Email Vs Social Networking Sites

I remember a decade ago, I was frequently visiting the internet café near my home to check emails and reply to them. Also, I used instant messengers to find like-minded friends or chat with friends. Now, the days have changed. Many folks, especially the teenagers use internet not to send and receive emails, but to log on to sites like Twitter and Facebook to know what their friends are doing and post a tweet or write something on their wall.

Earlier, I used to keep my calendar update to remind me of the birthdays of my friends. I used to send them a e-greeting or send an email wishing them. Now, I use Orkut or Facebook directly and wish them. I do not have to wait for the calendar to remind me. The networking site will remind me of their birthdays.

Earlier, to be in touch with my college class mates, alumnus or ex-colleagues, we used to have a group in Yahoo or Google. And we used to exchange emails. Now, I do not have to. I have these sites and they are in my network always, and I can access it where ever I am moving.

Will all this is phasing out the life of emails?

If the social sites are being used for personal use and friends, then yes. Friends are using less of emails and more of social sites to contact. They feel this media very comfortable as they can blast out one tweet to many. This media provides them the instant information. This media not only provides posting of messages but, at the same time allows them to chat, share photos and videos without using another website or app. This one social platform does it all. So why will they go and upload the video or photos somewhere and provide the link in the email after selecting the friends’ email addresses from the address book?

But, how far this social media communication will be successful for within the corporate if they stop using emails? Will the corporate allow such communication in their organizations to build healthy network among the employees? Yes, organizations need to open up. Organizations can build the networking sites accessible only to the employees and they will have all the stuff here. Zappos is extensively using the Twitter now. Organizations can use such media on intranet for better knowledge sharing and transparency among the levels. One-to-one communication can also be provided in the platform to maintain confidential communication. You will not need, a sharing folder to exchange files, need not need to use the intercom to contact the other person, do not have to check calendar to see if your boss is free, you do not have to switch windows or install other apps to communicate… A separate interface for customer communication can be provided. Customers can also log in to see the status and the discussion happening about their project. Customers can chip in-time to update the developers or the folks working on the project.

Yes, a day may come when email will be extinct.

Aggregator Tools to Update Your Status on Multiple Social Networking Sites

My first question and probably for most of the readers – Is it right to use a tool or aggregator to update your status on most of the social networking sites without really logging in and updating it individually?

Yes, it really saves time of logging into each of the site say Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Xing or LinkedIn. But, one should also note that these networking sites attract different sets of audience and with varied interest. Moreover, social networking is more of conversations between like-minded people and should only be used for sharing of knowledge and discussions. It should not be leveraged as sales pitch and use automated tools to update the status. One needs to be very personal in participation on such networking sites.

Lastly, is it necessary to be on all the networking sites? It is better to use two or three good ones where you feel is the best community for you and build network, share knowledge and keep the engagement as lively as possible. You will be benefited by this in the long run. One has to realize the real value of social networking sites.

Short-cuts may not work always. But, still if you are interested then here are few good tools which can be looked at.

Ping.fm: Allows you to post on Facebook, Wordpress, LinkedIn and Twitter
HelloTxt: Update status on Twitter, Facebook, Bebo, MySpace and more. It takes status updates from web, mobile, sms, email.. to more than 45 social networking sites.
GlueNow: Enables you to post content across the social networking sites using web or mobile phone.
Posterous: Is a blogging platform that allows you to post to multiple social networking sites except for Ning, Viadeo and Xing.
Flock: A Firefox plug-in and enables you to aggregate most of the networking sites.
Postling: Can be used for blog posts and simultaneously update the status in social networking sites. They have a 30-day free trial.
Digsby: Manage various IM, Email and social networking sites. You can update Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn status from Digsby directly.
Yoono: Is free software that allows you to connect and share with all your social networks and IM services in one place.

But, still the bottom line is use social networking sites carefully, thoughtfully and strategically. Definitely, no one likes to read the same status message on your profile when they visit Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. All are different and so should your status messages.


Also, please take time to answer the poll question on LinkedIn.

Related post:

• More Than 100 Free Twitter Tools for You
• 5 Important Approaches for Social Networking for Companies
• Update your Facebook Status from Twitter

Channel [V] Uses Twitter to Promote Re-launch Of Website

After Advani it is Channel [V].

Channel [V] used this novel way to announce and promote its new website on Twitter. The deal was – Members can opt to replace their profile picture to Channel [V] logo. And the logo is displayed on the registered member’s profile on Twitter for 50% of the time. Rest of the 50% the member’s picture is shown.

What do the members get in return? If members stay registered for 5days continuously, then they will be given a neat Channel [V] T-shirt (again branding). If they continue having the logo as their profile pic, they may be lucky to win an iPod.

The good thinking which Channel [V] has done is it did not hijack the profile pic completely. No one likes their pic to be hijacked completely. This helped many people to participate.

What still makes me think is why have they not used MySpace for this? They would have got more participation and target audience. Twitter and Facebook need to get smarter to cash on such things. They need to build good apps and features to build such brand communities and promotion which can attract advertisers. Cheers!!

Source: Medianama

6 Tips To Be Successful In Social Media Marketing

Social media is being vastly used to promote products and services. Moreover, many corporates are using such community sites to keep better customer relationship and cross-sell the products or services to the existing customers in addition to find new ones.

Here are 6 simple tips one really needs to understand to be successful in social media.

1. Change the attitude: One has to approach social media with a different attitude. An attitude which is different from the attitude you have towards other online marketing activities. In social media you have come to share knowledge, issues and solve other members’ problems. You are not here to thrust your products or services. Follow the AIDA principle – Attention, Interest, Desire and Action.
2. Target the right audience: Use the available limited resources and budgets to target the right and niche audience instead of blindly going into social media. Take out some time and think yourself as customer and identify the areas or groups the prospect engages in and talks about the products or services which you sell. Thus, you will know where your target audience is active in the social media sphere and you can start from there. You save lot of time and effort in doing this moreover, you can easily connect with them.
3. Set-up your own success metrics: Set-up your own success metrics for social media marketing as well as you have for organic search, PPC campaigns or email campaigns. Without these metrics you will not be sure if you are heading in the right direction or not. Define the metrics like – no. of comments for my post, no. of views for my videos, no. of stars your post or video has got as a rating from readers, how many have DIGGed your articles and so on. Depending on the numbers you get for these success elements, you can check on your progress in social media marketing.
4. Let people know who you are: Social media is all about building relationships and sharing knowledge. So, let people know who you are. Relationships are only built on trust. Provide your name and contact information and the relationship you have with your company. Your prospects will feel comfortable with communicating with you and, if there is an unsatisfied customer, then that person can vent anger much more easily on you. This gives you a signal to solve the issue immediately before it spreads.
5. What needs to be taken care for: Marketers should note that there is a very thin line between you and your prospects in the social media. One cannot just spam any community. Marketers need to build relationships and share knowledge. You need to take care that you are not ignored and your prospects need not consider you as spam. Be patient and slow and get them involved in conversations and build relationship with them.
6. Quality of content: Last but not the least, success in social media is based on the quality and the creativity of your content you post on these networking sites. Content is King here as well.

Social media is an effective, economical and successful marketing tool. But, time consuming one. And requires more focused effort. Patience and commitment is very important too, to be successful I this media.

Facebook reaches 200Million Users Mark

According to Facebook blog, the 200 millionth user has registered on Facebook recently. This is not a surprise at all, as this social networking site very popular and will reach the 300M mark in short time. Cheers and congratulations Facebook.


To celebrate this, Facebook shows a world map of its user density, fun facts about the number 200 million and, in an era of community outreach, highlights a few ways they are making a difference around the world in this video.