Today we are talking with Pradeep Chopra, Co-founder of OM Logic, one of the main online marketing agency companies in India. Pradeep will speak at the Internet Marketing Summit in Mumbai, the 23rd & 24th of November.
Pradeep, first of all, great that you are participating at the event. As an expert on online marketing, what is your advise to (online) marketers all over the world about THE way they should use the marketing tool of Social Networking or Social Media?
Could you give them your Top 3 tips?
a.) Social Media Marketing is all about Medium (channels such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter etc) & Message (content such as Conversations, Videos, Photos etc). The choice of medium and respective messages is critical to the success of any Social Media Marketing campaign.
b.) Social Media is about creating engagement/conversation with the user/customer. True (relevant & ever growing) conversations can only happen when you can understand the nerve of the user/customer. So, get into their world, identify their needs and then participate accordingly.
c.) Measurement (or lack of it) is not a mystery as treated by many in case of SMM. Yes, there is no ‘one size fit all’ metrics available in SMM but it’s not so complex either. One needs to understand that every SMM channel has its own objective and respective Metrics. And, you then need to link individual measures with the overall SMM objectives.
Please check out my recent presentation ‘Making Sense of Social Media’ for more details.
Interesting, and on your website OMlogic.com you are saying that ‘
We work with you as your online marketing partner and help you ask and answer the right questions to identify the “right message” to reach out to your target customers in the shortest possible time and in a cost effective way. And then, persuade those potential customers to take desired actions so that you get the best possible returns on your online marketing investments.’
Could you give a practical recent example of a very successful Social Media Campaign from a company and why it was so successful?
Here, I would like to talk about our contribution in Event Promotion using Social Media Marketing. Over the last 2 years, we’ve had the opportunity to promote (few are still being promoted) some of the greatest conferences such as PanIIT, OMCAR 2009, NASSCOM Product Conclave & Leaders in India using Social Media. Here are key reasons why Social Media contributed to their success:
a.) Leveraged Content (Photos, Presentations, and Videos etc)
Even today, most of the events don’t last beyond the day on which they happen. However, there is an incredible opportunity to leverage the content (in the form of session takeaways (an important reason for live blogging), photos, presentations, videos to promote the event & the organizer’s brand – can significantly contribute to the next year’s conference or other conferences by the same organizer. So, please plan to capture and use the wealth of content which gets created during the event. For e.g. our OMShare’s Social Media Channels – Speaker Presentations, Event Photo Galleries, Session Videos have driven thousands of views for various events.
b.) Community Building
Another great advantage of Social Media for event promotion (equally applicable for most of the brands & businesses) is the community development. Avenues like Facebook Page & Group, LinkedIn groups offer great platform to launch and nurture a powerful community.
c.) Blogging (and Microblogging)
Whether it’s a pre-event, during the event or post event, you can highly leverage both Blogging & Microblogging (e.g. Twitter). It’s a great idea to launch your event blog while you are launching the website/microsite for your event. In addition, you can leverage other relevant blogs to promote your events. Live conference blogging is a great tool to create valuable content for event promotion in addition to enriching the experience of the delegates.
Thanks for the tips and my last question is: besides SMM your company is focusing on SEO and PPC as the three pillars of the Online Marketing Strategy of a company.
Do you notice a difference nowadays in the focus of the clients you have? Are companies more focused on SMM and SEO since the costs normally are much lower?
What tip on the integration of these three pillars would you like to give for the visitors of our site?
Yes, SMM is increasingly gaining importance. It is going through the similar phase, travelled by SEO around 9 years back and by PPC around 6 years back. In the downturn, we are seeing more interest in SEO & SMM than PPC by many of our existing and new customers. However, each of these has their own advantages and disadvantages. Moreover, it is important to leverage the synergy between them (especially between SEO & SMM). Depending upon your business objective (e.g. PPC is a better medium for lead generation than SMM), your short and long term goals (e.g. use SMM and SEO vs PPC if your goal is brand building) and the availability of budgets, one should choose the right combination.
Refer to this ‘Online Marketing Framework’ chart for more clarity on the integration of SEO, PPC & SMM.
Pradeep, thank you very much for your information and we will see each other in Mumbai.
For more info of the India National Summit Internet Marketing on the 23rd and 24th
of November, please have a look at our site on India National Summit Internet Marketing 2009
