Content Marketing Success.

I read a very interesting post on content marketing the other day and it talked about how to position your content marketing strategy to really hit it where it counts with consumers. just to summarize it lets look at some of the things I learned from it.

Design means a lot: your content is far more interesting to read and a lot more receptive for the reader if it has visual appeal to it, remember the reader/audience might not be big on reading lengthy articles, while if these articles are complimented with visual aids, (infographs,pictures,GIFs) it hold the audience concentration in one place and allows you to get your point across more efficiently.

Use all aids: like i mentioned above about how to give a thought into putting some design in your content, adding visual aids pretty much goes hand-in-hand with this, use videos ,animations, call-outs to make your message more interesting to the audience.

Don’t force feed: the basic rule of marketing, which is to make profits and sales is always there somewhere in the head of a marketer,but when it comes to content marketing this changes a little.With content marketing you need to follow a more subtle and in-direct approach to selling your brand, content marketing should aim at educating,informing and entertaining the audience so that they themselves are enticed enough to inquire about the product or service and then allow themselves to experiment by actually using it. Going in with a “hard-selling” strategy will not allow you to approach audience/customers in a unique manner and you will end up as just another orthodox marketer trying to force feed your brand into the customers mouth.

Don’t keep them waiting: Most marketers do not realize when writing content that on the digital front, information needs to be fast and complete, and there has to be as much IMPORTANT information as you can put in when writing a content piece. What you need to do is to maintain the audience attention and make them go through as much information as they can WHEN they are in their “content reading mode”, provide links to support your article,give them hyper-linked content so that they can look into something right there and then. Don’t lead them on and don’t make them wait give them all important information all at once.

Sharing is caring..literally: Your content should be easy to share and go around, “liquid” content should not only be in terms of smoothly flowing and connecting but also in the form of easy sharing.

This is it for now 😀

How is Social Media Transforming Us and The World

The future has never seemed better.In fact to me it looks like the future will be marked with smooth sailing. I say this with regards to the evolution that internet has gone through over the past 20 years or less, and just how many times it has helped us in making our lives easier and more convenient to spend, with the advent of tools which help us in creating flawless designs,documents etc, to mediums which have facilitated the way we share and use knowledge or entertain our selves, mediums like YouTube and Facebook. The internet has in fact drastically changed our culture patterns, our communication patterns and pretty much everything in between.

So how has the internet, particularly the Social Media changed us and the global culture around.

• It has challenged the “Normal” way of life/ communication; it has actually brought people closer than we think. Everyone now is one click (or screen tap) away.
• Bought in more Diversity; though connection you can now view what other people are doing, how they are living, you can view their pictures, relate to them on the pages they like, share your joys and sorrow with them in a more larger scope, look at things from a lot of different perspectives through the diversity in demographics offered by the Social Media.
• Supporting one another; in recent years individuals have brought around complete revolutions around the world and even locally (Google Maya Khan 😛 ) just by running campaigns on the Social Media, gathering support from like minded people, the Revolution in the Middle East was one of the largest and longest ever Tweeted campaign by individuals and freedom fighters all around the world. Social Media played a very important role in bringing these historic events to be realized.
• Learning; by far the most positive change Social Media has brought to culture an society has been changing the habits of people to focus more on learning,reading and interacting on the things they are learning.
• Crowd sourcing; whoever said “too many cooks spoil the broth” is living in the last century, Crowd sourcing content and learning is the new way to be, what people dont see is that through crowd sourcing you are able to generate more perspectives,angles and more thoughts to topics and discussions.
• Unleashed Creativity; the Digisphere has helped people with skills, and crazy imagination to take their skills and talents to the very next level, share it with people all across and get recognized.
• Unique and Authenticity; as there are people with unique capabilities being highlighted around the world through the use of Social networks, there has also been a tremendous increase in authentic and unique content being generated all over the globe to be shared with millions across the world.
• Limitless Contribution; The Digisphere or even Social Media does not restrict anyone from contributing their thoughts,their notions or pretty much anything they want to share, anyone can contribute…how awesome is that.

Social Media and other digital tools have been given to us as a tool to bring about change and transform the world for the better. It has given us the power to reach anyone and everyone anywhere in the world….. so what are YOU waiting for start reaching out.

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 🙂

 

Handle your Negative Online Customer Comments Positively.

Some call it a blessing,some are irritated by it,others just downright don’t want it in their lives, this is how social media has impacted people ever since it grew in popularity and use.

However, brands and products have reaped more than a few benefits in terms of promotion and marketing on the online/digital frontier,taking their brand names to new heights. Along with this it has also given customers/target audiences a greater sense of attachment with the brand, through social media the customer now can simply say if he likes or doesn’t like a product right on the brands Facebook/Twitter/Google+ page . He can vent out his complaints,he can praise the brand, and he can provide opinions on what he like and what he doesn’t with regards to the brand.

With this comes the bad part,if interactions,complaints and opinions are left unattended on the social media, it starts planting a seed of doubt in the mind of the audience that the brand doesn’t pay much head to whatever the target market is saying. So how do  you deal with maintaining a positive relationship with your audiences online, and manage your interactions with them while mitigating their complains. Try this:

• Listen to what your audiences are saying to you and about you- if a customer is dissatisfied, try and talk to him,answer his query. Handle with care 🙂
• THINK before you SPEAK- never be in your “angry” mode when replying to customers/ or your online fans, because in that intense moment you could end up saying things which might not have good repercussions later on.Take your time in thinking just what to say to your online customer,how to craft an answer so that you/your brand remain in the “good books” while the customer is also left satisfied.
• Know the details- if you are running a brand, with a team of staff under you, you need to know what they are up to or how they are dealing with their side of customer interaction, once you know whats going on behind then you will be able to devise your answers in a better way.
• See how others are doing it – its always a good idea to look around other brand pages and learn to see how they are handling their customer interactions, this helps you in realizing the tone of interaction they are using, how customers are responding on their page to their updates and answers.
• Policies do work – social media interaction never follows a set pattern it could peak up negatives responses as well as positive ones, so having a set “rules of engagement” in terms of online responses helps if not completely erasing the negativity. If you do not define rules and policies for online engagement then you really don’t know where your online interaction is headed, and then it runs all over the place hence in the end deeming to be ineffective.

As social media progresses at such an exponential pace, online business managers or social media support teams are advised to be best prepared and skilled with handling such queries, complains, and concerns as soon as possible.

Always remember if a customer experience with your brand goes to the dung can, the online world with its tremendous capability to spread news and experiences in a viral shape can completely ruin your brand.