Nowadays almost everyone, from youngsters to oldies, is there either on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Stumble Upon or Delicious. And, with each passing day this trend is growing further. This very increase in the number of individuals has also triggered businesses to go social.

There’s no denying the fact that most of the social platforms are goldmines stuffed with loads of target audience for various businesses. But, if a business decides to go social, they really need to think about two things.

First, the integration of social media marketing in the overall marketing plan surely requires some effort. Every business that decides to go social will have to be willing to walk that extra mile.

Secondly, where there are your potential and present customers; apart from leads there are also grievances and negative publicity! While you would have new target audience asking about your products and services, you would also have the existing ones registering their grievances pertaining to a bad experience.

Therefore, comes the question – ‘to be or not to be SOCIAL’!

While, the answer to this particular dilemma must be ‘to each its own’, the importance of social media marketing is something that cannot be denied. Its virality, reach and connect has made it an inevitable marketing medium. So, businesses actually need to be more willing to take the extra pain and be realistic in their expectations from this medium. It is no magic wand but surely one of the most effective ways to connect with your target group.

The stage is set and the chance to reap the benefits of social media is all yours…. All you have to do is DECIDE!

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

“What the heck is this Social Media Marketing”?

Since, I am into the Online Marketing Industry; I heard this statement hell lot of times from friends, relatives, colleagues and professionals working in different domains.

Well, I am not considered to be a Social Media Guru nor an Online Marketing expert. I am just a common man who takes lot of interest in stuffs going around Social Media or in online world. There are so many blogs and articles written on Social Media that a common and simple man can get confused and would feel that it is not that easy to get into it.

Social Media has become a trend and every human being from school going student to 60 yrs old Businessman wants to get a taste of it. It itself created a lot of business opportunities to everyone. Social Media marketing brought people closer and business activities became more transparent than in any other form of marketing. Along with the prosperity it also brought lot of threats to the business as now you should expect your customers to be smarter than ever. They are closely monitoring you are your activities that a small mistake could turn into a blunder; take the case of Dominos Pizza, where two fools with a stupid idea destroyed the 50 years old reputation of the company in just 2 days with the help of just a 3 minute video clip posted on YouTube. This is the power of Social Media Marketing.

Social Media is a medium of communication in a more informal way and to make most out of it is really a challenge. Things are changing so fast in Social Media that you hardly get notice of it and so you lose advantage over your competitors. Social Media has brought the customers and producers closer with an always invite to competition. So, think and think again before entering into Social Media.

Feel free to know more about us and our services, contact us at:

info@omlogic.com or visit us at www.omlogic.com

YouTube has been a revolutionary invention in promoting your message through videos. It has been a one of its kind of digital communication tool to facilitate your message reach to your audience in a more absolute manner. You can find almost every video you are looking for on YouTube from science and history to astronomy. YouTube is therefore consider as a major Social Media marketing tool to reach customers scattered in almost every corner of this world and hence it has become equally important to follow the right guidelines to make most out of this video hub.

Tips and Instructions;

1. Don’t start promoting a video directly through ads

2. The best way to start promoting a video is to respond your videos to other video, it drives traffic to your site.

3. Creating a playlist of videos are always the best option for getting promoted on YouTube. It shows that you are genuine YouTube users and is always active on making people interested.

4. Your Video title must be catchy like “How to”, “Do you”, “Are you” etc.

5. Description should be short and catchy, just not explaining the content carried in the video.

6. Getting Video Response is the key to success on YouTube. It will impact users, as this video is popular so is getting responses.

7. Do not take part in comments.

8. Reply to the mails on YouTube will get the subscribers in touch with you.

9. Make sure your Video is embedded on your website before uploading it on YouTube. The reason is simple after your video is viewed by the user, he automatically visits your website to find more info about you, your business and it will bring more visibility to the viewer.

10. Social Bookmarking has always been a great way to promote your video on YouTube.

11. Upload on as many video sites as you can but not more than a video or two in a particular day.

12. The best way to get featured on “YouTube Featured Video” is uploading the video at time when you think most of the targeted users are online. For e.g. I want to upload video for specially Indian targeted customers, then the best way to upload the video on YouTube is in between 6-9 PM. It’s the Indian prime time and most of the people want to relax and get entertained at this time. However, your video takes 48 hours to get featured on YouTube. It is not sure, that you will get featured but if got featured than, you should not like to missed the opportunity.

13. Don’t change the Title and Description of the video once posted, It will have a negative impact on Subscribers as when they will see the same video with different Title and description, they will get the impression that you are promoting the same video with different titles and making fool of your subscribers.

14. Like for your Business, your customers are GOD, same with YouTube, here your viewers and subscribers are good.

15. Joining the relevant groups on YouTube. It will help you get more visibility on YouTube.

16. Annotations are good for your business, but there should not be more than one annotation on a single video. I have got to learn this trick, earlier I committed mistake by embedding too many annotations.

17. Your video should end with an appealing call to end; asking your viewers to rate, to comment in the video is very appealing. The reason is simple you have to ask for anything to come to you.

18. Make friends on YouTube, It is a social Networking site and people want to interact with you.

19. Getting on top of search engine is the most perfect idea to get tonnes of subscribers and viewers, use appropriate keyword with the help of keyword tracking tool.

20. Don’t judge your video by Subscribers, as there are lot many people like me who often visits YouTube but don’t like to subscribe or comment. It’s good to get views and rates on people.

Take the First Step;

1. After uploading the videos you should not let people come to you and see, rate, fav, comment on your video. Initially, you should send your videos to your friends, colleagues, mates and other known people on Social Networking sites. It will be a lot better option to make them comment on your videos, the reason is simple, if you want to win the race you should have to get a strong start.

2. The most difficult part of getting popular on YouTube is getting initial views, comments, subscribers etc. The objective should be let other people know you are on YouTube and is a creative video producer. Therefore, use your channel link as email signatures and on other social networking sites.

3. Twitter is the best way to get promoted, by just tweeting………..NO. You should be direct messaging to all your followers a message and link to your YouTube video.

4. Make your profile on other games and make friends there; it can bring lot of traffic to your channel.

These are some simple steps to get promoted on YouTube. Make your subscribers happy to make, yourself happy!!

]]> http://www.omlogic.com/blog/social-media-marketing/taking-an-advantage-of-youtube-for-your-business/feed/ 4 http://www.omlogic.com/blog/online-marketing/taking-your-business-to-the-discussion-forums/ http://www.omlogic.com/blog/online-marketing/taking-your-business-to-the-discussion-forums/#comments Mon, 09 Nov 2009 06:13:47 +0000 OMLogic Team http://www.omlogic.com/blog/?p=168 Discussion Forums have always been a great way of promoting a website and interacting with people. It becomes way easier for you to promote a website, business and or getting traffic to your website especially, when you become a good level participating member in the forums.

So, this post is specially about promoting your business through discussion forums, what should be the right strategy for participation on forums and how to search for the relevant forums.

I have not seen many people discussing the idea of branding through discussion forums. After working extensively on forums, while doing Social Media campaigns, prompted me to write something on Marketing via Discussion Forums.

I must say that discussion forums could be the right solution for your business if you are looking for long term goals rather than craving for quick lead generation. If you have a motto of earning money through quick social media than I must say dude, you are at the wrong place.

Discussion forums are the platforms, where your customers are taking about your product and service may be in favour or against. It is a place where people are looking for the exact and genuine information about a specific product and service from the people who have already used it.

Now, I think many of you have got an idea how useful these forums are from business as well as customer point of view. If we talk about business, this is a platform for tracking all the conversation happening around the world related to your product or your customers.

You can get most out of these forums by participation from your end without directly promoting your business. You should follow all the rules and regulations of the particular forums and should stay away from spamming. Spamming cannot bring any prosperity to your business rather than destroying your online reputation.

The right strategy for participation should be, providing help and suggestions to other members in the forum, ask people to rate your services and products and requesting them for their kind suggestion in enhancing your offerings.

You should maintain Google Alerts or Google Reader to track all the conversation happening around your area of interest, product or service. A list of relevant forums should be maintained, where participation could be done on regular basis. It is not a difficult task to find relevant forums on specific item, as there are large numbers of forums on a specific category. Sometimes you may get confused by big forums involving different categories. These forums certainly have lot of members and participation also happens at higher level. Your job is to create a space for yourself and your brand in these forums under a specific category.

The addition to Discussion forums are Q & A sites like Yahoo Answers, LinkedIn Answers, Answerbag, Wiki Answers and many more. These are some of the best Q and A sites where you’ll be able to find anything on a particular topic being answered genuinely. These sites aimed at providing help to guys seeking suggestions and advice for the product or services being used earlier by people over the internet. A business can take the opportunity of lead generation through offering suggestions and advice on the query being asked. Sites like Yahoo Answers also provides you with score and best answers tag to make you popular among the people answering to the queries. Your answers wull then have edge over other’s and would be ranked much higher anything you suggest..

Participating on forums become much easier and fun, when you start sharing links related to different contests, case studies, events and seminars etc. These are the content which brings traffic and leads to your business rather than leaving a link to your website homepage. It may bring traffic to your site but the bounce rate will be the challenge which you have to face with. Keep in mind don’t always link your post to your website or blog, it’s spamming.

However, you can try advertising under the classified or promotion/advertisement category provided in the list. Don’t flood each column with your content unnecessary o’wise your online reputation will get into danger.

I have tried to keep this post as short and simple as possible and would have also raised few more ideas in your mind. So, please come up with your suggestions which I’d love to hear.

‘Timing’ in my view is the real opportunity behind SMM. Sooner or later, most of the mysteries (including measurability) around Social Media Marketing are going to be solved – many through tools and others through knowledge sharing. Don’t you want to turn this ‘timing’ (unfair – the way many who’ll be left behind will describe it later) advantage on your side? ‘Yes’ is the obvious answer but do you have the wherewithal to create Social Media success for your business? More importantly, do you have the patience and willingness to learn & experiment with this amazing medium?

Over the last couple of months, after working (and still a long way to go) with various customers (thanks to them for trusting us) across different verticals, we’ve gained (and still learning) some meaningful insights, which today gives us the confidence to evaluate, strategize, plan and execute Social Media Marketing success for us and our esteemed customers. I’ve captured our learnings and insights in the form of presentation shared below.

This presentation essentially encapsulates the framework, which is the context inside of which we think, plan and execute Social Media Campaigns today. Two of the examples of successful implementations of the discussed Social Media Marketing framework – Commonwealth Games 2010 community and Cricket World Cup 2011 Community on Facebook. Also, for those of you who are serious about building community on Social Media, you should check out “Demystifying Community Building on Social Media (Facebook)” presentation and join us for continuous learning at Social Media Community Building Page at Facebook.

I am sure that in due course as we learn and adapt to the fast changing Social World on the Internet, we’ll need to come up with another face to this framework. Your contribution in the form of sharing your experiences, asking questions and agreeing/ disagreeing to our thinking will be highly appreciated. That’s the only way you and we can expect to run faster than rest of the Social world.