the following:
Apple iPad2, Samsung Galaxy Tab750, Motorola Xoom, Blackberry Playbook etc.

I have enjoyed using all the four above, but for the purpose of this article, I will be sharing my views on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 750

.

We are going to focus on the main consumer centric features that YOU, would really want to know.

Ease Of Use: The Galaxy Tab ships with Android 3.1 (Upgradable to 3.2 via Samsung Kies). Samsung has glossed it over with their Proprietary UI called TouchWiz. This makes even more spunky and easier to navigate. Case in point, the notification bar at the bottom right gives you quick access to toggles for connectivity, orientation, brightness, settings, clock and the calendar. The icon dock at the bottom is visible wherever you are, so you never get confused and can easily return to the home screen in a jiffy. The volume keys and the power button are placed ergonomically at the top facilitating quick access.

Power and Fluidity: Under the hood hums a powerful Dual Core Cortex A9 1Ghz processor assisted by the Nvidia Tegra 2 T20 chipset on an Android Honeycomb. What this means for the layperson is experiencing smooth transitions with excellent fluidity while navigating menus, apps and others. It has an amazing multi-tasking capability with beautiful rendering of high quality games and media and to top it all off, a support for 1080p videos even. This means that your tablet will happily chug along even if you are browsing the net, streaming music and editing your documents, all at the same time.

Camera: The Tab has a 3.2mp camera at the back and a 1.3mp camera at the front. It might not replace your Digicam or DSLR but it can easily be used for some spur of the moment stupendous shots. It also has a few options like smile shot, panorama & action shot. The addition of an LED flash at the back further allows you to shed some light on your shots if you get the pun. Overall, when you are on a Video conferencing using your Tab, you would love the experience, clarity and the feel of it.

Connectivity: The Tab has the options of connecting to the Internet over wi-fi or 3G. 3G speed depends on your ISP so I cannot comment on that. But we tried video conferencing over wi-fi and it served us just fine. In addition to Bluetooth 3.0,the Tab also sports Wi-fi direct allowing media transfer between two devices at blazing speeds.

Let’s say you are travelling or are at a friends, family members or at Clients place and you have drawn some really cool designs, layout or clicked some wonderful pictures which you have added as part of your PowerPoint presentation, all you need to do is turn on your Bluetooth or wi-fi or 3G and just send it across to the other device. The connectivity and data transfer is very smooth and fast.

Click to Enlarge

Android Apps: One of the greatest advantage of any Android based device is the humongous and overwhelming additions to the already scores of apps from the Android Market. There is an app for each and every requirement. From fun to productivity, you have it all. Documents to Go/Think office – For all your document editing purposes.

Some really wonderful apps that I have loved using so far are:

• Bord

• Drawing neon

• Evernote

• Polaris Office

• Cam scanner

• QRCode Scanner

• Calendar that auto syncs once you have signed with your Gmail app

• Gmail

• Infinite Design

• Nimbuzz

• Opera Mini

• Mozilla Firefox

• Photo edit

• Adobe Photoshop Express

• Voice Search

• The Times Of India TOI App

• The Economic Times ET

• Wall Street Journal Reader

• Zip Viewer

• VLC Direct

• WordPress

And the list is simply endless……

Flash Player support:This is yet another big feature of this tablet. Browse your Flash files easily on your tablet Browser and enjoy cool animation effects and website features.

Battery Life: Battery life averages out at around 8 hours at least with comfortably using core apps that would take you through your work and play for the day. Keep in mind that as the display is the biggest drainer here, so keeping a low brightness setting or using the “auto” setting should help to save some power.

Easy Connect for data transfer: You can easily connect with Your Android OS Supported Laptops and Or Samrtphones for eg. Samsung Android Phone or an Acer Aspire One that supports Android OS.

USB Port: Now this is a Power Feature. Although you can’t expand the memory using a memory card, there is a work around if the 16/32/64 GB of storage falls short for you. The Tab has an extension via a USB Port which allows you to connect with your USB devices. So just connect a pen drive with higher storage and you are good to go. The same port also serves as the charging port, thereby enhancing the design factor. Try it out with different Pen drive USB’s. I have so far tried it with a 16GB pen drive and it works smooth.

Easy to Type-in the Tablet Keyboard with a good, clear and crisp display and smooth functions:

As I wind up writing this post on my Galaxy Tab WordPress App, here are some final pointers to look at:

Conclusion:

Now after going through many aspects of the device, we come to the vital question: “Do I really need a Tablet?“

• If you are a Corporate executive on the move, who constantly needs to be connected to the net and also needs to deal with documents, scan through data, text; reply scores of emails, use tools that will enhance work productivity all, while on the go, then this can be a wonderful answer for your heavy laptop to a great extent. Sleek, Stylish and very reliable.
• If you are an entertainment junkie, who wants his music or movie collection with him, but is not happy with the minuscule screen of his media player, then this can replace your portable media player for you. That coupled with the ease of adding USB port & or a pen drive, makes this an amazing experience with great sound and video quality.
• If you are anyway looking to buy a new laptop and want all the above features at a price which I feel does justice for this superb device, with the added advantage of easy portability, multi-purpose use, internet on the go, clicking pictures, fun and entertainment, extended data USB connect, ease of data transfer, etc, then this is the device for you!

With more and more manufacturers like Motorola, Apple, Acer, HTC, Asus, LG and Sony bringing in more features, the quality and standard of tablets is improving rapidly, at the same time the prices are reducing due to their competitiveness. With the launch of Ice Cream Sandwich as well, there was never a better time to pick up an Android tablet. We hope this article helped you to make a better choice on which tablet to pick.

Do you Tab or are you planning to? Please do share your experiences with us here.

Ciao – Ravi.

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Movie Review – THE DESCENDANTS

[Image source: Wikipedia]
*ing George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Amara Miller

Before posting the review, the figures first:

The movie has grossed $ 51 M (Rs.270 Crs) as on Jan 22, 2012 in the US since its release in mid-November 2011.

It has been nominated for the Academy Awards in the following categories

• Best Picture
• Best Actor in a Leading Role, George Clooney
• Best Director, Alexander Payne
• Best Adapted Screenplay, Alexander Payne and Nat Faxon & Jim Rash
• Best Editing, Kevin Tent
• It has won the Golden Globe for Best Picture (Drama) & Best Actor in a Leading role – George Clooney (no surprises here!)

Source: Official website – The Descendants

The Story:

The movie revolves around a hot shot Real Estate agent Matt King (George Clooney) with a thriving legal practice business in Hawaii. His wife meets with an unfortunate accident and the movie is all about how the agent brings his family together – He has his younger daughter aged 10 years (Amara Miller) to take care of and his eldest of 17 (Shailene Woodley) is away at a college and not exactly on friendly terms with her parents. Its about how the family comes together and copes with this real time crisis and also about certain skeletons that tumble out of the cupboard during the process.

My view:

The movie released in India on January 26, 2012. I spent my Saturday night i.e. 28th January 2012 watching this movie at Big Cinema at R-Mall (not to mention the 180 bucks that I shelled out for the theatre ticket and Rs. 170 on refreshments!)

One would expect any movie with such a star cast boasting of the ever green George Clooney and with the number of awards/listings pinned to its chest to be a houseful one for atleast the first week if not for an entire month. However reality hit hard when the 3 of us (which can be read as 3 Idiots – hey no offense guys who were with me) reached the theatre at 10:45 pm for the 11 pm start. Once the movie started till the end, there were only exactly a dozen who were present!

The reasons are not hard to imagine.

The movie seemed more a portion of the numerous Saas-Bahu operas running on Indian television all week long with no beginning no end. George Clooney seems to have put in quite a lot into this role what with Penguin style walk(remember the Batman movies) and his Forrest Gump like scene when he runs to his friends place to check out on a piece of startling information provided by his daughter (Don’t want to spoil the fun for all those Descendant & Clooney fans!). Every time they came up with a close up shot of Clooney, It seemed that I was staring into the face of Mr. Wagle (Anjan Srivastava from Wagle ki Duniya!) ace cartoonist R.K. Laxman’s Common man epitomized on television. The movie just about wanders along predictable lines with a little bit of forced buffoonery in a supposedly serious picture. It has the usual parenting scenes wherein Clooney does not seem to have his daughters under control and how they seem to be in a state of constant disagreement.

However one needs to give full marks for the performances of Shailene Woodley and Amara Miller for doing full justice to their roles and playing them out well.

Last but not the least, My award for Best Actor in The Descendants would be for Patricia Hastie in the character of Elizabeth King, Clooney’s wife who plays the role of a comatose wife to be taken off life support!

I thought the movie to be a one time watch. Do share your reviews and opinions with us.

Angry Birds on Facebook!

After conquering iOS, Android, Chrome and Google Plus, the birds are ready to take their feathery battle with the gluttonous pigs to Facebook. Yes! Facebook users rejoice! Rovio is going to launch the Facebook version of Angry Birds on February 14^th i.e. Valentines day. You can check out the Facebook Event titled “Angry Birds coming to Facebook!” The event is scheduled for between 6:00 PM EST and 9:00 PM EST this Valentine’s Day (February 14, 2012).

[IMG source: Mashable]

Here’s the event’s description:

“Squawk! Everyone’s favorite furious fowl, Angry Birds, is coming to Facebook! Nothing says “Happy Valentine’s Day” like competitive pig-popping among friends! Join in on the fun – mark this date on your calendars, and let’s make this the biggest Facebook Event ever! Watch the game trailer here: http://bit.ly/yaqbZw and stay tuned for more details!”

Here are a few screenshots from the trailer for your perusal:

SCREENSHOT 1

SCREENSHOT 2

Screenshot 2 gives us an idea of how the game will actually look when you are playing via your facebook account. The top right corner shows your profile pic. The star at the top reveals some new power ups that might have been added.  Also old favourites like the explosive black bird, the rapid yellow bird and the mighty red bird make an appearance. It will be interesting to see what new aspects Rovio plans to add apart from integration with your social circle.

Ultimately, it is assured that couples & singles alike are going to have a field day this Valentine, slugging it out with each other. All we can say is, Oink to that!

Keep gaming on and do share your experiences with me. Looking to beat your score! – Ravi.

Check out other related posts:

• Advertising through Social Gaming crosses $200M
• Farming Socially: Farmville from Zynga

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Dr.Anjali Mukerjee’s Health Total  is now on Social sites!

Anjali Mukerjee’s Health Total is an eminent name in the nutrition and wellness industry rendering its services to people though various Health programs for more than a decade now.

That’s right, the BIGGEST name in the Health Industry is now present on Social Sites like -

• Dr.Anjali Mukerjee Health Total Official Page on Facebook
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Have a Healthy, Fit Life ahead.

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• Dr.Anjali Mukerjee Health Total Official Page on Facebook
• Dr.Anjali Mukerjee Health Total Official Page on Twitter
• Dr.Anjali Mukerjee Health Total Official BLOG Page (FREE SUBSCRIBE here)

Marketing and social media trend setters of 2011 and what we can expect in the year 2012

• What were the trend setters of 2011 &
• What we can expect in terms of digital & social media technology integrated brand, product and services marketing for 2012

The top trend setters, Power house websites and applications in 2011 were:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Google Plus
• Google Android
• Foursquare
• WordPress
• Instagram
• YouTube

 What they achieved and what we can expect from them in the year 2012:

Top trend setters:

Google Android: We saw the globe going gaga over the rich sweet OS treats offered by Google Android in terms of Éclair, Froyo, Gingerbread and so on. Google Android with its open source and scores of free apps, made its presence felt more with the launch of Gingerbread and that was coupled with Samsung’s ample choice of smartphones and tablets powered with Android OS. It has over 85% of its users now upgraded with Android 2.1 and 3.1 OS.

Facebook: The ‘F’ word. Facebook still remains as the top social networking site with over 700 Million users and sure enough, we are looking ahead at an early Billion user milestone mark this 2012.

Twitter: This site which was started merely as a social bookmarking tool or site, now is looking to be a threat to the mighty facebook too. Twitter crossed the milestone of users now sending over 200 Million Tweets per day and with the amazing platform now reaching to over 100 Million active users, the little bird was simply trending across the globe.  With its all new Activity stream, available across more countries and in many more languages, addition of TweetDeck, integration of tools for Sharing photos, videos and more content from popular streams across, Twitter will be the site to watch out for brands and users across the globe.

Foursquare: Foursquare set a record of Billion Check-ins in 2011.  That, further boosted with its user base now growing over 10 million people,  this location – based check-in site made it clear to the world ‘when it comes to geo target or location based application, foursquare rules the lot. (Foursquare Interesting infographic )

Google Plus: The much awaited Google Plus was launched with more anticipation than probably any other news with a frenzy of users paying scores of dollars for getting an “Invite” into Google Plus. Though the initial rush has eventually seemed to settle down with many users opting to stay a little bit longer with facebook than jump on to the G+ wagon, this power site of Google will surely add up some amazing surprises for brands, marketers and users across in 2012. Especially with the One+ button going live across search engine for users to use the tool and popularize real-time content streaming.

LinkedIn: In early quarter of 2011 LinkedIn crossed the 100 Million members mark and its looking better than ever. With its IPO soaring  and creating the most amazing financial buzz around,  it is a site to look out for. With its newer features of Live news, popular stories and more, professionals across the globe want to be a part of this amazing network. Lot is riding on it this year and if the past experience is anything to go by, 2012 will be a year of positive updates and surprises for LinkedIn users across the globe.

WordPress: WordPress crossed the 50 Million mark in 2011 and this popular Blogging platform now empowers over 70 Million sites (70,112,513 WordPress sites across the Globe.) With its ease of use and flexibility for users to add their own codes, app integrations and widgets, we wont be surprised to see it cross the 100 Million mark this 2012. With more and more bloggers and readers around the world, WordPress seems to be an obvious and unanimous choice.

Instagram: With over 150 Million photos, this site seems to be raging with creative and rich content in terms of “captured moments’ which are shared by users every second. Its easy to use, very  fast and empowers users to express themselves amazingly. This app would be a game changer in terms of rich media content sharing especially for pictures and we would not be surprised to see picture editing and effects features integrated more with the instagram apps in 2012.

YouTube: This video stream site turned Five in 2011 and with that it achieved a remarkable milestone of over 3 billion videos viewed a day.

Do we need to say why it’s going to make more eyeballs move on your computer screen in 2012. Keep watching.

 Most important points for BRANDS:

• Its very clear. The year 2012 will be the year of RICH CONTENT (Pictures, Videos, Pods & more)
•  With Brands understanding more clearly about social media quotient analysis and Consumer responses, metrics, the year 2012 will be about “BEING at the right place (Being present only in social sites where the brand and products presence really matters) at the right time.
•  2011 was the year of smartphones. While that can only see an uptrend, 2012 will be the year of Tablets across users. The fight between Apple’s iPad and Samsung Tablets will see a much stronger and more varied availability of tablets from other major players like Blackberry, Motorola, HP too.
• 2012 will be about real-time content streaming and data sharing with users that are genuinely useful to them and will add value to them on a daily basis.

Who will win:

• BOTTOM-LINE: Brands that can capitalize on giving Spontaneous responses to their in-house marketing teams or external agencies will only be able to capitalize. There will be no time for “Delayed responses” this 2012.
•  It’s all about bringing together Marketing and Branding strategies with technology that the user is comfortable with for that particular brand, product and services.
•  Detailed social media analysis, combining various digital strategies like viral marketing, keyword and SEO optimization, Creative Content writing, Online PR Campaigns, will need to go hand in hand with the brands campaigns across social sites like Facebook, Google Adword campaigns and social bookmarking and real-time content and trends streaming across power tools like Twitter.

Do share with us your views, suggestions and comments on “How YOU see the strategies, newer trends and social media marketing-technology integrating in terms of going social will evolve in the year 2012?

Have a wonderfully social year ahead.

Your SMQ Team

Techdivine Creative Services

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Related Posts:

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HAPPY NEW YEAR from Techdivine Creative Services

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Have a Happy New Year and a Warm welcome to 2012!

Team at Techdivine Creative Services

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Happy Birthday to Dear  Dhirubhai Ambani

 

Happy Birthday Dhirubhai - (28/12/1932)

The legend who shaped the destiny of millions globally and who made the story of Dreams so achievable in the eyes of the common man, he is none other than Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani.

The man who epitomized the words that “there are no limits to Dreams and no restrictions to Success” is the man whom billions of us know as Dhirubhai.

Some of his most memorable quotes:

We wish the legend a very Happy Birthday

Many Many Happy Returns of the Day to Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani.

He will always live in our hearts forever.

Pioneer:

http://www.ril.com

http://www.rcom.co.in

God Bless

From TECHDIVINE Creative Services

www.techdivine.com

“socialmedia@techdivine.com”

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Related Post:

• Dhirubhai Ambani – Dare, Dreams & Destiny
• Happy Birthday Dhirubhai

*****

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The journey from Social Media to Assured Sales

The journey from social media to assured sales is the one every brand would love to make.  As it not only ensures good business, but also helps brands to establish themselves as “Consumers Choice”.

Of the many aspects that are part of an online marketing campaign, there are few which are the core points that brands need to keep in mind while planning a social media marketing campaign:

Understand the consumer first -  Do your homework, research, analysis and understand the complete demographic and online social behavior of the consumers on:

• “How do they react” to specific tone of messages, words, phrases etc online.
• Each consumer (Industry centric) reacts differently online and offline.
• The idea is to have a very thin line between the two worlds and give the end users a real-time experience with rich content, feel in terms of demos, apps, videos, immediate feedback and responses too.
• In simple terms, it should result into value for connecting with your brand and a wonderful experience at the end for the users.

The consumer of today is well informed and it is to be used as an advantage by brands as their target market today interacts and engages themselves more than ever before.

So the first idea is to understand and connect with the consumer within and then with the end users.

• Don’t sell, but relate to their needs, buying patterns, customize and give them value for being a part of this online social engagement.
• Remember, every user online who speaks about you or “Likes or Mentions” you across social networking platforms, is your very own brand ambassador.
• Recognize them and reward them accordingly.Make room for immediate gratification.
• Look at what brands like Starbucks or Mountain Dew does. They take customers feedback and create products relevant to their needs.

Now comes the part of understanding what they need and the aspect of really making it happen based on organizational support and dealing with roadblocks that are inevitable (Organizational roadblocks – Rigid Policy, guidelines, in-house team support etc). Every effort towards customization for consumer, especially on an online platform, assures the Brands tremendous recognition and feedback via brand promotion and mentions by their consumers and the best part is that, its measurable.

Offer them custom designed services and products. Its wonderful when brands ask customers to design their very own “Combo products / services” It not only keeps them engaged with the brand, but also tells them that you value their opinions and doing your best to deliver.

Today e-commerce companies like Flipkart are doing really well because of many reasons, but few of those mainly owing to the fact that they have a “no-hassle return policy coupled with Cash on delivery” option which gives tremendous trust to consumers buying online today. With that, they also offer daily special offers, deals, low-price and that with great service is bound to make them popular. It shows that they have listened.

Another important aspect is, to not be on, each and every available online platform.

This is a mistake which many brands today make. Being or trying to be everywhere. Be at relevant online platforms. Understand whether your end users use blogs, forms, social networking sites, google searches, web banner ads, emailers, smartphone apps etc and establish your presence across those profiles only. Being across 4-6 such platforms to begin with is more than enough during a period of a six month to one year campaign wherein, you get a better understanding of their comfort levels with engaging online and you can then focus on may be just those 2-3 platforms, where their presence is more and for a longer duration.

Search engine optimization also is an important part of digital marketing today with feeds and comments appearing on searches. But with the pace with which social media monitoring and marketing seem to be growing, its become compulsory to integrate social media campaigns with seo. But make sure, you concentrate on on-page optimization as strong as off-age optimization too.

Customer insights and knowing your company or Brand’s social media quotient (SMQ) is the core of a social media or any digital marketing campaign. It also ensures brand monitoring for both, negative and positive mentions about your brand, product and services. Always remember, if you exist as a brand, someone out there is are already talking about you. Make sure you are a part of that amazing conversation prism.

SEO and Brand monitoring helps you to find the relevant sites when combined with social media influence strategies (SMI). It lets you study in-depth about the relevant sites, have a brief look at the profile of registered users on that site based on connect you have with the users or the apps integrated with the site. You then get to know the influencer(s) too. The idea is to gauge the quality of brand and or keyword related conversations real-time.

No campaign is complete without predetermined target to be achieved in terms of real ROI for the company or brand. Make sure your social media monitoring and brand marketing campaigns have enough strategies and process in it to help you evaluate the return on investment for your campaigns. Remember, good campaigns are those which constantly are improvised with consistent responses and feedback based on the social media quotient analysis and reports of your campaign.

Some power packed tools that always go a long way when used appropriately are:

• Blogs: It’s a powerhouse in terms of social media tool. A great way to engage your users with interesting and relevant information and at the same time, gives them an opportunity to interact with the brand too.
• Forums: Extremely efficient when it comes to users wherein the products need a lot of assistance in terms of support intermittently.
• Facebook: Wherein the end user is right in front of you
• Twitter: Users are consumption hungry and need quick information at jet speed.
• LinkedIn: For Corporate professionals. Connect and grow as a business together

So, what did your brand tell your customer today?

Share with me your views and comments here. Would love to hear from you.

Thanks and have a wonderful connect ahead.

Ananth V

Founder & CEO

Techdivine Creative Services

You can also Connect with me here: On facebook, On LinkedIn & on Twitter

Happy HALLOWEEN

Wish you all a very Happy Halloween from Techdivine Creative Services!

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So, what’s your ‘poison’ for the day - Trick or Treat?

Have fun.

Feel free to Use the image above as it is, to send it to your friends and wish them a HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Social Media Team

Techdivine Creative Services

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Dear Friends,

Here’s wishing you all a very Happy Diwali from the entire team at Techdivine Creative Services

Happy Diwali and a Prosperous New Year! 

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Email: “socialmedia@techdivine.com” 

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