Once upon a time, almost a century back, human occupation was mostly “transformational” in nature. Taking raw material and converting into finished goods. Be it a carpenter at work or be it a worker in a factory or perhaps a farmer engaged in agriculture, a majority of the work force was engaged in the business of transformation.

A few decades later, there was shift in the workforce occupation. From transformation workers we became transaction workers. Ringing up bills at the cash counter, an accountant, a truck driver, an office clerk….all these are examples of a transaction driven workforce (basically doing tasks that are rule based and repetitive in nature).

Now we see another shift taking place i.e. from a transaction-active workforce to an interaction-active workforce. An insurance agent, a nurse, a retail salesman, they are all interaction-workers. Interaction requires ability to use ones experience in a given situation. There are a set of experiences and there a set of situations. And a successful interaction worker is the one who is able to respond to a situation by correctly leveraging his experience. He needs to make complex interactions requiring high level of judgement.

If the world GDP, once upon a time was mainly contributed by transformation workforce, today it is mainly contributed by Interaction workforce. Tasks that were transformational in nature or transactional in nature are gradually being taken over by machines. And tasks that are interactive in nature … here is where Social Media is playing the role of an enabler.

Whether Social Media is going to drive the interaction-economy or whether interaction-economy will spur faster growth of social media…either ways it is mutually beneficial relationship.

Everything seems to be shrinking. Besides inflation (which is causing the value of money to shrink), there are two more things that are shrinking very fast: our attention span and our window to the world around us.

First, the shrinking attention span:

• Recently I came across a “research report”. It was called an “Infograph”. In about 15 graphs on a single long HTML page, a research on demographics of Social Media users worldwide and their Social Media behaviour had been conveyed. It took all of 6 “Pg Dn” keystrokes to see the graphs and about 10 minutes to digest the communication. Less than 5 years ago, the same data would have been presented in a 20 page pdf file with lot of words and commentary. Not so anymore. Crisp, to-the-point communication. So crisp that if you are not “into the subject matter”, those colourful graphs would remain just that. With substantially reduced attention spans, who really has the time or patience to ‘read’ a research report! We are now living in a world where research reports have become infographs and paragraphs have become tweets. Finally my 6th standard grammar précis writing classes are becoming useful. Today while writing tweets, the key challenge is how to communicate a complete thought process in 140 characters and also generate a question in order to create back flow of communication (If I remove the characters required for a bitly link and for RT), perhaps you need to finish the communication in 120 characters.

Now the shrinking window (no pun on “MS Windows”!)

• Once upon a time, our window to the world was all that our eyes could see if we turned our head from one side to another. Perhaps our eyes could “see” a radius of about 5 kms (if there was no obstruction).
• Then about 100 years ago, cinema screens were invented. A cinema screen was about 20ft x 20ft. Substantially smaller than our earlier window to the world, yet we could see and experience much more through this screen.
• Then 60 years ago, television was invented. The screens become smaller (24” x 12”), but our ability to see increased (now we have multiple channels to choose from).
• Then 30 years back, PC was invented. The screen further shrunk (12” x 5”), but our vision expanded. The WWW allowed to go just about anywhere you desired.
• And now the cell phone. Our screen size is just (2” x 1.5”).

It is interesting that our window to the world is continuously shrinking but our vision or ability to see more is actually increasing!

White paper on Social Media Mega Trends can be downloaded from http://www.socialwavelength.com/white-papers-download.php

If voting was restricted to Twitter alone, Shashi Tharoor could have been elected Prime Minister of India! Sadly for Tharoor, it isn’t, and there is life beyond.

Without a doubt, Shashi Tharoor has done more for brand Twitter in India than anybody else! Common citizens, who are far away from using Twitter, also recognize the word Twitter, thanks to Tharoor, and the news he made, with his cattle-class and such tweets!

But the same medium that made him famous, could well have spelled Tharoor’s undoing. And which is where, there are Social Media lessons to learn, for the rest of us. But I am jumping to the conclusion. Let me cut back to the beginning first.

So the Tharoor – Sunanda Pushkar –  Lalit Modi – IPL saga has been enough in the news, for me to repeat the gory details. And this piece is not about who was right and who was wrong, but more about Shashi Tharoor, and the Social Media mistakes he made.

The genesis of his mistakes though, can be understood, if we understand his personality. And M J Akbar does a great job of describing this in his Sunday piece in the Times of India. Couples of key facts pointed out by Akbar are that Tharoor did not leave his high profile and high pay UN assignment to join Indian politics, rather he left it to try and get the top job at the UN. And that for Tharoor, half limelight is better than no limelight! Also that Bush considered him to be immature.

In all of these statements lie perhaps, the explanations for Tharoor shooting off his mouth every now and then, and for his landing into a mess now, which Akbar puts as “writhing between a mistake and misfortune”.

Tharoor through his wild and popular run as the favorite Indian Twitter celebrity account, made an art of creating 140 character copy. Tweets that would be cheered by Indian Twitterati, tweets that would get huge RTs, and which as a consequence, generated huge Twitter following, and a cheering squad, which was happy to get a ‘cool and handsome MP who was tongue-in-cheek, and had a great sense of humor too, and who was so different from the boring Indian politicians of the day’! Tharoor looking for that half limelight could have not asked for more. To repeat the first sentence of this post, he had reached a position where if an election was based solely on Twitter votes, he had reached a position where he would win hands-down!

But the fact was that, Tharoor was just a great copywriter and made tweets interesting. He was not really that cool as a person, and he was not that far from the other politicians he would ridicule so often, in terms of his integrity.

And Santosh Desai, in his column again in the Times of India, explains how Tharoor’s slick language and style got him into more trouble than good, and how in this particular case, it landed him into quick sand. When style comes without adequate substance, such slips happen. And Tharoor slipped, ultimately resulting in loss of face, and an ignominious resignation from the ministry.

As Santosh Desai points out, and I have seen in person, in the twitter stream, and in the Tharoor support forums that have sprung up, Tharoor will still remain a favorite on Twitter. But his political future is another issue.

So what is the key Social Media lesson here?

The one and most important fact that this episode brings to the fore, is that on Social Media, you cannot pretend to be someone you are not. Or in other words, it is not just about words you use, but that you really have to ‘be it’. Take into contrast, another celebrity, Anand Mahindra. In fact, there has been a decent compilation of Anand Mahindra’s Twitter efforts, and how effectively he has used the medium. Now Anand Mahindra asks questions, admits he does not know it all, converses genuinely, and helps where he can. In short, he comes out as a regular human being, even if he is not one another common man. On the other hand, Tharoor came out looking larger than life, which unfortunately he was not!

And this is the last thing you do on Social Media. Social Media in general and Twitter in particular, is very public space. It amplifies conversations, and you create a Social Media brand positioning / reputation for yourself. If this is very different from who you really are, the pretense cannot be kept up for too long. Because Social Media has its own way of circling back, and haunting you, for your inconsistencies.

Social Media is about being honest to yourself, it is about transparency, and it is about being fair to your fans and followers.

As someone pointed out, best practices on use of Social Media are yet to emerge. But in the early days as we are, these are some early lessons to pick.

In lighter vein, Shashi Tharoor could attempt another first on Twitter, if he wants. If he chooses to resign from Twitter as well, he could be the first one to auction off his 700-odd-thousand follower account?!

Dear Customer,
The new Financial Year has started. But for us at Social Wavelength, it also coincides with our birthday. We got started in early April, 2009. And wow.. the year has zipped by!

Social Media is exciting. And being in the thick of things, as a Social Media agency, we have had year long excitement! And it promises not to stop, and in fact, it only gets  zippier.

So here are some highlights of the year that went by:

1. The first two months were, well, the first two months! The first two young men I decided to employ left me in 1 day and 2 days respectively.. lol. Then I managed to get a person whom I had worked with earlier, to get started with us. At least she would not run away. Its another thing that she was just not cut out for Social Media, and we had to part few months later!
2. There was still the issue of getting a first client. The only way to do it, was to catch a friend. And get his business. Which is what I did with Kartik Shah. And Skyscape Inc., USA remains a client. In the interim, they got bought over! Maybe we brought them good luck!!
3. How I got my first partner, in this business, is another story. But suffice it to say, that few coffees, few chats, and meeting of the minds, made this happen. An unlikely combination of a 23 year old Engineer, into his first job after engineering, quitting that job, to become an entrepreneur, by joining a 40-something (yes, 40-something is good enough; don’t ask for precise numbers here!) gray haired veteran of sorts, to help the world figure their way around Social Media! Welcome aboard, Mihir Karkare!
4. I did not realize this first. But it sank in soon enough that we were getting into the larger framework of the advertising world! And while I was comfortable about my business understanding, my knowledge on the Internet and Social Media space, but advertising industry was a different world! There was just so much to unlearn and many new things to learn. That khakhis and shirt can often be considered as being overdressed, and that a minimum of one f*** in a sentence was mandatory, were amongst the easier things to learn. Long pre-sales cycles, longer approval cycles, and longest payment cycles were harder to figure out!!
5. I learned that what we were preaching actually works! Yes, Social Media works for Social Media business. Doing no specific business development effort, but by being active on offline and online social media (offline social media = your personal network) generated leads, and then by providing reasonable thought leadership, this converted to business. Does this sound like what I talked to you, when I asked for your business? Well, it worked for me anyway!!
6. October 1 is the birthday of my friend. This happened to be the momentous day when that friend – also my partner at Homeindia.com – came on board at Social Wavelength as a partner. Bringing all of his bald pate, a symbol of his wisdom and capabilities, with him, and we were now more than ready to take on the world! Welcome, Hareesh Tibrewala. Now we kick ass.. !
7. They called us Mr. Keynote. Seeing a virtual deja vu of 1997-98 when we were called to speak all over the place, about the Internet, we now start receiving invitations to talk about Social Media. Hareesh and I need to ration the time we can give for such outings, as “we have to take care of your business too”!
8. We have managed simply. We have limited resources which we deployed well. We have spartan premises. We do not have a pool table. We do not have guitars or any other musical instruments. We serve chai or coffee, but there too, many prefer to go down, smoke and grab a cutting from the guy downstairs. But we have a lot of enthusiasm. We have a great team, who always have fun, who have a smile on their faces, no matter what the clock reads. That’s all we need to go to the next leap now.

But all this has happened, thanks to you, dear customer. You reposed your faith in us. You are a leader to embrace this new medium so early. And most importantly – you signed our cheques

The one year is a milestone for sure. But we know we have many more to come. And we look to have you with us on this journey.

Meanwhile let’s do a beer together. Whenever you are free. Tell us. It will be on us (well ultimately, you pay for it!!).

Very warm regards – Sanjay Mehta

Over the last 7 months of 2009, we have been actively participating in the Social Media industry in India, interacting with large number of clients, and that experience of 7 months has translated into this summary of 7 findings from 2009, and 7 wishes that we have for the industry, for 2010.

Our early client (or even agency) interactions were about a concept sale, for Social Media. And there was an incredulous feel as to what were we doing in their conference room, talking about Facebook and such kids’ stuff!

We’ve traversed a long distance since those days.

Of course, it is still early days for Social Media in India, but in a lot of ways, things have moved ahead:

1. Increasingly now, people know that Social Media needs to be a part of their marketing mix, if not yet, a part of their business processes itself. For those who understand the space, they will appreciate this difference. Perhaps by the time we review the space in end 2010, we may see that Social Media has also become a part of the company’s business processes!
2. We do not need to struggle to explain our business. A simple term like “Social Media Agency” is understood by most now. Though we are not strictly a Social Media Agency, we are close to that, and if a simple phrase can generate a close enough recognition, we are okay to let things be there.
3. In case of a few of our clients, we had picked up their abandoned early efforts of a Facebook page, for others we had started fresh ones. Suffice to say that ALL of those clients realize now that the Facebook page, the Twitter account, the blog, the YouTube channel etc. are their digital assets and  that they will not abandon these creations any more. Whether we manage these for them or they choose to do it themselves, their Social Media activities are here to stay. Note that the word “ROI” did not even come up in this! So there!!
4. In the early days, it was easy to get an acceptance to create a Facebook page or a blog or a Twitter account. From a hygiene factor, these were good to have. Things have changed here as well. While we still get many prospects who want to do Facebook and Twitter for the hygiene factor, there are others who have started seeing beyond. We have clients who have integrated Social Media very well with their offline marketing and others who are now asking for stand-alone Social Media strategies, with specific focus. There are few who have realized, that Facebook could be their new Email, in terms of having a regular and direct reach to their customers.
5. It took a while to get clients to accept our retainer fees. A few commented that our monthly fees were more than their annual PR budgets. Valid point, but  an apples vs oranges comparison really. What did that annual PR budget get them? A few print releases / mentions in the papers? With large reach, potentially, but with a blink-and-miss probability and also the life of just that one day for the effort? Whereas, the Social Media activities were an ongoing effort, an all-day activity done for them every day, and which resulted in strong digital assets being established for them, which were here to stay! It needed a different kind of dedicated effort, and produced a different kind of result as well. Thankfully, from clients who are in the know, our fees seem more acceptable and understood now.
6. We are very pleased to see a big shift from our agency friends. I mean, the advertising, PR and media buying agency partners. We have seen hesitation, threat, doubt and fear in the early days, but we are now seeing an increasing confidence in the Social Media space, from many. They have become open to new ideas, and to some extent, they are putting these up to clients, and many are getting through as well. This is going to be the most exciting part of 2010, I believe.
7. We are also happy to see companies looking at Social Media Monitoring as a part of the Social Media activities. Although still a pariah amongst all of the Social Media methods (in India), a few companies have started seeing the potential of “listening” and we are seeing this number go up. Businesses which are more sensitive to customer feedback, are especially concerned about managing their online reputations, and monitoring becomes an integral component here.

Having said all this, what we would really like to see change some more, are things like:

1. More clients seeing the relevance and importance of Social Media and at least beginning with the reference of the Social Media contact points on their collaterals, their website, their email signature files etc.
2. That clients realize that the challenge for the 0-1000 journey (the first 1000 Facebook fans or Twitter followers, say) is not trivial, and requires their participation. If that means that the client needs to put the Social Media icons and links on their website, on their TV commercial and press advertisements, send out emails to intimate their stakeholders, or whatever else that is required. Same needs to be done! Once a certain threshold level is reached, then the viral aspect kicks in, thanks to content and engagement activities.
3. While we are seeing a few, we hope to see many more of our clients open up to fresh new ideas for Social Media activation, which are in addition to the simple Facebook page, Twitter account, blog and YouTube channel. An activity conceived for and within Social Media itself, and which can bring together a large base of their Target Group. Something of this nature needs a conviction and a larger commitment in terms of time and resources, but the payback is larger, as it breaks the clutter and stands out. It needs bold first mover types to grab such opportunities, and we look forward to seeing more of those, amongst our clients!
4. We are also hoping for more buy-in from our advertising agency partners, to in turn have the conviction to present and sell to their clients, some of these new ideas. They will stand to win awards and we will be happy to stand next to them and get some reflected shine on us too, in the process. We know we have materials that can win awards for them, but we need their conviction to move it ahead!
5. We hope this year, Mouthshut.com and others in the league are able to put better technology in place, to separate the genuine reviews and feedback, from the fraud postings. While the fraud posts impact brands in the near future, in the long run, it hurts the credibility of sites like mouthshut.com, and make them less trustworthy!
6. We don’t really want this to happen to anyone. But it may still happen. A brand-damaging story that starts from Social Media and hits the mainstream media all over, and causes damage to the brand. Much like the Domino’s case in the US, or even akin to the Shashi Tharoor twitter escapades. Because such damage to one brand will open the eyes of all the other brands, that Social Media cannot be taken lightly. Even if a brand does not participate in outreach activities, they need to maintain a watch, and monitor the space, to identify potential PR crisis and plug them, before they go out of control.
7. Finally, we wish for clients to have realistic expectations. No, we do not oversell. At times, the client himself feels a huge surge of enthusiasm about Social Media. Which is perfectly fine, and good, in fact. However if this enthusiasm translates to an over expectation of results, that is tough to manage. The process of growth in Social Media is slow. Especially if done organically. Which is how most Social Media strategies are happening. Done right, the process can be made as efficient as possible. However, benchmarking with the television reach or looking for tens of thousands of fans and followers in double quick time, are all expectations that are bound to fail. A quick look at what other brands have managed, especially in their own segments, and then seeing how good or bad their own Social Media performance is, will be a good starting point to understand the positioning.

The above mentioned experiences are based across a variety of businesses, as from the outset itself, we saw clients from diverse verticals. From chemical engineering companies targeting B2B clients to television channels with millions of viewers, to electrical equipment manufacturers, software companies, hospitals, doctors, electronic device manufacturing companies, educational institutions, etc. We have seen, since then, that the prediction that within 2 to 3 years, everybody will be using Social Media is well on its way to coming true. It’s ahead of schedule actually!

All in all, it is exciting space. We are looking forward to working with many clients through 2010, and we will certainly hope to make a mark with few of our Social Media winning strategies, in course of the year. Watch this space J

Facebook users today were greeted with a message that a letter from founder Mark Zuckerberg was waiting for them. As this is not your every day occurrence, most of us ended up checking it out.

And while we found out that the galloping giant had moved beyond the 350 million user base number, it was also bringing about some significant changes in the coming days, to the way it has been functioning. While details about the exact implementation will be known over the next few weeks, there is enough information to generate many early reactions, to these changes.

I have a slightly different view to the opinions in that story in Business Standard.

1. On the subject of the regional networks which will not remain anymore, I have not seen any serious value to this so-called regional network, including the one of India. Networks, groups, communities are worth if they truly unify, generate exchanges and interactions, and are active. The specific Facebook Fan pages or groups that actually engage its members are the kind that are actively managed, have reasons for engagement, and have a common passion. Not the kind where you just ‘belong for the sake of belonging’. Regional networks were largely of the latter type.

2. The privacy factor, on the other hand is very crucial. As a father of two daughters who are active on Facebook, and as a consultant  and speaker on Social Media, this is one fact that I have highlighted many a times.

Let me explain with an example.

You go to a vacation at a beach resort, and have a rollicking time. Fun photos of the trip, including several in your two piece bikini find their way to your Facebook page. You are comfortable sharing these with your friends. After all, you have been selective about choosing your friends on Facebook. And as always, you get a lot of comments from your friends, on your photos.

Now few of your friends have large friend groups of their own, on Facebook. As they comment on your photo, a status update goes out to their friends, that <your_friend> has commented on <your> photo album. And in that status update, the ‘photo album’ is a link, that your friend’s friend can click on, and view!

Oops..that is not something that you expected / wanted / anticipated. And yet, you did not even realize that this could happen, because there were no apparent warnings (current version of Facebook also has selective privacy settings for many of its features, but often the default sharing is ‘everyone’ and most users do not realize the need to change it!).

And while that friend’s friend cannot comment on your photos, he can definitely view them, and should he have mal-intentions, he can do worse.

Not your best case scenario and something that is very real and happening, right now. I must admit for example, to not have any major celebrities as friends, but some of my friends have such friends. And once in a while when I see my friend commenting on their celebrity friends’ pics, I have been curious to check the pics out. I am sure the celebrity did not mean to share those with me, or many others like me!

So considering these risks, it is indeed a move in the right direction, to enable and basically prompt users to choose the level of sharing, for any piece of content that they update on Facebook. In a growing and large space, where abuse is so easy, even if it means a little change that we have to deal with, I think the privacy changes being proposed are a step in the right direction.

3. But does that mean that I will need to go and look over my hundreds of friends, one at a time, and set privacy settings for each of them? Surely that would be very tedious?

No, I don’t think that will be necessary at all.

Consider again:

a. At this time, the higher level of privacy was not present. It is being introduced. So whatever content you uploaded on to Facebook, you were comfortable to share that with whoever (largely, your friends) had access to it via your Facebook page. Just because you now have a choice to be selective, you do not HAVE to go and change privacy settings for your existing content. It was visible to your existing friends, and if you don’t do anything special, it will continue to be visible to them.

b. What is a choice for you is the NEW content that you will start uploading hereafter. At that point, while uploading, you may have a choice to decide if you want to share with friends, of friends of friends, or everyone. Again, as I read the open letter, it does not state anywhere that you will get to make selective permission settings within your friends. As long as someone is a friend, he is equal to all other friends. So you do not go and set levels of permissions to your various friends.

After all, Facebook wants to continue to remain a common user’s utility, and does not want to become a techie application. Multiple level of permission settings on users, is a techie activity, which I am sure, Facebook will not indulge in.

So what kind of consequences do I see as a result of these changes?

1. As an individual user, your privacy settings are certainly better protected. I would then recommend users to set their settings correctly, e.g. have private photo and video albums to be only shared with your friends and no one else. But if you post a link to your blog, which you actually want more people to reach, then that content can be allowed to be accessed by ‘everyone’. And of course, if it is just someone else’s content (like a neat video that you see), fell free to share it with ‘everyone’ again, as you have no need to protect that further!

2. But what if you are a brand? The one thing that brands found favorable about Facebook was its viral nature. Where good content could potentially fly on account of features like ‘share’ and ‘like’. Will Facebook become less viral now with these changes? Will your content not move that fast?

I would think not. Unless users make mistakes in their personal settings.

As a brand, the content that you produce, you will anyway want maximum people to see it. So you will not put any significant privacy protection levels on the same. You will set your content to be accessible to ‘everyone’ (as against only fans, or friends of fans or something like that). With that setting as your content moves out from your fans to others, there are no stops really. The viral aspect remains.

Unless.

Unless some users have made their settings such that “all that they share is only accessible to friends” and no one else. Ideally they want to protect their personal privacy, and would protect personal content, photos and all. But a mistake in user settings could well make ALL content that they share, only reachable to friends. In SUCH cases, the content that passes through such friends may perhaps stop flying as much, as it will not go to the level 2, beyond their friends.

This should not happen, but if it happens to a small degree, to that extent, the viral flight of good content may be diminished to an extent.

Other than these factors, I do not see major consequences of these new features of Facebook.

What are your thoughts? Have I missed something? Do you agree? Love to hear your thoughts on this.

Over the last approximately six months that we have been in business as a Social Media Agency, we have notched around 20 client engagements. Very interestingly and without intention, the clients are very diverse, from business vertical, size, geography as well as business focus (B2B vs B2C). In the process, we have had the singular good fortune to work on a variety of assignments, and have that rich experience being built.

But today I wanted to share with you, the diversity of attitudes of these clients.

What is the common factor amongst all of these clients, is that they are all early adopters. For almost none of them, was Social Media “necessary”. In the sense that today, their business would have had little impact whether they were engaging on Social Media or not. The reason then, that they ventured out and decided to get into Social Media, was because they thought bolder, they thought for the future, they are truly visionary as individuals. And we are glad to be associated with many such clients.

But other than being early adopters, in most other respects, the clients are quite different from each other.

There are few who have total trust in us. They are happy to hand over the reins (which means, the complete Social Media presence for their companies) to us, they are happy to let us run it. It does put a HUGE responsibility on us, to handle their brands with a lot of care. And perhaps, in that responsibility, we are obliged to handle these brands most diligently.

Then there are clients, who are large brands, and who know that a single wrong step could cause a lot of brand damage. Working with these brands involves vetting every single word that goes out into the Social Media space. The process is slowed down to an extent. Even after the material goes online, there are occasional corrections or changes. Sometimes we wonder if it is a bit too much. But then we realize that there have been such large investments that have led to these brands reaching the positions that they enjoy. And they can only err on the side of caution, and hence we do not mind the scrutiny!

Then we have this absolutely wonderful brand. A very prestigious brand with extremely high stakes. They have given us an elaborate set of dos and don’ts. From the language to the tone, everything has been specified. But at the end, we have been given a very categorical message. That they are convinced that we know more about Social Media than they do, and that they will like us to challenge them whenever we find them not getting it right, from the Social Media point of view. Extremely gracious and heartening.

A recent example with another client convinced me about how it is really early days in Social Media, still. And this is nothing personal, and I hasten to add this, since she may also read this blog! But I believe that a lot of folks in many organizations are grappling with the very same transition challenges that we experienced with her.

We have been working with this client for a while now. And doing the routine Social Media deliveries like Social Media Monitoring and their Twitter and Facebook accounts, but under their guidance, most of this has been restricted to a minimum level of engagement. When we recently suggested to her that Social Media is about mingling with customers, and where a brand needs to come out looking very human, and in that respect, we need to be a bit more open and more candid, perhaps even sharing the company picnic photos, or those birthday celebrations once in a while, she was hesitant. She was frank enough to let us know that while all of this may be true, she is yet to reach a point, where she can be comfortable about opening up in this manner. Or about mixing the official face with an internal more personal view of the company.

These may just be the transition challenges. Of going from the traditional world, to a ‘new’ world, or going from traditional communication channels to the new media challenges. And this may well be the hump to cross.

Different clients, different attitudes, different concerns..

Businesses are learning – nay, grappling – to cope with the realities of Social Media.

What about your company? Where do you see yourself fit? Or if you are an agency like ours, where do your clients fit? Would love to know your thoughts.

The title of this post might sound like it’s from a Dale Carnegie book. And sure it makes all the sense to listen well, in life. But here, I refer to the concept of listening in to the Social Media buzz. And the ample opportunity that it provides, to any brand, any company, any individual, today.

In our presentation (our own Social Media 101), we emphasize that the first opportunity for businesses on Social Media, is the opportunity to “listen”. It is an opportunity akin to eavesdropping the homes of your consumers, legitimately too

Listening enables you to get insights about your brand that you may not be aware of.

Listening can give you new product ideas, as you hear about the consumer’s wish list.

And many benefits of the kind.

And yet, as we speak about this, at events and to prospects, we have been asked questions like:

“Is it really worth it?”

“What do we do after listening?”

“Will it not be just too much conversation to manage and digest?”

“Are there such conversations happening, really?”

And after voicing such doubts, marketers return back to look at their advertising budgets, and decide to spend some more, just to make up for their diminishing returns on the earlier budgets! The low-resistance option. The option where you can buy yourself one month, or maybe three, to figure out why sales are down.

While all the time, the reality is there in front of the eyes, but the choice is made to ignore the reality, as it might just demand a lot more work.

Like a lot more analysis. “Those four conversations that were extremely negative about the product quality – how do they extrapolate to the larger quality challenge?” for example.

Or to figure out the real impact of a tweet recommending a competing product, from someone who has 5000 followers. What is the real “reach” of that message, and can it cause damage to your market share??

Say you find a thread of a complaint against one of your salesperson at one of your outlets. Do you ignore it and wish it will disappear or be forgotten? Or is it a PR crisis about to blow in your face?

All of these are tough questions, really. And there are many more of the kind.

It is easier to get them off your mind, and sit with your Excel spreadsheets, and figure out more media buy and more budget allocations. And hope that, in doing all of that, there is salvation. And a recovery of sales and of market share.

The fact is that you cannot wish away reality.

That the game is changing. And changing rapidly.

Increasing amount of purchase decisions – be they products or services, be they B2B or B2C – are being influenced, if not actually being made, via Social Media.

“Which phone should I buy?”, “Can you recommend me a good lawyer?”, “What’s your opinion of brand xyz?”, etc. are questions that you see all day long on Social Media.

Likewise, it just needs a few tweets or a particularly critical blog post, or a ‘caught in action’ video to pull a brand reputation down. One which had been built at great cost and one which will take even more cost to recover!

There IS real virtue in listening. Listening to the Social Media buzz. Listening to conversations about your brand, your company, your vertical, your competition.

Yes, these will take effort. To go over. To classify. To figure out the genuine from the junk. It will need time to understand the game, to come up with methods and strategies for this new reality. But you need to start somewhere. And the more you put off that start, the more difficult it will get to catch up.

To answer a simple question that someone asked us, “do such conversations happen, really?”. Okay – what kind of conversation can you expect to see on social media?

Those kind that you’d have with a friend over a drink.

Those issues that you discuss at a Parents-Teachers meeting.

The watercooler ones.

The chat that you have with your golfing mate, as you walk on them greens.

That chatter that is typical at a party, or at a dinner with friends.

The calls that you make to seek advice – on anything!

In short, any conversation that was natural to do offline, will now find its way on to the Social Media space. So go figure! Does your brand get discussed offline at all? Then, you can be sure to find such conversations on the social media space.

And then you can find some more.

“Because in my offline network, I might have not had the necessary expertise for say, those exclusive, high-end speakers that I was considering to purchase, or that piece of European art that fascinated me, or about a particular University in Ottawa that my child was planning to go to.”

Where the offline network stops, the online one is still accessible and alive.

And then to answer the other questions, “Will there not be too much data? How do I find it? How do I manage 1000s of conversations that come up?”

Well, this is where tools and service providers come to help.

Take for example, the SM2 Techrigy social media monitoring tool. Available in a Freemium model, it is something that you can immediately experiment with, and it can give you interesting insights in next to no time. Put in a set of keywords / phrases, tweak it with some conditions (language, geography etc.), and it starts pushing back to you, conversations from blogs, message boards, forums, video sites, social networking sites, twitter, etc. etc. that match your conditional requirements.

AND it does more. It gives you a basic sentiment track on all the conversations, it identifies the ‘influencers’ from the set of conversations, it enables an actionable workflow where you can assign the conversation to a team member. And many other such interesting features.

And in case you do not have internal team resources to manage this, or you want a higher level of value addition, there are service providers who can offer you that. In fact, our company provides services of the kind, where we do a manual read of all the conversations, do a more accurate sentiment tagging, and further tag the conversations around your areas of focus, such as quality issues, price issues, competition, product features, etc. That way, when you see a report, it is immediately actionable, no matter the quantity of posts that have been generated around your brand.

A few case studies of such social media monitoring work have been showcased earlier, on this blog.

In conclusion, I must share a job post that thrilled me no end, earlier this week. Even as we have been working hard to convince clients about the benefits of “listening to the social media”, we were happy to see Kodak announce a position of Chief Listener! That is amazing foresight, and acceptance and understanding of the new ways of doing business.

Whether you appoint a Chief Listener or decide to outsource your listening effort, do make a beginning. You will not regret, I assure you!

So are you already there ‘listening away’? Or what are your views / plans on the same? Would love to hear from you.

Disclosure: Social PR Outsourcing Pvt. Ltd., the parent company of Social Wavelength, is an authorised reseller for the SM2 Techrigy tool, for India.

Because customer conversations do not happen on your laptop’s C drive, they happen in the Social

space!

Say what? Yeah, ok, I kind of jumped the gun.

So let’s start at the beginning.

As we meet clients and talk to them about Social Media initiatives and strategies, many times, we realize that what we are advising is something that a client can so easily do himself. Well, not all parts of it, but many of the simpler ones.

So then, why does the company need us? Why can’t they do it themselves?

Some of the reasons in response to these questions:

1. Unless it is a day job, it does not get done well: There are times when there is a “mood” to jump into Social Media. Usually starts somewhere at the top levels of management. And the plunge is taken. Facebook page is started or a Twitter account initiated, or some blogging takes off. May even go on for a few months. And then, one of many things could happen:
   • a. The ‘champion’ of the project leaves the job, or
   • b. A joint venture initiative comes up, which occupies the mindshare, or
   • c. The CFO asks some awkward questions on resource utilization, etc.

   And the effort dies down. Slowly but surely, it fizzles out to a zero. Nobody even tries to clean up the mess. The ‘fans’ on the Facebook pages are left high and dry. Nobody responds back to the tweets. The blog looks like an abandoned ghost town.

   Impact on the brand? I am sure you can imagine!!

   If alternately, an agency was involved, such holes would not remain, usually.

2. You know all the stuff, but you do not how to present it: The business belongs to the client. She knows her business better than anyone else, and we, as Social Media consultants cannot even come close. However, with the client’s knowledge of her business, and her ability to put content together about the business, there may be a shortfall in the area of presentation.A very long blog post may be written, that no one reads through. Posts may sound too technical and boring. There may be a struggle to communicate in short for, say, 140 characters, for Twitter. And of course, fundamental language skills may not be that good.

   Here again, the Social Media Agency will fix all of these issues, and create content of suitable size, suitable style, and present it well.

3. There are only 24 hours in the day: Many times, we find that on the scale of good intentions, clients score 110%. That they want to go after Social Media and want to crack the puzzle, and they want to blog, and they want to tweet, and they want to do everything that comes in between. And they want to do it themselves too.With that kind of earnestness, the task begins and is taken up. The ‘honeymoon’ period goes like a breeze. They are frequent blog posts, there are regular updates on Facebook, on Twitter, etc. And then…. then, a big tender / RFP comes up, and getting that business could mean wonders for the client. OR, perhaps there are some regulatory / compliance issues that come up and grab the time of the client. And the first casualty of time is the Social Media plan. Because it is not delivering short term results!

   A Social Media agency would ensure against gaps of this kind!

4. The best things that you do are also often, your best-kept secrets: Most companies have, over time, worked on some amazing projects, some outstanding work for their clients. In doing so, they satisfied their clients no end, perhaps even earned some bonuses for themselves. They have probably even made a case study document out of this, with an intention of showing it to some other client, if a similar case comes up.There are also times when companies have come up with this brilliant presentation about themselves, and which they shared to their bankers or potential investors or while pitching for some new accounts.

   Such case studies, such presentations are then, hanging around somewhere in the C drives of computers. And sitting there, they do not have a chance to impress anyone else.

   A Social Media Agency will typically prompt the client to come out with such “secrets” and which are then showcased strategically, via Social Media, and then, have a chance to reach a wider audience!

In conclusion, I repeat that as a Social Media Consultant, or a Social Media Agency, there is almost nothing that I can do, which my client cannot do. There is scarcely any ‘technical’ skill that I bring forth, that a client would not have.

The only reason then, for a client to engage us, is because, “we will get Social Media done”, and left to themselves, clients may or may not do it consistently / regularly!

Yes, I generalize to an extent, to make the point. What do you think, though? In your experience, do you think this generalization is valid?

Enough now, about where the money is in Twitter! I would like to answer that question here and now!!

Now, you could be selling bananas in Denver, CO or you could be an agent for printing machinery in New York, or you could be a hot shot investment banker in Singapore or you could be running a play school in Mumbai. I may not be able to answer the question for all of you in just this one post.

But I will take a generic example, and hope you can figure out your hypothesis from this example. And find your own pot of gold from Twitter, if you can

So the most generic example will have to be one, where someone is seeking to sell, and make money as a result. So say, you are a small store selling laptop computers or books or clothes or cameras or whatever! If Twitter had to work for you and make some money for you, you would want it to point you to buyers of your products, isn’t it? Can Twitter do this? It sure can.

As a salesman, making cold-calls, what would be the perfect timing? To be at the right place at the right time! Like you were a salesman of guitars, and you walk into a home, just as the parents have decided that they will get their son a new guitar. Could it get any better for you, as a salesman?

Can Twitter play out this fantasy for you? Sure, if you would only stop and look.

If a person was in the mood of purchasing something, what would she say to herself? Or to her friends? What kind of statements are typical of this stage of buying?

“Planning to buy”, “Thinking of getting”, “Thinking of buying”, “Which one should I get”, “Should I buy”, etc. etc. Isn’t this obvious?

Now, Twitter being nothing but simple conversations of this kind, these are the kind of phrases that people use ALL the time. And you as a seller can simply look up the public timeline of Twitter, and find the people who are using these phrases!

No, you do not need thousands of followers for doing this. No, you do not need to be a Dell or an HP to do this. No, you do not need any programming skills to do this.

In short, this simple trick is available for anyone who chooses to use it. And then dig that one step deeper to find those buyers who are looking to buy what you sell, and perhaps, in the areas, where you sell. And you are on! At the right place, at the right time.

Check out these searches on http://search.twitter.com and once you have got it, and if you are a seller, you will not ask the question again, “Where’s the money in Twitter?”!

Now if you are not selling something, but you are into other activities, you just need to extrapolate the example shown above, for your own area of interest.

So if yours is a medical practice looking to attract patients, you may want to track the phrases, “looking for a cure”, “cure for”, “know a doctor” and such.

So did you find your magic phrases? Is there enough Twitter traffic for those? Good, so keep counting the cash, then! Cheers!