Without Limits…Without Boundaries

Its been quite some time since i wrote a post. So as a jump starter for gaining that posting momentum again i thought of starting with something light today. No Content marketing strategies, or how to “WOW” online audiences, this post is dedicated to simply casting a stone on how far and wide is the reach of the social media, and any/every content produced online, and how it just cannot be kept hidden from public/people anywhere in the world.

Talking specifically about Epic content websites/engines such as Youtube where content pools extend into gazillions of videos and other interactive content available to audience worldwide, content stealing, idea ripping and idea duplication cannot go unnoticed. To ALL THE BRANDS/MARKETERS /CREATIVE AGENCIES out there, people do find out when a particular concept has been ripped off an international campaign, or when a complete international commercial has been duplicated onto a local brand communication/advertisement.

People cannot be made a fool of anymore simply because of the fact that:

1) Online resources for content searching and researching are mostly crowd sourced and hence open/available for use by anyone at all.

2) The biggest online resource pool for ideas is Youtube itself and hence its quite evident that someone is bound to run into a “rip off” you agencies make out of various international ads/campaigns.

people, and more specifically people related to creative fields such as marketing and advertising need to realize the fact that online content sources are made without keeping limits or boundaries in mind when it comes to sharing content ,so if a video is made in Pakistan, it would take less then an hour or so for it to go global and be watched by millions of other users on the internet, and out of those millions there are going to be at least a couple of thousands who would catch it IF its a rip off of some other campaign or idea, and hence would start a new thread of sharing but this time around that thread would not be so positive, rather it will be filled with critiques and negativity for the Brand,the Agency and the ultimately the company.

Its better to be cliched honestly than ripping off content online and duplicating it. not cool 🙂

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.

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.