Putting social media in prespective

After all the hype and buzz around social media, finally a post that puts it all in perspective. I enjoyed reading Why I will never hire a social media expert and agreed with most of what Peter Shankman has to say...except that I don't really believe social media is ONLY about marketing and customer service. Those are very important elements of social media, but the phenomena also extends to areas that are traditionally not the domain of marketing of social media.

Stuff like what Nike and Starbucks do, crowdsourcing of ideas and concepts are also social media. Co-creation of content, that is so popular these days, is part of social media...so relegating it to the realms of the marketing and customer service is probably doing it a disservice.

Social media has the power to impact and fundamentally alter all aspects of corprate functioning. It is upto us to define its relevance and take advantage of it.

Profile: Michael Sanchez

Pix Courtsey

Michael Sanchez co-founded CafeMom; a social networking website that is specifically aimed at mothers. The site offers member-generated content such as journals, photos and profiles. CafeMom became the most trafficked website for women within a year of being launched. Currently, CafeMom receives more than 3.1 million unique visitors a month and  more than 140 million page views. The website is operated by CMI Marketing and the company is located in New York City.

Prior to CafeMom, Sanchez was the co-founder and President of Do Something from 1993 until 1999. Do Something has been involved with more than two million students and educators; with the aim of providing youth leadership and citizenship initiatives in schools. Sanchez also co-founded ’94 Cup Daily; a daily newspaper that was dedicated to the 1994 World Cup Soccer Tournament that was held in the US. He also served as its CEO.

As a child, Sachez travelled extensively around the world as a top-ranked chess player and received a lot of media coverage during that same time. He graduated from Columbia Law School in 1993 and currently resides in New Jersey with his wife and kids.

Profile: Gina Bianchini

Gina Bianchini is the co-founders of Ning; a platform for creating social media websites. Bianchini, along with  Marc Andreessen, founded Ning in October 2005. Bianchini holds a B.A. from Stanford University and an M.B.A from Stanford Business School. Prior to Ning, she served as co-founder and President of Harmonic Communications. 

With an estimated annual revenue of more than $10 million, Ning is considered to be the world’s largest platform for creating social websites, with more than 2.3 million user-created Ning Networks and more than 45 million registered users.

In 2010, Bianchini announced that she will be stepping down as CEO of Ning; moving to Marc Andreessen’s new venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz as an Executive in Residence (EIR). Aside from being one of the co-founders of Ning, Marc Andreessen is also the co-founder of the popular Netscape browser.

Bianchini has been featured in New York Times, Fortune, Forbes, CNN and CNBC; and Ning has been labelled as one of the world’s most valuable start-ups.  

Bollywoodhungama: Facebook's dishum factory

Name of Business: Bollywoodhungama.com

Website URL: www.bollywoodhungama.com/

Industry: Entertainment

Target Audience: Bollywood fans across demographics

Category of Business

The parent company, Hungama Digital Media Entertainment Pvt. Ltd, was incorporated in 1999, as an online promotions agency. In the short span of a little more than ten years the company is today a Digital Entertainment, Mobile Services and Promo Marketing firm. Hungama Digital Media Entertainment is headquartered in Mumbai.

Bollywoodhungama.com caters to fans of all things…well Bollywood. With the objective of ‘Bringing the fans closer to their Stars’, Bollywoodhungama.com has launched several initiatives, including live video and text chats with Bollywood personalities, India’s first ever Bollywood video quiz, exclusive production blogs of latest and upcoming films and movie reviews.

Marketing Efforts and Results

Bollywoodhungama.com launched its Facebook page in May 2010. It held a series of contests, giving away merchandise to the winners. Today, there is a roaring community of more than 232,000 fans, who look forward to information through posts and updates on the latest from Bollywood. The focus here is on interactivity, with fans being encouraged to contribute actively to discussions, posts, contests et al. For instance, the website has a weekly update called ‘Guess Who’ where they post an image of a celebrity with their back to the camera. Members are required to figure out who the celebrity is. This concept is replicated on Facebook and typically more than 500 answers are posted by fans. People not only look forward to these fun postings, but also keep coming back to know the correct answer. While the Facebook page is used as a marketing tool for content on the site, the page also features exclusive content not available on the site.

Bollywoodhungama.com has a strong Twitter presence as well, with more than 11,000 followers. The focus has been on keeping users updated on the latest on the website. Typically, a short description of the story, along with the link to the full story is put up as a tweet. YouTube has proved extremely effective as a social media channel. Users can view exclusive interviews with leading celebrities, video features and behind-the-scenes content, among other things. Since its launch, the YouTube channel has received more than 2,436,973 views.

One of the most powerful things that Bollywoodhungama.com has done is to integrate its social media efforts with its website. For instance, the video quiz - ‘Bollywood Ka Baap’ - has been integrated via applications on Orkut and Facebook.

“Since inception, Hungama has focussed on creating properties that help brands interact with their end consumers. Using internet, then and social media now, brands have the opportunity of interacting with their consumers, connect with them and create an ecosystem where the users and the brand can stay connected. As compared to traditional forms of communication, the social media environment allows us to create continuous brand recall by using user friendly messages. Today, a brand may not necessarily use strategic messaging, but use tactical communication methods to stay top of mind with the consumer,” says Siddhartha Roy, COO, Hungama Digital Media.

“For instance, when Bollywoodhungama.com interacts with its members on Facebook, it doesn’t say ‘Come visit my website for the latest in Bollywood news’. Instead the messaging could vary from ‘Hey guys, who is your favourite actor?’ to ‘Did you hear that XYZ celebrity has signed a new film?’ Reactions generated by communication of this nature create brand recall as the user is involved with your brand. Therefore, with social media, we have been able to create constant interaction with consumers which in turn helps us create evangelists which leads to better brand value,” Mr. Roy adds.

Marketing Investment

No direct investments in social media. However, social media has been integrated into every aspect of content and marketing delivery, so all team members contribute to the social media marketing effort.

Musicians and social media

You can argue that the whole social media scene owes a lot to music. Napster was the first really popular music sharing site and its founder Sean Parker had a big role to play in pushing Facebook forward. Social Media has always been a great platform for music and musicians, especially new bands and voices. There are just too many examples of social media being the platform that launched careers--Susan Boyle, Shaheen Jhafargoli, Justin Bieber...the list is endless.

So, if music is your thing, this article could help you reach your audiences. Read and play on!

Consolidating your social media exchanges on one platform

While social media is a great way to reach out to markets, I have always struggled with the numerous accounts I had to keep track of. My facebook account, the FB fan page for this website, twitter, linkedin, comments on the blog and direct mails.

I was actually looking for something that could simplify my whole social media interchange and provide me with a sort of single window system for all the different accounts. That is when I came across nutshell mail...I have just signed up for this service so I dont know if it will be as promising as it seems, but what they do promise is to integrate all your facebook, twitter, linkedin, youtube and a few other messages into an email delivered direct to your mail box. They don't do blogs yet, and I hope they add it, because that would complete the cycle for me. The service is free, so either check out their video or try out the service at nutshellmail.com. I will post a review of their service in a few days.

Using Social Media to get a job

It cost Alec Brownstein just $6 to get his dream job. You can argue that what he did, does not strictly come under the purview of Social Media and I would agree...but the point is Alec used an extremely innovative way that cost him virtually nothing to get to his target audience.

While his strategy might not work for all of us, having an active and relevant presence on social media can actually help you reach out to your audience and get your dream job. Read this post and implement if you want the power of social media to work for you.

Social Media trends of 2010

Maggie Fox, founder and CEO of Social Media today, sums up the year that 2010 was for Social media. An absolute must read for everyone. Especially, those still cynical about the power of this movement.