Nuggets from Social Media Summit 2011

The Social Media Summit organized by Echome and MOP Vaishnav college was very interesting and informative. I'm sharing few key points jotted down at the summit.

• Infographics is the new Link Bait.
• Nobody advertised with Paul the Octopus during FIFA World Cup 2010. We need to be flexible and create new marketing campaigns in a jiffy.
• Avoid cyber squatting. Block your domain names quickly.
• Your marketing budget is inversely proportional to your marketing IQ. Savita Bhabhi is the best example of zero budget marketing.
• Deep commenting will have more visibility. The comment size will be longer than a Tweet but shorter than a blog post.
• Listen. It is very important. Listen to keywords, brand names and any other data related to your field. Broadcasting is not Social Media.
• DELL has a 2000 strong center called "Social Media Listening Command Center." The centre listens to 22,000 DELL-related keywords.
• Placement (4Ps) of Philip Kotler is no longer valid. Geography is now History. People in India buy more books from Amazon in UK  rather than Flipkart in Bangalore.
• 40% of consumers who Like a brand later Unlike it.
• The audience has moved from captive to active, deference to reference, herd to swarm.
• You need to create an emotional connection with the audience. The Knorr Sidekicks advt with Salty created an emotional context with a creative video and song.Salty had 6000 Facebook fans and 3,75,000 video views.
• Consumers research Online and purchase Offline.
• Buffer App can be used to time your Tweets. You can time 10 tweets per day for free.
• Be a knowledge repository in your field. The award winning Cafe Coffe Day Facebook page has all details about coffee.
• Edge Rank is driven by relevance and engagement. no of fans is irrelevant.
• Passive engagement > Prompted Engagement > Unprompted engagement
• Digital is the most trusted media. Shattered reputations can cost millions.
• Even though social media is more popular with B2C, we should not forget that people run organizations and people make decisions in a B2B scenario.
• But B2B market will focus on getting 20 contracts from G2000 companies. So, the question of the need for social media in B2B arises.
• Video will rule the Social Media market. However, YouTube is only 30% to 40% of video market. There are are video sites like Vimeo and more.
• Keep a watch on Buyer Touch Points (BTP) and Influencer Touch Points(ITP)
• Bad customer feedback/comments about your company/service can spread virally. Hotel Fortel has quite a few bad comments on a web page.
• When a person on a bicycle was denied entry to Hotel Leela Palace in Bangalore, the issue became viral on the Web.
• You need content writers and not BPO staff for writing media savvy content.
• CTS Outreach evolved from internal blogs and is now developing with an internal tweet platform C-weets
• Blogologues is a concept of drama/theatre made from blog posts.
• Even if companies block Facebook with firewalls, employees access social media using their smartphones. 
• Celebrity endorsement in Social Media is in. When actor Trisha retweeted about puppy adoption the number of adopters doubled in no time.
• Use Linkedin for low involvement, low engagement, e.g selling network servers .
• Use Facebook, Twitter for high involvement, high engagement, e.g like selling cars.
• The general route is Facebook to company website to sales.
• In 2012, Social media will be greater than TV.
• The Ubiquitous Social wall that allows you to access Facebook even in your bedroom wall is the most awaited. 
• Marketing management is going to become like air traffic control.
• A good Social Media Policy for your company helps.
• Business Intelligence comes from customers. Crowdsourcing is in.
• Clients have to be clear about what they want in e-marketing.
• Great brands don't advertise. Their product itself is an advertisement. There is no brand selling but just word of mouth. e.g Google, Ferrari, Twitter, FB
• A Feedback in Facebook: I always dreamed abt a professor who is very tech-savvy, who will giv attendance if v attend classes thru online, who will publish his all lectures thru blog, who'll correct assignments online n all........and last week, i met my DREAM PROFESSOR at Social Media Summit,Chennai! He s Prof.Ravindra Dastikop frm B'lore. He used to give attendance to his students [evn if dey r not present in class]. The only thing d student shud do is dat dey need to send the summary of his class within 24 hrs via FB or other social medias......!!!!!!!! His blog is ON 24/7 :-)  [ Don forget to chk out his blog: http://dastikop.blogspot.com/ ]

Mahesh Murthy at SMSin2011

No WEB Marketing Pls ~ We WOM

Today, i went to my favorite tailor shop "My Ladies Choise" in Eldams Road,Teynampet, to give my salwars for stitching. The lady tailors are known for their good work. They had a range of embroidery designs( nearly 100) and children suits in display.

I asked the owner, if i can click a picture of their place and put it in my blog for free. The conscientious tailor told me that she is very busy with her existing orders and somehow delivers the stitched dresses on time without compromising quality. She had refused to advertise in the local papers who approached her too. She believed only in "Word Of Mouth" (WOM) and it was more than sufficient for her to get orders even for weddings happening as far as Karaikudi. Hey, that's gr8 right :)

The incident reminded me of a management snippet on Business Connections that i read recently:

There are tens of thousands of businesses making many millions a year in profits that still haven’t ever heard of twitter, blogs or facebook. Are they all wrong? Have they missed out or is the joke really on us? They do business through personal relationships, by delivering great customer service and it’s working for them. They’re more successful than most of those businesses who spend hours pontificating about how others lose out by missing social media and the latest wave. And yet they’re doing business. Great business. Not writing about it. Doing it.

I’m continually amazed by the number of people on Twitter and on blogs, and the growth of people (and brands) on facebook. But I’m also amazed by how so many of us are spending our time. The echo chamber we’re building is getting larger and louder.

More megaphones don’t equal a better dialogue. We’ve become slaves to our mobile devices and the glow of our screens. It used to be much more simple and, somewhere, simple turned into slow. We walk the streets with our heads down staring into 3-inch screens while the world whisks by doing the same. And yet we’re convinced we are more connected to each other than ever before.

Multi-tasking has become a badge of honor. I want to know why. I don’t have all the answers to these questions but I find myself thinking about them more and more. In between tweets, blog posts and facebook updates.

- Howard Mann is a speaker, entrepreneur and the author of Your Business Brickyard.