Sharing: HOW TO PLAY THE SOCIAL MEDIA LIKE A VIOLIN

I had written an article on Social Media Marketing on my blog some time ago.

I find the topic endlessly fascinating. Unlike those subjects I learned at school and college, Social Media is something I am learning on the job – a job that doesn’t make any money for me, at least nothing that I can count and tell in terms of cash. Many people believe it’s a waste of time – anything that does not make money. I have had people laugh at me behind my back when they got to know that I blog voraciously.

“You mean you don’t get paid for writing 100s of articles? But that doesn’t make sense.” I have heard that dialogue thrown at me many times. Those who haven’t blogged don’t understand the meaning of “Freedom” of expression. We all have an opinion, maybe two, about everything. Instead of gossiping about it, some of us choose to write blogs.

Blogs act as a catharsis for one. More importantly, it creates a presence for the blogger on the internet. Without realizing the impact of what I was doing, I just wrote on my blog to please myself, on a variety of subjects. Over the years, I have a powerful presence on Google search.

Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and more followed soon. While I heard people of my generation grumbling about the waste of time, I couldn’t stop being fascinated by making connections with strangers, especially people who do something similar to what I do – Bloggers and authors.

It gave me great joy when I shared other people’s work – when I found them fascinating. I never think twice about sharing people’s posts if I like them. This creates a win-win situation. This automatically encouraged people to share what I said on my blogs and other social media posts.

Think about old world marketing. People were trained, impressed upon and told to sell things whether they believed in them or not. While, of course, there are people who genuinely enjoy marketing stuff, I am not one of those.

In social media, the situation is very different. I work from my heart. When I like something, I post a comment and share. Over a period of time, it slowly dawned on me that I am creating a mega marketing base, effortlessly – or so it appears. That’s because I don’t do it as work, but as fun.

Next comes the question: How to get the attention of people to your posts?

Imagine the Home Page of a well-constructed website. It has every single element of the whole website. At least, that’s how it should be. You have just that one chance to impress your client.

This is amplified many times over on social media. It’s a challenge to get at least a small percentage of 1000s of friends to notice what I say; the attention span is extremely fleeting. I have only a few seconds to say it all.

1. My post has to catch one’s eye. A picture speaks a thousand words works here. You want to say something that needs to be heard, post a picture.

2. Avoid being repetitive. People will stop visiting your page. Variety is the spice of life.

3. I always go for vibrant hues when I create a poster. Facebook, Twitter, Google+ - check everywhere, the background is white. If you use a pastel poster, it has less chance of grabbing eyeballs. It will just fade away into the background, literally. The rainbow has seven brilliant colours with so many shades in between. Use them all.

4. I cram a lot of pictures and information on my poster. The poster should not grate for sure. But imagine someone scrolling through facebook at high speed. What will make them stop? A colourful picture. Okay, they have stopped for 5 seconds to scan my poster. I want them to see the cover of my book first so that it’s branded under their eyelids. My book name and my name go next. If another person has 5 more seconds, they can read a few words of a review or blurb. A buying link along with it is an absolute must. If someone likes the picture and information, they are not going to Amazon or Google search to look for a place to buy my books. I had better make it available right there.

5. Another person told me, “Sundari, it’s quite useless to promote on so many forums. I have done it. It doesn’t sell copies.” I beg to differ. I also believe in the saying, “Rome was not built in a day.” Patience does it. You keep posting your news, but never forget to stop and check out what others have to say. They can tell if you are commenting after reading or just saying something is great. Be genuine. We meet so many strangers and it’s as easy to leave a bad impression as leaving a good one. Sharing is caring, as that person’s post reaches an entirely different set of audience when you share it. People always remember.

Whenever I market myself, or market someone else on social media, my books sell. What had begun as a fun exercise, has become a huge marketing effort, done effortlessly.

Social Media is where you grow as you contribute - that is the only key.

Sharing: SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Social Media Marketing is a great way to promote yourself, your products, your services, whatever. And the best part is it’s FREE and it WORKS virally.

It is a simple funda where you help yourself by promoting others. Surprising, nah? Believe me, that’s how social media works.

Interaction is the KEY!

FACEBOOK

You can set up your page on Facebook and tell the world what it is all about. There is a list of options such as Organisation, local business, books, blogs and many more. There’s also a sub-category that helps define what you do. If nothing, you can choose, ‘Just for fun’.

You can invite your friends to LIKE your page and this posts your page information on their walls. The information spreads virally.

This is a sure-fire way of getting a lot of people to know what you are trying to promote – be it your book, your skills or other products.

The best way to get people to interact with you on facebook is to post regular updates, preferably with pictures. You can post videos and links too, pertaining to what your page is about.

Another way to get people to your page is to show interest in others’ pages by liking them, commenting on their posts and generally interacting.

TWITTER

We all must be having twitter accounts. If not, please set one up, it’s quite easy. Connect it to your fb account. Whatever you post on fb will automatically be tweeted.

You can post links directly on twitter along with #hashtags. Hashtags are used to create specific topics on Twitter. You can create your own hashtags or tag your posts with trending hashtags.

Eg: I want to post a blog link of a book review of my romance book. I open twitter and when I tag #blog and #bookreview and #romance I get a dropdown I can select from. When I use these hashtags with the links I am posting on twitter, the link will be seen by all those people who check for tweets that have these tags. Chances are high that strangers will get to know about what’s on the link. You will get more people to follow you. You can return the compliment by following them.

BLOGS

Blogs are a great way to create your online presence. You can write about anything that interests you. Creating a clean copy will go a long way in making your blog popular. People don’t want to read wrongly written English. Blogs can be written in colloquial languages for that matter. A picture goes a long way to attract interest. As they say ‘a picture speaks a thousand words’. One thumb-rule though – you should have copyright to the picture or if you pick one off the internet, give the devil his due and name the website in the caption.

You can interact on this platform by inviting your friends and acquaintances to follow your blog. An even better way of garnering interest is to visit other blogs and following them if you like them and also by posting comments. You can even share the link of an article that you found interesting on other social media networks.

GOOGLE+ (g+)

Most online articles have the g+ icon at the end of it. If you click on it, you automatically share the article with your Google+ contacts. You can not only do this for your articles, but also for others’ articles that you found interesting.

GOOGLE SEARCH

Try to stick to your full name on all social media websites. Let your accounts also reflect this name – the name associated with your service or product or blog. The public will automatically make the connection. If the same name is up everywhere, it is also easy for google search to throw up your links every time.

For example, Adite Banerjie, Rubina Ramesh, Sundari Venkatraman – check out google for these names. You will land up with links belonging to us. That’s because this name has been used everywhere on social media. If you use different names, the attention gets divided and all your links don’t show up on search.

IN CONCLUSION

There are more social media networks such as PinIt, Disqus, StumbleUpon, etc. But the ones mentioned above will suffice to begin with. Don’t feel threatened by so much information. It’s not possible to apply all of these at one go or in one day.

Try them one at a time. It will work over a period. As they say, Rome was not built in a day.

Film Review: THE SOCIAL NETWORK

Eduardo & Mark

Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Armie Hammer, Josh Pence, Rooney Mara
Director: David Fincher

The Story: The film is based on the book ‘The Accidental Billionaires’ by Ben Mezrich. Mark Zuckerburg (Jesse Eisenberg) and his girlfriend Erica (Rooney Mara) have an argument at the bar and they break up. Mark gets so upset that he posts a blog about Erica. His anger still unspent, Mark hacks into the Harvard University database and creates Facemash – a photo-sharing website and gets 22,000 hits in just 2 hours. His only intent is to humiliate Erica. While Mark is pulled up for hacking into secure networks, everyone in and outside campus gets to know about him. The Winklevoss twins (played by Armie Hammer and Josh Pence) have an idea for a social network and approach Mark with it. He agrees to work for them. But before that, he adapts their idea to create ‘The Facebook’. A grand sum of $1000 is invested by Mark’s best friend Eduardo (Andrew Garfield) and they enter a partnership of 70:30. The social network is a success from Day One while it had taken Mark a bare 6 weeks to get it in place. Things begin to get out of hand when Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), founder of Napster – an online music website – gets in touch with Mark. Mark and Sean hit it off immediately while Eduardo hates the very sight of the newcomer. A new contract is set up as The Facebook snowballs into the most popular social networking site. Eduardo signs for 0.03% share of the profits without realising what he is doing. Things turn ugly when Mark is taken to court by both his best friend and the Winklevoss twins. The rest of the film is all about how things get settled for The Accidental Billionaire who has already raked in $ 7 Billion after but a few months of floating his website.

My Perception: What can I say? I was spellbound by the movie. The Social Network ran for exactly 2 hours with crisp dialogues and superb acting.

Jesse Eisenberg did such a wonderful job of playing Mark. The quiet anger that he portrays when his girlfriend leaves him, keeping a cool head during the law proceedings, his smart-alec answers to everyone around, his loyalty to Eduardo, his instant friendship with Sean – he was just superb in just about every scene. I just loved the way he is quite chilled despite the billions growing in his bank.

Andrew Garfield as the hurt and humiliated Eduardo does an excellent job. The rest of the cast also played their roles very well.

There was not one extra scene or an out-of-place dialogue that one could complain about. You need to stay alert while the film is on if you don’t want to miss anything important – that’s every second of the movie. The film takes the viewer back and forth during the court proceedings and the story is built in flashbacks.

Verdict: Just awesome! Don’t miss this one in the theatres. I am planning to see it again soon.

Rating: ****** (That 6 stars and the rating is Stupendous)

* Silly
** Shaky
*** Smart
**** Snazzy
***** Super

Melodrama: SANIA-SHOAIB ENGAGEMENT

The Sania-Shoaib story is still going strong on TV. The full-time soap opera is dragging their names through mud while keeping the public entertained. Everyone’s talking about it, whether for or against the couple.

Bombay Times even ran an April’s Fool feature around their wedding reception.

While the supplement is running interviews with other ‘single hotties’ about their take on the issue.

Star News has a daily feature on Shoaib’s alleged marriage with Ayesha Siddhiqui. And other TV channels such as IBN Lokmat are not far behind. Ayesha’s family members, especially her father and mother, have been ranting, raving, crying, cursing and yelling in turns at press conferences. Makes one wonder what kind of a drama William Shakespeare would have come up with on hearing the details of this issue.

Tongue-in-cheek:

Will this issue that has been blown-out-of-all-proportion bring about an improvement in Indo-Pak relations?

I personally feel it is a great boost to the stumbling Indian economy.

1. The TRPs are obviously soaring for the various TV channels that are making hay while the sun shines.
2. It is not just the tabloids but even respectable newspapers have made the Sania-Shoaib affair, front page news.
3. A few lawyers must be minting money on this issue.
4. Many websites are running features on the controversy that seems to have become the hottest issue in our country.
5. Astrologers are going overboard with their predictions on whether the wedding will take place and if it does, how long it might or might not last.
6. It is a hot topic of discussion on online social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
7. Bookies are taking huge bets on whether the two will tie the knot or no.
8. A guy from the streets who gives predictions with the help of his parrot has parked himself outside Sania’s residence at Banjara Hills in Hyderabad and is making money offering his two-bit worth on this issue to anyone who is interested.

Wonder what more one can expect before the news fizzles out and some other melodrama takes its place.