How Radian6 and Sysmos facilitated me to make my social media project so much easier?

In the last week of March, the Town of Richmond Hill has undertaken to organize a cultural event for the community that encompasses various nationalities to come together and get acquainted to different culture. It will allow these communities to know each other and hence create more vibrant, multi-cultural society to live in. The artists of the society are the main entities to showcase such a talent.

All right, so where do I fit in as a student of Seneca College. Well, Richmond Hill Cultural Plan coordinator, Gillian Hards, has entrusted a group of students from Social Media program to handle their various social media accounts and help promote the event online in such a way that allows 100 artists from Richmond Hill to register for the event.

Well, Radian6 and Sysomos are amazing tools to help us analyze the presence of important individual or groups of Richmond Hill society on social media and develop strategies to influence them to make the objective fulfilled.

Well, in order to strategize, it is important to know whether we understand people’s sentiment or not, for it to occur, it is imperative that we listen the conversation on various social media websites on Richmond Hill Cultural Plan. For this purpose, we will bring in the use of these two tools.  

In order to reach out to large portion of society, one of the best ways to make it happen is to influence the influencers. The first step is to locate the right influencers that will be beneficial to the cause. Radian6 and Sysoms, both allow finding influencer.

Once these influencers are found, Radian6 widget “River of flow” will allow us to listen in on what they have to say about Richmond Hill Cultural event or something similar that may interest them towards Richmond Hill Cultural event, in case they are not interested.

Have a nice day!

PS: Come to the event if you want to. J

Summary of 3 videos on HootSuite Unviersity

1. “Where Context Meets Content”

As the world has grown the way we interact with people have drastically changed, the reason we purchase a product/service has changed. Everybody on social media has become brand of its own. The voice of a person is not individual anymore as we interact according to our brand perception and identity on social media, where virtual reality is the new communication. Personal identity has been merged into social media identity.

Even people are being ranked nowadays through scoring platforms such as Klout and Kred. It is a skillset of its own to score better. Even the most fake ones can become leaders on social media nowadays, but the question still remains the same, does it matter?  It can lead to quick approval but the quality of the communication still remains the same, the outreach has changed but the need will remain same. For example, word of mouth is likely to remain the most powerful tool to increase likability, awareness, the reason to purchase, etc.  

On social media the communication starts as soon a context is created as it meets with the content it required to fulfill the answer to the context.

 

2. “Klout for Business: Leveraging Influence for Your Brand”

Klout provides the scorecard on the basis of social media presence. Here, Klout assess various social media websites to see how well we are doing on those websites and mark us out of 100. Higher the score is, better the rank is. Klout takes websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Bing, and various other social media websites to accumulate the data together and push the score ahead. In Business, it allows to see the popularity of their brand, the connection the business has made with people who are influencing the social media mass users and.

Klout also filters the data presented on social media according to what is most important to the business. It helps to build up business strategy in the future.

 

3. “How to Start Engaging your Audience in HootSuite”

Hootsuite helps to listen in to conversation on social media, participate with people in conversation, schedule messages to various platforms from the hoot suite platform,  use feed, integrate the work within a team of social media, create various reports, search social media from simple search to advanced search options, to locate people with influence, and so forth.

In short, Hootsuite acts as engaging with the targeted audience that enables to reach to the social media objective

Image courtesy: http://hootsuite.com.br/

Video courtesy: http://learn.hootsuite.com/

The battle of two big bosses of storage services: Dropbox versus GoogleDrive

Among various cloud storage services that are available on the internet, Dropbox and Google Drive are definitely among the top three on the web, along with Sky Drive competing in the set of three as well.

 For the people who do not know much about these two services: Dropbox and GoogleDrive provides services that allow the user to store files on the internet under its own privacy control, share it with the selected audience and also allows to sync. Now that we have understood the importance of the service, the next process is to select the best cloud storage service for you. The difference in the sub-services provided by these two services will allow making the right choice for us, according to the requirement.

So, let us quickly get into the difference:

      1. Sharing: On of the most important feature as sharing the file is one of the major reasons why people use storage services; otherwise pen drive would have been enough to put money on.

Dropbox: Dropbox provides with simple, quick, effective sharing experience without any hassle whatsoever and can be shared just like any other link.

GoogleDrive: In order to share file, the receiver need to use GoogleDrive application as well, but still it is still a very convenient service when comes to sharing as it can be forwarded in the form of e-mail with good controlling options.

 

      2. Storage Space: The higher the space is, the cheaper that space is, more is the information to share on the web with friends, business-related professionals, etc.

Dropbox: The price for storage on Dropbox is on higher plateau with only 2 GB free storage available and after that approximately $10.00 per month for 100 GB. Despite Dropbox futile showcase of attracting users with extra 125MB for every time the account gets connected with Facebook or Twitter, it still is expensive in nature.

GoogleDrive: GoogleDrive does well with providing with 5 GB of free storage capability and after that approximately $5.00 per month for 100GB.  

 

     3. Security: In the world of increasing power and nuances of online hacking, it is important to secure the data, so dear to you.

Dropbox: The security maintained by Dropbox is uptight and provides two-step authentication process in order to enter the account. Along with it also ask for six-digit security code to enter into the account, it enhances the security.

GoogleDrive: Similar to Dropbox, it also asks for two-step authentication to connect with Gmail account, but it lacks six-digit security code, making it more vulnerable than Dropbox security.

      

     4. File Type: With the increased applications, the storage services shall have the power to support different kind of files, and if editing is possible too on web itself, it makes the service even better.

Dropbox: Dropbox supports lot of various file to be viewed on the web itself without the need to download the file, but still one cannot edit the file on the web itself. Only after downloading it can be edited.

GoogleDrive: It supports the most kind of files on the web itself along with the option of editing it online, itself. No other service supports as many files as GoogleDrive does, along with editing the file online makes it a better option.  

 

      5. Web Client: If the files are loaded heavily on these service providers, it is imperative to have better search option capabilities.       

Dropbox: Dropbox has advanced options to search the file online but with very limited options.

GoogleDrive: Well, GoogleDrive is obviously Google service thus one can see easily fathom the power of advanced search option that can literally do everything in filtering out the best search through numerous different file types, sizes and what not.

 

	Dropbox	GoogleDrive
Sharing	✓
Storage Space		✓
Security	✓
File Type		✓
Web Client		✓

 Source: Dickey, Megan Rose. “Dropbox Vs. Google Drive: Which Cloud Storage Service Is Better?” Business Insider. N.p., 17 Apr. 2013. Web. 27 Nov. 2013.

<http://www.businessinsider.com/dropbox-vs-google-drive-2013-4>

 Image courtesy: http://www.techzek.com/google-drive-gdrive-vs-dropbox-comparison/

 

 

Who to include in social media team of 5 memebrs? Read on!

For Private, Non-profits and Government:-

Community Manager: In today’s environment when transparency is one of the most critical factors and trust is earned through hard and continuous effort, community manager works in front as a link between the audience and the company. Community manager brings the human factor to the organization, since these sectors serve or affect humans. Hence, you need to make sure that you do not miss him from part of your team.

Web Developer: For proper functioning at the back end, we tend to forget on what it takes to actually run social media campaign. These developers serve as our social media technician that helps any organization to modify the process of social media according to the external requirement.

Digital Strategist: How to incorporate your social media campaigns on other platforms? There has to be a member to link up social media campaign with other digital media such as Televisions, newspapers etc.

For Non-profits and Government:-

Education Manager: Since, the issues touched by non-profits and government are generally sensitive in nature, it is important that information and knowledge spreads properly along the team, and thus rules and regulations are needed to properly formulated.

For Businesses only:-

Social Strategist: Well, including this person is very straight-forward. He/she would need to analyses the overall benefit of social media team. On how team should work in order to move forward to reach the goal of per-determined ROI.

Business Unit Liaison: In order for social media team to have proper co-ordination with business teams such as sales department or human-resource department, it makes complete sense to put such a member in the team. A business is run to make profits and needs combined effort to make it happen. Also, just awareness is not the goal of this sector, thus information and connection with other business teams are required in businesses more than other kind of sectors.

For Non-profits:-

Content Strategist: In the wake of increased need of dissemination of filtered information so that audience gets influenced by a topic in order to induce awareness and then call to action, it has become mandate to include Content Strategist, who can curate and utilize the media in such a fashion that allows for content to affect the most. Thus, non-profits need this person in the team.

For Government:-

Agency Partners: Government has the financial resource to use the third parties to handle their social media campaigns. Government need such agency that can be later disassociated so that the confidential matter remains confidential and only the information required to for agency partners to know is transferred.

Source: “Jeremiah Owyang.” Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang Social Media Web Marketing Breakdown Corporate Social Media Team Comments. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2013.

Difference in content strategy for government, private and non-profit sector in their absolute and not-so-absolute state.

Non-profit organizations thrive best when they expose themselves truthfully through media outlet, in short they become transparent.  The content should always have at least a bit of content that can make readers to make a stance or create awareness or give a reason to respond at least. What is the purpose of content if does not serve any of the mentioned purpose in non-profit organizations?

Now, the content shall be developed to serve these purposes. How these purposes can be more effectively met? In order to make a person make a stance, we shall give a reason to take such a stance. Our content shall be targeted in such a way that it encourages the benefit and realistic outcome of taking stance. In order to create awareness, an astounding fact can shake the person in remembering the fact that creates effective awareness so that chance of follow-up action increases. If the content is not strong enough to generate awareness or create stance, then at least it should create a connection with the audience to be read, such content help to accumulate information in audience’s mind that can motivate to change, later, when audience is ready.

Generally rich, visually empowering and astounding facts make the content successful for non-profit organizations.

What is government? They are group of people chosen by public (in democratic environment) to serve the community. Let us believe, hypothetically, that government is actually perfect. In such a scenario, the purpose of government would be to make a community (i.e. a country) run smoothly internally and externally. Due to the complexity in the internal and external structure, the content would be needed to be filtered. Creating awareness in order to maintain order in the community will be the sole purpose of government at every cost. Now, let us consider to keep the power becomes the central approach or at least a major concern for government. They would need to make the content even less transparent, because nothing remains same and since chaos always exist in imperfect society, government would need to make the content highly political in nature to soothe the major section of the society to keep away from chaos and in return it keeps them in power. The absolute truth would have existed in individualistic, perfect society. Now let us combine this theory on the content strategy. Content strategy for the government will be simple: Keep the content clean, straight-forward, not trying something unusual and also not trying hard to impress until or unless, the content goes against their vote bank. The usage of visually attractive content shall be kept to minimum and should be used when necessary. For example, if the focus is young generation, the visually rich content may be useful, but again nothing over the top shall be used.

Private sector is out there to make us pay more than the cost of their product or service. Not bashing them in any way, but consumerism exists most in democratic environment. How does this consumerism work? Create a sense of deficiency in the sub-conscious mind of human-being. Creation of this requirement can be done if the analytical skill of the content is of higher intelligence quotient. If the content becomes successful, it creates higher absorption need. Alright, so in order for the content to be successful, it needs to be made in sophisticated manner that does not directly reveal the purpose but subtly create the need. It can be done best through a good balance of visually gratifying content that matches up with the written content. For absolute private sector (for profits sector), it is impossible to be create absolutely clean, transparent content. The understanding of human psychology plays an important role to write a successful content.

Only Image source: http://barbragago.com/do-i-really-need-a-content-strategy/

Understanding Kloud and Kred through Macklemore

Hi, my name is Nimish. This is my first podcast.

Through one of my professor, I came across the websites Klout and Kred. What do these websites do?

These websites act as our social media report card. The higher the score is, better we have socialized

with people and vice-versa. Before, I judge their credibility let us see rapper Macklemore’s report card.

His Klout is high with the score of 89 out of 100. If high proportion is being taken by Wikipedia, it means

the chance of manipulated score of Macklemore’s high score is low, since click on Wikipedia page

cannot be so easily manipulated.. For his Twitter account at the rate of Macklemore, he has almost

point 2 million followers and contributes in 38.5% of Klout score: A clear indication of large social

following. According to Klout: Music, His own status, Hip Hop, Art and Seattle (His place of birth) are

major categories of his influence.

For Kred, Macklemore’s score is almost perfect with score of 999 out of 1000. Kred collects information

through detailed Twitter and Facebook information on the person or organization to score.

For Macklemore has only given his Twitter account on Kred, he has been scored on the basis of Twitter

only. The higher the mentions, tweets, retweet, followers are, higher the score is supposed to be.

According to Kred, the outreach level and influence score of Macklemore is mainly dependent on the

communities in Music, Sports and Students. Also, proportionally lower outreach score of 8 out of 12

when compared to almost perfect influence score suggest that Macklemore did not try hard to increase

influence as he did not try to attract but it is his profession, charisma and outward nature of career that

contribute in high influence. It clearly suggests more credibility of Macklemore.

Klout gives a more generalized, more customizable approach to calculate the score, while compromising

on the quality and credibility of the score. Let’s see how and why it is so. Macklemore’s twitter score on

Klout is solely based on the number of followers on Twitter; it means fake followers also formed the part

of score. Fake and inactive users do not generally retweet or mention. Also, why Bing is the only search

engine to be used in calculating Klout score? Is it only because that Microsoft has linked up with Klout?

Ok now I speak about Kred. Kred allows only two social platforms as of right now, facebook and Twitter.

the score reflects the true identity because of detailed analysis of twitter and facebook. Also, Kred

is more transparent in nature as they are more open on Mackelmore’s dashboard on the mentions,

retweets, and replies.

If businesses take Klout score at all seriously, it can be huge risk to undertake. Taking calculated risk is

another thing, but unreliable and superficiality score brought by Klout score can lead to mistakes, that

probably they will realize after undertaking it. On the other hand, for Kred, the score generate is more

genuine in nature. As we all know numbers do not lie, but if the calculation to reach the number is faulty

and incomplete, it should not be considered. Also, numbers do not necessary identify the quality.

Take care guys, bye.

As visual communication has taken over, it has become the king of all senses.

The impatience in the society does not have much time to stop and read text or listen to a long description in a monotonous voice. People, especially young generation, get attracted to visually satisfying or visually relatable communication medium.

With the advent of numerous and easy-to-use tools, it has become easier for simple and naïve users to make appropriate enough visuals to influence, if they know what is the message behind the communication. This advent has further resulted in the amplification of usage of visual communication and its current importance in the society.

Let us see what happens when beauty (stunning visuals) combines with meaningful message. The recent movies such as The Avatar, Gravity, Dark Knight Rises, Life of Pi and various other movies rocked the box office, particularly because of two reasons: The message (including storyline) and the visually satisfying or stunning effects. The books we obliviously pick up from the library to read are the books that have unique cover design. The chances of such books to be read increase, though if the content of the book is not good enough, it will fail. But still it has more chances to be read, nonetheless.

Visual communication is something that makes sense to our enhanced visionary sense. In fashion shows, the clothes, the hairstyle, the attitude defines visual communication. It sends out the message to people to follow the latest fashion cult.

Visual communication has been part of the society since its inception to differentiate one person with another in order to choose between two people with similar traits. If you go to shop to buy iPhone with two color options, say, black and white. People will purchase the color that suits their sense or suits the sense of people he/she want to associate with.

The example as simple as the one above shows the importance of visual communication.

We have even started to vote for people who are visually unique, stunning as the importance words have taken back seat for time being at least. The quick assessment has further increased the importance of visual communication that transfers the idea more quickly. For example, if you want to know the smell of rose, the virtual reality of such a smell can be now described through visually correct or suggestive visual sense. In short, all other senses are getting converged into visual sense. The reality can now be so easily blurred with the twist in visuals. It has become a huge part in western civilization.

In order to keep up with the importance of visual communication and imbalanced senses, the visual communication has not yet reached to its prime, where people may probably forget what makes the literature beautiful and what makes a smell a smell. In today’s era, visual sense is the king of all senses and needs to be acknowledged with importance or otherwise we may fail to be successful.

Not getting philosophical here, but we are heading towards this direction in the near future of our society, after that it is impossible to judge so quickly.

Catch you later after I adjust my visual sense,

Nimish Maheshwari

Image courtesy: http://phpsns.com/visual-sense-template-for-socialengine/

Want to enagage with people on social media? Trust your gut first, then use technique.

Engagement with people can start with moderate, positive and even on negative note. It can start with a simple communication or with sparks flying or something entertaining. Well, there are numerous ways to start engagement with people on social media. Since it is made up of lots of variables, it is difficult to create a complete structure on how to engage with people on social media but with reinforcement of few important rules and effective techniques, engagement can be initiated.

I went through the meaning of engagement in the Oxford dictionary, through the combination of various meanings, it meant to occupy, to attract, to get involved, and to arrange so as to come into operation. Now, we can easily deduce that engagement is simply to create awareness and then induce a reason to start conversation with the targeted audience.

On this basis, let us see what can be done to engage with people on social media?

After the initial awareness is created, the main force to start engagement is to induce a reason for people to engage. At times, awareness is enough for the people who are already initiated to engage but for the people who are not initiated, we would then need to understand what will be useful technique to induce the reason.

The technique would be flexible depending basically upon the characteristic of mass personality. Generally young people who do not get induced even after awareness are self-absorbed generation, who will change only if something will affect them.  Thus, the nature of technique shall directly hit them. For example, people who play violent games will not change through fairy-tale movies, but if the message is delivered through such platform in an aggressive manner, it will make them see things in different light. It induces engagement. We cannot sweet talk them to start conversation. If we want to engage with intellectual society, the reasoning and analytical skills shall be well polished and strong in order to start a conversation.

For the majority of young generation, who gets quickly bored and needs fast-paced environment will get attracted towards something unique, different in nature.

As you may have already realized, there can be particular technique to start engagement but it has several variables to look into.

In order to not get lost, I will put this technique in sequential manner:

1^st: Create awareness.

2^nd: Induce the reason if the targeted audience is self-absorbed generation or skip this step.

3^rd: Convey the message on the platform to which targeted audience can relate to, also the message should be tailored characteristically with the targeted audience.

4^th: Keep tailoring and reinforcing the message according to their need and requirement until the reason is instilled in them to engage with you.

5^th: You can skip all the steps if the targeted audience is mature or not self-absorbed, as then awareness may be enough to start engagement.

I have created this step that may stand true for most of the cases but again the will to start engagement is highly complex in nature because of number of complex variables presented in it, and thus this technique may fail, as future is complex and not determined.

Take care and start engaging,

Nimish Maheshwari

Image credit: http://www.velasconsulting.com/services/employee-engagement/

Google Analytics analysis of website “www.nimishmaheshwari.com”

The visitors to my website are generally my classmates; the data that I have gathered through Google Analytics will not form a precise analysis because the visitor sample here is not general sample. But still sufficient enough of observations can be developed and then analyzed.

The goal of my website is to create awareness on Animal Cruelty and Environmental concerns, thus initially my concern would be the kind of people who are visiting my website.  If I am able to create low bounce rate, the better it reflects the acquirement of my goal, since the longer the stay, the chance that the person will get more aware about these concerns.

So, the basic requirement of my goal is more interaction, more visitors along with lower bounce rate.

Let’s start with the bounce rate, then:

1.       Bounce Rate:

Bounce rate is quite satisfying, since it is fresh website. Due to several pages on my website, it has led to low bounce rate. Still, the bounce rate will increase if the content on other pages is not interesting enough. Also, since it is new website, it has drawn initial attention, but if the content is not well prepared and written, the initial advantage will be wasted. Fresh and interesting content has to be written.

2.       Average Visit Duration:

 

Another perspective to look into when to see whether my goal has been achieved or not is to know how much time visitors have stayed on my website on average. The more time visitors spent on my not-for-profit website will show that they are interested in the content and thus the chances of making them influence is increased. Here, the average visit duration is sufficient enough to know at least the gist of the concern presented.

3.       Demographics:

When I developed the goal and objective of my website, it was to increase the awareness, such that it gets converted into positive action. The best demographic to choose that can actually make difference through a translated action is 25-34 age groups. Since, this group has the ability to be converting their awareness into action in most effective manner. The less rigidity in this group what I was looking into. Another important group for me to look into is 18-24 age groups. The time invested in this group will result better future outcomes, if I am able to get them on my website and influence them. I will be content enough, if I can simply make them aware, because of their less independence. The action from this age group shall not be expected.

Due to the above mentioned reasons and the satisfying statistics, the website has captured the right audience.

4.       Geography:

 

The content on the website is as of right now, targeted more towards Canadians than elsewhere. Thus, the above information well suffices the short-term objective of website.

5.       Level of Interaction:

This is interesting report to look into. After the landing page (home page), the other interaction reflects the general interest of people. Here, the forums page is the best bet on my website. Thus, this page has to be handled with more interactive content in the future. Other than that, we can see that on 1^st interaction, “animal-cruelty”, “green-ideas” and “what-we-do” are the pages that resulted in interest from people. The later level of interaction means the pages are not much of interest, at least the title of the page! The better content on late interaction levels can increase the overall quality of the content on the website.

In order to have better analysis, it is important to keep the proper, systematic and regular tab on Google Analytics reports. Especially, when the website is launched, as it helps in giving the direction on how to handle the visitors in the future, since as we already know, if initial proper direction is provided than the later part becomes easier to tread upon.

This sum up basic and initial Google analytics analysis of my website: www.nimishmaheshwari.com

To sum up my Google analytics analysis, please find the image below:-

That’s all from me for now,

Nimish Maheshwari

How to correctly find the right audience when starting a social media campaign?

In order to effectively utilize the social media policy, it is important to well define the targeted audience for government, non-profit or private sector. Since the audience are not per-defined or ascertained until the goals and objectives are formulated, hence the core variables are needed to be formed such that it becomes easy to capture the right audience.

The three consistent and core variables that can be found in the above mentioned three sectors are as follows:

• Assessing the present audience:

The present audience is the core identity of any sector, thus, first labeling the current audience is important. This labeling can reflect the kind of social network that they are currently using. After it is done, the comprehensive data can be generated that can help to determine on how the new social campaign can be linked with data, so that the asset such that present audience do not get lost in the process.

Current audience is also needed to be segregated according to the level of interaction that exists between the organization and audience. For example:

1. For Government, Law makers and party leaders are very close acquaintances, whereas the citizens just follow government’s policy.
2. For Private, Staff members are very close acquaintances, whereas the consumers just consume their products and services.
3. For Non-profit, fundraisers are very close acquaintances, whereas the passive followers may just share the content.

• Research on the competitors/other similar groups:

In order to properly and quickly adapt to a particular situation and correctly find the targeted audience, researching on what the competitors are presently doing in the market place, it allows the company or organization to start from higher level, without any primary research. Even the mistakes can be observed and new development can be produced over the existing competitor’s strength, weaknesses and flaws. Researching on competitors is easy approach to reach and locate the targeted audience, but being prudent in this step is necessary, too, as the chances of getting carried away is high, as originality can be lost and thus targeted audience can be misinterpreted.

•  Defining the overall audience:

This variable is co-dependent on the above mentioned variables and thus these three variables can be termed as a step process, too.

Anyways now that present audience is well understood and research on the competitors has enabled to filter the audience. The complete picture of the targeted audience can be understood as goals and objectives of the social media campaign be matched with the requirement to fulfill it. For it to happen, it is necessary that the PESTLE analysis (or any other analysis, depending upon the requirement) be made. It will filter the audience to right size and thus reduces the chance of error.

Work Cited:

Image from: http://jumpstartcto.com/why-defining-your-target-audience-is-important/