The Meme Phenomenon..

On a lighter note, i want to talk about “Memes” the recent internet phenomenon which i categorize as “Content” none the less has spread throughout the world like wildfire, What are internet Memes? how did they came into being? and how have they grown?

Starting with What Memes are, what does the word “Meme” actually means, i looked up the meaning from the all wise Wikipedia and i found this; A meme is “an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures. If we look at it this way then,the internet memes we see nowadays are so not what goes with the above mentioned meaning..BUT…if you look at the meaning more closely and then translate it into a more “Modern day” meaning, today’s world/people/norms have considerable changed and are now vastly driven by practices and cultures witnessed in different parts of the world,adopted to a more local level, the internet has truly made the whole world into one big global village, and the kind of Memes we see on the internet everyday,(Funny,Retarded,Sarcastic, situation,Rage comics) are pretty much true yet humorous depictions of whats happening around us and just how people have started to act with the ultimate explosion of the Social Media,internet, and crowd/user generated free sharing content.

The Meme phenomenon came to light not much time ago, maybe 2 years or so but over the past one year has gained immense popularity and recognition worldwide.

an internet meme (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

U.S. customs officials have the authority to scrutinize the contents of travelers' laptops and even confiscate laptops for a period of time, without giving a reason. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Things like “girls with DUCKFACE” pictures, the ridiculously photogenic guy (a recent hit Meme),Troll Faces, Bad luck brian, the college graduate, words like “Me Gusta”, ” Like a Boss“, are some of the renowned and most associated with Memes on the internet, all of them being used to highlight a specific statement, or sarcasm, or an action WHICH IS ACTUALLY carried out by people/us in our daily lives and we don’t really think about much.

Memes have very conveniently and humorously brought a change in the way which people communicate now on the internet,considering that the internet itself is inhibited majorly by young adults more than any other demographics, Meme based conversations and references have gathered quite the recognition, in fact in many social circles now it has turned out to be a “In” fad, to know about memes and to use their references while talking to each other.

The Meme culture has also given rise to great,unique and interesting visual content based websites such as www.9gag.com , 1loop.com,buzzfeed , among the more recognized ones,creating yet another vast field for digital content, which can also be commercialized and integrated with orthodox marketing in the form of merchandise creation etc.

The creation and shot to fame of Memes and Meme based content websites, gives proof that, digital content has no bounds, and can create serious ripples when integrated with the right form and amount of mediums.

*ME GUSTA* 😀

Related articles

• Are Memes Art? [VIDEO] (mashable.com)
• A fun MEME! (socialactions.net)

Content Marketing Ideas Worth Putting to Use.

Time and time before i have mentioned, that social media is all about interacting and making connections, creating relationships and expanding your network. Traditional marketing loses out on this one aspect, as it falls dead on its face when it comes to creating a relationship, they “think ” they are establishing a relationship but the truth is that they really aren’t engaging enough with their customers, especially engaging with the customer in his own settings, (home,cafe,office,hotel room), Social Media does all that and much more.

You see its all about building a relationship with your customers and prospects that helps in building trust and turns prospects into buyers and customers into brand custodians,ambassadors and high value repeat buyers. How do you do that? by talking to them,engaging with them, and providing them with what they want to know, in the manner they want to know it…providing them with SUPER CONTENT.

Content Marketing is all about creating compelling,Liquid ( contagious,viral) content and just spreading it like wild fire over the internet.

you start this by first just asking the customer for his permission that you may send him content, this could be through asking them to like your page to deliver them with information and content which they would want to read and watch. Content marketing is not an easy job there are certain challenges which you need to face in order to construct good compelling content. these challenges start with actually finding the inspiration to generate ideas for content, then create it,make it relevant, how to resource it in the long term, and finally managing and moderating it.

The Multi-Media Reign

Traditional marketers do not put heavy faith in alternative media like videos and rich messages since they kind of consider it to be a temporary blip/ bubble in marketing which might fade after time. What they need to understand is that compelling content needs to be in more than one form, textual content just doesn’t cut it for audiences anymore,they need visuals,they need video,they need something to interact with something to “experience” the message with, hence the use of alternate media while making content is advisable, use photos,videos,animations and it WILL work.

in short here are a few ideas for creating compelling content.

Idea: Include images and Photos

Idea: Create a “liquid/contagious” Online video

Idea: Design visuals/grpahics which would explain the content in a better way

Idea: Use Infographics-the hottest trend in content nowadays 

Idea: Create Blog posts or e-Excerpts which are well structured, and relevant.

Hopefully if you guys delve into these elements in a little more detail you will understand what and how useful content marketing, more specifically compelling content marketing is.

 

Using Social Media for Instant Feedback

In this day and age the only other thing that moves as fast as the speed of light is social media. It has proven to be a superb tool for communicating and connecting with customers/fans,provide Real-time responses to them and maintain a very active relationship with them, another use which marketers should now consider for social media is, collecting feedback.

• Pre-product launch feedback: its has been witnessed time and time again that whenever a product brings in news features or extensions to its existing line consumers show hesitation towards taking up the change, they react by leaving comments on how they don’t want the brand to be doing this and how their life would be made harder than it already is if this change was to take effect,but slowly steadily they do come around to adapting it. What marketers need to look at at this point is that many a times these comments,complaints or discussions bring out elements and points regarding the product which might have been over looked by the brand team or the marketers on a whole. COLLECT this feedback,compile it and store if for further improvements.
• Create Focus Groups:  this is an excellent way of gathering information regarding your product or any plans you have for it. Start Polls, Discussion forums on Facebook or Google+, Tweetboards,Twitter Chats because for gathering good feedback you need to delve deeper into customer interactions, holding discussion forums actually helps in targeting the audience you are trying to capture hence ensuring you receive very focused comments and suggestions. Conducting engaging surveys and polls is always a good idea for generating feedback.
•  Industry Expertise in Useful: One of the basic roles of social media is to expand and strengthen your network, and at the same time it has made it easier for your brand to get in touch with opinion leaders and influencers who drive buying behaviors,get in touch with them hear what they have to say, record and apply those things.
• Use Blogs: try writing once in a while, if you face writers block, visit your social network and ask people around on what challenges they feel when writing or ask them anything,this will help in developing ideas in your head once that is done simply share those ideas in the form of a blog. You can also use a professional approach and start a company blog,share posts on it all around the Social sphere, it will help in generating comments and feedback.
• Develop an Identity: Develop an identity for your brand, a persona of sorts something people can relate with and then use that persona on your Social Network while communicating with your audience, its been seen people respond to personas and similar identities more easily and in a more comfortable manner. Good for extracting suggestions.
• Keep a lookout for your Brand: its not necessary that audience might only be talking about your brand on your Brand fan page,they might be mentioning the brand, or commenting on the brand in other social spheres as well, its your job to keep a look out on related pages, competitors or complementary brand pages to see if your brand is being mentioned somewhere, and more importantly which tone is it being mentioned in.

So if you think there are other ways of gathering genuine and important feedback through the social media let me know 🙂

 

Principals for Social Media Content Marketing.

Sweet and simple,here are some principals all you SoMe marketers and users can follow or include in your online Content management plans ;

• Be Focused– know who you are speaking to, your content should be able to communicate with your customers in easy user friendly language.
• Know what to achieve– you need to know what you want your content to do for you, do you want it to entertain the audience so that it leaves a memorable impact?, do you want it to provide leads for future sales?, or do you want it to go viral. You need to set a specific task/goal for it before sending it out.
• In-house publishing– open source social media has made it amazingly easy for users to generate and share content anywhere,anytime and everywhere,so now all you need to do is possess some hint of what is called “writing skills” and you can easily ,post blogs,send emails to your blog subscribers,tweet to your followers and promote it on Facebook.
• Problem solving– it is one of the biggest aspects of content generation and management, all customers,users and people have problems, if they point it out on your brand page be ready to help out these customers by offering them solutions or if there isn’t a solution just try to be nice to them.
• There is no use in generating online content if there is not Call to action for it, always include a call to action in all your content messages,it could be to subscribe,share,or register, creating call to actions help a brand in achieving its ultimate goal, which is to get customers and earn money.
• The Human Connection-  your content should speak to the customer…LIKE THE CUSTOMER, like a human would interact with another, be authentic and be real, that is what the “New Marketing” phenomenon is all about.
• Working examples- case studies have always been a strong marketing tools used by marketers over the years, when you translate it to social media or more specifically “Digital” you need to “SHOW” customers these case studies rather than “TELLING” them, use a visual source, place it on your pages, let customers see how others are using your products/ brands and how they are relating to it.
• Sense of Humor-  it would really really help you and your brand if you were able to take that baseball bat stuck up your tushy and loosened down a bit. Develop a sense of humor in your content and in the way you communicate with your audience its will help giving your brand a more “human” look as well.
• Publish everywhere-  share,share, and share your content some more,on the infinite array of apps and content sharing tools at your disposal on the digital front. blogs, websites,Facebook,Twitter etc.
• Use aids and visual tools-  not everyone is fond of reading, people like me for instance need information to be more visual, that makes me remember it more,reading obviously is always good but aiding it with visuals,photos,videos,audio (podcasts) can really make it shine.

Toodles…dont forget to share and subscribe 🙂

How to Make an Awesome Social Media impact

The Social Media age has seen many brands skyrocket to fame in short spans of time, creating an exposure so strong that audience worldwide automatically synchronized themselves with the brand values they experienced on the social mediums. Interactive videos, augmented reality based branded apps, Android and IOS compatible apps on smart phones, content ( both visual and verbal) have really augmented the reach and growth of products,brands and services at an exponential rate.

if you have taken the “social media” road to success you must have started spending a lot of time on your favorite social medium,gathering information regarding it and trying to grow your Social connections to the strongest, are there even any lines which can be drawn to where all this ends.

the question is can you create a social media impact without spending a gazillion minutes/hours,commenting,interacting and tweeting? (since i have always mentioned social media is all about creating a two way method of interaction and communication with the target audience).

the answer here is,YES YOU CAN,But (oh yes theres always a but isn’t there),all you need to be is efficient. How? simply by the use of some easy methods,online tools and a little patience, you can create an amazing social media impact. How do you do it? heres how ;

• Create an audience research pool, you should be able to answer the 5 W’s 1 H

1. Who is your audience?
2. Where can you find them?
3. When are they most likely to engage in a conversation online?
4. When should they connect with you online?
5. What do they want to know about?
6. How do they want the information sent to them?

• Plan your Online Time schedule, you need to plan your time for your social interactions and online promotions everyday, you cannot go around spending all day on it,your time for interacting with your audience needs to be focused and effective, once you are done with step 1 you need to analyze your learnings from it and find out where your audience spends most of its time, and then you use that social medium and that “form” of content to interact with your customers/audiences.
• Establish Goals, do you want more people on your fan page? do you want traffic on your website? you need to set goals for your online presence, you need to define certain KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for acheiving these goals, KPIs help you in measuring the milestones you have reached in accomplishing your goal.
• Content is King, like the famous “customer is king” philosophy in marketing,Social media and digital marketing follow the philosophy of “great content”,online audiences spends way too much time sifting through tons on unnecessary content on websites,Facebook pages,Blogs etc, you need to create content which is concise and has a great message which captures their attention,like WHAM. Focus on the quality of content NOT the quantity, a well crafted status update can help audience growth exponentially rather then a cliched,and heavily repeated one.
• Interact with you audiences whenever you find the chance, you necessarily don’t have to be near a computer or your laptop to update your brand pages status or answer a query, use you Mobile phone,connect while in the train, riding the cab,just do it whenever you can.
• Adapt to the change,the Digisphere is a fast moving fast changing world,you need to keep on tweaking your methods and changing your online strategy in accordance with the fast changing trends and needs of your audiences.

Cheers 🙂

Look at me…Buy ME : Making your Brand Work in the Social Media era

Enough yapping about What social media is? how social media work? blah blah. We now come to most basic of marketing questions, what do marketers want?….. and NO its not “high brand recall” or “creating a  brand image” it all comes down to how much moolah your brand is raking in, in the real world profits dictate future promotions and “loyalty” of the marketer towards his brand,if the marketer does not believe in the brand himself, he cant make a profit out of it even if hell freezes over.

Since i mentioned before digital has now become a natural part of many organizations and marketing plans,it has also provided a platform for brands to break conventional marketing barriers and excrete sales out of potential customers who might not be within a brands reach conventionally.

so in the spirit of  “marketing”,how do you make branding work on the social media; you start with.

• researching how many people from your target market are on the social media. CREATE A SEPARATE FACEBOOK COMMUNITY.
• have a constant stream of PARTICIPATION within the community.
• keep your peeps engaged on the page, if you notice participation from someone in particular on the rise, ENGAGE WITH THEM DIRECTLY,others will notice.
• if you have a brand which is a hit among the target audience, and you have “loyal follwers to it” good for you. People want to talk about a your brand, give them reasons to talk about it, CREATE GREAT CONTENT around it.

your customers can be spreading word about your brand through various different channels:

• they follow it.
• they tweet about it
• they paste Facebook updates on it/about it
• they retweet about it.
• they put up links, videos, pictures about your brand.

USE IT TO YOUR ADVANTAGE.

• Most customers/users post only positive updates regarding a brand (females are much kinder in this aspect 🙂 )
• Generally its been seen that users who have “liked” a brand on facebook, have a larger number of followers and are greater influencers than people who are introverts on the Social Media.
• Another excellent way of “humanizing” your brand on social media is through creating a PERSONA for it.create a character around the brand,bring it to life by giving it a name for e.g. fido dido, direct all your posts through that persona for e.g. fido dido “likes” this, fido dido commented.Create engagement through it.
• Send promotions/Coupons on your brand community, make discounts and coupons available for online as well as physical users.
• consumers would like to get updates about your brand on and off, the most effective way is by short updates through Facebook, consumers prefer email notifications to a certain extent, but consumers absolutely are not fond of offline ads brands place about their promotions/ other things.

Bottom line, be THERE for your consumers, interact with them continuously through the social media,keep them interested…things should work out jusssttt fine for your brand then :D.