Author: manu prasad

  • Social Scaling

    The subject of this post has been visited before, thanks to an earlier note by Tac Anderson on the ‘3 types of social media strategy‘, and David Cushman’s excellent presentation the same topic.

    What made me revisit this are Tac Anderson’s post last week titled ‘Dam your social media strategy‘, which used an excellent analogy to present a 2 step approach to changing business strategy , and my own experiences in the last few months. In my first post that referred to the 3 types of social media strategy, I’d wondered whether it was possible to move from strategy 2 (optimising social media  for business) to strategy 3 (optimising business for social media), but my experiences later made me feel that it was perhaps (generalising) an inevitable approach, and this view has only been strengthened since then.

    However, the biggest roadblock I sense is in convincing an organisation and its internal stakeholders to look at the tools from beyond a ‘push communication’ marketing perspective especially after we start out on optimising social media. It is all the more difficult because this perspective is something they can identify with – just another channel, and one that’s ‘free’.  A twisted view that ‘Conversations are markets’. Just another place to sell your wares. 😐

    The challenge is to shift the focus from ‘media’ to ‘social, and from a purely brand centric view to one that encompasses the organisation’s internal stakeholders and consumers, and has a more holistic view of ROI. I wonder then, if it is actually better to start with something like ‘customer care’ or ‘operations’ and include ‘brand’ only at a much later stage in optimisation. Debatable. 🙂

    until next time, ambushing marketing on the brand team.

  • Culture Bridges

    There was much excitement when I saw that much talked about presentation that somehow seemed connected to Google Me and Google’s approach to social. But the sounds made recently by Darth Scmidt don’t really give cause for delight.

    While it doesn’t make sense to talk ill of something even before launch, the ‘social layer’ does sound underwhelming. It doesn’t help that Mark Zuck recently hinted that ‘social is not a layer you can add’. ( What is interesting though is he also said in the interview “We’re trying to build a social layer for everything”) He should know about what works in ‘social’, because whether you love or hate Facebook, it is definitely a creation (and creator) that demands respect, on various parameters.

    Somewhere towards the end of his post titled ‘The Forever Recession‘, Seth Godin, while talking of the ‘recession of an industrial age with its imperfect market communication’ paraphrases Clay Shirky and states that ‘every revolution destroys the last thing before it turns a profit on a new thing’.

    I thought about this statement in the context of Google and Facebook, and also remembered an earlier post at GigaOm which showed the difference  between the way Facebook and Google work. And that prompted me to wonder whether every age has a unique organisational and workforce culture that best fits it, and the entity that grasps it, succeeds.

    This is not just a Google-Facebook question, but one that I’d consider across domains and categories. The leader in an earlier era would try to capture that culture mojo and would most likely fail because it tries to add to what it has been doing so far, where a start from scratch is what is warranted. The interesting part is also that the time between ‘revolutions’ seems to be consistently decreasing, so how do brands and organisations carry their success across?

    until next time, a revulsion for revolutions?

  • Group Pwn

    I’ve never gotten around to trying group buying/deal sites until once recently, though I always thought that they were fulfilling a need for businesses and consumers. But when I read this ‘peculiar’ story titled Groupon’s Success Disaster, I found myself identifying with it (from a consumer perspective, we’ll get to that in a bit) and since the number of group buying sites in India is only a few numbers lesser than the number of social media consultants, I thought it made sense to spare a few thoughts on it.

    The (linked above) story is of a small business owner, who, after 3 months of using Groupon, discovered that the deals were hurting the business financially and then had to take $8000 out of savings to cover payroll. Considering that, I thought the Groupon reply has quite a cruel title – ‘Too much of a good thing‘, but it is well drafted.

    The win-win for business-consumer in this is because it gives the former a chance to spread the word on the service and probably get some feedback on it and the latter mostly gets a good deal. Like I mentioned, I used a site recently for what seemed like a good deal. Though the deal process was painless, I ended up spending more money than what I normally would, thanks to a mis-communication (and some carelessness on my part). It means that I won’t be a repeat customer. It ends up as a lose-lose. Now this is probably the exception to how it usually happens, but…

    It did make me think whether the business owners get into deals with a strategy in place. Not just in terms of finance, but also in terms of their expectations of buzz, their delivery capability as well as how they’d manage to make the customer return. When it is kept in mind that social platforms and deal sites are mostly interwoven, I think it’d make sense for the business to use their service delivery (assumed good) and connect it to their social presence. A “We hope you liked it. Here’s an x% discount for your next visit and we would really appreciate it if you could leave your comments on FB/Twitter” approach. Facebook would especially help the business to spread the word beyond the usual early adopter set. While on retail, its difficult not to mention Foursquare. Though I’d love it if Foursquare aggregated the deals themselves, the businesses definitely can get active on Foursquare and push their deals to users nearby.

    With the (limited) examples I’ve seen, I doubt whether this is being done. So it reminds me of a lot of advertising,  and most social media efforts. The former because the message and the product/service are rarely (generalising) in sync, and the latter because of the lack of strategy and the herd mentality.

    until next time, regroup!

  • Internet and People States

    The Economist has an excellent read titled ‘The Future of the Internet‘, where it details the possibility of a Balkanisation of the internet, by forces such as Network Operators, countries, and closed platforms. Quite an irony, as they point out, since the internet was supposed to be a great unifier.

    I realised that so far we had been dealing with entities that had a geographical constraint – all forms of media, languages, culture etc. When brands entered alien markets, they adapted to suit the needs of the local population – sometimes in terms of communication, sometimes in terms of the product/service itself.  So I guess, it would be futile to expect that we would solve a challenge of this magnitude soon, considering that the internet has been around for only a relatively short amount of time. (cool infographic)

    But what struck me was that though the factors mentioned above are indeed distinct and relevant ones, what about users? Thanks to the long tail of content, people are able to get content tailor-made to their requirement, more often that not. They are also able to create content and share it with specific people. When I see e-groups, closed blogs, newsletters, and increasing privacy options on existing networks, I wonder how much of Balkanisation already exists thanks to users, who control a lot of the where, what and to whom content is shared. I connect with different people on different networks and share different relationships with them basis different contexts and interests, and except for minor overlaps b/w Facebook – Twitter and Twitter – Foursquare, they are all almost separate worlds. And its not just the where and the what, its also the when – I have Orkut friends discovering Facebook, Facebook and LinkedIn friends/connections discovering Twitter, Twitter followers discovering Foursquare, GReader friends discovering Quora, when my usage and behaviour on these networks would be completely different from theirs thanks to relatively early adoption.

    The other question is how would brands be affected by a Balkanised internet. Would all their users exist in the same place and time? How does it affect communication? Product, or service, how many brands can be like Apple, who are the nearest to being a ‘state’ in themselves? How many can actually build and sustain that? How much of it depends on the nature of the product and how much of it on the people connections (or social gestures)? Would integration and consistency of communication matter then?

    But then I realise that despite the user Balkanisation, we have our means of communication and transportation open. When push comes to shove, perhaps it will be too unprofitable for any entity to remain Balkanised, irrespective of their own vested interests? We live in hope. 🙂

    until next time, 800th post at the other blog 🙂

  • Multi purpose content

    This post over at GigaOm, titled “Apple doesn’t target markets, it targets people” sparked a tiny debate between Mahendra and me, on the effects of ‘antennagate’ on Apple fanboys, though the article itself had little to do with this line of thought. I wondered, like I’d written here earlier (last two paras), whether the continuous dissing in the media and the product flaw itself would create skepticism among the fanboys and affect future purchases, Mahendra didn’t think so.

    The subject of influence has cropped up here earlier, but the focus was on new media platforms and people. The above conversation made me think about the challenges that brands face on content that’s created on multiple media platforms.

    Even as traditional media platforms are being unfavourably compared to new media thanks to their constraints, the abundance of content – the media tsunami, on the latter does make one wonder how much of consumption by the intended crowd really happens. Meanwhile, despite the constraints,  technically, the reach of the traditional media platforms is still significant. A brand’s consumers exist on/consume these media.

    That really poses interesting questions on the notions of brand imagery, consistency etc, which have been holy cows of a previous era. Take this video, for example. Its a massive hit on Facebook and YouTube

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTl3U6aSd2w

    “Where’s the Gillette logo?!”, if this were a traditional TV spot, and what’s the message here? A close shave? 😉 But at 5 million + views, surely this must count for something. But what? This fuzzy nature of social media content and the media on which its propagated is exactly what raises difficult  but important questions on brands’ participation in social media.

    The answers are obviously not simple ones, and would have to be adapted to each brand’s needs. But as these lessons from Old Spice would suggest,  an important requirement is to understand objectives and define roles for each platform. The challenge then would be to create a content strategy that not only uses the inherent strengths of the different media, but also understands the motivations, consumption habits and preferences of the different kinds of people who use them. Instead of blind adaption across various platforms, exploring content options and finer segmentation is perhaps the order of the day.

    Perhaps Apple’s success is because of what the original post says “It focuses on users. And Apple lets them decide how and where they’ll use its products.” I wonder how many brands use that kind of understanding in their communication and brand strategy.

    until next time, iWash 😉