Why I do what I do (for a living)

This is a question many people ask me or at least might like to ask me. If you look at the typical break-up of jobs from a college like IIT Delhi, you will see major chunks going into core engineering, banking, consulting, analytics, software and a very small fraction getting into marketing. Even a smaller fraction gets into start-ups as a fresh recruit. In fact start-ups are usually also associated with those who are not able to get a job anywhere else!

So what am I doing in a social business strategy firm? And why should anybody looking for a serious career in marketing and brand management look for a job in social media?

To address these questions, let me first explain what a social business strategy firm like mine does. A social business strategy firm builds a brand's presence on social web ( i.e. web 2.0). So apart from the general forms of social media that we see everyday like Facebook/ twitter/ LinkedIn, a social business strategy firms tries to establish a sustainable presence for its clients by building and nurturing community platforms for the client's prospects and customers in a way to meet the client's business needs and objectives. Hence although this is a solutions industry where there are mostly projects and consulting assignments, there are tremendous scope for understanding and learning marketing:

1) Overall presence: Although companies use a social web presence for purposes more than just marketing like support, research, ideation, CRM, attracting talent or even creating the core product ( news and media industry), however I think a presence in any form can be attributed to marketing the brand in some way or the other. Since here it is about establishing the brand's social web presence, any sort of effort will have an effect on how people perceive the brand and hence is a part of company's marketing.

2) Sustainable communities and not one time campaigns: As I must have mentioned earlier that the real value of any investment into social media is in building something that you can sustain and nurture with time. As compared to traditional social media agencies, in social business strategy firms the focus is into building these sustainable long term engagement with brands where you are on the same note as the client's marketing team in understanding their business problems and coming out with solutions.

3) Defining a new type of offering in India: For me the best offering from this job came as the opportunity to learn something that so less people know about at least in India. You get ( and in fact need) to research so much into this field that at a very young age you get the confidence to preach others how they should go ahead with their businesses on social web. Looking at the fact that most of the people working in this field are pretty young, entering this field at the right time can help one build thought leadership at a young age.

4) Get a taste of different industry sectors: Social Business Strategy is more like a solutions industry than a services industry. So one day you are understanding a beverage company's business problem and the next day you are doing the same for banks, NGOs, technology, consumer durables, automobile etc companies. Likewise you get insights into business and marketing practices of different industry sectors.

5) Generate a new perspective for brand building: When I learnt brand management, none of the many books and resources I researched talked constructively about building a brand based on what a customer wants it to be or what the customer wants from it. All talked about creating the right brand identity, right brand personality etc to communicate itself with the ultimate goal to generate awareness; basically the right ways to broadcast themselves to their customers/prospects. However at none of the resources I got to read how should a brand be built in an ecosystem where broadcasting no longer works ! ( due to the availability of social tools )
Interestingly, when I first studied Brand Management, I never bothered about it! But now I see that many brands are increasingly becoming concerned with the shift of power from the organization to the customer, and many of them are thinking of different ways of sustaining or building brands. Many companies like Dell and Starbucks have successfully shown that this is possible.

I hope the above mentioned reasons would help marketing enthusiasts and freshers from colleges like IITs to look into a career in social business strategies or at least explain it to some why I chose  it. And by the way... it also pays well :)

Learnings from the 2020 Social workshop on personal branding

Its is great to be a part of an organization that encourages its employees to build a personal brand. And its even great to be a part of an organization and working with people who have successfully implemented this mantra in their life.

I began writing in 2007 as a society humor blog since I thought that as I have nothing else to write that people would like to read and moreover as humor sells, it is a good starting point. Then 2 years later when I started working at 2020 Social and as my worked involved a lot of research in Social Media, I realized that probably I should write about social media too as I have a lot to say about it. Hence started the dilemma between writing what I wanted to write ( Society Humor) and what I was good at ( brands, marketing and social media) because of the obvious reasons of working in a social business strategy firm and having authored a Brand Management Textbook.

Typically I should have chosen one of them long ago because writing about society humor and marketing would be confusing to anybody. It is difficult for anybody to digest, " He is a social media guy writing serious stuff and also a funny guy writing random stuff". But I did not want to part away with making fun of people, one reason also being that any typical funny blog posts on this blog generated much more comments than a social media blog which I wrote then on my company blog. So then I thought of Barista, and the way they sell food ( sandwiches, submarines, lasagnas etc) but effectively branding themselves as a beverage ( and that too coffee) company. The learning was, market your USP and keep the additionals inside the shelf. Hence this blog became a place for "Social Media, Marketing & other random stuff" where essentially the social media part was highlighted and the other funny posts were kept in another category tab.

But then yesterday in the 2020 Social Salon Saturday workshop I learnt that a) I am not Barista and b) One needs to choose a very niche thin segment of workspace and try to build a personal expertise brand there.Also that the best time to develop a personal brand was 20 years ago and the next best time is now!  So it appears that it is time to make a choice whether I want to write the random funny stuff that I like to write or whether I want to write the stuff which actually adds value to me in the domain related to my work.

Moreover over the time I have realized that I always had so much to say about marketing and social media but never really seriously thought about putting anything more than my research on this blog. So as a note to myself, let me remember this day as the day I chose to write about marketing and social media than writing about society humor. Maybe its high time that I grow up!

How to make e-commerce a social activity

Background: Purchase has for long been considered a social activity and often leverages conversations. Recommendations and reviews by a friend or a third party are often very helpful in making purchase decisions. It is interesting to see how some online shopping and e-commerce platforms have leveraged social web into converting a whole shopping experience into a social activity.
Some of the interesting social features that I came upon can be categorized as below:

At the initial levels of these social engagements are websites having ratings & reviews features where users can review the product databases, rate the products which can be compared by the viewers using comparison engines. Then there are websites having comment sections for conversations regarding the products, other member's review etc. People can also add products to their 'wishlists' so that they can remember and let other see what are they planning to buy next.Amazon makes very good use of these review and rating features for its vast product database.
On the next level of social engagement architecture are product aggregation websites where the focus is on aggregating products from various sources and getting the members to recommend or review the product. These websites can cater to niche segments like shopstyle which aggregates fashion products from various sources and  lets its members curate the aggregated products. There are also social commerce websites like thisnext where the members themselves submit products from various other e-commerce websites and others curate ( rate, vote, review it) them. Hence such platform give people the opportunity to discuss products belonging to e-commerce websites which do not use such social applications. To add to this list, there are platforms like deals plus where instead of best products, the best deals and offers are featured.
Moving forward there are social commerce platforms with a special focus on community features. So social commerce communities like Kaboodle have people submitting products from various sources but then there are also profile, relationships and interactions among these members resulting in better social engagement. Similarly crowdstorm is architectured to let the community choose product for its members. Wishpot is a social commerce community focused on members and wishlists. So you can see what your friends are buying, help them out with their wishlists, see the most wished products. etc. Ebay has created product neighborhood groups ( like art, video games etc.) and leveraged these evangelist groups to drive purchases.
Then there are communities like product wiki, which is a wiki for product information and ratings. In Zlio members can get their own online store, showcase articles from zlio directory, promote products and earn purchase commission.Many social commerce platform also run periodic UGC campaigns and tactical programs to generate buzz and traffic. Woot for instance keeps doing such contests and campaigns.
Many of these platforms also have good integrations with social networks like facebook, twitter etc to carry the feed activity to their user's friends and social network. Wishpot, productwiki have some good facebook and twitter integration. Ebay has an application for showcasing your favorite items on ebay to your network.
Acknowledgments: Special thanks to mohit for making all the research easy