PeopleBrwsr - A gift for brand managers

It is not very often that an idea translates into an effective communication solution which blows you over with its simplicity. PeopleBrowsr is one such platform which promises to provide quick access and a unique browsing experience that only an true social media enthusiast can appreciate.

Incidentally, I came across Brian Solis's post on the browser when I was looking for a solution which would take care of my social media interface needs.

Mr. Solis introduces this application on his blog as follows:
Introducing PeopleBrowsr, an attention-centered dashboard for managing your online relationships and communication in Twitter and across multiple social networks.

At its foundation, PeopleBrowsr is a first of a kind meta-network for social networks that works with Mozilla FireFox 3, Safari 3.1 or Google Chrome – no download or plug-in required. It essentially turns your Web browser into a simple, visual social media dashboard. While there are many third-party tools for Twitter, PeopleBrowsr brings the best features from all of the popular add-on services into one solution - without requiring a download or a browser plug-in.

If you are a heavy social media user or a brand manager / analyst, it is a dream come true.

I will leave the comparisons and analysis with other similar applications to the Techies. As a user and a communications consultant I am more than overwhelmed with this application.

It is still in alpha and I would encourage you to go ahead and take it for a test ride. You will be blown away.

Mumbai terror attack: When not doing business pays…

Opportunists strike at the heart of human tragedy, shredding the spirit of Mumbai to bits. Businesses which are sensitive will sustain and win the good will of all .Those out to get a bang for their buck risk tarnishing their reputation and loose respect.

It is not a new thing. Politicians do this. Business’s do this. Corporates do this. Individuals do this. You and I also do this.

“Every crisis is an opportunity” is a line often repeated in top ranking B-schools, communications programs, marketing war zones, so on and so forth. I suspect this particular instinct develops over time as we are encouraged to get back to our routines with helpful edicts such as ‘…life moves on…’, ‘…it’s just a phase…’ and ‘…it’s business as usual…’ after any catastrophe strikes us, personal or otherwise.

The message is clear. Let us get back to our lives since we are not affected by this directly and still have to continue earning a decent living. Our collective resilience is a function of necessity and undeniable realities of life. It’s pure Darwinism, survival of the fittest.

Now, many of you would exclaim, amongst choicest abuses, things like

“Hey Hemant…what else are we supposed to do…we have to move on?”

“We just can’t hold on to our grief and stay stunned forever.”

“People need help. We need to get into action and do something…!”

I agree. But all I have to say is don’t abuse someone else’s grief and try to squeeze a buck out of them by playing on their vulnerability.

Here’s what got me pissed off.

A day after the brutal massacre by crazed zealots, probably hot on Prozac or Cocaine or what ever that works, I get a call from a leading Mumbai based Insurance Company asking whether I suddenly was aware of my mortality and would like to preserve my family’s way of life after I kick the bucket.

And another one of their ilk, the insurance arm part, one of many swishing tentacles of a corporate giant, gave me a buzz to find more about my insurance needs.

Now, now, the assumption here is that the ensuing events would have had such a drastic effect on at least 1% of the total population they touched base with, which would lead to some form of business in terms of product sale.

Perfectly legitimate, you may say, but it does leave a bad taste in the mouth.

A private firm that I know of also went ahead with its placement calls to unsuspecting recruits g/painfully employed in competitor firms. And this is what the receiver of this generous offer had to say,

“What kind of morons work at this place. The whole world is f*cking falling apart and he’s bugging me to come in for an interview! I don’t want to work in such a place”

Its business as usual they say. Life goes on… Sure, I agree. But you have insinuated the wrath of common people that you willingly subjected to your crude insensitivity. Now I don’t want your product. May be I will soften up in a couple of months, but right now I have lost respect for you!

From a communications stand point it would have made sense to shut shop or at least curb activities which cause discomfort to others. This is when it would have paid to not do business for once.

• Mumbai terror attack events [Link]

• BJP, a leading political party in India, issued an advertisement which tries to score a political point after the gruesome events [Link]

Indian bloggers now acknowledged as consultants to media firms

Afaqs reports the launch of Livemint radio today with Business Standard to follow suit. These well established media firms are now looking towards veteran bloggers and established new media practitioners to set up their digital initiatives.

Well known blogger Kiruba Shankar is to aid the BS initiative while Kamala Bhatt, of the popular The Kamala Show is associated with the livemint radio.

This follows a pattern observed globally wherein established bloggers are sought by major corporate firms and media companies to guide their way through the untrodden territory.

Also, it is typical for top bloggers to get the recognition and the moolah while there is virtually no trickling down to the resilient masses. This too is expected as Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest holds good.

The trend of new media specialists partnering with corporate firms to set up their digital platforms is a welcome one from a communications perspective . Some bloggers have been able to make that transition to Mainstream Media (MSM). This definitely is a good sign for the social media business.

(Article link)

Continuing the Obama v. McCain social media initiatives series

An article in Mint today with the headline "What we googled for during the US elections" (link) details the various keyword searches across the globe. The interesting bit is how many corporates directed traffic to their websites and web properties by purchasing these popular keywords from Google.

Mahesh Murthy, Founder, Pinstorm Advertising, claims that Indian searchers predicted the Electoral College results. Obama-related searches outnumbered McCain-related searches 2.3:1, nearly the same as the Electoral College results, the article states.

The IT heavy areas of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu surfed for keywords BPO (Business Process Outsourcing), H1B visa alluding to the visa application process for NRIs, an expected phenomenon due to uncertainties of regime change.

Also it might be useful to see my previous post on the topic:
(Link)

Social media warfare: Obama vs. McCain

The social media strategies and tools used by now President-elect Barack Obama and his opponent John McCain is an interesting paradigm shift from the heavy reliance on Main Stream Media (MSM) outlets to the grass root level and democratic social media platforms. It would be interesting to analyze the various modes of digital communication incorporated by the two in their campaign.

Here are two of the top articles which provide a scorching insight into how one can leverage social media and digital platforms by both the candidates.

1) Barack Obama and John McCain - Social Media and search engine scorecard (Link)
Courtesy Brain Solis for his tweet which gives the link.

2) Windchimes, a Mumbai based social media agency is running an analysis, a two part series on this topic on their blog (link to part I), (Link to part II)

If there are any more analytical blog posts of this kind that you have come across, please share the link.

3) Update: Mint article which detail search engine trends across the globe during the time period of the election. Also, it informs how companies managed to drive traffic to their web properties by purchasing popular keywords.
Link to article
Link to my post

IRS 2008 R2: Update

The .pdf version of the Indian Readership Survey (IRS) 2008 Round 2 conducted by the Media research Users Council's (MRUC) can be downloaded here

IRS 2008 R2 released...Readership declines

The Media Research Users Council (MRUC) has released the Indian Readership Survey (IRS) round 2 ratings for the year 2008. Following global trends, total Indian readership is reported to have declined as compared to IRS R1 2008.

Amidst boom time in Indian media markets, there is an increasing trend of readers moving online which is also observed in developed markets. May be an integrated press room is in order.

The top five English newspapers by total readership are: The Times of India, the Hindustan Times, TheHindu, TheTelegraph, and the Deccan Chronicle.

The top five Hindi dailies by total readership are: Dainik Jagran, Dainik Bhaskar, Amar Ujala, Hindustan, and Rajasthan Patrika.

The below graphic (courtesy Livemint) provides a broader overview of the readership patterns.

Pimp my PR

Simple digital tactics which add that little extra ‘oomph’ to your traditional PR campaign

1) Disseminate press releases on free news wires

Free online press wires can prove to be a handy tool to reach out to target audiences. These distribution services offer a simple solution to generate coverage online.

A brief registration process and few hours of wait is all it takes to publish your release directly on to these platforms. The wonder of push button publishing ensures that the process is relatively hassle-free and 99% confirmed.

Most free PR wires have a respectable web reach with updates searchable on Google, Blog searches, Yahoo and other search engines along with certain blogs and websites which mirror this content. Also it can be used to increase traffic to a website by search engine optimization (SEO).

Some of the popular PR wires are IndiaPRwire, 24-7 press release, PR.com, Sane PR, Newswire Today , etc.

2) Create SMS channels

Social networking has hopped, skipped, jumped and landed on to the dazzling mobile phone. Services such as SMS Gupshup and Google SMS Channels allow you to create a SMS stream catering to a specific topic, sector or company.

So by creating an ‘IPL updates’ group or channel open to subscription, one can forward messages to every constituency of stakeholders with a mobile phone like journalists, analysts, important influencers, etc.

For instance, a day before a major press conference one can just type in the details on the platform online and send it to the entire community which subscribes to the channel as an SMS. Most journalists would gladly be a part of such groups.

3) Video / Photo uploads

This is the often repeated, much abused advice that any social media user will offer in order to increase brand awareness – “Upload your damn videos on YouTube!!”

Now the tricky part is to choose videos you want to put out there, in line with the corporate identity, open to scrutiny and acidic comments within a social eco system.

The same can be done on photo sharing websites such as Flickr, Picasa, etc.

4) Share documents

A journalist or an analyst will forever be indebted if you took up the job of managing client documents for him/ her.

Online document sharing platforms such as DocStoc, SlideShare, Scribd, etc. can act as a repository of documents, a one stop shop for press releases, backgrounders, boiler plates, profiles, etc. for a corporate or individual.

Content sharing is many times done on the corporate website itself, but web 2.0 platforms provide the added advantage of a community and a social network for user comments, feedback.

5) Cross promote links by e-mails

Most conversations which amount to an activity between an urban PR professional and a journalist or an analyst takes place through e-mail. Attaching a client dossier to every email will not only overload the journalist’s mailbox but also, and most importantly, irritate him or maybe hurt his much cherished ego.

So instead of a heavy file, paste a link to documents, pictures and videos from any of the above platforms so that they can be accessed from any location and without much load on the mailbox. This ensures that the endless wait due to limited bandwidth or document size is evaded.

These are just the basic steps that one can take to added a bit of digital pizzazz to traditional PR practices. The digital medium is limitless and the possibilities endless. The only real barrier is initiative…

Like, stuff and thing

Corporate communication on new media platforms must transcend the ‘blah’ and transform to the ‘quirky and incoherent’.

If every alternate phrase that you speak is not interjected with either of the above three words, namely, ‘like’ stuff’ or ‘thing’ you may find the following a little difficult to digest. For the rest, it’s show time!

This is not a comment on the vocabulary skills, or the lack thereof, of the Indian cosmopolitan youth who is touted to be the future leader and more importantly an active participant in the economically fundamental process of currency flow. Namely, he or she will be the future decision maker, the new consumer which makes this entity an important stakeholder.

The drudgery of going through 15 years of higher education and a B-school or a finishing school after that chips away at the very instinct that craves to exclaim ‘awesome dude’ at a job well done. These foot soldiers enter the corporate world with the pressure to suppress every impulse to talk in their erstwhile lingo and adopt a somewhat uncomfortable formal tone which is mostly and at times rightly rewarded with a pat on the back.

This is indeed a necessity, if you wish to be taken seriously in the corporate world. But with time, the habit of parroting taught speech pattern has left an entire corporate level clueless as to how to communicate with the audiences engaged in virtual markets that communicate, buy, sell and create products and ideas on new media platforms.

Every communications professional worth his salt knows the importance of adapting to new lingo and cultures to get their message across. In public relations, this skill becomes even more crucial as our bread and butter and the all too vital umpteen mugs of industrial strength filter coffee depend on it.

Amidst the corporate cauldron of formal conversations you are most likely to run into a paunchy jovial guy in mid 40s, cracking dirty jokes and discussing the latest version of Halo on Xbox with fresh recruits in their early 20s. While the rest of us wonder what makes him click with the ‘cool’ crowd, the young ones already have a ‘rock star’ to worship.

Social media platforms have changed the face of influencers in our globalized economy. Ideas are not restricted to geographies, markets are no longer a physical universe and paper is no longer the currency. In this space, conversation and relationships are the new forms of currency.

A blogger may not respond to a formal pitch note which says ‘…please publish this after due consideration…Thanking you in anticipation…’ and as such. Instead, try leaving relevant comments on his blog posts and telling him that his blog is ‘way too cool’. Engage him on a social networking site (say Facebook) about his likes, dislikes and interests. You may find that he is much more receptive about the idea of receiving your company updates and eventually writing about it on his blog.

‘Social media marketing’ or ‘conversational marketing’ is about interacting with your target audiences. The key is to make every conversation personal and at the same time relevant to a mass audience. It is necessary to immerse oneself in the community, be an active participant and then expect acceptance of your thoughts and views.

Adapting online cultures, assimilating oneself in its evolving ecosystem provides that valuable insight which lends to the communication structure best suited for the environment.

Be warned, that every individual is different and a single solution cannot be used as a yard stick for all digital communications queries. Think on your feet, innovate and be creative in your replies and posts. Importantly, be unhesitant, persistent and relevant.

So for a lot of us who spent a lot of time blogging, commenting on fellow blogger’s posts, hopping from an Orkut to a Facebook to a twitter and generally whiled time on digital and social media platforms that came to be collectively known as Web 2.0, there is still hope! The rest need to catch up.

New poll on social media

Take poll below on social media and digital PR relevance in branding for Indian corporates:

Guerrilla PR

A form of ‘guerrilla warfare’ against big budgets and larger brands, ‘guerrilla PR’ is an effective tool to combat peer group branding activities.

The concept of guerrilla advertising and guerrilla marketing has been around for a while now. The practice essentially comprises of targeting specific focus groups through a controlled effort by initiating spurts of high intensity campaigns sporadically keeping in mind the industry scenario and peer group activities.

The result in terms of brand association and end-customer engagement has been encouraging. This is music to the marketers in a sluggish economy that a broader impact can be achieved with a minimal budget!

We see examples of this on business pages everyday where a small banner of a capital market listed company is placed in the centre of the article which talks about biggest stock gainers of the day with associated tag line ‘Biggest gainers choose …’

Contextually placing ads to leverage content for a brand is a common practice in the digital space. Google along with many Social Networking Sites (SNS) have monetized their business and made a fortune by offering user profiles and activity details which help in placing contextually relevant advertisements.

Public relations thrives on user connect and third party endorsement which makes the maxim ‘influencing the influencers’ a functional necessity. In PR target audiences and media based on client brief are defined at the strategy and planning stage.

Niche audience targeting is a more specific and precise science than the general ‘spray and pray’ method generally practiced. Can traditional PR practitioners develop messages and campaigns which can be leveraged at key moments in a company’s business cycle keeping in mind the organizations environment and arrive at a viable business proposition viable to the company?

Here, social media can be a handy tool to conduct sporadic campaigns which are targeted specifically and engineered towards maximum consumer engagement. Brand building and sustenance of perception through consumer engagement has become a flatter process for organizations as they can initiate contact with a consumer directly rather than relying on an influencer to carry forward their messages.

A form of ‘guerrilla warfare’ against big budgets and larger brands, ‘guerrilla PR’ is an effective tool to combat peer group branding activities.

The nature of the medium aids in implementing simple, tactical digital media practices to leverage a brand for a short-term and long-term, as well. For instance, during crisis when a negative link to a company appears on the first search page on Google, a new positive release is disseminated online to bury the link in older pages. This is just indicative of the broader possibility and is already practiced by many traditional PR firms.

Guerrilla PR can bring about a sweeping change in traditionally accepted PR practices and redefine the communications business. In times of an economic slowdown where advertising and PR budgets are taking a hit across the board, can the business offer customized solutions which are cost-effective and help the company to achieve its branding goals.

The change is just around the corner. Are we there yet?

As newsprint prices undergo steep rise, is digital the final solution

Business Standard has carried a story today which says that due to rising newsprint prices leading publication houses are deferring their new edition launch plans and increasing their advertising rates.

Newsprint prices have risen by 50% over the past 6 months which mirrors the global scenario of the print sector. Until now, India was an anomaly to the global trend of decreasing newspaper circulation and ad rates. India, a booming media market, with market projection predicting bullish trends for the next two quarters may undergo revision.

Indian Newspaper Society (INS) has asked its members to reduce its newsprint usage by 20%. This downward trend puts a serious question mark over the proposed plans of many mainstream publication houses in India, as the report suggest.

It has been long suggested that the newspaper in its current form will soon be extinct and be replaced by other digital mediums like mobile, internet, digital kiosks and tablets, etc. This may be an early sign.

Technological innovation has changed the media business time and again. As Marshal McLuhan famously proclaimed, ‘medium is the message’.

Social media, the much abused yet little understood term, may be the next big wave to define the way we imbibe and consume information. This virtual congregation of masses to connect and share thoughts, ideas with each other will perforce necessitate that news dissemination also undergoes a change to cater to these new media audiences.

With these changes inevitable, the business of engaging with the media will also change. This is where specialized new media practitioners will enable entities to engage with a tome of dynamic, coagulating yet disintegrated mass.

The writing is on the wall, it is time we start preparing.

Continuing the debate: Todd Defren says...

I was reading Brain Solis’s Essential Guide to social media this morning where he emphasizes the need of being immersed in a social community to be accepted and become a part of it. Only this would eventually lead to a sustainable relationship.

To further the observer and user debate, Todd Defren posts that those who are using social media tools to monitor brands, influencers and conversations (in that order because for most that is the priority hierarchy) must be empowered.

I agree with this view, even though deliverables in social media can be measured effectively, is widely considered an ‘all fart no shit’ exercise. So the need is to find that connect with consumers, the end-users, which is must more often than not due to decision levels and dependency which delay the process of engaging.

But you can take it further, into the realm of “Actionable Listening.” The difference here is that the folks doing the listening/responding are empowered to effect change within their organization, on customers’ behalf.

Read on: Actionable listening vs. active listening

Social media divide: User versus observer

In the ever expanding social media space, there is an inevitable chicken and egg question? Do you need to be a social media user to devise online brand strategies or would suffice being an online media observer?

Public Relations practitioners in the traditional media space need not be active participants. Most PR firms are keen to have ex-journalists on their roll, as they have the real world knowledge of actual practices in media. It is easier for an ex-journo to conjure all possible story ideas and sector updates which could be carried in news during lean news days. Also, a media relations as a function becomes relatively easy as most of them share a level of camaraderie and bonhomie with the media.

But, this is not the case with most PR professionals. They are merely observers or at best consumers of mass media with no active involvement in the process of creating content or the real world experience of working in a media firm or a publication house.

New media professionals can merely observe and implement brand strategies by imbibing dispersed knowledge across the web. But is it necessary for them to be active participants and users of web 2.0 tools?

Being an interactive medium, it is relatively easier to be involved with a broad spectrum of platforms and tools in social media space. So, PR persons can acclimatize to the new world order by engaging their audiences themselves.
Also, being a part of the community would help in greater acceptance amongst peer group, communities and potential influencers making PR component an extension of the online persona.

One is clued into new technologies and emerging avenues of message dissemination by being in the know rather than merely accept redundant tools which are no longer effective.

The benefits of being an active participant rather than merely being an observer are obvious. At the same time it is very simple to be a poser in new digital space as the general discourse is easily available.

What defines the two is quality. This will differentiate the posers and pseudo practitioners from the real users and knowledge experts who are clued in. The quality will determine the eventual pay out and survival of the lot.