#blogging influence

Data in this day and age needs to be rapidly exchanged, or else maintaining balance with the fierce competition around wouldn’t be possible. With the help of Crowdsourcing, strategic issues can be solved, tasks get completed sooner, contributors from across the globe can be roped in for help on a voluntary and“open to all” participation, and the designated problem would thus find a solution without a sword hanging over the head, namely overhead costs.  Having said that, here are a few examples of companies that applied Crowdsourcing to the best, hence please read on and be well-informed;

Unilever

A highly and well-recognised company across the globe, with immense facilities and high staffing of it’s own, Unilever realised how important it was to have innovative partners and collaboration, not within the firm but from outside. The company sought help from everyone around the world and took feedback on various projects they worked on.

Anheuser-Busch (AB)

As one of the leading breweries in the world, Anheuser- Bush (AB) made great inroads using Crowdsourcing. In the US, Budweiser at that time was on the top as one of the most wanted beers being sold. AB went one step ahead and sought feedback from real users in the market and brought about a brand which resonated with the choices of millions across the nation. Black Crown thus was born, and the golden amber beverage made a splash, thanks to Crowdsourcing 

Coca-Cola

Crowdsourcing worked miracles for the soft drink giant, whose formula yet is unknown and is a mystery. The company now has a very open model for business and prominently talks about using Crowdsourcing, which according to them helps shape better futures for many, creates challenging ventures for the youth, brings about more employment and jobs across many nations, provides funding for educational projects and also cares for the environment too. Coke has sought the help of Crowdsourcing, using online feedback and suggestions to help market it’s products seamlessly and with lesser costs and efforts too. 

Nokia

Crowdsourcing didn’t stop at certain niches of the market, it went full throttle and one example of that would be with the mobile phone giant, Nokia. Nokia’s Ideas project was meant to be a global conglomerate of ideas and innovations, open to all and voluntary for people to use. The main aim of the company was to be consumer driven and derived, across all the nations it served. Such an idea was of high value since it worked on the needs of the consumer, took feedback seriously and newer ideas were generated, enabling Nokia to come out with one of a kind products and services.  In this day and age, one would find many such examples of how big and small companies have used Crowdsourcing to make it big. It would be wise to read more and learn how the companies used the innovations to their merit. 

As per a study released by LinkedIn, over three quarters of businesses using content marketing are publishing through blogs.

With the rise in social media communities and networks across sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and many other networks, several analysts had sounded the death knell for the blog. However, the reality is that the blog is far from dead - figures from the LinkedIn report show

that 76% of content marketers are using blogs.

Findings from the LinkedIn report find support in several other studies which have attested to the fact that consumers are turning to blogs when looking to make a purchase.

Blogs rank favorably with consumers for trust, popularity and influence. More and more consumers are exploring new blogs to seek reviews and advice on product information.

Studies have shown that readers turn to blogs to make a sound decision before purchasing products like electronic gadgets, apparel and footwear and more as well as deciding on possible travel destinations or to go to a particular restaurant for dining.

About the Author: Author of this blog is a Chief Evangelist, Digital with Blogmint — India's first crowd-sourcing platform that brings together Brands, Bloggers and Market Influencers.

The last session for the day also happened to be one of the most engaging ones of the lot. The talk was hosted by Ranjini Ramachandran of Unmetric and the panelists included Nidhi Bhasin from TVS Motor Company, Karthik Nagarajan of Group M and Shivraj Subramaniam from Madura Lifestyle and Fashion. 

Wittily named, The Unquiz, the talk engaged the audience in quite an interesting manner by adopting a quizzing format. The audience was divided into three different sections each led by one of the panelists. The questions for the quiz were composed using the analytical data gathered by Unmetrics on how brands have performed on various social media handles in the last year or so. 

Questions like ‘Which of the following brands experienced a growth of 3.00% after releasing a video with a new brand ambassador?’ and ‘Which brand garnered the most number of likes on social media for an advertisement following the Supreme Court judgement on Section 377?’, were directed at the three teams. 

After an entertaining and interactive half an hour, it was Nidhi Bhasin’s team that scored the highest and the winning team’s members played out a final quizzing round among themselves in order to find a winner. Finally, the quiz was won by three people and everyone from the winning team took home an interesting prize. 

Overall, it was a session that was highly informative and focused on learning and getting the message across in a manner that was quite refreshing for the audience. 

Panel: Alex Oberberg, Nokia Ashok Lalla, Infosys Rajiv Mehta, Puma India K Ramakrishnan, Cafe Coffee Day Samar Singh Sheikhawat, United Breweries Limited This was one of the more interesting sessions that gave us insights about the corporate side of how companies go about integrating social media in their marketing strategies and why ROI needs to be measured.

The first point that came forth is what would you define ROI as? The most upfront reply came from Mr. Sheikhawat as he termed ROI as output against input; the input here being the resources invested in social media strategies by a company and output being the fan following and popularity they have garnered through it. He said that “The role of social media in brands is to build communities around the brand platform”.

Companies are increasingly recognizing the positive impact of social media on a brand which is why the budgets allocated for digital marketing are on the rise. Social media is free for the consumer but Social Media marketing requires strategy, time and money for the ones executing it. That is the reason why it is crucial for marketers to convince senior management for budget allocation for the same. There was a critical observation that for a marketer, “it does not matter what you think your brand is, people tell people what it is, and that is what drives the social media.”

The session concluded with a unanimous agreement that “Return on Investment” should indeed be measured but it cannot be measured on the performance of a single medium alone which is why it is important that the online-offline integration is effective and integrated across all the available social media channels to get a true measure of ROI.

The much awaited Social Media Week kickstarted here at The Leela, Bangalore today with an opening address by Alex Oberberg, ‎Global Head of Programs & Markets Engagement, Social Media & Digital at Nokia with a message to people to embrace Social Media, meet new people, share ideas, collaborate and bring in the community together. This is the fourth year of Nokia’s association with Social Media Week and this year, the Social Media Week is happening across 25 countries spanning 5 continents. “Social Media is a true movement. Let us make it a platform to bring the social to technology and interaction in the community.” – Alex Oberberg

This session was possibly the most interesting and unexpectedly intriguing session of the day. Taken by Saket Modi, a self-proclaimed ethical hacker, the target of this session was to underline the need of security in web and social media platforms. Before he started, he was bluntly clear that this session was to bring about awareness rather than scaring the audiences present.

Saket shed light on how security is on the back end of considerations for websites – be it general or e-commerce, when running a business. However, this is where majority of the companies get it wrong. With the socially integrated world that we live in, social media security is basically the stem on which the social media arena grows, so it becomes imperative to take care of it. Turning a blind eye to the security aspect of a social media strategy just leaves it vulnerable to being compromised. Speaking from a hacker’s perspective, he repeatedly stressed on how easy it is for a hacker to get access to your personal credentials which can then be used unethically by him.

He even gave a live demonstration by taking a random Smartphone from the audience for a span of a few seconds and before one would know, he had access to contacts, messages and everything else on that phone. He even disclosed how he did it by downloading a simple APK file and accessed it through an indigenous software developed by his company. This demonstration refreshed Die Hard 4.0 for us.

The crux of this session was well conveyed and equally well received. The lesson learnt – Be aware Give importance to security when utilizing social media avenues on web or mobile. 

Before getting into the gist of what this session was all about, here’s a question – What is a Paradigm Shift? To define it simply, a Paradigm Shift is a complete change in the way you perceive things. To elucidate this statement, Mr. Senthil Anand, Head-Account Management at KRDS Social Media agency, gave a simple yet convincing hypothetical scenario.  “A person buys a packet of chocolate and goes and sit on a bench, keeping the packet besides him. Just then, another person comes and sits there, opens the packet and starts having those chocolates. This leaves the first person perplexed as to how someone can do something like this. And to add insult to injury, he even offers those chocolates to the first person. At that time, he puts his hand in his pocket and realizes that he had kept his packet there itself. This realization of his changes his perception of the situation from being desolated to appreciating the giving gesture of the second person.”  Social media has seen a similar paradigm shift since it first came into being. Before 2000, the only medium for brands to advertise and promote was broadcast and print media. But at present, social media as a medium plays a big role in changing brand perception and influencing buying decisions. A great example of such influence is the “Swaad Zindagi Ka” campaign by Cadbury which changed the popular perception that chocolates is for children to chocolates means celebration. In this PULL marketing era where consumers are attracted to brands rather than brands being forced onto them, Facebook ads has helped brands focus on target audience and amplify their reach to a large extent. To crisply round it off, the paradigm shift in social media has been from limited avenues of promotion through PUSH MARKETING to a much more tangible approach in PULL MARKETING with lesser media orientation, instant access to information and multiple content creators for a better of exposure to brand audiences through web and social media platforms. 

A panel discussion on sex, sexting and social media happened here at Fava, where the panellists were: Prasad Virappa , Namarata and Samrit Gill and the moderator was Apoorv who has also written a book recently.  Social media has made people’s sex life exciting. With social media, sexting has taken a hygienic way of having an affair. Here you get involved with people with whom you may have never interacted in your real life. You get the freedom and independence to do or say something which you will never do in person. You get to live another life. Young people even share with their friends and show them how are they flirting with another person or what are they texting. Samrit says she has learnt a lot from social media about all intimate stuff as India being a country where people are a little reserved in talking about sex and related stuff. She never had the courage to ask her parents about it or go and pay a visit to a doctor regarding the same. So, here social media has helped her. Namrata feels that nowadays sexting has become a virtual foreplay. People are more open these days and talk about casual sex, sex buddies etc openely. People are opening up. She feels texting in a way is different than a phone call. But not everyone supports the same idea, some say they would be same when they are texting or speaking over the phone. People get involved in virtual relationships as they get to live a fantasy live here which they always wanted to live. It has been a trend these days to change the profile picture on facebook three times in a day. People change pictures to seek approval from others. To project an image of what they want others to see in them. They are trying to fit into a group. In short, they are trying to validate their existence. Another trend that has come up these days is to take self pictures through your own phone. It keeps you motivated. It makes you take the control of how you look in front of others. Social media enables you to keep in touch with people, it enables you to see people who share the same interests or have the same personality as you. But the art of conversation is dying nowadays, the conversations are more direct and straight to the point.