Social Listening and PR

I know every one of you have heard of the word “listening”. But have you ever heard of a word called “Social Listening”? I’m sure most of you have not heard the word . And even if you have heard the word, I don’t think most of you have a clear understanding of what is the exact meaning of the word social listening. So, I thought of discussing about social listening in this blog post.

First of all I’m going to give you the definition for social listening. According to Track Maven which is the Competitive Intelligence Platform for Enterprise Marketers social listening is the process of monitoring digital media channels to devise a strategy that will better influence consumers. A company can use that information for analyzing consumer behavior, determining the public’s perception of a company, and comparing a company’s public reputation to its competitors’.

After social media, social listening is considered as the most noteworthy technology to come to the field of marketing. The best thing about social listening is its effectiveness can be used not only for marketing but for all the other functions of the company. Companies can listen for industry trends, competitive analysis, product insights and lots of other instances.

First of all you have to identify that are you listening to all the important conversations going on in the industry, what are they talking about your company etc.? If not I can say that you are missing thousands of opportunities every second you spend. If you are running any kind of social media for your company it is very important that you listen to your customers, competitors and other partners and respond to them as soon as possible.

Since the number of active internet users is increasing day by day, the internet provides a great platform for companies to get online real time feedback from their customers without incurring a cent. Companies can observe and analyse the actions of the internet and social media and analyse those data to draw conclusions. They can see what pages the customers like, what groups they belong to, what are their feedback on new ideas and products by the competitors and so on. And also if you are actively participating in those conversations and replaying to the comments of your customers without a delay it will help you to grow their loyalty towards your company as well.

Merely handling social media or having social media networks is not enough to face the modern competition. Companies should maintain a closer rapport between its stakeholders and have a good public relationship with them due to following reasons.

• When there is a crisis in the society, people start talking about it and with the help of social media it can spread like wild fire.
• How can the company involve in resolving a matter of a customer because the customers have the power to promote your product as well as to evacuate your product from the market.
• Social media listening help the companies to understand customer insights by involving in their real conversations. From those conversations companies can get an idea about how the customers feel about their product, what are the improvements can be done, what are the competitive advantages we have over the competitors. And these conversations also provide real time focus groups for the companies.
• Social media can create organic awareness for your product and brand.
• A successfully carried out social media campaigns can increase the sales and the brand name and reputation.

So if you want to maintain good relationships with your stakeholders and improve the public relationships, it is recommended to maintain a good social listening process.

SAFE AND RESPONSIBLE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media is the strongest media that we can use to reach the modern customers because even if we skip a meal we never reduce our daily dose of social media.It has become that vital in one’s life. According to a research conducted using of teenagers aged 12-16 years, 94.9% have used a social networking site and more than 34% of them have said that social media is the most important thing in their life and using them are very important for them. Even though these statistics prove that majority of the teenagers and other customers as well use at least one social media network, not all of us are aware about how to use social media in a safe and a responsible manner. Therefore today I am going to talk about the most integral areas which cover under the above topic.

                      

Before moving on to how to use social media safely and responsibly, first I would like to talk about the purposes of using social media or to achieve what objectives people use social media. Even companies create social media profiles having the same intentions similar to individuals. They are,

• To create a profile about yourself to interact with friends. In case of a business, to interact with related parties. 
• To update status, to comment on posts by you and by the others. 

• To upload photos and videos of you and your friends and family or of any special occasion. Businesses use it to upload photos of their products and services, videos of their events etc. 

• To send or receive messages. 

• To chat with friends and family. Businesses use it to chat with their clients and suppliers. 

• To join a group that you are interested in or to like pages that you find important or attractive. 

• One thing you can do is you can limit you connections to the people you know or who you can trust. 

• Use the strongest privacy settings possible because there is no such thing as being too careful. This will also allow you a more relaxed experience because you will not be disturbed with unnecessary things. 

• When it comes to sharing information, be 100% sure before sharing it with your friends because you may not know who will be seeing the post ultimately. 

• Always be socially responsible a report the offensive and abusive profiles, groups and pages to help social media networks to provide a better service to you as well as to other users. 

• Pay more attention to your security software because if they are not up to date and not up to the standards, there is a high possibility for you on is exposed to malware and viruses and to cyber-criminals such as hackers and crackers who will try to steal your identity and your sensitive information.

                     

And in this blog post I would like to put more emphasis on what an individual can do to use social media in a safe and a responsible way. 

So, the next time you are going to use social media, make sure that you are complying with all the above requirements which will assure you a safe and responsible use of social media.

How to protect your privacy when using Social Media Networks

Do you know that only 38% of you know how to limit or customize the content you share on Social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn?. This number which is even less than half of the total users is a good indicator which shows the unawareness of the users about their privacy and its protection.

Therefore today I am going to talk about few tips which are going to help you to protect your privacy when using social media.

1.One common mistake we do is not reading the privacy policies produced by the sites. If we spend two three minutes on reading the privacy policies we can get a clear understanding about the following areas.

• What is the scope covered by the privacy policy?
• What kind of information they collect? 
• For what type of information they have access to?
• How long they are going to keep the information we provided?
•  How can we contact them regarding any concerns on violation of our privacy?  
  But just like the terms and conditions, we never read the privacy policy. So we don’t have a proper understanding about the above factors. Therefore my advice for you is to read the privacy policy before you provide your sensitive information. 

2. Another main and one of the most important things is what are the devices you use to share your information through social media. If you always use your personal computer or your mobile for browsing the internet, up to some extent it guarantees your privacy. But if you use public places and networks for social networking it is pretty easy for someone to access your information. Therefore you should be very concerned about the additional gadgets that are plugged into those public devices and also to delete your browsing history including the cache and the offline data.

 

3. Minimize interaction with third party applications. For example we can take the thousands of apps used in social networking. But not all these apps are created by Facebook. Some are third party apps. Therefore if you have at least a little doubt about the content and the amount of information the app requires, it is better not to install the app at all rather than risking your privacy.

4. Be concerned about the posts that you are tagged in. Again this is also a very important area because we tend to ignore this as a threat and we might think this is harmless since one of our friends tags us in that post. But have you ever thought that those posts are visible to friends of your friends who are not even in your friend list. Even if you always customize your posts and make it visible to only selected people, without your knowledge your posts will be visible to strangers. So it is really important to review your tags before adding it to your profiles and if you think it is not appropriate, don’t think twice to untag yourself.

5. And you will also have to be concerned about the privacy settings of your friends. When you customize your posts to only a few of your friends and if they are not maintaining good privacy settings, your posts can be viewed by outside parties.

Next time you browse internet or use social media, remember these tips and try to protect your privacy because leakages of those sensitive information can even destroy your whole image.

Marketing with Twitter

Every one of us is very familiar with Facebook. When we hear the word “Social Media Networks”, the first thing which comes to our mind is Facebook. Today I’m also going to talk about a Social Media Network. But the network I chose is Twitter. The main reason for me to choose Twitter among all the other networks is it provides a competitive edge when it comes to promoting businesses through Social Media. 

Twitter is a Social communication tool which allows you to keep in touch with people who you follow and the people who follow you. Twitter has similar characteristics to the other popular social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube since it allows you to communicate with each other by sending messages and sharing photos and videos. But which makes Twitter unique among the rest are the different characteristics it carries.

Unlike in Facebook, with Twitter every tweet arrives at every follower’s feed. And if you compare it with LinkedIn, Twitter is better because Twitter allows you to follow anyone you like to where LinkedIn is only a two way system.

People who use Twitter are looking for new ideas, business opportunities, information and mostly products and services. They got there to learn new things and share what they know with the others. 42% of the Twitter users follow a brand or a company. Every second they share those experiences with others and it is a great way to get more exposure and create and improve awareness about your business among people. 

If you think your customer base covers under Twitter, you should start maintaining a Twitter account. Therefore, even if your business is a very small one or a large multi-national, you should integrate your Marketing activities with Twitter. Maintaining a proper and up to date Twitter account can create a strong impact on your existing as well as potential customers.

Here are some tips to create the best Twitter account for your business.

• Choose a username and a profile image which tells about your business the best 
• Create a graphic file which matches with your brand and use it as your account background so that every visitor can see that background when they visit your profile 
• Complete the profile properly in order to help the followers to easily access your details without any delays or barriers. 
• Follow as many as people you can follow who are related to the business in any way. (Ex: Customers, Suppliers, other organizations in the industry etc.)
• Start talking about your business. You can tweet, reply, mention, send a direct message or re-tweet. 
• Create tweets with a link to your website which directs the followers to it. 
• Enter your Twitter account details and the link to your website to link them together. Clients and fans will find it easier to interact when these two are linked. 
• Make it easy for the people to share your website content on Twitter by adding a tweet this button. 
• Share attractive pictures of the products and services you offer since no one will spend their time on your account if it does not produce variety. 
• Create viral videos on your customers, success stories and about the business and upload them to your twitter account.

If you adhere to the above tips no matter how big or small your business is, your growth is inevitable.

If it is used effectively and successfully, Twitter can help you to build your brand and promote it, monitor the reactions of the fans and interact with them to create a good image for your business.

Wait for another blog post on another interesting area in Digital Marketing. Until then , I wish you success with everything you do !!

Web Analytics

Hi friends. It’s been a while since I posted my last blog post. So thought of coming back with some important concepts related to digital Marketing. 

Today my topic is going to be “Web Analytics” and I am planning to cover most of the key areas related to the topic in order to paint you a clear picture about the topic. Since we all are using websites for our personal and business purposes, it very important to understand how to analyse the performance of those web sites.

Simply Web Analytics means the study conducted to study the performances of a website and its users. Companies use different web analytics software to get the results. Among much other software, Google Analytics is the most commonly and popularly used software for web analytics. Since it’s free and user friendly, every Website Administrator tend to use it to analyse the effectiveness of their website to measure the performance of their Digital Marketing campaign.

Actually Web Analytics is one of the main behind the curtain scenes of the Digital Marketing campaign.

Most of the e-marketers use Web Analytics software because it gives so many advantages when it comes to measuring the e-marketing results.

• Here are few details measured under web analytics?
•  How many visitors visited the website
• How many of them are considered as unique visitors?
• Which mode is used to visit the site (Ex:If the visit was direct or if they followed a link to come to the website.)?
• What were the keywords used by the visitors to find the website using a search engine?
• When the sites have a higher traffic in a day?
• What were the links they clicked when they were browsing through the website?
• How much time did they spend on the website?
• Do those customers revisit the website?

After getting the results for the above points, it is also possible to analyse if the website and its pages are functioning properly. This information helps the administrators to improve the effectiveness of the website by reviewing them.

And also it gives a clear understanding about the website traffic because in the analysis it shows the pages which had the most and the least number of visitors. With this information, it is easier for the administrators of the site to decide for which pages they should pay more attention and what are the areas they have to improve to attract more visitors to that page. And it will help them to create a better user experience.

So, if you are not using a Web Analytics software it is high time for you to start using one because by not having one you are not only missing out the analysis part of your Digital Marketing campaign. You are missing out an integral part of your total Digital Marketing process.

I hope the content I shared with you was useful and it added some value to your knowledge. Let’s meet again with another interesting topic like this and until we meet, wish you all good luck with everything you do.