Social Samosa - Do you Feel UP or Let Down?

My fifth post on Social Samosa

A few weeks ago

Twitter Junta was contacted by @theviewspaper for a Tweetathon called #ifeelup. Basically, a 72 hour non-stop twitter chat where people discuss various social issues and tweet about it with a specific hashtag, like a #TweetChat .

On 8th,9th & 10th January the tweetathon happened with the #ifeelup hashtag trending.

Cut to present day

There is an outrage as twitterers realize the campaign was an initiative of 7 up. This shouldn’t have been an issue though, if only it was openly communicated to those who participated and lent their tweets towards the campaign. Even theirmail communication [to some panelists] didn’t mention that a brand was involved.

Here is how people realized it was a brand initiative.

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Social Samosa - Got your social media communication right?

When everyone started using Social Media for brands in early days, content writing was looked upon as just that - ‘content' writing. It focused on the basics, i.e., providing information about the product, having some quirky updates on something related to the brand, some polls, some crossword / unscramble games, quizzes about products or related items, and some interesting insights on brand profile.

Well, we have certainly evolved since then. With social networking sites changing the very nature of human communication, especially with newer interfaces and more importantly, newer ecosystems we think differently now. The focus on simple engagements in a bid to get more conversations, comments & retweets alone is now history. With the evolution of social media within the country, audiences are all the more aware about what brands stand for.

What does this mean?

Someone wise in our industry said -

"The true measure of your Klout is not by the ranking you get, but the community you build and more importantly how you engage with them."

As always, social media is not about broadcasting but about engaging and invoking a thought within your audience and driving home a point at the end of the day, which then relates to your personality as a brand. Today’s content and communication is more about how well you know your community, how well you moderate it and how comfortable the community is to reach out to you. To do all this, communication is the key.

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Social Samosa - Facebook Timeline for everyone!

Timeline?

A lot of us were totally swept away by the introduction of Facebook Timeline at the Facebook F8 conference in September. A completely amazing redesign of the Facebook's user profile page, it lets us showcase the Timeline of our life on Facebook. Besides just updating information and interests, this feature allowed people to showcase their life right from birth till date, in a theatrical fashion, creating a story of their lives.

Those who still don't know about the Timeline, (which is highly unlikely), can get some insights by watching this video.

So, just yesterday at work, one of my colleagues was asking me on how to go about activating the Facebook Timeline. Since I didn't quite remember the steps to it, I looked up an old article on Techcrunch where one had to create an app and do a couple of things via the developer mode.

By now, most of the folks we know in the industry have already read that article and cracked the Timeline for ourselves. Well, at least most of us geeks have! ;)

Nonetheless, Facebook finally launched the Timeline for everyone and now, after gradual roll-outs and testing for months, we don't have to hack or wrack our brains too much - it's easily available to all users now.

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Social Samosa - How brands can use #NewTwitter?

In my last post I talked about how #newtwitter had changed for users and what the reaction was from users in India about the change. While users are certainly trying out and will get an opportunity to make their judgments, I'd like to highlight what #newtwitter has to offer for brands.

Currently @twitter says these features are available to a select few brands and will roll out more broadly in coming weeks and months. So with this article, I'd like to share some insights on how brands can really utilize these features to the fullest.

Many of the brands in India have been using twitter to be a direct point of contact and to host community meetings (tweetups), product launches, quiz contests, concierge services and carry intelligent conversations to engage with their users on a real time basis. The struggle is to keep the audience engaged and give something interesting, especially since the ecosystem is very restricted.

One of the things that twitter certainly wants to do with this move is make its relationship stronger with brands and advertisers. With the further development of #newtwitter as a closed ecosystem, it will look forward to offering something more for brands, especially when Facebook is way ahead and Google+ recently joining that category.

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Social Samosa - #NewTwitter (Will it Let You Fly?)

Twitter changed again... But hey, wait, didn't twitter only recently change? With the @handlename & Activity thing.

Well it has changed again so welcome to #newtwitter If you haven't already seen this video, then this is something you'd love to see. The first impression I got, when I looked at the video... Is twitter going the Apple way? You gotta have a look at the video and you'd be able to make a comment on that. I'm sure by the time I've written this post, most of you must have already seen the video. If not, then I'd suggest you do and tell me what you think?

Besides the very sleek and polished video one of the things that came across strongly on the page were these words.

“Yours to Discover”

A faster, simpler way to stay close to everything you care about.

We all are now used to dynamic changes in various Social Networking sites, be it Facebook, Google, YouTube (Recently they came up with a new interface too) and now twitter. But these words certainly seemed like a promise and the video certainly gave you that feeling. If nothing else, you'll really like the video :)

The real question that went through my mind was... 'How is the actual interface?' Does it really deliver what it promises? Will it evolve / change soon enough? I didn't immediately get the web interface, so I tried it first on my Android phone, which was readily available.

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