Interested in leveraging Social Media to make a real impact for your organization? Want to separate the hype around No of Fans & Followers from the real value of genuine Fans & Followers on Social Media? Whether you are a small business or a large enterprise, you will this interview relevant and useful.

Explore the opportunity of Social Media through practical case studies shared in this interview of Pradeep Chopra, CEO of

Digital Vidya, in TheSmartCEO Magazine.

Hope you found it useful? Please feel free to share your

feedback or ask questions related to Social Media in comment section. In case you are interested in leveraging Social Media for Brand Building, Lead Generation and Customer Acquisition, you may want to join us in our upcoming hands-on, case study driven Social Media Workshops across India. You should also check out the hour-wise Social Media Workshop agenda.

Digital Vidya will celebrate its 100^th Social Media Workshop by organizing its 2-day workshops in Mumbai on July 19-20, in Delhi on July 26-27 and in Bangalore on Aug 7-8.

Social Media is an integral part of our lives today. Professionals and Organizations across the world are using this new medium to fulfill various business objectives ranging from market research to customer acquisition. While this medium is evolving so fast, there are limited opportunities for people to stay abreast with the latest developments in Social Media space.

As a pioneer of Social Media learning in India, Digital Vidya’s workshops help its participants learn and leverage Social Media Marketing for brand building, lead generation and customer acquisition.

Since January 2010, over 2000 professionals (including CXOs) from more than 500 brands such as Google, eBay, Ogilvy, Parle, Airtel, MakeMyTrip, SnapDeal, Naukri, Cisco, Infosys, Asian Paints, Shoppers Stop, Nokia, Intel, Citibank and General Motors have participated in 99 Social Media Workshops by Digital Vidya across India, Singapore, Malaysia and Oman. A selected list of previous workshops attendee companies is available at http://www.digitalvidya.com/clients.html

“Strongly recommended for anybody who wants to understand the social media” said Sameer Bajaj (Associate Director, Corp Communication at ESPN) and “I generated number of leads for my business during the two days of the workshop ” shared Barun Anand (Founder, ACS) who attended Digital Vidya’s earlier workshops. A number of participants have shared their experience of Digital Vidya’s workshops at http://www.digitalvidya.com/testimonials.html

Digital Vidya’s workshops are case study driven, hands-on workshops and are led by one of the two co-founders Pradeep Chopra and Kapil Nakra, who’ve over 12 years of Digital Marketing industry experience. The curriculum

of these workshops comprise of various aspects of Social Media such as ‘How to build a successful community on Facebook’, ‘How to leverage Twitter for Business’, ‘Leveraging LinkedIn for B2B lead generation’, and ‘How to measure ROI of Social Media?’.

Anyone who’s serious about leveraging Social Media Marketing can find detailed workshop agenda and can register online to participate in any of the above-mentioned workshops. TradeBriefs, Adgully, India Digital Review and Mediavataar are the media partners for these workshops.

Oh god what will happen now? Don’t panic, this phase shall pass too just follow the below mentioned tips.

Remain active and respond courteously: Your fans are angry or upset,that does not mean you should hide under the table or lock yourself; rather respond to their complaints in a courteous manner. Stay active on facebook wall.

Ann Taylor Inc. is a perfect example to demonstrate this postulate. They posted photographs of a new product- silk cargo pant (by Loft ) on their Facebook page it also had a click–to-buy link, many fans bought that product. Situation suddenly turned when their fans started posting pants look great on model, who was tall and slim-built and asked if they could prove that pants would look ‘good on real women’. The photographs were posted again on wall next day; these were of women ranging from size 2 to size 12(with height from 5’3” to 5’10”). A possible threat turned to opportunity.

Be a patient listener: Be a patient listener, before blurting out anything randomly, listen carefully and then respond.

DM your angry customer: After cooing your angry customer in public, direct message him and get his contact details. Answer his concerns, solve his problem and if you do it pretty well, he might remove the post himself or he might share his positive experience in both the cases you are in win-win situation.

Don’t remove post without consent of your fan: Never try to delete a fan post without his permission. “A small spark will turn into forest fire”.

A friend of mine had problem with Ford car, he posted on their wall, but instead of listening to his complaint he was blocked. He messaged all his friends- “Ford Figo has blocked my profile because I have shared my bad experience on their facebook page. The suspension of figo is horrible, I have just completed 8000 km and the sound comes from every corner. Friends I want a favor from all of you please write on their wall on my behalf”. As a result wall was flooded with this message, finally he was contacted by Ford Figo local branch manager and his problem was resolved, but all this could have been avoided if they would have resolved his issues earlier.

Let your Loyalists respond: “Customer is king”-do remember this golden phrase, always maintain cordial relations with them and see them turning as your brand ambassadors. You will not need to worry about ugly comments, fans will do the needful

If you have a loyal fan base, you are richest amongst all Facebook page owners, despite not having biggest fan numbers

Transparency: Always be authentic and transparent with your fans, do admit the truth and take your responsibility if you are wrong rather than

hiding under the bush.

A similar mistake made by Nestle who never heeded to Greenpeace activists’ voice, rather got busy in removing negative comments, result: a new logo “Killer Nestle” was created and got circulated. Curbed voice started echoing from every corner, and NESTLE: the sweet czar turned sour. Finally Nestle announced about their environmental initiatives and reformatory plans to avoid deforestation but by that time a lot had been lost – dropping stock prices and lost faith of loyalists.

Remember, Anger of fans spreads like epidemic, so please cure when it breaks through first fan rather than waiting for whole community to get infected!!

Catch more Social Media insights with us @ Social Media Workshops.

“Content is king” “Content is driving vehicle for any literary piece”. A lot has been said about importance of content, all statements lead a single conclusion that     “Content derives traffic” so it’s really essential that content is selected and presented carefully.  In this blog we have made an effort to jot points that can help in creating amazing content.

There are various ways to make your blog interesting and a potpourri; a couple of tips that can help in keeping your content fresh are:

Interesting ideas for blog: Keep yourself abreast of latest developments, a lot of blog ideas can be extracted from news and moreover it catches attention sooner.  Other sources could be blogging networks, facebook news feed top stories etc. Content is everywhere; just keep your eyes open.

For the user, by the user: “User is our lord”!! We all put so much effort to get our target audience, true….why not just indulge them in doing marketing for us and let them be our brand ambassadors and rope in more audience……..sounds strange but believe me it is possible, trick is in getting your audience work for you.

There are various ways like : Organizing Opinion polls, discussions, contests- all these can be

used e.g.- if you want to write a blog you can ask your community to share ideas/opinions about that topic, not only you can get breakthrough ideas but also sometimes their personal experiences.

Another way could be -you can blog about your fan discussions, opinion polls. Similarly you can share stories about experiences of your fans with you. A lot can be done, pick up card of your choice.

Scheduling: Scheduling your posts is another critical postulate. A simple blog posted in time is far better than an awesome blog posted weeks later. “A stitch in time saves nine”.

 e.g.- If you had to post about Obama victory, post it soon after elections , rather than waiting and posting blog after he completes half term, who knows whether he will stay on post till that time or will he still be hot property for readers till that tenure “think about it”.

Curator speaks: Having a opinion leader on board for elaborating about a topic can create a great impact, not only it gives you a lot of visibility but also adds to variety in blog content. That does not mean you need to rope in hot- shots or experts always, you can also blog about day to day experiences of people.

e.g.- In a social media agency- a conversationalist is an expert on content strategy of brand, undoubtedly he is best person to talk about handling audience. Similarly, in a hospital, nurse is best person to talk about patient care. Every person is an expert; you just need to identify his power

• Real time stories: Sharing real time happenings can be an option to make your blog series interesting. I will share an interesting example- Pradeep Chopra, director of Digital Vidya shared his personal experience that how twitter solved his problem with ICICI Bank, which had bothered him for  around three months.Such stories give reader a feeling of –personal connect and thus you can inculcate your reader’s interest without much effort. This list is endless a lot can be written on this and a long series of examples can be shared but we have tried to restrict to crucial ones only.

“So guys are you ready to don your blog with all these feathers”.
Learn more insights about Social Media with us @ Social Media Trainings

Discussions apparently are an inseparable part of our lives, we learn a lot from them – myths are ruled out, new ideologies are formed, we find like-minded friends and what not. In light of this advantage, a lot of brands are utilizing discussion forums for adding value to their business.

It’s quite easy to begin a discussion panel or online for

um and attract like-minded people but the real challenge lies in making those people participate. Let’s just figure out what can be done to improve engagement on online forums.

Give and take: nothing in this world comes free, why would engagement, ooo……..wait, wait! Don’t think you need to pay audience for engagement, rather we are talking about perfect “barter system”- give with one hand and get in other hand, that means pay back your audience, that is cherish their views christen them “opinion leader of week” etc. and see how conversation thread shoots. Special badges like “founding peers” for initial users can work wonderfully.

 Be persuasive yet not pushy: Sounds interesting but is quite tricky, you have to use tactics and find ways to influence your community members. Try to work on idea – “what’s in for them”- are you a ‘knowledge source’, ‘topic of interest ’or‘ Opportunity Sea’ for audience.  Work on these lines and see your community members responding themselves without much effort on your end. Influence is definitely a great way to engage community.

Call to action: If your post has call to action, see audience jumping on to your wall. See how this message is calling you

“Hi Friends, WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF TRUE FRIENDSHIP.A group which is mainly based on FRIENDSHIP is SMARTTEENS.SMARTTEENS is a group of smart people from all around the world. This group can give u useful information, good messages, fun, humor, jokes and all type of messages. But remember any type of ADULT STUFF is not allowed in the

group.

So, COME ON JOIN ALL NOW.HURRY UP!!!”

Easy way to respond: make passage easy for audience that means instead of making your “registration tab and comments tab” a hi-fi thriller, “keep it simple” and make it easy for user to respond.  “A complicated registration may lead to user’s disinterest”

 Appreciate, applaud and be considerate: Give due respect to your audience, weightage to their views, treat them as kings………but if they cross the line you need to hit them like if somebody is creating spam on page -send him gentle warning via private message or block him.

You will have all sorts of people on your forum and sometimes it might be the case that you (as a brand) and user might have contradictory opinion about a topic, but since forum is a user generated content page so you can’t stop him but instead work cleverly to flip his opinion.

No rule book for success: Nobody has any rule book for improving engagement but what brand can do is “remain in good books of audience” i.e.-keep doing hard work, treat your community members carefully and lovingly and then see this wonder chant working.

And last but not least “never say die”, keep your action going no matter what happens, who knows which day would turn your  fortune !!

Catch more Social Media Insights at our “Social Media Workshops”