Tagcrowd of my blog

ahuja (8) blogging (43) brand (16) building (14) capital (6) co-creation (6) cocreation (4) collaborative (10) comcast (8) comments (9) communities (19) company (7) consumer (23) corporate (21) council (5) customer (13) develop (4) employee (6) equity (4) experience (4) generated (9) interact (6) interesting (5) knowledge (9) labels (7) leverage (4) links (7) management (6) marketing (11) media (25) networking (8) online (21) organisations (4) participation (8) pm (5) post (18) product (7) relationship (5) resources (5) share (4) site (4) social (24) sunsilk (4) television (6) think (5) tools (9) value (7) vandana (8) videos (4) web (24)

created at TagCrowd.com

TagCrowd is a web application for visualizing word frequencies in any user-supplied text by creating what is popularly known as a tag cloud or text cloud.Saw the same at Pete Blackshaw's blog and thought I should give it a try.

Social networking and the collaborative environment

An interesting post by Eric Kintz, CMO, HP to take a look at Facebook's marketing potential.Early explorations for facebook's potential for marketing

How facebook's integrated collaboration environment could be a one-stop shopping avenue is described best in The Teenybopper Network by Andrew Mc Afee, Associate professor, Harvard Business School. His description of Facebook as collaborationware that spreads like wildfire and what exactly motivates people to get involved with this technology facilitated network building -"The desire to be popular and make friends" sums up the concept behind the ever increasing numbers on these social networks.
Also,
Facebook now open to enterprising developers talks about the innumerable applications being offered to developers to customise facebook to needs of the enterprise.

Another interesting post at the Gilbane Group Blog Facebook and enterprise 2.0 throws up kindof unexpected results. On a query on which collaboration technologies youngsters would use over the next 2 years in their jobs, email emerged at the top of the list. This was fairly acceptable considering that email is the primary source of interaction ad formal data communication in any enterprise today, but the tremendously low expected usage of blogs/wikis and a networking platform like facebook was a departure from the current picture emerging with the increased usage of these networking platforms.After all, appearances are deceptive!!

Case study from Brandingwire

Interesting new blog containing case studies and having a set of bloggers solve them independently. The first case study from
Branding wire is about a fictitious coffee company and the objective is to work out a strategy for growth and expansion. Ideas of contributors range from branding strategies to expansion plans, to extensive market research with the current consumers, to managing customer relationships, developing web strategies for publicity, capitalising local strengths, employee training to kiosks etc. An exhaustive list of ideas..

The one that stuck a chord was the idea on using Coffee outlets for Social Networking by The Branding Blog
In the era of social and Business networking, using these premises for the same, would definitely act as motivation for the social groups and adding an image angle to the offer, can make way for elite/premium social groups to get associated with the coffee chain. This will automatically take care of the word of mouth/buzz marketing as interested groups would like to be part of the clique.The relationship equity can be built upon so that customer's tend to stick to the brand beyond subjective or objective assessments, so much so that sticking to that brand of coffee becomes a habit.
Using social media further, adding access to internet based social networking at such a hangout can further set the revenue registers ringing.

Adding further to Drew Mc Lellan's idea of collecting data to gauge a customer's point of view, maybe some online communities can be established to have people share their coffee experiences...rather than interviewing customers, maybe an online site where they could briefly document their experiences before leaving, and hence be part of the 'Coffee' community....

As suggested by Brand Impact
" go after influential bloggers; find a large number of bloggers inside and outside the coffee blogging arena, and send a complimentary 1/2 pound bag. Ask for their input, either privately or publicly (on their blogs). Bloggers like coffee (by and large), and have an outsized influence"

Having satisfied customers create content about their experiences is bound to set off a positive chain which is much more beneficial than any other marketing or brand building tool....After all, satisfied communities not only indulge in repeat purchases, but also are great customer advocates....

Web2.0, Networking and Image Building

Sat through a very interesting lecture by Bethany Cheney, the Marketing head, U.S.A. of Techtribe-an online community established courtesy Web 2.0. She spoke on
" Building the Brand of a Leader" and brought out how increasing visibility, networking appropriately and developing charisma were the key ingredients to a successful image building exercise, which inturn would be very useful for individual growth and success.

Her interesting observation that 'there are only six degrees of separation' highlighted the power of networking and how connectivity can be established between total strangers to accrue benefits for the others. Web2.0 in turn has opened a plethora of options to leverage this understanding of networking to build relationships.

These online communities have been setup for developing contacts with other people as well as sharing information and knowledge for growth,as also forge vital business associations. A valuable outcome of this new phenomenon is that senior corporate honchos, who could be well established names in their respective domains can service the community by functioning as mentors to the youth.The youth in turn can have the dual advantage of developing rapport with established industry names, as well as gain vital information through participation...

From SEO and SEM to SMO and SMM.

How will the big brands react?

Internet marketing, once upon a time talked about Search Engine Optimisation and Search Engine Marketing. Now it talks about Social MediaOptimisation and Social Media Marketing.Social Media Optimisation or SMO, a term recently coined by Rohit Bhargava,Vice President for Interactive Marketing with Ogilvy Public RelationsWorldwide, aims to "Leverage all the links and marketing value you canget from social and business networks".

Rohit Bhargava's 5 rules on SMO, which eventually got converted to17 rules, courtesy other readers, showcases how the power of online contentcan be used from a business development perspective.SMM, coined by SeoMoz also aims at reiterating the impact of social networking and itscontribution towards marketing.

In the Indian context, the foray of broadband into the houses of averageconsumers has made internet a pervasive influence in users' lives. As unexpected outcomes emerge from unanticipated dimensions, the time is not far when big brands will end up using Social Media to promote theirproducts and use Web 2.0 as an integral part of their marketing strategy.

Ryzing and Orkutting

Business and Social Networking along with Corporate or Business Blogging are tools which are catching on like viral fever across marketing communities.
Networking on Business and Social Networks-groups of individuals and organisations has emerged as a key technique in modern marketing. This is a fact we all are aware of...only the size and volume of the entire userbase hit me hard as i read a post on 'Virtual Reality Marketing' posted by Eric Kintz, VP, Global Marketing, HP. He has talked about Korea's Cyworld where 17 out of the 48 million South Koreans are hooked in to this online community....at this rate, being a part of one such network is akin to a qualification/important part one'spersonality.
These online networks help individuals and organisations achieve goals through relationshipping and friendshipping.One can develop relationships, build new contacts and establish friendships.The idea is to develop relationships first and then use them for business.

The focus is hence, on the VCP model(Visibility,Credibility, Profitability) of Marketing-

1.Visibility-The success of all networking is based on the ability of people to remember who you are, what products/services you are associated with and what services you provide.

2.Managing Relationships-Evolving simple aquaintances into credible relationships
3.Collaborating-Joining together for achieving business goals,by making best use of opportunities.

This relationship capital has huge potential if we are able to mimic the dynamics of the real world through online sites and replicate them appropriately to achieve our end objectives. Patience, interactivity and sensitivity are three areas which one needs to work on!! Ryzing on
Ryze and Orkutting onOrkut are the latest buzzwords.