Social Media Marketing Ideas from the West

Hi, its my first blog post on the very first day of my trip to USA. Actually I have been here twice before but I never thought of writing down my daily experience into a blog post. This interesting idea struck when I was packing my bags and thought that how am I going to share pictures with friends on facebook while am travelling. This thought concluded in deciding that not only pictures but I would also "Live Share" my thoughts and experiences with all!
Yesterday I just went to a small outlet near by to strech my legs. Outlets included the famous brand names like Macy's, J C Penny, Old Navy, Aeropostale, Hollister, etc whose product we now get in India too.. (they are made in India originally ;-) ) As I was walking by the stores, I noticed an interesting marketing idea for shops and outlets.
Traditionally, we see store names above the stores at each shops. Now they also imprint with various graphics and designs on the front doors and glass to attract customers. On occassions like Diwali, Holi and Navratri we see drawings of diya and dandiya on store front glasses. Its aesthetically attractive and inviting. And so this marketing stuff works well in India.
With the upcoming industry of social media marketing businesses have entered into the social media world to attract online viewers and customers. Now, we know that cross marketing always works best everywhere. Letting know people that "We are on Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, etc" is most important because your customers need to know where are you located online and offline both, so that they can reach out to you everywhere in every possible ways. So for this businesses need to imprint social presence on the outside store maketing materials. Printing social networking sites logos, QR codes, etc will definitely bring you lot of loyal customers.
I noticed this small but very effective social media marketing idea at each store imprinted right outside the store's front glass. They are letting their customers and walking-by visitors know that they are actively present on social media platforms. They are there to serve you better. Just take a look at the picture I took at some of the stores for better understanding. Isnt this amazing?
What you think? Let me know your thoughts too..
Thanks for reading. Lot more yet to come, as I will be blogging throughout my trip, jotting down amazing things ! :-)    

#5 Awesome Ways to Increase Interaction and Conversation with Your Audience

Interaction and valuable conversation is often a key to drive your business. Managing those interactions is also quite important. Online conversations happening these days need proper direction to manage it and getting most out of it. Here are some awesome & simple ways to increase your online interactions and conversations with your audience. 

1.       Use  Videos to engage 

Interact audio-visually through creating your own videos. People love watching videos. There is no need to make expert quality videos. People will love the raw content, coming out fresh from your premises.    

2.       Tell Stories about your brand

There are great tools to create stories like – Storify. Use these tools and express your brand story. Use your customer recommendations that are received on twitter or facebook, quote them on your stories and make them famous. They will love it and even appreciate you. Share your messages through short stories and don’t forget to insert images because a picture says a thousand words.   

3.       Conducts Visual Contests

To increase interactions with your audience, indulge them in attractive activities like conducting visual contests on Pinterest and Instagram. Instagram is great for mobile internet users and also a great tool to conduct mobile contests. Organizing Contests is a great idea to know your customers well, get their feedback, and co-creating content with them.  

4.       Share news and updates regularly with pictures

Share your company news, ratings, information, events, etc on social media using related images and photographs. This is a great way to start a conversation about something that you are informing them. When you get some likes on the stuff you post, start a conversation in the comments section and engage them in it. 

5.       Celebrate every occasion of the world

World is your market now. Your potential customer may be anywhere in the world. So send wishes on every occasion, happy or sad. Caring for your audience is very much important. This is a great way to “Humanise” your brand and making people realise that you care for everybody.

So, here is my info-graphic saying everything that I wrote above. Enjoy & feel free to Share it ! 

12 Most Important Twitter Tools for Entrepreneurs

As an entrepreneur, it becomes essential to capture traffic coming from inside Twitter.com because it is cost free. We all know the basics of twitter and how to use it. But how effectively are you putting this tool for capturing your market and creating a circle of customer engagement. 

Twitter is a network which shares information in small pieces. And so there are various other tools to monitor your Twitter account. I have compiled a short list of 12 most important tools, that every entrepreneur should consider using at least some of them for monitoring and managing conversations on Twitter. 

1. Twileshare - Upload and share files on Twitter with your clients, customers, employees, and other important contacts instantly. This makes your work instant and on-the-go easy. 
2. Vizify TweetSheet - Your Twitter activity is displayed as an instant infographic. It displays your information in an easy and attractive way, forcing anyone to go through your content.
3. TweetMyJobs - Great job matches via Twitter (and mobile). It is a great tool for HR managers of your firm, reducing recruiting costs at large.
4. Twups - Twitter aggregator. Popular topics are clubbed all in one place so that you can monitor the topics relevant to your business and track it who is discussing them. You can also work on your online keyword strategy for your website.
5. TwitterFeed - Feed your blog to Twitter. One of the most important tools. Reduce your tweet burden by just creating a tweeterfeed account and sync it with your blog or other blogs of your interest.
6. Nearby Tweets - Find and watch tweets from local users. This will enable you to see who are tweet about you in the nearby area and you can reach up to them for off – line conversations.
7. TweetLevel - An influence measurement tool from Edelman. This tool measures your brand influence and will give you a score. How influential are you among your competitors and customers.
8. Tweet Scan - Twitter and micro blog search. Search and capture relevant people, groups, topics, locations, etc.
9. Twitalyzer - Serious analytics for social relationships. It is an interesting tool, some what similar to Google Analytics, helps you to see how many followers are online on real time, who retweets your message, what people are talking about you, followers and following statistics etc.
10. TwitBlock - With TwitBlock, find out how many followers are spam and you can trash them, so that they do not clutter your account and you can get better statistics about your followers.
11. Splitweet - It is a most useful twitter tool if your firm has more than one brand to manage on twitter. Splitweet is Management + brand monitoring for multiple Twitter accounts tool helping you manage all your brands at one place.
12. BirdHerd - Twitter made easy for groups and teams. BirdHerd helps communication among your team mates and group conversations. It’s like your own small community inside twitter, which helps you carry out important meetings, conversations, quick polling among team mates and much more. 

Hope this list is useful. I would love to hear your reviews. 

-KP.   

Twitter for Entrepreneurs - Interview with Keith Keller

Amazing conversation with Keith Keller from Melbourne, Australia gave me deep insights on how can one use Twitter for sharing their message. So, I thought why not share his thoughts with my network and give them a chance to listen him, straight away from Australia. 

I have already written about Keith Keller earlier in my previous posts. Also, He runs a much demanded programme - Crack the Twitter Code. Recently, Keith also wrote a book on "Twitter for Creative Souls" which is an e-book and u can avail it for free on his website.

Here, again Keith has shared some very useful Twitter tactics that can be used by Global Entrepreneurs. For the first, he has shared his views with India. Have a listen to this Sound Cloud audio (below) of me taking his interview. 

KONVERSATION WITH KEITH KELLER & KHUSHBU PANDYA (MP3) by Khushbu Pandya

The making of Konvophilia

The most interesting and fascinating thing for me is to create something on my own. In my childhood, I used to create art works out of materials lying idle at home. I always used to make my projects look creative. That's because creativity resides in my basic nature. Everything I do, should be compulsorily with a flair of creative touch with perfection. 

I wanted to share a story of one of my most important creation and so I thought to write about it. Well, in this age of new media, most popularly known as 'social media', every person has an opportunity to create a world of their own. So, I too created my Facebook page just because I wanted to create the world of my own thoughts and passions. 

Being Leo along with creative mind, anything I do is with deep passion and strong will. Hence, for me, the Facebook page also needed to be like a perfect identity, having proper objectives and a unique place. So, at the time of page creation, I had to give it a "name" obviously. But nothing was appealing to me. I wanted to name it very differently. But it should also be relevant to my ideas and thoughts which are to be shared on it. That's when I learned the importance of naming an Idea or a Start-Up. 

For me "Konvophilia" is no less than a start-up. I treated the process of  creating Konvophilia just like a start-up. It is a serious business to me. I have to be relevant. Not because it is displayed publicly, but also because it reveals my personality, my thoughts on Social Media, my expertise, my ideas. I have to be a responsible person for what I am sharing, posting, tagging, liking, commenting or following. I think being a Page Manager gives you the feel of being an Owner of your space. And so I treated Konvophilia as my first Start-Up. 

Coming back to the Name - Konvophilia, many have asked me why this name? Konvophilia is actually a term I coined for my self. As my initials are KP (Khushbu Pandya), I wanted to name my page not anything but only by a single word having both these letters and that too 'K' being the starting alphabet. Well, the start-up is all about Social Media. The things that would be appearing on it are related to this new media, its importance, relevance of conversations, studying social relationships, impact of conversations on various businesses and professionals, importance of eWOM (e-Word Of Mouth), etc. 

Hence, keeping in mind these parameters, the first word is "Konvo" which is derived from "Conversation". The short word for 'Conversation' is Convo and as I wanted my word to start with alphabet 'K', it turned out to be "Konvo". The second adjoining word is "Philia", which is one of the four ancient greek word for Love. It is also translated as Friendship according to Aristotle. So, the combination of both words "Konvo-Philia", whose meaning turns out to be "Love for Conversations" appealed to me a lot, because it very well defines my ideas, thoughts and perspectives. 

Another important thing to be done after that was to give it a visible face. No one would like an empty profile picture space. Profiles without identity catches the least interest of people. Seoyeon Hong, a doctoral student, conducted the research along with Kevin Wise, an associate professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism and other doctoral students. This study found out many truths about the importance of Profile Image of a Facebook Profile, whether it is a page, group or a person. I had a plan of creating unique logo for my page, but as I wanted to go online as soon as possible, during initial times, the image for profile was taken from internet. Below is the image. 

This image suited quite well to the name and image of my start-up. Those times, there were no cover images for pages. The night of Feb 29 2012, there were news that Cover Pages are going to be introduced on midnight of 29th Feb and from March 1 2012, every Facebook page will have a cover page section introduced. That night, I created a Cover page for Konvophilia as well and introduced it that midnight. 

 

Again, came a time, when it felt compelling to change a customized profile image. I, then did some combinations of images in Paint and Photoshop to come out with proper icon. The below image was then created. 

Time to change has arrived again. Because creative minds never sleeps. "Konvophilia" is going under a massive change right now. and soon it will be published. The "New Konvophilia" is more organized. As soon as it is revealed, I will write more about it in detail.  

This was the Story of Konvophilia - my first start-up. And now, Konvophilia is also a new name for my blog. I think, I am completely into my this project, making it better and better every time. 

-KP.  

3 Major updations in Social Media Geography

Hello Friends, 

Today, I am sharing very important thing for all social media lovers and practitioners. 

Are your social media marketing strategies based on current platform scenario ? 

Well there some changes in the landscape and I think all should take these three major adaptations into their social media marketing strategies. Lets take a look on the infographic that I have prepared on the basis of information by Fred Cavazza.   

Being Social in Social Media

Social Media is been explained by many experts and specialized people in the media and social media industry. Today, I am not going to explain "what is Social Media" but rather just want to express my understanding the essence of Social Media. 


Here is what i have made to express my understanding in some simple and interesting way. 

In the above infographic, I have explained a very simple fact.
Conversations and people are the main essence of Social Media, which makes this medium "a Social place". 


Have you ever questioned why this medium is called social media? If its just internet then why can't it be called Online Media ??


Answer is - 
 "Socialization" which happens on Internet and gives people a chance to interact in real time with real people and real organizations is the only thing which makes this Space of Internet a "LIVE SPACE" 


Hence, what matters is 3 basic things :
1.   YOU as an initiator of conversation 
2.   PEOPLE with whom you share your views and take their views in return 
3.   CONVERSATION which happens between YOU & PEOPLE, making the internet a LIVE SPACE