It is not every day that you get to sit, talk and most importantly listen to people having the same interests as you. I was literally bubbling with excitement, after getting to be there in the Social media bootcamp in Bangalore, on Wednesday, 15th October. 

The camp was organized by Helen Issar, who runs the Social media Management group called Penny Lane Social. Coming with a vast experience in this domain from the dawn of social media, she has a profile to be envy of. Making things happen digitally, making brands come alive and register themselves in the consumers mind, is what she had been doing. Oh Yes, I am envious.

The 3-hour long, with a little break of amazing biscuits and cakes in between, session started with basics of Social media. It would be rude of me to simply say that this part was boring, as this was basics, but it was. Nevertheless, it was nice to start this off to ease everyone in, on the big elephant everyone is looking to tame, i.e., Social media.

As the session went on, things got interesting. From nitty-gritties of social media to tips on how to take care of twitter/facebook/Youtube to stats detailing how the full scope of Social media in India is yet to be explored completely.

Targeting: The target user profiling on each of these social networks vary. The stats throw up a beautiful picture on how this can be done effectively. Filtering out your target is a very important step in starting off your campaign.

Content Generation: The content generation requires empathizing with the reader and customizing it to their liking. Different rules apply on different social media platforms. While the 80:20 Rule of Curated: Created content works for Twitter, a 70:20:10 rule of Created: Curated: Promotional content works best for Facebook. The correct proportion will aid in making the recipe of engagement on these platforms better, and give the ultimate dish a great taste.

One size does not fit all, and hence content tone varies across platforms. While a blog reader is expected to at least read 300+ words, a tweet message has to be contained within 140 characters. (Makes me wonder, are you still there reading this “more than 300 word blog”? 😛 )

Pictures work wonder on all the platforms and so, a picture + quote + small description is ideally the correct syntax to be used to code for Social media success.  

Create stories: The most effective way to capture an audience is to tell a story to them. This can be in the form of a picture flow chart (A How-to guide?), making your users share experience of their use or sharing your knowledge about what you do best to the world.

Read insights and statistics: Tailor the social media content through insights and analytics gathered from user behavior.

Brand all your content, make it your own. Pictures/Videos/pdfs should all bear your logo, wherever you share them.

It all boils down to one very important fact, Create content to build a community with an expectation to build it into a marketplace.

Important question is not why to use Social media? Question is How to use it to our advantage?