Tag: Social Media

  • What makes a full stack marketer?

    On Twitter, GG asked a question that I felt compelled to answer because I have used this on LinkedIn for a while.

    I did borrow the phrase from tech, but sounding cool didn’t quite cover it. 🙂

    To begin with, why do I use it? First, the people I want to connect with on LinkedIn are from the consumer tech, digital marketing and brand domains. This usage would be familiar to them, and would help frame my experience and expertise. The experience straddles the offline and digital space, and has media, FMCG, e-commerce and fintech brands. The second part is to do with the skill sets that I think qualifies one for that description. This is my attempt to elaborate on the latter. The “frontend” and “backend” of marketing. It covers demand generation, lead generation, and conversion but I have refrained from classifying it because it is context-dependent.

    Disclaimer: These are my perspectives of things I have worked on. I do this with the understanding that “as our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance” (more…)

  • Occult of personality

    Recently, Badshah took the rap for allegedly paying for fake views on a music video, in a bid to break a YouTube viewership record. I’m surprised that a lot of folks were surprised! Whether it’s social media (FB, Instagram, Snapchat etc) or media networks (YouTube, TikTok, and largely Twitter too), digital ecosystems have been built around reach. Just like traditional media was. Reach that is then sold to brands and advertisers. Reach that is usually also a poor surrogate for efficiency and effectiveness. That’s why all this reminds me of Goodhart’s law – when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. The unintended but predictable consequences of optimising for the measure. So why do brands still do it? Hey, everyone has KRAs and no time for real outcomes. Output is good enough. Influencer marketing does just that. Besides, a case can even be made for credibility in the audience’s mind. But that’s a separate story. (more…)

  • Peak Abstraction

    Saturday mornings are sometimes spent at the lake nearby – walking/jogging around it. A few weeks ago, I saw a few dressed-for-exercise folks spending the entire time doing an intense “exercise” – posing for selfies! To be fair, the lake is pretty, but..

    It led me to an interesting line of thought. Before I let you in on that, some context setting, or you might close the tab at the ridiculousness of it. Given that the species has lacked telepathy, we have been abstracting for a very long time. Sensations, emotions and thoughts that make up our subjective reality needed to be conveyed. We converted them into everything from facial expressions and actions to drawings to language – spoken, written and then published soon as we entered the machine age. You are now reading what I am thinking.  (more…)

  • Binary Code

    Facebook is in the process of updating its Newsfeed algo again so that we see more posts from friends and family, and less from ‘Pages’. Great news, except that when every person is media, and there is a limit to the pruning one can do, the feed will still consist of biases, prejudices, hoaxes, paid endorsements without disclosure, and yes, cat videos, Lincoln’s quotes on self driving cars, click bait and baby pics. My point above is less about filter failure and more about the continuing explosion of content and its distribution to set the context.

    But now let’s talk about filters. The sheer volume of content means that (in general) the reader will want quickly digestible information before he/she moves on to the highly entertaining video waiting in line. Absolutely connected to ‘the demise of the middle ground in the attention economy‘. The article talks about nuance in political debate getting lost, but I think its reach extends beyond that. As this fantastic Guardian article “How technology disrupted the truth” states, “..everyone has their own facts“. But why do this happen? (more…)

  • Social Nextworks

    The impending death of Orkut (2004-2014) made me think of the evolution of social networking and its transience. Orkut lived ‘only’ for 10.5 years, and this is despite being part of Google, though some would call that a disadvantage. Facebook  has been around for the same time, and the fact that it is a force to reckon with is a testament of its understanding of this transience. It also explains the acquisition of Instagram, Whatsapp and the attempt on Snapchat.

    However, I recently realised that I am probably more active on Whatsapp, Instagram and Pinterest than Facebook and Twitter. I am also reasonably active on Secret. That made me dig a bit deeper.

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    (via)

    What is changing? From my observations, there are at least two factors that are driving the change.

    Perspectives on connectivity: The early era was fueled by the need to connect. Facebook is soaring well beyond a billion users, and its longevity is (also) because the need still exists. It continues to look for better ways to do this, manifested through front end and back end changes. But despite this, and my own curation of my newsfeed by sending signals to Facebook, I am regularly overwhelmed by the volume. This goes for Twitter too. Personally, I have treated these platforms as a means of self expression. I would also like to choose the people whose perspectives I want, and who are entitled to a judgment, if any. But that’s not so easily done on popular platforms.

    That’s when I start to look at the many ways to handle this – from social networks to messaging apps. I could go to where the crowds are relatively less and/or are more ‘focused’ – by domain or use cases, (LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram) I could interact with smaller groups, (WhatsApp) use ephemerality (Snapchat) or be anonymous (Secret) As I mentioned, at least three of these work for me. A wonderful nuance I caught in Mitch Joel ‘s prophetic ‘The Next Big Thing Online Could Well Be Anonymity‘, is that it may not just be ‘something to hide’ that makes some prefer anonymity, but it could also be so that ‘who they are will not become a focal point within that discussion’. Anonymity on the web is not new, but many of its enablers are.

    Devices: The networks of an earlier era (eg.Facebook) were made for desktop and had to adapt for mobile. On the other hand, Instagram, Whatsapp, Secret, Snapchat etc are mobile natives. Given the increasing ubiquity of smartphones, their growth is not surprising.

    What are the possible business models and what’s a brand to do? As more and more users flock to these new platforms, they would need to mature, with business models which could mean associations with brands – the journey from social network to social media.

    Instagram and Pinterest are already social media, making advertising at least one of their revenue sources. WhatsApp does not like advertising and already makes money on downloads. Its competitors like Line, KakaoTalk, WeChat etc, however, have found various other means – virtual items, (stickers, in app purchases in free video games) promotional messages, baby steps in electronic payment handling fees, and interesting tie-ups. Snapchat already has many marketers on it and is likely to offer promotion options too, probably tied to a time bound event.

    Secret has a lot of negativity surrounding it – s3x talk and startup malice and being just a fad – and there are comparisons to Formspring and its demise despite funding. But beyond advertising and in app puchases, maybe, there’s also potential for insights on a brand and its use cases? Things that cannot be found on indexed platforms. Also, Whisper already has a content deal with Buzzfeed.

    Analytics for such platforms haven’t even really begun yet, but it can’t be far away. But more importantly, all of these platforms are potential enablers for a brand to take forward its narrative and become relevant to its users. It continues to be about storytelling, and digital.