Social Media Marketing

A communication tool that allows one of the largest laptop manufacturers t

o get new business worth $ 3 million and helps someone to become the President of one of the most powerful nations in the world cannot be ignored.

Social Media Networking has given mute brands, a voice that is allowing them to connect, communicate and engage their target audience. It has also provided the consumers with a new and more personal way of attaining cognitive information and insight

about a brand, which proclaims to be a manifestation of the individual.

With emergence of Social Media Networking, the power may have shifted completely from the Brand owners to the Brand users. But if the brands are willing to accept this new tool

, they can bring that much needed personal and human touch to their offerings.

This will also allow the Brand owners to keep the consumers hooked to their products for a longer tenure than they were previously doing. An intelligent and a smart brand will acknowledge that the days of Brand Loyalty are over and only those brands that make the effort of being amongst their users shall survive the evolution that is Social Media Networking.

Understanding and thereafter integrating the tools of Social Media Networking into a marketing plan is today becoming as important as advertising was about two decades ago. Quoting from the Dentsu Handbook of Social Networking, “Social Media helps in lead generation, brand recollection, increase number of transaction and create awareness. Which brand would not want that.”

With 500 million users hooked to one platform, that just became 550 million by the time this line was completed, the scope of reaching out to consumers is infinite. Today Facebook profile of an individual gets more attention than the individual her/himself. In such a scenario, a Brand that does not have a Facebook page will surely struggle for recognition.

And like any Social Media expert will tell you, Facebook is just the tip of the iceberg. Today with Twitter, Orkut, Linkedin, MySpace, Digg and what not, the total number of consumers that one can reach through these platforms far exceeds any other media.

Today, an application on Facebook allows the users to experience the Brand from the comfort of their home. It allows them to engage with the product like never before. A virtual tour of an Ikea store on Facebook in an area far from a physical Ikea store can make the consumer choose one brand over another.

With such a powerful tool at their disposal, the brand managers now understand the scope of using Social Media Marketing. It is also helping in generating the most powerful sales driver, the word of mouth promotion. A cool fan page or application can drive far greater sales than any advertising campaign could have ever done.

Like Carol Kruse, Vice President Global Interactive Marketing, Coco Cola puts it, “we have a lot of online and community driven loyalty programs and we understand what exponential Brand Equity we can generate with these tools.”

Planning.

The internal anxiety to achieve success is as old a problem as the human race itself. The human mind has been trained and wired to think of the consequences of failure rather than the glory of achievement, much before either comes knocking.

What should be a life of dreaming and achieving is, thus, reduced to a life of worrying and failure. All of us know the affects and effects of positive thinking, but very few of us can bring ourselves to act on it. When faced by a challenge which in any situation won’t be more daunting than mere turning up at an appointed hour, at a pre-determined location for a known discussion, we

start to wonder about things such as what if we can’t turn up at the right time? What if we lose our way? Or more hilarious options like, what if my tie is not of the right length or crazier still, what if the other person doesn’t respond? The effort that we put in conjuring up such fantastic hurdles in our lives could well be used in creating a more positive atmosphere around us. Of telling ourselves that each piece of the grand puzzle will fit in to its place to reveal the amazing beauty of what is, life.

Not much in my life has gone according to the plan. Ideally I should have been in IIT. Ideally I should have thereafter done an MBA from a B school that would get me a job which paid so much that my only worry would have been to invest it properly to avoid more problems of taxation. Ideally by the age that I am right now, I should have been well settled in a place where I had a huge car, a grand house in one of the Metros and with enough money in my account so that a trip to Phuket would be like a drive from Mumbai to Pune.

But it is not.

I didn’t graduate from IIT. I went to an obscure engineering college in one remote part of the country. A place more famous for its Vada Pavs rather than an engineering college. But think of this. I did have few of the most memorable years in that place. It was one of the most beautiful places in the country. I am sure if I was in IIT I would have repeated a 5 point someone, but instead I passed out a Mumbai University Topper. And got into one of the most renowned conglomerates of India.

Logic says, there after the planning should have kicked in. MBA from that insane B school would have come. With job security already in place, all I would have to do was work my way to the top. Well, my path was a little different. I took to an institute which only those who were working in that field would know about. That also when told about the mother brand that it came under. Most of the time I elicited a response which ranged from a surprised “where?” to a more questioning, “really?”

But again, take a note of this. I did go to an institute which I feel is as good as those insane pay package B schools. An institute which allowed me to be, well, me. It gave me the opportunity to hold my camera right in the face of the most celebrated personalities of this country and say, “well, this is what I am learning.” Where my class room was not just a room, but an open canvas on which I painted and re-painted till I got the master piece. What that institute gave me is incomparable. It took a lot away from me, but none of those sacrifices were for waste. For I believe, what I gained was about as high as those insane pay packages. Though my real pay package is not even covered under the current tax slab.

I can’t think of flying to Phuket as if it was a Mumbai-Pune drive. But I can always think of Mumbai-Pune drive. And you know what? Think of this- every time I drive, I enjoy being in the driver’s seat… looking around and listening to my radio. Now, will you be able to enjoy flying to Phuket that much? Are you allowed to steer the aircraft yourself? And I am sure, the wind in the hair experience won’t be too welcomed in the aircraft.

I also don’t have an insane pay package so forget a bank account full of money. Hence I don’t have the worries of taxation to bother me either. The day I feel like going out for a grand meal, I don’t think of which place to go to. I think of: I want to go out. And I leave. Wherever the destination might be. However expensive or however cheap.

For me a holiday is not where, but with who and how. How being in question to enjoyment and not means. I live free of these tensions. I live free of the money I get from my job. Of course I don’t advocate this style to anyone, to each his own.

What I do advocate is a life little less complicated. A life, little less stressful. A life, where we are not constrained by who we want to be, who we should be and who we actually are. A life where we don’t have the negativity surrounding us like a bubble. A life not spent anxious about the outcomes that may not even happen. There is an equal probability of success and failure, and don’t contest me, an engineer, on that. So if I have the equal chance of success, why should I give more time to worrying than to celebrate my probable success?

Live life with a touch of hope and an attitude of happiness. It can change your world.

- From the workstation of an obscure engineering college graduate and a master from an ambitious institute, who walks around masquerading as a CREATIVE B.E, MBA Graduate.