To sustain Leadership in the market, companies have to keep on adding something new in their offerings. Same is the case with social networking giant Facebook. To sustain Leadership in the social networking arena & to maintain popularity among its userbase, Facebook is adding something new to its product line every other day. Recently, it made some changes in its chat & notifications settings, which had a mixed response from the users, and now, Facebook has rolled out big time changes its privacy & sharing settings (few changes have been live & few would get live in the coming weeks).

All of these changes could well be categorized into two parts:

1. changes to its sharing functionality, and
2. changes to privacy settings on user profiles.

Let’s see how these changes would affect the user while using Facebook.

Changes to sharing

These changes are done keeping in mind how you can share your content with others or how you want your content to be visible to others. These sharing changes would fall under two sections:

1. Tagging/Un-tagging
2. Status updates

Tagging/ untagging in Facebook posts

Tagging is a very interesting way to share your photos, videos & experiences with your friends. But it becomes too irritating when some-one tags you in something which you don’t want to be a part of. Now, you would have the option to approve or reject before the picture or video actually gets published. So, you can control people tagging you in their content. Also, you can now approve or reject when someone tries to tag your content, even if they aren’t tagging you specifically. The major change in tagging option is of ‘tag anyone in your posts’, no matter you are friends with the person! Isn’t it interesting?

Shared with friends

This feature would make it possible for you to share your experience with a large group of people inspite of the fact that you are not friends with them. And you never know, once you share your experience with them, they can become your friend. So, with the Facebook tagging feature you can expand your social circle!

Shared with Custom

Another change is of ‘un-tagging’. We think that this is the most sought after option by the Facebook fans. Facebook has tried to improve this feature by providing more options like asking the photo uploader to remove the photo from your profile completely and blocking that person on Facebook.

‘Status Update’ has also come-up with few amendments. You can choose to share your update in three ways: share with public (previously everyone), with friends or customize your status update sharing. You can now decide to whom to share ‘What’s on your mind?’ (Never tell your boss what’s on your mind! )

Not only this, you can now add location & people to your Facebook updates. So, you can share your updates telling the world, whom you are with at that moment of writing the post & where! Now, you can add your location from anywhere, regardless of what device you are using.

Also, you can choose to add location to your photos, albums & videos. We must say these changes in sharing settings will make Facebook more user friendly, not sacrificing the privacy and fun to spend time with!

Changes to Privacy Settings

The biggest change to privacy option is the transfer of privacy controls from settings page to user profile page. Now, you can see the edit-settings option on the top-right side of your profile. The users need not jump on to cumbersome privacy settings tab to limit the visibility of photos and other things.

Also, the ‘View profile as’ option has also been shifted to your profile from privacy settings page. You can easily see how your profile appears to public & your friends.

View as Public

All these changes are again an attempt by Facebook to show the world, that when it comes to innovation, the company is always ready to play the game.

But, the game changers (customers/users) are always the king who decides the success & failure of the player!

So, let us know whether these changes in Facebook are what you desired for & whether you liked them or not?

This post was written with inputs provided by Neha Jain.

So finally!!! Much awaited Facebook updates have been rolled out. We are pretty happy to see these in particular. It looks like that Facebook has taken some cue from Google+ & a little bit from Twitter. We are going to talk about all the latest features in ‘Keep It Simple Silly’ way. Users who have already used Google+ will easily reckon these features.

View Profile As

Facebook has provided a special feature to their users where they can actually customize their profile according to the various users. Or more specifically, now they can actually decide that how their profile will look to different people. Click on the ‘Profile’ and then on the very right hand side of your profile you will get to see this option.

View Profile As...

When you click on ‘View As’, you will get to see a screen (Image Below), where you can actually type the name of the person and see that how your profile will look to that particular person.

This is how your profile looks...

Profile Control Options

Earlier when you wanted to edit your privacy controls, you had go to the ‘Privacy Settings’ and control the information from there. Now, every section of your profile has the button right next to it where you can instantly select with whom to share and what.

Inline Profile Settings...

Profile Tag Review

Now you can approve photos, videos or posts where you have been tagged. You can go to the ‘Pending Posts’ and control the tagging option right from there. So, instead of getting a notification every time, now it’s in your hand to approve that tag or not.

Profile Tag Reviews...

You have to turn on this feature (turned off by default). To turn on this feature, follow these steps.

Account -> Privacy Settings -> How Tags Work -> Edit Settings -> Profile Review -> Edit.

After following this procedure you will see this screen. Just TURN ON Profile Review there.

Profile Review...

Sharing Control Options

Now this is the complete rip off of Google+ feature. This option will appear only when you want to share something over Facebook. Now you can tag your friends and even strangers. Also you can add your location and select with whom you want to share it.

Sharing Controls...

So these are the main changes in Facebook privacy settings and sharing settings. We personally feel that by rolling out these features, Facebook has managed to reduce the security concern of users quite a bit.

Did you find these features entirely a ‘Rip-Off’ of Google+ and Twitter?

This article was written with the inputs provided by Jitesh Pandey.

Content, as they say, is still king. Copy plays a stellar role in any social media marketing campaign. You may have the best social media strategy and incorporate them in your blogs, tweets, scraps and pretty much anything that is social; however, without the proper social copywriting or content writing strategy and technique, all will be lost. Your entire effort will go into vain.

You need to woo your targeted customer with a well crafted user-centric approach that would lead to an effective two-way communication.

Well, there are few questions that need answers before any SMM campaign. And you need to get them right, if you want your campaign to be a roaring success

It is decision time now.

So, what do you want?

The first question you need to answer.

Is it just traffic? Creating a buzz? Aiming for a higher rank in the search engines? Selling a product? Promoting something? Looking for long-term brand loyalty? Enhancing your reputation? And the list goes…

You need to be crystal clear about what you really want with your social media campaign. Once you have a definitive answer to what you want, you can pass on to the next question.

Who do you want (to target)?

This is as crucial as the first question.   You need to know the specific and precise segment of demography, the right people to target your campaign.  So, what are the different sets of customers that you want to address? Do you want to confine your social media marketing campaign to just your old customer segment? Are you looking to expand your reach from the target you already have?

Think over it and get the answers right. Don’t rue over things at hindsight; it is no use crying over spilt milk. Go ahead only when you are bang on target. You can’t afford hits that miss. Period.

And then it finally comes to the “How to” question.

Once you get the ‘What’ and the “Who” right, you enter the most critical phase that can make or mar your campaign.  You have a plethora of choices and you have to get it right.

Tweets? Blogs? Articles? Whitepapers? Newsletters? Case Studies? Research& Reports? Press Releases? Content Placement? Link Bait? Buzz Content?

So, how will it be???

The answers can make all the difference (to your Social Media Campaign). Please tweet me @Robin_Goel, if you find anything more useful to make this post more interesting.

This is not my first write up on LinkedIn and its capabilities and utilities in a highly connected and networked world that we live in. However, in all my previous discourses, I emphasized and stressed on taking a holistic approach to effective marketing with LinkedIn.Unlike other social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter etc, LinkedIn not only allows you to share images, videos, links and status updates, it provides you an added opportunity to market yourself. LinkedIn is a tool for “Personal Branding” (as is often understood in the industry circles); but I’d rather call it “Self Networking”. LinkedIn is one of the few professional networking sites that have stood the test of time, reputation intact, giving users a strong networking experience with its usability and capability. The rate at which people are signing up for the LinkedIn on a daily basis cannot be overlooked. The heavy rush to join the LinkedIn bandwagon is reason enough for you to join the networking site. In fact, you can find everyone, from Industry leaders, CEOs and CXOs to colleagues, and past employees on LinkedIn. Well, if you aren’t on LinkedIn now, you don’t have to wait for long; I guarantee you a request coming your way in a very short time.

LinkedIn is a powerful networking tool that gives you options to add new connections, share information, recruit people, gain knowledge, seek opinions etc. You can recommend your colleagues and past employees for jobs and seek their support in your professional life too. As a matter of fact, LinkedIn is an apt platform that provides you opportunities to showcase your professional background, skills and knowledge, with solid references and accreditations of your work (by employers, peers and colleagues). LinkedIn not only brings you closer to the industry and market, it enhances and adds value to your profile, and plays a big role in carving a niche for yourself in the domain.
In today’s competitive business scenario, companies are always on the lookout for highly skilled and talented professionals. You never know the number of people who are interested in you, keeping a close eye on the latest developments in your professional front. There is no better platform than LinkedIn to checkout and search people for hire/contract. Activities on LinkedIn like networking, offering tips & suggestions, feedbacks, answering queries and knowledge sharing are highly regarded and given due importance. In fact, people join LinkedIn with the idea of connecting, and striking up professional relationships, with people from diverse groups, backgrounds and networks.

Of course, networking is not the sole purpose and reason to join LinkedIn; it has many other beneficial features too. LinkedIn provides you with multiple utilities from marketing your brand, customer handling and corporate communication to lead generation and most importantly ‘Online Reputation Management’. However, the unique feature of LinkedIn lies in discovering the hidden connections between the network and the real world.

Social Media Marketing aids in Relationship selling

Your company’s success depends on a good sales cycle format. The pattern of sales cycle differs from business to business. So then, what’s the key to expand a business? Nowadays the online platform has a large number of people connected with each other. With the arrival of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, LinkedIn; the distance factor has almost vanished and people can stay connected quite easily. A traditional sales cycle looks something like this:

Social Media

Lead Generation is a crucial part of a business. There are many ways to generate leads. Social media marketing can provide a lot of support in generating these leads. Every networking platform has its own uniqueness; it depends on how you use that platform to engage with your audiences.

To retain a client is always a challenge and there are number of ways that you acquire to maintain a good relationship. When you use social networking platform, it becomes quite easy to keep in touch every now & then without any hassle.

Things not to forget

1. Say no to SPAM!

Sending links of your company can result in you being labeled a SPAMMER. It does a lot of damage to your reputation; your account may even get banned.

1. Selling forcefully – not the right way.
2. Engage a dialogue with the audience to the maximum extend.
3. Be careful while sending out your marketing messages; revise it twice/thrice to avoid any negative feedbacks.

How can SMM agencies act as an agent?

In order to execute & regulate Social Media Marketing campaigns, one needs an expert in the segment. Experts who can analyze the current state of the company’s branding / reputation in the online world, assess their online reputation and, choose the right techniques to build the company’s branding and reputation.

Key aspects of SMM:

» Customer’s Business Model and Business Objectives
» Competitive Landscape
» Customer Segmentation
» Marketing Communication and Messaging
» Current Online Presence and SEO Compliance
» PPC Audit (if running)
» Conversion Analysis
» Measurability
» Website User Experience

In today’s time, every business house, irrespective of size, is definitely looking at social networking channels to market itself. Initially, when social media sites came into being, the idea was to network, gossip, connect and share. They were nothing less than a revolution in communication and brought people closer.

Marketers have discovered great potential in these social media sites and online tools in terms of generating leads, creating a strong brand presence and reaching a large segment of the market. Recently, I got a call from a friend who lives in small village in India. He asked me to create a Facebook Page and a Twitter account for his shop where he sells mobile phones. Well, I am not promoting his shop on this blog, but his request took me by surprise, considering there is hardly any internet connectivity in the village. Heck, this guy didn’t even have a mail id, so why would he ask me for such a favour? His plan was that whenever his village is blessed with broadband connectivity, people will find his shop if they google the village name or if they join relevant friends on social networks.

Earlier, when marketers promoted their website, seeing themselves on the first page of search was their only goal. Then, in addition to that, came content ads and search ads for lead generation. I am sure by now, you are clear about what Social Media can offer to marketers, it’s potential in generating huge relevant traffic, branding, customer feedback, larger market share and, of course, leads and business opportunities. I have seen many marketers focused on creating brand presence even before launching their website. Although very channel and idea has its own useful period, in the current scenario, the usefulness of social media marketing cannot be decoupled from the overall marketing objective.

Social Bookmarking is still doubted by many marketers for its ability in supporting their Online Marketing campaigns. Marketers always tried escaping from the use and important of Social Bookmarking and often considered it as a time taking unnecessary activity. They would rather find investing their time on Facebook and Twitter neglecting usefulness of Social Bookmarking sites. Guys, I am very serious about Social Bookmarking as an essential online marketing and link building tool

There are always some questions in the mind regarding Social Bookmarking, like…

• How a Social Bookmarking can promote my site?
• What are the correct ways of Bookmarking posts?
• What are the best Social Bookmarking sites?
• Is it possible to Bookmark all of my posts?

These questions are not new, I often hit by these questions numerous times speaking to my clients, colleagues and friends. Whenever I talk about Online Marketing and Social Media Marketing contributing major portion of it, I don’t forget to explain them the importance of Social Bookmarking. Well, this article may help you find answers to these questions.

Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources and contents. In social bookmarking websites, users create and store bookmarks of their choice. These bookmarks can be viewed by others and that let them know about new services and latest concepts which are making news in the online world. For example del.icio.us, Digg, Furl, Reddit and Stumble Upon are some of the most popular social bookmarking websites.

Descriptions may be added to these bookmarks in the form of metadata helping other readers understand the content of the resource without first needing to download it for themselves.

Social bookmarking is a great way to direct visitors to your blog or site. First, you have to build a site that is worth reading. Build on your blog content, and make sure that these are up to date as well. Of course, everything in print must be interesting if you aimed at making online readers your regular visitors. Millions of people use these Social Bookmarking websites daily to search for information on various topics. Naturally, when it comes to promoting your site or the content, the idea of bookmarking is to post links back to your own website pages on these traffic heavy websites.

Social bookmarking is a not only a powerful tool but you must be careful and not to become a social bookmarking spammer. Social bookmarking spammer will find himself in trouble getting his account banned and in result negative reputation over the web.

A one way link is created to your site, everytime a website is bookmarked. Most social bookmarking websites have high page rank scores and are considered to be authority websites in the eyes of the search engines. Resulting in your bookmarks being indexed very quickly and the relevant back link will be added to your overall link count.

The best thing about Social Bookmarking is that you can always re-bookmark your website or an article with different titles and description. By doing so, you will figure out the best title that can gain the most attention and visitor to your website, which may ultimately convert all the traffic to sales.

Social bookmarking sites are becoming increasingly popular to use as an alternative to search engines. By submitting your content to these sites, internet users are able to find your information without having to visit to search engines. The concept of searching in a social bookmarking site is very similar searching in search engines. Tags are used as keywords for search engines, so that when a user is searching for information related to your content, your information will appear in the search results.

Since there hundreds of social bookmarking web sites, you probably want to be a little selective regarding your content to be submitted to. There are many sites offering news and resources in specific categories for e.g Health Ranker is best considered in resources related to health, fitness, and medicines. However, there are many sites offering content from large category to choose from.

Click here for the list of Social Bookmarking websites.

Imagine, you start your day sitting down with a cup of coffee… you search your company name online and the top result is someone slamming your company, your brand or you.

I am not kidding, it’s very possible that conversations about you and your company are taking place across the web on various social networks 24X7. A single negative feedback can cost you millions. Hard to believe? Look for Dominos or America online. That’s a pretty big reason to worry, when your customer determines your success.

They say, with power comes responsibility. In the case of social media, prosperity brings threats to businesses. You have to be on your toes while running an inbound marketing campaign, as you don’t want to miss any of the conversations online about your products or even about yourself.

Now, let’s get to the source of the problem and some precautionary steps:

Why you should care about ORM?

1. Your customers are online taking keen interest in your deliverables.

2. Several positive reviews bring more sales prospects while a single negative review will bring down your actual sales.

3. Your competitors are more interested in you than you yourself.

4. People miffed with you (for no reason, maybe) are online.

5. Future of your company in online.

What actually happens Online?

1. A dissatisfied customer posts a review about your products or service on social media sites like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and the result shows in the first page of Google overnight.

2. A single review is enough to start a conversation and that will be enough to give you a headache.

3. Your competitors will see this little conversation as a Golden Opportunity to take the discussion to the next level, making matters worse.

4. Non-response to a query seeking necessary information about your products makes you a picture of poor marketing and customer service.

5. Your past employee, frustrated at your policies / remuneration is enough to cause turbulence in your business and brand image.

6. False information and misrepresentation about your products and service.

Key to Manage Online Reputation:

The above are some of the major causes of a sullied online reputation. But hey, for every problem, there is a solution out there. Online reputation can be protected by just being cautious, alert and following some necessary steps:

1. Create a sound social media plan for your business to be present on major social networks where your customers are online.

2. Maintain consistency throughout all social networks where you are present; with same level of information and services you provide.

3. Don’t overlook the importance of SEO as it helps improve your page ranking and makes your site rank well on various keywords.

4. Don’t run away from discussions. Instead, enter the discussion and try to get the issue resolved by offering active customer services.

5. Maintain a corporate blog and share useful insights about your company, services, and achievements, even social and corporate events. This allows people to get to know you better, builds loyalty and diminishes animosity and scepticism. Sun Microsystem’s CEO blog

6. Don’t just advertise about your products and services. Offer the opportunity of reviewing and rating your products to your fans, friends and internet users. Starbucks did it right with “My Starbucks Idea.”

7. Twitter and Facebook are great platforms for building a community around your product or brand. It makes it a lot easier for people to discuss and find information about you by just visiting your profile or page, best example being, Zappos

8. Listen to customer feedback and act accordingly. Thank the customer for his positive feedback and get the problem resolved if he has a negative feedback.

9. Don’t hesitate to promote your content through Videos, Images, Blogs, PPT and PDFs on various social media sites like YouTube, Flickr, Slideshare, Scribd etc.

10. Don’t enter a war of words, if someone presents false information about you or your brand to promote negativity. Instead, calmly ask him to remove his comment or, get into the legal action if you are sure about his intent.

11. Come up with better customer support service and offer rewards through contests and gift coupons. Contests and promotions are an equally important aspect of inbound marketing as they are of outbound. Eg Dell offering discount coupons on Twitter.

12. Ask your employees to blog about their learning and achievements while working with the company as customers are always keen to know the company from inside.

13. Treat your customers as a part of your company; you cannot survive without them. Enter into some social cause and invite other members to lend a helping hand…Like Aircel with their initiative “Save our Tiger”.

Tools to monitor online reputation

1. Google alerts and Yahoo alerts can be used to track conversations happening around your brand online.This tracked information is supplied to you based on your targeted company keywords through email.

2. Sometimes the most important conversations don’t happen on blogs. Forums and message boards can also host conversations about your brand and you’d never know about it. Boardtracker makes your work easier with providing conversations happening on forums around your product or brand.

3. Technorati is the leading blog search engine indexing millions of blog posts in real time. It also tracks the authority, influence and popularity of blogs.

4. Monittor and Twitter Search can track conversations happening on twitter about your company.

5. Social Mention – A social media search engine that searches user-generated content such as blogs, comments, bookmarks, events, news, videos, and microblogging services and even more, with user sentiment and tonality of discussions.

6. You can use paid tools such as Reputation Defender, Trackur etc to monitor your presence online.

Maintaining Online Reputation is not a tough task, it is a bit challenging though. Being active, with smart marketing skills will do the business for you. However, don’t expect to move mountains in a day. Instead, give yourself some time, and expect better results in a longer period.

“Because a negative message is more viral than the positive one”

We understand what it takes to manage online reputation while everyone is on a mission to move you out of the playground. If you are worried about managing your online reputation, whether as a company, campaign or as a celebrity, get in touch with us and make yourself ‘authentic’ in the eyes of people.

Mail us at info@omlogic.com or join us on Facebook

When I am talking about Social Media, particularly for the small businesses and for whom the time to invest in less and want to jump into social media quickly being on one or two social media site out of continuously growing social media tail, then I’d suggest them to try LinkedIn or Facebook, the truth is if I had to pick just one, LinkedIn would definitely comes first and I’d have a solid reason of recommending it.

Let me tell you why?

LinkedIn is one of the site that has different demographics than Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other social networking sites. LinkedIn is a site that trends to get brushed aside in shiny and flashy world of Social Media. LinkedIn is a place to sit and realize it’s more than just another place to add friends and share photographs. Very little layout control, minimal advertising and organized like an address book.

LinkedIn is a social networking site for professional and business- oriented relationships. It instead helps you discover inside connections to recommend Job candidates, business partners, employees and Industry experts.

The first thing you should care about is creating a searchable public profile in LinkedIn. This Article will help you create LinkedIn account and get quality traffic to your site both from LinkedIn and Search Engines.

LinkedIn strengthens and extends your existing network of trusted contacts by using “Build your Network” feature. The purpose is to contact people on your email address book and letting them know that you’ve arrived on LinkedIn. Once you completed inviting people to join you on LinkedIn, ask your staffs, employees, friends or colleagues at work to join LinkedIn and put links to your site on their profile. Ask them to use keywords liberally in their profile, thinking of it as an SEO page. Such that your LinkedIn profile may land business directly from the contacts you’ll make on the site.

LinkedIn is no doubt a powerful social media marketing tool. By using LinkedIn, you’ll have an option to promote your content through integrating Blog, Videos and Powerpoint Presentations. Use LinkedIn for recommending people for their work, sending messages to your connections regarding Job Openings etc.

Join the relevant groups; participating in discussions always brings prosperity to your business. LinkedIn Answers is a great way of getting your query responded by people in your network and also gives an opportunity to help your connection by answering their questions.

Being on Facebook is like being a citizen of third most populated country in the world. Well, don’t be surprised. If Facebook were a country it would have been the third most populated county in the world.

Personally I’ve become addicted to Facebook, and in particular with the Facebook Platform and the FanPages. I’ve spent hours upon hours experimenting with new ways it provides to connect and communicate, I’ve created several successful fan pages and communities for my clients and in this article i’ll try to explain how to use Facebook to make a big impact on your business, and why it’s substantially different than any other social network that’s come before.

There are two primary ways for companies to market on Facebook. The first is through Facebook Groups and the second is through Facebook Pages. Groups are more focused on bringing together groups of people who share common interests, whereas pages are places where users can interact around and with a particular brand or product. They share their opinion about you, your products or get in touch with you through your page.

Because Facebook pages are typically the best option for organizations to promote themselves on Facebook, I will focus on Facebook pages throughout this article.

Creating your Facebook Business page:

1. Creating your genuine Facebook profile would always be the first step to being successful on Facebook.
2. Create your Facebook business page with your Organization name or specific product where you want your fans to engage or share their views. Keep in mind Facebook is not a selling platform, it will always be a risky decision experimenting it.
3. Clearly define the objective behind creating the page, your objectives should always have a goal to develop a community through interaction with the public.
4. Your page must give a social look from the first impression; avoid limiting it to boundaries and certain users. However, relevancy is always an important criterion.
5. Make full use of Photos, videos etc. to make your page look more interactive.
6. Make a custom landing page for users; don’t make them fall directly on your page wall without providing them the clear idea behind your initiative. You can create custom tabs with the help of Static FBML language.
7. Make your page active by posting Atleast one update daily. Don’t post long and 2 many updates in a particular day; fans may get distracted with your updates popping up everytime when they log in.
8. Make it a habit of responding to the fans comment or their posts on your wall. They will get the return out of their participation as they will not feel isolated and left out.
9. Applications are the best way to promote your content available on the web, you can find many applications advantageous to your page.
10. Contests and Promotions always generate lot of engagement among community members so don’t miss the opportunity to offer some rewards to your fans. You can send a message to all of the fans of your page with a special promo code for a freebie or invitation to an exclusive event. Then, use the Wall or Notes section to publicize the winner of the promotion.
11. Get more fans to your page by running Facebook ads. It is tough to get the large fans without using Ads.

The most successful business pages (if you measure success by the number of fans and level of interaction) are those that foster and encourage user’s comments and reply to those comments sincerely whether they are positive or negative. So, in conclusion, don’t hesitate to go out and join the community, interact with your customers, and most importantly, listen to what they are saying about you, your organization, and your competitors.

If you like to harness the power of Social Media and want to make a strong brand presence on Facebook and other Social Media networks, please feel free to drop us a mail at info@omlogic.com.

Click here to connect me on Facebook.