How should we use Twitter: Classification & their Impact on us

Today an interesting conversation (here, here & here too) with Asfaq led me to brood over one simple question. How should Twitter be used? Now simple it is but its implications are manifold. To pen down some of my thoughts on “How we Tweet?” led me to another sort of thinking, i.e. does our tweeting ways or techniques of posting those short, succinct, terse messages (tweets) impact the way we think/perceive ideas/notions or stuff like that? I believe they do. I’ll take this post into two ways. First, will try to understand broadly how all those zillion of tweets posted per day around the world can be classified into and then how are they can impact the way we think/perceive about various things around us.

Firstly, those terse messages which we all have coined as Tweets can be broadly classified as:

1. Question/Enquiry Tweet: This category of tweets fall majorly into What, Where, When, How and all the other statements which ends with a question mark. These kinds of tweets generally take advantage of the collaborative framework of Twitter.

2. Share Tweet: This type of tweets are classified as sharing information in the form of links (mostly short & terse url), events & news or anything & everything which a person feels can be shared. This is the bread & butter for those ever-hungry bloggers looking for some extra bit of attention into their blog through some visitors.

3. Me Tweets: This category of tweets, I feel is the most significant yet abhorred ones for many since it creates clutter or noise in Twitter. This type of Tweet talks only about specific ones like I’m sleeping, I’m drinking coffee/beer, my girlfriend/boyfriend left me blah blah blah. Come one, not too many people want to listen to you. For this, I remember one very apt line: “…If you want to be boring, talk yourself; if you want to be interesting, talk everything other than yourself…” But as I said, this type helped Twitter survive because they have given us space where we can voice our opinions & life par se. So lastly no complaints there at least.

Lastly, how can those terse messages impact our thinking/perception:

A small incident happened today in the morning while I was on twitter. Moksh Juneja posted a small tweet on Airtel = Vodafone goof up which caught Twitter’s attention big time and people started forming their own opinion about Airtel & Vodafone.

I’m not saying that it’s wrong but the point I want to make is that all the money spent by companies on the brand building and portraying images about themselves get slapped every now and then since consumers are no fool nowadays. Information and connectivity is dirt cheap if not free. So holding back is not the solution anymore. You (companies) can’t hold back conversations anymore and consumers will make an impression about you and in turn influence others too. So the questions remains what are you doing about it? Get into the new system or die watching it out!

P.S. I always take business examples since it’s an easy fix to keep score.

Read More Twitter Post:

• Video: Twitter Simplified
• Fail Whale
• Revenue Models for Twitter
• Swainism #2: Random Thoughts on Twitter, Networking & Life
• My first Twitter Meetup at Mumbai

Nokia's Social Media Initiative: Blogger Review Program

Before starting off, some pep-talks on some recent happenings around me of course. I posted last on 9th August which is like many centuries back it feels like. Actually was caught up into one of those times where my mind and heart wandered along the realm of the Web which caught my fancy. But to narrow down my surreal thoughts, Asfaq (@Asfaq) helped me in figuring out (here & here) why I was wandering for the last 2 weeks. He termed it as "The Twitter Effect" (Will post on it soon)- Sounds cool but trust me when you have it, that's about it. Your whole world, inlcuding offline & online world gets affected to be precise (more on it later though).

Anyways, the reasons I had to blog was a mail from Saurabh in the morning and more precisely a small tweet in response to this one. He confided to me earlier that he got a Nokia thingy happening in this life which mostly authenticate that he's hell of a good blogger/influencer (whatever you want to say!) which he mostly ignores or he's a Dumb A** to understand (Respect). Today he mailed me in the morning to share his experience with the Nokia Blogger Review Program.

He has some interesting thoughts on Blogger Review Program which Nokia Initiated and included him along with 2 others (TwilightFairy and Ashish - He denied later though). So I have few random thoughts to share from the mail which saurabh sent me in the morning along with few other Social Media Evangelists (if I may say so!) which led to some interesting conversations via mails, comments, tweets and blog posts.

• The first question from me would be: Has Saurabh Garg lost it? Mainly because why can't he believe that he is damn good and Nokia thinks he worth all their spending which included shipping the expensive piece (I was fortunate as Saurabh showed me the piece when we met) half way across the world & back. (P.S. I hope SG takes my statement above with little bit of salt and sugar)


• Secondly, the conversations over the mails were quite interesting:

TwilightFairy wrote: "....See another effect precipitating here due to Nokia giving u a handset for review :) Now there are posts around ur post"- This is to solidify that SG has turn out to be an Influencer since we all are blogging about him.

Ashish wrote: "....And that makes me wonder - Is Saurabh @ the center of 'ecosystem' or is there an ecosystem building around saurabh?" I like this sentence since it implicitly tells us that the subtle relationship between us & the Ecosystem of intent/things/ideas is becoming blur day by day.

Also read Gaurav Mishra's post on SG's new found job as Nokia Reviewer.

• And lastly, my reasonsing for selection of SG was right. What I believe Nokia might of thought is that they want to cover the whole Indian Culture/Technology/Social Media space. And who else to think other than Ashish of PluGGd.in or TwilightFairy who is a very well known name in Twitter and in Indian Blogging scene. Yeah SG would be a doubt that his reach is not that far flung as others, but hey this guy has some interesting fan following in twitter (Follow SG and you'll know what I'm saying) and has a definite voice to speak to the modern Indian youth.

So my analogy for Nokia's selection is: Covering the whole pond with little yet definite ripples which can move the water.

• Lastly, it's a great way to reach your audience and sure enough Social Media is giving them enough leverage to attain the critical class/mass. But I would have appreciated if they would have employed few more bloggers and lastly surprise them by giving the exquisite piece as a gift (I think I just said what's in SG's heart n Mind).

So one last thought before I finish this post and my very recent blog post droughts: THANK YOU Saurabh to act as in enabler in this case.

Interesting versus Boring Customers

Ask this question before thinking why you hit southwards in your balance sheet. It is not that your product is worth nothing or your market strategy is bullshit. How about this proposition: Are you targetting the right customers? In this media-frenzy society where everyone is connected somehow, either via SNS like Facebooks, MySpaces etc or through Twitter, Friendfeed blah blah, so how can you think that your customers are not influencing each other. They are!

So that makes segmenting and targetting the right customers all the more important.

Look at the proposition above. When smart & interesting people talk about you or your product/brand par se, it generates something invaluable which your stupid ads doesn't since they are more often than not slapped on the customers face when they never wanted it in the first place. But targetting those invaluable customers who wants to listen about you makes sense since he will do the last bit of word of mouth for you.

Now the million dollar question is how you can you find those interesting people who can turn out to be your customers? Remember loyalists, early adopters, early innovators- It's just a clue.

Please comment/criticize/appreciate and discuss from your own experiences.

How Brands make “Meaning beyond Money”

"...Mass media has become increasingly fragmented and viewers’ engagement levels have decreased. Only 5% of the viewers watch TV ads and 30% of the viewers watch TV while reading the newspaper" (tweet) by Stephan Loerke (PPT Link), Managing Director, World Federation of Advertisers.

So this calls for newer and innovative ways of customer attraction and retention strategies. Social Media gives a lot of promise in terms of participation, engagement, permission, collaboration etc which has brought the customers and the companies in the same platform.

But the question is why should you care?

One of the reason is, you like it or not, your customers will definitely talk about you and the web has given them a apt platform to raise their voice to appreciate as well as criticize you.

Now the worst scenario is that your customers are not talking about you at all. Think about it. They don't care about you. But they necessarily need not be negative conversations. They well could be constructive discussions filled with chances to learn about your customers and what you need to do to make them happy. Happy people buy more and tell their friends. It's your prerogative whether to join the conversation or not or rather we can say "To Participate or not to Participate is the question"!

The best outcome is that those who are talking about you are spreading the word on your business - Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell called them Citizen Marketers. The worst case scenario is that those customers who talked about you even once stopped doing so, they did not think you cared about what they were saying, so they stopped caring about you and your business - you become invisible to them (and increasingly their friends).

So letting your customers talk about your brands make a lot of difference since it makes "Meaning beyond Money".

Related Stories:

• Swainism #1: Marketing, Social Media & You
• After Mass Media, it's your turn Social Media to get Fragmented
• Eureka Bar: Backstory as a Marketing Tool
• Creating Empathy, Understanding & Openess in Business
• 5 key pointers towards Brand building

Demystifying Influencers: From Pyramid to Diamond Model

CNET Networks conducted a three-part study called "Understanding Influence, and making it work for you" (Download here). It explored the structure of social networks, methods of acquiring information and the motivations for giving/sharing/influencing others. Guy Kawasaki explains the basic tenets of the study in his blog post.

But what I was interested in is the marketing or advertising takeaways from the white paper.

The study provides three key marketing takeaways:

1. Two unique characteristics of information that influencers value are that the information is unique and trusted.
   

2. Shape your marketing messages for the larger network of moderately connected users, not just the few highly connected individuals at the top.
   

3. Make content actionable for users.
   

But these theories may have some loophole. For instance, a meme originating in Facebook may or may not catch and have a world wide reach. But it may catch on in particular group and spread to other similar groups by virtue of the fact that a highly connected individual in a group on Facebook is also in a group of like minded individuals on MySpace.

So in a niche group context, the meme will spread. If enough niche groups catch on and the meme has a wide enough appeal it is likely to take of on a grander scale.

This can only occur if you have a large number of highly connected individuals in a niche. Without highly connected individuals there would be no way to connect outside of the specific niche group with other groups.

I would suggest that a highly connected individual must also be a highly active group member that also has a high degree of credibility within a group in order for a meme to spread (thanks to one of the commenter).

Other than this in country like India, there is a high chance that this theory may not be put into practice as such since demographics is widely varied, so different customers will consume the same product in different ways.

Note: In case, the pdf downloading plays crazy with your mind, shoot me a mail at sampad.s@gmail.com. I will send a fresh copy of the white paper ASAP.

Blogs : The Flip side of Narcissism

I have always liked Seth Godin starting from his books to his blog about anything under the sun. He has this immense talent to take minutest thing on this earth and making it easier to comprehend in his own way. So when Seth comes up with latest post about "Blogs & Self Promotion", one thing becomes crystal: People talking about you is far more effective than talking about yourself in world wide web (Thanks Seth).

So two things are to be done after reading this post. First, get a copy of "Meatball Sundae" (Seth's latest book) and secondly if you have a business then put these proactive thinking (not reactive) in your marketing messages and avoid the plight of getting vanquished.

Also, the thing about "New Age Marketing" is word of mouth. You are in or out is very much proportional to the word-of-mouth your idea generates. So selling books is no different from business. So going by the same paradigm, word of mouth is the new phrase that should be written as a new commandment for every marketer.

But blogs add a different dimension to your business. The real term is "Credibility". It may be in the form of other bloggers talking about it or general mass spreading it which is in term adding to that credibility factor. So narcissism which most often than not, we bloggers generally attach ourselves to won't be that good (not for this blog or for your business). So using this tool to sheer perfection will definitely lead to better sales (I'm sure I'm doing good for Seth) not only for books but in a broader sense to your dipping business.

Height of Measuring Word-of-Mouth

Some skeptics say that social media lacks two most important attributes: One being the lack of scalability & the other being the measurability parameter. Though, I don't totally disagree with the above statement but it has always been one of my interests to understand how to measure effectiveness of things like word-of-mouth without asking the analytics guy to work overtime.

The answer came in a very weird fashion if I may say so. Being a marketer, it's important to have an eye for detailing. Even more in your observation, understanding and last but not least sharing the information with your peers, family and sometimes to those whom you don't actually like sometimes :-). So that is the very essence of word of mouth. But you can't actually measure it until & unless you see your sales figure or something related to that moving northwards. Isn't it?

But I have an interesting point of view here. You may disagree with me totally. But being a marketer, when you see your non-geek friend, less media savvy guy or sometimes your grandmother talk about something new which she has seen or heard; then you know that it must be working.

Actually, the point is that nowadays we read into too much of data and forgo the intuition part of it. So when your next door neighbor (whom you usually hate sometimes) tells you about a new gizmo he has seen few days back; remember that your company (if it is making that gizmo), then actually you are doing good in your word-of-mouth campaign. So Information+Intuition=Order of the day.

Word of Mouth - *The Pond-Ripple Effect*

It's not that word of mouth is now a trend. It's been there for ages; definitely in a different way of course starting from biblical ages. But things have definitely changed along the way. The way it was perceived; the way it was spread; the way it got assimilated in our culture. And of course authors writing about it, made hell lot of difference in the way companies took it as an important marketing tool- be it in form of viral like "dove-evolution to onslaught" campaign or "We didn't start the viral" campaign to name a few in recent times.

But there has been a shift in the way it used to be spread then and now. I call it "The Pond-Ripple Effect". To simplify the concept, few things have to be kept in mind. First, a news/information which has to be spread is more like a story which is passed along the way like a baton. Secondly, the target audience is more like a pond along whose contours we are going to play with (metaphor).

So, we are already there to demystify the strategy. Supposedly, a story (here it is like a stone) is thrown to a target audience (the pond) through various means of media to create a ripple effect i.e. some sort of hype (may be good or bad). Generally, the stone is thrown in the middle of the pond to create maximum ripples. But sooner or later it fades away because of media proliferation and lack of customer attention.

So what do we do now? No, we are not heading towards the dead end. Take this case into consideration. Supposedly, the same story is thrown towards some opinionated evangelists who forms the boundary of the target audience (the pond). Now what may happen is this- Since marketing today has become more of a reflection of social paradigms and we believe more on peer recommendation, so these stories will keep on adding new values all the way through in the pond with bigger & better ripples.

So at the end of the day, your target audience knows about you; credibility is duly manifested since in every culture we follow some figures who are most often than not opinionated and at the end of it, you are creating conversations which makes "Meaning beyond Money".

Eureka Bar: Backstory as a Marketing tool

Few weeks back, my friend Bozo told me that he bought a new shirt from Peter England (Do check this interactive site, quite interesting I must say). Though this won't hit the headlines for sure, still it did helped me to write this post in "Eureka Bar".

I observed an interesting narrative in Peter England (an apparel brand in India) shirts' packaging which tells us more about how the brand came into existence with "Peter England Story". This piece of simplistic marketing effort goes beyond the traditional capitalist overture.

Now product backstories is not new in the consumer centric markets. It has been there for ages. But now its importance is very well understood. If we dig deep, we will understand that product back stories have more potential than just from societal point of view. It's more on a cultural basis where you are trying to engage your customers with your product.

The backstories run deep inside the human psyche and forms an emotional bond. Now as far as I am concerned, I believe that backstories generate better Word-of-Mouth as people are more thrilled to know about where the product came from, how is it made etc. Nowadays marketing efforts are concentrating more on benefits, creating demand or focusing on attributes. So marketing companies' backstories become all the more important in this case.

The real lesson is "Simplicity in Marketing". Nowadays customers know that "You are Marketing" so simplicity becomes all the more imperative to break through the clutter. Basically no one adapts marketing which is simple and at the end of it all, it just gets ignored. But, simple stories are easier to pass along as they respect their audience by not wasting their time.

At least in this case, an Indian brand has taken to this concept of selling through Simplistic Marketing.

Some spoof about viral marketing

While checking out some of the most famous viral campaigns, I found one of the most interesting snippet. Though FutureLab has covered the topic taking insights of Todd's campaign on "We didn't start the viral", but for me I have a bit different take on it.

First of all, one question that came into my mind is that does a company or an individual have to try to make it viral? Or it is vested in the hands of the target customers who somehow engage themselves to the viral message. Now for me I think that the latter one is more true than the former.

Sometimes it may happen that the viral message may get lost in between because of target customers may not be the key influencers. So what do we do about it? Three things should always be kept in mind while spreading the message.

1. Make your campaign more engagement oriented to increase (if not manifold) the "customer engagement dimension" (CED).
2. The good old "Delight & Excite Strategy" in the viral campaign.
3. "Easing the spread of word" medium for better viral.
   

"Boys will be Boys"...So are marketers like *boys*??

I read an interesting article in CBSNews today.

"Consider, though, what 'boys will be boys' thinking implies about the true nature of boys. The answers typically are astonishingly negative: Boys are messy, immature and selfish; hormone-driven and insensitive; irresponsible and trouble-making; rebellious, rude, aggressive and disrespectful -- even violent, predatory and animal-like."

Now you must be thinking what the hell is the article's piece doing in this blog. Now think about the last marketing snippet or an overt ad campaign you have seen. Do you find a fit in the words above (Bold words). More often than not, the campaigns are idiotically crafted to prove their points as if customers are going to buy their products after seeing those ads. I have only two words for them- "Come'on Dude". It's not working anymore. Customers know that you are marketing.

So get out of that whole aura of "bossy marketing" thing. Feel the pulse of your customers. They don't need your flashy & jazzy campaigns. They want something which will make them feel more than satisfied. Though I know loyalty won't come by this means. But nowadays more and more companies are looking for that short terms gains in sales rather than long term truth. But marketers instead of being boyish can become a trusted friend and give customers a story to carry forward. Now I don't think companies will lose much on this.

Now how about this little Nike Story (link). See how loyalty can be earned.

Internal Marketing: Latest corpotate mantra

Companies spend millions of dollars in advertisements to woo customers endorse their product. But nowadays companies are engaging themselves in an activity called “Internal Marketing” in the form of word of mouth (WOM) advertisement.

Companies believe that the employees can be the flag bearer of the company in terms of carrying the company’s name to the market and advertise with a positive connotation. This creates an aura of positive vibes about the company or the company’s product per se.

But the processes have to be in place like aligning the current employees in tune with the company’s values. If the employees are a happy lot, they in turn will communicate positive WOM for the company which catapults the company’s profitability over the sustained period of time.

So it can be said that companies should see that branding takes place at the root i.e. the employees as a viable option rather than spending millions on traditional advertisement for nothing but for a bunch of disloyal customers.

Women as "Word of Mouth" agents

Time and again research has shown that women speak more words per day than an average male. Now most of the time it leads to gossip which is their forte (pun intended). Now the question is how a marketer like me comes in picture with this inherent female characteristic.

Take this for instance. “Word of mouth” marketing’s basic structure depends on people talking or discussing amongst themselves which is another form of gossiping (both with positive and negative connotation). So I guess by now the exuberant marketers’ eyes are well lit with this notion where women can be used for effective Word of Mouth marketing because they have an inherent trait of information sharing than their counterpart’s i.e. males.

But the most difficult part is the link between the product or its characteristics and why women would discuss about it.

If someday I am able to crack this puzzle then surely, I am opening an interactive social media advertising firm with due importance to women.

P.S. This post is in no way demeaning women in any way or form.

Related articles

• Good links to discussion on marketing and social media
• PopularMedia, Getting Your Brand Word-of-Mouth Marketing
• Plan for Viral Success Through Social Advertising

How Second Life is shaping our reality -Virtually

Marketers are always on a look out to tap those subtle possibilities from every nook and corner. So how do u see the possibilities when you have zillion people hooked on to the internet and the world of internet is shifting from web 1.0 to web 2.0 i.e. more user generated content? That’s why the future marketers are trying cash in through this internet revolution. And this is exactly what marketers are trying to do in a portal called www.secondlife.com

Second Life (SL) is an Internet-based virtual world where it enables its users, called "Residents", to interact with each other through motional avatars, providing an advanced level of a social network service. Residents can explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, create and trade items (virtual property) and services from one another. The stated goal is to create a user-defined world of general use in which people can interact, play, do business, and otherwise communicate. Now isn’t the bell ringing in the minds of the inquisitive marketers?

Infact SL is a huge advertising niche that is ripe for tapping into. Innovative companies have started to cash in, e.g. IBM has their own island in SL where residents (actually the IBM enthusiasts) live and interact with each other. “Harry Porter” was promoted through SL. Moreover, Toyota launched “Scion” brand in secondlife knowing there are millions of SL residents whom they can target and at virtually no cost.

So companies are targeting this platform to build their brand through word of mouth (may be I will talk about effective WOM in some other post). There are marketing companies whose entire business has been reshaped to specialize in brand marketing in Second Life.

Related articles

• Bits: Second Life: Tamed for Corporate Consumption
• 'Next Big Thing, or Next Big Bust?': Virtual Worlds []
• Virtual World Marketing That Works: My Top 3 Tips
• IBM And Second Life Announce Interoperability, But Bridging Virtual Worlds Is the Wrong Answer