Why do you need a Social Media Agency?

by sanjay on Friday, July 17th, 2009

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?

17.07.2009 General, Sanjay, Services View Comments

Listening to iPod Speakers: How Social Media Monitoring can lead to Actionable Insights & More

by mihir on Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

Executive Summary: Is Social Media Monitoring just an academic exercise, or can it lead to concrete benefits to the Brand? We conducted a Monitoring exercise to find out. The chosen domain was iPod and iPhone speakers and docks. To know more about what we found, read on. (Hint: It was the latter)

The method used for conducting this Social Media Monitoring exercise was essentially similar to the previous exercises carried out by us (Online Travel Sector in India and Hybrid Cars – Whats the Social Media Buzz). The study differed however, in that we completely focused on deriving points of action from it. We specifically chose this particular market  (iPhone and iPod docks) to conduct the exercise, because it was very close to another market/domain (iPods and iPhones themselves) which have a very high level of noise. We would have to ensure, therefore, that the search was very well defined, so that the number of irrelevant results retrieved would be kept in check. The entire exercise involved:

  1. Identifying the appropriate search terms to enter into the Social Media Monitoring tool, so as to reduce the number of irrelevant results retrieved. (We restricted the searches to retrieve four days worth of data, June 12th to June 15th)
  2. Running the searches, and allowing the Software to perform a first level classification of the results.
  3. Our Social Media Executives cleaning up the results, to remove all the irrelevant ones.
  4. Higher level, intelligent classification, categorization by our Executives.
  5. Analyzing these results to extract points of action, and identifying influencers.

Our learning:

If I was a company about to launch an iPod Dock/Speaker system, what would be the features I would ensure that my product had? Apart from the obvious feature, viz. Good Audio output, our monitoring exercise revealed two features which were highly appreciated:

  1. Compatibility with different generations of iPhones/iPods: What may seem to be an obvious enough feature, was not present in some models (eg. Bose SoundDock Portable). Conversely, whenever a mention was made of a dock which had this feature, it was highly praised (eg. GenevaSound Medium).
  2. Ability to charge your device while music is being played: This feature, as well, wherever present was highly praised (eg. Harmon Kardon Go + Play). Yet, not all systems seem to have this feature.

On Social Media, Issues resurface, constant vigilance is required. The Bose SoundDock Portable, mentioned above, had a problem. Days after the 3G iPhone was released on 11th July 2008, people started talking about issues with the SoundDock Portable. While charging the iPhone 3G, the dock made a popping/clucking sound, every 5 minutes. This was reported on a particular thread on the Apple Support forums. We saw users helping each other, recounting  their interactions with Bose’s support  (which incidentally, did not reply in the thread). The problem was solvable, requiring the users to send the dock to Bose, who would modify it and send it back. As it happens, three new posts was posted on the the same thread, on 15th June 2009 (which is why the tool picked it up).  These people had the same issue, one year later, and still had to help each other solve it.

Action Required:

We identified results, which merited response as ‘Action Required’ results. They were further classified into ‘Action Required: First Level Response’ and ‘Action Required: Escalate to Customer Service’. Within these four days, we found three results on which we determined action would be required, in terms of escalating those three results to Customer Service. They were all related to the Bose SoundDock and problems associated with the same. The first Action Required result was about Bose SoundDock not being able to charge a users iPod Touch. The second and third results were from the apple support forums, with users talking about the popping/clucking sounds being made by the SoundDock Portable.

Influencer Identification:

From among the various sources where iPod docks were spoken about, Social Media Monitoring also helps us identify the influencers, viz. sources with the widest reach. While the largest number of reviews of various iPod docking systems were on the blog Smart Reviews Online, the popularity rating for this particular blog was 2 (out of a maximum possible rating of 10). On the other hand, the blog Geek.com, which did not always talk about iPod docks, had a popularity rating of 10 (highest rating possible). The only talk about iPod docks on geek.com in this time frame was about the passPORT home dock enables the Soundock to charge iPods while playing them. Another big influencer, with a popularity rating of 10 (source with highest reach or popularity) was, unsurprisingly Apple’s support forums, which had a single thread active, with only three posts during this time frame. It became clear, that frequency of posting (which may lead to a particular blog/channel being seen as influential) may not really be the most popular source.

The above study is an illustration of how monitoring Social Media can very clearly be used to derive well defined and specific action steps. It also helps in identifying which are the most influential sources of information about your product or brand.

The categorization done by our analysts, opens up opportunities for some interesting insights. First let us look at what is the ratio of relevant to irrelevant results from the one’s extracted by the tool:

How do users percieve your brand? What are the thoughts, words they associate with your company? We can analyze the themes being touched upon on Social Media, when people are talking about your brand. In this example, we did this themes analysis on the entire set of relevant results, viz. across brands.

In the tag cloud shown above, larger the size of the word/tag, more closely it is associated with the brand (in this case across brands). The above cloud, for example reveals that the word ‘System’ is very closely associated with speakers/docks, something which should be considered while thinking of a branding strategy for your next product. The word ‘dock’ is individually bigger than ‘speaker’, however, the word ‘speakers’ also figures prominently in the tag cloud.

Now that we know the themes being touched, we want to see which domains have the maximum volume of conversations about iPod Docks and Speakers (a reminder, we are doing this study for the four day period from 12th June to 15th June. It can easily be conducted for longer durations, and on an ongoing basis). The most popular domains, which spoke about iPod speakers, were as per the following image:

If we look at the above graph carefully, we see that there are two posts on Craigslist. Which means there is probably a resales market for iPod docks. We classified these posts concerning resale, and now we can see, which brand has the most resale related posts  for the given duration:

These resale related posts were not restricted to Craigslist alone. Done on an ongoing basis, this can help identify the size of the resale market for a particular brand, or even a particular product.

In previous Social Media Monitoring exercises, we have seen some basic data analysis, including Ratio of Tone within brand, Tone analysis related to product etc. As we can see in this post, much more complex and insightful analysis is possible.

Your questions/comments are invited. What other insights would you like to be able to draw from Social Media?

If you wish to download the White Paper for this study (PDF), you can visit the Resources Page on our website.

14.07.2009 Services, Uncategorized, customer service, iPod Speakers, mihir, social media monitoring View Comments

Twitter – where is the money?? Ok – here it is!!

by sanjay on Thursday, June 25th, 2009

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! :)

25.06.2009 General, Monetization, Sanjay, twitter View Comments

Social Media is like life, and hence it’s not a fad!

by sanjay on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

In the course of my talks and presentations, one of the questions that keeps coming back from marketers and nay-sayers alike, is ‘if social media is one more fad which will die away in a matter of time’?

And I say, ‘no’. It will not.

Orkut could be a fad, Myspace could be a fad, hey Twitter could also be a fad, and so also Facebook. The brands can be popular today and gone tomorrow. But the fundamental ‘Social Media’ itself is here to stay. And the reason I am convinced is because Social Media gives us a release to do what we anyway want to do as humans. It enables us to be our natural selves!

It is natural for example, to want to make new friends. Or to stay in touch with older friends. Or to want to be creative. Or to express exhibitionism. Or to be altruistic. Or to pay it forward. Or to seek validation from peers. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Such natural instincts were there before the advent of Social Media. All of us may identify with some of the above as being a part of our nature. Some of the above will appeal to nearly all human beings. And because Social Media allows all of these to happen, almost everyone will find something or the other to capture her interest. Which then, explains the large scale adoption and growth of Social Media.

On the other hand, it was NOT natural to get up in the morning, and flick your fingers all over the Rubik’s cube. It was not natural for racking your brains to find the digits in the squares in a Sudoku puzzle. Which is why, Rubik’s cube or Sudoku were fads while they lasted, but they do not capture the attention of people, to that extent, anymore!

So to repeat, since the technologies are available and will not go into reverse gear, Social Media, in one form or another, with one brand name or another, is here to stay!

Some more examples of how Social Media is similar to society and life, in general:

1. Think of getting into a Social Media community as being similar to getting admitted to an exclusive club. If you get admitted to a club that is very selective of its membership, and then on day one, as you enter the place and see people gathered around, if you go and thrust your hand forward, pull out your business cards, and suggest to them that they buy their insurance from you, there will be a review of your admission to the club, in double quick time.

Same is the case with a Social Media community. And yet I see this rule being violated so often. In a very closed community of alumni of our college, where there are such engaging conversations, I saw an out-of-the-blue email from a silent member – one who has NEVER posted till date – to offer his services. No hello, no hi, just the URL of his service. Can it get more self-defeating?? And yet, we see these instances all too often.

Sure, business happens in those exclusive clubs, and on the golf ranges, and it will certainly happen in Social Media communities too. But you have to bide your time, get to know the people, generate the relationships, and then when a certain comfort is established, sure enough, exploit the synergies, for win-win business opportunities!

Unfortunately, marketers plunging into Social Media often look at it, as one more sales channel, and with targets hovering in their heads, want to rush things here too!!

2. But marketers often have a different explanation to such issues. That is the explanation given for telemarketing. Even as most of us complain and curse the intruding telemarketing calls, the calls keep happening. Simply because the larger ROI on these, is attractive to the brand. That few people are disturbed and curse does not matter to them. The end results matter to them, and which are attractive by and large.

So will these marketers also justify then, the quick push of the business card, soon after joining a Social Media community? And only worry about the percentages?? If they do attempt that, their strategy will be a dismal failure on Social Media, even if they have managed to get away on telemarketing:

a. You can actually un-follow / block people on social media, unlike on the phone,

b. You can condemn a brand quickly, on a magnified scale, on social media; when you get irritated on phone with a telemarketer, your ire is not easily broadcast,

c. On Social Media, people will remember longer. You could have ruined your prospects for long!

3. That brings to the fore, another parallel. How best to utilize the social network, to work a business around it? In the offline world, for long, MLM successes like Amway have shown the way to use, with discretion, with subtlety, your network, to generate a business opportunity. Yes, there are MLM haters and I certainly am no MLM person, but when a model has worked for long, and with a lot of commercial success, it is undeniable. Not all MLM-ers have got it right, but those who have, have done with the right strategy, I am sure.

In quite the same manner, will emerge the subtle strategies on using your online social network or community to position your business goals, without being intrusive, without being obnoxious. And when you master that, you would have got Social Media marketing working for you!!

Do you see other parallels between Social Media and life? Share those. Makes for interesting understanding of this phenomenon that is happening in front of our eyes!!

24.06.2009 General, Sanjay View Comments

Was this Social Media in the Web 1.0 world?

by sanjay on Sunday, June 14th, 2009

Two things have prompted this post.
There was some chatter, I think on Twitter, or perhaps on some blog, about how long one has been on “social media”. There were responses that mentioned periods like few months, 1 year, and going upto 3 years or so, on the outside. I did not participate in that chatter / discussion, because I felt funny. Have I been on Social Media for last 2-3 years, or last 12 years?? I know I would have raised a lot of eyebrows if I had mentioned 12 years there! So let me put up the facts here and allow you to decide. By the way, most of those people in that discussion must have still been in school 12 years back :-)

The other reason that prompted this post was the slide that we put in our corporate pitch. We write there that:

Social Wavelength is a startup venture, incorporated in April 2009.

Social Wavelength though, has been many years in the making!

This is an effort then, to explain the idea of the “many years in the making” that we mention.

So here it is. Way back in 1997, when there were just a handful of websites in India, my first entrepreneurial venture, Homeindia.com, was one of those sites. And although later on, from 1998 onwards, it moved towards the e-retail space that was to be it’s focus thereafter (and continues to be, as on date, although the business is run by it’s new owners after we divested our stake in 2007), in those early days of 1997, Homeindia.com had a different focus. Here is a screenshot, without images, that I was able to pick up from archive.org:

In 1997, the government of India, under Finance Minister, Mr. P. Chidambaram, had announced this Voluntary Disclosure of Income Scheme (VDIS) that enabled unaccounted income (from tax point of view) to be converted to accounted money. There were a lot of questions that people had, in this context. We had enabled a Bulletin Board on Homeindia.com, that time. While we had empaneled some experts to respond to people’s queries, but in addition to the experts, it was also open to any user, to respond to another user’s queries.

Over the few weeks when this scheme ran, there was large amount of interaction, and it became a veritable case of “user generated content” and a “community” of sorts, although those terms were not really fashionable those days!!

So did we run a Social Media application in those Web 1.0 days, in 1997? I think we did. What do you say?

In fact, over the next 9 years that we ran Homeindia.com, there were many other applications that we built and launched, which had high engagement with the users.

But to go back to the original two questions, I do believe that I have been engaging in ‘Social Media’ for a long, long time. And also on account of that 11+ years of hands-on experience in running these consumer facing online businesses, I have reason to state that Social Wavelength has been many years in the making!

Do you agree? As usual, welcome comments and feedback.

** For information of readers, I co-founded Homeindia.com in 1997-98. After the initial efforts in areas like VDIS, the site quickly regrouped to focus on offering services to customers outside India, including Non-resident Indians and others. Homeindia.com had the honor of being awarded “India’s Most Useful Website”, and subsequently took the onus of being “India’s Most Reliable Online Store”. I divested my stake in Homeindia.com in 2007. **

- Sanjay Mehta

14.06.2009 General, Sanjay, WebsitePlus, social media monitoring View Comments

Social Media Monitoring of Travel Sector in India

by mihir on Saturday, June 13th, 2009

Having done an exhaustive Social Media Analysis of the the Indian Elections 2009, we shifted focus to the Travel sector in India. The focus of this monitoring exercise was to extract information and learning which might be useful to Travel Agencies as well as Travel Portals based in India. We wanted to explore Social Media Monitoring as a method of generating leads and identifying prospective clients. We also wanted to see whether it can be used as a feedback mechanism by players in this sector. For the purpose of this exercise, we restricted the search to the 5 day period of 1st June to 5th June 2009 (which is towards the waning end of the travel/holiday season).

Objectives:

  1. Extract data related to Travel sector in India using Social Media Monitoring tools

  2. Using human intervention, validate whether the search results are relevant/useful for travel agencies of travel portals.

  3. Categorize the data in a manner which will make it easier to consume/easier to base decisions on.

  4. Derive conclusions/learning, if any.

Process:

For performing the initial search, we used industry leading Social Media Monitoring tools. We set up queries for looking up some of the travel websites/portals from India (cleartrip, makemytrip etc.). Apart from this, we set up searches which focused on generic travel related words and phrases (‘travel’, ‘vacation’, ‘journey’, ‘trip’ etc.).

We then came up with a categorization strategy, with the focus being categories which we thought might be useful to the various Travel Agencies (online or offline) as well as Travel Portals.

As mentioned previously, we restricted the search only for items (content created) between the 1st and 5th of June 2009.

Our Content Analysts then looked at the data retrieved by the monitoring tool. The activities performed by the Content Analysts included:

  1. Identifying relevant and non relevant items from within the returned search results, and classifying them as such.

  2. Categorizing content on the basis of the source of the content.

  3. Categorizing all the content pieces according to the categorization strategy mentioned previously.

  4. After human intervention, doing a before-after comparison on the data.

  5. Extracting conclusions from this higher quality data.

Results and Findings:

In the time frame of 1st June to 5th June, the total number of results picked up by the tool was 672. The first finding, of course is the number of relevant and irrelevant results. Fully 86.75 % of the results were deemed irrelevant, from the Point of view of value to travel agencies and portals. The remaining 13.25% of results were deemed to be relevant.

From the relevant results, we drilled down further, by the categories we had set up. The results are tabulated below:

Category Number (percentage) of relevant results
Planning Stage of travel
Early 1 (1.1%)
Mid 1 (1.1%)
Planned (late) 1 (1.1%)
Promotions 10 (11%)
Prospects

India Travel

 3 (3.3%)

International Travel

 0 (0%)
Travel Reason*

Business

 0 (0%)

Pleasure

 1 (1.1%)

Religious

 2 (2.2%)

Unknown

 1 (1.1%)

*Travel can be for multiple reasons

Here are the snippets of the posts/tweets which were classified in different planning stages (early, mid and planned):

Finally, we did an analysis of how much is the chatter around various Online Travel brands in the Social Media space. Here are the results of that analysis:

Conclusions Drawn and Learnings:

  1. The percentage of relevant results in the total number of results retrieved in 13.25%. Using search results (even from industry leading tools) without a layer of human intervention will not be very efficient, or even very accurate.
  2. Realistic leads (at various stages of planning) can be generated from Social Media. While the percentage may seen small, it must be kept in mind that the search was restricted to a 5 day period, from 1st June to 5th June (which is towards the end of the holiday season.)
  3. There is a large difference between the amount of chatter around the larger Indian travel portals in the social media space.

Comments are of course, invited.

If you wish to download the White Paper for this study (PDF), you can visit the Resources Page on our website.

13.06.2009 india, mihir, resources, social media monitoring, travel View Comments

Social Media Strategies and Case Studies

by mihir on Friday, June 12th, 2009
Also contains a little pitch about the services which Social Wavelength offers for fulfillment of your Social Media needs.

12.06.2009 Services, mihir, presentation, resources View Comments

Can Social Media Make Your Invisible Site Visible?

by sanjay on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

There was a lot of discussion generated around my earlier post, about the Invisible Website Syndrome. Besides the comments and discussions on the blog here, there were many interactions on other forums like LinkedIn, where the content was shared. It brought forth several perspectives on the subject. I am summarizing my thoughts now, with the added learning from those interactions.

At the outset, let’s ask the tough question? Do you really need a lot of traffic to your website at all? Do you need high visibility for your website? Maybe not. Yes, indeed, you need good visibility for your content. But that is not the same as good visibility for your website. Simply because content is mobile. Your content could be delivered to your readers / viewers via RSS feeds, widgets, embedded video players, and you may even choose to give summaries or full content replicated at higher traffic locations like social networking sites. That being the case, your content is visible, but not necessarily your website. What you need to be sure about, is to ensure the mobility of your content. Don’t constrain it.

There is no getting away from the fact that your content has to be good. Whether through advertising, whether through social media, whether through search engines, whether by putting a gun on someone’s head, whichever way, if you get traffic to your content, that is only the beginning. Will they stay and read? Will they want to see further updates? Will they Digg you, will they tag you in Delicious? Will they share your URL? Will they tweet and retweet your URL? All of those decisions impact further visibility of your content. And those decisions, in turn, depend on the quality of your content. So there is no getting away from creating interesting, relevant, useful content for your target prospects.

This is akin to the customer acquisition process in a store. The first time customer acquisition cost is high. But it is justified by the life time value of the customer (the repeat purchases, where there is no spend on customer acquisition anymore) or the referral cases that the customer brings. If those repeat purchases and referrals do not happen, then the customer acquisition cost is typically a loss to the company. Same is with generating visibility of your content. Good quality content, that is mobile enough, will ensure that amortization of the ‘customer acquisition cost’.

So what become the key pointers to a strategy, once you have good content and you have set up the mobility factor on your content?

  1. Ensure that the basic HTML code (typically) of the pages is done “correctly”. There are many tools available to test the compliance of the code, and it is a good idea to ensure those efforts are taken. This is because, a page can easily look right on a browser in spite of the HTML not being correct. This is on account of your browser ‘covering up the errors’ and showing the page correctly. But for a search engine bot that may come to crawl the pages into the search engine, may not be able to move into your page and ‘read it’ well, if there are HTML errors. And that will prevent your pages getting into the search engines. It is a very fundamental point but I mention it here, only on account of the number of pages that we see, where this has been ignored.
  2. Ensure that the page is basically done well, in terms of on-page SEO effort. A large part of the on-page SEO effort is good common sense, e.g. giving relevant page title, giving a descriptive URL to the page, using relevant H1 links, putting proper meta tags for keywords and description, etc. An experienced HTML programmer should usually get these aspects right, and should not need specialized SEO effort. Doing this makes the site fundamentally search-engine friendly. It does not ensure immediate search engine placement, but it is a start.
  3. Having done all this, and having got your site ‘ready’, now is the time to get started on the process of visibility generation. A good start is to send out the URL to friends, family, business associates, etc. who may be interested in having a look at the website. Several of them may come and take a look and few of them may end up bookmarking these, at any of their favorite sites like Delicious, Digg, Reddit, etc. This enables sharing of the content at those bookmarking sites, with a possibility of discovery from there. And hence traffic.
  4. It is also assumed that you are already active on social networking sites, Twitter, etc. Also that you are part of relevant groups or communities on these social networking sites. If you are not, then it is a good idea to become a member and then mingle in those relevant groups and communities. As one who has been a member for a while and been a participant in the groups and communities, it is alright then, to share the URL of your new website, with the group / community. You can also tweet about it. It is a good idea to share a small note on why it would be good for people to go and see your site (“what’s in it for them?”). You may also request folks to ‘RT’ your tweet about your website.
  5. Once you have shared it with your friends and groups on Social Networking sites, and you have tweeted the URL, you have to hope that it spreads further. You have to remember and appreciate this quote of Mike Arauz: “If I tell my Facebook friends about your brand, it’s not because I like your brand, but because I like my friends”. If your content is good, your friends will tell their friends and so on. You also have to hope many of the viewers coming in via these viral means, will also end up bookmarking and tagging your site, and the spread of your site will increase further, through those tools.
  6. I did mention in my previous post how tough it would be to penetrate the SERPs in Google, on account of the sheer congestion. However there are opportunities left out elsewhere, e.g. a) you can run a corporate blog, and there are better chances of it getting linked in, either at Google itself (thanks to WordPress, for example), b) besides just posting links to social networking groups / communities, you could consider getting a social networking profile for the business itself, c) put up pictures related to the business, with necessary descriptions and tags, on sites like Flickr and Picasa – those could get searched faster and better, and drive traffic back to the rest of your content, d) do the same with videos – create good corporate videos and plug them into variety of video feed sites like YouTube, Metacafe, DailyMotion and others, with your branded channel, proper tags, descriptions etc. Like the images, this will also drive traffic back to the rest of your content.
  7. Last, but certainly not the least (and I must mention this, before the SEOs strangle me!), there is the SEO factor. Once you start generating traffic inwards to your website from these various places, and such traffic is coming in, on basis of specific keyword phrases, it is a good idea to reinforce the site’s standing for those very keywords, with a structured SEO effort, including off-page activities like link building and others. This works to cement your place in the higher positions on the search engines.

By no means are the above suggestions an exhaustive list. But these are all tried and tested, and these can be a good set to get started. Good ground will be covered only by meticulously following these guidelines. Once you get going with this set and develop the initial visibility, a higher level of effort may be put to sustain the visibility, and grow it further.

Do you see any major fundamentals missed out of this list? Share them via comments, then.

09.06.2009 Sanjay, WebsitePlus View Comments

Why India does not have a customer service attitude, and why Social Media will change that!

by sanjay on Monday, June 1st, 2009

** There is a website visibility blog series, which is in the working. Meanwhile, pitching in with this post. **

The inspiration for this post comes from some interactions with Indian brand managers, where we got a suggestion that Social Media may not be on their priority, simply because there isn’t enough of their target market, out there, just yet. When we talked about possible brand reputation risks, and suggested that at least a good social media monitoring exercise should fall in place (quoting cases like the Domino’s story, for example), responses suggested that ‘there have been numerous complaints of cockroaches found in Coke bottles, but that has not hurt their sales growth one bit’.

So why are we like this, in India? Why does customer service come low on priority?

I have personally had outstanding experiences with companies like American Express (for lost traveler checks), Southwest Airlines (for last minute change of bookings, etc.), Cort furniture rental (when I had a short 4 month stay in the Bay Area) etc. I have also heard / read stories of other customer-centric brands like Nordstrom.

But ALL of these are from outside India. I cannot think of one outstanding customer service experience that I would like to talk about, in an Indian context (perhaps, Orange County, Coorg might make the cut for me). Considering that I have spent far more time within the country than outside it, this makes for a generally pathetic state of affairs. Why so?

My analysis of reasons why Indian brands are not too concerned about customer service is:

  1. There are just too many of us! When you have a bad experience at a restaurant, curse your way out and promise to never step in again, does that impact that restaurant’s business? Not by much. There are new suckers who are willing to try him out, each day, day after day. Think about a mobile phone or mobile service provider problem?! With millions of new users coming in each month, do they feel threatened by the dissatisfaction of a single customer?
  2. Our ‘chalta hai’ culture. We accept mediocrity. Of ourselves. And hence of the service we get. We are a service provider (to an internal customer or an external customer) as much as we are a service consumer. And when we are prepared to accept mediocrity of ourselves as a service provider, the same comes back to us as a recipient of service. And in our true ‘chalta hai’ spirit, we accept it!
  3. The slow legal system. So the automobile garage short changed you. You can even prove it. What good does that do? You know you do not have the time for the painfully slow courts of law. And other than taking the law in your own hands, you do not have any other resort. So you resign yourself to your bad luck while the garage continues to give shoddy service.
  4. The lack of an effective consumer movement. Again, we have a more active consumer protection mechanism than earlier, but for the size of our economy, it is still too little, and too late. There is no serious case of ‘consumer backlash’. Even with the high media attention that the ‘fertilizer in Coke and Pepsi’ case got, I do not believe their sales were dented by much.
  5. The lack of a strong, single point media vehicle that can go after these cases. Yes, when it suits them, mainstream media takes up some of the cudgels. But there are always other ‘breaking news’ fighting for the minutes or the column inches, and the brands at fault, just need to wait out the time. On the other hand, there has not emerged in the online space, any strong brand that can just work to take up the cause for the consumers. At least, none with a serious brand recall.
  6. The freeloader attitude that many of us have. Why can’t a brand offer “30 days free replacement” in India? The kind that is a par-value service offering in the western worlds? Because it would be a disaster. Unfortunately, coming from a ‘shortage economy’ legacy that we do, we have a tendency to grab whatever is on offer for free. If there is a 30-days free replacement, you would find the longest queues for returning these, on the 29th day, after using the items for those many days. Likewise, brands may assume that any leeway given in terms of customer service could end up getting abused. In a restaurant that I know, they will not allow on a single table, people having a buffet and a la carte meals. Because they fear that the smaller a la carte ordering folks, will end up sharing the one free unlimited buffet that is ordered! Unfortunate, but true representation of the average Indian L

It is for all these reasons that we do not see brands and companies getting particularly aggressive towards excellent customer service, and we continue to suffer, as consumers.

Moreover it is for these reasons that companies often do not much care about Online Reputation Monitoring, as they figure that it does not matter!

However I strongly believe that brands and companies are missing a trick, as they ignore this Online Reputation monitoring effort, and believe that it does not matter in India.

  1. Online memory is longer. While stories that came in the newspapers or on TV are fresh only as long as the stories are alive, online, these stories do not die. They are searchable, they are accessible, and they can haunt you at the least expected moment of time!
  2. Snowball effect. What could start as a whimper or one dissatisfied voice, could soon convert into a community of dissatisfied users, and then become a snowball. Dissatisfied customers in Cochin, Mangalore, Patiala, Lucknow, Pune..wherever.. are now connected. By the medium known as Social Media!! And in size, their voice is amplified and the whimper can become a big holler!
  3. When social goes mainstream. Domino’s went from YouTube to the New York Times in 3 days. When such transitions happen, God help your brand. You do not really want to wait for that to happen. Stem it while you can, should be the mantra.
  4. You may have many customers, but you have few bankers, investors, joint venture partners. Once you slide down the reputation path, and have tons of bad press (well, more like bad ‘web-content’) , then you may just find it getting tougher to get bankers to trust you, to have investors putting in money or giving you a decent valuation, or to get joint venture partners. Because of our population, customers may still come, but margins may go down, as the premium factor disappears!
  5. And what about people? Good resources do not want to work with companies having bad reputation. Not when they have a choice. If you choose to ignore the complaints, customers will write, blog, tweet, shout. And these noises will keep good talent away from your company!
  6. This can haunt you at the most unexpected and inopportune moment. When you are going for the IPO and your papers are filed, your competitor might just pull out all that dirt from the web and social media archives, and ensure that it gets the maximum visibility. Since content does not disappear here, you always carry this risk!

It should be clear then, that even if you are selling in a seller’s market, reputation matters today! And especially online reputation or reputation being created via Social Media conversations. It is important to monitor Social Media for social chatter about your brand, your competition, your vertical, and be alert on any unusual developments.

Of course, it is critical that the company gets customer focused in the process, and does not allow much customer ire to happen, in the first place. In many cases, these may be a significant cultural change to bring about!

Do you think Social Media will impact our attitude towards customer service? What is your opinion on Social Media’s role as a reputation builder/breaker? Looking forward to a great discussion.

** Social Wavelength offers the service of Social Media monitoring. Social Wavelength will use industry standard software tools to tap all conversations around a brand. This can generate a very large amount of data, though. Our social media executives then work to ‘clean up the data’ and tag the conversations on various parameters, enabling effective and actionable reporting to clients. In cases where brand reputation sensitivity is extremely crucial, Social Wavelength can also offer 24×7 Real Time Online Reputation Monitoring and Reporting. For more information, please email info@socialwavelength.com. **

01.06.2009 Sanjay, customer service, india, social media monitoring View Comments

The Invisible Website Syndrome

by sanjay on Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

Few weeks back, we considered the option to outsource some routine, simple web development work. With that in mind, we started interacting with web development companies, all of whom had some stature, viz. they were at least 50-100 person teams, and they had a client list that was at least in 3 figures.

In my meetings with them, I would ask them to name their best website work, which I could review. Just so as to understand how good are the sites which they consider to be their best. And as I saw those “best” sites of theirs, all of them ‘looked good’ (typical flash work, great graphics, etc.), but none – repeat none – were SEO friendly. When I queried them about this fact, they defensively claimed that “oh, these clients just wanted a web presence and were not concerned about SEO”.

What is the meaning of “just wanted a web presence”?? And ALL of them had the same defense??

So I went to the next step – asked them to show me their OWN websites. The company website of the web development business. Disaster! None of them would ever get a lead from being found on a search engine!!

That sadly is the story of the day. When web development companies and their clients are in such deep mess, think about what can be the status of a typical new business, going out and putting up its website?!

Indeed, this is a phase of the ‘invisible website‘.

Let me drive home the point. Say you are in the business of diamond jewelry, and spurred by all the noise on going digital, you decide to put your business online, and create a website. Now you would need to get your target customers to visit this site, right? And you would expect search engines to drive traffic to your new website, right?

Well, that’s not going to happen!! WHY?

Try searching for ‘diamond jewelry‘ on Google. You get nearly 20 million matches.

Okay, so you are in India. So you say that you don’t care for the entire world to find you. If someone is searching for ‘diamond jewerly India’ and if you can get found that is good enough for you. Well, ‘diamond jewlery India‘ returns around 800,000 matches!

Compromise time. “Let me get Mumbai at least”, you feel. Next stop ‘diamond jewelry mumbai‘. About 335,000 matches!! Yeah, you would wonder about it, no? I am sure there are not so many jewelers selling diamond jewelry in Mumbai, but the search matches are surely there!!

Is there ANY hope at all? Let’s try ‘diamond ring 0.2 ct mumbai‘. Finally – a smaller number of search results! But still around 18,500.

Now you get the concept of “the invisible website”?

So how do you STILL make an impact with a website. Here is where Social Media comes to the rescue. Whether you reach the entire world or not, you certainly want to reach a far higher number of people beyond those that get your business card and who want to then, check your site out.

So the subject of my next post will be (and leave your thoughts about this in the comments): “So how exactly can Social Media make the invisible site visible??”

26.05.2009 Sanjay, WebsitePlus View Comments

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