Social Media Jobs:

So you like making friends? How about getting paid for the same?

Google Plus raked in Shah Rukh Khan for an extended rendezvous with fans on a Thursday afternoon, a few days before Ra.One was slated to release- an epitome marketing move by Google indeed. Such tactics with close link to timeliness, purpose and human disposition are an in-thing these days.

Speaking to MBA students at St. Mary's School of Management Studies, in a joint initiative of the Business Line Club and Central Bank of India, the presenting sponsor, Mr Jayan Narayanan, Associate Vice-President, Corporate Marketing and Communications, CSS Corp, an ICT services firm said: “If you are on a Web page showing information on Ra.One, you will have advertisements of movie-related Web sites on the right.”

Elucidating on social behavior online, he said statistics show Google Plus achieved in 16 days what took Facebook took 780 days: Garner 10 million users. “It's attributable to the public trait of diving at something without purpose, not Google Plus' efficiency.”

Social Media pages are making money by the click and these firms work hard to avoid being ousted, but now even  individuals are getting into the money making process and that too literally by making friends!

It might not sound feasible at the first go, but if investigated further, it becomes pretty simple.

These social media pages can be effectively used to showcase talent. Whether it is a writer or a photographer or even singers or dancers, their blogs/photos/videos can get viewership and in turn stand a chance of being recognized by the right person. Even if recognition never happens, one can gain a lot of encouragement by getting noticed and commented/tweeted upon by friends and in turn friends of friends!

Then there are marketers who diligently look for people with impressive social media presence to promote their products and services. And you thought it was done only by those top-notch companies via direct collaboration with Facebook/Twitter? Rahul Ranaut also thought the same before being approached by a local business house to promote their restaurant chain via social media. Rahul is a final year B-tech student from a prominent institute in Delhi. He boasts of a friend list count of above 1000 in Facebook and around 250 followers in Twitter, supposedly because he is relatively new to Twitter. Rahul said “I got to know about Facebook way back in 2005, I always liked to make new friends, but did not know that it would end me up with some money-making-opportunity! I started tweeting relatively recently because I realized people do like my instant takes on breaking news and other significant developments.”

Although this concept is relatively new, it is catching up at a notable pace. However, it has its cons attached to it. The concept could turn a bit dicey for the person behind the page when his friends realize that he has been monetizing his friend base! Yet, an intelligent approach to the whole thing can handle that part of the game.

Whether SMIs embrace this concept or not will depend on the impact these cornerstone projects have on the pioneering company’s sales and value addition.

CORPORATE’S SOCIAL MEDIA RESPONSIBILITY

Social Media requires constant monitoring and ad-libbing. Where start-ups and SMEs require vigorous marketing and promotion, it’s an entirely different ball game for the well-established corporate. Enumerated below are my takes on the proper approach towards the avenue for the latter.

Be Selective!

It’s really important to prioritize what a company wants out of the phenomenon called Social Media (SM). They need to pick the top few upshots which they would like to see getting materialized through this platform.  Social media is enchanting because there are so many interesting things to read, people to meet and places to go. It's challenging to prioritize and pick just a few; so instead we end up trying to do it all, which is both time and capital intensive.

The correct approach would be to do a few things in a better way. Once it is decided upon, 90% of the energies must go into these priorities and the remaining 10% can be used for innovation.

Getting the Right Things Done

Being busy is one thing and working in the right direction is an entirely different thing, no rocket science though. It must be analyzed; the amount of time and capital invested in this space should give us the desired results. So it’s time that we reevaluated the investment we made in this sphere and strive to get the right things done accordingly.    

Staying focused is another important aspect of this game; it must be ensured that extra inputs or improvisation must be done without losing focus on the key areas we identify. News like the Facebook F8 developer’s conference or Steve Jobs passing away are important no doubt but their implication should be properly assessed before deflecting any energy towards them.

Getting it right at the top

The top executives of any well-established firms need to be well equipped with the social media space, as any wrong action they take on this space may snowball into a huge issue for the company. A recently released book by Peter Bregman called “18 Minutes” gives us valuable insights into how one can manage his reputation in just 18 minutes every day. This can help the creme-de-la-creme of such companies who generally have little time to manage their online reputation. Here is how:

Step 1 (5 Minutes) Your Social Media Morning Minutes

This is your opportunity to plan your social media for the day. Before turning on your computer or picking up your PDA, sit down with the to-do list and decide what is happening to make this a social media successful day. What can you realistically accomplish whether it’s writing a blog post, researching a new Twitter tool, sitting in on a webinar, or getting ready for that next conference?

Step 2 (1 Minute Every Hour) Social Media Refresh and Refocus

Managing your social media time hour-by-hour is both a discipline and a science. Don’t let the hours manage you … How many times do you all of a sudden realize you have spent the last 20 minutes reading Twitter updates, surfing Facebook Pages, or reading an article from an e-mail subscription?

Set your phone, computer or watch to ring every hour and start the work that is listed on your calendar. When you hear the beep, do a social media check up. Assess your progress and recommit the next hour to get back on track.

Step 3 (5 Minutes) Your Social Media after Dark

At the end of your day, shut the laptop and review your social media day. Ask yourself some questions: How did my social media day go? What did I learn today? Whom did I interact with? Did I meet new followers on Twitter that I should send a quick @ reply? Was there a nice RT of me I should acknowledge? Any comments on my blog I should respond to?

Building and maintaining relationships is critical in social media and it is easy to forget that it takes just a few minutes to share appreciation, congratulate someone, or offer thanks.

This is not a huge task to do, but when done with devotion can actually do wonders for companies by giving them a slight competitive edge. And in this era of cut-throat competition, a slight edge is all one needs to move up the ladder.

How to maneuver the social media to generate leads: insights for Start-ups and SMEs. 

What do commoners want? Fame, recognition, some amount of love and yes $ufficient money ($ is a variable here).

What do businesses want? Customers, sales, brand augmentation and in turn ROI…

This is my take on how these business houses can make the best out of SOCIAL MEDIA (SM) to pursue the ultimate business rationale: 

Paso Uno: Start with the Basics:

A short study of the various available SM platforms where one can pitch in for prospects. A company needs to determine unequivocally their target audience and the appropriate medium. A media firm for instance needs TWITTER as a rule of the thumb. Similarly a Retail firm will not want to take its FB page lightly!!

For SMEs (assuming bigger firms have already initiated rather implemented such measures to avoid risking being thrown out of business) it becomes really important if they want more business and also because it’s just a matter of time before SM becomes inevitable for them as well.

De dos Pasos: Recognize your customers:

Once the medium is finalized, it’s time to go viral on promoting whatever you got. This promotion should not necessarily be of the strengths but also of the weaknesses. Wondering what that means? Simply ask people to suggest you on how to get the crooked things can be straightened in your business, I mean it could be any other product which is on sale for which you ask suggestions. But the process should be continuous, the customers want recognition and when there are follow-ups to these suggestions, customers feel recognized!!

Tres Pasos: Make ‘em famous:

I was once called up by a well known company and to my surprise they told me I was chosen as a lucky winner to get a cricket ball signed by the best bowler in an ongoing series and this felicitation would be done live on national TV right after the match! The kind of impact it had on me and my family can be gauged by the fact that we still swear by that company’s products. How to replicate this on Social media? Simple, create a column somewhere in your firms FB page where you can showcase a lucky customer and keep changing it periodically. This could be just one method, one may occasionally TWEET/POST/SHARE a customer’s pic or simply mention this person to garner some loyalty points.

Utimo Paso: Pay them in cash or in kind, they won’t mind:

Now that almost all customer needs are more or less accommodated, we must address the most common psychological trait in them- GREED. It may sound as if it is straight out of the Wall Street movie, but the fact is that GREED is the cornerstone of all businesses. What a tactical SM person can do here is use it promote a company advantageously. And the method is same: Offers/Discounts/Promotional Schemes/Cash Back. Only thing new is they earn these by visiting the company pages more often!

Coming up next: How can companies with established SM presence optimize the time and effort they spend online?     

Everything is moving eastward: and social media usage?

What is common between Me, Barrack Obama, and Brad Pitt apart from stunning looks? We all have a Twitter or Facebook account. Where’s the big deal? Every other person has one. The point to be noted here is not the quality of people having an account but the quantity. Therefore I think it is safe to derive that social networking is a phenomenon which is determined on demographics. So if the demographics are on an oriental trend then it is but redundant to assume that social networking would be otherwise.

So what do we mean when we say eastward? Elucidating further, pick up the first gadget that you can find on your comp table, most probably it is made in china unless it is a nail cutter as only the Koreans deserve the sole right to manufacturing them . So if a Ford truck can be branded in AMERICA assembled in JAPAN and sold in AUSTRALIA can it be called an American vehicle? Yes the world has globalized and you are smack in the middle of it. However Globalization has become more of a misnomer if looked at from the western perspective and us individually. For them (the Americas and the Europes) it means loss of job and a falling economy, for us it means more BPOs, KFCs and Reality TV.

Confusing so far! Read on.

Fact 1: In Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia almost 80% of Internet users use social media.

Fact 2: Indonesia already has the second most number of FB users after the US.

Fact 3: You did not know all this till you read it here.

Our food for thought is firstly why has fact No.1 and 2 happened? And since these are true we can safely assume that the internet does more than just provide information. Fact no 1 happened because social networking is more than just to and fro of personal or commercial information across users it is now a “Virtual Bridge” connecting minds to thoughts , people to emotions and you to others. The sheer amount of people who have lacked the ease of a channel like a social networking for connecting it can be again safely assumed that the high demographics found in the east will be driving the modus operandi of you, me, Barrack Obama and Brad Pitt at-least on Facebook.

To connect you need people, and the East has it in abundance, however, is it solely the demographic quantity edge that has triggered this shift? One should keep in mind the fact that the East has a small population which can actually access the internet and of those who do; many face a lot of technical barriers in their way, unlike their western counterparts. The transition has occurred because the East has gradually come to appreciate the power of social media. People here have realized how strong this medium is when it comes to spreading truth and awareness.

                                                                                

The bottom-line is: Yet another trend that started off in the WEST has caught up big time with the EAST. So when we look at the social media usage in this part of the world, it ranges from opposition in the Singapore elections to organizing rallies against corruption in India to helping victims of the earthquake in Japan locate their loved ones.

What an Odd name for a site which focuses on everything else but your face (some of my friends don’t even have a Profile Pic). Speaking of pictures, for all you guys who like their facts in numbers and not in gibberish please look at the graph below and understand. If you still don’t get it, you can ask someone else or post it as a status on your Facebook page, better still- avoid all hassles and ask me (COMMENT ).

Credits: RAGHU- for forwarding some crucial stuff, VICKY- for that extra confusion, and a little bit of BBC for all the sad facts.

The overpopulated planet…

No points for guessing that it’s FACEBOOK I am talking about.

I may have disappointed my clique by deciding to write about Mark Zuckerberg, a hard working guy. But this guy who went to Harvard and then left it midways to become the youngest billionaire (debatable, because his roommate cum co-founder is also a billionaire and was born 6 days after him) deserves some recognition.

But folks cheer up, he has some of our traits, look how he quit studies midways!!

So you might be thinking that you know everything about this guy, you have watched the movie “Social Network” right?

WRONG! There are some startling revelations coming up in this blog…

But before that I will narrate an interesting story.

It was a dark afternoon in Delhi; the eclipse prediction was accurate to the T. Rishav was already two floors down when that rigging dilemma whether he locked his room or not took over. He rushed back upstairs and confirmed from the nearest staircase itself… it was locked.

He struck his rear head lightly with his hand. This is what he has been doing for every silly mistake he does. But today this punishment would not suffice for the gaffe he commited last night.

He rushed to the spot where the cab would be waiting for him everyday. He was late as usual. But Nobody really minded his late coming, instead he was always greeted with “good mornings/ afternoons” and “smiles”. There is one thing that must be said about him in this respect. Rishav was a social animal.

He befriended people in no time, particularly those whom he wanted to be with (or for that matter from whom he wanted to extract some work).  So he was friends with the cab driver (of every cab he ever traveled in), with all the guys who ever accompanied him and of course with all the girls he ever met. Yes, he was a womanizer too.

Some said it was his child-like looks and others said it was his soft-spoken attitude that these girls liked. But here he managed to maneuver both the sides in such a way that the girls didn’t mind his friendship with the so called “bad” boys, and the guys were not jealous of his long list of “girl” friends!

But today was not just another day. It was the SECOND of days he would like everyone to forget. He sensed trouble for the first time when nobody greeted him, except Smith, his best friend (or so he thought). He did not know whether to initiate a discussion today. He could do it in any normal day when others hardly had a topic to start a conversation. But today a strange eerie in the cab’s atmosphere made him hesitant.

Suddenly it struck him!

Did they know what happened last night? But how could they?

He did the job with such finesse; he couldn't dare to let others know about it! 

Was it all over then?

Then why didn't that column in THE HINDU mention or even hint at him?

Or was he overrating the scenario?

Maybe these thoughts were bound to arrive in every brain which masterminded, executed or even witnessed the previous night’s occurrences.

Then why was every thing so atypical today? Or was he mistaken?

It could be that everyone greeted him and he didn't hear any due to his exhilaration. Maybe it was his anticipation of the worse which blanketed the reality just like the moon’s shadow had done to the earth few minutes back.

He decided not to jump to a conclusion. He was trained not to.

He replied with a hesitant smile to Smith- “Wassup buddy?”

Smith- “Bas kat rahi hai yaar, Tu bata. Ghar se phir phone aya tha kya? Upset lag raha hai?”  Smith was one of those Indians (on the verge of extinction) who still preffered Hindi unless forced to otherwise.

“Nahi Yaar, just have a headache”

He decided not to talk throughout the journey and pretended to have a serious headache.

To be continued...

So friends, a first time writer just sold his draft to you, thanks to FACEBOOK.

Imagine me starting the blog with a title: Story (just another story) of Rishav- the terrorist in masquerade. Would you have read it from there? No, but you did this way. Such is the power of social media.

So not only individuals like me but even business houses have caught up with the trend. They say it’s been high time that they transit from selling to a mass (out of which many may not buy) to selling to the needy (90% selling guaranteed).

While Facebook has undoubtedly surpassed every other medium in the space (in almost every aspect), other media are not really dispensable. A simple fact in support could be that every prospect (in business sense) does not have a FB page. Twitter, consumer forums, dashboards and blogs are unique in their own way. An assembly of these media can effectively help business houses to reach out to the consumers. Where businesses worldwide have realized this, some specialized business providers have mushroomed to fill the demand gap.

These firms provide specialized services which are customized according to the needs of their clients. They have the infamous advantage -talked about widely in the book FREKONOMICS- of information and expertise which their clients do not have.

Moreover, there is a sense of paranoia amongst these giants that they might miss something in the social sphere which their rivals can use against them.

NETSCRIBES offers such services to its clients so that they don’t miss out on any development in this arena. And I am a part of this process! Interesting right?

The story of an unintentional blogger

While it is true that I was not born with that silver spoon, it is also true that I hardly ever walked that extra mile to get anything. Whatever I got was always a kind of gift and nothing was hard-earned!!

Laziness was always in me. I could never reach school on time, I always dozed off at the study table, loved only to bat (bowling involved run-ups), didn't bother to burn the midnight oil even before important exams like the boards (ask any Indian what BOARD exams mean to them and then decide upon the magnitude of my laziness) and today as I write this blog my boss is explaining me how critical time management is to one's career (Yes, i was late to office... again).

By now I hope I have some sympathizers... people who know the value of more than 8  hours of sleep a day, those who regularly squander away time sitting on a couch  engrossed deeply in movies and of course people who risk a divorce for that beer with their friends!!

People of my clan hardly reach anywhere in the pyramid of their career, but we have one thing which no one can beat us at- our ability to talk, think and interpret the world in an unique way (thanks to our restful mind and soul which has ample time to take in any trash which hard-working people hardly consider and reflect upon).

Now the big question arises: How on earth did this native of the lazy-men-club end up blogging (believe me it requires HARD-WORK)!!

The story goes this way....

Once upon a time- in the year 1997 to be precise (REMEMBER: In the Internet era even one year old stuff is history)- there were men called Jorn Barger and Peter Merholz who coined the term "Blog". Websites like Open Diary (1998)  started by Bruce Ableson, LiveJournal (1999) by Brad Fitzpatrick took blogging to the next level. And by the time Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan (Pyra Labs) launched blogger.com in August 1999 (sold to Google in 2003) blogging was almost a household term.

But this was only the beginning of an Era, one that would change the way people thought and above all- REACTED!!

Because in the year 2004 Mark Zuckerberg was to happen. It is for all of us to see today how FB has changed the way we do business. Social media was growing at an unprecedented rate both in volume and effect. In January 2005, Fortune magazine listed eight bloggers that business people "could not ignore": Peter Rojas,Xeni Jardin, Ben Trott, Mena Trott, Jonathan Schwartz, Jason Goldman, Robert Scoble, and Jason Calacanis. The combined brand value of all social media facilitators skyrocketed many times every year since then. 

Cut to the 2011. This lazy creature graduated and like every other inhabitant of "the" lazy world said its high time (happy time) to call STUDIES quits. And this was when I realized how badly people like me need a silver spoon at birth.

So I assembled all my certificates and walked into this organization called NETSCRIBES and managed to get a job (thanks AGAIN to my restful mind which hitherto spend a lot of time studying the SOCIAL MEDIA).

Yes, today I am a SOCIAL MEDIA INTELLIGENCE guy. And this blog is dedicated to this bread earner of mine called the SOCIAL MEDIA SPACE.