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.