Ideas Maverick Blog by Preetham Venkky

Just a few days back, there was a rumour doing the rounds about Steve Ballmer (CEO, Microsoft) getting stage time at the upcoming Apple WWDC 2010. Though it was just a rumour from an unverified source, the news had hit leading technology blogs on the internet. Several news publications carried the story too.

Traditionally, under such circumstances, companies involved would issue an official company press release. But in this particular case, Microsoft decided to do it differently. Instead of issuing a press release, they decided to use PR 2.0 practices and issued a light-hearted tweet from their official Twitter account instead.

I’m going to put my money on more companies increasingly replacing their official press releases with simple responses to rumours and other web related controversies / conversations. Welcome to the new age company press release. Not only does this set the record straight, but it also expedites the process of getting the word out as quickly as possible. It also becomes a point of reference helping bloggers and news agencies get an official source. I for one, enjoyed the humour brought out in Microsoft’s tweet.

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Bulk SMS has found commonplace in the marketing mix of most companies. Every local business, from restaurants to retailers to insurance agents use this as a mass marketing ‘solution’. With costs as low as 3 ps (Rs. 0.03) per impression, the net expense to reach a target audience of a 100,000 is a meagre Rs. 3,000 ($ 60). I personally receive more than 20 advertising / offer messages on a daily basis, but the one which dropped by most recently caught my attention.

SeventyMM is an online movie rental service with operations in Mumbai, Delhi and its headquarters Bangalore. I was a one-time customer but decided to move my subscription to Big Flix due to lack of good titles to choose from. This means they have my mobile number and probably have my permission (though cheated into using fine print) to send me messages. But the audacity of the message was hilarious. Its content read something like this:

You are the ‘CHOSE ONE’ Get 3 months Unlimited subscription @ Rs499 only and Also Get DVD Combo FREE worth Rs1299 sms RENEW to 57570 or call 08060600070 T&C

So, let me get this straight! I (and based on the language, only I) am the ‘CHOSEN ONE’ to get this special offer. How can you bulk message your former customers and fool them into thinking they are all the ‘CHOSEN ONE’? I would never like to do business with an organisation which takes their customers to be fools. Oh! come on SeventyMM, we can all see through your ruse. ‘CHOSEN ONE’? Why not just get rid of it from your SMS all together; you would’ve at least walked away with a little dignity. So, if I’m the chosen one, along with your discounted membership, do I get to have superman like powers of Neo.

A little bit of digging and I realised they have a lame Twitter profile too. @seventymm Except for a few egotistical broadcast tweets, there was little to show for in their timeline. What shocked me further was the use of Katrina Kaif (not related to SeventyMM in any manner) as their display picture. What were they expecting? A sudden spike in their follower count because they used a leading Bollywood actress as profile image. If it were anywhere but India, they would’ve been sued for misrepresentation. By the way, I wonder if Katrina Kaif or her manager are reading.

While such meaningless strategies are commonplace, I would’ve definitely expected more from a company which is primarily conducting their business online. Social Media Marketing strategies are increasingly becoming effective, you just need to add intelligence to the mix. I could probably help you create one pro bono.

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Recently, Condé Nast publications decided to turn into a creative agency for their existing roster of clients with advertisements being produced, customised and optimised for other media (besides Condé Nast properties) such as Facebook and Youtube. Condé Nast, the publishers of Vogue magazine, have a bouquet of publications specialising in fashion, design, lifestyle as well as technology. It’s always endearing to see old media companies get onto the social media bandwagon with little or no understanding.

Case Study: Vogue India

So we decided to analyse the social media efforts by Condé Nast publications over at this side of the world. We analysed the presence of Vogue India on their three primary social media channels – Blogs, Facebook and Twitter.

Vogue India Blog Analysis

Vogue India’s blog can be found at – http://www.vogue.in/blog.aspx With no means to subscribe to a RSS feed, I’m not quite certain if their blog qualifies to be one. While you can leave comments on the blog posts, and subscribe to it via e-mail using a long registration process; it’s nothing but a glorified content page, which until recently updated their blogs only once a month. With no way to subscribe to the content on this blog site (either via RSS or Atom feeds), Vogue India’s blog is user unfriendly and just not Web 2.0 ready.

The first blog post was published on 16 Aug 2008 with close to 70 post so far. The blog articles haven’t been regular until just recently.

Vogue India Facebook Analysis

Disappointingly, Vogue India seems to have taken the Facebook group route instead of bringing in more interaction with the brand by establishing a Facebook page instead. To confuse the user further, they have 2 groups with similar updates.

Vogue India group has 6,418 members and was last updated on 14 Mar 2010 while Vogue India: Your Fashion Bible group has 2,879 members and is up to date. The strategy to maintain two Facebook groups is both disconcerting as well as confusing. Both the groups are listed under the “Entertainment & Arts – Fashion” category and are administered by Jasmeen Dugal.

What’s odd is that there is little or no interaction with group members and the groups are primarily being used as a broadcast medium to notify members about new articles and updates on the main site / publication. Vogue India could’ve used their group album to publish behind the scenes photographs of all the action, but instead they seem to be using it only to update it with the cover pages for each of their issues. There’s a huge scope to utilise this community, but they seem to be doing little about it.

Vogue India Twitter Analysis

Vogue India seems to be using Twitter only as a broadcast channel. They have a disproportionate ratio of tweeps following vs followed. As a thumb rule, brands are expected to follow back their followers. This action enables their fans to send them direct messages which ensures one-to-one communication without disrupting their public timeline.

Their first tweet was published on 29 Sep 2009, a lame broadcast tweet. There is absolutely no interaction with tweeps and all the updates seem to be using the web interface. Anyone serious about using Twitter social media related communication will always use an application like Tweetdeck or CoTweet.

I don’t know what’s worse, their lack of interaction, despite fans wanting to or their lack of understanding of who they need to follow. A large number of tweeps they follow don’t seem to have updated their Twitter profile pic.

Node 6

Listed below are a few pointers Vogue India could use in order to up their social media interaction:

• Enable RSS subscription on Vogue India blog
• Migrate the blog to WordPress platform with Disqus commenting
• Merge both the Facebook groups
• Actively interact with Facebook group members
• Post behind-the-scenes action on group albums
• Move from Facebook group to Facebook pages
• Follow back your followers on Twitter
• Interact with Indian tweeps interested in fashion
• Activate the latest Facebook like button on all web pages
• Integrate all your social media platforms

All stats and details were gathered as on 24 Apr 2010.

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While most social media marketing experts understand and propagate the importance of titling, tagging and describing all media uploaded on social networking sites, very few understand its importance from the context of social objects.

Social Objects

In an interesting webinar a few days back, Brian Solis pointed to the importance of all media uploaded on social networking sites as candidates for optimisation. SMO (social media optimisation) is the new SEO (search engine optimisation). I would prefer to define social objects as any media which can be found by searching. Social objects need to have the following properties:

1. Social Objects should be associated with a digital file offline.
   A word document, a notepad file, a power point presentation, a MP3 audio file, a movie file, a picture, a XML / HTML page, etc. are all digital files offline which can be shared online.
2. Social Objects should be findable via search.
   A social object stands to be one  only if can be located via generic search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing etc.) or using network specific search engines (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc.).
3. Social Objects should have a title, tag / category and description.
   All social media content should be tag-able, descriptive and  titled. This helps describe the social object and distinguishes one media type from the other. This is important since all searches are still keyword based and the above three properties will help locate the appropriate media.

In simpler terms, an image on Flickr, a bookmark on Delicious, a video on YouTube, a document on Scribd, a blog post on WordPress, a tweet on Twitter are all social objects which satisfy the above properties. Needless to add, a proper keyword analysis is advised before defining the various properties of a social object. So the next time you upload an image or a video spend a little extra time filling in the additional information.

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While plenty has been written about how you can create a great Twitter background, very few have been written on how to create an elegant background without the tweet timeline obstructing the view. Creating a Twitter background can actually be a tricky affair, thanks to the various screen sizes now available. Before the launch of wide-screen monitors (or desktops and laptops alike), users had screen sizes to choose from. There were 640*480, 800*600, 1024*768 and 1280*960 variants available. With the advent of LCD/TFT/LED display technologies, computer screens have been growing at an unprecedented rate. My favourite still remains the latest iMac 27″ from Apple; with a screen real estate of 2560*1440 pixels, this is one huge screened computer. Introductions of larger screens has widened the range of screen sizes from the narrowest at 1024*768 to the widest at 2560*1440.

Your Twitter Background on a 27″

Ever wondered how your Twitter background would look on a massive screen? Try it at your closest Apple showroom and I’m sure you’ll be disappointed. Oddly repeated images, if you’ve selected the tile background option; or a lone cornered image if you haven’t. How does one optimise? While the solution is quite simple, few people actually realise it. The steps mentioned below, take you through a simple process of creating your very own customised Twitter background for your profile:

Step 1: Width of the Twitter timeline = 763 px (on any screen)
Step 2: Width of scroll bar = 15-17 px (always)
Step 3: Total max. width = 780 px (max.)
Step 4: Left free space = (ScreenWidth – 780)/2

For a screen width of 1024 px, Step 4 would yield 122 px as result; while for a screen width of 1280 px (more common in recent laptops), Step 4 would yield 250 px as result. So what does it all mean? Well it means if you want to be safe, ensure that the main image (Logo, Photo etc.) in your twitter background image is not wider than 250 px and is placed in the top left-hand corner. If you want to be really safe, ensure the main image is not wider that 120 px. Height of the image should never exceed 550 px. Now that you have your canvas, feel free to get creative within the space, which would mean you are restricted to the height more than the width.

Meanwhile, if you want to tile (repeat / loop) your background. use the above measurements to sensibly cover the free spaces on both sides. This is an option I would never recommend for professional brands or organisations.

Quick Facts

Safe Size = 250*550 px (for wide-screens)
Super Safe Size = 120*550 px (for old screens)
Do not tile the background image.

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