All Posts in SocialMedia

|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

In a 360 degree connected world in which all audiences, including customers, stakeholders, investors, and employees are on a single platform, social media offers a crucial avenue for brands to develop direct relationships with their audiences.

Image Source

Customers are more likely to engage with brands that deliver humanized solutions. From a marketing perspective, it’s important to create content that connects with people personally rather than a one size fits all approach.  Relationships with customers can be strengthened by providing customer support channels through social platforms.

Helping customers on their terms, in their preferred application, helps improve brand loyalty and provides an opportunity to win back a customer that had a poor experience with a product or service.  Lastly, brands can utilize social conversation to offer incentives to targeted individuals, ensuring high penetration amongst the customers you are trying to attract. All these efforts on social platforms are proven today to increase brand loyalty, win back dissatisfied customers and help in conquest marketing campaigns.

Social media has become a very important feedback tool for brands as it helps them to avoid blind spots around brand perception, product challenges/successes and reputation. It allows industries to identify opportunities and to drive customer engagement around certain topics based on sentiment or perception. From identifying market readiness for the product launches and campaigns to proactively combating misinformation and managing crisis, social media is helping brands to identify and manage customers’ perceptions through effective social conversation and intelligent digital marketing.

Social media has opened up a marketing channel that no one could have envisioned 15 years ago.  The direct access to existing customers and potential customers in an environment of their choosing is unconscionably effective.  The potential to go viral with little spend feeds social marketing budgets.  But that yearning for virality has risks.  An unforeseen messaging conflict or overlooked politically incorrect tone can result in devastation for a brand.

Marketing managers are required to create strategic approaches to take advantage of the benefits, while minimizing the risks.  Some of these framework strategies are listed below:

  • Develop creative, personalized content; don’t come across as promotional
  • Generate synergistic partnerships with like-minded brands or influencers
  • Develop communities for unbranded opportunities
  • Leveraging social platforms to enhance traditional or digital campaigns
  • Evaluate all content for political correctness, its intersection with current events and for cultural sensitivity

ATCS is using the power of AI to analyze social conversation to provide qualitative and quantitative insights. Through social listening, we are advising customers on strategies for driving company reputation campaigns, product launch strategies, unbranded initiatives, and community development. Through storytelling, we are helping our clients understand their customers’ journeys with their brand or competitors, identify gaps in the market or in offerings, engage with their customers to provide value and connectivity and also to identify new opportunities in the market for new products.

Our programs help clients at any stage of the journey in their broader social initiatives. For example, in initial stages we have monitored for reactive listening based on crisis situations. We have also recommended monitoring unbranded conversation around relevant client topics and provided actionable metrics for campaigning.

If the client has achieved a certain degree of maturity when it comes to social listening, we help drive intelligent decisions based on customer insights. In this phase brands are provided with deep insights to support for market launches, market gaps, customer pain points, gaps in awareness and mapping customer journeys. At this stage we also provide a closed loop picture of the customers’ digital performance based on customer behavior across public social media, search and .com analytics.

As storytelling comes to the forefront of understanding customer behavior, ATCS India will take their social listening and insights development to the next level by enabling customers to realize their strategies through Marketing Automation. Insights are best used when applied to tactics and Marketing Automation is the next logical path for ATCS to take forward. As a partner of Salesforce, ATCS is able to leverage best in class tools within the Salesforce digital marketing suite to help clients create a comprehensive picture of their target audience and provide actionable insights for brand teams.

The presence of a skilled workforce and rapidly developing market in India positions ATCS to play a strategic role in the region. Overall, the Asia-Pacific region is brimming with economic dynamism and India is often viewed as the gateway. ATCS is already prepared to benefit from this economic environment with a strategy that focuses on the development, support and proliferation of MarTech.

ATCS has developed a digital marketing IT development and insights driven COE in India that can now serve the APAC region cost effectively and more aligned with time zones.  To be able to provide intelligent and actionable social marketing insights from India is a rare commodity that demonstrates ATCSs commitment and confidence in the APAC region.

About the author

Rucha Pandit is a Principal Consultant at Advanced Technology Consulting Solutions Inc. With over 6 years of experience, Rucha has managed multiple roles at ATCS. She is currently at Montvale, New Jersey where she is responsible in enabling enterprise scale social media strategy for clients across industries and markets, supporting innovative capabilities, such as command centers, across clients, using social media trends and KPI in order to optimize client’s business insight and decisions. For more information, please visit her profile.

|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Established in 2014, Forward – Goldmine’s digital arm, has won the Social Media mandate in a multi-agency pitch and will service Bank of Baroda, India’s second largest public sector bank for another 3 years starting April 2019 across creative, media and ORM-led services.

Forward has launched the bank’s various digital platforms in 2016 and has helped Bank of Baroda connect with a new audience and push its new digital banking products. The agency has also assisted the bank leverage its partnerships with multiple events across the country.

Commenting on this development, O K Kaul, General Manager, Marketing, Corporate Communications & WMS of Bank of Baroda said

We are delighted to extend our association with Goldmine as our social media partner. Thanks to their strategic insights, digital expertise, in-depth knowledge of the category, our visibility online is very strong today. The campaigns they have created and executed have helped us establish a good digital footprint within the banking sector.

Being a technologically strong Bank, we particularly appreciate that Forward has deployed QuickMetrix, a strong social analytics and management software that supports all digital activities with relevant data.

To this, Aastha Singla, Co-founder, Forward, Goldmine said

Servicing Bank of Baroda has always been a learning experience for us. Given the current dynamics, the next three years seem crucial especially with the three way amalgamation of Bank of Baroda, Vijaya Bank and Dena Bank, making it a financial powerhouse. With a positive outlook, we look forward to the challenges and opportunities that come in the near future.

From the onset, Forward deployed QuickMetrix [India’s leading Social Media Listening and ORM software] for a strong technology platform to manage the Bank’s online presence across social platforms.

Pleased with this extension, Surendra S. Baliga, Co-founder – QuickMetrix, said

It is a matter of great pride for us that Bank of Baroda has deployed QuickMetrix since 2016 and has chosen to do so for the next three years. We have learnt a lot from Bank of Baroda and QuickMetrix will continue to evolve to serve India’s second largest Public Sector Bank.

QuickMetrix is integrated with the Bank’s internal systems to build a seamless experience for its customers’ service requests originating from social media.

|In: SocialMedia|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

ScoopWhoop, India’s most exciting youth media brand has renamed its Hindi content platform – Gazabpost to ScoopWhoop Hindi. The new brand will continue to engage specifically with Hindi-speaking millennials & Gen Z’ers with addictive, interesting and relatable content while also bringing in the quintessentially ScoopWhoop flavor that audiences across India know and love. The content will cover everything from entertainment & social news, to infotainment to original video content and series created exclusively for Hindi-speaking youth.

Image Source – ScoopWhoop

The future of content is most decidedly regional. Media & entertainment needs of regional audiences are constantly growing, and the youth market specifically has been underserved for quite some time. ScoopWhoop Hindi is an opportunity to capture hearts & minds of young Bharat by combining Gazabpost’s existing reach with the brand love around ScoopWhoop.

Sattvik Mishra, CEO – ScoopWhoop said

With this rebranding, we are poised to build India’s only content brand that engages the Hindi belt’s youth at scale. We are confident that advertisers too would see greater value in an integrated ScoopWhoop offering that reaches young audiences across India & Bharat.

About ScoopWhoop

Founded in 2013, ScoopWhoop is India’s most exciting youth media platform for social news & entertainment largely appealing to the 16~35 demographic. About 30 million unique users visit the website monthly and it’s widely considered to be India’s most popular social content brand with over 250 million video views and over 400 million content views across social media per month.

Apart from the flagship portal, ScoopWhoop, the company has multiple properties that include ScoopWhoop Hindi [ScoopWhoop’s Hindi publication], Vagabomb [a go-to publication for the modern Indian woman], OKTested [a youth-oriented channel for challenges, ties and other game shows] and Unscripted [a video platform for interesting and untold original stories from around India].

|In: Marketing|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Social media now plays a key role in advertising for many businesses. If a company is not using social media, they could be missing out on opportunities to raise brand awareness and acquire new customers.

For many companies, Facebook is the focus of their social media advertising strategy. It has the largest user base and the broadest reach in terms of different demographic groups. Even with this information, many businesses still wonder whether Facebook advertising can have an impact.

Facebook advertising does have the potential to help brands increase awareness and influence purchasing behaviors. Research has even shown that Facebook ads can affect brand image and have an impact on purchasing intent.

Knowing that Facebook advertising can help your business reach its goals is good, but there is more to successful Facebook advertising than simply creating and publishing ads. Working with and learning from a successful Facebook advertising firm will help you understand what goes into developing an effective ad campaign. Additionally, you can keep these basics of Facebook marketing in mind.

Define Your Goals

Setting a clear goal is one of the most important parts of running a successful Facebook advertising campaign. Without a goal, you will simply publish ads that have no aim. While some of them might have good results, the campaigns will never live up to the platform’s full potential.

Page Likes

You can run campaigns that specifically work to get more likes on your Facebook page. This can be a good place for businesses to start because it will grow the organic reach of their Facebook page and can also raise brand awareness. Additionally, these ads have great potential because they do not ask much of the user.

Website Traffic

Website traffic ads can also work well as a launch point for companies that are new to Facebook. It’s a relatively low-pressure advertising approach, and you can direct the ads to any page on your website. Instead of moving right to pushing for a sale, you are just letting consumers know you are there and showing them what your business has to offer.

Website Conversions

Most Facebook ad campaigns are going to result in conversions of some sort. However, this will happen organically after initial contact with the ad. When you develop a campaign focused on driving conversions, you are targeting consumers and directing them to assets that are designed to move them closer to a conversion.

Brand Awareness

Brand awareness campaigns are about exposing more people to your company. By letting people know more about you and what you can do for them, you are essentially setting yourself up to have greater success with the ads that are designed to drive conversions. Instead of selling, you are demonstrating the value of your brand and letting consumers know why they should engage with your services.

Lead Generation

With lead generation ads, you are trying to get consumers to share their contact details. With Facebook, this strategy can be more successful than through some other advertising platforms. Instead of directing the user to a landing page where they fill out a form, all of the information can be collected through the social media platform.

Customer Acquisition

Acquiring new customers is an obvious goal for Facebook advertising. You can use Facebook ads to get people to sign up for a service, buy products, install apps, and more. Facebook makes it easy to find new customers, and you have a variety of advertising options that can encourage them to become a client.

Offers

Offers can be a great way to attract new customers and to re-engage old customers. In some cases, you might be providing something for free to get people to sign up for a list. In others, it could be a discount to encourage a purchase. Offers work because they help your ads stand out from all of the other content that is shared on Facebook.

Engagement

Engagement ads can work well for users that have already had some level of contact with your brand. You could run these ads to showcase new products or features. They can also be helpful to encourage use of an app, or you could use an offer to get visitors back to your website. The idea is to remind a past customer of your business and make an effort to re-engage them.

Reaching Your Goals

Having a goal is important because it helps to inform the other decisions you will make concerning the direction of the ad campaign. Once you have a goal, you then need to use some best practices to help you to reach it.

Audience Targeting

Much of the power of Facebook advertising comes from the ability to target the right audience. Facebook collects a lot of information about its users, which allows advertisers to select different audience attributes. These can then be accurately targeted for ads. In addition to that, you can also have great success with features like custom audiences and lookalike audiences.

Social Proof

If users see other people benefiting from something, they are more likely to want to follow suit and do it as well. Social proof can be a powerful tool when it comes to Facebook advertising, and it can add a small push that gets users to engage with your ads. As an example, if you are trying to get people to sign up for your email list, you could show that you already have thousands of active subscribers.

Address Pain Points

Promoting the value of your brand is important, but there is something to be said for addressing the concerns of the consumer. What problems does your product solve? What need does it fulfill? If you’re able to address these concerns in your ad, you can make an emotional connection with the consumer. This will increase the chances that they will engage.

Test Your Ads

Research can help you to find good strategies to start with, but nothing will guide you to success like your own experience. If you want to be able to learn from your campaigns and find the strategies that offer the best results, you need to A/B test your ads.

Retarget

You will find that some people go to your website without converting. This is a sign that they have some interest, but for whatever reason, were unwilling to follow through and convert. Instead of giving up on these missed opportunities, you could create a custom audience of website visitors and retarget them with new ads. You may even want to consider offering some type of incentive that will help move them closer to a conversion.

Businesses of all sizes can have success with Facebook advertising. You just need to find the right goals for you and deploy the right strategy to reach them. If you are still having trouble getting the most from your Facebook ad campaigns, you might want to consider working with a firm that specializes in social media advertising.

About the Author

Rae Steinbach is a graduate of Tufts University with a combined International Relations and Chinese degree. After spending time living and working abroad in China, she returned to NYC to pursue her career and continue curating quality content. Rae is passionate about travel, food, and writing [of course]. More about Rae can be found here.

|In: SocialMedia|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Social media is truly a phenomenon. No longer than fifteen years ago, social media as we know it today had not even been thought of, most likely. Myspace was the first true social platform as we know it, and started gaining popularity around 2005, though it was originally released in 2003. After Myspace came Facebook in the years prior to 2010. Twitter came shortly after, then begat Instagram.

Image Source – Social Media Screening

Facebook has more than two billion – that’s 2,000,000,000 – regular users that log on at least once every month around the world. As you might imagine, it’s the largest social platform.

While most people use social media to keep in contact with friends, family, coworkers, and even meet people they’re not already familiar with IRL – in real life – another leading use of social media is for businesses, organizations, and other entities to connect with their customers and potential consumers.

Yet another purpose of social media – although it wasn’t originally intended to work as such – is exercised by employers. A majority of employers engage in social media screening to help weed out unqualified candidates. Here are several tips for screening applicants at your organization – take notes, and don’t try to tackle it without help – it’s OK to ask.

Reach out for help

Not every organization is experienced at hiring new employees. Even if an organization and its constituents are, in fact, seasoned in scouting the job world for ideal applicants, they might not be ready to screen them on social media. Besides, not outsourcing social media screening responsibilities forces employees to focus on responsibilities that they might not be passionate about, prepared for, or trained in.

Seek out social media screening agencies on the world wide web. We recommend trusting reputable agencies in assisting your organization with screening applicants on social media, including the likes of Fama.

Apply screening procedures equally across all applicants

In hiring, it’s important to subject all applicants to the same treatment. Not doing so can potentially result in organizations being accused of discriminating against those that they didn’t hire. Even if legal problems like this don’t pop up – they won’t, a vast majority of the time, although in today’s politically correct world, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Delegate the actual browsing of social profiles to others

While you should keep this responsibility within the walls of your organization, the person or people that make the final calls regarding hiring decisions should never be the ones that screen social media profiles.

If the entity you work for is large enough to have a human resources department, delegate digital job screening responsibilities to HR. If not, ask someone outside of the hiring process to look through applicants’ pages and provide a summary of all pages to the person making such decisions. Remember to never include any information regarded protected characteristics like age, sex, or race.

Be consistent in subjecting applicants to screening procedures

If you look through the top ten posts of a particular applicant’s Facebook page, then use a program to sort through every tweet that person has on Twitter, you should hold every single applicant to those same standards.

Not doing so, whether you recognize it or not, is not being fair to those seeking jobs at your organization.

|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Wisdomjobs, one of India’s leading end to end online recruitment and career solutions portals, have released a report on How companies are striving to improve the quality of hirings. Wisdomjobs surveyed 120 companies across Hyderabad, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata and Pune to understand their focus on improving quality of hire, and the metrics they employ to improve the quality of their hires. This survey includes companies from IT, E-Com, Retail, FMCG, Real Estate, Pharma and Manufacturing sector.

Image Source – Quality Of Hiring

Companies have different hiring methodologies. Some focus on cost-effectiveness and quick turnarounds while others prioritize long-term success of their hires within the organizational template. Whatever the methodology, the single-most effective parameter to measure the success of a company’s hiring process is ‘quality of hire’. While some companies also place emphasis on ‘time to hire’, it is the quality of their hires that impacts organizational performance over time.

Quality of Hire [QoH] helps companies measure the long-term value of a new hire. While it is a vague and often subjective measure, it offers the best indicator of an organization’s ability to onboard quality talent through its hiring processes.

Companies use several metrics such as performance of new hires, turnover and retention ratios, and satisfaction ratings by hiring managers to quantify the quality of their hires. However, certain aspects like employee engagement and cultural fit are intangibles that are difficult to define and measure. Figures like cost per hire, volume of hires etc. measure the effectiveness of the recruiting process but not the quality of employees hired through that process.

Upon releasing the report, Ajay Kolla, Founder & CEO, Wisdomjobs said

The single-most effective parameter to measure the success of a company’s hiring process is ‘quality of hire’. In the long run, companies need to develop an effective quality of hire measurement based on parameters defined by all organizational stakeholders. Standardized assessments and realistic expectations can help companies to quantify the quality of their hires to the extent possible.

The Quality of Hire Measurement

  • 45% of respondents agree that Quality of Hire is the single most valuable metric to evaluate team performance.
  • However, only 29% of them feel that their Quality of Hire measurement is effective, while only 10% feel that their metrics are best-in-class.
  • 52% said that they use Performance Reviews as the key metric to measure Quality of Hire.
  • 32% said that they use Retention Rates as a key metric to measure Quality of Hire.

16% use Hiring Manager Satisfaction to measure Quality of Hire.

Has measuring QoH improved hiring quality ?

Measuring QoH will help companies to understand how their recruitment practices are impacting the quality of employees being hired by them. However, several companies are unable to utilize these measurements to create a significant change in the way they hire.

  • Nearly 40% of companies said that measuring QoH had a significant impact on their hiring processes.
  • 25% of companies said QoH measurement had only a moderate impact on the way they hire.

10% of companies said that QoH measurement had no impact on their hiring processes.

What channels are companies banking on to improve QoH ?

Most companies are making conscious efforts to improve the quality of the candidates they hire by opening several channels of engagement with potential hires. From social media engagement to employer branding, companies plan on investing more in the following channels to improve QoH:

  • Social Media – 50%
  • Employer Branding – 46%
  • Employee Referrals – 41%
  • Campus Recruiting – 27%
  • Job Boards – 26%
  • External Agencies – 13%

Other tools used by companies to improve QoH

Assessments

Companies are increasingly using assessments conducted before interview rounds to identify quality candidates, map their competencies etc. To this end, they use offline/pen-and-paper, and online assessments, both. Almost 50% of companies surveyed use assessments to improve their QoH. Among those who use assessments:

  • 86% said they use pre-hire assessments for candidate screening.
  • 73% rely on assessments to determine job fit or competency gaps.
  • 60% use assessments to evaluate leadership potential.
  • 52% use assessments to build employee development plans.

Background Checks

Background checks have long been used by companies to weed out fraudulent candidates. But they also play an important role in helping to improve the quality of their hires.

  • 54% of companies said that background checks help in improving their QoH.
  • Other benefits mentioned by companies were more secure workplaces [41%] and improved regulatory compliance [30%].
  • Among the checks conducted by companies are:

About Wisdom Jobs

Started in 2010 and headquartered in Hyderabad, Wisdomjobs is one of India’s leading job portals providing end-to-end recruitment solutions to organizations and career opportunities to individuals. Within a short span of 5 years, Wisdomjobs has developed a database of over 30 million profiles spanning experience levels, skill sets and industries, thereby providing a huge pool of relevant candidates to various organizations. For more details, please visit Wisdomjobs

 

|In: Android|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

VoxWeb, the social networking app developed around ‘speaking-pics’ or voice-augmented photos have unveiled new designs and features on its Android and IOS Apps. The most significant of the new features – introduced after heavy user demand – is the ‘Embed Voxie’ option which allows users to embed a voice-augmented photo to their blogs and other websites/webpages. In addition to this, users can now store the newly created voice-augmented pic to their device without the compulsion of sharing or sending. Users can also create a private Voxie collection by leveraging this feature.

Also, in a major policy shift, VoxWeb disabled the likes and comments count on other users’ content [content creator will continue to have the like and comment counts along with the like list] to remove the ‘performance anxiety’ friction and thus encouraging users to post frequent updates without worrying about the number of likes they get on the post publicly.

Other new features introduced in the VoxWeb app include doodle drawings and sticker pasting options on pics, pin post to the top of profile page and two simple and effective privacy settings options. These features will provide users with an elevated photo sharing and social media experience while using the platform.

Speaking about the new app versions, VoxWeb representative said

These new features in VoxWeb social media platform adds another dimension to a user’s social media experience. We are continuously working to provide our users a unique and rich experience while revolutionizing the digital image-sharing and social media space. VoxWeb is excited to present these refreshing visual designs and new features to internet users.

The latest features and designs available are:

  1. Embed voxie option: Now users can embed a voice-augmented photo to their blogs or websites
  2. Private voxie collection: Users can transform their album or other photos to voice-augmented photos and  save them on the device, without the need to  post or send those photos. This creates a private rich collection of voice-augmented photos
  3. Doodle: Users can also add stickers and draw doodles on the ‘speaking-pic’ or a voxie created
  4. Pin-to-top: There is an option to pin a social media post at the top of their social media page
  5. Innovative approach to privacy settings: With a combination of merely 2 options, users can effectively enable the desired level of privacy and everything remains in sync with the fundamental nature of a ‘follower-following’ network
  6. Following list: VoxWeb has disabled the option to see a user’s ‘Following’ list to encourage following within the network
  7. Changes to update  likes and comments on the app: The platform will not display the number of likes and comments anymore [though comments to any post will always remain visible]. This ensures that sure users don’t have any ‘performance anxiety’ while creating a post that is a big friction on various one-to-many communication platforms.

Link to try out the new features on the VoxWeb app.

About Voxweb

VoxWeb is a consumer internet company which designs and develops online communication and networking products. Incepted in Jan 2015, the company is based in Mumbai, India. The flagship product of the company, is the ‘speaking pictures’ [voice-augmented photos] social network VoxWeb. The platform is perfect for capturing and sharing moments through pictures which can be captioned using vocal sounds. A must-have camera and communication app for concerts, parties, sports and tourism, additionally, the app also facilitates creating selfies that can speak upon touching and the VoxWeb Team has christened these ‘speaking selfies’ as ‘Voxies’.

VoxWeb, aims to create a global consumer internet product from India and the app has already got more than half a million users from 97 different countries. Brain child of Yash Mishra, an IIT Kanpur graduate, VoxWeb was founded in 2015, to become the new age social media app for internet- users.

|In: Marketing|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

There are many pieces that go into the puzzle that is a lead generation website. Those pieces need to fit perfectly together for visitors who arrive to your site. If one of them is missing, you’ve just handed over what could have been a great sales lead to your competition. Based on data from over 300,000 validated online sales leads, we discovered that 84 percent of visitors convert during their first visit.

Back to those puzzle pieces: there are several things you can implement to score a conversion during the first visit. We’ve created a guide to 10 of the most important for you to implement as soon as possible.

Top three points are below:

Content – This shouldn’t be much of a shocker, but creating content that stimulates action will make the benefits you offer jump off the screen.

Intuitive Navigation – With the short attention span of most buyers, you don’t want to frustrate them with bad navigation.

Relevant, Custom Imagery – Poor imagery will have visitors second-guessing your expertise. Images should captivate and distinguish you from the competition.

For the whole story on building a website that converts, take a look at the following presentation

About the author

Brad Shorr is Director of Content Strategy at Straight North, a B2B Internet marketing company that offers services for SEO, PPC and web design. Shorr has written for leading online publications including Forbes, Entrepreneur and Moz. You can find more about him here