Internet and Indian youth are two inseparable threads that are weaving the face of our nation at the speed of light. Books and newspapers are fighting a losing battle against what is becoming the future of a more modernized and globalized India. If we have to summarize India’s future with internet in a nutshell, it is nothing less than brilliant.

Here are some of the ways in which we have categorized these points:

1. Greater Internet means cheaper internet: There was a time when having an internet connection at home was meant for the richer upper class, or for people who were supposedly more “advanced”. These days not having an internet connection at home is equivalent to not having any butter in the fridge. With the large number of internet connections getting installed each day, the cost has gone down and has become easily affordable for all.
2. People’s worlds are on the web: From online shopping, to booking flight tickets, everything is done online. With the increasing stress at work, people do not have time to shop or even get groceries. Making these facilities available online, the younger generation is becoming more and more dependent on what can be ordered online and home delivered.
3. Social Networking: People in India, especially the younger generation sleep and eat through popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. No one has the time or patience to wait. Instant chat and messaging through such mediums has become popular and this trend is only inclined to grow forward and not backward.
4. Employment: With so many job search portals like naukri.com and timesjobs.com people now have a quick step solution in finding the right job. The process has become simple for employers as well since they can hand pick the best from any industry and the entire process is uncomplicated and free of any error.
5. The 3G craze: Everything can be easily accessed through mobile phones since they now come with a 3G technology, and this further strengthens the bright prospect of internet in India.

The world is shrinking with every passing day because of Internet. What happens somewhere in America can reach the Indian News Desk real time because of the speed at which information is transmitted. In 2010 India was ranked 4th in terms of its Internet users across the globe, and that was just 3 years ago! India is advancing and social media is catching up faster than anything else. The wireless age would be nothing less than extraordinary in times to come.

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Content marketing implies gaining a substantially higher following on online platforms, with an aim to benefit business.

These five techniques will help to uplift the performance of your web content and social approach.

1. Allies
Symbiotic functioning for mutual achievement of goals is effective. Website partners exponentially increase visibility and improve ad impression, as well as provide better page rankings.

In content marketing, a potential business partner can be from another industry, but should merge with a common ideology. For instance, a website of footwear reviews would team up with a foot care specialist or footwear store.

A few criteria for choosing a partner are:

• They have considerable traffic and cater to needs of a similar demographic in a different manner.
• Feature articles, guest posts, and alternative methods to enrich content visibility. Trade guest posts, run product features, and seek creative new ways to expose your content to a broader audience.
• Utilizing online means to implement relevant advertising that boosts audience segmentation and target acquisitions.

2. Platforms
Establishing a presence on every social media site, is a waste. Building and developing the same on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or LinkedIn, should be done in addition to using referral sites and fresher networks where exposure is higher. Inbound traffic and search engine rankings improve when sharing buttons are available.

Produce content ideally suited for newer platforms of huge referral potential. For instance, Pinterest is image specific. Creating top-quality visuals with artful or creatively witty copy would work well.

• Refresh your existing content by transforming each form into another periodically. For example, turn a past blog post into a video or a past video into a single visual graphic of data.

3. Audience Empowerment
Giving the audience this ability means getting them to work for your cause. Content marketing means allowing the audience to keep the campaign alive as it permeates different levels of the market. Nike, with the #makeitcount campaign, for instance, superbly carried out this requirement.

• Allow audience to communicate through the brand. Sharing any information is encouraged and appreciated. It helps build brand reputation and goodwill among consumers.

4. Earning Share-worthy Status
Simple language, a casual and assertive approach, and insights on trending topics, all attract fundamental human actions towards content marketing.

• Streamlined content, which requires a glance to gain a gist.

• Using confirmations of online shares or hosting a sweepstakes for most shares from a first level.

5. Extract Useful Data
Uncovering facts about the habits of the target audience, their rate of engagement, participation, and preferences, depends on analytics and scrutiny of data. With the help of online tools, this can be done easily.

Content marketing requires comprehensive effort and purposeful performance. Including these five strategies along with social modes enables faster goal realisation and revenue generation.

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Staple members of the social marketing stronghold are undoubtedly Facebook and Twitter. However, since its inception in 2010, online social bulletin Pinterest has outdone Google and even Twitter in terms of referral traffic and client conversion rates. If you’re contemplating the business possibilities of Pinterest, here are a few points that will get you pinning for more.

What it is

It allows sharing photos on your own virtual bulletin board, managing them, and dotting them with either pins or images. It entails boundless possibility with pinning and repinning your distinct images as well as those of other related ones.

Being highly socially addictive, users engage in fun, and gain greater recall by simply posting interests while the visual presence ratifies the business or brand.

Pinterest for Business

With about 40 million users currently, the amazingly substantial traffic provides a fantastic platform for business communication with customers, existing and potential. In addition to being a free platform, it is connectable to both Twitter and Facebook, meaning that when a user pins or repins your images, it reaches those websites as well.

Target Audience

Businesses that cater to young women have prime position with over 80% of the user base consisting of females, between the ages 18 to 40. If senior citizens are the required demographic, the less tech-savvy would not be conducive to promoting products meant for them.

Content

Being a visual website, the pins depend highly on aesthetic and appeal to the user base. Clothes companies and style-based firms of design and sports would do far better than others who would still be able to increase their own website traffic and brand awareness with the multiple business possibilities of pinterest. Marking related content is also crucial, as it displays a wholesome reputation of covering the areas in your industry, to encourage repining and sharing. Additionally, attaching personal preferences helps to draw a larger crowd and extends the scope of the brand and its composition.

Conclusion

This visually driven social media website is constantly growing and holds the third position for traffic created. This is only one of the business possibilities on Pinterest that are freely available to utilize in a proper manner. Including guest contributors, organizing contests, and creating catalogs helps to add depth to your business presence, which through pinning, will escalate rapidly.

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It’s an alluring development – the onset of a social network. Just a decade or so back, the homosapien race was merely social. Today, it is one that is actively networked. Definitely, the progress is rational. However, like behavioural psychology would point out, there are a few who limit their social interactions.

Take the quiz to know some fun facts about your social networking persona! 

A. How Often Do You Check Your Facebook Account?

1. That’s the only place I am reachable 24*7
2. Every morning, afternoon and evening
3. Maybe once a week
4. I don’t have a Facebook account. Does it surprise you?

B. How many social media platforms are you registered with?

1. Almost every that I’ve StumbledUpon
2. At least those that my friends are on
3. Just the one or two popular ones
4. The ones that promise a career

C. What’s a hash tag for you?

1. It’s my key to trend on Twitter
2. I see something like that on Facebook when friends mention a one-liner
3. It’s a symbol on the phone that I sometimes use
4. I don’t know, may be it stands for Number, as in #1

D. What’s your Favourite Facebook activity?

1. I just like the activities on Facebook, each and every one
2. A few like Criminal Case and Chatting
3. Updating my profile and Uploading pics
4. I think it’s all a waste of time

Result time

If you chose most 1s ..you are the Social Monkey – Having a merry time on every branch of social media, with a bunch of crazy chums

If you chose most 2s…you are the Web Hawk – Like a referee you’d rather watch than participate

If you chose most 3s…you are the Net Pet – Happy to hang around for a bit to have a good time

If you chose most 4s…you are Social Hermit – Living aloof, never in a rush to catch up

And please do post your results in the comments box below!

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500 million – that’s the number of users Twitter boasts of on this date. Like most of social media, Twitter comes free of cost (there is an option to pay though) and not using it as a business tool would be missing too big an opportunity. Whilst owners of large businesses have got a hang of Twitter as a marketing tool, many small businesses are still trying to catch up rather than keep up.

So what do you need to dig out maximum benefits from Twitter:

Start Trending: Twitter hashtags are a way of spreading the word. They get your business in the loop, by not just creating news, but also by bringing out the opinions of the commoners with regard to your business

Listen to the Feedback: You would find a lot of Twitter users giving their opinions about a certain product. Feedback must serve as an eye opener. Having said that, it won’t be recommended that you accept every criticism coming your way (as most customers have tendency to take out their rants at the slightest sign of trouble).

Conversations: You can take it a step further by getting involved in 2 way conversations. Hire someone who can directly take the user queries/complains and responds to them promptly.

 It’s all Real-time: There is no better way of making your offering go viral than Twitter. Everything happens there and then. You launch a product, you tweet about it, and they will know about it. With platforms like Twitter, there is not even a nanosecond of a gap between the time of initiation and the time of going viral.

Avoid Aggressive Marketing: Now that you have garnered a fair number of followers, don’t post tweets regarding your promotions and offers only. Aggressive Twitter marketing will not bring more followers to your Twitter account, which would be lost in social media universe. Users don’t need too many reasons to hit the ‘Unfollow’ button and you are giving them one. Post tweets that have some sort of connection with your offerings but at the same time are interesting and worth retweeting.

With Twitter, it is even possible to get your small scale business boom like a giant. As an active social media platform, the bird-like marketer carries messages from where they start to those who relate with them, in less than 140 characters – Perfect retention and attention tactics. Beat that!

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Colours – They remind you of two things – the joyous festival of holi; and, the uninterrupted, essential variety of life. Take for example social media. There is absolutely no dearth of variety in the purpose and usage of these platforms. You have the red queen Pinterest, Blue bird Twitter, a blue and white journal Facebook, and many more ways of keeping entertained. Social Media indeed is motley of interesting ideas to draw from. Each platform, however, has a USP. The confluence of connectivity with social media is an interesting development that the Internet has witnessed.

The world today enjoys many facets of this platform. There are innumerable social media platforms waiting to be explored. Not just that – there is a lot that you can do with and on each of those platforms. Even though you are doing a number of things on social media, there are a number of activities that you can take up of which you don’t even have an inkling of idea about. Finding a job, learning a language, chatting, dating, keeping in touch – all can be done through a single social media platform. Here are some variants of is worldwide usage:

• From Black Churches to Everyday businesses, every organization makes use of social media in a manner that suits them. Have you ever heard about a court room trial being tweeted about? That’s what Courier-Post did once.
• Another important aspect of social media is that it thrives on change. Since technology is the base of every social media activity, a small change in technology can open a number of avenues in the periphery of social media.
• Varied social media platforms are suitable for laptops and desktops. With the invention of smart phones, using social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest on phone has become feasible.

While the four main slices of the social media pie can be divided into video updates, test updates, photo updates, and content updates, there are many other things that social media has made possible.  Think Farmville for example; apart from the fun and enjoyment that it provides, the game teaches a lot of farming. With social media, be a little creative and a lot creative, to realize all the facets of the platforms.

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From the day Facebook allowed brands to have their exclusive presence on the social media platform, brands have started benefitting more. There was an essential need of awareness and a platform where brands can talk to the consumers. This is now met by the social media platforms and they also allow brands for various modes of engagement.

Facebook:  As mentioned earlier, Facebook has given brands the liberty to have an exclusive branding page. This comes with a variety of options that can be added to the brand page apart from the basic information. Brands can get started with contests and bring in more consumers in their circle. However, for brands, an increase in the number of followers on these platforms, also mean an everyday interaction strategy via posts.

Twitter:  Twitter, on the other hand allows brands to take on the interaction in the shortest possible word. Brands should be open to the idea that people may not always tweet the best about them. In such cases, it also acts as a space for a turnaround strategy, taking customer grievances seriously and welcoming them for solutions.

Pinterest:  The branding via platforms like Pinterest is largely based on the visual. It is more like a space where people can window shop your products. This space is still growing and not all brands have successfully utilized it. A very important factor that would work for Pinterest strategy will be with brands opening up to the idea of showcase. The more the impact of products, the better the reach.

There are other mediums like Youtube but then again, not every brand can afford a budget to support a commercial video, so third party sharing may work. At this point of time, social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest come with minimal or absolutely no cost, and give the brand a wider exposure.  It is time to get started and getting social, soon.

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The fact that Twitter empowers you to build a huge audience base and serves as a boon to your business is no news. But do you realize that tweeting a more too often can make you a better writer? Well, credit the 140 characters limit for the effect:

Get to the Point Faster, Shorter

A tweet forces you to be brief. It requires you to get your message across in the simplest of language. Whilst you may be the guy who searches for long and flowery adjectives while writing, Twitter does not give you room for that. And before you know it, you are conveying a message or an idea without using too many layers. You begin realizing that you don’t have to be descriptive while describing something in the most explainable manner. You can directly get to the point, without a prologue and still garner readership. The Twitterverse has redefined penmanship.

Exercise Your Vocabulary, without being Extravagant

Since 140 characters are all you can write, you need to shrug yourself off the rich words that force readers to scramble for dictionary. On Twitter, you readers won’t do that. They would just rotate the mouse wheel to scroll to the next Tweet and there goes your chance to gain new readers. So while you start getting accustomed to writing simple, adequately descriptive and yet a mix of words in your tweet, it shows on your blog/article site. You get better at using verbs as well.

What to Leave Out

When you are writing a blog piece, you are eyeing, let’s say, 400 words. There is a lot of redundant information that is included with or without intentions. Inevitably, while drafting long write-ups, you sometimes lose the sight of what your readers might be interested in reading. On Twitter, you have to write the action-oriented words that have the best possible chance of drawing response from the readers. Just get the message across. Writing ‘about’ that message can be done on some other platform, on some other day.

Linear Writing

Blogs and articles give you the freedom of being all over the place. You start writing on a topic, meander off it and then come back. Whilst this might interest a segment of readers would like your article to be not one dimensional,  there are those with a lesser attention span who would only jump the paragraphs. Blogs make you ponder over words and sentences – at times disproportionately, but a Tweet lets to eliminate the redundant thought process and impede your though right then and there, without spending dime of an extra second.

You might argue that Twitter is an oddball platform for improving your writing style,  but as an under-literary way of writing, Tweets can help you curb the on-line blabbering and write with more focus.
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Random quips by celebrities on social media often stir up a controversy. Same goes for companies which have found a great ally in the form of social media to promote their brand and product ranges. There is no dearth of instances where a social media campaign has turned into an embarrassment for the firms. 2012 was plenty of such sordid stories which ironically have been fun to read about:

Hurricane Sandy Discount: The American firm, American Apparel launched a Twitter campaign which offered 20% discount to people who were ‘bored’ of the events that unfolded due to the hurricane. True to its nature, the campaign received a huge backlash by twitter users.

Palghar Girls Quote on Bal Thackeray Episode: This wasn’t even the case of a celeb’s tweet going wrong. Two Palghar girls posted a harmless status on their Facebook account, stating that the Mumbai shutdown on the eve of Bal Thackeray’s death was uncalled for. The post caused a lot of furor as they got arrested. And as one would have expected, Shiv Sena harassed the girls as well.

Robert Vadra’s ‘Mango People, Banana Republic’ Statement: It was Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra’s turn to find himself at the wrong end of a social media controversy. Arvind Kejriwal raised his finger on the dealings between Robert Vadra and DLF. In response, Vadra mocked the accusation tweeting, ‘Mango People, Banana Republic’.

McDonald’s #McDStories: Everything was going great for our favourite McDonalds. The “M” sign”, the tagline, and the burgers were all perfect. But then the brand erred! Its social media strategy which they thought would be a success, turned out to be a nightmare.

Criticism of Supreme Court = Jail: Another case of opinion paving the way for jail. Two Air India employees tweeted a remark about the Supreme Court, which was labeled as ‘derogatory’. The two accused KVJ Rao and Mayank Sharma found themselves behind the bars in no time.

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If it is a competitive scene, things can get ugly anywhere. It just did in the social media scene, when Facebook managed Instagram restricted the way the shared pictures were used on Twitter. After Facebook took over Instagram early this year, people hoped for change of policies. However, one very unwelcome one has gone right into the face of Twitter.

The reason why Instagram took a strong stand on this one was referred to the way the pictures or ‘cards’ used to appear on the micro blogging site, Twitter. In some of the instances the images were not true to its original form. In complete denial of being subjugated by Facebook, the Instagram authorities liked to stress upon the fact that the decision was entirely from Instagram’s end as it would help restore the genuineness and quality of the pictures.

However, looking at the complete scenario, it sure looks like a storm brewing. This also directs to the fact that the growing web of social media platforms are mutually dependent on each other and cannot break free easily. Not only that this brings the audience and users of the site into a complete circle where all are inter-connected. In such a scenario, do the users get a right to vote on such policies? It is a valid question. It would make sense if the policy has rather been formed based on user’s feedback but if it is not then, things are definitely at stake.

Another hint from this event is towards the future of the social media turf war, where sites may lock horn over issues of web space and information sharing. Given the fact that a user generally shares a lot of personal and professional information online, he would be at the receiving end of a bitter policy. So, though it is accepted that the social media platforms are nothing without their users and they humbly acknowledge that, let’s hope the users still have a good say in matters that affect them.

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