Rajat's blog

Although, we wanted to continue our free offering of social media monitoring, the cost of maintaining it has skyrocketed with over 100,000 keywords tracked by tens of thousands of users.

Also, cost of storing open-ended unstructured data for years has taken a toll by bloating into tens of TBs of data stored in RDS/Elastic Search/S3/EBS etc.

So, we have decided to do the following –

1) Free users will no longer be able to create social media monitoring profiles.

2) Current free users will also not be able to see their data starting Monday unless they upgrade.

3) Daily monitoring email updates will continue but if you at any time want them stopped, simply delete your monitoring profiles from the Monitoring section.

These changes will roll out over the weekend.

Please do let us know if you have strong opinions on this. Else, please upgrade

Thx for continued support.

Chief Trouble Maker

Rajat Garg

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Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Coca Cola Campaign brings Happiness from Air

Social Media has been the one stop destination for a majority of campaigns that have the power and the capability of driving maximum attention and loyalty towards the brands. There have been many successful social media campaigns over the years.

Youtube has now become one of the most prevalent social networking platform to share campaigns that can help brands to spread their message across and bring in valuable feedback from its viewers.

So was the case with the social media campaign that we are going to discuss today.

Coca Cola, the famous brand that needs no recognition launched a youtube video to spread happiness. The campaign was based out in Singapore when the skies were filled with red boxes of happiness as remote-controlled #CokeDrones took flight, dropping off refreshment and words of encouragement to more than 2500 guest workers around Singapore. Thousands of cans of ice cold Coke, along with genuine messages of gratitude, to workers at high-rise construction sites around the country, providing a refreshing break, lifting spirits and bringing cheer to appreciative recipients.

Themed “Happiness from the Skies,” the project sought to build much needed bridges between Singaporeans and the city-state’s 1.3 million-strong guest worker population that comprises about one third of the country’s entire workforce. The largest group of foreign laborers is made up of guest workers that come from as far away as India, China, Bangladesh and Myanmar.

Leonardo O’Grady, ASEAN Director of Integrated Marketing Communications, Coca-Cola Singapore said, “At Coca-Cola we are in the business of sharing happiness all around the world. So when Ogilvy came to us with the innovative idea of combining Coke with drone technology to connect two segments of the community, who rarely interact, to share a special moment of happiness, we could not resist the temptation to give it a go.”

The campaign has proved to be great, just within a week from when it was uploaded the video has 283,361 views which means that the video took an excellent start and is supposedly going to do well in the coming times as well. This video has not only affected the traffic but has given Coke a better image even further.

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Thursday, May 08, 2014

The All New Facebook Audience Network

Facebook has been venturing into many new arenas lately and has had a strong impact on the advertising and branding market as well. The social media giant Facebook has launched its mobile ad network called Facebook Audience Network so developers can make money without having to sell their own ads, do their own targeting, handle measurement, or route payments. Now this has given maximum power in the hands of the advertisers such that they can with a small piece of code run campaigns on the platform or they can work directly with Facebook to create native ad units that feel like a natural part of their user experience.

Although this new feature has not yet rolled out, developers can sign-up for Facebook Audience Network or talk to their ad rep about getting early access. The program, or the new network will roll out next month and will start with advertisers interested in buying app install and engagement ads. Facebook revealed that it will cut out a minimal portion and pay the rest to the developers, those the company wouldn’t reveal exactly how much its cut will be.

All this seems to provide the basic framework that would once again make Facebook an important social media marketing hub. Eventually Facebook plans on integrating other marketing objectives including website traffic or ecommerce purchases. Existing Facebook advertisers can start pushing their ads to Audience Network with a single click since they use the same creative as News Feed Ads. The ads come in three formats: standard IAB banners, standard IAB interstitials, and native ad units. Facebook says the ads are “designed to help marketers meet key business objectives, like driving app installs and engagement.”

The launch represents a big shift in how Facebook’s business works, from monetizing engagment on its own properties to earning money from its ad targeting data elsewhere. Until now, Facebook’s revenue has essentially been directly proportional to how many ads it showed in the News Feed and how many users visited. Lets wait and watch what happens once this is rolled out.

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Wednesday, May 07, 2014

The Importance of Personalising your Mobile App

The past year has seen a huge rise in the popularity of personalisation marketing, as brands come to realise that there are ever increasing ways of reaching customers through various devices. We’re all aware by now of the meteoric rise of mobile and tablet devices and also how this has led to many large brands looking to mobile apps to further enhance the shopping experience for customers, especially those that use augmented reality.

Personalisation and mobile marry perfectly and since as a retailer you’re looking for footfall, the best place to catch potential shoppers is whilst they are on the move. Mobile apps have become the official channel to drive content and services to consumers. From entertainment content to productivity services, from quantified-self to home automation, there is an app for practically anything a connected consumer may want to achieve.

Personalisation in mobile apps gives the apps a better chance to effectively reach out to its users and sustain them for a longer time. Just as GlobalCom did with its app, Mobile Number Locator. With this app a user could look up for numbers, block users and find out other vivid details. To give it a personalised approach they added labels to their app. Now a user can add labels to every contact and easily know and understand who is trying to contact them. With this smart move GlobalCom was able to increase their retention rate from 15% to 30%.

Optimising mobile apps is important, keeping in mind the objectives with which a customer will download a particular app and begin using it. By zeroing in on user’s preferences, as well as providing product information and configuration tools, the company is able to sell apps quickly and efficiently.

By developing apps that enable customers’ to implement their personal preferences, brands can get ahead of an increasingly crowded field eager to capture the attention of the mobile majority. However, many brands are reluctant to give users control given a myopic focus on their business objectives, but personalization is the key to achieving lasting engagement. Users are more likely to keep an app when they can create a tailored experience that extends the value of that brand in their life.

A personalised mobile app experience surely adds great value to the app thereby increasing the number of customers manifold.

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Tuesday, May 06, 2014

Push Messages in Mobile Apps

The new wave of technology favors mobile apps in a more better and a more advanced manner. Mobile applications is the newest technology that is getting at par with the social media, especially internet. As we know that marketers keep finding new and innovative strategies to reach their target audience and build loyal relationships, mobile apps have become their new personal favorites.

Mobile applications have become an essential part of mobile marketing. Through apps, you can deliver rich and contextual content to any customer who downloads the experience and develop a more personal relationship with your customer based on usage insights. Getting your users to successfully download your app is the first step in establishing this relationship; but, it is not enough to ensure consistent usage. The conversation must be maintained so that the app and the brand continue to serve as important elements in the consumers’ daily lives. That’s where a push mobile marketing strategy comes in.

This is where the role of push messages comes in, they are used to send segmented and custom messages directly to the home screens of app users, including breaking headlines, sports scores, gaming challenges, news updates, functionality enhancements and context-aware messages. These are more or less types of alert messages which are used by marketers to remind their customers about the existing and the new features that they can leverage. Push notifications cannot be avoided or missed and they are good attention seekers.

Once dominated by mobile messages, push notifications have not only entered the arena but has taken over normal mobile messages completely. Currently the use of mobile apps (nearly for every possible thing) has increased manifold. If two years back there were 100 smartphone users now there will be 1000. Consumers have downloaded 25 billion mobile apps on their iPhones, iPads, and other Apple devices. Another 10 billion apps have been downloaded from the Android app store by owners of phones running Google’s Android operating system. With such facts and such a progressive growth brand managers have found the key to all their branding relate issues.

Using the technology and the potential of push notifications, Avenue, a fashion retailer for real-sized women, was able to achieve an ROI of over 6,600%, as well as drive in-store traffic and increase sales. The campaign consisted of weekly promotions that effectively motivated subscribers to visit the store for the latest fashions. Avenue was able to accomplish these results through rich media messaging. With this innovative technology, subscribers were sent image-based coupons with an effective call to action that produced high engagement rates.

Nowadays there are so many agencies who are solely working to create push messages/notifications for brands such that each click converts a prospective user into a loyal customer. Mobile apps are the future of technology and mobile marketing is the future of all branding and promotion activities that are done in lieu of a brand. Keeping this in mind push notifications are working well and will continue to deliver some insightful results in the times to come.

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Thursday, May 01, 2014

The 2014 elections in India on Social Media

It is certain that social media is the stop destination for all spheres. Not only brands but celebrities and now not to forget political parties and personnel are also using the platform to carry out campaigns, thereby reaching out to the masses in one of the most economical ways possible. Off and on these politicians use the domain to aware people of an occurrence or share with them the new norms that the Government has made. Not only in India, this stands true for almost all countries.

Obama’s Obama care is an apt example of the same. The extent to which the social media domain has been used in India in 2014 is enormous. The onset of general elections saw widespread campaigning from all major parties that dominate the subcontinent and in such a scenario social media campaigns could not be kept aside. Not only the political parties many tech giants also took the initiative of persuading the citizens of India to go and cast their votes. Be it Google’s ‘pledge to vote’ campaign, Facebook’s online political debates, Vebbler’s ‘the Ungli campaign’ or telecom operator MTS’ election tracker, firms are trying to woo voters ahead of this year’s general election.

India has the third largest Internet users base globally of more than 238 million users with a majority comprising of youth. This includes well over a 100 million active on various social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. No wonder, social media platforms, technology firms, e-commerce portals and telecom operators are using this opportunity to connect with users.

As per a recent study by Assocham states that technology giants like Google and social networking websites like Twitter and Facebook will see their India revenue soaring this year. The three major political parties in today’s time are; the ruling party- The Indian National Congress, The opposition party- Bhartiya Janta Party and the one which has emerged out lately promising to eradicate corruption from the roots of India- The Aam Aadmi Party. This year all these parties have taken it to social media to tell the public that why should they vote them.

The parties have hired a number of advertising agencies to help them accomplish the task. Be its Modi’s, ‘Abki Baar Modi Sarkaar’along with the various memes and sayings which were trending on Facebook and Twitter for quite some time, or Kejriwal’s video throwing light upon his life and his aim to make India a dream country, or Rahul Gandhi’s speeches which wooed many of the Congress supporters, the social media has seen it all. For more than a month these have been the talk of the social networking websites with people going crazy over these posts and statements.

This year’s election in India has seen by far the maximum use of the social media domain to spread the message across and allow users/followers. Leaving no stones unturned political parties have tried to exploit every possible way to accumulate as many votes as they can. Political parties typically spend around 30% of their poll expenditure, estimated at Rs 15,000 crore, on advertising and publicity. Of this amount, 15-20% is spent on the emerging digital marketing.

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Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Qdoba’s Queso Showdown

Though we realise that Facebook marketing has reached its decline stage almost completely, certain brands are still leveraging the potential of the social media giant- Facebook. Various types and genres of brands are nowadays using the social media domain to ensure a wider reach and frequency in the market. Even so, brands are organising ad campaigns, social media campaigns on various social networking websites such that they are able to target the biggest community at once.

Qdoba Mexican Grill is a chain of fast casual Fresh Mex restaurants in the United States and Canada serving Mexican-style cuisine. They on Facebook ran a viral campaign which engaged the fan base and brought much insightful results along with an increased traffic to its facebook page.

The brand organised the, Qdoba’s Queso Showdown, a campaign wherein the fans had to vote between two dishes. the dish that won would be given out by the brand to whomsoever registered for it for free on a single day. The most striking feature of the campaign was the way Qdoba updated the results in real-time over the contest. A regular update of the results made it more exciting and encouraging for fans to participate in the campaign. It showed how fans are still engaged with the effort, and generated more buzz and excitement around the whole endeavor.

A good, old-fashioned vote is one thing and using this particular theme to their benefits is another. after the completion of the campaign, the whole of 28th April Queso DIablo (the winner of the contest) could be added to any entree for free in all participating Queso restaurants as an add on to their order.

The campaign worked out in favour of the brand even when the concept of voting has withered out. Fans of the brand showed keen interest as such the campaign was able to increase user engagement and take it to an entirely new level. A post on the official page of the brand on Facebook read, ‘The votes were closer than anything we’d ever seen – 16,664 for Queso Verde and 16,680 for Diablo – but in the end, Queso Diablo pulled through for the win!’

Qdoba should be happy on this. A thorough increase in the traffic by using a basic concept on facebook is not happening a lot these days.

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Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Internet Loves Dogs- Pedigree Youtube campaign

After a thorough analysis SocialAppsHQ.com came to a conclusion that internet is a place where certain subjects trend and eventually become the talk of the town. Social Media has been helpful to many brands and products since its inception and has been a successful source of thoughtful and detailed insights as well for brand managers.

Seeking help of the internet, Pedigree, the specialists in the pet food category began a campaign on Youtube. The Internet really is a boon for pet-food marketers clever enough to capitalize on animal-obsessed Web culture without seeming too mercenary. Pedigree New Zealand uploaded a video of cute dogs being even cuter, which attempts to leverage YouTube’s revenue-sharing model to raise money for dog charity. The initiative carries the strapline ‘Every dog matters’, which is intended to fit with the brand’s overarching ‘We’re for dogs’ positioning.

Already people on the social media domain needed no reason to watch cute and appealing videos of cats and dogs and here, pedigree incorporated a social cause to it. So now when seeing this cute video, you are not wasting time but actually you are participating in a charitable task.

Every view will be monitored by YouTube, and Pedigree has pledged to donate £25,000 to the PCT for every 25,000 people who view the channel.

The concept behind such a campaign is that, ads are not very encouraging to watch and people are generally reluctant to share them across their channels. A video involving cute dogs doing mischief is something everybody wants to not only see but also share. Thereby, for its famous ‘Adoption Drive’ campaign, they created this super cute Doggy video, and enabled YouTube’s revenue sharing model, to make every global view earn money for the cause. There have been more than 5 lac views already and the deal is working out to be quite of a success already.

Of Course the social media campaign comes with the risk of the video not going viral, and big $$ values not returning as expected, but as of now the campaign has shaped out well and is being able to fill in the reserves.

This video in particular is a part of Pedigrees ongoing Adoption drive which bases its activities on the fact that an estimated 107,228 stray dogs were taken in by local authorities in 2009. Likewise, the brand aims on saving the lives of at least some dogs and giving them the care that they deserve.

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Monday, April 28, 2014

A Beginners Guide to Pinterest

Pinterest – a social media network for people to upload, save, sort and manage images, known as pins, and other media content through collections known as pinboards was launched in March 2010. Ben Silberman, Paul Sciarra and Evan Sharp- its founders started with the thought of creating a website that had more to do with the visual content of a conversation. Silbermann and a few programmers operated the site out of a small apartment until the summer of 2011 after he had already approached a magazine company to buy Pinterest from them. Luckily the deal did not work out and slowly yet steadily the website grew. By August 2011 it had become a part of the ‘top 50 websites of 2011’ article.

After brands like PetPlan and Sephora became a part of the platform and benefitted hugely, Pinterest’s credibility began to improve. With its presence on Pinterest, Petplan saw an 87% increase in new site traffic, a 35% increase in page views and a 12.5% increase in insurance quote requests. By using Pinterest Web Analytics to observe the kinds of content that get the most pins and repins, Sephora has come to learn which content will be popular with pinners such as beauty lists, color swatches, and face charts, it was thus able to add a lot of value to its products only to increase its users base further.

The number of users on the website kept on ticking. In January 2012, the website crossed 11.7 million unique users, making it the fastest site in history to break through the 10 million unique visitor mark. Today Pinterest is the third largest social media community only after Facebook and Twitter.

Its like the new buzz on the social media domain and it is the new platform for many social media campaigns. As addictive as it can be, people and brands are going crazy over the platform. Although a part of the social networking arena, the platform has its own lingo which might seem to be a bit tough for beginners. The lingo used means:

PIN- A pin refers to an individual image added on Pinterest. These pins can be easily added via a website or by choosing the option of uploading a pin on the platform itself. Each pin added using the “Pin It” button links back to the site it came from.

BOARD- A board is a collection of many pins together. These boards can be categorised the way one wants to. A board can be created on any topic, such as Recipes, Wedding Ideas, Books to Read, Health & Fitness, or Wish List. You can add as many pins to a board as you want and create as many boards as you want.

FOLLOWING- The following option makes you follow the boards created by other users on the platform. “Following All” means you’ll have all of a user’s new pins on all their boards shown to you in real-time on your Pinterest Home Page.

As per the Pinterest tagline, “A place to organize and share things you love” the platform allows its users to share all images and gives the freedom to give them catchy phrases and captions that adds on to the image quality and impact. Share and store important links that you wish to remember. Next, let’s begin using Pinterest.

Getting started- Creating an account on Pinterest is easy and simple. All you need is an email id to create an entity on Pinterest. There is a small form that you will need to fill, basically you need to put in your credentials here. After filling the form you will see something like this.

Also, the email id that you have used to register for an account on the platform will receive an email to confirm your registration.

Thereafter you need to tell Pinterest about your interests, follow certain boards that are trending on the platform and you are all set to pin your first image. It is always good to follow some influential and successful boards so that one can take help from them in case you get stuck somewhere. Following boards will give you a better idea of the platform and add to your accounts credibility as well.

Once you are done with the initial setting up of your account, all you need to do is get set to go ahead with your first pin.

You can also find other friends on the platform and begin following them.

Create Boards- As stated above, boards are like categories that you can make on Pinterest. They are a collection of many pins all put together which belong to the same genre and type.

Once your board is created and you have entered its description, given it a name and other details, it will appear like this.

The board is all ready! Now, you need to pin new pictures to the board and begin pinteresting. Also, if one needs they can edit the descriptions and the name of the board by just clicking on the ‘Edit Board’ option. You can also send or rather share your board with friends from Facebook, Google and Yahoo on Pinterest. the red ‘pin’ button on the bottom left corner signifies that the board is all set to take its very first pin.

Pin Images- Pinterest is all about pins. Pinning images means uploading new images and pictures to boards. Pinning of images can be done in more than one ways. Pins can be directly added from different websites, you can create pins from personal photos and Pinterest also allows you to repin pictures that already are a part of the platform.

Pins from other Websites- When you find something on a website that you’d like to pin to a Pinterest board one can easily follow these steps;

Step 1: You first need to make sure that the Red “Pin It” button is a part of your tool bar of your browser. Once it is there the process becomes very easy. On seeing an image on any other website that you wish to pin you just use the tool from your toolbar.

Step 2: The next thing you see will be a pop up on your screens. This pop up will consist of a selection of images that are visible on the screen, you need to make your selection so as to which image you plan on pinning.

Step3: A screen will pop up with your chosen image. Select the board where you want it to appear and add a tittle. Click the red PIN IT button, and your new pin will appear on your Pinterest board.

Personal photos as pins- Maybe you’ve got your own ideas to share on your Pinterest board. Take photos of how you’ve organized, decorated, or created something in your home, or share scenic photos from a favorite places. Transfer the photos to your computer and upload them to your Pinterest boards. It is easy to do the same, all you need to do is follow these steps.

Step 1: From the top bar of your Pinterest page you need to click on the plus sign to select from a list of options in the drop down menu. From there you select the ‘ Upload a Pin’ option.

Step 2: On selecting Upload a Pin option a dialog box opens that will help you navigate your computer and search for the image that you wish to pin.

Step3: On selecting the image, Pinterest will ask you for the board (from the list of boards that you have created on your profile) in which you want to upload the picture.

Step 4: After selecting the board all you need to do is Pin the image by clicking on the ‘Pin It’ button. One can also add description and title to the picture and customise it a little.

After the selection the image will be a part of your Pinterest account which can be shared with other friends on Pinterest.

Repinning Images- Whether you’re viewing new pins from those you follow or pins from browsing the Pinterest network, it’s easy to repin images to your own boards. At times you come across pictures that you wish were a part of your boards as well. By following these simple steps you can easily repin images;

Step 1: Simply hover your mouse over the pin’s image and choose to Pin the image. You can also like and comment on the existing pin.

Step 2: Once you REPIN something, you will be prompted to assign it to one of your boards. After selecting the correct board the image will become a part of your board as well.

Pinterest is not only about creating your own identity on the website. It includes navigating through the Pinterest network and to follow new and unique boards. The platform can be considered to be a one stop destination point for many brands who wish to showcase their products to their users. Pinterest can be easily used to make creative boards as per the product categories. Especially new designers and boutiques are making ample use of the website and have been deriving useful insights. It’s a place to share and obtain new ideas from the growing community of other Pinterest users. Pinterest is both entertaining and useful and suitable for Pinterest marketing.

Be a part of the community and keep Pinteresting.

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Sunday, April 27, 2014

Weekly Social Media News Updates for 22th to 28th April

SocialAppsHQ.com believes that social media is one of the fastest changing fields where every second something new and unique conspires. The experts of the domain are constantly updating the regular happenings that have certain impact on people. Social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter are always doing something that is different from the others and has a direct link with the users of the platform. New launches, social media campaigns, acquisitions and closures, social media is a complete package of all. Not to forget are the latest social media mobile apps, Snapchat, Instagram, Vine, all are working on similar lines ready to influence the market as a whole.

In the past one week there have been certain newsworthy updates, projects, controversies and acquirings. Following is a concise version of all the news details that you need to know.

New search features on Pinterest- The company has just announced guided search, a new product that will allow users to better search for some particular pins out of the 30 billion pins on Pinterest. These will be like specific filters relevant to the original search term. The hope is that users will come across more relevant content, as well as discover new content they didn’t even know they were looking for, says Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann. Pinterest also unveiled custom categories, meaning users can now add pins to categories that didn’t previously exist.

New types of ads for Twitter- Twitter announced Website Cards, a new ad-unit that highlights a small photo, a line of text, and a URL to an advertiser’s webpage. These will be a part of their new ads strategy as promised by the company earlier. The new ad units will appear in user Timelines worldwide soon and this new feature has been added just after the announcement regarding the Q1 earnings of the company.

Facebook crosses 1 billion mobile users- Along with the announcement of Q1 earnings Facebook revealed that it had now crossed the 1 billion barrier and the number of active mobile users had exceeded the number. Facebook’s monthly active user total is now at 1.28 billion worldwide, and has increased every quarter since the company went public in 2012.

The Facebook Newswire launched- The social network launched FB Newswire, a Facebook page of hand-selected and journalist-verified news stories from across Facebook’s platform, according to Andy Mitchell, director of news and global media partnerships at Facebook. The Newswire selects stories in partnership with Storyful. The agency will use an algorithm to find popular and breaking news stories on Facebook in categories like sports, entertainment, tech and politics. Storyful will then follow up on these stories using human verification from its journalism team before surfacing that content on FB Newswire. As such the most relevant stories are expected to reach out to its users on Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg at Madame Tussauds- the wax version of Zuckerberg will be spending his days at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco taking pictures with visiting tourists. Madame Tussauds, the world famous London-based wax museum, unveiled a life-size wax figure of Zuckerberg as part of a promotion for the museum’s grand opening in San Francisco in June. The figure was unveiled alongside two other celebrity figures: actor Leonardo DiCaprio, and recording artist Rihanna. As huge as it is Zuckerberg will be available at the museum from June.

For a complete read follow the links. Have a nice week and be socially active!

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