Reminder - Facebook Timeline: Are you there yet??

Only one day to go before Facebook applies mandatory upgrade to your brand pages.

Do it now!!! - is the word on street. Facebook had last month asked users with brand pages to try the new timeline feature. They offered users to upgrade & have a preview of the features. Post that, users had an option to roll back to the older version and revise their content strategies. But that is going to end tonite. Here's the message Facebook has sent to the users:

Reminder! Tomorrow starting at 11am PST we will begin to migrate Pages who have not upgraded yet to the new Timeline format. If you admin one of those Pages, you still have time to get your Page ready by adding a cover photo, milestones, etc. before tomorrow! Check out these tips from other Page admins: https://www.facebook.com/marketing/posts/10150758346981337

So, if you have still not put your upgrade strategy in place, NOW is the time to do it. Make sure you're equipped atleast with:

1. Cover Photo

2. Pinned Story: One post that you would like to highlight.

Pinned Story

You can check more about Facebook Timeline at the official site.

And here's my updated Facebook page. Go ahead and click the "Like" button on the right & would be glad to engage.

Do share the link of your Facebook page using the "comments" section below.

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How not to use Social Media

Goldman Sachs

Guess your morning social feeds would have been inundated by the news of Greg Smith leaving Goldman Sachs and his damning revelation of the state of affairs in the organisation. On Greg's part, it is sad that he has to leave the organization after putting 12 years of efforts since joining as an intern.

With his article in the NYTimes Op-ed going viral, it does seem that people are interested in knowing what goes on at one of the most revered organisation as it concerns money. He has indeed stated that the culture & leadership is all concerned about making money, and moved away from its basic tenets of serving its customers to enable them make long term investment decisions, but my take is which organisation isn't into that. 

Unlike when he started 12 years back, the times have changed drastically now. These days people do want to make money fast and do not might getting battered for a while. That is the sentiment that helps organisations like Goldman Sachs & others run their business, so nothing wrong with it. End of the day, its all about "money".

But resorting to a public smear campaign leveraging social media was quite uncalled for. This issue could become a classic PR case & we would have ample bytes being written about it (I leave that to the experts).

Do utilize the comments panel below & share your take on the issue. I am still skeptical about supporting a disgruntled employee.

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Social Media & Changing Food Habits

You can say, this journey of change in food habits started during my first visit of the US. Almost, 8 years back I tasted 'Pad Thai' and 'fruit tart' for the first time & instantly fell in love with it. Since then, I have been trying to perfect it & today it tastes good & so my wife wanted to put up the recipe on her food blog (haven't obliged her with the Pad Thai recipe yet :-) ). The discussion with her though brought to my notice how the food habits around us & including ours have changed with the proliferation of social media.

Food is something that is intrinsic to all of us & you can gauge the popularity with the number of blogs dedicated to it, be it - healthy, organic, vegan, pastries etc or the number of photos appearing on Pinterest.

So what is driving the change?

Frequent Travel

Food habits in each of the country were quite unique to the place of living, but since the late nineties when people started traveling places frequently as the businesses started going global, there was this sudden interest to learn recipes of distant lands. Today, mom's recipes has been replaced by food blogs.

Social Channels

A visit to thekitchn.com made me realize the number of contest taking place - Healthy Blog, Best Food Photography & others. And the key drivers of these contests is the healthy dose of sharing across the social networks - Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest (offlate). 

Even the food chains have become suave enough to have presence on Social Media and ensure that they grab eyeballs as well as business. Take the case of McDonalds & Subway brand pages on Twitter.

But more than them, its the individual contributors who write regularly - the likes of Chinmayee Bhat @LoveFoodEat or Sukaina @SipsAndSpoonful or Susan Voisin @Fat Free Vegan.

These folks have made sure that the traditional recipes are shared & adopted. In family dinner or even otherwise, the eclectic dishes are indeed derived from either a blog or probably the host came across a Tweet or Facebook post.

While, I can't still make out what a ganache means, my wife has already put her baking skills to test (unfortunately on me!!!) tonite. 

Do share your thoughts & how your food habits have changed. Make use of the comment section below and share your favorite recipe or two and your thoughts. Meanwhile, cheers to Pepperica (@jalbarai) for igniting these topic.

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New: Facebook Timeline for Brands

NEW: Facebook Brand Pages

Voila!!! Facebook has indeed launched its timeline feature for brand pages as promised during fMC (Facebook Marketing Conference) and we are already seeing brands lapping up the changes.

For starters, there is a preview available so you might want to have a look at how your page will appear after the change.

But, in case you decide not to change, well, you do not have a choice because according to Facebook, all the brand pages will appear in the new timeline format after 30th March. So better adopt the change & play around for a while to build some super looking brand pages.

And why this changes?? 

It seems that post IPO, Facebook wanted to leverage on the revenue potential of Ads & Sponsored stories and latch itself to paid content. With premium features, it can take care of both as the stories will appear in the News Feeds of the fans & also paid content will appear as 'story' after log out.

Another ability is to 'highlight' as post. Something that you would like to appear a the top irrespective of what day you posted. This gives brands an opportunity to showcase some of its best content & get better CTRs.

Also, it will move away from what appears as 'like' based marketing, where you had to 'like' the page before being able to comment or view images.

More information on the changes can be found at Facebook

And here's how my updated Page looks like:

Malhar's Social Media Page

A detailed follow-up post on how you can create the new brand page & better leverage the features coming up next.

Do share your thoughts on the new changes & if that will that help Facebook or brands drive additional revenues. Would love to hear from you all.

Have a great weekend ahead!!!

Check out my about.me profile!

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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How-to setup an Editorial Calendar for effective Content Strategy?

Image Courtesy Stuart Miles

Writing is a wonderful art & over the time since I started to write - blog, articles, whitepapers or for that matter any content, I have found that the only way to better it, is to follow a certain content strategy. 

Your single most goal is to build content that will generate more traffic but the challenge is how-to translate that into action...

Regardless of your goals, one of the way to setup an effective content strategy that can improve over time, is to build a "Editorial Calendar". I have seen multiple templates available on the web, but having picked up few of them I have gone ahead & personalized it to suit the content that I produce.

An editorial calendar is a great way to do forward planning - research, et al for your content and also helps to keep track of your ideas, users.

Though, one of the goal that every content strategy should address is to show up on the search ranking, so have a post that has a blend of "search engine" specific keywords in title & post.

Here the glimpse my "editorial calendar" and you might want to personalize it to your requirements:

Editorial Calendar

I've divided my calendar under columns like:

Week

As I do my posts on weekly basis, the first column was to put a date/week for each content. It helps me channelize my research, thought process in the run-up to the week.

Key Goal

Its good to define your key goal at the start. It has been my experience that until you have a certain goal in mind, it would be difficult to setup your thoughts over the huge amount of noise generated on the web.

Heading

The first place where the viewer might get interested to go through your content is the "heading". This is the single most piece to attract viewers and gather a certain fan following. Also, the traffic from social channels will most probably be driven by it.

"Headings" need to be creative, suggestive or even controversial so that viewers will read further & comment too.

Have a tentative heading to start with as you might need to revisit after you have defined your keywords.

Keywords

Go through any SEO optimization techniques & the stress is to have maximum coverage of keywords. 

"Keywords" supposedly are instrumental in driving the traffic to your site from the search engines. Make sure your post, heading have a mix of them so that your page is search-engine friendly.

I make sure that my post has a good set of keywords for it to appear in the search engines & help drive first-time visitors.

Hits/Week

Once I am done with posting my content, I track the stats for a week. It helps me to analyze the content of my post - what worked & what didn't. 

A deeper analysis can reveal which channel has generated traffic - search engine, Twitter, Facebook. It is one detail that can helps you to decide which channel to emphasize for your content.

Comments

These is a very personal column that I use to deduce the judgmental errors.

It helps me in planning for my next post & I try to avoid the mistakes that could have occurred in previous posts...

And while you are here, do not forget to leave your comments. They are welcome & helpful too...

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5 'P'illars of Social Media

(Image credit: 'Idea Go' at freedigitalphotos.net)

"2012 has arrived & here's me wishing you a fabulous year ahead"

The goal for year forward for all of us will be to become as engaged with customers as it could be possible. Social Media is one such medium which offers limitless opportunities - product launches, interesting offers, events, photos to get engaged or even generate new business.

In the first post of the new year, am listing the 5 key pillars to achieve success on "Social" channels - Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus et al. Whether you are starting your social media journey or you're already at the top, these few ideas can help you notch up the efforts in the right direction.

1. People

Invest in 'people'. Get on-board people with knowledge about the medium - the multiple channels, SEO, PPC; to ensure that your organisation covers all the possible medium of communication. Ensure, you or the team engages with the audience thereby giving a personal attention to them.

2. Process

Build a set of questions on your motivation to target the medium. That will help you in demystifying the medium and enable to streamline the process to achieve the required goal. Make sure to document the process which can improve the depth of knowledge assets.

3. Product

Put technology to work. There are companies who have already developed "products" that help you take greater advantage of the existing social medium

- Timing your updates - Use Timely or Buffer (@BufferApp)
- Social Media Monitoring & Engagement - Use Radian6, Commun.it

4. Proliferation

Scoop the web, certain best practices are already out there. Utlize these assets & spread awareness about your brand, activities across diffrent social channels.

5. Promotion

Since you have taken steps to proliferate your organisation, brand the last critical step is to promote. Focus on engagement (2-way conversation), quality of your messages (not the number of messages). Engagement with customers will lead to stronger relationship & word-of-mouth publicity. But remember, social media is not spamming.

Thanks for reading through. Please do comment & share your thoughts, let's get engaged!!! Happy New Year!!!

Follow me - @MalharBarai, Facebook Page, GooglePlus

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The New Twitter Brand Pages

Twitter recently rolled out changes to the UI and many of you will agree that the new look is quite suave & gives the user a great perspective on the investments folks at Twitter are making to become user friendly. In this race of social media platforms to out do each other, the users are at a great advantage to experience some great innovations.

But the one feature that Twitter rolled out & what could be potentially a BIG competition to the world of Facebook & Google+ is the launch of its brand pages. The folks at Twitter have been rather kind enough to not name the feature as "Brand Page" but as "Enhanced Profile Page". The new feature though is available to select users at the moment & I had a chance to have look at the page of @McDonalds

Brand Page Features:

1. Pin a Tweet/Feature your content

And as I hear from the street, one of the best ability of this new feature is to pin a tweet or again in Twitter's parlance is "Feature your content", which effectively allows the brands to highlight one of its most engaging content helping them to drive much more inbound traffic. This tweet remains at top of the timeline and has the ability to hold non-textual content which would be most useful when brands would like to share an image or video. (Look how enticing the Big Mac looks :-) )

2. Banner/Header
 

The other big change was to have your brand logo, image, tagline or other content at the top which could be a major differentiator for visitors to classify from normal user page to a brand page.

There are 20 more Twitter Brand pages other than @McDonalds and the list can be found here.

What's your view?? IMHO, I am looking forward to the day when Google+ or Facebook launches the "pin" feature, but until that time, Twitter shall be the most chosen medium to share brand information.

Do drop in your comments/feedback below or at my Facebook Page or Google+ Page or tweet @MalharBarai

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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 create Google+ Business Page

One of the biggest news of this week was the launch of Google+ Business Page. It was the news that we had been waiting for since the launch of Google+. True to industry grapewine, it has indeed placed itself directly against Facebook. Also, the creation of Google+ Business Page was like a walk in the park, I had no rumblings at all.

Presenting here, some easy steps to create the Google+ Business Page, which has also been explained at the Google+ Blog.

Step 1

Go to http://plus.google.com/ and login with your Google+ credentials. On the right hand bottom, you should find a link "Create a Google+ Page" or you can directly go to http://plus.google.com/pages/create and login and proceed to step 2.

Step 2

On the create page, select appropriate category for your business. Enter the name of your business, website and sub-category. Based on the content of your page, select the viewer type.

Step 3

Next step is to customize your page. Make sure you have a catchy tag line, something that would entice the viewer to visit or like it. You can even upload a photo of your business.

Step 4

Finally, spread the information about creation of your page. You can share it with your colleagues or a small group initially. But before that, do load the page with some content. That will help viewers to understand your focus areas & want them to visit back.

Step 5

There you have, your own personal Google+ Page. Get going, invest sometime to post content regularly to have more visitor on the page.

Few of the best pages I have come across till now and more recently Toyota too.

Thanks for reading through & here's my page.

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