Do I need to learn code to use this platform? Let’s find out.
Ten Reasons Why You Should Use Paid “Influencers”.
You read that right. I’ve crossed over to the dark side!
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you would have seen discussion and debate on “paid” hashtags – trends that are achieved via spam-tweeting scr
ipted tweets. These simulate popularity, and trick the Twitter trend algorithm into believing that the hashtag is a genuinely popular conversation. See this story on Livemint or go to Twitter right now and check a few trends.
Leaving the debate on the rights and wrongs of this tactic aside, I’m going out on a limb and propose that you adopt these techniques as well. Here are ten reasons you should.
- It’s cheap: Twitter will ask you for an arm and a leg for a promoted trend. Pay a fraction of this amount to a cottage industry of hired tweeters and you can trend for a day or two for as low as INR 18,000 per trend. The last offer I got was around INR 22,000 for a day, with a guarantee that it will trend nationally.
- It’s no-questions-asked: If you want to throw slime on your competitors and business opponents, there’s little you can do on organized media. Google, Twitter and Facebook, and most other publishers and media houses are quite careful about brand violation and will generally not allow you to use trademarks that you do not own. But no such rules apply when you are employing spam influencers. So throw as much slime as you like – as long as you are not personally abusive and use cuss words, you can go on and on.
- It has plausible deniability: The best thing about this tactic is that there’s plausible deniability. It’s useful to have, if you’ve read reason #2. If you are an agency, you only need to tell your client that you’ll get them trending by his/her most committed supporters. If in the rare chance a client does ask you a question or two, you can easily deny that these are paid spam. You can convince him/her that it’s just committed and vocal fans who are tweeting #brandlove spontaneously. After all, which marketer doesn’t like to hear that?
- It’s practically untraceable: After demonetization, many of us have turned honest-to-goodness citizens and seamlessly moved on to digital payments. But all large organizations with significant brand spends and rostered global agencies never paid in cash anyway, and most definitely cannot be seen as paying directly to the cottage industry that peddles spam-tweet trends. These are usually an informal set of individuals, and influencer marketplaces are yet to get established as direct vendors (afaik). So the agency outsources this to a smaller agency who act as a go-between. If some pesky twitter-inhabitants-turned-investigative-journalists ask, read reason #3. It’s #brandlove!
- Saves brainwork: Creating a hashtag campaign with spam influencers doesn’t require too much grey matter. All you have to do is to create a few meaningless 140 character sentences send it to the influencers, with some clear instructions on timing and submission. That’s about it. In fact, no one down the chain requires to use the upper storey at all.
- It can get you impressive metrics: After the hashtag campaign is over, it’s fairly easy to get the numbers. If you have a Listening tool, use it. Some free tools like Topsy or Hashtracking will also work to a limited extent. You can also use Twitter’s own analytics tools to crank out some fairly impressive numbers. Create a nice infographic with Twitter birds and Facebook likes. Highlight the “reach” figure and that “million” next to it. Once you have sent to the client, who will obviously be happy, send it to yourself with a CC to the rest of the organization. Add a pithy line, like “hard work gets you results” or some such. Also tweet it and post it on Facebook so that your admirers can admire you. Encourage your client to do the same and ensure he has you, your boss and his boss in CC or mentions.
- Provides employment: Hashtag campaigns are essentially repetitive tasks that can be done by anyone with reasonable internet and cut-paste skills. For Rs 100 a tweet, this is gainful employment and a decent ROI on an English medium school-level education. If not for such campaigns, many young people of our country would otherwise be idling away, watching inspirational or self-help videos on YouTube and outraging on unnecessary media-driven issues on social media. In your own way, you’re contributing to the nation’s economic growth.
- Mistakes will be overlooked: If you took point #6 a little too seriously and didn’t use the grey matter at all and did a booboo – for example, you had lady tweeters talking about beard trimmers or men tweeting their love for epilators – don’t worry. No one’s going to notice.
- It is therapeutic: After a few campaigns which follow the above pointers (particularly #7), you will start believing in your own genius. You will grow in confidence as the list of “campaigns delivered” on your resume and LinkedIn profile gets larger and larger.
- It can get you awards: A few campaigns like this and you will be among the “Top 50 Most Influential Marketers” awardees around this time next year. Accept the award, post a Selfie, enjoy.
#Sarcasm
Originally posted on Linkedin here:https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ten-reasons-why-you-should-use-paid-influencers-haroon-bijli
Digital Vidya interviewed me!
Digital Vidya, one of India’s oldest (and perhaps the largest?) digital marketing coaching and training outfits interviewed me. (they called me “thought leader” – how awesome is that!)
Do read, and share your thoughts. Here is the link:
http://www.digitalvidya.com/blog/interview-with-haroon-bijlidigital-marketing-expert/
A Li’l Bit Of Influencer Marketing Never Hurt Anyone… but…
Somewhere in an urban area in Tamil Nadu, a man receives a call from a familiar number.
“Saar. You thought of me, saar! How can I serve you saar!”
“Yenna thambi, how are you? All well? Family well?”
“Yes saar! Everything is fine saar! How can I serve you saar!”
“Well, a very important thing. You know elections are coming and I’m running too…”
“Congrats saar! You got ticket!”
“Yes yes. Madam is planning a big rally in our city. Really big. We have to bring out the whole works. Crowds must be full. What can you arrange?”
“Saar, anything saar, you tell me. 30-40 thousand will come just like that. Good budget? We can get one lakh more people easily. How much budget?”
“Biryani, Rs 201 in cash, white dhoti for men, blouse piece for women. One bottle Cosmopolitan also for men.”
“Saar… saar that is in 2009. Last year for Lok Sabha, the other party had offered Rs 501 cash for each person. And unlimited Cosmopolitan. Forget this dhoti, blouse piece and all, no one wants that and anyway they sell it later. So why…”
“Unlimited Cosmopolitan?”
“Yes saar, unlimited. The party has now an alliance in our neighbouring state saar. He is a big supplier, and Kerala has prohibited liquor. So what I was saying is that they are used to this now”
[muffled discussion]
“Ok, done. 501 in cash and unlimited Cosmopolitan”
“Right saar. 1.5 lakh people guaranteed from my side.”
“Thanks… I know I can rely on you.”
Thambi gets down to business. Calls up a few henchmen for a quick stand-up meeting.
“See, this is a big one. We need to make a lot of noise. We get this party to work with us, our future is guaranteed.”
“Saar, 1.5 lakhs… possible?”
“Oh yes. Jamal, you work on Idrees Maulavi. Karthik, you work on Narayan Potti and I will work on Palanisamy and Father Muthu. We get them to come with us, we get the free people. For others, no worries… Cosmopolitan is there!”
“Saar, if nothing works, Cosmopolitan works saar. You are a genius saar”.
Rally done, he receives a call from the same number.
“Thambi, you are a genius! Madam is now proud of me! We silenced everyone with their cheers! My ears are still ringing with their applause!”
“Saar, all due to Palani’s blessings, Saar. He has made the goddess Lakshmi come to you!”
A few weeks later, the election results are out. Thambi receives the call again. This time, the man on the other side is not so happy.
“What happened, Thambi? We lost!”
“Well saar, what can I say. You wanted crowd for the rally, I got the crowd to the rally. You wanted noise, you got noise. You gave Cosmopolitan, they drank Cosmopolitan. You paid Rs 501, they bought more Cosmopolitan.”
“But… but… you were good there… but…”
“Saar, what to do… don’t think bad saar, but I sent the same people to the other party’s rally as well. Business is business saar.
“That is fine, but what I don’t understand is they cheered so loud and yet…”
“Saar… don’t take it badly saar, they cheered for Cosmopolitan, not you or Madam.”
This is work of fiction. Any resemblance to any social media agency or politician is unintentional. However, resemblance to influencer-driven social media campaigns, though, is quite intentional.
This contains a lot of local words and references. Apologies if you can’t fully understand. Oh and Cosmopolitan is a cheap whiskey brand popular in south India.
What to do when your brand ambassador is in the news for the wrong reasons
Using celebs to endorse your brand is often a two-way street. Brands sign on celebrities after weeks, or months, of soul-searching, staring into space, strategizing and legal and financial diligence. It’s like a marriage – you are in with the celeb for a fairly long period of time and hope that your union is beneficial to both, or at the very least gets you nice selfies.
While brands were never in complete control of their perception, the loss of control is quite complete now. The power of the consumer to amplify the negative and ignore the positive has kept digital marketers on our toes. As it is, things are hardly certain in a country like ours – political and social uncertainty, natural calamities, strikes, traffic, the pot-bellied pandu, low quality of education – all of these combine to make some of us sleepless at night. Because today, the customer demands instant answers and gratification – and dare you deny him that, he will go online and use all his knowledge of twitter and facebook to vent against you.
The last thing you need is your brand ambassador doing or saying something that goes against popular sentiment. But then, you aren’t in control of his/her mouth. You find your mentions peak, but the sentiment tracker shows more orange than green and there goes your plan to go home and work from the privacy of your loo. And someone taps you and asks you to come to a meeting room full of people who till now, knew you are “into digital” but weren’t exactly sure what all that meant.
A dozen eyes look at you.
“So what’s your plan?”
Boom.
So what’s your plan? Some suggestions.
- Understand the problem dispassionately: This is darn difficult to do. You are wading through indignant, self-righteous and grammar-challenged sea of comments talking *at* you. You have methods to placate an irate customer waiting for her refund, but then this mess is something else. Panic sets in fast. The thing to do here is: a) take a deep breath b) shut down the screen showing your mentions c) use a filter to separate relevant voices from the noise – actual customers with problems c) get a hang of numbers – current hashtags, emerging hashtags, mentions, supportive and positive hashtags, and feed them into an hourly trend. You will get to know which way the river of stinky-solid-fluid is flowing, at least.
- Assess best-case and worst-case scenario: In this case, the best case scenario would be that people become rational again and go back to the usual business of discount-hunting and freebie-seeking. The worst case – the mob becomes bigger and bigger, goes mainstream, and there is a realistic chance of permanent brand damage
- Have a chat with your brand marketers: Is the problem the brand’s fault? You’ll find that the brand has little to do with it, and but the organization can do very little about it in a highly agitated scenario. No matter what you throw back, the crowd isn’t going to be pleased. Important action point here: don’t try to please a mob. It never works.
- Work on your team: If you are leading a team of social customer care agents, it’s time to step it up. Ask them to address real customer service issues and ignore the noise. It’s hard, because they are trained to address and reply to every tweet. Retrain them quickly. And most importantly, make them feel relaxed and ease the pressure. One wrong word typed and you’ll only make the situation worse for your brand
- Seek out influencers. The real ones, not the paid spammers: The phone rings. Your social media agency has a plan. The client servicing guy has prepared a draft of tweets which talk about the good work your organization has done. He says he can get “social media influencers” to talk about the positives of your brand, highlight the positives, and that he has the knowhow to “make it trend”. Tempting, but junk it.
Instead – seek out the real influencers. READ what they are saying. Chances are that they’ve already latched on to the problem and are publishing some advice. Read. Absorb. You’ll get fresh perspectives and new ideas. The least it will do is settle your nerves.
- Determine course of action: by now, the suits are panicking. Journalists are hounding your media folks. Your social media team is overwhelmed. You are itching for some action. You convene again in the meeting room. Everyone agrees on issuing a statement. As a digital marketer, however much you may disagree with the tone and content of the statement, you will have to execute it on the battlefield and do your best with it. Often, the leadership takes the call on the content and the tone. The best you can do is to prepare your team for the worst, and keep a close watch on how well the statement is being perceived on social.
Do you need to do anything more? I’d say no, except learn from the episode. Online mob fury is like a toddler’s tantrum. Inhale, exhale, and watch it blow past you.
Soon, it will be BAU and you’ll start welcoming that tweet telling you how much you suck because you didn’t send the consignment to the third address the man had given your customer care over phone while he was driving past Ambience Mall on NH7 and now his wife is really upset and you better pay his money or he will use social media to ensure no one buys from you again.
Bliss.
What Kids Think When They See Logos
A dad recorded his daughter reacting to several well-known brands. An insightful watch:
If you think about it, you can pick a lot of insights within these four minutes. I like how she goes Cheetah, Cheetah, Cheetah when she sees Greyhound, Jaguar and Puma 🙂
Would love to do this with some Indian brands. Could be fun.
How NOT to Fire An Employee
First, you’d think this is some kind of joke. Which business tweets stuff like this?
You might even feel for the pub/restaurant. Hey, it’s Christmas season! The chef needs to be around, man.
Oh oh. A week? Sock it to him, manager!
Hey what’s this? This doesn’t sound like the meanie manager!
Ouch.
Well, thanks, but no thanks!
So what happened? Apparently The Plough fired its chef. But they forgot that the bloke had the keys to the twitter account! Here’s what the twitter bio of the restaurant says now: “Let this be a lesson to all bad catering employers …”.
It’s all there at http://twitter.com/ploughpub
Moral of the story? Don’t be unkind. It’ll come back and bite you.
Going Back To The Start: Chipotle
How can you tell the story of your brand in an engaging, delightful and memorable way? You can, and it doesn’t have to be complex. You can be delightfully simple. Take for example, Chipotle.
Chipotle, in case you aren’t aware, is an North American food chain which specializes in Mexican food. It’s brand promise is “food with integrity”. What does that mean? According to themselves, “it means serving the very best sustainably raised food possible with an eye to great taste, great nutrition and great value.” Read more about this here.
I am impressed with how they’ve told this story through these ads.
First, Back To The Start.
They continued the good work in 2013 with The Scarecrow.
Examine the videos. These are delightfully simple stories, said with passion, with excellent covers.
I enjoyed watching them. Hope you’ll enjoy them as well.
How can you make an internal social network successful?
I answered this question on Quora, in January 2011. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge, many organizations are deploying internal social networks at breakneck speed, but the basics of adoption remain the same. (Original post here)
There is a temptation to go the “if you build it, they will come” route for internal social networks. Unfortunately it doesn’t work. The single biggest challenge for an internal social network is the competition from the external social network (read Facebook) Most people already have an account, interact with their colleagues, classmates, family and other friends, spend a considerable amount of time even during working hours (see this Mashable – The Social Media Guide post). The challenge for internal communicators is rather unique.
In my opinion (and experience), you need to take care of the following:
1) Actively promote: going “viral” leaves too much to chance. You shouldn’t design anything to go viral. You should have a proper communications plan to promote your social network.
2) Develop content: create a bank of exciting, relevant and business-oriented content, at least for the initial quarter or half year.
3) Identify and develop ambassadors and champions: the key to success are some enthusiastic users who can sustain conversation for some time, build traffic and act as mentors to new joinees.
4) Don’t forget the technicals: usually communicators tend to shrug away the tech part – design, usability and scalability. God help you if you aren’t involved in the decision to buy the product, the tech support investment required and all that.
5) Last, but probably the most important: identify the business objective and stick to it. Everything – the tool you choose, the support you need, the content you develop and the enthusiasts you charter should be aligned to this goal.
I speak of this from a content-driven social networking (like blogs, Q&As, idea-sharing) rather than the 140 character tools. I am not such a fan of Yammer, because it seldom gets past the firewall. This also works for photo-driven social media sites.
Hope this is useful.
Is Social Media Irrelevant To B2B Marketing?
Previously posted on the Social Media Summit 2011 blog.
We often hear about the irrelevance of social media marketing in B2B. It’s tempting to discard social media; many of us have experienced the denial first hand, and we might as well go with the flow. But as digital communications and marketing practitioners, it would be unfair if we accept the status quo and do not make the requisite effort. Yes, a few years ago, even digital was considered irrelevant, but today, in 2011, it would be sheer lunacy for B2B marketers to ignore social media. The fact that there is a session on this topic at the Social Media Summit is in itself, a sign of the acceptance of social media.
But there are certain realities:
a) We see quite a lot of case studies and examples for effective usage of social media in a B2C context, but much less of it for a B2B brand.
b) The apparent marketing spend on social media is negligible as compared to traditional media
c) We see very few social media participants at leadership levels from B2B organizations
d) Social media channels and internet accessibility is fairly restricted at many B2B workplaces
There are several popular reasons cited for the above. Have you heard them? Check:
a) Sales cycles are longer and complex. Selling is through tender and RFP processes, relationship marketing and personal contact.
b) Buying is through procurement or purchasing departments, who presumably have very low exposure to even online media
c) The target audience is not exposed to social media or unlikely to make decisions based on what he/she sees on social media
d) Most organizations (at least in India) are sales, delivery or product driven, rather than marketing-driven; naturally this affects social media
e)B2B organizations have a finite audience, we “know” our target audience by name, address, email ID and can afford to contact them directly – so we don’t require social media
f) It is enough if we are present on the Internet and appear in search results. All we need is a good website, it is enough for purchasers to research our products/services and contact us if interested.
g) CEO, C-suite decision makes are more impressed by hard copy marketing collateral, don’t go online often, and hello, they are not on Facebook or Twitter!
h) We don’t do promotions and discounts, so what will we give our twitter followers?
i) After sales, we rely on personal contacts and relationships to render service, so we needn’t use social media for customer service
j) The exit process for B2B customers is quite complex, so point i above applies there as well. If we are in, we are in for keeps, at least for a decent period
k) Nobody really contacts us through our Twitter channel
f) Our customers buy from us because of our prices. Really.
All these read like excuses, don’t they?
But be honest. Much of the popular reasons are true. Sales cycles are definitely longer. Yes, we do look up tender notices published in font size 7 in a two-column inch space deep inside a voluminous dead-tree newspaper. Our target audience doesn’t tweet every two minutes. Nobody really contacts us through our Twitter channel. And so on.
But do we throw all the 53 slides of “How to use Social Media” we prepared and pitched to the management for into the Recycle Bin and do what they naysayers say? No, absolutely not.
Here’s why:
a) Social media is about people. The statistics are staggering. Millions of Indians spend a considerable amount of time online and in social media. Your target audience is one of those millions. They have a Facebook account. They have a LinkedIn account. If they are more evolved in the online space, they tweet. Not being in social media is much like not being at a party where all your contacts are. They won’t probably cut a deal with you as soon as they see you. But connect with them. If they are suddenly aware of a requirement, where do they look (these days)? Flip through a rolodex? Or thumb the think Yellow Pages? Not anymore. They do a google search, then Twitter, LinkedIn and in some cases Facebook.
b) Your target audience researches you well. They look up blogs. They rely on third party analysts/advisors to advise them on deals. They try to get an objective opinion of your company, your product or service, your employees, your ethics. What if they come across an employee haranguing against you on some forum? What if an environmental group has tweeted consistently against some of your policies (you shouldn’t have a policy that is against the environment, but that’s a different matter) on Twitter? You haven’t been seen putting out your point of view, much less being even aware of such content that has been published against you. This data is seen by your customer. Maybe it will end up in a docket presented to the CEO at the vendor shortlisting stage?
c) Getting found. Reason a, again, but this time focusing on being available on search. Social media, including blogs, are a no-brainer when it comes to search optimization. You have to use whatever opportunities you have to be visible, and not having a presence in social media can only penalize you. Online marketing these days is mainly the business of getting found. Maximize your chances.
d) Thought leadership. You need to exhibit to your target audience that you are at the top of the game and are getting better. Not only should you have a good content development program, you should ensure that your content gets read by your target audience. This includes not only the CEO of your target company, but his team, his employees, industry specialists, industry opinion makers, industry analysts, advisers, trade body members, academicians and so on. You would have to use a wide variety of means to publish and popularize your content, and social media is definitely one of them.
e) You have a finite audience? Great. Target them. Develop social media programs specifically for them. Collaborate with them. Brainstorm with them. Make them part of your knowledge base. This could be as simple as a blog where you invite them to comment on your post. Or it could be as complex as a social extranet where you could host a variety of applications that helps you tap into their knowledge base, and more importantly, help them utilize you better. If you combine this with your project management utility, even better.
f) Your relationship cycle is long-term? Exiting you is complicated for the customer? Good. Use social media to upsell and cross sell. On the face of it, networking using popular channels like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, connecting with them and consistently tweeting your content/thought leadership (but not spamming) is a good method to stay on their radar. But creating a joint space – a gated private space – where you encourage, among other things, your relationship team and their vendor management team to collaborate better and communicate better, is a much better utilization of social media and web 2.0 capabilities.
All said, it is all about contextual usage of the channels at your disposal. You need to have a judicious mix of all media channels – paid, owned and earned – at your disposal. You can’t – and shouldn’t – discard social media, but neither can you tweet paeans about yourself at five minute intervals.
Reduce that 53 slide presentation on social media to 12 slides. And give it another try.