Social Marketing

Did you hear about the water cooler effect social media websites are having on Television viewership? In the past when the web was gaining popularity everyone thought or believed or assumed that, this would be end of television viewing since internet would suck the consumer into it for eternity thus killing other forms of media entirely or to a greater extend. But turns out that this version is just a myth or a belief with the current developments about the fact that social media websites such as Twitter, Facebook etc are fueling the possibilities of increasing television viewership which enables users to share interesting information that they can watch together from different parts of the country or world in order to contribute value to the smoky serious or hilarious discussions on the web.

Now, the wheel of fortune has turned around and users are able to tweet or update their status on Facebook, be part of discussions as well as watch television at the same time, the so-called multitasking is profiting everyone. No wonder that the Vancouver Olympics is now one of the most watched winter games since 1994 and the Super Bowl supposedly the most watched program in the United States, since the 80’s, isn’t this amazing? This does mean that how well a program on television can evoke hot discussions with millions of tweets would determine the popularity now and moving forward, and this would help increase the channel viewership. Since the power of deciding what to watch and what not to lies in the hands of the customer, there would be more and more customer empowerment with respect to them having a say over what companies broadcast, which means that there could be some tough competition or rough road ahead for these companies in particular. Also, this does mean that there is tremendous power in the hands of the Twitter or Facebook or other social media users not only to back up a not so good show or series but also to bring down a good movie, if they want to but as always, I am positive or confident that Twitter users like us would be smart enough to stand up to make some good decisions or smart choices and ultimately feel glorified of being part of a better tomorrow, I can see that day right around the horizon – what do you say?

Everyone is bombarded with information from an array of social marketing websites that more or less have similar functionality with the main purpose of keeping you connected with others at the same time helping you interact with people all over the world. Does being faithful to one social marketing website, either Facebook or Twitter or Google Buzz or Orkut make you a less social person than others, within this social environment. There could be mixed answers to this question, I think that some may state that you are socially outdated, but at the same time are companies able to control the vast growth in user base for these services and cope up with expanding or improving services as well as security, reduce spam messages etc on a global scale. My personal opinion is sadly, ‘no,’ or ‘maybe to a greater extend than others but not completely.’

I am all over the internet, on Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, Google Buzz, but sadly haven’t still figured out which one works best for me. I do personally like Facebook over the others, but again what is the point in connecting to the same friends using different social media sites is a question I often ask myself, forget the number of requests we get from friends to start using another service or flash game LoL. Most individuals work one-third of the time everyday, sleep for one-third and I often do not get enough time from the remaining one-third to frequently update things on all of my social sites or my blog, and the hassles associated with checking all these sites leave me with so little time to actually interact effectively with pals or other people. Can we call this an era of information overload or socialization at its zenith?

Recently I have been reading about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and I would like to share some insights into SEO techniques that need to be considered while creating a goal or plan for your organization. As you would already be aware, SEO is mainly a collection of strategies that would improve the level at which your web site is ranked in the results returned when a user searches for a key word or phrase. One of the primary things that you need to do is have an SEO goal setup for the organization, but a goal such as increasing traffic to your website is way too broad so it would be better to change this to be more specific such as increasing the number of visitors who complete a transaction of atleast $10. This is just a roadmap indicating where your website is and where we you want it to be and hence it is important to set achievable time lines. The SEO goals and plans change very often hence you need to be very flexible with these goals/plan and make it a point to review them periodically, quarterly would be the best.

After setting the SEO goals, you also need to prepare an SEO plan which will help you stay on track while implementing the different SEO strategies. First of all, you need to bear in mind that it is easier to start smaller by considering each page on the website rather than everything together, and instead of randomly selecting a couple of pages, it is better to pick the top priority pages such as the homepage, or other pages that would generate the most traffic/revenue. The elements that need to be considered while assessing your existing website are: site or page tagging, page content, site links and the site map. In order to get the site properly listed on the search engine it is important that meta tags mainly the title and description tags are included in the coding of your website. The page content needs to be relevant and updated regularly when it comes to search results and keywords need to be included on the coding so that crawlers can index the page easily. It is suggested not to include too many keywords within the meta tags or the content, as it is unethical and known as keyword stuffing and most search engines would blacklist your website in such cases. Also since some search engines do check the number of times these keywords appear on the webpage, it is unethical to repeat unrelated or meaningless content over and over again to get a better ranking. This is known as spamdexing which in turn would cause your website to be blacklisted again. Site links are another essential element, the sites that lead away from your website as well as lead into your website need to be meaningful and not broken. Also in most cases keywords are linked within the content instead of providing actual URLs or links. Last but not the least, it is equally important to have the sitemap included within the coding of the website, which helps crawlers move around more easily.

It is my opinion that most SEO strategies ignore the target audience or deciding on where you want the website to show up. This would be deciding on whether you want the webpage to show up on a primary search engine such as Google, Yahoo, MSN (which index almost all sites on the web) or a secondary/regional search engine such as Lycos, Ask (targeted at more specific audience, regional searches etc) or a targeted search engine (very narrowly focused usually to a general topic) such as Yahoo Travel, City Search. This would help you to focus on the parameters that are most important for that search engine and optimize it in a better way, say if your website is new then you can focus on MSN which usually lists newer websites based on the content and the keywords used rather than Google which usually takes a couple of weeks before ranking newer websites. Similarly since the search algorithm and priorities set for each parameter is different for each search engine, I feel it is better to be more focused rather than general. After assessment of the website, set up a comprehensive plan to improve these key elements on the prioritized pages and continue to work on this to achieve the goal.

Social Marketing has been around for over a century aiming to provide awareness to the general public about the issues affecting the world, mainly those that need to be addressed. It can be linked to various advertisements that are aimed at educating people to bring about a desired behavioral change. Social Marketing has attained predominance in the past century and seems to be one of the strongest tools which marketers leverage to their advantage mainly to build and develop their brand around the customer. The social marketing mix is similar to the traditional 4 P’s but these are molded to satisfy the specific target audience. So when does a social change happen – when people change their internal attitudes, external structures and/or work to make a behavioral change unnecessary. The best example would be changing the internal attitude that wearing a seat belt is necessary to protect yourselves while driving, or the external structure can be changed by passing a law making it mandatory for everyone to do that, also by collecting a fee or fine if you violate the same. Now society can also work to make this behavioral change unnecessary by building cars, roads/highways that are very safe, so you need not bother to wear a seat belt anymore.

The concept of Social Marketing in its entirety can be best explained using the concept of the Customer Triangle. The customer is the key to the process; hence we can visualize your face at the center of the triangle. Knowledge about you or the customer is the prime concept, which would include understanding the values, beliefs, attitudes, interests and the social context in which they hail from. The social marketing mix would be the different methods or interventions used by business to obtain the desired behavioral goal. This is often called as the marketing mix or the interventions mix from a strategic or operational standpoint. In order to better reach the target market, the specific audience can be segmented into different groups based on various parameters that are relevant to the product or business. Exchange would include knowing the expectations of the customer in terms of the factors that cause the most impact on the customer to get better attention, those factors that are not so important and the price expected to pay which would be the real cost factor. Therefore in order for someone to change an old behavior or accept a new one, you need to offer something very appealing in return. Hence the action and exchange always goes hand in hand. Competition comes into play even in social marketing and the customer can choose any other alternative course of action other than the one desired by our business. Tune in more often for informative write ups on the same topic.

The anti Tahoe pizza party seemed to be fascinating especially the picture my colleague made of a dinosaur biting into the ‘T’ of Tahoe. It just shows how much annoyed everyone is at not being able to be part of the fun trip over to the Lake. This frustration is further enhanced by the emotion that you have had to work when a big part of your team is having fun at the party for two consecutive days. Personally, I feel happy to have a free weekend when you can relax at home, have a drink, get to watch a couple of movies, playing my online games, rather than getting back home on a Sunday from Tahoe and having a restless next week with hundreds of emails to be read and things to attend to that require immediate attention.

Last week seemed to be pretty eventful with two wonderful people, who filled our office with life, left the company. Again, that makes me ponder over the reason why someone decides to move onto another job and I feel that the first and foremost would be better opportunities with hikes, extra perks, promotion which enables a better standard of living, then there would be some who place being closer to family as priority, and some others who want to be located in a better geographical as well as climatic conditions. But again the question is when did they start thinking about this change and why did they decide to finally move on. The reason for this could be either too much work pressure and tension at job due to constant change, lack of fun activities due to less socialization among peers at work, dissatisfactory work culture, no work-life balance, having to bear the emotional frustrations of an annoying boss, lack of any value addition to job and so the list goes on and on. In short, a person is tempted to lookout for newer opportunities when you are dissatisfied with your present work environment, and of course unless he gets laid off.

According to Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate rose from 7.2 to 7.6 percent, the hires rate fell sharply to 2.6 percent and the quits rate has declined to 1.4 percent. Are we witnessing the same series of events that accompanied the worldwide economic downturn in 1929 all over again? Is this the right time to look for another job, when so many are out there jobless, trying to earn their daily bread? These questions seem to be relevant but the truth is that nothing can stop a person from achieving what he desires for in life.