Category: Social Media

  • Update: Autumn-Winter 2011

    The last few weeks have kept me busy, thanks to a career crossroad. I had a few options, each of which presented its own share of pros and cons. At a larger level, there was a dilemma on whether to stay as a consultant or get back to a job. This tussle is something I’d like to document in depth, so that’s a story for later.

    It was made even more difficult because the major consultancy option was with an organisation whose work I respect and whose domain is a personal interest area. I also had a couple of ‘smaller’ consultancy options, which offered work in interesting domains, in addition to my regular Bangalore Mirror columns. There was also a job option which would allow me to work with a couple of people whom I’d gotten to know through Twitter, and whom I like and admire for their perspectives.

    After much consideration and with a little help from invaluable friends over DMs and chats, the update on the LinkedIn profile now reads ‘Head -Social’ at Myntra. In addition to various personal priorities, I chose to go with this opportunity because it gave me the maximum scope to implement the concepts I frequently write about on the blog. The organisation is at that rapid growth stage where I can work towards making ‘social’ inherent in processes across domains. In addition to the ‘social’ piece, I’ll also be working on a couple of other domains.

    So, in addition to the regular kind of posts here, I’ll hope to share the experiences of creating a ‘social’ strategy and implementing it on the client side. The mandate is to embed social in fashion, not be social after a fashion, and so, I think we’re in for a lot of fun. 🙂

    until next time, job 2.011

  • A Brand’s new story

    Brands have always been storytellers, but new platforms bring with them opportunities and complexities that warrant a tweaking of the craft. Welcome to transmedia storytelling. And you can read the rest of my article on afaqs.  (Just this once, don’t mind) 🙂

  • Social : Means or Outcome?

    In the last few weeks, I have had several interesting conversations on the subject of social’s utility to brand building. I realised that I often veered towards building the product/service ground up with social inherent in it. I was trying to understand why and that took me back to the ‘aligning business to social’ vs ‘aligning social to business’ perspectives. (earlier post and source)

    Though fundamentally the same concept, its application brought about the title of the post. With a pragmatic approach, I realise it is impossible for existing organisations to suddenly transform one day and change/align their business to a socially relevant purpose. It requires evolution. So once they identify the need for this evolution, their challenge is two fold – to build social into existing products/services and simultaneously look at identifying need gaps (of the users) in their domain which have the potential for social resonance. (either by giving the individual user such an excellent experience that he shares it in his circle willingly, or by delivering a utility by using his social connections on other platforms) The first is using social as just another means to meeting an existing objective, and the second is building something that by its inherent nature will have a social outcome that also delivers business results.

    They differ not only in approach and design, but also in terms of gestation, returns and time frames. Depending on the organisation’s evolution appetite, they will have to choose how much they would like to focus on each.

    until next time, social output is where buttons come in 😉

  • Social Media Fatigue – an opportunity?

    One of the interesting conversations happening on the web these days is on ‘social media fatigue’. As a user of many platforms, I can admit to having experienced this many a time in the near past. But it’s strange – fatigue for the networks we created. So I asked myself – what really causes it? Is it the overwhelming ‘pressure’ to be on top of everything that happens in one’s ‘social circles’? Or is it the other end -the boredom of seeing the same people having the same kind of discussions day after day?

    As we first explore new networks, I have noticed that we often hunt for familiarity – either in terms of features, or people. For the purpose of this post, let’s stick to the latter. From personal experience, I have always wondered whether people (including me), in their efforts to be ‘always on’ and across multiple platforms miss out on broadening their world view, and exploring content beyond their natural haunts. A direct result of this is the paucity of topics beyond the day’s hot topic or #outrage or say, a done to death humour hashtag. All of the above are generalisations, since I’ve also been part of several interesting discussions on Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn. Google+ actually works better for me these days, probably because it’s a new flavour. However, none of the networks have really nailed it in terms of connecting the user to new people who might be able to broaden our ‘scope’. On the contrary, most networks try to use a ‘people like you’ approach. And then probably, familiarity breeds contempt.

    Also, as I’d mentioned earlier in the context of Google+ usage, people rarely make the effort to produce or even share different or differently packaged content for various networks. This means that, especially in new platforms, where networks start small, you are hit by the same content. After a while, familiar content can also breed contempt, I guess.

    To minimise the fatigue, the hard work for now, given platform limitations, has to be carried out by the users – in production, distribution and consumption. It’s only recently that I started defining my relationship with the platforms – by answering the basic why, what, who, where, when questions. That has resulted in a comfort relationship, but I’ll be the first one to say that it’s not really optimised, which would also explain my continued experiments with various platforms.

    For some time, I thought Google+ Circles, used in conjunction with Sparks, would make excellent ‘interest based’ communities, but then realised it was difficult to scale because Circles aren’t opt in i.e. someone has to add you to a circle, you cannot add yourself. Which leads me to the final point.

    Thanks to this line of thought, I wondered whether brands could play a role in diminishing social media fatigue. The ‘constantly on top of news’ would require platform solutions, but there are two other opportunities. One, connecting users whose only link to each other would be the ‘stories’ associated with their brand/category. This link could then spawn new layers and associations between them. Two, sharing content that provides the user more perspective in his domain of interest. Obviously, the users to target here are the ones whose interest area overlaps with the brand’s own category. In both cases, there is a lot of data to be unearthed before working out a specific content/community strategy. So, if brands can ply their trade a little more smartly, life on on social networks could probably be a lot better. What say?

    until next time, post fatigue? 😉

  • Identity & Equity

    I read two quotes in a completely unrelated (to this blog) context – Ashwin Sanghi’s “Chanakya’s Chant”, a work of fiction – but was intrigued by the perspective when I saw the ‘brand-social’ domain through this ‘framework’.

    The quote to start with is the one by John Wooden “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”

    In the days of (only) traditional media, (if given the money) both character and reputation were relatively easier to establish and maintain because the number of publishers with significant reach were limited. Which leads to the second quote – from Winston Churchill “There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion”

    And then came the blogs, social networks and the statusphere, which allowed everyone to become a publisher.

    The question I’d like to ask is whether this published opinion and the pressures of real time (not to mention limited characters) are making brands focus more on reputation than character. How would you define reputation and character in brand terms? Would it be brand equity and brand identity respectively? If the focus were to be more on creating a strong brand identity through the product itself, customer care, sales process and even marketing communication, among others, would reputation/brand equity be much easier to handle?

    until next time, identity scarred