Social Media Marketing Isnt Rocket Science!

Whenever you’ve got a product or a service out there and have users for it – the users obviously have feedback about it.
This may sound all old school and completely beaten out like a dead pig, but the fact is that most marketers do NOT collect or utilize user feedback properly.

Right, now it has become easier for users to give out feedback thanks to the social web.
But, how many companies actually harness all this feedback otherwise categorized as “vital data” to improvise what they give in the end to the customer.

Yup, as always the question of “What’s in it for me” arises.

Here’s what’s in it for you as a seller or marketer.

• Fuzzyness

I call this the “fuzzy factor” – If the customer knows that there’s someone listening to his feedback and implementing it, they feel more compelled to participate on your platform and propogate your brand over the web.

• You Just Got Better

This is probably the most obvious advantage of using user feedback to your advantage – you get better and your product gets better for the user each time you bring in recommended modifications.

• Friend Factor

If people know that you actually listen to your customers, you give out a more friendly image and more people are compelled to adopt your brand or product.

• Future Mode

Most of the data and the feedback you have collected from users can actually aid you to develop new products which appeal to users.

Now, that the more commercial aspects of the process have been discussed, we get to the more dirty parts of the process..

So, how the hell do you collect all this feedback data and implement it?

1. Know the system

This is the first thing you’ve gotta do in order to effectively harness all the user data and pool it in – you’ve gotta understand the system behind which your platform or site runs and also understand how to work around it.

2. Find Out Where your users hang out

This step involves finding out where your users hang out in various parts of the worldwide web and also charting those places for reference.

3. Allow or enable users to give feedback

In order to harness feedback, you need to allow users to give out feedback – All you have to do in this method is actually allow people to give feedback.
This can be done by using a variety of methods from Web Forms to Shout Boxes.

4. Store User Feedback

Now, all you gotta do is store the user feedback in a database and make sure its properly categorized.

5. Implement

Based on what the majority of your users want, you can implement their feedback or suggestions.

6. Let ‘em Know

Once you’ve actually implemented their requests or feedback, just let em know that you’ve done it!

So, thats all there is to this process – easy aint it?

Whatever you do, just make sure you do not get carried away from the original goals of the product or platform.

We’ve seen people talking a lot about twitter being a “lifestream” of sorts where you can shout out to people on what you are doing by giving out small status update messages.
But, not many have actually talked a lot about how Twitter can help you in marketing your product or brand and become an effective channel for Social Media Marketing.

Whether you deny it or not – Twitter isn’t meant for any direct sale, let alone any hard sell.

Twitter is more of a platform for you to let people know that your out here and let them know about the latest developments on your projects and launch messages.

It enables you to have a set of people “interested” in following what you or your brand is upto, thus propelling you up into the web value chain.

Here’s what Twitter will help you with:

1. Data Collection

Even though Twitter may not be the best platform or tool for data collection, its still a very quick ( duh ) and easy way to collect data.

For example, if you want to be blogging about something or have a new feature idea for your product and would like to get some quick feedback from your client base, twitter can help you do just that!

You can send very quick tweets to your followers posing your ideas to them and they will get back to you with their suggestions, which is very vital data.


2. Product Launch or Development

Got a new product coming up? Or a new development? – Just Tweet it out!

Twitter enables you to keep your fan base informed about the latest developments your product is going through, thus helping you maintain and improve upon that all important “buzz” factor.

This not only gets people talking more about your product, but also encourages more people keep a tab on what your future developments are.

3. Content Distribution

Twitter is again not the best content distribution platform – but, if you have something really viral or new, you can pack quite a punch by tweeting about it and pointing people to the content.

And, twitter is also great for letting people know about new blog posts or articles.

4. Twit Referrals

Once you’ve got a good amount of followers who pretty much read all your status messages, you can actually ask them to refer people to you if you are looking for any particular skill set of people.

Else, you could even ask them to spread your message or refer you to other people.

This works really well if you have a very seasoned group of twitters who know you pretty well.

One thing you should always keep in mind is that, when it comes to using twitter for marketing, it makes a whole lot of sense to move out of the twitter “lifestream” idea to a “productstrem” idea.

I’ve been using Mixx recently and find a whole bunch of differences between Mixx and Digg.

Mixx seems like a fresh new approach to the concept of content voting and seems to be more “social” when it comes to comparing it with Digg.

Here are a few reasons why I think Mixx is better than Digg:

1. Mixx Groups

One of the major reasons why I even considered using Mixx was because of the fact that there was a whole new feature in Mixx called the Mixx Groups.

This feature enables you to distribute your content over niche subsets thus enabling you to target audiences more effectively and also get the word out.

2. Easier to Submit

Its just a lot easier to submit stuff to Mixx because it tells you at the start whether an article is a duplicate or not, whereas Digg does it at the end.

The process is made easier by eliminating captcha unless you are submitting too many news stories too quickly.

3. More Exposure

This is probably one of the most elementary reasons why anyone would prefer Mixx over Digg, you just get more exposure at Digg because its still a small and closely knit community.

This also makes it easier for you to get your news stories to hit the front page.

4. Lesser Spam

Yup! – There’s definitely lesser spam over at Mixx thanks to the fact that the spammers don’t see the value in it yet.

Its not there there’s no spam, there’s definitely spam, but its minimal.

5. Mixx Awards

I particularly like the Mixx Awards feature because i’ve won a few myself and am poised to become a Super Mixxer.

This is great just because its a super encouragement – Would also love it though, if the Mixx team gave out free tee’s to Top Mixxers

You can catch up with ME on Mixx Too!

Yup, Yahoo has done it again!

No, its not an ingenious new social media platform – they’ve done what they’re usually good at – cloning successful social media platforms.

This time, the scapegoat has been Digg.

When I first heard about Yahoo coming up with a new social voting platform, I pretty much figured out that Yahoo wanted to be the real Digg killer.

There have been quite a few articles making the rounds around the blogosphere about “Yahoo Buzz being the next probable Digg Killer”.

I was pretty inquizitive about the true “merits” of Yahoo’s new offering and did a bit of “digging” around it.

Now, here are a few pro’s and con’s of Yahoo Buzz as I see them.

Pros:

1.  Great UI and super neat voting system.


2. Invite only beta – which solves most of the spam issues, but that’s bound to change very soon.


3. Interesting little “just added” widget just below the header which hasn’t been put to the best use, but is definitely a welcome development.


4. Yahoo seems to have integrated the buzz sub-domain with its main portal to push users to the “most buzzed” articles from the main yahoo portal – That guarentee’s a very good chunk of traffic to those who actually get that buzz.


5. Very neat look and feel.

Cons:

1. Too similar to Digg.


2. Doesn’t have real ideals and is a bad sell.


3. Could get spammy thanks to the large chunk of non authentic sources which are usually in Yahoo.


4. Doesn’t really have that “community” feel to it YET.


5. Too old a scheme to really succeed.


6. Not too appealing to the normal social voting site user.

So, I guess that about sums it all – I’ve just listed the good points and the bad points about Yahoo Buzz and you are free to derive your own conclusions.

Do let me know about any theories you have over at the comments box

We did see all the hype over Twitter a few days back ( remember those good old days? ).

Now, after dabbling quite a bit with twitter, i find it to be an ultimate time waster unless you have a lot to yack about or have a gazillion followers who read EVERY twitter status tweet you post.

So, why is twitter a time waste?

1. Twitter isn’t exactly social media in its true sense. For most people using twitter ( like me ) its an empty wall – You shout out “Hey” and rarely get an answer.

2. Your Tweet gets completely lost in all the other tweets and thus, the purpose of “visibility” and people “seeing” your messages goes down to a weak percentage.

3. Twitter completely drains you of new ideas if you get addicted to it. For an advanced twitter, whenever he gets an idea, he just tweets about it and completely loses track of his previous ideas or fails to improvise on them.

4. If you turn on updates via IM, every time some one sends a status message, you get an update making it harder for you to do any of your longer term planning.

5. Getting a client/sale via Twitter is almost impossible.

6. The “discussion” factor seems to be absent when it comes to twitter to a large extent – A lot of people are just shouting out randomly.