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?