Top 4 reasons to participate in Twitter Chat

Twitter Chat

In the last few months, I seem to have caught up with the Twitter Chat bug. For someone who's is making foray into the social media marketing world, it is an apt form of communication and learning.

What is a Twitter Chat anyway?? 

When you have spent some time on twitter, you do come across situation where information is exchanged between individuals. Suppose you group these individuals, throw a topic and let the thoughts flow, there goes Twitter Chat :). In an ideal situation, it goes like:

1. Setup a date/time

2. Suggest a topic

3. Setup #hashtag, in order to help people follow the conversation

4. Send out invites

But end of the day, the biggest question that arises, how does it help ME??  I have been lucky enough to have exchanged ideas & befriended some of the great individuals in the Social Media world using twitter chat. Here are my top 5 reasons, you should be part of Twitter Chat:

1. Engagement

One of the clear advantage of being a part of tweet chat is the increased engagement. When a topic falls into your sweet spot, you are bound to get sucked into the discussion. Various chats encourage you to post questions, which gets answered by the panel or other participants. One of the best forms of engagement in real time.

2. Build Intelligence

For instance, the recent chat we had at #Toolschat on Kred. I have not yet adopted Kred since the great fiasco of Klout and there were participants with similar concerns over the scoring. Participating in the chat on that day, helped us build intelligence about Kred and also similar enterprises - PeerIndex and likes. We were able to uncover the pulse of the various users of Kred and guess it helped Kred to gather feedback informally, which may help in future investments.

3. Focused Followers

If you are in the game, where you fret on the number of followers, my advice, this is not the place. But in case you want to follow or get followed by key individuals in your space - do attend the chats, regularly. Here's a place where you get to interact with like-minded individuals and engage with them beyond the chat sessions.

4. Promotion

The above example of Kred, exemplifies the power of Twitter and Twitter chats. It's your time to be in the limelight. As an enterprise, you might want to sponsor a Twitter chat or be a guest panel on a day & tell the participants how your product(s) can help them. It will be a chance to educate potential customers about your products and one of the best methods to serve information and source feedback.

Well, we have IBM  coming to #GetRealChat on 5/1. Be there on Twitter at 9 PM EST and follow the hashtag.

As part of my regular activities, I participate in the following chats:

a. #BlogChat

b. #SocialChat

c. #PinChat

d. #SMChat

e. #GetRealChat

Let's engage there.

You might also want to check out the Mashable's 15 Essential Twitter Chats for SMM

 

Has Twitter Chat helped you?? Share how?

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D is for Digital Marketing

Ever since Internet became the heart of communication channels, companies are finding ways to leverage it for marketing benefits & that essentially is all about 'Digital Marketing'. The marketing world has seen a paradigm shift in their campaigns while moving from traditional channels to the digital space. 

The advent of search engines saw the marketer lapping up SEO, ad banners, PPC strategies as part of digital marketing, which promised that your brand pages lands at the top. And now even these  are being tweaked so that they suit the more prolific social channels rather than focusing on the entire internet space. The intent is clearly to be heard and reach out to more customers.

This blog post is part of the A to Z Challenge and I would be glad to see your comments on "Digital Marketing"

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How Pinterest can help Emerging Markets

Pinterest

Over the last few weeks I have been glossing over the fact that Pinterest is driving much of the social traffic. It has been a site which has generated a great amount of (p)interest in the social world off the last few months & well, I was kind of lured to visit. Just as we saw a huge amount of noise created by enterprises to launch their brand pages across Twitter, Google+, Facebook - this year start seems to be devoted to Pinterest.

What is 'Pinterest' ??

The first thing that stuck me was that the site is still not officially open to all & is strictly invite-based. Not that it would be an issue as I have never heard anyone's request turned down, but I agree, its a better way to keep off some unwarranted noise.

Started by Cold Brew Labs with an intention to share images based on themes, Pinterest helps users curate images from various website using its 'Pin it' button or by uploading the image & is shared over its canvas (pin-boards). It basically is a platform where images can be shared & marketed.

While I was waiting for my request to be approved, which was done over a due course of time, I took some time off to ponder over the facts (from Mashable):

Pinterest -

• is the fastest to reach 11.7 million unique visitors in Dec 2011 (comscore)
• Has 10.4 million registered users (Source)
• Averages 1.36 million users daily
• Has 68.2% users as women
• Has a healthy 3.6% referral topic, better than Youtube, Google+
• Estimated unique visitors to Pinterest.com increased by 429 percent from September to December 2011. (via Monetate)
• Top interests in the U.S.: crafts, gifts, hobbies/leisure, interior design, fashion designers/collections. (via Ragan.com)
• Has seen 289% increase in apparel retail traffic between July - Dec'11

Looking at those stats, you're sure that it would be an interesting business proposition to put your wares on the Pinterest platform. 

 

Volkswagen USA

Have a look at Etsy or Volkswagen USA boards on Pinterest & it will be easy to gauge the kind of potential Pinterest has and it would make sense to to have your items displayed there.

And the one market that can obviously leverage on the social channels was the "Emerging Markets". Small & Medium Enterprises (SME) in those markets can certainly gain a mass following outside of their geographies by having a display over and above their own portals.

Pinterest offers a very simple way to get you onboard & start pinning (the equivalent of displaying & linking product photo).

1. Get an account. Simple go to the Pinterest site & "request for an invite". Enter your preferred email id & you should soon have a link from the team to proceed with creation of your account.

2. Create a content strategy. Gregory Pouy's presentation shall help you decide on the strategy.

3. Create Pin-boards. Login to the account & start creating pin-boards based on your product themes - Weddings, Formal Wear, Casuals, Gift ideas. It will help you manage the product lines & an easier track back.

Etsy

4. Pinning to Portal. Each image on the pin-board can be linked to your portal. Also, like this user, you might can also display the price on the pin-board & get the viewer to visit the website to transact further.

5. Promotion.  Link the pin-boards to popular social sites like Twitter, Facebook or Google+ and enterprise can achieve better mileage for their brands.

6. Feedback. Create a board where users can re-pin your products & based on the products shared, the enterprise can determine the demographics of the users & promote the range of products in a particular geography. eg. A user in the Middle-East, Asia tropical region shall not be looking to buy woolen clothing designed for colder climates. Such information can be leveraged while creating pin-boards.

I believe this are good times for the SME in the emerging markets to grab some eye-balls & create a generous fan base. With the kind of growth Pinterest is going through, it has to be part of the content strategy for enterprises in these markets to leverage it over & above the conventional portals & other social fan pages.

But yes, there have been concerns over privacy & copyrights over the images being shared which I believe would be thrashed in coming days.

Needless to say - "Go ahead...Needles are waiting to be pinned" !!!

So, do you find some of these strategies exciting?? It would be great to hear your views & learn about other successful ideas and how they are being implemented.

Let me know through comments & will be glad to engage in the conversation.

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5 Effective Social Media Strategies

Now that you have put across your first tweet, blog post or created your Facebook Page or Google+ Page, you need a sound plan to succeed. Scout the net & you should find tons of links to help you succeed & I promise the following post might not be too different, but then its just some of the strategies that have help me while starting for zero. You'll need these strategies, as there are competitors who are ready to out-do you & by the time you master it, a success story would have already been born.

(Image Courtesy: Creative Commons)

Do read this before you dish out the next piece of information for your followers:

1. Identify your target customers

Before you begin your next update, gauge your target audience - area of interest, age, geographical area. Gather an idea of what they would like to hear or see.  Ensure that your blog has appropriate visual appeal and aesthetics to keep the reader interested or have interesting Twitter headline to make it clickable.

2. Scout appropriate content

To ensure that you share content, that would make your customer "share", research on the subject. List out the sites, blogs, news within the domain & subscribe to feeds. Staying updated with the trends will help you to share latest contents which is what your customers are looking for

3. Update regularly

The only reason will have followers is they expect information from you. Keep updating, and once you share regularly, they will know where to look out for any new happenings or get information on the subject. Set aside atleast 15-20 minutes in a day to update. And with the host of tools available now - Tweetdeck or Hootsuite, its easy to schedule your updates.

4. Interact

The best way to master your social media skill is to interact with other users or you audience. Be prompt to respond to comments - positive or negative. Start making connections with the folks from your industry, start participating in discussions, share your thoughts. The law of attraction works very well in this medium.

5. Promote

Now that your content is focused & an audience set up, start promoting self or business. This will ensure that your stories are heard instead of it being picked up from all of the noise generated on social media channels.

And these were some of my strategies to succeed over social media. Few of them are easy while other might take a while but remember, social media does take time and money.

Well yes on Thanksgiving & otherwise too, a big thanks to all the readers of this post and my blog. Love to hear your comments or success stories as usual.

Good Day!!!

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How to increase your Twitter Followers - Top 10 ways

Twitter has been a terrific place to share information and links to information. But to have your content read, you need to have a large pool of followers.The greater the number of followers, the more influential your content is.

Today I shall list down few steps that have helped me to increase the number of followers:

#0. No one likes an egg- head (yes, I have deliberately number it 0 as this is the most important step)

Egg-head is the default image that Twitter give. Maybe you have liked it & would not want to change, but we would like to know the person sharing content. No pets, no monuments and no scenic locales. We would like to know YOU.

#1. Get a short bio

Give a brief description of yourself, your interest/passion. Potential followers do read the bio besides reading your content.

#2. Share your internet footprint

Provide like of your blog or company URL or Facebook Page. They should know what else to follow. Also, these turns out to be a good SEO exercise. Ensure that you put up the "tweet" button or "Follow me on Twitter" button on those sites

#3. Follow the leaders and build connections

Whatever your choice of subject, follow the leaders & get an understanding of what they share. This will give you a fair idea of what the acceptable norms of content sharing is within that domain. But do not stop yourself at just following the leaders, build connections with other users whose content you find interesting

#4. Start sharing content

In a given day, you would be reading a lot and gathering information on your choice of subject. Share all these meaningful content. Preferably, it should be links, because given the 140 char limit of Twitter, you might not be able to convey the entire message. So, lead your followers to information. Use the URL shortening services like bit.ly, ow.ly or goo.gl and many others. Twitter has recently started shortening the URLs using its own t.co service too

#5. Tweet Regularly

This step should in fact be high up the order. Remember, your followers are expecting information from you. Keep sharing, and once you share regularly, they will know where to look out for any new happenings or get information on the subject. You can use services of Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to schedule your tweets

#6. Repeat your Tweets

Something that I learnt very late, and this was while listening to Guy Kawasaki. Do repeat you tweet, as you would never know which part of the world is following you. A tweet in the US day time would hardly be seen in the timeline of someone in India, unless it is repeated in their day time.

#7. Engage within the domain

Try to get yourself heard. Engage in the various conversations happening over Twitter & share your point of view. Chances are, few of the readers will like it & start following you.

#8. Do not SPAM

Whatever your reason of joining Twitter, make sure you do not SPAM the followers. This is a strict No-no.


#9. Ask questions

Another form of engagement is to ask your followers some questions or set up a poll. You can then share the results over your blog.


#10. Thank followers, re-tweeters

But make sure these are done as direct message. Other followers are not interested in whom you have thanked & once you reach a certain number of users, your timeline shall be filled with these messages instead of the content incase they are public messages.

Thanks for reading through. I can be reached on Twitter @malharbarai

Do leave your comments & I would be happy to engage.

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How To Get Over The Social Media Noise

With plethora of Social Media Platforms do you find yourself lost?? It seems so often that with an unprecedented rush by enterprise to implement marketing strategies unheard of till now and grab your share of attention thereby adding to the "noise" in the social space. With millions of users across Facebook, Twitter & add to it the latest entry of Google+, the "noise" created is overwhelming.

Take this, it took Google+ only 16 days to notch up 10 million users since its launch whereas Twitter took almost 780 days and Facebook 852 days to have the same number of users. And, the "noise" created by these platforms with its multiple information feeds, ads is just increasing which might shadow over the real information (a reason you went social)

But as enterprise, with growth in number of social platforms, you ought to master the art of getting the users attention to the platform of choice & span several minutes to get over the other "noise". You need to be able to connect with the audience, talk about the topic they are interested in and be able to share it without inhibition.

Here are few tips to get over the Social Media Noise:

1. Enchant readers with the right titles


How many times have you given a pass to one of you Twitter update or a Facebook update, because you  didn't find the message interesting. The trick is, have a subtle message & do not oversell. No one likes to be told to act in a certain way. One of the great post by Jeff Bullas explains it.

2. Spread message across multiple platforms

I have been following Guy Kawasaki, Pete Cashmore (Mashable) - you name a platform and these guys are already there. They are the best in business and have ensured to ride over the Social Media wave and get their message heard. They were amongst the first few users on Google+, and ensured that their posts continued on the new platform thereby increasing their fan base.
 
3. Post regularly & multiple times in a day

Have a schedule, make sure you post regularly. Coke Studio by MTV India makes sure to post regular music updates on their Facebook page. This ensures that the massive fan base they generated during the first season remains glued and when they go into the second season, they'll have a certain number of fans increasing their TRP ratings.

The other lesson that I learnt from Guy was to post multiple times in a day & the simple reason we tend to overlook is - you never know which part of the world is reading your message. Posting the same message multiple times ensures that fans in any geographical location will have it in their timeline/feed.


4. Reply to comments and engage readers 

Once you have posted, expect people to comment. These comments could be good, bad or ugly at times, but then readers have the right to share their point of view. In the same vein, it would be good that you reply to each of these message & help readers to understand your point of view. The more you engage, readers will tend to love your post. They will also help in having you make an informed decision on certain subjects. Engagement will ensure stickiness to your page as the readers are comfortable that you understand them.

And how to ensure you get comments, read this. One of the best I have come across so far.



5. Be Concise

This is the age of fast-food. With the kind of attention span we have these days, no one will read a 100 line post. I have been a huge fan of Seth Godin's posts. For me, they are the perfect examples of how your posts should be. "precisely concise". It ensures that your posts are read & you invoke the readers to think. If they want to know more, comment are left & then there could be further engagement.

So what do you think - hopefully the above will help you stay above the "noise". Do comment, I do engage with my readers :-) 

You can leave your comment either here on the blog or my Facebook Page or Google+ or just Tweet me.

(Image Courtesy: FreeDigitalPhotos.net - Renjith Krishnan, Danilo Rizzuti)

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How To Create Facebook Fan Page

For a long time I had been procrastinating on this, but finally over the last week I created a personal branding page on Facebook. I had been following pages of few of the brands for a long time & this step was long overdue.

Based on my experience, I thought it would be good to share my experience of creating the Facebook page, so that some of you might find it easier to get it done & may not delay like me :-).

First thing first. Why should you create a Facebook Fan Page??

- It lets you advertise for free
- Unlike your Facebook account, the fan page can be viewed without logging in & so it can be crawled by the various search engines.
- Enables you to create a dedicated fan base, enabling you to control the content

Now that you have enough reasons to create it, dive..choose your subject well and make sure you have a good name to it, because as the followers swell, you'll have to live with that name.

Step #1 - Create Page

At the bottom corner of left pane on your Facebook page, you should be able to find a link with an orange flag saying PAGES (image 1).

The click will lead you "Pages" Screen. The "Create a Page" button is on the right side (image 2). A click on the button shall send you to the "Create a Page" screen.

You can also find the link "Create a Page" (image 3) at the bottom of your home screen. For benefit, I have already put the link here & incase you are already logged in, you should be able to see the "Create a Page" screen. 

Step #2 - Categories

(Image 4)

Once you are at the "Create a Page" screen, choose the appropriate category for your business from the 6 main categories (image 4) & multiple sub-categories. Yes, you can change the category later.

(Image 5)

Now that you have selected a category which is the closest to your page content, go ahead & give a name (image 5), but a word of CAUTION - the name cannot be changed later (can be changed only until 100 fans) & it is the name which the search engines shall pick. 

Step #3 - Logo

(Image 6)

When you have accepted the Facebook T&C, you'll be presented with the screen to upload your logo (image 6). Skip the step, if you wish to upload the logo later or you can upload your business logo. The logo can be either uploaded from the local computer or you can provide the URL of logo image file from the business website. 

Step #4 - Invite Friends

(Image 7)

Popularize your page now. This page (image 7) allows you to invite friends from your existing contacts, import contacts and also share the page on your Facebook wall. Do make sure to "like" your own page. Atleast you should be happy about it :-) 

Step #5 - Fan Page

The fan page information is now shared with the people you know, but you also need to catch attention of other readers. This step helps you in give information about yourself. The content here should be able to catch attention of the visitors, so make sure you sell yourself quite well. Be crisp!!

(Image 8)

Congratulations!! Now you have your own Facebook Fan Page (image 8). It will go ahead & ask you to confirm the category of the page, make the changes if you think you've classified it under a different bucket. 

Step #6 - Promotion

(Image 9)

Since you have created a Fan page now, the next step would be to catch attention of millions of users of Facebook & the best way to do a "promotion" is create an "ad". On the right pane of the page, you will be able see the "Promote with an Ad" & "Promote my Page" button (image 9), which leads to creation of an "ad"

The promotion is based on the pricing limits you set. Facebook optimizes the delivery of ads in order gain maximum clicks. 

Step #7 - Content Sharing

(Image 10)

Finally, the page has been created & promotion campaign has been set up. The next obvious step would be create meat for the page. Start posting & sharing information on your page with the many options. You might want to share content using text, link, photos. Go ahead & do it. It's your page now. 

Step #8 - Analytics

Still at the end of the day, you would definitely be interested in getting information about the number of visitors & content being clicked. "View Insights" link on the right pane of the page helps you view the information. The "Insights" page provides information by week, month, year & also allows to export data in Excel and CSV formats.

While writing of this post, I did come across the Top 100 Popular Facebook Pages.

Though Facebook has already detailed the page creation process here the post above was my 2 cents. I have already created my page on Social Media and sharing some interesting content over it. Don't forget to visit it & "like" the page.

Thanks for reading through & would love to read your feedback on the post.

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Build a company using Social Media - Infographic

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