Identify your target audience

Identify where you can find these people

Get in front of them by purchasing their attention in the form of an advertisement

On offline media you search for spaces for print ads, magazines, television, hoardings wherever the right audiences gather and online it’s much the same with display advertisements, search marketing, banner space purchases and more. You find the right space that reaches the right audiences and you pay for it. The next month, you find the right space, that reaches the right audiences and you pay for it…again!

Marketing spend is a perpetual ongoing kind of spend that continues as long as you need to reach communities that others have built. 

The key words here being - that others have built. 

Since you don’t own the community and the media / property (whether it’s a magazine, website, billboard) where these audiences gather, you have to keep paying as long as you want to reach out to them. One of the biggest game changers, social media, blogging, web content and online publishing have brought about is giving nearly anybody the opportunity to “build their own communities or digital media properties on the web so that they can own those communities”. With the right expertise, investment in time, resources and determination to deliver great content, you can actually publish and develop your own digital assets, build audiences based on your target areas and eventually keep those audiences rather than have to pay each time you need to reach out to them.

A baking products brand could spend $2500 per month a month renting a 300×300 banner space on a cooking and baking blog that receives 50,000 visitors and approximately 150,000 pageviews each month. The banner could result in some amount of awareness, about 200 clicks and a small percentage of sales that can be attributed to the banner. The next month they would have to shell out another $2500 and the month after to sustain the same results. Alternatively, they could invest in developing a cooking & baking blog of their own. For the first several months, they may have very little traffic and it would take time to even reach the first 1000 visitors. However with time and a consistent daily effort, they could develop a blog which also has 50,000 unique visitors a month and 150,000 pageviews. Another six months later they could have 100,000 visitors and keep increasing their reach. The initial investment may be higher but as time goes, the costs don’t increase but the benefits do since you own that community, all the space around it and it works as a marketing asset to your business. You reap the rewards long after!

With time a lot of businesses have woken up to the fact that building your own online media assets, communities, publications and web properties is a viable option to constantly relying on third party sites to reach your audiences. We’ve actively helped build some of these for our own clients and seen the long term advantages of owning your digital assets as opposed to shelling out marketing budgets month after month renting space on other’s online properties. While media buying and advertising remain the quickest way to seeing results, if you have some time and the will to invest in developing your own web assets, we’d say go for it! There’s no better time to start…than now!

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At the Buzzfactory India office with Dilip Daswani, CEO at Zeebric (right)

This week has been an action packed one for us at the Buzzfactory office and we had a demo for what could well be the future of social media marketing consumer product marketing for mobile / smartphone carrying consumer.

We had Mr. Dilip Daswani Founder & CEO of Zeebric visit the Buzzfactory offices and were fortunate enough to get an early glimpse into the Qliktag solution & mobile brand engagement platform which had us on the edge of our seat thinking about the possibilities an innovative technology platform like this opens up to taking social media campaigns right to the store shelves! From the user point of view, we simply took our smartphones, scanned a QR code (or tapped a product label with an NFC enabled Samsung S3) placed on a jacket and a completely customized product specific page for that very jacket popped up on the smartphone browser screen.

The page had an image of the jacket, detailed product information, a video on the designer and a contest registration tab with a “share to Facebook option”. As a social media marketing firm we’re accustomed to conceptualizing and executing brand contests and promotions on Facebook, Twitter or social networks but being able to deliver a contest or promotion right to a smartphone on the ground right when you’re standing in front of the product…that opens a new world of possibilities! The Qliktag platform is remarkable in so many different ways in terms of giving brands a platform to connect directly with buyers of their products one-to-one, being able to gather buyer insights as they shop, enabling brands to build and deliver highly customized experiences for each individual product to customers and more. However, from a social media brand marketing perspective, the ability to use a platform like this to create social contests and promotions at the point of sale / store / post purchase gives brands the power to “engage” when it matters the most – when the product and customer are in proximity.

Imagine walking into an electronics store, scanning / tapping a tag placed on a high end home theater system with your mobile phone for a chance to win it. Your contest form appears on your mobile, you can listen to audio samples, answer a question and you’re registered as a contestant. Social media has brought brands and buyers to interact more closely with eachother over the last few years but club the mobile connect component which uses products to connect brands and their customers and this could well be the next evolutionary step for brand engagement via smartphones! Contests, promotions, sharing, interactions and more not just while you’re browsing or online…but when you’re out shopping, evaluating products in a store or just bought something.

When social media meets mobile like this, you brand engagement is heading towards some exciting times!

Future of Social Media Marketing

The post The Future Of Social Media Marketing – Where Mobile Meets Social appeared first on BuzzFactory.

The answer is – there is a small but significant difference between a social media user & a social media analyst – as a professional analyst you don’t just use social media to interact, you professionally approach every single update, post, conversation, promotion, interaction, campaign etc with:

- A clear understanding of the clients primary objectives or end goals

- A positioning or “voice” that represents how the client or brand wishes to be perceived

- An understanding of who the target audiences are that you are looking to engage & attract

- An insight into strategy and questioning the motives and what to expect with every action

- An inclination to measure every action and track the resulting effect of everything they do

Outwardly, a user posting some content or an update via a social site versus an analyst posting may not appear too different. However, the analyst is able to understand the motives behind that update in the context of the business objective even if that update is a “simple good morning” on the Facebook page.

The social media analyst, knows what are the best times to reach people online, which days, which hours and how to maximize the reach of every outgoing post. They know how to look at statistics and analytics from various data generation tools and derive meaningful insights. They can figure out what works, what doesn’t work how people are reacting to different communications, identify issues, come up with solutions and make things work by approaching things in a logical way backed with experience and knowledge of how the web and web users operate.

As the social web continues to disrupt traditional means of communication and media, the demand for professionals that quite literally understand the ins and outs of how things work online will only increase. The skill sets required to be successful as a business on the web are skills not every internet user necessarily has simply because they are online. They come from cultivating a deeper understanding of user behavior online, understanding technology, the role of content, usage of tools and experience. There are websites that do wonders for their businesses and there are websites that do nothing. There are marketing campaigns that are done wrong and drive away people earning distrust and there are some done so well, people love those companies. For every business that has ventured onto the digital arena and decided to make a mark on the web, there are specific people that drive their initiatives backed with knowledge, experience and an analytical ability adapted to the workings of the social web. For every business that plans to venture into this space a little further (there will be a lot of these in the years to come), they will either need or get in line to recruit these social web savvy professionals to help lead their pursuits.

We don’t doubt the social media analysts of this world are going to be among some of the most highly sought after professionals in the days, weeks and months to come!

The post Why Companies Will Line Up To Recruit The Social Media Analyst appeared first on BuzzFactory.

Just about a month ago we asked someone “well why did you decide to setup new website and Facebook page for your business” and I just couldn’t get my head around the answer. The reply was “Because there are now millions of people on the internet and if I post something to my website or Facebook, millions of people can see it!” …NOT!!! Now to most who have a grip on how the web works that may seem like the silliest reply you’ve ever heard but I’ve come to notice this notion that the internet has millions of people so they can all see anything you post – is a common misunderstanding. Many assume since there are so many people on the web, it’s the perfect place to post something about their businesses on the website, on a blog or on Facebook and ….millions of people will get to see that.

True the internet does have millions and millions of people but so does Bombay, LA, Mexico City or any other metropolis. That doesn’t imply if you open an office on the 15th floor of a building in one of these cities, all the millions of people in that city knows about your office, what you do or anything else about it. It just means you have an office in a massive city that almost no one knows about. In order to get people to know about what you do there you need to reach out, talk to people, tell them about it, network, attend events, advertise, get some PR, get published locally, contact people and actively make sure you reach out to some new people everyday.

Having a website or setting up a Facebook page for a brand or business works much the same way. If you have a website you can assume the whole world will know about it or read it but in reality…no one does unless you reach out everyday and actively ensure a few more people know about it each day. You need to tell your friends about it, family or share it with your immediate network, join groups, get coverage, actively have conversations with others so a few more people know about it everyday and eventually it will add up to a lot of people knowing about it.

There are an estimated 150,000 new websites that go up each day. There are millions of updates and conversations that take place on the social web each day. What are the odds of people visiting or noticing what you put up?

Well…that depends on how much effort you are willing to put into reaching out and making sure people out there do take notice and make what you are doing count. Until that happens, the numbers…..are just numbers.

The post The Internet Has Millions Of People – Well So Does Bombay! appeared first on BuzzFactory.

Then..

I spent the night setting up a website. It was a first step in building a startup that I was determined to make work from that very evening and would work towards come what may. The process of structuring the website was more than simply having a home page. It was a process of putting together all I had learned about developing an online presence, engaging with people online and leveraging social media to create a buzz. It was a process of compiling it into a solution or “productized” services that other businesses and brands could use to increase their own outreach. It involved putting my visions for a company that could address the need to have dedicated efforts & talented professionals work on web outreach and presence development, a need I was sure would only become more pressing over the years as social media and digital marketing disrupt traditional mediums and marketing practices.

Armed with a single client a technology company based in California, USA and an html website created overnight, a new startup journey had begun.

Now…

Between 4th April 2009 and 4th April 2013, it feels like we’ve been through no less than 3 distinct phases with countless experiences, ups, downs, highs, lows, achievements, disappointments and yet every minute has been priceless and incredible to say the least. With every one of the experiences, we’ve learned and evolved as a company.

In 4 years, we’ve been through 3 distinct website and offering structure changes.

Worked from 3 different spaces.

Worked with clients across over 3 continents.

Grown cautiously, focused on getting things right and even scaled down and re-built when that seemed to the right thing to do keeping the long term vision in mind.

Looking ahead…

And now we are 4 and it coincides with yet another chapter in the journey. This April marks a new year for Buzzfactory. We start the year with a team that is talented and driven to move ahead. A new workspace and HQ for Buzzfactory with a cool vibe just waiting to see some great things happen each week. A new partnership with an innovative & highly experienced advisory team. A business presence and office in CA, USA and a new trajectory to take things to a new level.

The road behind has been filled with moments I wouldn’t trade for anything. The road ahead looks interesting and bright.

Happy Birthday Buzzfactory! Cheers to many more incredible years ahead!

The post Happy Birthday Buzzfactory! Cheers to a 4 Year Startup Journey appeared first on BuzzFactory.

However, as the web has evolved so has the idea of content. The textual script has grown its skin and bones and now presents itself in many different forms. Although we do tend to spend a lot of time on the Internet, the attention span is quite less per page. Not everyone reads every word of what you have written / published. Blogs have changed form and along with interesting textual content also include tonnes of media. Right from a video, or a podcast, infographic.

In the mad mad rush of getting customers, getting views for your page and keeping them engaged, the kind of content you publish also makes a lot of difference. An average content writer now no longer is supposed to be eloquent with words only but should also have more skills to integrate good content with great presentation. To capitalise on the short attention span of the average user the key message of what you intend to publish needs to be supported by good content and presented in a great manner to lead to any effect.

Internet is now changed to a visually enticing media, with PC’s shrunk to size of laptops, tablets and smart phones and connectivity at anytime, it has become that much more difficult to grab the attention of the user. So although free content publishing platforms are open and available for all, it is that much more tedious to develop and groom a dedicated readership. Often is a case when great content lies wasted because it was not presented in a more user friendly manner.

Thus for web publishing, the job of  content writers is that much more multi-faceted, although they need to do an equivalent amount of research to verify facts, to solicit from right sources, to use their words right to get the message across. Now they have an added responsibility to present content creatively and intelligently.

Below are some examples of expressing a message visually:

Inforgraphic is a great way to disseminate essential information

Pictures always tell a great story!

The post Content specialists are more than just writers! appeared first on BuzzFactory.

SMO or “Social Media Optimization”

It’s widely used by social media service providers, professionals and often thrown around in conversations like “Hey you should consider social media optimization services for your website if you want traffic or results!”. Personally, I despise the term for the simple reason it implies in some way you can manipulate certain social media channels and “technically” adjust them to your website or brands benefit.

Social Media “Optimization”. I cringe when I hear the word since it seems to suggest a technical way to “optimize” or manipulate social media to your benefit. Clearly this SMO phrase caught on from the term Search Engine Optimization which in itself I have no qualms about. Search engines have been based on algorithms or an arithmetic logic which takes into consideration a number of technical factors. A website CAN technically be “optimized” for search engines by manipulating content, keywords, titles, descriptions and other elements. Ranking well in search engines and driving traffic through adjusting for better ranking results IS all about “optimization”.

Social Media however, is not purely about technical adjustments, manipulating social networks or sites for traffic. It’s not about optimization. It’s about communication, content, conversation, engagement & human interaction. You can use tricks, tools and technical manipulation to increase numbers of Facebook Likes, Traffic Stats, Get Followers, Increase Comments and show numerical increases in metrics (believe me: a number of “professional service providers” do!) but you can’t bank on technical manipulation to deliver real value via social media. THAT is done through “connecting with people”, engaging people, drawing them through the content you publish, interacting with them and bringing out a personality that audiences can identify with.

You can add a Facebook page, YouTube Channel, Twitter account and LinkedIn page for a brand or website but that isn’t going to help if there isn’t a compelling interaction across those channels and a strong enough lure to interest people. Simply creating RSS feeds, bookmarking accounts, accounts on every site doesn’t tap into the long term benefits of people actually connecting with your brand or what you do and as much as the SMO term is marketed as a technical service….it’s really not some purely technical process where someone can be hired to “optimize” your website for social media, leave and you’re all set. It’s a communication and content driven service which is ongoing in nature and focused on “people” and your website or brands interactions with them in the digital world just as you would network, communicate and interact with people in the physical world.

You’re either social. Or you’re not. You can wear a nicer shirt (optimize your appearance) hoping people will like you better but eventually its about your personality, the way you interact with others and what you say that determines how people take to you.

The post Why I Cringe When I Hear The Term SMO or Social Media Optimization appeared first on BuzzFactory.

It’s unfortunate, but it’s true. If you’re one to keep up with the every changing world of the web and marketing online you’ll probably know what I’m talking about. Social media and digital marketing has made major strides from being a sideline “fad” that some businesses dabbled with 6-8 years ago into a more mainstream focus area for a lot of brands and businesses today that are looking at it more seriously. In India, we’re still considerably in the early stages of leveraging online channels for marketing and despite some really great examples of success stories, the bulk of businesses and professionals have a long way to go on the maturity curve in terms of really understanding how it works to really use these channels correctly.

One of the biggest challenges - expectations & mindsets don’t change at the pace online marketing trends and technology changes at!

About 3 years ago, we managed to build a lot of traffic for an online retail brand and the core of the social media marketing effort was a blog with a highly organized publishing and editorial schedule. Some of the posts we did went viral on Digg, the SEO was effective, there were traffic spikes from StumbleUpon and traffic build up happened in a matter of a few months. 3 years on in 2013, Digg is barely one of the top social media channels, Google has changed it’s algorithm a number of times and virtually none of the strategies that worked back then, work to that effect today!

The introduction of Googles Panda and Penguin updates virtually turned the science of SEO on it’s head ensuring mass link-building tricks,  directory submissions and other short cuts to quick traffic are methods of the past. Not only do they not work, you can actually be punished or blacklisted for over-optimizing or indulging in SEO techniques to quickly boost results. Having a Facebook page with 1000 fans back in the day actually meant anything you posted had a reach of 1000 fans which is no longer true. Facebook has consistently restrained the actual reach of updates on brand or fan pages over the years to encourage paid promotions and it’s currently as low as 8-12%.  That means out of your 1000 fans, only 80-120 will actually see an update on your page and you need to pay Facebook if you’d like to extend that reach. Getting Google+ +1′s never meant anything back then but have an influence on what you do now.

Bottom line - The dynamics of the web and what works in terms of marketing something have changed drastically in a very sort span of time.

More importantly, they continue to change, every month, every week and everyday. What worked a few months ago very well, will not work for you now. However, most people have not or will not accept that fact since mindsets don’t change as quickly. As a result expectations of what should be done, how to go about things and what is realistically possible are badly skewed since they based not on current dynamics but past routes others have used to build their web presence. You often find a marketing head or business owner demand instant search traffic, 100′s of links to their website in a month, 1000′s of Facebook fans organically in days, a high Page Ranking in a matter of weeks and requests for “SEO magic” that web marketing unicorn stories are made of. To them, their demands seem perfectly rational since there are real live cases of so many that have used those methods to deliver returns. They cling on to expectations based on what worked then and not what might work now. These are unfounded expectations which won’t see the light of day like believing a one time search optimization effort will instantly lead to success or publishing a blog or having a Facebook page will instantly have people visiting it or liking their page just because there are a lot of people on the web.

All said and done, just because the dynamics of the web keep changing, it doesn’t mean nothing works either. It simply means one needs to be able to change course with these changes, constantly adapting and ensuring expectations align with times.

Those that are open to experimenting, trying different things and adapt with every passing week will eventually stay on top the ever-changing web.

The post The Dynamics Of Social Media Marketing Change Faster Than Mindsets appeared first on BuzzFactory.

Visualising such information is a tough task, but there are always such commonalities among people you know and there exist bridges between groups of people that you did not know were there.

Just stumbled upon one such interesting tool map which creates a map of your LinkedIn contacts. I was pleasantly surprised to see how the many different people I know come together on a professional networking scene. Friends and contacts from various walks of life come together here and are many times inter related to form interesting connections.

Have some fun with the LinkedIn InMaps and create your own too!

Fun with Connection – LinkedIn InMap

The post Fun With Connections – Visualizing Social Media Relationships appeared first on BuzzFactory.

You don’t always need a digital marking agency or social media professionals to manage your social media activity. It’s not rocket science and you don’t have to “know social media” in order to use it. You have to “be social”, converse, communicate, share just as you would in a room full of people and it’s a natural human process that has simply found a technology enabled new medium. However, the difference between a common user using social media and a social media professional that engages actively on channels like Facebook, blogs, YouTube, FourSquare and more is the intent behind every update or action on these channels.

Let me give you an example: Just yesterday we posted a close up photo of a mouthwatering plate of food on behalf of a restaurant client. A restaurant owner can easily manage his or her own social media accounts and is also likely to post a photo of one of their best plats of food as a Facebook update. However, the restaurant owner will probably post that photo update late at night or early in the morning when they are not in the restaurant working. We posted that picture at precisely 6:00 pm because that’s when most people either log off to leave work or get back home from work and get on Facebook. It’s also the time of the day when you start thinking about what you plan to have to dinner, whether you’re going to start cooking once you get home or make plans to go out. That’s probably when you are more likely to remember that juicy plate of kebabs and recall the restaurant as an option. There is intent!

When there are business objectives behind an interaction or update, there’s intent behind every activity and a somewhat calculated approach to everything you do as a professional. While some may argue it’s the wrong approach to social media, this is how social interactions are carried out in the offline world too. People don’t always attend a speaking engagement to hear what the speaker has to say. They may attend it with the intent of networking there and bumping into prospective opportunities there. Similarly a social media professional will often find themselves retweeting or engaging someone on Twitter not because they are fascinated by their tweets but they are hoping to get noticed and develop a relationship with them so they may in turn get a mention & benefit from that persons extensive influence or reach. That is intent!

When we work on behalf of clients we make sure a contest form has as few entry fields as possible so more people are not dissuaded for entering their details. We make sharing as easy as possible so people are inclined to share and we reach more people. We add hashtags to updates, alt tags for images and SEO descriptions for blog posts to ensure everything published is optimized for people to find it easily. There is intent and deliberation behind each activity or action and therein lies the difference between being social and being social with intent.  There lies the difference between a common user using social media and a social media professional using social media to achieve some underlying objectives.

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