#ArtofSocial - Book Review

The news that +Guy Kawasaki has written a book itself is a phenomenon in social media circle. And if that book happens to be on Social Media itself, it must be a craze. So it is. This is a quick review about +Guy Kawasaki & +Peg Fitzpatrick 's latest book - "The Art of Social Media" #ArtofSocial

If you have been into Social Media for a while, you must be knowing a little bit of many things, if not every thing of Social Media platforms. But this book gets into the real details behind a typical Social Media campaign, if that is headed by the likes of +Guy or +Peg.
[I intend not to introduce Guy in this post as I assume you have access to Google (or some other search engine) in your country, in case you are hearing his name for the first time]

Guy has been speaking about various aspects of Social Media for a while in various Hangouts & Seminars. This book consolidates those between the covers. If you are a regular listener of him, you may find some of the topics quite familiar. 

What is there in the book:

The book starts with how to build the perfect profile page in SM. Yes it starts at the basics. Then it gets into how to curate contents. Also he gives his view on what to comment (and what not to), while responding. He has pages on Hangout & Twitter specifically. He talks about how to socialize an event. The real life examples would be quite handy for someone trying to promote an event for his agency or org.

The Guy style:

Though the book is co-authored, Guy claims to have taken the task of writing the book himself while taking inputs from the co-author. Hence you can expect typical Guy-ish memorable lines, like this: "If you are not pissing someone off on social media, you are not using it aggressively enough." As you might be knowing if you follow him, Guy is a big proponent of repeating same posts multiple times during the day. He talks about this in his book with some stats. Though this sounds like a good idea, I personally don't do it. If you are doing it for an organization, which has followers in different timezones, this tip might help you. Also I liked his idea about engagements as a 3 round amateur boxing match. Round 1: Commenter comments, Round 2: You Respond, Round 3: Commenter responds to your response. End of fight. This tip might help you when you get engaged on something controversial, say politics. Avoid using curse words at any cost, even if you are yet to get into the 3 round boxing match mode. There is a growing trend these days of buying followers in Twitter, Facebook etc. +Guy  explains it beautifully on how the mandate of building social media flows from CEO to CMO to Marketing agency and how does it translate at every stage. At the end, the marketing agency end up buying few followers. But as he says - "You may never be caught buying your way into social media, but to do so is pissing your karma, and karma is a bitch."

Who should buy this book, and why?
This book is about execution plans of Social Media. Its not about the Social Media funda or philosophies or strategies to be adopted by different kinds of industries. It doesn't either talk on the Facebook vs. Google+ debate :-). If you were looking for any of those stuff, don't buy this book.

Then who should buy this book?

• If you are an SM enthusiast, buy this.
• If you are planning to use Social Media for your own business, buy this.
• If you want to sound smart in your agency, while the big guys give fundas on SM, buy this.
• If you are having your own agency and planning to do it better, buy this.

BTW, if you were looking for a large hardcover book, which is beneficial for improving your biceps, you might get disappointed. Its only about 92 pages. I guess that can work as a deciding factor as well! 


Happy reading and happy socializing.

Disclaimer: I had got the book for free to do a review. 

Cloud is SMB's killer weapon, if you are starting now

Cloud is the best weapon an SMB can have, if he is starting up now.

Cloud has certainly been picking up now and is becoming more commonplace than ever. But to make it more prevalent, it is critical to demystify the concepts of Cloud, especially among the Small and Medium sized Businesses, as they are the ones who are poised to gain the maximum out of Cloud.

In one of my earlier blogs on LinkedIn, we had talked about the fact that any Internet facing end-user is in all likelihood already using cloud. 

• For example, if you are using Dropbox, then you are keeping your files in one device, while accessing from any other device, provided you install the Dropbox app or access it through browser. This is driven by a Cloud provider (Amazon AWS), which stores your files in the backend in some remote servers and shares back with you when you provide your user id and password from any other device. 
• If you are on Google Drive, you are again using the cloud features for similar usage. 

In a related post on +Digital CRM blog, we tried to give you some idea about why an SMB owner is much better placed to start up a company today compared to 5 years back considering the advent of Cloud. 

• For example, to host your business web pages, you would not need to build an IT Infrastructure from scratch and also think on keeping it large enough assuming your business clicks soon and the site doesn't crash. You can build a scale-able infrastructure on Cloud, where you can increase the computing power, storage almost on the fly. 

Any SMB owner should be more interested and would like to spend more time on:

• The products 
• Pricing 
• Go-to-market strategy etc.

The IT infrastructure, Analytics etc is expected to come as an on-tap service. And that's precisely what can be achieved through Cloud. 







Are you an SMB owner or an SMB startup?
Are you wondering where to start on the IT side of the business?



---

Thank you for checking this article. I contribute regularly on Technology & Management related stuff. Apart from this blog, you can follow me at 
Twitter: https://twitter.com/csubhamoy
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/csubhamoy
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/csubhamoy

About me: I have been working in the areas of IT strategy & usage of Digital technology to deliver business growth. My areas of interest include Enterprise Mobility, Cloud Solution Architecture, Enterprise Architecture, Social Media and Big Data. I am an alumni of Indian Statistical Institute (MTech Computer Science) and also attended Harvard Business School Executive Education on Innovation and Driving Growth.

Indian Election - the Digital battle

India is going into its Parliamentary Election process early 2014. This time, the two major national parties - Congress and BJP are putting their best foot forward in terms of Digital and Social presence. It is being told that this is going to be an epic battle on Social & Digital media with well known Consultants behind both of these two parties. While BJP has declared Narendra Modi as its Prime Ministerial candidate already, and going ahead with an aggressive Social & Digital strategy, Rahul Gandhi - the Congress face is yet to get into that offensive. However we have started monitoring them already, and will keep an eye on how the trend is moving.

Narendra Modi is so far ahead of Rahul Gandhi, by miles, in terms of Social media activities, Digital presence, Search etc. However recently Rahul Gandhi came out of his slumber and made a populist press conference where he slammed an Ordinance put forward by the Parliament (interestingly Rahul himself is a VP of the party which is the majority partner). After that outburst, it seems Rahul is inching far closer to Modi in terms of people's interest in digital forum.

The below chart is from Google Trends, where it is showing the search trend of Rahul Gandhi & Narendra Modi over September and October (till 3rd Oct). The steep spike on Narendra Modi's curve on 29th Sept was possibly due to the much hyped Delhi meeting on 30th Sept. That shows how Narendra Modi could generate so much of noise for a national rally. Rahul got the spike on 2nd Oct, after he slammed the Ordinance on 1st Oct. After 2nd Oct, there is not much activity happening on both the fronts, but the rate of decline for Narendra Modi is higher than that of Rahul, which must be worrying the Modi Digital Media consultants.

Rahul's digital campaign has been a non-starter so far. However with election nearing, we hope to see more activity from him in the coming days. Only once in last 6 months has Rahul been able to topple Modi in Google search volume, and that was on April 4th, when he made a speech at CII. 4th April to 2nd Oct is quite a long time. If Rahul wants to stand any chance to generate noise in the Digital & Social front, he needs to relook at his Social strategy fast.

One month is a short window to predict the future, but for those who love numbers, get glued to this space. We will keep looking at the Indian General Election through data science in days to come.

Durga Puja & Google search - a contrarian view

Durga Puja is a huge business in the Eastern part of India. Hundreds of millions of rupees are spent in these 5 days of festivity. Obviously people have also been spending on the Digital media fronts increasingly over the last few years. But is it resulting in desired Return of Investment? 

That's a difficult question. But we have an easy answer: It seems much lesser people have searched for "Durga Puja" in 2011 & 2012 compared to 2009 & 2010. In fact in 2011, the search volume came down to 40% of the previous year. There was a marginal increase in 2012 though. 

If you notice, the upward trend got down in 2008 also. Possibly it was a dull year due to the recession. But what happened to the Googlers in 2011 & 2012? Will 2013 see a revival of Google search volume due to increased social media and related searches or will it continue to be down due to the bad economic condition of the country? 

Keep guessing till the Puja gets over.

Moving towards a Social Business

Recently had a webinar at TechGig.com on Social Business around the facts, myths and steps for becoming a successful social entity. We talked about Graph theory as well. If you have interest in Social Media and have around 45 minutes of time, you can take a look.



http://www.techgig.com/expert-speak/Moving-towards-a-Social-Business-Facts-Myths-and-Steps-for-becoming-a-successful-Social-entity-391

How does a celebrity differ from you in Twitter? Graph theory answers.

Continuing from the previous post:

We already talked about What is a Graph and have also seen a sample graph from LinkedIn. Now lets see what is the difference between the Facebook Connection Graph and the Twitter Connection Graph.

This can be a graph generated from any Twitter account, who is marked as the dark circle (lets assume its me, now we know from the previous post that we are just a node in this big thing called graph). 

Without priming, lets do some thinking exercise:

1) How many followers do I have?

2) How many people am I following?

If you answered 2 and 3, you can move to the next paragraph. If you answered something else, here is the explanation: 

There are 3 connected nodes with the dark circle - 2 are connected both ways, which means these two are following me and I am following both of them. However the 3rd circle (right bottom) doesn't follow me back yet (the snob). 

Now check the top left node. There are 5 nodes following it. But it is not following anyone. This looks like a celebrity. She has lots of followers, but she doesn't care to follow anyone yet.

Now lets move to Facebook. Here the connection graph is not directed. You assume that a relationship/path/edge gets created only when someone accepts your invitation (partly true, but lets assume for the sake of simplicity). 

Here again let the dark circle be me. I have 7 friends. I have mostly two groups of people, marked in a blue box and a red oval. The people in the blue box are my friends from college, while the people in the red oval are from my office. 

Now that we visualize this graph, how does it help in connecting the dots? Wait for the next post. 

We will talk about the weight of a person in Social platform. It would help you understand why should you get Obama follow you in Twitter, instead of you following him.

How Does Graph Theory affect you, daily?

If you have not heard about something called "Graph Theory", I assure you that you can still read on. This post is about LinkedIn, Twitter & Facebook and not something to do only with geeky computer scientists. 


As expected, lets start with the basic - What is a graph? To answer that, don't go to Wiki, rather stare at this triangle. 
Well, this is a graph. 

A computer scientist would be proud to declare that its a graph having 3 nodes and its connected-undirected. 

And what was that? Simple, it consists of 3 vertices (O, H, M - you may call them nodes as well) and each connected to the other two. In real life, the 3 nodes can be your Office, Home and shopping Mall, where the lines are the roads. So for example, there exists a path between your Home & Office, Office & shopping Mall and shopping Mall to Home. So its a connected graph, where you can reach each of the places/nodes from any other place/node. BTW, the roads are assumed to be two-way, hence you can use the same road to move up and down between O, H & M.   That's why this is an undirected connected graph.


But in real life, do you often face a situation where you have one-way roads? If so, please look at the next image. You can imagine a situation where you have a direct road from Office to Home, but there is no such direct path Home to Office (I wish). Hence the arrow is marked as originating from O ending at H. However the path from Home to Mall is two-way. But the path from Mall to Office is one way. Now that its no more a both-way world, it becomes a directed graph. Lets see if we can reach anywhere starting from anywhere else. If you want to reach Mall from Office, you can, but you need to go via Home. If you want to reach Office from Home, you have to go through the Mall (not bad). So the places are still connected as such. Hence it might be a geeky way to call this a directed connected graph. 

But these were simple examples, aren't they? To make life interesting, lets introduce a not-so-simple example of a graph.

If you are confused, don't worry, this is called a colored graph :)   Jokes apart, I got this generated from LinkedIn based on my contacts. You can also generate this graph for yourself if you have a LinkedIn account and you click on this URL http://inmaps.linkedinlabs.com/.

But what is so revolutionary between this graph and the previous two? 

Well, the only differences are 1) here the nodes are persons, your contacts. 2) And if there is a line between two nodes, that means they are "Connections". 

Are they directed? No they are not, as in LinkedIn, the relationship/path gets created only when the other person/node accepts your invitation. Is this connected? Well, this is, but note that this is only your connection graph, hence obviously they are showing the connected people (directly or via your connection or via your connection's connection etc). 

Now, that is trivial, ain't it? We understand that we are only a node in a giant graph (remember Shakespeare?) We also understand that there can be relationship/path between our friends/connections/followers. But how does it impact our social presence? Watch out, coming soon. 

We shall talk about Twitter as that gives an example of directed graph. And we shall also talk about Facebook.

What is so Social about it?

This is an interesting video from Erik Qualman on the spread of Social Media. He is a known face in the Social Media space. The video is approx 8 months old (which is like a decade in Digital business) and hence the numbers quoted might need to be adjusted accordingly. Also it might not have the latest and greatest of Social Media - however the essence remains same. For example, I guess the next version would surely mention the Oreo campaign. 

Till that time, enjoy the music and the pace of the video. You may also like to share this video with your boss to justify you spending your entire day in Facebook/Twitter.

Was Suman the ultimate marketer of Tea?

Long before the CCDs & Baristas dotted the cityscape, Suman made a superhit song in the early 90s (Tomake Chai - 1992), where he celebrated love and the city of Kolkata. It had a line in it, where he had expressed his romance around a cup of Tea. Someday, some marketer may pick that line up ("Ak cup cha-e ami tomake chai" -- loosely translated, "I desire you over a cup of tea") to start a Tea chain - similar to the CCD slogan of "a lot can happen over a cup of ...". The song has some leftist leaning in it, ignore that if you would like, and focus on the Tea part for the time being :-)

The lyrics here is in Bengali script - it is beyond my capacity to translate that - you can listen to the song in the YouTube link.

প্রথমত:, আমি তোমাকে চাই
দ্বিতীয়ত:, আমি তোমাকে চাই
তৃতীয়ত:, আমি তোমাকে চাই
শেষ পর্যন্ত তোমাকে চাই।।
নিঝুম অন্ধকারে তোমাকে চাই
রাতভোর হলে আমি তোমাকে চাই
সকালের কৈশোরে তোমাকে চাই
সন্ধের অবকাশে তোমাকে চাই।।
বৈশাখী ঝড়ে আমি তোমাকে চাই
আষাঢ়ের মেঘে আমি তোমাকে চাই
শ্রাবণে শ্রাবণে আমি তোমাকে চাই
অকালবোধনে আমি তোমাকে চাই।।
কবেকার কলকাতা শহরের পথে
পুরোনো নতুন মুখ ঘরে ইমারতে
অগুন্তি মানুষের ক্লান্ত মিছিলে
অচেনা ছুটির ছোঁয়া তুমি এনে দিলে
নাগরিক ক্লান্তিতে তোমাকে চাই
এক ফোঁটা শান্তিতে তোমাকে চাই
বহুদূর হেঁটে এসে তোমাকে চাই
এ জীবন ভালোবেসে তোমাকে চাই।।
চৌরাস্তার মোড়ে পার্কে দোকানে
শহরে গঞ্জে গ্রামে এখানে ওখানে
স্টেশন টার্মিনাস ঘাটে বন্দরে
অচেনা ড্রয়িংরুমে চেনা অন্দরে
বালিশ তোশক কাঁথা পুরোনো চাদরে
ঠান্ডা শীতের রাতে লেপের আদরে
কড়িকাঠে চৌকাঠে মাদুরে পাপোশে
হাসি রাগ অভিমানে ঝগড়া আপোসে
তোমাকে চাই, তোমাকে চাই, তোমাকে চাই, তোমাকে চাই
এক কাপ চায়ে আমি তোমাকে চাই
ডাইনে ও বাঁয়ে আমি তোমাকে চাই
দেখা না দেখায় আমি তোমাকে চাই
না-বলা কথায় আমি তোমাকে চাই।।
শীর্ষেন্দুর কোন নতুন নভেলে
হঠাত্ পড়তে বসা আবোলতাবোলে
অবোধ্য কবিতায় ঠুংরি খেয়ালে
স্লোগানে স্লোগানে ঢাকা দেয়ালে দেয়ালে।।
সলিল চৌধুরীর ফেলে আসা গানে
চৌরাশিয়ার বাঁশি মুখরিত প্রাণে
ভুলে যাওয়া হিমাংশু দত্তর সুরে
কোন্ কবেকার অনুরোধের আসরে
তোমাকে চাই, তোমাকে চাই, তোমাকে চাই, তোমাকে চাই
অনুরোধে মিনতিতে তোমাকে চাই
বেদনার আর্তিতে তোমাকে চাই
দাবীদাওয়া চাহিদায় তোমাকে চাই
লজ্জাদ্বিধায় আমি তোমাকে চাই
অধিকার বুঝে নেওয়া প্রখর দাবীতে
সারারাত জেগে আঁকা লড়াকু ছবিতে
ছিপছিপে কবিতার ছন্দে ভাষায়
গদ্যের যুক্তিতে বাঁচার আশায়
শ্রেণীহীন সমাজের চির বাসনায়
দিনবদলের খিদে ভরা চেতনায়
দ্বিধাদ্বন্দের দিন ঘোচার স্বপ্নে
সাম্যবাদের গান ঘুমে জাগরণে
বিক্ষোভে বিপ্লবে তোমাকে চাই
ভীষণ অসম্ভবে তোমাকে চাই
শান্তি অশান্তিতে তোমাকে চাই
এই বিভ্রান্তিতে তোমাকে চাই।।


Ode to a Ganwala: Suman Chatterjee/Kabir Suman: Click here to read an older post on Suman and his life.

Socialist World

There is so much of Social around us these days.  Do you feel comfortable in this new world with all of the new things evolving around you everyday?

Being Social has got a whole new meaning in the last few years - its not enough to have a chat with your friend over a cup of tea or have a phone call once in a week. You got to do this publicly, in one of the many Social networks. You need to Like the fact that he/she had a nice trip back home from office, else you are going to be outcast pretty soon. But did this Social movement help us in improving our life in any way?

In terms of ease of communication, possibly yes, the social platforms, coupled with the smartphones have made it much easier to connect with your close friends. It has made communication cheaper. You can use your phone to call up your friends in any other country easily using Skype or Google Hangout, just by paying the data charge which is quite less compared to the voice calls.

Did it help us in taking decision faster? May be yes, may be no. If you look at the ease at which you can get your friend's feedback (or friend's friend) on the new microwave, it surprises me. You don't need to ask all of your family members or friends or office colleagues about how do they feel about a particular hospital before you admit your wife for the special day. You need not believe only the product catalogs churned out by the marketers, which talk about the brighter part of the product only. 

On the flip side, we now-a-days tend to spend more time on the FB App than the total Internet time earlier. But who cares about that anyway? Well, if you have a youngster at home, you may have already started nodding your head. Its very addictive, and it takes away the time people used to spend in other nice-old-school hobbies. But thats a different story altogether.

Now if you are a marketer, you are the one who has got benefited the most. Social Media has opened up a big trove of customer insight. Now you know when I am going to buy my new car or when do I plan to take my family out for a dinner or when is my daughter's birthday coming up. If you are connected to this new thing called Social network, you also know who all my friends are, and what we are talking about you. Based on our sentiment, you can decide how to position a product or do upsell and cross sell. I am sure you are going to be the biggest beneficiary of this new development. But as a consumer, we would sincerely request you to please make this experience more friendly so that we Like it! 

How can you make the Social Marketing less intruding and more customer friendly? Lets catch up soon again on that. If you have your ideas, do let me know as exchanging ideas is the basis of the new Social world. Lets be a Social animal on this lovely planet.