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Technology changes the communication process with a change in itself. With the advent of new media technologies the communication process became more direct, fast and complex. This has also led to a process of shrinking words and expanding access at the same time. Certainly, this change has a bearing on the social fabric as well. Till the recent past, dissemination of information and news was the business of formal organizations with a great degree of credibility. It was a one way communication mode, however the pattern of information dissemination has now been changed to two way communication with almost no cost for accessing that information.

To respond is an obvious societal nature. However, earlier it was limited to interpersonal communication and time and space were the constraints in the process of communication. Internet is undoubtedly converting a larger society from passive to active. Today social media is not only confined to the metropolis but reaching to the small cities and towns among the educated youth. Laptop, mobile and internet driven discourses have already been initiated in the society. It has an impact in the democratic polity and the protest for Lokpal Bill initiated by Anna Hazare was symbolic of this emerging public sphere. The audience of social media is, thus, interactive and reflective in a multimedia society of present. Unlike the mainstream media it is providing a pluralistic platform to people and also setting agenda other than the agenda set by ‘paid and sponsored formal media’. The socio-political fabric of India could be seen as changing vibrantly, particularly, during the recent phase of electoral process under the democratic setup and one could observe the change in the political behaviour of people on the similar lines as John Dewey [2] puts forth while discussing the optimistic view of public in The Public and its Problems: The strongest point to be made in behalf of even such rudimentary political forms such as democracy has already attained popular voting, majority rule and so on, is that to some extent they involve a consultation and discussion, which uncover social needs and troubles…The essential need, in other words, is the improvement of the methods and constitution of debate, discussion and persuasion. That is the problem of the public.

Sociologists and Political Scientists are looking the virtual ground with sanguinity for creation of a public sphere beyond the elite class. However, the experts of formal media find it not at all useful; they take the social media as a menace, rather. According to Media Analyst N K Singh, “because it is a mode of mass communication, the quality of discourse will be affected. Social media is hostile and it cannot be called a breeding ground for a true public sphere’. Here, the argument of issues becomes strong. Due to the heterogeneous character of the masses and netizens to set a common objective or a common set of agenda is still a problem to be looked at while considering the virtual public sphere as ready for discourses. To quote Jim Walch.

Electronic democracy’, like communitarian computing, has also become an area of both political and academic interest. This other use of computer-mediated communication is what radical democrats see as something of an electronic town-meeting. Besides pursuing a public discourse of issues and opinions, the technology could make it possible to conduct online voting. While this approach may help to re-enfranchise the electorate, it still has problems in dealing with the selectorate - those who set the agenda and choose those who set the agenda and pose the questions. However, the possible uses for strengthening direct democracy are still young and experimental.

We still cannot deny the fact that the new/social media has blurred the earlier patterns of communication process and it has brought the global and local at the same platform. it is a new form of media and the process of socialization is still on. According to Prof. Anand Kumar, “It is the virtue of social media to always remain in novelty and that is providing the nature of it’s being evergreen. The discourse at a common platform has started.” Indisputably, social media has increased public opinion with an increased knowledge base among the masses. Social media sites such as Twitter have encouraged people to express and politically involve themselves through the use of media tools be it laptop or mobile phone. The next sections of the paper closely examines whether the political behavioural change among people have its bearing on the upcoming elections in India or not.

It was more than a decade, when internet marked as a powerful medium of communication globally. However, due to technological reach and access, it was more vocal in the developed countries and developing countries like India. The world witnessed real command of internet during the presidential election campaigning of the year 2000 when in the US the internet provided a new interactivity tool of direct conversation between the candidate and voters. From then it is continuously growing leap and bound and have become an integral part of the communications in political campaign. As public access to the Internet has surged past 70 percent of the US population, the Internet has claimed front-and-centre status and campaign strategies’

The trend has been followed by Indian political parties during General elections of 2004. The electronic messages were sent on internet and mobile phones created a buzz at that time. The hi-tech political campaigning is portraying grassroots political and social issues. However, it could not turn into being a success at that time. Ahead of the parliamentary elections in India, the political parties are again searching for the prospects in the new media tools for campaigning. On the same, it would be interesting to know the new communication patterns that have emerged and helped in the social mobilization and increasing participation in the political processes in the recent past particularly through the use of social media; Anna Hazare movement, for instance.

Therefore, the present study would involve the recent trends in relation to the use of social media in campaigning and mobilizing the popular sentiments by political parties. Since, the usage of social media is getting momentum in engaging the public in political debates/moves especially when the previous model of e-campaigning by political parties failed on ‘ground’, it would be pertinent to make certain observations:

• The social media has provided a virtual platform for political debates.

• It will also provide a new tool of pre-election polls. So far it has been observed that the advent of new media and increased usage of social media has stimulated the practice of voting among the educated class, which used to keep itself aloof from the election process earlier.

• After the extensive use of social media during Anna Hazare Campaign in India and witnessing the success of the same, government and opposition political parties have also started utilizing this tool to register their influence.

In the light of above observations the present study would strive to find out the interrelationship between the socio-political fabric of the country and the communication process initiated by the social media tools. Further the study would also attempt to know the strategic moves of the political parties specially to use social media in political campaign, implications and limitations of social media in the same, whether social media may be an effective tool for it or is it only successful while being a part of a convergent system. Therefore, the study would also look into the question of relevance of traditional media in contrast to the new media (traditional media vs. new media).

To make the study holistic, both, qualitative and quantitative approach has been incorporated. Focused group interview of 10 media personnel, politicians and social-political scientists has been done to find out the above mentioned objectives. The study includes a survey of 500 people (inclusive of men and women with age of 18 or more than 18 years, since they are eligible to cast their vote) to know the effectiveness of the social media as tool for political campaigning from audience perspective. The study also makes an endeavour to find out how social attitudes are being a force in changed designs of political campaigning through including open-ended/non-cued questions in the questionnaire. Along with it, some of the earlier studies on the similar subject had also been examined for the purpose.

Social media is comprehended as a communication platform where it users collect and disseminate information of their choice. It is believed that social media catalyses the process of public empowerment by opening up avenues for masses to freely articulate, share their experiences and to raise concerns creating the possibility of their further enrichment. Therefore, it is pertinent to know the use of social media in the political process.

Campaign strategies of Indian political parties have a rarely moved away from traditional methods of broadcast campaigning of printing campaign posters, playing tv and radio ads and door-to-door campaigning. These methods have given them results in the past and so few campaign managers saw reason to change a winning strategy. There is always apprehension about adopting something new and politicians were in unchartered waters when it came to moving a large part of their campaign to a digital format. Moving towards a digital medium also poses the threat of leaving out the rural voter bank who have limited access to smartphones and internet. The biggest issue faced was that there was no completely accurate voter files available to leverage targeting.

Past election campaigns made an ideology to define their party goals and it would be their loudest message. But issues and concerns are not the same for every voter and a blanket approach to campaigning does not give the desired results.

For national campaigns, the biggest reason for not adopting digital channels into their campaign is because majority of India’s voting bank is rural. To win an election, a campaign needs to only target this large voting bank. Old ideas have worked well and will continue to be an easy bet. When it comes smaller campaigns like state elections, urban cities count for a significant size in the voting bank.

The Obama campaign in 2008 became a proof of concept for Indian political campaigns. Their campaign had a 100-strong analytics team that helped him rally voters and win the election. The Obama campaign brought the advantages of big data to the attention of Indian campaigners. 2014 saw a new face of election campaigning in India when Modi hired the political strategist, Prashant Kishor to manage his election campaign. Kishor and his group of data analysts went to work collecting and analysing huge amounts of data across various demographics in India. Their efficient use of big data propelling Modi into the front seat. Data analysis helped the team micro-target their audience and tailor messages for every demographic. It helped them raise funds and determine efficient ad placement, exponentially increasing the campaign’s reach.

The BJP had data on each of the 543 constituencies. They knew how many mobile and Internet users were present in each constituency. The same holds true for social media users. Alongside, they used analytics to understand which polling booths had voted for the BJP in the previous elections. For each polling booth data analytics was used to segregate voters into blocks to determine who were pro, undecided or against the BJP. They first used deep analytics to understand group communication behaviour and then used appropriate technology to communicate with them.

The 2014 Modi campaign heavily used social media data to target voters and market their candidates. The 18 month long campaign was backed up by meticulous research done over the span of 3 to 4 years. They got voter feedback and addressed voter concerns and issues in real time. It bridged the gap between the candidate and the average voter. With millions of people feeding them real time data, analytics saw to it that status updates on social media would reflect the opinions of voters. Modi used voice broadcasting to target mobile only voters. Understanding the voters preferences also helped in placing ads where there is a higher chance of them being seen and clicked on. Modi’s team carefully monitored social media conversations where BJP was being discussed and promptly responded to concerns voiced. The campaign spread over internet and mobile with numerous social media campaigns to bring together BJP volunteers on the ground. With the advanced use of analytics the Modi campaign targeted 810 million voters, 543 constituencies across 1.13 million polling booths.

During the Delhi state elections, AAP swept the votes with their out of the box approach to campaigning. AAP used their limited funds wisely by not spending large amounts on TV and radio. Instead they carefully planned every step of their way. Using a brilliant marketing team, AAP ran many creative campaigns such as putting up posters in Delhi autos and getting auto drivers to hand out questionnaires to get voter feedback on policies and issues, handing out visiting cards with a message in the Delhi metros and ‘Gully Prabhari’ where they appointed one person in charge of a street who does campaigning in that area. They took measures to learn consumer pain points and modified their campaign manifesto. This helped AAP understand their voters issues and keep their message focused on their voters needs.

With Modi’s success in using analytics to decide the course of his campaign, other parties are playing catch-up to update their technological prowess. Any future campaigns that do not take use big data while making campaign decisions run the risk of being left behind at the polling booth.

With the election season coming up in some areas, it is currently time for the political gatherings to contact the voters. Winning a relation requires effective strategizing and interfacing with the voters. You have to influence them to comprehend the great things you have improved the situation them and the things that you will have the capacity to do if your party comes in administration.

Presently, it is unrealistic for any party to contact each voter in each voting constituency to disclose to them your election purposeful publicity. Anyway, what would you be able to do? How might you contact the voters? Indeed, the appropriate response is straightforward. You have to use the Bulk SMS service. To achieve your focused on voters in a split second, you should look for the assistance of the Bulk SMS benefits and guarantee them about your essence.

At Digital Election Agency, we ensure that you get the best quality SMS administrations. Be it voice SMS or What’s App SMS, regardless of how you intend to unfold your race purposeful publicity to the voters, you will have the capacity to do it proficiently with our assistance.

 In what manner can SMS Service help in your Election Campaign?

On the planet today, our cell phones have turned out to be one of the fundamental things in our lives. In this way, it has been seen from different examinations that 95 percent of individuals check their cell phones in a split second when any message comes. In this way, it isn’t difficult to make sense of that the rate of perusing the instant messages is significantly higher than some other correspondence medium.

Obviously, you can send messages or call the voters independently however the effectiveness of such campaign is much lower while the expense of beginning such campaign surpasses that of SMS enormously. A large portion of the messages you send to the voters can go new and there is additionally the likelihood that your messages may wind up in the spam box of the voters. Besides, individuals tend to hang up on the special calls rapidly as opposed to hearing the full message. In any case, that will never be the situation with SMS.

On the off chance that you send an engaging message to the voters through SMS, they will no doubt read totally without shutting it. Subsequently, running SMS campaign will clearly give your gathering an unmistakable preferred standpoint over your rivals.

Moreover, you won’t need to clergyman substance for each message independently as you will be able to send messages in mass ads up to a plenty of beneficiaries. In addition, you will get the conveyance report quickly when the message has conveyed to the beneficiaries. Subsequently, you will never have any inconvenience in following the execution of your battle.

As we said before, the rates of sending limited time SMS in bulk sums is much low as well. You can send a huge number of Bulk SMS to the telephones of a plenty of voters without spending much. Thus, you will have the capacity to come to pass your messages consistently with no problem.

The most essential thing in guaranteeing astounding execution of your gathering in a race is by building up appropriate correspondence with the voters. You have to contact them and come to pass your contemplations and in addition thoughts regarding their advancement and prosperity. It encourages you to connect with the general population and influence them to understand that you will dependably be there to help. You should feel them associated with your gathering and they should not feel confined. Just thusly, you can stand out enough to be noticed and get the outcomes on the ticket.

Innovation is advancing quickly and it is in this manner time to actualize most recent advances to build up legitimate correspondence channels with voters. Running a Bulk SMS campaign supports the odds of winning for your political gathering incredibly.

Social Media is a vast platform used by businesses to explore their expertise to the world. These social media platforms used widely, because of its consistent growth in the marketplace. Here, you can convert leads, make the brand image and recognize as the brand. Only You need a perfect marketing strategy and the art of storytelling to attract your audiences.

Using social platforms without a strategy and smart goals is a big task. So, before landing on this area make sure, you have some good strategies to stand up in the crowd and have enough confidence to beat your competitors. Here I am sharing 3 basic tips of social media marketing to set up the initial assets for your business as a brand online.

1. Choose the right platforms for promoting your business

The number of social platforms is increasing day by day, and it creates confusion that what should be best for your business. You cannot use all the social media platforms for promoting your business because it wastes lots of time of yours and even not gives you the fruitful results too. You need to choose the right platforms for your branding by doing some research. Like, are the users you want to target using that social media platform? Or you can reach out to the people who give you the conversions or not?

Now, the thing is from where you can research social media platform so that you can decide which is best for your business. Let me resolve your issue with some mind-boggling statistics of leading social media platforms:

Statistics of Facebook:

Facebook is the leading platform for all type of business promotions, with the incredible number of users. Here the stats of Facebook which will help you decide your strategy of branding:

Statistics of Twitter:

 In my opinion, Twitter is specially made for the businesses and enterprises for B2B conversions. You can use twitter to maintain your professionalism in front of the users. See the statistics of Twitter to decide the best:

Statistics of LinkedIn:

You can find the connections here which help you to generate leads in your business. The stats of the LinkedIn are good and growing faster with time. Have a look at the statistics of the LinkedIn here:

Statistics of Instagram:

Instagram users are growing faster, and the platform is establishing a level for businesses. See the Instagram insights and decide the platform works for your industry or not:

2. Post actively on your chosen platforms for engagement:

Now, if you have the platforms which can generate leads for you, so you can’t be reckless in posting on that. The inactive platforms will make a negative impact on your potential customers. You have to blend your innovation power and creativity in your posts, to engage the users with you. The human touch is required in posts for making it more attractive.

Note down some points to keep your social accounts active:

Post on the platforms when most  of the users are online and able to see your post. You can grab that data     from the insights of the social media platforms where you can see the most  engageable days & time and more.

Pick some random topics which are relevant to your industry to post and make a time-frame of posting  them on your chosen platforms.

Frequent posting on your business account will reflect your post on the NewsFeed of the visitors  and users.

Plan to run the series of some     particular topics you choose to post which will keep consistency in your     posts.

These points will help you to strategize your social media activities and assist in establishing a good brand image online.

3. Influencers help you to lead on social media:

Connecting with the influencers will help you to gain more engagements which eventually convert into leads. The big brands like Amazon, Flipkart don’t need to make more efforts for getting millions of followers because they are the well-known brands, but in the stat of a startup or SMEs, you need to influence the visitors or users to make a relationship with your business.

Influence marketing is an excellent choice in that situation. The influencers will give set up a platform for your business where you can analyze your efforts of marketing and can improve them fast.

Now, you are thinking how to decide the influencer for your business branding. Right…??

The qualities of the influencer will help you are:

Activeness: The influencer must be     active on blogs and social media platforms and publish the fresh and     unique content on a daily basis to look useful.

Expertise in the area of work: Make sure he/she must be     an expert in his/her work area and able to deliver the natural results of     its expertise to you.

Power of choosing right: The influencer has the     potential of selecting the right way to earn the engagement instead of     following other influencers strategy.

You must check these qualities in the influencers to get the fast results.

Maintaining a good reputation on social media is also a big task for the business, but your consistent efforts will make that task more manageable for you. Keep consistency, give the instant response on the customer’s actions and offering the best & exclusive deals will never let you down in your industry standard.

 Blog Source =  http://blog.sarv.com/tips-using-social-media-platforms#comment-23312

Image Source = SproutSocial

Steps To Improving Your Online Business Perception

The way people see you and your business largely depends on how you have managed your online reputation. Believe it or not, everyone has an online reputation these days, especially businesses.

Even if you don’t have an official website, your customers and clients will post reviews about you, and this will directly or indirectly affect your online reputation.

Your potential customers and clients depend a lot on your online reputation to perceive your service. So, here are a few steps you can take to manage your online perception.

Know Your Online Perception

Before you start working towards managing your online perception, first of all, find out what your current status is

The first step is to open the Google search  engine and search for your company name in it. Scroll through the result  pages and see which images, reviews and articles pop up. Online reviews  from real people will give you a nicer idea of what your current online perception is

Next, look into industry specific sites and  know your status. Sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp work on reviews, and you     can go through the conversations going on about your business.

Check social media and see what people are  saying about your company and your service

Reading reviews can be extremely helpful in understanding what others think about your company.

Grab Your Domain Name

If your domain name is available, grab it as soon as possible before your competitor does. Pick a good domain name for your website, and work towards filling it with the right content.

You can use your domain name to introduce yourself, give a description of your business, products and services, post some interesting articles related to your business, share your ideas and perspectives etc.

Whenever a person searches for your domain name over a search engine, he should be directed to your domain name.

Join Social Media Networks

It pays off to join a social media site and stay active on it. Some of the most popular networks are Facebook, Twitter, Google +, YouTube, Pinterest, Tumblr and LinkedIn.

Make sure to fill your profiles completely while repeating your company name wherever relevant. Customize the URL as well.

Instead of the automatic profile page available at www.facebook.com/profile/32747234, you can go to the settings page and rename it as www.facebook.com/yourdomainname.

Whenever you fill your profile, be sure to enter your full name instead of a quote or nickname. Some social media networks even give you an option to post a link to other sites as well. So, take advantage of this and manage your online perception.

Check Your Google Local Search Listing

When a person searches for your company name in the Google local search listing, the results will display your business location, hours of operation, phone number and other contact details, a few reviews, website URL, directions etc. Search for this listing using Google, and make sure that it is updated with the right information and details.

Staying active online and responding to your clients and customers is a nice way to manage your online perception and improve your reputation. Be easily accessible to your customers, and watch your business grow.

If you have even the slightest information about digital marketing world, then you must have heard about a social media command center. The brand you are working at may already have one, or may be thinking about getting one soon. Having a social media command center has become a widely used term over the last few years, especially after brands like Dell, Cisco, Gatorade, and American Red Cross started showing off theirs. But what exactly is a social media command center, and why is it important for a business?

What Exactly A Social Media Command Center Is? Social media command center is an area a company dedicates to its social media team. It aims at monitoring and engaging social conversations around a brand and its market. Specially hired employees sit in these command centers and constantly watch what their customers or clients are saying about their brand through Facebook, tweets, Instagram messages, snap chats etc. Usually, brands use these areas to show off and flaunt. They make glass-enclosed, sleek rooms installed with several large screen televisions. When you look into them, they display dials, live-streaming of tweets, heat maps across the globe, and other relevant information regarding the brand and its popularity. A social media command center allows the team to monitor their brand’s marketing efficiency trends, along with their risk management and customer service updates. A command center will handle the company’s daily workflow, and coordinate with other company departments as well.

Why Having A Social Media Command Center Important For A Business? It is a fact that social media platforms have changed significantly over the last few years. Now, stories tend to spread wider and quicker than before, and so do your brand’s marketing and information. The technology with which these command centers monitor and analyze the social media has become smarter, due to which the information gathered is more powerful and relevant. They can be helpful in various ways: • The command center will display the social data of an organization on large screens, so that all departments can view them and realize the company’s reputation in real-time • Companies get instant feedback from their customers, and identify the latest complaints and expectations from them • They also get a chance to find out where their competitors are excelling, so that they can also bring improvements in their business Once you launch your marketing campaign, you can monitor its response at the command center in real-time. In this way, you will be able to catalyze embedding of the social media into your enterprise

How To Setup Your Own Social Media Command Center? You can setup your own social media command center with just a few equipment, including a workstation, computers, flat screen TVs and dedicated Internet bandwidth. It is a great tip to set it up in a visible location, so that all members of the organization feel connected to it. Categorize the incoming content into immediate, not urgent and no reply sections. You can also determine which key points you want to highlight on the screens. You can even make different things visible for different departments. By setting it up, you will be quickly come to know who is talking about your brand, what he is talking, and where in the world.