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E-Paper

Posted on September 15, 2014 Updated on September 15, 2014

Few days back I met with one of biggest media house CEO for business purpose. He quoted now day’s only I am reading newspapers in house. My son carries tablets for reading newspapers. He was just sharing one funny incidence and he quoted this, but somehow he was rite. I remember my childhood days when we were eagerly waited for Newspaper and try to read it first. Every one start reading at a time…each one had one page :).

It’s an E-Paper era…

What is E-Paper:

Print and online editions have been joined by a third version of the daily newspaper, namely the so-called E-Paper version, also referred to as the “digital edition”. Meant here is the online edition of a daily newspaper that optimally simulates the printed pages by displaying them one-to-one on a smaller scale. Users can navigate on the newspaper page; obtain an overview just as they know it from the print newspaper. The digital simulation of the printed edition permits both specific pages and articles to be retrieved by clicking on them. In this way, E-Paper combines the presentation possibilities of the printed newspaper with those of the online newspaper.

Benefits of E-Paper:

Technology:

In term of Technology E papers allows us to do lots of things. Since we are living in Internet world, and we have everything except time. People spend his most of time on mobile phone or Tabs. They can access it anywhere & anytime. Its easy to read and downloadable. Normally its in JPEG, PDF, Doc, HTML, XML etc. formats. Its easy to access and user friendly also.

Comfort:

Since it’s an online version so we cannot tear it. User can see the same with two facilities: free access and paid subscriptions. For Media houses it’s an extra feature to get money.

Archiving:

Interesting feature of E-Paper is archiving. In print edition its almost impossible to find any past editions. But in E-Paper it’s just a matter of one click. It has search facility also where you can write your keyword and you will get exact clips.

Reach:

You can access all E-Papers across world, different languages and different editions. Now lots of e-papers are giving facility to translate the whole newspaper in English. Which is very useful for foreigners.

Some Flaws of E-Paper:

Different Newspaper:

We have done some internal research on E-Paper. We found lots of discrepancy in E-Paper format. Like…

1) News content was not same as hard copy

2) Placement of News is different compare to hard copy

3) E-Paper was not updated for that day

4) E-Paper was totally different from hard copy

5) Photographs, Snippets, Briefs were missing in E-Paper

Editions:

Corporates are targeting to different cities now. It’s important to reach them with information. It’s very difficult to believe on E-Paper for all aspects. Especially in term of Editions. As ToI have more than 13 additions but it covered only 13 on E-Paper. Then again you have to rely on other sources for publications

Publications:

Not all publications: Again you will not get all the publications on web. Publications like Aaj, Which have great circulation in north belt but they are not on e-paper. Its all about the target audience of news papers.

Subscription: If you are on Web then you don’t have any patient to wait for payments and all. Many publications specially all magazines are subscription based. People avoid going there.

List of E-Papers in India

English	Hindi	Marathi
epaper.livemint.com/	http://epaper.amarujala.com	http://deshonnati.digitaledition.in/
http://paper.hindustantimes.com	http://epaper.bhaskar.com	http://epaper.eprabhat.net
epaper.timesofindia.com	http://epaper.haribhoomi.com	http://epaper.esakal.com
http://deccanheraldepaper.com	http://epaper.jagran.com	http://epaper.lokmat.com/marathi/
http://epaper.centralchronicle.com	http://epaper.lokmat.com/samachar/	http://epaper.loksatta.com
http://epaper.deccanchronicle.com	http://epaper.navabharat.biz	http://epaper.prahaar.in/
http://epaper.dnaindia.com	http://epaper.navbharattimes.com	http://epaper.pudhari.com
http://epaper.financialexpress.com	http://epaper.patrika.com	http://epaper.saamana.com/
http://epaper.freepressjournal.in/	http://epaper.prabhatkhabar.com	http://epaperdivyamarathi.bhaskar.com/
http://epaper.indianexpress.com/	http://epaper.punjabkesari.in	http://epunyanagari.com
MALAYALAM	TELEGU	URDU
http://digitalpaper.mathrubhumi.com/	http://epaper.andhrabhoomi.net/	http://jadidkhabar.com
http://www.deepika.com/dpathram/	http://epaper.sakshi.com	http://www.dailyaftab.com
http://www.keralakaumudi.com/	http://epaper.vaartha.com	http://www.etemaaddaily.com/epapers
KANNADA	GUJRATI
http://epaper.kannadaprabha.com/	http://epaper.divyabhaskar.co.in/
http://epaper.udayavani.com/	http://epaper.navgujaratsamay.com/
http://vijayanextepaper.com/	http://kutchmitradaily.com

Just Look at it:

This entry was posted in Print and tagged E-Paper, E-paper in India, Electronic News Paper, India's E-Paper, Shringesh.

Top Publications in India by State

Posted on September 8, 2014 Updated on September 15, 2014

Normally all PR executives have issue to get coverage in quality of publications. Here is the list for your reference. Below is the readership data for TG 12, all India.

In current scenario when PR measurement slowly getting its space in PR world. Its difficult to show case your visibility in lower rated publications.


Chandigarh	Andhra Pradesh	Assam	Goa
Dainik Bhaskar	Eenadu	Asomiya Pratidin	Tarun Bharat
The Tribune	Sakshi	Asomiya Khabar	Gomantak
Hindustan Times	Andhra Jyothi	Assam Tribune	O Herald O
Aaj Samaj	Deccan Chronicle	Amar Asom	Lokmat
Amar Ujala	Namaste Telangana	Bismoi	The Navhind Times

Delhi	Karnataka	Bihar	Gujarat
Hindustan Times	Vijay Karnataka	Hindustan	Gujarat Samachar
The Times Of India	Prajavani	Dainik Jagran	Divya Bhaskar
Navbharat Times	Kannada Prabha	Prabhat Khabar	Sandesh
Hindustan	Samyukta Karnataka	Aj	The Times Of India
Dainik Jagran	Udayavani	Rashtriya Sahara	Saurashtra Samachar

Haryana	Kerala	Jharkhand	Maharashtra
Amar Ujala	Malayala Manorama (Daily)	Hindustan	Lokmat
Punjab Kesari	Mathrubhumi	Prabhat Khabar	Daily Sakal
Divya Himachal	Vanitha (Mal)	Dainik Jagran	Pudhari
The Tribune	Deshabhimani	Dainik Bhaskar	The Times Of India
Dainik Bhaskar	Malayala Manorama (Weekly)	The Times Of India	Maharashtra Times

Jammu & Kashmir	Tamil Nadu	Chhattisgarh	Orissa
Daily Excelsior	Daily Thanthi	Dainik Bhaskar	Sambad (Ori)
Amar Ujala	Dinakaran	Hari Bhoomi	Samaj
Punjab Kesari	Dinamalar	Nava Bharat	Dharitri
Dainik Jagran	The Hindu	Nai Dunia	The Samaya
The Times Of India	Kumudam	Patrika	Pragativadi

Madhya Pradesh	West Bengal	Punjab	Rajasthan
Dainik Bhaskar	Ananda Bazar Patrika	Ajit	Rajasthan Patrika
Patrika	Bartaman	Punjab Kesari	Dainik Bhaskar
Nai Dunia	Karmakshetra	Jag Bani	Dainik Navjyoti
Dainik Jagran	The Telegraph	Dainik Bhaskar	The Times Of India
Raj Express	Karmasangsthaan	Dainik Jagran	Punjab Kesari

Uttar Pradesh	Uttaranchal
Dainik Jagran	Amar Ujala
Amar Ujala	Dainik Jagran
Hindustan	Hindustan
Amar Ujala Compact	The Times Of India
Aj	Hindustan Times

This entry was posted in Print.

Circulation

Posted on September 8, 2014 Updated on September 15, 2014

A Newspaper’s circulation is the number of copies it distributes on an average day. Circulation is one of the principal factors used to set advertising rates. Circulation is not always the same as copies sold, often called paid circulation, since some newspapers are distributed without cost to the reader. Readership figures are usually higher than circulation figures because of the assumption that a typical copy of the newspaper is read by more than one person.

In many countries, circulations are audited by independent bodies such as the Audit Bureau of Circulations to assure advertisers that a given newspaper does indeed reach the number of people claimed by the publisher.

Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) is a voluntary organisation constituted in the year 1948. Going back six decades when the concept of circulation audit was yet to be established in our country, advertisers had no means to know the actual circulation numbers of publications that they used for advertising and had to depend more on their own judgement. Publishers also found it difficult to convince advertisers of the relative values of their publication for the purpose of advertising. It is with this background, eminent representatives of the advertising profession and publishing industry came together to establish an organization which could serve common interest. Since then the benefit of ABC certificate of circulation have been availed by advertisers, advertising agencies, publishers and organisations connected with print media advertising.

The primary objective of the Bureau is to secure accurate circulation figures and data relating to all periodicals and media that sell advertising space and in regard to such publications to obtain information as to area of distribution and fix standard forms and methods for ascertaining the circulation figures and to record such information and circulate it to members of the ABC.

Bureau certifies circulation figures of member publications for a six-monthly audit period i.e. January to June and July to December. The system envisages a comprehensive audit of printing, distribution, financial and production records of member publications by a panel of approved auditors as per the audit guidelines laid down by the Bureau from time to time.

No. of Article, Title, Language, Jul-Dec’13, Jan-Jun’13

This entry was posted in Print.

IRS

Posted on September 3, 2014 Updated on September 3, 2014

IRS is the single source survey for media and product ownership/usage. The prime objective of the study is to collect readership information from a cross-section of individuals, in great detail, so as to present a true and unbiased picture of their readership habits. On the media front, it also captures information on television and cinema viewing habits, radio listening habits and Internet usage. In addition to this, IRS captures information on various FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) products, usage and consumption and durable ownership amongst households. Since media and product ownership/ consumption information is captured from the same household, it enables linkages between the media and product data. IRS equips you with information that is truly reflective of the Indian population for making informed decisions.

New IRS

How New IRS is different

Advanced Technology Used which minimises Non-Sampling error
For the first time the entire survey will be conducted by Double Screen CAPI.
All show cards/mastheads will be displayed through the device.
New Sampling Methodology for accessing Up-Market Households
Audio Recording for certain section of the Questionnaire during the interview
Use of Census 2011 for universe projection
Improved quality control with real time workforce tracking Reduced interview time to 30 minutes
No Manual data processing
With all these features, the survey has tremendous scope of reducing non-sampling errors by imposing strong quality control checks and thus improves data quality

Benefits:

Removal of manual interviews will reduce the interview duration to 30 to 40 minutes as against over an hour previously. This will result in reduction of respondent fatigue and will provide us better quality response.
Bringing in global best practices like inclusion of data fusion, advanced research methodology equipped with modern technology.
Data fusion possibilities through satellite modules – intrinsic and extrinsic (in future)

Geographical Spread:

District level reporting will be incorporated in stages.
32 States and Union Territories are covered in the new IRS – 95 Cities with a population of 5 lacs plus population.
92 individual districts will be reported initially and 502 districts will be reported as 98 districts clusters.
Therefore from the first report itself, ‘Reporting Units’ will increase from 75 to 180+
New IRS will be covering all India excluding two States (Arunachal Pradesh and Andaman, Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep) and a part State (Kashmir).
This year IRS would be reporting Jammu and North Eastern States as well, this was not so until last year
Face to Face interview using Double Screen CAPI, across the Country
All interviews conducted will be through Double Screen CAPI

Methodology:

The IRS data is reported at the Household level and at an Individual level.

Household Data:

The household data is collected by interviewing the householder. Information in the household section is focused on all household details from the household composition, durables owned, household items purchased and other key demographic variables.

A Normal Household is defined as a group of persons who normally live together and take their meals from a common kitchen unless the nature of their work prevent any of them from doing so. Persons in a household may be related or unrelated to each other. There may be one member households, two member households or multi-member households. The link in understanding whether it is a household or not, is a common kitchen.

The Householder is defined as:

A person who takes the decision on purchase of day to day household products such as groceries, toothpastes, soaps, detergents etc. with respect to what to purchase, when to purchase and how much to purchase is a Householder. This person has to be staying in the household and can be a male or a female. The householder need not always decide on the brands. The householder need not always physically go to the shop to buy these products; the householder may only be suggesting the requirements while someone else implements it.

Individual Data:

Individual data is collected from a systematically randomly selected person who is 12 years or older and stays in the household. The Individual Questionnaire is mainly focused on capturing readership of publications, TV viewing, Radio listening, Mobile usage, Internet usage, Cinema going habits and personal usage of selected products.

Target Group:

Sample Size is 2.35 lacs. Individual Questionnaire-12+yrs; Household Questionnaire: Householder. The survey will include all individual households, and exclude Institutions.

In lay man term:

IRS Team collect samples from individuals by face to face interview. They used to show different mastheads of newspapers to individuals and then ask to identify the same. If some body identify Times of India Mastheads. it counts as one reader of Times of India. After that IRS team do quality check and creates exact opinion. Basis on that data comes.

New IRS Launch

This entry was posted in Print.

Blogging

Posted on August 28, 2014 Updated on August 28, 2014

First things first: This is nowhere near a comprehensive guide to blogging. There are dozens of good books written about creating, growing, and maintaining a blog, and if you’re interested in going down that path, we’d recommend you find a few you like. We hope, though, that this chapter provides enough background to give you a solid understanding of whether or not it’s the right endeavor for you.

As web publishing has gotten easier, blogs have become more prevalent. Individuals with little to no technical experience can start up and run a blog using any number of different platforms. Consumers read blogs at greater rates now than ever before. Exact numbers are difficult to find, given how widely distributed blogs are, but there are more than 33 million new posts each month using WordPress alone.

What does the blogosphere look like?

There are an estimated 31 million bloggers in the US alone.

In one survey, almost 87% of bloggers had been actively blogging for at least two years.

57% of bloggers report having more than one blog.

35% of businesses blog at least once every month.

60% of bloggers report to be men.

Nearly 2/3 of influencers earn revenue from blogging, but 80% of them report earning less than $10,000 per year.

How are people using blogs?

Every blog has its own set of objectives. Some are run by individuals, some by companies, and others by some combination of the two. While you can find a blog covering just about anything, there are several overarching buckets they usually fall into:

Corporate: These blogs are written by a company for its consumers or stakeholders. They are often found on the main company website or a dedicated subdirectory/subdomain therein. (Side note: there’s good evidence that says a subdirectory is a better choice than a subdomain.) Topics can vary from news and announcements to product launch info and even community relations efforts.

Personal/diary: Bloggers who keep a personal journal online may have aspirations to develop them into other types of blogs, but their primary function is sharing their lives and experiences and generally target existing friends and family.

Hobby or interest: These blogs are focused around a theme. It could be professional in nature (tech blogs often fall under this banner) or completely personal (involving something like fashion, beauty, sports, etc).

Professional: These folks are in it to make a profit. They may base their income on ads or even affiliate sales, or they may have other means of income; the key is that these blogs earn them a paycheck.

Community/communal: This category often looks like what is often called hyper-local news. A local Seattle blog, the West Seattle Blog, is a great example of this working quite well. The blog covers news related to its particular neighborhood and has rich user forums that often generate a great deal of the content.

Strategies and tactics for success

Successful blogging is a lot of work. Depending on what success means to you and your company, it can involve any number of people—marketers and product managers are just the beginning. A blog is your opportunity to showcase your company’s culture and personality while shedding some light on the products you offer.

Authority: Your blog should be used to help establish authority through content that adds value to your industry as a whole. That said, how you set your blog up can impact the authority in some niches. A self-hosted blog is going to be the safest bet for everyone. It is an extension of your website and should be treated just as professionally.

Content: Depending on your industry and the frequency with which you’d like to publish, content creation can be a challenging task. The key is to stay creative and think like your users. What kind of information would they like to see? What kind of information would help them use your products more effectively, or would make their lives easier? What would entertain them? You can get to the bottom of many of these questions by looking into your site analytics. It’s a bit more trickier with Google now masking people’s search keywords with “(not provided)” in your GA dashboards, but there are plenty of other sources of valuable information about your users. If you’re using AdWords, you’ll still have access to some keyword data.

You can also look to your competitors’ sites, social conversations, your inbound Q&A, customer service requests, and any other feedback channels you have. Just look around you, and you’re bound to come up with other ideas. Another idea is to open the conversation to your colleagues, and even the customers themselves, to make it a group effort. Creating a content calendar where you can organize these ideas will work to keep you on track and prevent you from losing any of those great ideas.

Timing: Timing isn’t actually everything, but it sure is an important part of the puzzle. It is especially important today, when we receive a constant flood of information from social channels. The perfect timing will depend on your audience. Ideally, you want to find the time and day when your community is most available and willing to receive and share your content. This is going to be a time when they’re very active, but not so active that the your message is lost among the noise. Try experimenting with different times of day until you get a feel for what that “optimal” time is for you. Tools like Followerwonk can help. You’ll also want to keep an eye out for industry happenings, news, and othermajor events that may impact the attention span and appetite of your community.

Style: Blogs afford you an opportunity to step outside the bounds of the heavily vetted copy on the rest of your site and really develop your company’s brand voice. Take advantage of that opportunity, and don’t be afraid to show the world who you are. Raise that brand flag with pride!

At the same time, make sure your choices are intentional. Have a good sense for what your voice sounds like before you use it, and stick to it. That’s not to say that individual authors or even individual posts can’t have different tones, but they should all pivot from one primary brand voice. While this may sound limiting, it actually makes content easier to create, because you have a good sense for how your brand persona would approach a particular topic or situation. There’s only the writing to figure out from there. That’s the easy part, right? 🙂

Frequency: The only thing worse than never blogging at all is starting to and not maintaining the effort. As a visitor to a company’s blog, it is disheartening to see that the most recent post is from several months ago. This gives the visitor no reason to subscribe or participate. You certainly don’t need to blog every day, or even every week for that matter. Find an attainable cadence, set expectations with your audience, and stick to it. Perhaps you only do a monthly industry roundup. That’s cool. Just tell people in advance so they know what to expect.

Engagement: As we’ve mentioned before, engagement is where the real magic happens. Posts really come alive when they start to see comments and conversations from the audience. Engagement is also where a community starts to take shape. The biggest key is how you moderate it. Comments left unchecked are a golden ticket for spammers, who are crawling the Internet for opportunities to drop links. Not to mention the trolls. There are a several good ways to moderate the comments on your blog, depending on your goals. Some people choose to have an approval process, but the more popular a blog becomes, the more labor intensive that strategy becomes. Some choose to have a site-specific log-on and profile, but this can cut down on engagement for those unwilling to take the time to create one. It’s up to you and your own workflow to determine what the right strategy is for you.

Beyond the comment moderation, there is a lot of work that can go in to actually responding to comments and engaging with the audience on your blog. The same fundamental truths we outlined for social networks apply on your blog, as well. Be respectful, prompt, honest, and personable. Oh, and don’t feed the trolls.

Consider creating a “reader’s bill of rights” for your blog as your community grows. This document should outline what the standards for your community engagement are, including what the behavioral expectations are for both your community members and for your employees. It can help to not only keep you honest, but instill a sense of fairness and faith in your audience. At the highest level, it can be the “True North” you get to point to in times of conflict.

What success looks like

Successful blogs become known as reputable and enjoyable sources of information, earning the trust and admiration of their readers by providing valuable content on a regular basis. Valuable content, though, can take different forms for different people. Take a look at these success stories for a few examples.

West Seattle Blog: Perhaps one of the most celebrated hyperlocal blogs there is, the West Seattle Blog represents a small, but civically active neighborhood in Seattle. The blog began when a power outage in the neighborhood sparked the need for an instant and neighborhood- specific news source. From there, it has only grown. Now averaging a nearly half a million visits each month, the site has an avid community forum where discussions regularly end up on the front page of the blog, and from there, sometimes even the evening news. The West Seattle Blog is a regular source for reporters in the area and a “first-thing-in-the-morning” read for most residents in West Seattle and beyond.

Moz Blog: Born in 2004 as a venue for Rand Fishkin’s thoughts, struggles, and discoveries as he learned SEO, the Moz Blog has expanded its scope alongside its parent company. The blog is now a hub for thought leaders in the inbound marketing industry, with an average of a million page views each month and many posts garnering more than 100 comments. With its focus on educational content that empowers readers to make effective decisions, the Moz Blog has become a must-read for anyone looking to learn more about inbound marketing.

OkCupid: The dating site struck gold when it turned its lens inward to dig up content for its blog. It pulled back the curtain and showcased the data behind their users’ behavior, which is not something many sites like theirs are too eager to do. It paid serious dividends. Their blog alone has over 38,000 backlinks from nearly 900 linking domains, and while they stopped posting quite a while ago, they stand as a great example of success even today.

Recommended tools

WordPress: One of the most popular blogging platforms in existence, WordPress is a free and open-source tool that can be hosted either on WordPress or on another domain of your choice. Incredibly flexible and easy to use, it is often the default option for both advanced and novice bloggers. There is an entire industry built around the creation and sale of custom themes and skins for WordPress, making the otherwise templated platform more personalized and customizable. WordPress can be used with existing sites as well, making it an frequent choice of businesses and consumers alike.

Blogger: A free blogging platform built by Google. This tool is quite similar to WordPress in theory, but without many of the features and flexibility. Blogs here can either be self-hosted or left on blogger.com. It’s much better-suited for a casual personal blogger than a business or professional blogger.

Google Analytics: Measurement is a must if you’re interested in tracking your progress against business objectives (which you really should be). Google Analytics (GA) is a free analytics tool that provides insights about user behavior, traffic, and social behavior on your website. Your GA account can provide tons of useful data that will help you get to know your customers, what they’re looking for, and how you can better serve them.

Comment Plugins: Most of the blogging platforms come with built-in commenting features, but for one reason or another people may choose to go with a different tool (often because of features, sharing, or concerns about spam). Some of the most popular are Disqus, Facebook, and IntenseDebate.

Google Alerts: Another free Google tool, this one helps you keep an eye on your online reputation across the web. You can freely program the tool to send you alerts via email whenever it finds a mention of a keyword or keyword string you specify. You can set these up for yourself, your business, and even your competitors. When you’ve put some muscle behind a particular piece of content, it’s also a good idea to set up a Google Alert for the title of that post. This will help you identify extensions of the conversation that you will want to get involved in. This is also a useful tool in protecting your content, as it can help you identify when your work has been stolen or scraped.

Fresh Web Explorer Alerts: This is one of our favorite Moz tools. With a subscription to Moz Analytics, you now have access to set up e-mailed alerts for new mentions of custom queries. We like to think of it as Google Alerts, only better.

Linkstant: By keeping an eye on when people are linking to your blog, you can follow the conversation. People will often read a blog and then start a conversation on their own site, usually linking back to the original spark—your blog. By participating in the conversation on the new site, you can usually generate a circular flow of traffic and engagement driving your readership, traffic, and links. This tool will alert you via email every time someone has linked back to your site, helping you uncover these opportunities.

This entry was posted in Social Media and tagged Blogging, Google+, Shringesh, Wordpress.

Posted on August 28, 2014 Updated on August 28, 2014

Through beautiful images and easy-to-use “pinning,” this website has taken the online community by storm. Following its beta launch in 2010, Pinterest provided a way for users to simply share and create image collections for hobbies, style, businesses, and more. Whether you’re a business owner connecting with your users through images or simply trying to redecorate your home in DIY-fashion, Pinterest has something for just about everyone.

Key stats and demographics

Pinterest has 20 million monthly active users (70 million registered users)

More than 50 million unique visitors per month

5 million “article pins” per day

Women are five times as likely as men to use Pinterest

Pinterest users in the US spend about an hour on the site each month

Shoppers spend more on their purchases when referred from Pinterest—roughly twice as much as referrals from Facebook and Twitter.

Pinterest drives more referral traffic than Twitter, LinkedIn, and Reddit combined.

How are people using Pinterest?

Image-based sharing is becoming increasingly important for brands and consumers alike. The effectiveness of imagery has led sites like Pinterest and Instagram to quickly become the new staples in daily digital life. In a world where people don’t necessarily want to spend a lot of time reading, rich media helps users share, communicate, and consume stories quickly and easily in meaningful ways.

Strategies and tactics for success

Engagement: The Pinterest community is growing quickly and can be very engaged. This is a great opportunity for your consumers to interact with you, so be sure to pay attention to your comments for opportunities to have conversations. They may be asking questions or just offering words of praise or concern. Using a tool like PinAlerts or Pinterest’s analytics to monitor where and how your content is shared can help you catch opportunities that don’t come directly to you.

Discoverability: Set your site up to be shared socially on Pinterest. Make sure the social sharing buttons on your content pages are easy to find and use. Directing people’s attention to your Pinterest page will also help them find your content and enable sharing in new ways. Also,don’t forget to implement appropriate tracking so you know how well these are working!

Content Strategy:

Highlight customers: Highlight customers using your product, content they’ve created, or even their stories. It will appeal to their natural desire to be acknowledged and included. This also helps them feel like they’ve added value back to their community and instills a sense of ownership.

Behind the scenes: Give your audience a look behind the curtain by showcasing behind-the- scenes pictures. This increases the feeling of getting special limited content, and thereby, their affinity for your brand.

Community relations: If your business is involved in community or charity activities, share that with your audience. You may feel like this comes off as bragging, but it can be done in a humble and selfless manner. Your customers follow you because they’re invested in you and what you’re doing, and your efforts outside the office are an extension of that relationship. You might even get them involved!

Know your audience: Know everything you can about your audience, and give them what they want to see. Humor works particularly well on video, for example, and beautiful imagery of any kind tends to work incredibly well on Pinterest. You might even try to get to know people by spending time on the platform in your personal profiles. You can use that to get to know what works there and how people share and communicate.

Content Strategy:

What success looks like

Sony Electronics: There are so many things right with what Sony is doing on Pinterest. From brand new products to a collection of vintage products and all the way to highlighting sale products, they’re utilizing a mixture of content for their brand fans. Sony use their ads as interesting points of content as well, but also don’t shy away from some of the more off-topic boards. They’ve got the content nailed down.

Beautiful Objects: The social media-savvy brand has extended its reach to Pinterest. One of their boards is only slightly related to coffee and shows how Pinterest doesn’t have to be just about your product images. Go off topic a little, but stay relevant.

Nordstrom: From naming their social team members on the page to regularly posting on boards as broad-ranging as “Totally Throwback,” “Nautical Vibes,” and “Beach Wedding Ideas,” this is one department store that knows how to pins. And, with a following of more than 4.4 million people, their strategy clearly works. Nordstrom gets bonus points for bringing their social integration full-circle, adding “Top Pinned Items” displays in its stores.

Etiquette tips and guidelines

Give credit: Sharing other people’s content is at the heart of Pinterest, so giving proper credit is of the utmost importance. Ideally, everything is pinned from its original source, even if that means digging a bit to find it. You want to provide the best user experience possible, and if you pin content directly from a Google Image SERP, for example, users would be linked back to that SERP instead of the page where the image originated.

Change captions: Repinning isn’t like retweeting on Twitter. You’ll want to be sure to update the caption on a repinned pin to make it your own. It should represent you and your brand, and should show relevance to your community. Don’t forget to use target keywords that your audience searches for so they can easily find your pins.

Don’t flood: Pinning throughout the day is going to be a brand’s best bet, and there are tools to help you schedule pins in advance. If you pin all of your content at once, you’ll flood your followers’ streams, and it could annoy them enough to unfollow your brand.

Organize: Keep your boards organized, as people will follow them for specific content. A user who subscribes to a “recipes” board doesn’t want to see images of fancy cars or interesting furniture. If you want to share new types of content, create new boards.

Group boards: Group boards allow more than one user to pin to a board. You can collaborate with partner companies, your coworkers, and anyone else with whom you’d like to collaborate on unique and interesting content. You’ll definitely want to have a strategy and purpose behind a shared board.

Secret boards: This is probably not a feature you’ll use for your brand, but you can create boards that are shared with a limited group of people and invite them to pin on them as well.

Verify your site: In order to have a verified account and have Pinterest Analytics for your site, you’ll need to verify your site. Pinterest’s Analytics will show you statistics on how many pins have been pinned from your site, what sort of traffic Pinterest drives to your site, and more.

Recommended tools

Pinterest’s Blog: They highlight a variety of users and brands and showcase interesting news. Keep an eye on this blog to stay on top of any changes and also as a source of inspiration from users doing interesting things.

Postris: Helps you find the most popular boards, pins, and people on Pinterest.

Viraltag: A bulk scheduler for Pinterest helps you avoid overwhelming your audience and upload several pins at a time. Viraltag also feature analytics and allows you to upload to multiple Pinterest accounts.

Curalate: This tool helps you measure board and pin engagement, generate traffic, find advocates, and more, depending on the pricing package. It also helps with Instagram.

PinAlerts: Basically Google Alerts for your website’s content on Pinterest, among several other measurement features.

Rich Pins: Pinterest has made it possible for your products to show up as more than just photos. By prepping your site with the right meta tags, you can add rich content like prices and reviews to other people’s pins of your content.

This entry was posted in Social Media and tagged Pinterest, Shringesh, Sony Electronics, Starbucks.

YouTube

Posted on August 27, 2014 Updated on August 28, 2014

After its humble beginnings in 2005, YouTube has become more than just a place to watch cat videos. Eight years later, YouTube has morphed into the world’s second-largest search engine, a driver of online culture, and a springboard for Internet fame. There’s still plenty of cat videos to go around, but YouTube has its sights on bigger, better ideas.

Key stats and demographics

1. YouTube sees over one billion unique visits each month

2. Over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month

3. 100 hours of video are uploaded every minute

4. Mobile devices account for more than 1 billion views each day

5. According to Nielsen, YouTube reaches more US adults ages 18-34 than any cable network

6. Thousands of YouTube channels are making six figures annually

How the network is being used by consumers

In a word, sharing. Content is being uploaded and shared through YouTube at record rates. Users can follow channels (which have gotten more sophisticated in their design and functionality over the years), upload their own content, comment on and discuss videos, and follow other users’ content. With the ability to link directly to or embed videos, YouTube has become a primary source of video entertainment for users all over the web. Its ability to monetize through ads—both for itself and its users—adds a layer of financial sustainability.

Strategies and tactics for success

Engagement: The comments on YouTube are famous for being a bit of a wasteland. Many of them are meaningless and often from trolls. Many brands shut off their comments for good reason. You may opt to leave comments on, just to see what type of engagement you get, and that is okay too. What is not recommended, though, is to leave them on and ignore them; either tend to the garden or get rid of it altogether. And you can see powerful results by choosing to engage with your audience.

In order to improve commenting on YouTube, YouTube comments are now directly tied to G+ accounts. As a business, you’ll need to link your G+ brand page and your brand’s YouTube account. First, you need to make your YouTube account an administrator on your G+ page. Then make sure you’re logged into your YouTube account and then follow YouTube’s connect instructions. After everything’s connected, alerts for new comments on your YouTube videos will appear in your G+ notifications, and your YouTube videos will show up in a tab on your G+ brand page

Content Strategy:

Help content and other how-tos: For some products, tutorials and how-tos are going to be incredibly valuable. Help your audience learn how to better use your product, including ideas about how to use your product in novel ways. Help them learn how to do things that may not be directly related to your product, but are highly relevant to their interests.

For example, a nail polish brand may occasionally highlight how-tos for special-event hair. This is incredibly relevant to their audience, but not directly related to their product. This is a tactic we’ve mentioned before: think horizontally.

Exclusive content: This can take the form of early access to new products, special channel- specific promotional deals, or even insider company news. Giving these limited audiences exclusive access to different types of content will make them feel honored and “in-the-know.” Also, creating channel-specific content will give each individual a reason to follow you on more than one channel, increasing the depth of their relationship.

Incentivize participation: Have your community create content and share it on your behalf across their networks. You then can curate based on hashtag or on a central repository (e.g. a blog post holding YouTube content), or find some other way to help draw attention to and connect the user stories. This activity can drive awareness of your presence and help engage the audience while cutting down on the amount of work required of you.

Measurement: Just like your other marketing efforts, it is imperative that you know what success looks like. Tailor your efforts (content, engagement, etc.) toward initiatives that help you move the needle and prove your success by measuring progress against your identified goals.

What success looks like

Old Spice: You almost can’t have a conversation about YouTube marketing campaigns without talking about what Old Spice did in 2010. They changed the game with their personalized response campaign, and its results proved it worked. The secret sauce for them was taking something that worked and resonated with their audience and made it more engaging and interactive. More recently, REI used the channel in a similarly responsive and agile way during a holiday effort.

Zillow: With a broad range of videos uploaded (everything from real estate industry news to an adorable video of a four-year-old teaching you how to use the iPhone app) and a separate presence to teach agents and brokers how to market houses using Zillow’s tools, this online real estate firm is a great example of how to think outside the box when it comes to YouTube.

Etiquette tips and guidelines

Engage responsibly: If you have comments enabled on your videos, make sure you moderate them and stay engaged, as YouTube is more prone than other platforms to generate spammy comments. You’ll want to make sure your channel continues to provide value. If you happen to find yourself in the presence of trolls (and the sun isn’t out to turn them to stone), remember to keep your cool; you act on behalf of your brand in a public forum.

Comment wisely: Whether you have comments enabled on your videos or not, there are likely going to be times when you’ll need (or want) to comment on other threads and videos. The standard advice applies there, as well: don’t yell at people, check your spelling and grammar, use your brand voice, and definitely don’t leave spammy comments yourself.

Advertise safely: This isn’t a decision to take lightly. For high volume channels, it can be revenue-producing, but that needs to be weighed against the brand impact and the customers’ experience with your content.

Favoriting and subscribing: If you favorite a video, it also shows up on your profile page as a video you favorited, sharing it with your friends and subscribers. Subscribing to someone’s channel means that you’ll see all of their latest uploads and favorites in the feed on your page. This the equivalent of following someone on Twitter.

Uploading videos: Luckily, YouTube takes about every video format under the sun. Uploading the video is the easy part, filling out the information about the video is the real work. You want to make sure that your description is SEO- and people-optimized, that your title and keywords are on target, that your videos are properly categorized, and (if possible) that you provide a transcript of each video. Every bit of relevant information you can add to your YouTube upload gives you more opportunity for people to find your video and makes it accessible for all types of users and search bots.

Recommended tools

YouTube TestTube: This works much like Gmail Labs. For those of you looking to stay up- to-date on potential, new YouTube features (or even just get access to some neat elements), you’ll want to occasionally check TestTube and see what they have to offer.

YouTube Advertisers: This is a central hub where you can get an idea of what other brands are doing for inspiration, and it’s also a portal with a great deal of content about ad solutions.

YouTube Analytics: This offers the equivalent of Facebook Insights for your videos. You’ll find numbers on engagement, discovery, and demographics.

YouTube Charts: A list of videos sorted based on most views, popularity, comments or other criteria. Looking for content ideas? This is a great spot.

This entry was posted in Social Media and tagged Measurment, Old Spice, Shringesh, YouTube.

Posted on August 27, 2014 Updated on August 28, 2014

The world’s largest professional social network connects colleagues with each other and businesses with current and potential employees, all while enabling community development and content sharing. LinkedIn’s potential lies in its power to build authority, establish thought leadership, and cultivate a robust network. Join us for a peek behind the curtain to see if LinkedIn is a match for your business.

How are people using LinkedIn?

If you took your water cooler, networking event, business card holder, and Rolodex, smooshed them together, and put that concoction up on a domain, you would approximate LinkedIn.

People build out their profiles to showcase their professional background and resumes. They are able to connect with individuals they know or have worked with, leave each other recommendations, and find new connections. LinkedIn can also be a great place to look for and find a job, as it takes the utility of job boards and adds in the human connections that are so invaluable in finding the right position.

For companies, especially recruiters, that is just the beginning. Business professionals have created their profiles and gotten recommendations from co-workers, making it a solid fit for brands looking to recruit new talent. LinkedIn allows hiring managers to search and filter candidates based on multiple factors, and users can join groups based on professional interests.

Beyond recruiting efforts, LinkedIn is a great place for a variety of helpful social activities to boost your business.

Business development:

LinkedIn is a fantastic platform for generating B2B leads, with nearly three times the conversion rate of Facebook or Twitter. Your mileage may vary, but this certainly signals the platform is one that comes with great opportunity. Some tips include:

1. Keep your company page up-to-date

2. Use the products and services spotlight

3. Solicit recommendations for your products

Establishing thought leadership:

Establishing yourself and your brand as an authority in your area of focus will help build authority and trust among your customers, both current and prospective. LinkedIn’s feature set can help brands stay up-to-date on users’ professional networks, in addition to establishing a business presence and sharing company news.

Building customer advocates:

Be careful not to overdo self-promotion. Advocacy and word-of-mouth magic happen through positive engagement. When brands engage customers and build strong relationships based on respect and trust, customers will “like” the brand and perhaps even love it. LinkedIn makes it easy to be both personal and specific. You know a lot about the person you’re interacting with, so use that information.

LinkedIn drives business value because it is based on a user’s professional interests. This makes it an obvious and natural fit for sharing brand-based updates, news, and info; as well as driving traffic to company-focused websites.

Strategies and tactics for success

Personal use

Complete your personal profile thoroughly and honestly.

Find your connections and reach out. Every once in a while, pick someone you haven’t talked to recently and send them a note— without needing anything—just to say hi or share something interesting that you think they’ll enjoy.

Link to your profile from your blog, Facebook, and/or Twitter accounts to help people find your profile. (In fact, if the content being shared is relevant, link back to those pages from your LinkedIn profile. Keep in mind, though, that those links might draw hiring managers to those associated pages.)

Participate in Groups. Your personal authority and trust can be boosted, leading to new opportunities, leads, and connections. Note that this functionality is currently only available to individuals.

As LinkedIn continues to become a place for people to share quality content, we will see more engagement around that content. Be a part of that movement: Share your own content and share high-quality content from others.

Business use

Complete your company page and ensure it is always up-to-date. If you change your structure or have company news to share, be sure you’re updating your company page on LinkedIn; this will update in your followers’ newsfeeds.

Make updating your LinkedIn page part of the compliance process when fundamental updates occur at your company, as LinkedIn is often a source of truth for individuals doing research.

Make sure to respond to your posts, reviews, and questions. If a user leaves a product review, thank them. If they have a complaint, address it. Answer questions and offer advice and assistance.

LinkedIn can be an amazing source of competitive intelligence for your business. Follow your competitors’ pages and watch for their news, updates, and employee changes. Certain exits and job openings can provide insight into strategic direction.

What success looks like

Companies that have found ways to grow professional communities have seen the most success on LinkedIn. This task requires more than just posting valuable content; the superstars of LinkedIn have found ways to facilitate meaningful interaction within their networks. Here are a few that stand out.

Teach for America: The Teach for America team clearly recognizes that LinkedIn is a valuable and high-potential platform for their recruiting efforts. They have a very well-developed page taking advantage of all of the features available. This creates a deep experience that adds to the authority they’re building here. They not only share openings they’re trying to fill, but also work to start conversations through the content they share. Additionally, they have worked to build and showcase testimonials on their company page, adding a level of trust to their presence.

The Bridgespan Group’s LinkedIn Groups: Bridgespan builds relationships with and supports non-profit organizations, and when it comes to community-based engagement, it has taken a bit of a non-traditional approach. Where many companies would attempt to build out and maintain their own on-domain forums, they’ve chosen to curate their community on LinkedIn with nine separate, functionally different LinkedIn Groups. They have broken up the Groups in ways that are meaningful for the community members, thus ensuring valuable conversations.

SAP: Companies can also have their own Groups centered on their product, offerings and related topics. This can be a great opportunity to host discussions, much like one would host a networking event. The SAP Group on LinkedIn allows the company to post targeted jobs and recruit new employees, with data and demo information about the group helping the recruiters narrow their searches.

Etiquette tips and guidelines

Connecting with professionals on social media involves a mindful and even graceful back-and forth; it’s all too easy to come across as insincere or even spammy. The best relationships are cultivated through a natural and careful progression of communication. Pay attention to social cues, and you can avoid the many things that might result in a complete social train wreck.

A business card is not an invitation to be annoying: We’ve all likely seen this happen: the business- card crop duster. The high-speed networker at an event circling the room like a Roomba looking to collect and distribute as many business cards as they possibly can. LinkedIn requests are immediately sent, likely without a personalized email, and invites are sent for a bunch of groups, events, or even to download their eBook. Please don’t be that person. 🙂

Cold mail: You might find someone on LinkedIn with whom you’d like to get in touch. If you do, use a personalized approach and give context to the email you send. Let them know who you are and why you would like to connect. (Your “why” should never be because you have something to sell.)

@responding: While LinkedIn has no smart user alerts, using the @name when responding to comments on your Page or in Groups is a good practice to keep conversation flow coherent and directed. However, LinkedIn did recently start doing an activity alert; instead of just emails, it now tells people when conversations that they’ve been part of are updated.

Fix broken windows: You want to make sure to clean any spam from your LinkedIn Groups. Members—especially those who need new jobs or other types of promotion—sometimes have a problem telling spam and low-quality postings from what you need to engage and grow your community. Be gentle and empathic, but make sure to have rules for your group which you can cite when moderating comments.

Be genuine: In every interaction you have on LinkedIn, be yourself as much as you possibly can. When connecting with someone else, avoid sending the standard “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.” Not only is it less likely to be accepted, you may even get marked as spam, resulting in your inability to send future connection requests. Personalized interactions make the other people feel like you actually value and care about them and take interest.

Recommendations: LinkedIn recommendations can be an incredibly powerful thing, but should only ever be solicited from people you know well and who know your work. The recommendation itself will be much better for it. If you request one, feel free to tell the person you’re approaching about a specific goal you may have for the recommendation. You don’t want to do this in a pushy way, but you may get a more useful recommendation, and it can actually make their life easier as well since they’ll have a predetermined area of focus.

Sharing content: Not all your content needs to be shared on LinkedIn, as what you share here can very easily reflect on your professional reputation or make you look selfabsorbed. Avoid tools that automatically transfer posts from other platforms. Above all, be conscious and aware of what you’re sharing, and try not to share too much—since connections are so important, LinkedIn is one place where you really don’t want to be hidden from people’s feeds.

Discussions: There are ways to view LinkedIn Group activity in “Discussions” under “Choose Your View: Latest Discussions” and “What’s Happening.” “What’s Happening” shows the discussions with the most recent activity, so you can keep tabs on current conversations. “Latest Discussions” shows the most recently posted discussions.

Recommended tools

Building a professional community can be a very different experience from business to business, so finding the right features and functionality that work for you is an essential step to success. Here are some of the more useful tools to help you customize your LinkedIn experience.

LinkedIn for Outlook: If you use Outlook, this tool brings your professional network right into your mailbox. It also scans your Outlook contacts and finds new connections for you on LinkedIn. Having this information in your inbox can help you better keep track and engage with your contacts.

TrueSocialMetrics: For the analysis enthusiasts, TrueSocialMetrics gives you a huge amount of data about applause and engagement on your LinkedIn page.

Buffer: This app, which raced to its millionth user in less than three years, will help you schedule posts and give basic click/reach analytics for all posts on your company page, in your groups, and in any of your individual profiles.

LinkedIn Maps: Brought to you by LinkedIn Labs, this nifty tool lets you log-in with your LinkedIn credentials and visualize your network over a map.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO64unwQNeY

This entry was posted in Social Media and tagged Analytics, linkedin, Measurment, Shringesh.

Google+

Posted on August 26, 2014 Updated on August 28, 2014

If you’re like most of the Internet, you’ve probably delayed your investment in Google+ in hopes of a sign that it’s time to make a move. Consider this your sign.

Google’s social endeavor, Google+, became the new kid on the playground in 2011. It initially adopted many features from Facebook and Twitter, mixing in its own unique functionality like Circles and Hangouts. The platform is a little different from other social networks, in that it acts as a social layer across many of Google’s own properties—including the display ad network—thus connecting millions of sites. With nearly 67% of US search engine volume, Google is still the biggest player in the search engine game. And, with Google+ posts passing link equity to other pages, building a presence here is a better idea than ever.

So how many people actually use Google+? The latest numbers from Google, posted in October of 2013, show that there are about 300 million active monthly users who upload 1.5 billion photos every week.

While exact numbers aren’t available, reports commonly estimate the site’s users as about 70% male and 30% female. CircleCount reports the US as the biggest audience, followed by India and Brazil. Perhaps most interestingly, by a large majority, those reporting a job role are students. The large majority of the remaining top are in either technology (developers, engineers, designers) or photography. The secret here is really about determining if your audience is there, and at this point, it’s a safe bet it is.

How are people using Google+?

Google hasn’t released much in the way of stats and information about how people are using the network aside from raw usage data. G+ is anecdotally believed to be largely male and tech-driven, which much of the available data seems to support. Early adopters are still the largest and most active groups on G+.

Much of how users actually engage on the network is the same as on Twitter and Facebook. However, because circles force categorization of people, Google+ is far more easily customizable and allows a greater level of flexibility and dialed privacy. This would, in theory, allow users to enjoy the network with more people in more relevant ways. For example, you could share content specific to your professional network with people in that circle, while sharing the pictures of your kids to a more private circle, all from the same platform. Another feature that seems to be growing in popularity with users, marketers and brands alike is the Google+ Hangout. Hangouts can be public or invite-only and allow users to connect with one another with voice and video without needing to download any software. Google has also added communities, which appear to mirror Facebook’s groups, giving additional functionality and interaction opportunity to the site.

Strategies and tactics for success

Finding success on Google+ will—at least for now—be largely dependent on your audience and whether or not they have made the jump to this network. If they haven’t, you’ll need to either find a way to relevantly target the users that are there with your content in hopes of leveraging the benefits to your advantage, or you’ll keep an eye on the network and test the waters here and there, waiting until your audience arrives to dive in.

The increasing functionality of the network is exciting. With the addition of Communities, it is easy to see potential from a conversation and engagement perspective. As an added bonus, Google made it so your community can be tied to your brand page. Awesome.

Now the ability to add events through interactive posts to a brand page gives even more functionality. You can invite users to an event and notify them directly; when they RSVP, it will automatically be added to their calendar. Consider the impact here to both your online events and even those held at brick-and-mortar locations. Extending your offline events to your online and shareable audience could help net exponential reach (and ultimately attendance)!

Regardless of the platform, there are some universal truths to social media marketing for businesses that will hold true on Google+ as well. It’s important to spend time clearly identifying the objectives you are trying to meet. Having these goals laid out will give you a way to measure your success, making the rest of your effort far easier.

Promote Google+ pages in other platforms:

Leverage your other channels (social and otherwise) to increase visibility to your burgeoning page. This increased visibility will help build the community there while also presenting an integrated front.

Implement authorship and publisher:

Implement authorship and publisher: Implement publisher status for your brand and site and help your blog authors with authorship. This will help establish authority and will add a personal touch to content as Google SERPs will show author faces in results. Over time, this also allows the authors increased visibility. Use this to your advantageand let them build their voice and audience. All of these factors will increase the visibility and authority of your presence. Depending on the nuances of your content’s authorship, you’ll want to make sure your content’s properly marked up.

Image sharing:

The G+ community responds well to imagery, particularly professional photography. Social is a channel that rewards authenticity, though, so mix some more “homegrown” media in with the highly-polished brand imagery.

Format posts:

Use the * and _ and other operators in conjunction with paragraph spacing and post layout to call attention to your content and make it more professional and appealing to your audience. And don’t forget to tag relevant people using “+” and their name.

Find and befriend tastemakers:
It is easy to find key influencers on G+. It’s still a smallish community where it may be easier to get the attention of and build relationships with influencers in your space. Tread lightly though; don’t spam and always be respectful.

What success looks like

Though many companies initially delayed their efforts on Google+, there are many that stand out as shining examples, and they have the +1s to prove it. Here are a few of our favorites:

MATLAB: A company that helps coding professionals better use their respective languages, MATLAB continuously provides its community with educational tools. They share content from their six blogs and numerous webinar series, offering an official certification program and general advocacy to grow the coding profession. Additionally, they reach out to audiences speaking both English and Japanese.

RedBull: The varied content that RedBull shares on Google+ is a great example of how to think horizontally about your brand and what it means to engage with consumers. In every post, the brand appeals to interests that exemplify what it means to be a part of the RedBull community and a RedBull drinker. You will not see posts about the product itself, its attributes, or even direct value propositions. What you will find is exciting images of extreme sports stars, video content about risk-taking, and even engaging music videos.

Asos: Asos does a great job of highlighting highly- engaging and interesting content on its page. The best part? They are present and accounted for in the comments. While many comments on Google+ can be spammy and add little value, the brand clearly monitors the page and reads through the replies to help grow their community. This gives the user a reason to actually reach out and converse with the brand and follow them.

King Arthur Flour: It’s the little flour company that could. A once small and regional flour company has been able to blossom on the web. One of the tactics they’re using and seeing impressive success with is engaging on Google+. Sharing lots of recipes and using delicious pictures gets a lot of people talking. You’ll notice that they put a lot of effort behind their yummy content!

Etiquette tips and guidelines

Inexperience doesn’t have to be a drawback when you’re building your circles. If you keep your conduct classy, you’ll have no trouble earning the respect of your audience. These tips will get you started.

Add value: Create good stuff. While trite, it is true. Giving people something to get excited about and a reason to want to follow you is the best way to grow your community. Google+ allows you to target who gets to see your content if you wish, so use that tool to your advantage and get creative. Can you create a special circle just for your top influencers and advocates? You betcha! The sky’s the limit!

Engage: If you’re putting out quality content and giving people a reason and opportunity to engage with you, you must be there to back-up that conversation. Be there to get involved, address questions, and add to the conversation.

Respond: If a follower takes the time out of their day to ask a question, come to you for help, or even just share something with your brand, it is simply the right thing to do to engage and respond to them. Don’t ever leave them hanging. The only thing worse than not being present in a conversation is being around and ignoring half of it.

Frequency and scheduling: As with other platforms, timing is important with your posts on Google+. It’s a little easier here because of the built-in filtering that circles offer, but like other networks, you’ll need to figure out the optimal times and frequency for posting to your Google+ page. Currently, there is no way to pre-scheduled posts in Google+, except through a Chrome extension called Do Share or third-party tools such as Sprout Social or Buffer. Do beware, though, that not all third-party tools allow for formatting.

Don’t spam: Google+ is no different with regard to spam. There are even unique ways to bother people on Google+. For example, when “events” were introduced, there were waves of complaints coming from users who had felt as though they had been spammed by those trying out the feature. Users can share a post directly with groups of people sending them specific notifications of that post, or even via email, as opposed to simply showing up in their feed, a feature susceptible to spam. The “communities” feature attracts shameless spammers, too. These features must be used very thoughtfully to avoid annoying your audience. As with all social networks, Google+ will surely adapt to prevent some of these issues over time. In the meantime, avoid exploiting them for the sake of reach. You will be sacrificing authority and the respect of your community.

+Name: If you want to call out another Google+ page or person, you can directly link to their Google+ page (which notifies them that you’re talking about them) by putting a + and then typing their name. (Google+ will help you with a drop-down.) This is similar to the @ symbol in Twitter, and helps make whom you’re addressing clear to everyone. Definitely try to include author names when you post blogs, so they can engage with commenters too.

Notifications: As a page manager, you’ll see the infamous Google+ notification bell on the righthand side of your screen. This will show you all of mentions of your brand on Google+, shared posts, new circlers, or community invites. To keep track of which ones you’ve already paid attention to and engaged with, you can x them out on by hovering on the right side of the individual notification box.

Recommended tools

CircleCount: If you’re curious how the Google+ demographics align with that of your clients or brand, this site can help. By analyzing millions of profiles, they look at top influencers and show your posts aggregated in a quick snapshot of how they’re doing. Having already analyzed over 23 million profiles, they are working to become the number-one data source for Google+.

Google’s Official Policy Guidelines: As with any social platform, you should be familiar with Google’s intentions behind the Google+ platform, including the company’s own explanation of how to use it. The policy guidelines from Google highlight actionable restrictions and also include features of the site, resources for brand to get support, and information around custom URLs.

Google+ Ripples: From a marketer’s perspective, this is probably one of the most exciting tools available to us as a part of Google+. Ripples shows you just how your content is shared in an easy-to-navigate manner. If you want to see who your influencers are and how they’re impacting the effectiveness of your content efforts, using this tool will put a giant smile on your face.

Simply Measured: The Swiss Army knife of social analytics tools also has measurement for Google+, along with most of the other major players in social media.

This entry was posted in Social Media and tagged Google+, Measurement, Shringesh.

Twitter

Posted on August 26, 2014 Updated on August 28, 2014

Founded in 2006, Twitter’s 140-character bite-size updates have transformed the world’s access to real-time information. Its simple interface allows for sharing anything from breaking news to sports, to great content, to worldwide politics. In a time when we’re oversaturated with media, Twitter also allows us to access what we need to know. Much of the reporting from the Arab Spring uprisings was done directly through Twitter. Through all of this, brands are joining the network not only to promote their messages, but also to quickly and succinctly address the needs of their customers.

How are people using Twitter?

Twitter has become a tool for everything from facilitating the collapse of governments to showing off your newborn. Through Twitter, athletes have added sideline commentary and Hollywood has dialed up the drama. Consumers use the service to share and find content. For many, Twitter has replaced their RSS subscriptions and traditional news media.

Due to its mostly public nature, Twitter’s most powerful use is connecting people. The platform allows complete strangers to come together over common interests and ideas and to participate in conversations that range from the relatively mundane to the incredibly important.

Some users may choose to essentially live-tweet their day, while others limit their contributions primarily to content sharing. Your goal is to identify what types of users you’ll be looking for and engaging with and gain an understanding of how and why they’re using the tool. By understanding their motivations behind using the site, you’ll be better able to target your efforts and content in meaningful ways.

Strategies and tactics for success

Your success on Twitter depends on your specific goals, of course, but there are some universally applicable strategies that can start you off on the right track. By continually keeping these tactics in mind, you can speed your progress toward your own goals.

Branding and voice: Being aware of who you are and who you aren’t is critical on Twitter. You only have 140 characters to communicate your thoughts, so every word matters. Your company’s brand and voice seeps into every interaction, passive or active, that you have here. As you grow, you will naturally get a good sense of whom the idealized brand representative should be. How would they talk? How would they respond to conflict? How would they joke around? Questions like this may initially seem silly, but it’s better to answer them ahead of time than to create answers based on your mood or the amount of sleep or coffee you’ve had in a given moment. Consistency of voice is important, as people like to know what to expect in their interactions with you. Over time, this consistency will help you build trust and confidence with your audience.

Also, ensuring your account name and profile are filled out according to your brand guidelines is critical. Think of these fields as your “first impression.” Many people will visit a Twitter profile only once to decide whether or not they want to follow you. Your bio should be on-point, and your handle branded and appropriate. Your location should accurately reflect where you are. Your follower count may come into play here as well. Controlling your follower:following ratio can help you further establish credibility, showing that you care enough to follow your community members back.

Responsiveness: Due to the condensed format and quick pace of Twitter, it’s essential to respond to your community as swiftly as possible. The platform makes it easy for people to find your brand, and you’re sure to get many customer service requests that need your immediate attention. If you ignore a critical tweet for too long, you may find that one person’s voice is soon amplified by their followers. Also, don’t just respond to emergencies or questions—make sure you also say hello and respond to kudos given to your brand. As you grow, you’ll have to figure out how scale, but too much tweeting is a great problem to have.

Measurement: The beauty of Twitter is that data is plentiful; the tricky part is setting up those measurement frameworks and dashboards so that they align as closely as possible with your business objectives and goals. Data is what really influences your bottom line in social; it helps you tell your own story and find both opportunities and successes.

What success looks like

Developing hordes of followers is no small feat and, providing enough value to keep them engaged can be tricky. Companies consistently earning the attention of the Twitterverse are worth keeping an eye on; here are a few particularly impressive examples:

Taco Bell

The fast-food chain is quickly gaining a reputation for their spicy snark (no pun intended). Consistently funny, engaging, and sometimes a little irreverent, Taco Bell is completely on-brand, and it works quite well for them. From a content development perspective, give them a follow and take a look at how they reach out and engage with their audience.

Whole Foods Market

Whole Foods, an organic grocery store chain, uses Twitter to really reach out and engage their consumers around relevant content and interests. Not just about their in-store experiences, but also about their experience with food in general. Take a look at their weekly Twitter chat, using the tag #WFMdish, where the topic varies weekly, but centers on healthy foods and cooking. This is a great example of expanding your thinking about content and engagement horizontally, not just vertically.

Charity: Water

A wildly popular non-profit movement, Charity: Water largely gained traction on Twitter. In three years, they raised over $15 million dollars to bring clean water to people around the world. Charity: Water relies heavily on engaging content to get their message out. This includes video, impactful images, and consistent branding on Twitter backgrounds and profile images. By artfully telling their story and building connections between the audience and its mission, they created true momentum and support.

Etiquette tips and guidelines

Like any social interaction, Twitter has its own set of best-practices to follow in order to be successful. Here are a few tips to get you started:

Don’t spam: This should be a rule across all of your marketing efforts, but it bears repeating here. There are many new accounts popping up with marketers behind them having the best intentions, but no matter how you slice it, spam is spam. Jumping in on irrelevant hashtags to market your product is unhelpful. Likewise, relentlessly mentioning every person in your feed to draw their attention to a piece of content or offer is typically received as annoying. Be sure to keep your tweets relevant, helpful to followers, and spam- free.

Direct messages: DMs are great when you need private information, like a shipping address. Traditionally, you can only DM people who follow you and vice versa. If you have a verified account through Twitter, you can select a special setting to allow anyone to DM you. However, you cannot respond via DM unless the person DM’ing you follows you.

Never send automated DMs as it’s considered spam. Do not, under any circumstance, send auto-DMs to your followers. Auto-messages aren’t engaging, and you aren’t reaching out personally for relationship building. If you’d like to reach out to every single person that decides to follow you, do so in a personalized and unique way.

@ replies: When you start a tweet with an @username, only people who are following both you and @username will see your tweet. If you want more people to see it, just put a period or other marker in front of the username. Or you can always just rephrase your sentence.

Hashtags: By using #hashtags, you’re exposing yourself to a wider audience. Many people follow conversations using various hashtags, but possibly won’t be following you. Hashtags are meant as a shortcut to explain what your tweet contains or to show you’re part of a conversation or event. If your brand’s jumping into a hashtag, you should make sure that you’re contributing value to the conversation instead of just promoting your business.

Retweet (RT): There are two ways to RT, manually or through Twitter’s native RT function. RT’s a great way to boost your community’s members content, make them feel good, and say “you’re awesome!” If there’s a link you want to track or a grammar/spelling issues you want to fix before RT’ing, you can edit the tweet and post it as “RT @username: Puppies are cute!”

Scheduling updates: A variety of tools help people schedule out tweets. Scheduling updates is the community manager’s very best friend as you are not always online or otherwise available to update Twitter when you need to. You create the tweet, set the time and date, select the account you want to send it from, and schedule. Scheduling allows you to publish content when your community’s most active.

Make sure to watch your scheduled posts. Scheduling posts can be an incredibly useful tool that allows you to scale your energy. However, pre-scheduled tweets can be detrimental in times of crises, e.g. global disasters, national tragedies, etc. It’s important to quickly turn any scheduled posts off even if these crises are not directly related to your brand; global events can erupt, creating an inhospitable environment for off-topic content. Worse yet, your posts may unintentionally become the source of controversy during a crisis. For example, LiveNation went horribly wrong with Twitter, during a horrific accident at a RadioHead concert, which they were liable for. Be sure to keep an eye on your scheduled posts if you choose to do so.

Shortening links: Twitter now auto-shortens your links, but you should consider using a separate shortening service with built-in analytics, as it will allow you to track clicks of your content that don’t point back to your own web properties. Bit.ly, Buffer, and HootSuite are all good options. Your may even consider buy a customized shortened domain.

Twitter lists: Making lists of users can help your targeting efforts when you’re trying to reach industry influencers or join in conversations relative to your niche. If you’re making a public list, remember to be empathetic to people who aren’t on it; it’s best to stay away from lists that qualify or rate people or their services. Making the lists private avoids this issue.

Use Twitter handles: If you’re talking about someone who’s on Twitter, use their @username. It’s just polite, and your community wants to know when you’re talking about them, as it’s an easy ego boost. This also encourages the people mentioned to share what you’ve posted or further engage with your community.

Recommended tools

Followerwonk:

Admittedly, we’re a little biased about our own tool. Followerwonk takes a data-driven approach to measuring an account’s audience, but bias aside, we think you’ll love it too. This tool helps you identify demographics, growth, interests, what time your followers are most active, and even tells you what audience members you share with competitors. Followerwonk helps you explore the social graph and really understand who Twitter users are.

Crowdbooster:

Depending on the size and number of accounts you are monitoring, this can be a free tool. It offers a fast and lightweight view on growth and what’s working from a content perspective.

IFTTT:

“If this, then that” allows you to set up rules for your online activity. Essentially, macros that work across your social accounts and even your website to create conditional triggers for events. Helpful for many activities beyond Twitter.

HootSuite, Social Engage, and Sprout Social:

These apps allow users to manage their Twitter accounts more effectively. With varying degrees of control and functionality, you’ll want to take a look around and figure out what works best for your needs and your team. These tools all do essentially the same thing: help you engage, measure that engagement, and interact with your followers on Twitter in ways the web interface sometimes makes difficult.

Twitter for Business:

Twitter’s own one-stop shop for hitting the ground running with your business. It’s a great resource for those just getting started with the platform.

Simply Measured:

This rich analytics tool allows you to measure follower growth, engagement, reach, and even figure out who your influencers are.

Twitter Cards:

By setting up your web content with the right metadata, you can make rich content appear every time someone tweets a link to it. There are currently several varieties of cards, including templates for articles, photo galleries, apps, and even products.

Additionally, Twitter launched Lead Generation Cards, which go the extra mile in helping businesses drive conversions. They include rich content and a clear call to action, allowing new customers to engage with your content in a single click.

This entry was posted in Social Media and tagged Measurement, Shringesh, Twitter.