Tag: social media

Social media Bootcamp: My Experience

On October 16, 2014

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?

Life of a Social media Addict

By farooq

On February 8, 2014

In Others

“Good morning 🙂 “

Before the traces of sleep left the eyes, still curled up inside the blanket on a cold morning, a tweet was posted, the notification bar that lighted red across the blue bar of facebook was religiously checked upon, emails checked and various other notifications were duly unread from whatever the Smartphone displayed. The snoozed alarm rang itself for another time, vibrating right into my hands, and hence the day began.
The day of a social media addict.

Well, it is not a biographical account of a random guy, but a simplified and collaged explanation of how the day of a socially active species would look like. A day where each of the happenings on a daily basis, or preferably hourly, or even more frequently than that, knocks itself up on any of these platforms. The indulgence gets multiplied, and the social life over the internet appears to be more active than the actual “social life.” Without bothering ourselves about the pros and cons on which life is better, or which one isn’t or to engage ourselves in another useless discussion like the one frequently happening on social media, let’s just concentrate on the story that unfolds for this guy, which we are so indulgently talking about.

The daily drama unfolds with the morning, bringing upon the overnight carry-forward social baggage with it. The Facebook messages, the likes on the recently uploaded pictures, counting the number of RTs the tweets have got, the endorsements on LinkedIn, and the list goes on. All of this carries along throughout the morning chores, the breakfast, newspaper; everything goes hand in hand along with the Tweeting and FBing garnishing the breakfast platter. Multi-tasking couldn’t have defined itself in a better way.
While pictures, with their editing of the breakfast food, tagged as “yummy”, “out of the world” or simply delicious” find their way to internet through Instagram, tweets describing, “the awesome start to the day, with the amazing Cheese Sandwiches” grace the Twitter Timeline, while perhaps a “Thank you Mom for the amazing Breakfast”, by tagging her there would update itself on Facebook. Thank you on the breakfast table is, so mainstream you know.
College starts with a Check-in on Foursquare update of “Your Highness” entering the premises and at the same post being shared on Facebook and Twitter. Notifications and Mentions pour in from the college brethren, as to the whereabouts of the hangout or why some of them won’t be coming.
The long walk to the spot, the head hung down, not in shame but latched with an ultimate concentration on the hands holding the powerful device. The walk itself is no mean feat, where dodging the passer-by and continuing to reply on the messages are a big achievement in itself. At least when the perfection is such, that an injury-free me reaches to buzz in a high-five with the buddies.
The hangout, of course, involves lots of chit-chats, banter, and discussions ranging from anything to everything. All along, something which matches the tag of being “funny,” “interesting,” and “weird” gets tweeted or posted to Facebook. The general rule is, everything which can be limited to 140 characters may find its way to Twitter, while stuff which is on the higher side of the humor/interesting quotient scale, gets updated on the facebook wall.
Classrooms of course, cannot be livelier than our “class contributions” in the form of WATSAPPing.
And just when things would somehow get finalized, an update on Facebook disclosing our whereabouts and plans for the evening, with the necessary tags would surface. (Open invite for stalkers if anyone wanted to). The update would also ring up comments, along with their sad looking smilies.
Interestingly, more than anything in the long-drive or sometimes a bowling session or just some food indulgence, it would be making sure that an adequate number of pictures giving evidence that we were there. Reminds of the time when people used to carve out their initials on Rocks or trees only to revisit those years later. This is the digitalized version of the same.
The only glitch comes, when with the amount of usage, the batteries in most of the phones, dies down slowly. With nothing much to update or tweet, we have to Talk to each other!! To our surprise, the talk builds upon the fun and the time way back home passes in a flash.
But, once all of them reach their home, the first thing that they all do, after getting a little scolding from either of the parents for being late, is to look for the Lifesaver- The Charger.
And then, the virtual life of the social media addicts are back with their tweets, updates, and uploads on the Internet.

Likes, Comments, Retweets, Follow, block, tags- the things that matter.

By farooq

On September 22, 2012

In Others

Wake up in the morning –> search for your phone (under the pillow or to the table beside you) –> unlock it with the speed of lightening –> check for messages, mentions, notifications, likes, facebook, twitter –> and now the day starts, Good morning world :).

This is the age of social network!!!! Where, the morning starts with twittering (ironically not by the chirping of birds :)).

There was a green revolution, then sometime later a white revolution, internet revolution and wagaira wagaira. Each of the generation gets itself associated with some sort of tag along with it. The one thing, (if I may not call it a revolution as such) is the phenomenon of Social networking, which is what our generation is associated with. The era, where one has more “friends” in the virtual world then in the real. Wherever one sees, can find people FBing or tweeting. From making friends and connecting with the old ones, this has also become a platform for people to raise their voice regarding every other issue concerning the economy, world and themselves.

Every pic that has been captured where you look even a little decent (the definition of “little” of course changes for women 😛 ) is there on facebook. Every place that has been visited has to be checked in via foursquare. Every little thing you do gets tweeted. Some YouTube it, some tweet it, some pin it and no matter what. Everyone is On it.

The story of social networking does not end there, it actually starts.

Once a pic/post/video is updated, every comment or like, every retweet or mention, makes the story go forward. Our social-network-happiness-quotient is directly proportional with the increase in each of these activities. There is also a give and take relationship prevalent too, you like, I like.

Remember those Orkut days?? When the number of “scraps” used to define your status and half of your time used to get spent on adding friends from your friend’s friend-lists. Every cute picture or names used to make the arrow of the mouse go towards the “add as a friend” button. Everyone knew as to who visited your profile and so one had to extra careful. Not much is different in facebook too, the only fact was that the “stalking-frequency” is on the higher side as no one knows as to who visited the profile.

When one writes a blog, the exciting part, after completing it, is to see how many people actually read the stuff. Even when people give their feedback, whether they like it or not, gives the writer the encouragement to continue writing (now you know what to do after reading this 😛 ).

Most of the things that we do are done with the purpose of getting noticed and appreciated. People sometimes go overboard in doing this, yet each of us in some form or the other love to display our achievements. Social networking has also become somewhat like this, i.e. sharing your achievements for getting appreciation. It’s good to do things to get appreciated, but as they say, “too much of anything is bad” and hence overdoing this in both the worlds (real and virtual) calls for a slowdown. What is to be appreciated will get its due, if it’s worth it. One just has to wait. Some “intellectual users” even tag others in their pics so as to make sure that one just cannot ignore to “like” their posts/pics. They even make it a point to invite you to use the very “interesting” games/apps. Where in the real world will you find such lovely friends like these? (Seriously? 🙂 )

Too much philosophy, eh??

Well, that’s what some elitist-social-networking-gurus will tell you (yes, there are elites everywhere). The over-doers are termed Wannabes or despos or attention seekers (the twitterati has another term for all this, Orkutiyas). The thing is that each of these elites have also went through all this, but what’s gone is gone, now it’s all a different ball game for them.

So, what’s the way forward???

There is only one thing that should always be followed, “Never fake yourself”. If you really feel like sharing whatever you like, you do. If you like using one social network over the other, you do. Don’t get buoyed by other’s thoughts and actions and never blindly follow “trend”. Whether it’s the social network or the real, be just YOU!!!!