Social Media Marketing

Key Branding Rules on Social Media

Brand managers have been placed at a higher sense of responsible and more accountable position than ever before.

So before one goes ahead with the power of online marketing tools, Offline solutions, Creative writing for content of your product across sites online etc  of today and leverages it for their brand, it is very much essential to know, what are the keys rules to follow.

BRAND ‘key’ rules:

Always be very clear of your organizational goals from planning a social media campaign, or using multiple platforms for implementing the same. The core needs to be always on the Brand and not the tools or techniques of implementing it. Remember, the social sites are merely tools.

Given below are few key points that every organization needs to keep in mind before implementing an online marketing campaign and reaching across the millions of prospect across the globe irrespective of the nature of your product market or service or industry.

1. Responsibly use the available platforms after properly analyzing them and understand clearly the technology available through those online social networking site platforms before placing your brand on it.
2. Today, with the massive reach across over 750 million users online, the key is also on the timing behind the appropriate use of these media.
3. Always add a face to your voice, whatever be the platform you are using.
4. Integrate your multiple platforms together and stay in sync with the content that you promise to share and make sure you deliver on it.
5. Most importantly, understand that the platform is not to “sell” but to connect.
6. Privacy, content, IP’s are to be clearly showcased across platforms. Reusing of your content, selling it for commercial and such other interests of third parties should be made very clear about.
7. Better safe than sorry. Always understand that what is once online, stays online. So make sure, the information you are showcasing online, can afford to be shared by all those you know and those you don’t, in matter of seconds.
8. As the clichéd quote across superhero movies goes, with massive power, there needs to be a sense of great responsibility too, make sure you understand and implement it in your campaign.
9. Respond: Whatever may be the conversation happening around you, about your brand or organization, respond positively. In case of any dissatisfaction expressed about your product or service respond with utmost sincerity and get to the root cause behind complains at the earliest. Address it and provide proper responses unless the feedback or comments are repetitive by an individual whose nature and online characteristic seems to be disruptive and destructive in general. Make sure, you learn to ignore and at the same time create a backend system to resolve an intentional and unwanted negative comment or feedback from a user online.
10. Do not share personal information, especially of clients and members. Always keep your member groups moderated in terms of the content being posted.
11. Have a clear Social Media Quotient analysis done of your Brand with insightful reports, analysis and feedback.

 Branding yourself in today’s era is very much essential, but make sure, the way it is done is not the way you or your team members want it to be done, but the way it is to be done. With control, Brand-Customer connect and moderation.

Do share your views on it with us here.

For Customized Social Media Marketing, Brand Monitoring, Online Marketing services – Write to us at: socialmedia@techdivine.com or for QUICK CONNECT & Customized Industry Solutions Reach us here

Happy Branding online.

 Social Media Team

Techdivine Creative Services

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Social Media Marketing, Monitoring & Measuring: Turbo Powering Brand You in real-time

Great, so the world is now way past the “Social Media cannot be measured stage” as brands have begun evaluating the ROI for not only their Customer engagement, brand loyalty but have begun crunching sales numbers for their products, services and are gearing up to now go beyond the daily metrics.

Today with the power of social media tools, online marketing campaigns can track everything from pulls, ping-backs, redirects to actual hits, tracking, connect and sale.

The value in return, is well, just like the plan, long term and priceless.

Its all happening and its in real-time.

The Most Crucial Challenge:

The real challenge which marketers across seem to be facing today is keeping the power of the three M’s (Market, Monitor & Measure) connected not just to numbers but the Brand itself.

Why, because we can use the three M’s today but can we empower it to turbo charge our Brand in real-time?

Let’s see how we can do it:

• Customer within: To begin with, understanding that Brands today have a much larger and more responsible role than ever before, that is to connect with the customer within. This would be the first step. Stop trying to think like the customer, “be the customer’

• Its not me, its always You: Wouldn’t you agree if this was the line used rather than the one that movies have made legends out of, relationships would have been stronger with time and loyalty? Now think from a Brands point of view. One needs to accept the fact that unless you are Steve Jobs or Brand Harry Potter, your product might not get a million pre-booking orders a week in advance. Thus the second step is, it’s not just the service or product or brand that sells, for the end user of any other brand its simply ‘you’. Your commitment to them with sincerity in your gesture, tone, message and the constant effort to consistently deliver ‘value’ to the customer is all that matters.

• Gratify NOW: Today the word “like’ and ‘share’ mean so much more and to a marketer these words today are pure magic when it comes from a customer. Why, because when a customer hits a ‘like’ or a ‘share’ button today for your brand, product or service,he is your very own brand ambassador online.
  • He has done three things for you with a single click:

• Given you real time feedback
• Added a power value in the form of referral
• Turbo charged your Brand for FREE

Now when we think of it in the above terms, we realize the need to ‘Gratify’ that customer ‘Now’.  Always track and thank them, give freebies or badges, discounts for sharing etc that will actually add ‘value’ to them. It’s always easier to gift a prospect than share benefits with an existing customer isn’t it? So make sure, when they have powered you, you too empower them.

• Invitational yet paid Lunch: So you have a fan page on facebook and every post of yours is about the new offer that you have come up with. Well, lets see, now ‘How would you feel if someone invited you at their place for lunch and then tried to sell you something at the dining table during your lunch or worse, made you pay for that lunch?‘ That’s right, so when you have a fan page and members, surround them with conversations about what they would love to do. Feed them with useful interesting information, resources and links. These pages are wonderful source to understand your customers so much better. Ask them, take their opinions, know what they like, engage them in conversations. Imagine scores of ‘fans’ suggesting ideas in real-time that could help you in helping them. That’s multi-dimensional targeted marketing power from a single page for you.

• Ease to connect: Very important. Just because there is a site with lots of people online on it or may be a mobile application that is the most downloaded, don’t force it upon your customers too. Give them various options to connect. Have an easy way or platform for each of your customer to get discounted offers, deals, resources, freebies from anyplace that is of ease to them. So every offer of yours need not be marketed using only a blog or a fan page. It could be shared and integrated with website referrals, viral campaigns, mobile integrated offers with check-ins, twitter power and social bookmarking etc. Let them have the ease to connect with you using tools that they are comfortable with.

• Its always fun when its well, ‘Fun’: Same old movies, dinner, clothes and routine work. So dull! Isnt it? So why give only an opportunity to comment, share or like to your customer. Give them something they can interact with. Engage them with tools that will make them use their creativity, or may be share their photography skills, make them fan of the week for engaging others, let them try out their new smartphone for scanning a QR code may be and sharing the awesome interactivity with his or her friends. Let them find out a fact about something interesting and unique, useful and fun while they engage with your brand. Keep it rolling.

There are so many more things that can be a part of customer engagement, moderation, monitoring and connecting with your user that can help you grow in every which way possible. Like the post reads, Turbo charges BRAND You!

I have listed just a few from it.

Do share your views, comments and your experience using various techniques to keep your customer engaged with your brand.

Looking forward to Your comments.

Have a wonderful day ahead!

Regards

Ananth V

Techdivine Creative Services

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Why do you need a personalized background (BG) for your Twitter Profile?

Personal branding is the key term here.

Let us look into the “WHY TO” for creating your own personal twitter background.

In our earlier article, Twitter, the power of Micro-blogging we have given few tips, tools, guides, how to use, free twitter background creating applications etc – Power Of Twitter article Link Here

Here are a couple reasons for why you might want to build your own BG for twitter:

WHY Twitter BG

Your Twitter BG should be created keeping in mind the above 4 categories:

BRAND – What does your Brand speak of

PRODUCT – Core Products Mentioned

AUDIENCE – Target Audience expectation

MESSAGE – What you intend to Tell them

Who needs to create a personalized twitter background profile?

Corporates, Professionals, Freelancers, Marketing Consultants, Freelance consultants, Artist, or anyone who needs to reach out to a target audience with a clear message, a personalized background helps you tell people who you are and what are you here for.

It also helps you to create a one pager profile including your core services, your skills, interests, website/blog & other details with your contact information for others to reach you directly.

For eg.

Take a look at our Customized Twitter Background, simple, nothing too flashy but yet creative and connecting with the user out there. We needed to keep in mind that:

1. We are a creative advertising & marketing agency with core services

2. Offering across multiple platforms.

3. We needed to portray ourselves as we really are, corporate yet creative and in sync with the latest in technology out there to help our clients achieve the best outcomes / goals.

@Techdivine

Make sure in the process of creating a customized creative twitter background, you do not forget who you really are and what is the message that you would like to give your user.

Guide to creating your own Twitter Background:

Size requirements: There are mainly two things you need to be sure of:

1. File size needs to be less than 800 Kb
2. Your Background image should fit into most screen resolutions (To be safe: Create an image higher than 1024 X 768 Pixels)

Next, the actual dimensions. This is important because improperly-sized images can be covered up by your Twitter profile or can start to tile, which often leads to an undesired effect. In most circumstances, you want your background to be large enough not to tile. To achieve this, the total image size should be around 1600px wide by 1200px tall. This encompasses almost all screen resolutions. The dpi can be kept at a little higher resolution of around 90 here for a high quality image.

Dimensions of Margins:

Right Side & Left Side: Maximum 240 Px width and Max 500 Px height

This is so as to keep in mind that the middle area of the twitter content does not majorly overlap the background image at most of the resolutions. Keep in mind that a computer with a low resolution of 800 X 600 Px will see only part of the images and not the whole picture / background image. So make sure, the text content in the design is always closer to the margin area and smaller in width size.

Creating a customized Twitter Page:

Use a background image that is free from copyrights or create your own using photoshop or such other image editing software.

How to plan a twitter background for your Personal Brand?

What we considered when we planned our Twitter BG:

What our Twitter BG means:

The core is the Coffee cup on top middle with the letters TD on top of the foam distinct denoting identity clearly visible across any platform and medium.

Techdivine Mark

The coffee mark denotes the core efforts and hours of inputs of a creative artist.

Dedicated Hours

The white badge denotes our flagship product which is social media marketing services.

social media services

The wood and pencil in the scene stand for traditional values, integrity, strength and ethics whereas the edge of the laptop denotes fresh ideas with the best that technology has to offer.

Strong Values

Monitoring tools

Finally on the left side our contact information with few of our core connecting platforms including Blog, SNS, site and our core products and services.

Social media connect

Just like we had planned above on how we needed to present ourselves to our friends, colleagues, peers etc via our twitter BG page, the first thing you need to do is create a simple storyboard of what you need to tell your audience. Once you are clear with that, start with the background of your design.

Step 1: Creating a Background – Select the right background that suits your theme, message and style.

Step 2: Select few Props for your page like Books, carts, chocolates, graphs, fabric etc depending on what is your core product and service.

Step 3: Make sure the Contact details furnished by you are accurate and not too complex for the reader to understand. Remember, the average surfer would spend not more than 15 – 30 secs on your page unless you have something very exciting and bang on target. So make sure the textual content is not too much, but has the right links and contact sources.

Step 4: Your Logo, icons for the pages should again be in sync with the theme you have selected.

Step 5: Once your image is ready, go to sign in to your twitter account, and follow the steps given below:

customize twitter

Done!

One very easy to use and yet wonderful site for creating your own twitter BG’s in seconds below:

http://www.freetwitterdesigner.com

Feel free to share your own creative designs for Twitter profiles too here with us.

Happy customized tweeting!

Social Media Marketing: Factors influencing online marketing for You!

With the advent of newer media and technology tools, social media marketing is growing in every field and industry.

Why so?

The user is everywhere and the customers are all around. So that is where you need to be there too.

Why has social media marketing today become so prominent and focused on?

It’s simple. When you are a brand (existing) new or old at micro or macro level there are conversations happening online about your product and services in real-time. So the question here simply is, would you rather have your competitor cash in on the conversation or would you yourself like to be a part of the interaction prism and channelize the leads your way?

Moreover, one needs to be clear of few things about social media marketing:

• It is not about social networking websites alone
• It is not about just having a blog or a forum page
• It does not matter if you have a zillion fans only

So what makes the real deal about social media marketing work?

Firstly, one needs to be clear that “People buy from people” and secondly, one needs to clearly understand that you cannot sell to peoplewho are online to stay connected with friends and peers .

So, DO NOT SELL, but instead CONNECT with your customer.

Let them develop the trust in you and be the brand ambassador for you instead. It goes a long way.

So what does a social media quotient measure from a social media marketing campaign?

When you are able to humanize your brand by becoming one in conversation with your target group (which means you need to reach the right target group, even online) you can deliver (giving is the beginning of building a humanized brand to show you care) concrete (be realistic and precise in what is being offered) and credible (earn the trust) easy to consume information, resources and help.

Reaching through forums, blogs and other facebook communities, linkedin groups, twitter platforms and such other relevant to “YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE” locations will get you to your customer. So make sure you use not too many but at least two or three platforms to spread across and connect.

What can you expect from your social media marketing team?

• Firstly, make sure you assign them the right goals which are on top of your organizational priorities.
• Then make sure your ‘team’ whether in-house or an external agency has the relevant credentials (Professional background and academic excellence) to back up the product and or service online.

Why?

It’s your brand out there. So make sure the one handling it, understands it well enough.

So a good branding experience is essential to nurture the brands and at the same time a wonderful academic credential into the field of marketing research and management ensures your product is not going into the hands of just another “oversized” advertising agency or a “freelancer” trying to prove they are part of the online new age marketing media.

With this also make sure that before the social media marketing campaign is planned, designed and implemented, the team or agency are showing enough ‘types’ of data tracking, brand monitoring and product analysis demographics from their end.

You can ask for a brand analysis or better, their process to plan the campaign for your product in a detailed step by step flow with details of what will be tracked. If the answer is web hits or just ‘members’ to your social networking groups, you know you are not with the right set of team.

What you need here is someone who can assess not only your brand but also your top priority goals which can be anything from building up a powerful presence across online to launching a product across specific platforms and offer it in a realistic and reasonable timeline. It’s your brand, your product in their hands so make sure it is in safe hands.

Should you be investing on any sort of adwords of different CPC (Cost per click) models?

It depends on your budget. To start with, essentially do not invest in tools where control over clicks is not in your hands. For eg. If you have invested even a small sum of Rs.10/- (INR) per click on a keyword and if you have a set of online competitors who might even for the fun of it make possible 1000 garbage clicks (garbage clicks are those which your competitors or other random users click and land on your site a day which is of utterly no use for which you anyway end up paying) in a span of lets say 30 days in the month, you are ending up paying Rs.10,000/- (INR) per month for literally nothing.

So invest rather in resourceful knowledge providing forums, blogs which may be maintained by professionals in the field with credentials and testimonials to vouch for the same. This will not only be economical but also give you an up-start in the field of online brand building in a powerful way for a long term purpose.

Thus, proper exposure to brand and marketing both, professionally and academically, measurable statistics relevant to your industry and product information, with a powerful SEO knowledge presence would make up for a team of social media marketing consultants whether in-house or external.

At least you know, you have invested in the right place for something that’s going to keep you connected and growing both brand wise and presence wise.

How else would you be able to justify your ROI (return on investment).

So make sure you understand completely the factors that go into influencing the social media marketing techniques for measuring your true social media quotient across platforms.

Right opportunity, technological resource, brand monitoring, reaching the right target, positioning your brand the correct way, optimizing the utility factor of these power packed online marketing tools as a business function with set of pre defined goals and timelines ensures social media marketing for you as not a fashionable fad but a resource that you cannot afford to ignore.

Stay Connected. Give us your views at socialmedia@techdivine.com

You can tweet with us here @techdivine

Regards

Ananth V

Techdivine Creative Services

Connect with me:

@Ananthv9 on Twitter

@Ananthv9 on foursquare

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Social CRM

Social Media Marketing has spread across the globe today. Why will it not?

Social networking sites like Facebook are becoming a massively populated, loved & sought after nation for both, users and marketers today.

With the addition of new technology tools getting added to the vast section of the majorly expanding marketing arena, the need to connect in-depth with the customer today, has only increased.

The core here is, where does the role of the much needed Customer relationship manager (CRM) come in.

Or is it not needed anymore?

The answer is a very simple, yes, it is needed & more than before.

Now that the conversations are being handled online across  clients:Following points are very much essential:

• A CRM who can make sure that the applied technological marketing tool impact is utilized or not is very much essential today.
• Adding up a social connect site for your client is not the solution. Tracking it, receiving feedback, improvising it regularly with response, feedback from clients based on their needed goals etc is what will make the social media campaign a successful one finally.
• If your role is limited to just creating the social connect pages as a social media specialist, make sure you either do not go ahead with the campaign or inform the client of the much needed mutual response from their end for this magical miracle of a power tool to make the much desired impact. Trust has to be mutual, both for the tools and the clients to make this work.

So the question is, how does a CRM fit in between all of this today? How and how much does he impact the Social Media Quotient of your business?

Every business today seems to adapt, implement technology for every single purpose.

Here is where the challenge & skill of a CRM to take your organization and your esteemed clients to the summit of their goals comes into the whole picture. The idea is to blend technology, tie it up a notch with the human skills of personal touch, add that and integrate the same face of your CRM to your online profiles while connecting with your clients and make sure he or she is as technically and market wise sound as your IT and Marketing team is skilled with their respective skill sets.

The power of the tools of social media are unbelievably massive and thus the head that yields the timely yet spontaneous decisions and understands the customers changing needs today, needs to be a combination of your good old CRM with latest technology market research tools and be industry alert. Knowledge of the varied tools like twitter, hootsuite, foursquare, linkedin etc and knowing what they can do for your client is what would make the whole campaign work for real

With this, the role and career of your CRM has not only doubled but become a lot more accountable and responsible than before.

There is so much more a CRM needs to do today? Give us your views on the same…. We would love to hear from you.

You can write to us here: socialmedia@techdivine.com

or

Join & Connect with us here to share your views:

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Regards

Admin

Techdivine Creative Services

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Why SNS: Twitter & Facebook

Dear Friends, Firstly thank you all very much for all your support and in helping us touch base of over 20,000 members across our varied platforms.

Today our esteemed clients from across sectors of Banking, Finance, Infrastructure, Educational Institutions, Trading, Creative agencies etc. and their support and responses to our various posts and industry search reports, media analysis, social connect statistics, brand presence analysis and user interaction tracking methodologies, online marketing space connect, viral campaigns etc. has led us to enhance our existing portfolio of marketing and creative services further.

That brings us to the launch of another Brand under our Online marketing services venture, the launch of:

(The actual Official Logo will be launched only in the third week of Feb 2010)

Your SMQ Social Media Quotient (Logo launch in 3rd week of Feb 2010)

Your SMQ™ – Social Media Quotient for tracking the social connect, enhancing corporate reach and generating much needed impact from the Online marketing campaigns across varied industries for different products and services.

So, Welcome to the Launch of our new Brand Your SMQ (Social Media Quotient)™

The Logo of Your SMQ will be unveiled in the third week of February 2010 at our Mumbai office.

Your SMQ Social Media Quotient would not only discuss on Social Media analysis, Social Media quotient, Online marketing, viral campaigns, brand analysis but also would give value adds and updates on technology and industry news on marketing, technology and branding while adding a stronger brand reach and recall for our existing clients across industries.

We would like to sincerely thank all our members for their increasing support and we assure excellent innovative services and lots of such value add on Social Media Marketing, Design Services and Creative Writing in the coming years.

For more information on what (Your SMQ – Social Media Quotient)™ would offer, keep watching this space for the dates and the official logo Launch in our Mumbai office.

Regards

Ananth V

Product Consultant

TECHDIVINE Creative Services

Social Media, Design Services & Creative Writing

Feel free to write to us at: admin@techdivine.com or you can write to me directly to know more of the Brand Launch at ananthv@techdivine.com

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