Carwale's route to social media success

According to AllFacebook.com, during the average 20-minute period last year, there were more than 15 million wall posts and over 10 million comments posted. With overwhelming statistics such as this, who can deny the power of social media? Tapping into this potential is India’s largest auto media platform CarWale (www.carwale.com).


CarWale’s Karobar
Launched in 2005, the website focuses on Indian car consumers. The aim is to provide comprehensive and unbiased information to car buyers so that they may take informed decisions. The site offers various categories of information, including detailed specifications of various manufacturers and brands as well as expert reviews and owner reviews. The site also provides comparisons, so that people can narrow down their choices more conveniently. So, if you’re keen on buying or even selling a car, this is a good place to start off.


Social Media as the Fuel
Why is social media important to CarWale? The answer is simple. The site’s revenue model is based on traffic. The site makes money by providing services. So, every time someone visits the site and engages in any of the activities - car research, new car purchase, used car sale or purchase. Even if the visitor does not use these services, the site generates revenue through advertisements. In either case, the site needs to attract traffic. CarWale has used social media to engage the common man, create its brand image and get him to visit the site.


CarWale’s Social Media Test Drive
The fan page on Facebook was created in 2009. The start was slow because social media was not a priority then (possibly because the craze was yet to engulf the Indian metropolitan population). It was about eight months back that CarWale gave serious thought to its social media strategy. The results have been outstanding as the Facebook fans have grwon from around 800 to close to 18,000.   


In order to capitalize on the World Cup fever, CarWale recently launched the Fix the Match Contest. CarWale uploads pictures and short write-ups of cricketers and asks their fans which car would suit that particular cricketers the most. For instance, the latest one is about Ashish Nehra. One fan has selected the Tata Nano for him, as it is good for short rides, but not for the long haul. Another fan believes the Maruti Suzuki Swift is perfect, as Nehra is dependable, while yet another has chosen the Chevrolet Cruze because of Nehra’s love for speed.


The Speed Breaker
While CarWale has experienced a lot of success with Facebook, its Twitter page is not as eventful. It has only a little more than 500 followers and regularly distributes news and important updates through this platform.


Social Media Mileage

“We perceive social media as a very effective brand building vehicle. We feel that social media has huge potential and it will only grow. We are yet to use it to its potential though,” says Banwari Lal Sharma, Assistant Vice President – Product at CarWale.

“The referral traffic from Facebook page has grown 11 times year-on-year in last year which is indicative enough as what it can grow to. With social media landing on mobile phones, we are hopeful that it will contribute to a significant amount of traffic,” Mr. Sharma adds.

Carwale.com has a global Alexa ranking of 3,467. Its India ranking is 247.

Social Media Servicing Costs

CarWale has invested the time of its marketing, product and design teams. It has also tried Facebook advertising, although it believes that such ads do not justify the spend, as they are expensive and have relatively low ROI.

“As far as social media is concerned, we are not in the ROI game as of now. It's a long-term investment. But that said, we feel our efforts have paid off. We are happy interacting with our customers informally. The feedback they share with us help us immensely in building better products and services,” says Mr. Sharma.

A lot of companies consider the users of social media as a little non-serious and non-engaged. However, in CarWale’s experience, this has not been the case, especially when they were able to come up with “thoughtful ways of interactions”. “During a couple of campaigns on Facebook, we noticed that the quality of referral traffic was slightly better than any other referral we had received. It was almost equal to the quality of direct visits we receive, which is nothing short of remarkable!” opines Mr. Sharma. 

China's paranoia, India's opportunity

Egypt first, Libya most likely next...and China after that? Chinese leaders have long feared the power and reach of the internet first and now social media. They would have taken note of how Twitter and Facebook have been successfully used to galvanize thousands of protesters, and they are probably doing everything in their power to make the great firewall of China even greater.

However, in doing so they are also doing an injustice to the engine that drives the remarkable China growth story...their exporters. Think about it, social media has emerged as the most powerful marketing concept since Google dished out adwords. Every business worth its bottom line, either already has a social media strategy or is desperately scrambling to get one. Just look at how print and television campaigns are being reworked around a Facebook fan page, or a Twitter handle. Online, every campaign and website has an FB or a Twitter reference. Linkedin has become the defacto meeting platform for businesses and the Chinese are missing out on this action (actually Linkedin is not blocked there, but it is not popular in mainland China).

Here are the main reasons why I feel the Chinese are missing out:

* Social Media is about engagement: Unlike traditional marketing channels, social media marketing is about engaging with your customer. It is a platform that allows you to pitch your product/service, get feedback and interact with your customers/potentials. Apart from your own social media properties, you also have a great opportunity to interact on general forums. This two-way engagement is an excellent opportunity to grow your own business, learn about new opportunities and make useful contacts. However, if you are not there you do not exist.

* Cost effective marketing: The best social media campaigns actually cost little or nothing. They are the ones that are liked by the community and go viral. Given that a majority of mainland China exporters are low-cost warriors this is a marketing solution that would have worked very well for them.

* Small biz's best friend: While all of us know about the big guns like Lenovo and Huawei the export engines of China and India are driven by small to medium-sized companies that are extremely price competitive. These firms invest every dime on their core activity and have little left over for marketing. A social media campaign would have helped them register a global presence at a fraction of the cost they have to otherwise incur.

Anyway, the point is they are missing out, but then so are companies in India that should be taking advantage of this opportunity. While the Chinese can at least blame their firewall, you have no reason not to take full advantage of this opportunity. So here are the five things you need to do to leverage this opportunity:

1) Create a Linkedin profile: Linkedin is a great place to start. This is quietly emerging as the platform to do business and you need to create either a personal profile or one for your company there.

2) Join communities and forums: Check out the most popular communities and forums for your line of business and join. Remember to contribute to the discussions and not just plug your business. Contributing to discussion and being seen as a thought leader is a good way to build up solid connections. These are everywhere, but the most ones for business seem to have migrated to Linkedin.

3) Facebook Fanpage: Set it up. Takes less than 10 minutes. Ensure your friends like it. Post regularly on it and use it to get feedback on your products/services, ideas whatever. If you get an audience going, they will be a great ally for your business.

4) Blog; It does not take time. Set it up within your own website or do it on a blogging site like this one. Again, don't just plug your products here, share your thoughts, problems, issues, success, doubts...let your audience into your business.

5) Google Places: If you have a retail front to your business, dont forget to put it up on Google places. List it there, and give as much details as you can. Also encourage your customers to rate your service.

There are lots of other stuff you can do, but doing these five should help you get started. When your effort starts paying off, you can do more.

Riding the Radia Tapes

Open--the Magazine burst into collective public conscious with their expose of the Radia tapes. The magazine that exposed the unholy nexus between PR, journalists and politicians turned to social media when its servers could not handle the load of too much traffic, to get outs it message. This is their story.

Name of Business: OPEN Magazine

Website URL: http://www.openthemagazine.com/

Industry: Media

Target Audience: Indians and NRIs.

Category of Business

Open is a weekly current affairs and features magazine. It is the flagship brand of Open Media Network, which is the media venture of RPG Enterprises. Other popular brands of the RPG group are Ceat Tyres, SareGaMa and Spencer’s. Launched on April 2, 2009, Open has distribution across 12 cities, including Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Kochi, Chennai and Hyderabad. Open has positioned itself as a magazine for the cosmopolitan Indian. Open has three distinct sections – the first is Small World, a 10-page news selection, the second is detailed stories and features on a wide range of domains, including politics, sports, entertainment, science, technology, health and culture, and the third section is called Mindspace, which has literary essays and write-ups on art, gadgets and celebrity gossip.

The website focuses on well informed and well travelled Indians and NRIs. In fact, a significant portion of the new and returning visitors to their website are from North America. Open aims at getting “quality content” to their readers.

Marketing Efforts and Results

Open has a number of blogs, which include posts on a variety of topics from politics to sports. They have a presence on Facebook with 5,556 fans. On their Facebook Fan Page, Open publishes updates on stories featured on their website. Many of these fans are very active, which can be seen from the number of “likes” that each update receives. Several fans are very vocal about their opinions on the stories and comment openly. On Twitter, Open has 3,642 followers. Here, too, links are shared to the stories uploaded on their website.

Open makes active use of convenient widgets on their website that allows readers to share, commend and critique content via other social media platforms.

“The best example of the effectiveness of social media for us was when we broke the X-TAPES/Radia tapes story. The shock of the revelations created such a huge spike in web traffic that the Open website kept crashing in the first few days after the story broke. Even as we were desperately ramping up our servers, it was important that we do not black out, and we were able to do this by staying proactive on our Facebook and Twitter pages,” says R. Rajmohan, Publisher, Open Magazine.

Marketing Investment

All social media interactions are handled by the in-house team. No extra resources are deployed.

Creating opportunities for the youth

Name of Business: LetMeKnow.in

Website URL: www.letmeknow.in

Industry: Opportunity Portal

Target Audience: Youth, primarily in the age group 18-25

Category of Business

Founded in 2007, Let Me Know is a portal focused on connecting students and young professionals across India with opportunities for growth, career building and self development. It is a unique concept that helps the Indian youth to find internships, workshops, scholarships, events, seminars, conferences, tech-fests, literary events, part-time jobs and more. A number of opportunities arise for undergraduate and post graduate students across disciplines and young professionals. Often organizations with these opportunities find it a huge challenge to find the right people for them. Moreover, the costs associated with reaching out to the right people may be too high to be viable. Such organizations can now post these opportunities on the Let Me Know portal and extend their reach at no additional costs and with great convenience.

Let Me Know enables organizers (corporations, startups, universities, associations, non-profits etc.) to create, post and publish opportunities, invite entries, accept and manage applications and announce results. One can post an opportunity in categories such as business, technology, entrepreneurship, arts, culture and social innovation.

Marketing Efforts and Results

Let Me Know set up a blog in August 2009. They were initially blogging pretty actively. However, of late, their activities on this front have been limited. A blog is a great tool not only to connect with readers, but also to improve Google rankings through dynamic content updates. Moreover, an active sub-domain appears as a separate entity in the search engine results page.

Efforts have been focused on building a fan base with a strong presence on Facebook. The company already has about 9000 fans and regularly posts information about the latest opportunities that appear on their website. The fan page of Let Me Know begins with a registration page, thereby boosting the registrations on their website.

Let Me Know has 777 followers on Twitter. Here, too they publish their daily dose of latest opportunities. Both Facebook and Twitter have been used to encourage comments and questions around the various opportunities. Feedback is gathered from the followers, fans and subscriber on other social media channels and the company uses them to continuously improve their services. Social media has also been used to give special focus to specific organizers and/or opportunities that are most viewed and clicked.

“Facebook has very useful in helping us reach more students and young professionals from around the country. With our recent integration of daily opportunity updates on Facebook, traffic on our newsletter has increased. Facebook has also helped us get good feedback on our service which flows directly into our planning efforts. Twitter, on the other hand, has helped us a little bit in identifying new opportunities but not so much in getting more visitors or subscribers to the portal. We have realized that the Indian youth’s presence is quite strong on Facebook but Twitter is not that popular a social networking website amongst college students in particular,” says Sarabjeet Singh, CEO, Let Me Know.

Marketing Investment

• One-time integration of their daily newletter of opportunities with the Facebook and Twitter pages.
• Two man hours daily to filter opportunities and post the most popular ones on social media channels.
• 1 day every month for a monthly review of activity on Facebook and Twitter and using analytics data to improve marketing efforts.

Online pays off for professional services

Professional service providers like lawyers, doctors, CAs etc need to seriously consider going online to grow their businesses. Users are increasingly turning to the internet to find the services they are looking for. This includes local services. Google has responded to this trend by the launching Google Places. However, Places is just one piece of the puzzle. There is a lot more you can do online to generate more business.

Create a Free Website

Creating a website is like owing an office location where internet users can reach your business. You can read about the importance of a website on thousands of articles on the internet; however, here is what you will not find there – the option of free website makers. Free website makers allow you to create a basic website where you can easily upload information in the form of text, images and videos at no price. Some of the most popular free website makers are Wix, Weebly and Jimdo.

Keywords: The Secret to Online Traffic

Keywords refer to the search query that internet users type to search for specific information via search engines. Optimize the website content for keywords that are relevant for your business. For example, legal services in India, Indian legal services, lawyer in India can be good keywords for a legal business. To find good quality keywords, use the Google Adwords tool, which is available online for free. Use keywords in the title tag, Meta tags, headlines and intro paragraphs. Avoid the excessive usage of keywords, as this makes your content look unattractive.

Start Selling with Ecommerce

If you are serious about selling products online, opt for a paid website that allows online transactions. Such websites enable you to create an online shopping store where users can buy products or services by making payments through their credit cards, debit cards or PayPal accounts.

People Love Freebies

Add freebies on your website for users to download. For example, you can add an industry report or a case study imparting information. Internet researches show that a majority of the users participate in a meaningful quiz to test their knowledge. Add an interesting quiz to make people stay longer on your website.

A Blog a Day

A blog a day will establish your presence as an online expert in your field. While a website is dedicated to your business, a blog is more personalized approach to online marketing. Start writing blogs about the latest in your field, personal experiences, tips, and how-to topics.

Establish Identity on Forums

Forums are websites that allow users to discuss a topic. Look for popular forums that are dedicated to your industry or specialization. Answer queries posted by users and ask them to contact you for further information.

Optimize Social Media Presence

Social networking is the buzzword of this era. Take social networking profiles seriously. Facebook allows you to create a company profile page for your business. Use this page to enable existing and prospective clients stay connected to your business. Updates from the company profile page will work as a remainder to your clients. Also, use LinkedIn to connect with other professionals from the industry. This will help you to understand what they are doing differently.

Apart from these free promotional activities, you can opt for paid internet marketing through the Google advertising program. Enroll into this program and your business will get listed in the paid search results based on the keywords that you have chosen. Similarly, Facebook also allows paid advertising. While paid advertising is an easy way of generating sales, do not underestimate the importance of optimizing your online presence through free marketing strategies.

While the to do list above might seem intimidating, it is essential if you want your business to grow. Of course any half decent online marketing company can create your presence in a week or less at a cost of anything between Rs 10,000 to Rs 25,000....depending on the package you opt for. Take a look at the list of companies here, or simply google for one. Remember to check the credentials of the company you sign up with, as there are as many snake oil sellers as genuine companies out there. 

Where to Spend Your Digital Marketing $$$

For those of you interested in the numbers behind the phenomenon of soical media marketing. This should help you figure out the power of this medium: Where to Spend Your Digital Marketing $$$ in 2011 | Social Media Today

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.

Book for every child through social media

Name of Business: Pratham Books

Website URL: www.prathambooks.org

Industry: Education (not-for-profit)

Target Audience: Everybody. Pratham wants to put a book in every child’s hand. So anyone who helps them get there is a target.

Category of Business

Pratham Books is a not-for-profit organization that publishes affordable children's books in multiple Indian languages. Their mission is “to see a book in every child’s hand” and create a “Reading India”. In the last seven years, Pratham Books has published over six million books in up to 11 languages.

Marketing Efforts and Results

Being a non-profit organization, the folks at Pratham Books have made time for people. The same is visible in their social media strategy. Pratham Books realized that it was impossible to accomplish their mission alone. The need of the hour was to collaborate with other publishers, writers, translators, parents, etc to be able to reach the last child. Thus, they began their social media efforts to create a community around reading and their efforts have reaped results.

Pratham Books has methodically tapped on the strengths of multiple social media platforms. “Social media, to us, is not a marketing tool and we have never used it as a marketing tool. Social media has been crucial to us building our social publishing strategy and has allowed us to create a very strong community around our mission of ‘A Book in Every Child's Hand,’ says Maya Hemant, Digital Community Manager, Pratham Books.

The organization maintains a blog - blog.prathambooks.org. This talks about publishing, reading, literacy, kidlit, learning, non-profits, events and more. The posts are a treat for anyone who appreciates creativity. Guest blogs have also been welcomed. Pratham Books sees Twitter as a space where they can engage with the community, share ideas, ask for help, get feedback, listen to complaints, participate and mobilize volunteers, to help their reach their goal. Pratham started using Twitter early in 2009 and has more than 3,000 followers. “Growth has been purely organic and we have built a large, geographically diverse community passionate about reading and always ready and willing to help. Twitter and tweeple have helped us connect with children who run a mobile library for other children in Bengal, bikers who have travelled across states and distributed our books to government schools, housewives who informally teach under privileged children in their locality, parents who coax school administrations to hold book fairs with our books, marketing experts who help better our strategy, organizations that need books and want us to help them in setting up their libraries, authors and illustrators who want to work with us, developers who have developed iPad applications for us and more,” says Hemant.

The organization has uploaded many of its books (available under Creative Commons licenses) on Scribd, so they can reach a wider audience. These books can be remixed/repurposed by the community to suit their purpose. There have been cases when their books have been translated into Lojban (a constructed language), Assamese, French and Spanish.

Pratham Books has more than 1,600 fans on Facebook, where it updates information from the blog as well as about the events organized by them. It uses this platform to communicate with the community. The fan page has a very personal and warm approach. Pratham started using Facebook towards the middle of 2009 and has built a tightly knit community. “One of the things that we do differently is that we do not use Facebook, or any of our other channels, to talk solely about our work or market ourselves. This is very important to us because we want our efforts to be larger than just our organization and to reflect the cause of reading,” says Hemant.

Documentation of the initiatives taken by Pratham Books can be found on Flickr. The organization also uses this platform to upload their Creative Commons licensed illustrations. Again the purpose is to reach more viewers and give the community the flexibility to repackage / reuse the content.

One can find Pratham Books on YouTube as well. Documentation of the work they do and information about some of their initiatives are uploaded here. The organization creates trailers to let people know about their books. Audio books, recorded by Radio Mirchi, are uploaded at Soundcloud.

“A key take away is that patience, authenticity and transparency are fundamental building blocks needed to build a successful social media presence and more importantly, a strong community,” says Hemant. Their social media and publishing efforts were recognized at the IndiaSocial Case Challenge, where they won the first prize.

Social Media Marketing Investment

Pratham Books does not allocate a budget for its social media marketing efforts. There is one person, who anchors the effort, while every member of the team.

8 reasons why Entrepreneurs must blog

4 blogging tips and 3 ways to promote it
"You got to be kidding, on top of EVERYTHING else I have to do myself, you want me to blog. Seriously, do you even know what it takes to be an entrepreneur?" Highly censored conversation with a friend and recent entrepreneur who wanted me to work out a social media marketing strategy. Having tried, and failed, at setting out on my own I do know what it means to head your own start-up and that is why I feel a blog is a critical element for any start-up. Here are my reasons:

Share your passion: Entrepreneurs are some of the most passionate people I have met. They totally believe in their idea and their ability to make it big. It is this passion/conviction that gives them the courage to give up six figure and more salaries and trudge the uncertain path of having their own set up. Unfortunately, their passion is only visible to their family and employees. A blog is an excellent way to share that passion with the world. You never know, who else might catch the infection...a VC, potential customers, potential business partners.

Share your expertise: Many entrepreneurs are domain experts. They have spent years honing their skills and knowledge and now want to use that for themselves. If you fall in that category, you have a lot to share. A blog is a great way to share your expertise and to make your clients comfortable with your company. Your knowledge will help build credibility for your company and go a long way in solving the one question most start-ups have to deal with: "Why should I go with you?"

Blogs are not websites: Blogs are personal, they are not the same as your company website. A website represents the formal online presence of your company. That is where you have details about your business, your products/services, customer interface and even your shopping cart. A blog on the other hand is an outlet for you, your personality and lets your community understand the person behind the show.

Connect and share: Helps you connect with peers in the industry or other start ups. Many of them share the issues, concerns you have or could have the solution you are looking for. A blog helps you get to them, and helps them understand your needs. If you are blogging on your expertise, you will be surprised as to how quickly a community forms around your blog.

Test your ideas: A blog is a great place to test your ideas. The feedback will help you refine and better it before implementation. If it is a bad idea, the community will let you know.

Social Networking Tool: Blogs are at the center of the whole social networking Web2.0 buzz. You can connect your blog to your Facebook page, twitter handle, Youtube channel and improve your chances of getting noticed.

Google loves blogs: Google and other search engines love blogs. Also there are a number of blogging directories that you can list in. A great way to get yourself and your business noticed.


Lorenzo Von Matterhorn effect: Okay, I picked that up from a cheesy dating rom-com. Basically in that particular episode the character has a dating playbook. One of the tricks he uses is the Lorenzo Von Matterhorn. Basically, he sets up a web presence for this fictional character--Lorenzo Von Matterhorn, where Matterhorn is an adventurous European billionaire. He goes to the bar, drops his name and goes away. The girl does a quick search for the name, finds the fake news all over Google and the guy gets his girl. TV dramatics apart, the reality is everyone is checking out potential business partners, investments, employees, employers. Having a strong web presence will go a long way in making the deal happen. A blog is the cornerstone of your online presence.

Yes, I know its takes time and effort (I've already spend three hours on this post and figure I still have a couple of hours to go) so here are four ways to do it really quickly and painlessly:

1) If writing is not your thing, consider a video blog (vlog) or even a podcast. You can actually blog straight into the webcam on your laptop and post. It's that easy.
2) Doesn't have to be long detailed posts full of wit or wisdom. It's personal, so develop a style that works for you. I'm a writer, I like writing so I do it. You can share an idea and that's it. Your community will get used to your style.
3) Don't worry about the writing style. Keep it conversational...but do try and avoid an over casual texting approach...that is irritating to read.
4) Repost. I actually write about one original post a week. Rest I repost other posts, videos, slides that I think are relevant for my community.


Finally, if I've convinced you to start blogging do these to get noticed by your community:

1) Republish: See if your posts can be republished. Mine are republished in Entrepreneur India, biztech2.com and sometimes the big daddy in my space socialmediatoday.com also picks up my posts.
2) Share: On Linkedin, twitter and Facebook. I have set up a fan page for my blog on Facebook and have joined relevant communities on Linkedin. They drive a lot of traffic my way. Twitter too helps as, increasingly people in this community are beginning to follow my tweets.
3) Outsource setting up and marketing of the blog: It has actually taken me more time to set up and market my blog, than post on it. I did it, because I had the time and because I wanted to see what works. But you're probably not going to have the time to write & market your blog and run your business. So consider outsourcing it. There are enough and more firms that will do everything from setting up the blog to marketing it. It is also not every expensive. I have compiled a list of social media marketing companies...take your pick or just google for them. You can then focus on the message, while they take care of selecting the right platform and ensuring maximum audience reach.

Five Basic Facebook Business Page Optimization Tips

Author: MagicLogix

1. Create and set a unique Facebook name. You can do this by going to www.facebook.com/username and selecting your Business Page (not your Personal Profile) from the drop-down list. This unique name will also be used for your unique Facebook URL. Also, choosing your name is one and done – once you choose it, you can't change it, so be sure to double check for errors.
2. Add interactive Facebook applications. Facebook offers over 550,000 active applications, many of which help promote your own website and content via your Facebook Business Page. In addition to providing a user-friendly interface, most of the applications are very easy to install and customize. Also, integration and usage of these Applications will promote links to your website, blog, or online retail space. Here are my top five must-haves: Networked Blogs, Static FBML (Facebook's HTML), Promotions, Slideshare, and Reviews.  
3. Add the Like Button Plug-in to your website. To encourage your blog followers and website visitors to follow you on Facebook, add the Facebook Like plug-in to your site. This Button is single line of generated code that allows people to share your content with their network of friends. By clicking on the Like Button, a story appears in the user's friend's News Feed with a link back to your site. In addition, users have the ability to add a comment, giving more prominence to the published story on Facebook.
4. Be social, and let your fans, too. Locking down your Page to limit management time is going to make your page less fun and less interactive for users. Let users to post on your Wall, add photos, tag, add videos and comment on your posts and posts made by other fans. Enabling interactive options may result in a spam post here or there, but you can monitor all activity and delete what you deem inappropriate.
5. Optimize your status updates with keywords. It's significant to note that Facebook Pages are indexed by search engines, meaning public updates from your Business Page (unlike your Personal Profile) often show up in Google's real-time search results. When posting a new update on your Page, keep your most important keywords in mind. Also, try to add a picture when possible – Facebook updates with images posted on Business Pages are clicked on 54 percent more than text-only updates, and even 22 percent more than posts with a video update.

For many small to mid-size businesses, Facebook Pages are increasingly becoming a second homepage. Employing these basic optimization tactics within your Business Page can significantly enhance your visibility and outreach not only through Facebook, but the entire World Wide Web.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/social-marketing-articles/five-basic-facebook-business-page-optimization-tips-4061462.html
About the Author

Magic Logix is a digital marketing solutions company that provides services in Professional Website Design, Website Development, SEO and Online Marketing. The company utilizes open source development to design and integrate customized CMS for online business management, web applications, as well as customizable ecommerce websites for online merchants. By combining high quality web design and online marketing, Magic Logix offers businesses highly customized, fully functional websites that are designed and developed for Search Engine Optimization. To learn more about Magic Logix web based marketing services please feel free to visit http://www.magiclogix.com.

Six lessons from five companies that use social media

Between them they have more than a million facebook fans and twitter followers. On an average they have been on social media platforms for less than a year. Barring one, they do not have a budget or staff for social media marketing activities. Yet, they acknowledge that social media marketing is the "backbone of their marketing efforts."  These are the lessons from the five companies that have understood social media and have used it to grow their business.

Listen: "Social Media have a feedback mechanism built-in, which needless to say benefits both the customer and the brand," says Sachin Bansal, CEO and Co-founder of Flipkart.com (an online bookstore). "The key is to listen to what is being said about you and to you. Users will be brutally honest if you give them an opportunity. The onus lies on you and your brand about what you do with the feedback." Flipkart.com has done very well by listening to its customers. The site has close to 700,000 fans on Facebook and has used conversations both as a tool to sell products as well as build features users want on the site.

Integrate: Giveindia.org, a charity portal that lets users donate to their favorite charity, has used an integrated social media marketing campaign to reach out to donors across the world. Their facebook page links back to their site. Their landing page on causes.com links back to their facebook page, twitter handle, blog and also has videos of giveindia events that are posted on youtube. This 360 degree social media integration has helped the organisation reach its message effectively to the widest possible audience. Indiamart too uses an integrated approach that includes blogging, facebook, twitter, youtube and photo sharing sites Photobucket and Flickr. This all round approach has helped the site engage with its audience of SMEs and keep them informed about products and services on the site as well as general developments in the sector. “Social media marketing has become a very strong medium to reach out to a wider audience. Social media platforms in the form of Facebook, Twitter, Youtube have made it possible to broadcast messages and news to a larger base of business persons and the like. Its ability to engage with the stakeholders irrespective of geographical barriers has helped us penetrate SME space to a large extent,” says Dinesh Agarwal, Founder & CEO, IndiaMART.com

Engage: One site that has learned the value of engaging with its audience is pagalguy.com. The site prepares students for MBA entrance exams and has been active on Social Media since 2008. Pagalguy realized early social media is ideal for interacting with its students and prospectives. The company uses its facebook page for contests, polls and surveys. It does not duplicate content between its facebook page and its website. “We recently launched a survey to rank business schools and saw around 9,000 clicks from facebook in 20 days. This was a phenomenal way to reach out to our current and new users,” says CEO Allwin Agnel. Legal website Lawisgreek.com also uses its social media platforms to create a level of interaction with its audience. This, the company believes, has resulted in a loyal customer base and one that actively contributes to the growth of the site and therefore the business. On its twitter account too Law is Greek encourages conversations between its experts and its customers.

Use Discussion boards: For a specialized service like Lawisgreek, discussion boards are a great way to connect with their audiences...in this case lawyers and people in need of legal advice. The site is active on Linkedin and regularly participates in relevant discussion boards. This helps create awareness as well as drive traffic. Palash Das, from the Strategic Alliances division of LawIsGreek.com, said, “Social media marketing is the backbone of our marketing initiative. This is what has helped us reach out to our target audience, engage them and create our brand.”

Inform not just advertise: Indiamart, lawisgreek and pagalguy have learnt to provide a wide spectrum of relevant information on their social media platforms. For example: you will find interesting discussions on news--everything from a UP Khap Panchayat ruling on Jeans to Advani demanding black money from Swiss bank be returned can be found on the lawisgreek facebook page. Indiamart uses its platforms to inform about government policy and overall developments in the SME sector, while pagalguy limits advertising its services to its website.

Social Media Marketing is really free: Barring lawisgreek.com (which has a minuscule budget for social media marketing), the others have used existing resources to set up and run their social media marketing. All those fan pages and followers have come at little extra cost, thereby truly bringing home the advantages of this medium.

Twitter Marketing Best Practices

Author: Steve Herbert

Social media is here to stay and utilizing it for marketing is only going to become more important as more people embrace this channel to give and receive information. This article focuses on Twitter but these core principles can be applied to any social media or even traditional off-line marketing techniques. None of the concepts are difficult to apply.
If all you do is tweet out 140 characters that say, "Buy this great thing now! link to my site" then you may get a sale or two. Heck, if you have a large enough list you may even be fooled into believing that it's effective. You may get some quick results you will not have any lasting results if you're not providing people with a reason to stay connected.
Lead with value. This is first, and by far the most important, core principle in marketing. Leading with value leaves the door wide open for you to determine what "value" is for you and your market. I have provided value by writing this article. You can provide value by sharing this article (and others like it) or by posting a quote that others may find inspiring, thereby valuable. It's really that simple. The more you give, the more you get.
Keep it interesting and varied. Every post doesn't have to be the greatest, new thought or even specific to your topic. Find a good quote, a video that's interesting or funny, share ways to save money, get organized or save time or just post a fun photo. There is an endless supply of quality content that you can post so when you're ready to post a sales tweet prospects will actually look at it instead of saying to themselves, "Here we go again with another sales pitch" and press "delete".
Do not over-saturate with "sales" tweets. There are differing theories on how often you should place a sales tweet in your rotation.  Those ratios vary from one sales tweet in every three tweets to one in ten.  I tend to subscribe to the one in ten arena myself. I'd rather have people stay connected to me than have them feel pressured or bothered by a constant flood of "BUY! BUY! BUY!" tweets. Wouldn't you delete someone if they did that to you?
Respond to Direct Messages (DM). This is a very effective way to build a relationship with your followers. Also, thank people for their comments or retweets of your content. Remember Twitter is a two way street - it's not just for you to blast out content.  It's for creating relationships. Take a little time and explore some of the sites and links your followers send you and comment on them.  People love to get complements and know that you are "listening."
Build relationships. Twitter is a quick and easy way to connect with people and open the door for a genuine conversation. Once you've engaged someone you have a far better chance of them buying your goods or services. After all, people don't buy on fact.  They buy on emotion. When you interact with someone you develop trust, and that's essential for a lasting relationship and a sale.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/social-marketing-articles/twitter-marketing-best-practices-4052427.html
About the Author

Husband and Father of Twins, Loves Traveling to New Places, Scuba Diving, Internet Marketing Success Coach Helping People Make Five Figures a Month From Home, Highly Motivated to Help Others Succeed.

Flipkart grows by listening to customers

Name of Business: Flipkart.com

Website URL: http://www.flipkart.com/

Industry: ecommerce

Target Audience: Online shoppers, people who shop for entertainment online (books, movies, music, games, etc)

Category of Business

Flipkart.com aims mostly at people who would like to buy books online in India. What the company calls the “steroids” for its website are low prices, free shipping and an intuitive interface that makes it very convenient to search for books. The site has a young and trendy look and feel. Flipkart.com was launched by a passionate group of professionals who aimed at giving Indians a good online shopping experience and excellent customer service. Technological initiatives were focused on making the search for books faster and more convenient.

Marketing Efforts

In its social media initiatives, Flipkart.com aims at facilitating an easier conversation channel for customers and users. Conversations are to the point and are targeted at specific issues, thoughts and ideas.

Flipkart.com began activities to make its presence felt on Facebook and Twitter about a year ago. The company has also used LinkedIn to connect with people. The popularity of the site has grown through recommendations...people recommending the site to their family, friends and co-workers. And what better platform than social media to leverage ‘word-of-mouth’! Flipkart.com recognized that using social media is about being human. The people who manage their channels infuse Flipkart's culture and personality in what they do or say in tandem with their own personality.

“Social Media have feedback mechanism built into them, which needless to say benefits both the customer and the brand,” says Mr. Sachin Bansal, CEO and Co-founder of Flipkart.com. “What's key is to listen to what is being said about you (as opposed to hear), and for that matter being said directly to you. Users will be brutally honest if you give them an opportunity. The onus then lies solely upon you and your brand, about what you do with the feedback. That's where we've seen tremendous benefit.”

“Transparency and Honesty is the key. If you value these traits as an organization, Social Media will help amplify it,” adds Mr. Bansal.

Result of Efforts

Flipkart.com has a strong presence on Facebook, with a staggering number of fans. The company has more than 690,000 fans and has used easy, interesting conversations to engage them. Flipkart.com has 2,877 followers on twitter. Flipkart.com’s Alexa global ranking is 2,101, while its India ranking is 164.

Marketing Investment

The investment in social media has been in terms of time and effort. Almost everyone at Flipkart monitors social platforms. 

What GiveIndia gets from Social Media

Name of Business: GiveIndia

Website URL: http://www.giveindia.org/

Industry: Non-profit

Target Audience: Internet savvy, working class population falling between the age group of 25-45

Category of Business

GiveIndia was launched by Venkat Krishnan, an IIM-A graduate, in April 2000 as icicicommunities.org. GiveIndia is an online platform for people across the world who wish to make donations. There are about 200 NGOs that receive funding through GiveIndia’s online donation platform. They first carefully scrutinized over 3,000 Indian NGOs for transparency and credibility and out of those chose 200 that met the GiveIndia listing criteria. Till date, more than 75,000 donors from across the world have been able to help millions of people through the GiveIndia platform. Donors have the freedom to select a cause of their choice to support from the 200 NGOs.

Marketing Efforts

GiveIndia has used social media integration in order to increase visibility and awareness among the working class and also to encourage people from all over the world to make donations to the causes of their choice. GiveIndia has used Facebook to reach out to its target audience. They began this endeavor two years back. They have customized their fan page to include additional tabs that connect the users and fans to their blog and events. They also have a tab that features videos from YouTube for all of their fans.

GiveIndia has also made use of Twitter to inform users and fans about their activities. They started using Twitter in April 2009. They have regularly updated their tweets for their fans.

Another social media initiative taken by GiveIndia is the GiveIndia page on www.causes.com. This causes page is a part of Facebook where they promote this philanthropic endeavor and aim at connecting people and organizations in the US to 200 Indian NGOs.

GiveIndia also has an active blog http://blog.giveindia.org/, which they use to highlight their programs and causes. They also have user posts and have done a great job in integrating the blog with their website, their page on causes.com as well as their facebook page.

When talking about social media, GiveIndia’s CIO Dhaval Udani said, “It’s a great tool for awareness and reaching out to the mass number of people out there. However, we are yet to see its real benefit.”

Result of Efforts

GiveIndia’s Alexa rating has improved continuously. Their traffic rank for India now stands at 17,972 and worldwide stands at 151,153. Due to their efforts, their fans increased to over 900 on Facebook and to over 600 on Twitter. On causes.com, GiveIndia now has more than 3,400 members and has received donations through this platform.

Marketing Investment

GiveIndia has made marketing investment in the form of employee time and effort. Their current employees, who understanding the objectives of GiveIndia and the message they want to convey, have taken all the initiatives.

Case Study: Indiamart uses social media to connect with SMEs

Name of Business: IndiaMART

Website URL: http://www.indiamart.com/

Industry: B2B Marketplace

Target Audience: Bulk buyers, bulk suppliers, manufacturers, exporters, service providers, SMEs and MSMEs

Category of Business

IndiaMART.com is India's largest online B2B marketplace. The platform is aimed at connecting buyers with suppliers. Through this platform, Indian businesses can hope to gain global exposure and conduct business with companies across the world. There are more than 1,000,000 companies that have profiles on the website. IndiaMART.com aims at providing its members cost-effective solutions for business promotion. The site offers its members options like premium listings, portal sponsorships and banner advertising to enhance their online visibility.

Marketing Efforts

IndiaMART.com has great confidence in the power of social media marketing as a medium of reaching out to the target market. It has a presence on various social networking sites.

The company began using Facebook in 2009. The company sees Facebook as a “consistent medium of brand promotion.” IndiaMART.com uses its Facebook account to provide SMEs specific latest news and information about current trends. It does this through regular updates on its wall. Through this medium, the company is able to share information about various business aspects, such as trade shows, with its members.

IndiaMART.com has a meager presence on Twitter. Its Twitter account has less than 500 followers. A restricting factor could be that most of the tweets are promotional, rather than what social networking is actually about, i.e. being social.

IndiaMART.com also uses Youtube to share videos of their media coverage, including interviews of their CEO, as well as success stories of their clients. The company uses Photbucket and Flickr to share pictures of their products and events. Blogger has been used to educate SMEs (small and medium enterprises) on how to better handle their business operations, share key announcements from IndiaMART.com and related news. IndiaMART.com also has a presence on social bookmarking sites like delicious and Stumbleupon.

“Social media marketing has become a very strong medium to reach out to a wider audience. Social media platforms in the form of Facebook, Twitter, Youtube have made it possible to broadcast messages and news to a larger base of business persons and the like. Its ability to engage with the stakeholders irrespective of geographical barriers has helped us penetrate SME space to a large extent,” says Dinesh Agarwal, Founder & CEO, IndiaMART.com.

Result of Efforts

IndiaMART.com has 58,351 fans on Facebook. Many of their fans are very active and freely exchange their thoughts, suggestions and opinions here. IndiaMART.com and other marketplaces generate more than 40 million page views per month. IndiaMART.com’s three-month Alexa global traffic rank is 1,391. Its Indian traffic rank is 108.

Facebook and twitter are unsafe

While, I do spend all my time on this blog advocating the benefits of social media marketing and how sites like facebook and twitter help you get to your market...there are precautions you have to take when on these sites. A recent report lists facebook and twitter as the most unsafe sites of last year. Read this to know how to secure yourself.

Case Study: Pagalguy.com a hit on Facebook and Twitter

Name of Business: PaGaLGuY.com

Website URL: www.pagalguy.com/

Industry: Education

Target Audience: People who are interested in getting a graduate degree in management

Category of Business

PaGaLGuY.com is an online platform for MBA preparatory resources. The platform was founded in 2002 with an aim to enable MBA applicants make informed decisions. More than 700,000 MBA applicants access the platform every month. The website provides resources to help with preparing for MBA entrance exams (like the CAT, GMAT and TOEFL) as well as admission interviews. PaGaLGuY.com is also a place where MBA applicants help each other by sharing information, suggestions and experiences.

Marketing Efforts and Results

PaGaLGuY.com has a strong social media presence. It has close to 6,000 fans on its Facebook fan page. The fan page was created in 2008 and sustained a good rate of growth in fans. PaGaLGuY.com facilitates interaction as well as promotes contests through this page. It does not believe in duplicating content on its site and its facebook page. So, the interactions are unique and more meaningful.

“Recently we launched our survey for business school rankings and we saw around 9,000 clicks on our application from facebook over a period of 20 days. This was a phenomenal way to reach out to our current and new users,” says CEO Allwin Agnel.

PaGaLGuY.com has a twitter account as well, where it has more than 3,100 followers. It began the endeavor in 2010. The platform is used to announce new stories to its followers. The followers on Twitter and fans on Facebook have grown organically—no marketing monies invloved. PaGaLGuY.com uploads videos of events and news on YouTube.

The website has experienced huge success with its forum, which has more than 2 million discussion posts. MBA applicants can find useful stuff out there on MBA preparation and admissions.

PaGaLGuY.com’s three-month global Alexa traffic rank is 7,569. Its Indian traffic rank is 480.

Marketing Investment

PaGaLGuY.com has not outsourced its initiatives in social networking. People who update the website spend some time in maintaining the facebook and twitter accounts.

Outsource your Social Media Marketing

In all of life's uncertainties a couple of things that we can take for granted

a) Social Media Marketing works
b) It takes bucket loads of time to get the campaign underway and for it to pay-off.

If you belong to the category of entrepreneurs/individuals who need social media marketing but do not have the above bucket load of time, then consider if it is worth investing in either a full-time employee or outsourcing it. I am not a big fan of the full-time social media expert idea and this is why:

• Too expensive: This is probably the most expensive option to take. The experts cost a lot and the novice could end up costing you much more in the long term. 
• Lack of expertise: Social media is an evolving phenomenon and there are not enough individuals who have really understood the nuances of their medium. There are also many aspects to social media, it is not possible for one person to fully understand and integrate relevant aspects of social media to your overall business plan. A Social media company on the other hands brings the expertise of the team to play for you.
• Dependence: With just one expert, you are up shit creek, if they decide to quit, fall ill whatever. What happens to your plan, what happens to continuity? 

Outsourcing, on the other hand, works out to be better value for money and you actually get experts who bring their learning from different companies to play for your campaign. However, I see two main issues with outsourcing; a) what do you outsource and b) who do you outsource it to

What do you outsource: Basically everything related to setting up your presence on the social media networks. Once you have decided on what you want to communicate, let the agency recommend the right platform (facebook, twitter, youtube, linkedin, blogs etc), the strategy and the campaign look and feel. There is a level of programming involved with facebook and this too can be part of the package.

The one thing that you should not outsource at any cost is the interaction or the dialog with your audience. The exchange is key to a successful social media campaign and is the one area which needs you to be personally involved.

Who do you outsource it to: Way more difficult to answer. For starters you can check out this list of digital agencies I have compiled. However, barring a couple, I have no personal experience of their ability, expertise or professionalism. Meeting with them and talking to their clients should give you a good idea of their capabilities.

However, if you are still not satisfied, I would recommend you try out a freelancing site like elance.com. These sites list a number of providers who bid for your work. Quality is assured, as their ability to garner more projects depends to an extent on how existing customers rate them. You can check out their ratings as also testimonials from past clients. Another advantage of going this route are the rates. Since it is a bidding, rates are extremely competitive. I have used elance on a couple of occasions and am pretty satisfied with the value proposition the site provides.

Finally, Social Media Marketing has become too big for you to ignore. It has to be an integral part of your marketing plan. But, do realize success here depends on keeping the communication going with your customers...so that is one aspect that you have to keep with you. No one can talk about your company/product better than you can.

Case Study: How Law is Greek engages customers

Name of Business: LawIsGreek.com
Website: www.lawisgreek.com
Industry: Legal
Target Audience: Laypersons, Lawyers and Law Students

Category of Business
Launched in February 2010, LawIsGreek.com (LIG) is an online platform for resolving legal issues, with a focus on India. It aims at increasing awareness of Indian laws among laypersons and does this by publishing articles that simplify legal jargon and through “how to” articles. The website also publishes legal news. LIG aims to resolve legal problems that people face through its “Ask for legal advice” section. The website features details and profiles of lawyers who offer their opinions through blogs as well as through legal counsel to people seeking information on specific law categories. There are forums that enable discussions on varied topics among laypersons and law experts. LIG provides specialized services to students, lawyers and laypersons.

Marketing Strategy
LawIsGreek.com has used social media integration for enhancing its visibility, popularity and awareness within and outside the legal sphere. Its Facebook Fan Page forms the primary tool to reach out to Indians across the globe. Updates on this page invite a lot of feedback. This interactivity has created a community that is loyal to the site and contributes to it. This fan page has been customized to include additional tabs. For example, the “Latest on LIG” tab is where Facebook users can take a look at all the recent activity on the site. This engages them by providing them the opportunity to express their thoughts around the content on LawIsGreek.com.

LIG has used Twitter to do much more than what businesses typically do. The profile encourages conversations rather than merely being a tool to send tweets to its followers. Additionally, LIG has a page on the site that displays legal updates from people on Twitter.

One medium that has helped LIG to connect with legal professionals is LinkedIn. Using discussion boards to involve experts in the field of law, LawIsGreek.com has built a strong group on this networking site. It focuses on converting this effort into greater activity on the site.

Palash Das, from the Strategic Alliances division of LawIsGreek.com, said, “Social media marketing is the backbone of our marketing initiative. This is what has helped us reach out to our target audience, engage them and create our brand.”

Result
LIG reached 20,000 fans on its Facebook Fan Page in September 2010. Activity of its fans has also grown. As of December 2010, there were more than 50 daily comments on various posts and more than 20,000 daily post views. Alexa’s global traffic rank improved from 800,000 in March 2010 to 66,956 in December 2010. Alexa’s Indian traffic rank improved from 60,000 in March 2010 to 10,383 in December 2010.

Investment
LIG began investing in social media integration in May 2010. Their marketing investment has been in the form of hiring dedicated SMO experts. The associated investment was around INR 60,000 ($1,350) per month for the first eight months. Once the foundation was laid, the investment for maintaining social media involvement declined significantly to about INR 16,000 ($350) per month.

LIG has two separate segments involved in social media integration. One segment focuses on building the base and the other focuses on increasing overall user engagement.

Free Course on Social Media Marketing Basics

I found this to be an interesting introduction to Social Media Marketing. Covers the basics and gives a fairly decent understanding of the importance of the media. Best part is, the course is free and does not take too much time.