So now we have it in the open , for survival of any organization , social media is or soon would be an essential requirement.

So the next question which arises is , does a Brand need to engage with all platforms.  - In answer to this I would say , that’s a highly subjective choice   ,for each brand its own. But yes probably the idea of spreading a bit too wide, unless  its linked up well would be a  question.  If the brand can pay attention to all the media it chooses to engage with , they should be spread out, different demographics usually sit in each of the social media platforms. However the little that I have seen suggests that Face-book, Twitter and You tube seem to be the favorite platforms for most marketers. Specially the first two.

Lets delve into this decision a bit deeper – In actuality the social media platform that you indulge in depends on two basic things  -

1) The Target population – it is a good idea while making your digital Marketing strategy to decide  on the specific target markets that you are  looking to engage. e.g. YouTube is a  very popular platform with teens, adolescents, young adults and Housewives to some extent. Their level of engagement with this platform is different. Similarly face-book has recently seen a  boom in the 45- 55 year old population . Basically its important to understand  the demographics of the Social media platform that one is looking to engage with and thus making the choice .

2) The message that you want to send out – Second  criterion for the choice of platform i would say would be the message that you want to be sent out ,if its a campaign or a  long lasting showcase  of culture.

3) The  intent – the  purpose  of the communication. If you just want to go viral, which i must say is not the easiest to do , then You Tube is a good platform, If its to build a community around a brand then probably face-book is a good platform , twitter is a good platform for discussions, and for promoting other  platforms, its also good for promotions and customer care.

Those are the three basic ones that one needs to consider and if this phase is dealt with well, its half the battle won. It is seen that  lots of times   the cause for failure  of Social media campaigns is usually the selection of an in appropriate  platform, or rather  not understanding these  basics before  engaging.

Please  remember Social Media Platforms are  not just (or rather should not be treated as) extended mouthpieces for the brand. Here the conversation is not on your terms but rather  on the  customers. Thus even when one is selecting a message , its important to consider is this message something that the target audience would engage with , is it something they are interested in , or is it just something that the brand is interested in and wants t0 push out to the audience.

So to sum it up,  indulge with that many platforms only that you can handle and devote time to regularly, secondly don’t get into a platform cos everyone’s there ,  make certain of the fit , give it a thought.

Conventional marketing has been around  for donkeys years  , as early as  the Gutenberg’s metal movable type in the 1450s  , there were marketers ready to disseminate information,  yes the science behind it was  not perfected, it was more of trial and error.  But then came technology first in the form of  magazines, then newspaper and then the radio and  Television.  Mass media ruled the masses rather the corporate masses.  They were just the perfect route to eyeballs. Then came the computers and the Internet.  New tools , high uptake and  global reach.  Corporates were out there in the cyberspace, making there presence  felt, trying to increase traffic onto their sites.  Trying to grab attention of all that would listen ( at-least their target markets)

But there was  one thing in common to all of the above media , and that was that the marketer talked and the  consumer (audience) listened.  And  so for ages corporates talked  , they were a  part of this one sided conversation . They talked and initially it was  interesting listening to them, it was novel for some time,  creativity  and maybe not that  much of relevance and of-course repetition defined the uptake of the message. We as consumers were hammered with, what to buy when to buy , where to buy it from,  why we needed  something, and we listened , we bought and felt happy. But then things  changed  , there were quite a few fraudulent  claims of utility , of price of quality . And at the same time along came the choice of not listening , the ability to ignore or forward the disruptive corporate messages in the form of TIVO ;s , the spatial continuum was altered, this was specially in relation to television, the thirty second spots were loosing their effectiveness.  At the same time this new wave crossed the world, the wave of getting connected, of talking to each other  , of uniting to  make a difference.  A fight for what they loved and what they loathed, and at  such a time though i cant say that conventional media faded away , however i would say the social wave gained importance.

Any corporate now who at-least is not tuned into the social media space is surely moving towards extinction.   People have found a voice and they are having conversations,  they are connected with other people as well as with brands. They are talking about their day to day lives  , about the products they use, about the products they are satisfied  with , about what they hate. And its time to listen .

they said that the  information age was upone us long tim back , but truly i  think its only now that we are ready for it.

Why

1) look around you , and you will see  people on mobile phones, computers and accessing the web almost every waking minute of their lives.  interacting with some or the other social media platform.  Now its easy to be connected 24 / 7 look at the Iphones  , the blackberry’s and the  i pads.  And this is just the beginning.

2) The social media space is exploding Infact according to recent report  (Nielsen, Global Faces & Networked Places, 2009) 2/3rds of the worlds global population is in the social media space ,  visiting social sites is the 4th most popular online activity ahead of emailing and lastly believe this the social sites usage is growing three time faster than the overall internet usage,

3) Its not just one social media platform that skews these numbers .  facebook if it were a country would be the fourth most populated  in terms of sheer numbers, 13hours of video that is uploaded per minute on you tube  from across the globe,  13000000 the number  of articles available on Wikipedia. 1382% the  increase in twitter usage from jan to feb 2009 .

Now  should we  take social media seriously.   Well now that  ihae gotten your attention , lets lok at how we could use this abundant resource.

Marketers have always been creative and here are a few usages that i have come across

1) for Market research – segmentation , likes dislikes etc etc

2) Beta testing of products

3) Customer service, Complaint management  and CRM  initiatves

4) Branding , branding and some more Branding

5) Customer feedback and Product innovation

6) Generating  Loyalty – the tribe

7) Sales promotions

8) Competitor intelligence gathering

(happy if you could add a  few more usages  here )

I think the Social media space is in actuality appropriate for almost all of the marketing functions , and its useful in almost throughout the product life cycle.  I agree that its not appropriate for all brands as a purely promotional or advertising tool, however none the less its important for the company to atleast observe whats happening in the social media space  in context to their brand and products.  It  keeps a company’s ear to the ground ,  and thus makes it better prepared to respond.

So whatever you do buy your damn senior executives an I pad and tell them to go play . See you there.

Aspiring entrepreneurs / Entrepreneurs in UK, StreetEntrepreneurs is a place where you can come, share and learn about entrepreneurship. I attended the street entrepreneurs meet twice and it was really informative. Thanks to Alan, Bruce, David and Jo-Anne for organising meet ups. The meet will happen every second Wednesday of the month. The next meeting will happen on 11th of August 2010 at All-Bar-One, St Vincent Street at West Nile Street, Glasgow, you can contact jo-anne@  suzy@  alan@  bruce@  david@streetentrepreneurs.com to register with opt-in mailing list.

Yesterday, I attended a session about protecting your idea in the pre-patent phase. Thanks to Alan who taught us an unconventional way without investing any enough money to protect the idea which was really helpful. Though it was not foolproof idea, but it was an idea that can worth try.

Finally, I found some interesting thing yesterday, the majority of participants were females. It was really interesting and surprising for me that more females are taking their career path as entrepreneurship.

eMetrics marketing optimization summit London has been announced the event date is 17-18 May 2010 and the venue is Grand Connaught Rooms, Covent Garden. The main theme of the event is “How to optimize your value of online marketing?“. A lot marketing managers, web analysts and business intelligence experts will be participating. This event will be very valuable for companies and individuals who are looking on the online marketing opportunities. You can expect following from the events.

• Meet the industry thought leaders and experts
• Discover the basics in WAA Workshops
• Explore advanced topics in Post Summit Workshops
• Compare insights with industry leaders, consultants, and peers
• Identify and realise your desired outcomes from this event
• See hands-on demonstrations of the latest tools in action
• Walk away with specific answers to your specific questions and specific solutions to your specific problems

As we are the blog partner of the event all the iamaceo readers will get a 15% discount, you can provide discount code of “IAMA010” while registration.

In recent times i have been going through some text and material related to the new generation tools in Marketing specifically speaking we are looking at the Online tools and  social media marketing .

The question as to whether one should indulge in such media as twitter and facebook , or  for that matter of fact  even youtube is now obsolete. I feel that its  only the organizations which are entrenched  in their pasts  and  highly resilient to change  would  refuse to use these tools and  maybe in the future they would see the need for change.

That is not the question that i intend to answer or raise through this post , the questions of today are how to create tribes around your brand ,  or product. Apple has its local communities of apple users who are proud  of their products and loyal to the company to the core, similarly big brands like Harley Davison has its bunch of HOGs  who follow and celebrate the company and its products , they understand the core values at the heart of the Harley and  are entrenched inits culture, they form their own support networks which further  promote and advocate for the product. The question which comes to my mind is how applicable are these communities to the small scale corporates  , or even businesses.  How difficult would it be for a local restaurant or coffee shop to create its followers to advice people in the community as to what are the best dishes to be tried in the place advocates promoting the joint on facebook and twitter ans so and so forth .  How difficult would it be for mom and  pop stores to  develop and foster a community of users.

Another  question  which would be applicable to all such communities which exist  is whats next, do we eat into these communities through repeatedly exposing them to our sellings and discounts.  It is but natural for a marketer once he has created a community to bombard it with sales promotions and  so on and so forth , is this what they are looking for. If not then what is the purpose of creating these communities, should we let them thrive  forming networks within them to form a stronger community and  have limited engagement with them, just to give you an example a  recent membership into a  club has seen me  adding to their followers on facebook and yet every weekend  I am bombarded with the  info of whos the Dj playing there, I dont intend to take any action till im ready , but the constant invasion of my privacy makes me rethink if being a part of this community is something more than what  i bargained for . So the question here my friends is how do we retain these comunities at the same time make the most of them.

A third question that comes to my mind is

specifically in regards to the use of twitter, is twitter the right tool for every corporate, for an  organization on the move  ,example a movie theater or a Event organizer it makes sense as it would be of interest  as to whats happening in the organization , maybe even for the days special menu of a restaurant , but for organizations which are more static do we use twitter effectively and if not then how can we  , do we need to post things on it on a daily  / hourly basis or should it be used sparingly.

Just  some questions of a mind that at times wonders

From my own personal experience “only cash can make cash”. So it is important to have eye on your business cash flow, whether it is a small scale or large business. Some years ago I read the book “Rich Dad Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki. He mentioned about cash flow and how to handle cash in the book. But initially I was not ready to admire his words “only cash can make cash” but sooner or later I realized that the key to success relies how effectively you manage your cash flows. Even if you are making profit from your business if you are not generating enough cash flows at the end of the day the business will flunk. If you are able to manage your cash inflow > cash outflow you are in positive cash flow, obviously this means the company is profitable.

Look at this picture they are trying to make the cash flow positive but you can see that the obligation of previous month is still there then how can they make cash flow positive?

1) Negotiate with your supplier for delayed payment. For instance piggyback your this month payment to next month ending so that you can get time to collect money from your customer.

2) Cut unnecessary operational cost. Don’t purchase any items which are not critical for the business. For example your company need transportation it is not a good idea to buy vehicle, instead hire it. Once you hire a vehicle you don’t need to worry about its maintenance, tax insurance etc.

3) Be selective about customers. Try to get customers with good credit history. You can buy those reports from credit agencies where in you will get the full details of payments, credit ratings etc. You can also select customers without good credit history by availing a deposit for using the service.

4) Accurately raise the invoices. Poor administration and handling of invoices delays payment.

5) Re-arrange customer payment cycle. This is very effective if you are doing some service business with a monthly payment. A simple example is if you can re-arrange the cycle and raise the invoice by 20th of every month with a due date on next month beginning collection can be very effective because most of the customers will get salaries at the end of the month so can pay money easily.

6) Offer early settlement discounts. Offer discounts for early settlements, but the downside is it will affect the profitability. Remember one penny today is not one penny tomorrow it is much more depends upon the interest rate. In this case we have to take net present value of the payment into consideration.

7) Compel customer to avail direct debit by offering some difference in transaction charges.

8 ) Diversify your customer base. It is not good to have a 2 or 3 service contract to run a business. Payment delay in any client will affect your cash flow there might be chance for the business to meet financial obligation.

9) Payment reminders, this is very effective sending reminders to the customer compels for payment.

10) Use a third party to collect your debts, make sure that the agency is reputable and recommended by people.

11) Consolidate your loans, if your business have multiple loans consolidate the loan with a single bank and negotiate the interest rates.

Remind Cash is the life blood  of business, so if you are not able to manage cash inflows and outflows don’t do business.

As a  career choice an  MBA  is a highly debatable degree , specially with the number  of colleges sprouting up across the world. The choice of where and when to do an MBA  is a  highly subjective one.  The purpose of this post is not to give an exact figure of where and when to do ab MBA  but sort of t give you a guideline as to   the choices you may need to consider.

Where  – there are quite a few criteria  which sprout up when you consider these choices. There are established educational  Institutes providing High Quality MBA’s and  there are  a few colleges which would not necessarily come  into your mind unless  you have done thorough research but which match if not exceed the Quality of these established players.
When making  a  choice of an MBA its its very important to look within and try to find out the reasons for doing an MBA and  then letting this reason be the  guiding factor for you.  Here are some o the reasons that I have come across

1) For better  job prospects : this  is a questionable driving force for joining an MBA  , its always better  to have a  more  well thought approach to an MBA  . An MBA is an investment in yourself and if chosen well any MBA would add  this value to you .  But if this is your prime reason for joining an MBA you need to reconsider to make a better choice of school.

2) Have a Business Idea need tools to  make it into a reality  – Well if you are the creative sorts and have business ideas , no matter how far-fetched they seem it would be   a good Idea to join an MBA  programme which has specialization in Entrepreneurship.  There  are many schools who offer this .  Do remember  that sometimes this process can be disillusional and can bring you to  more concrete reality. So an idea might be rejected but from the MBA you would learn to build more  grounded business plans and to be a better critique of the business plan.

3) Haven’t got a clue but am sure an MBA will help  - Its a better idea to choose schools which offer a more holistic  approach to the MBA , an MBA  can be used as a navigational tool , to chart out a career path for yourself as you move ahead in the MBA.  Here its more about a trial an error methods and I would advise aspirants driven  by this motivation to focus on the MBA  experience and make a choice within the programme.

3) Well I think I have tried my hand in strategy and  I want to learn more about it / Want to join a consultancy  - For people who have given deep thought to their past experiences  its a good idea to Join an MBA  which is strong in strategy eg Harvard , Strathclyde etc.  The process of the MBA would equip you with tools to identify the need for , create , implement  and to test out Strategies.

4) I want to specialize   the answer for such people is simple choose a school renowned  for your specialization ad go for it full hearted.

Other  things to consider  -   Duration of course 1  yr – 2 yrs, Return of Income, Class size , ability to network

An MBA  is a learning experience its not so much about the  actual learning its more about how you apply this  in life.Its not an educational course  its a course in changing your life , I would recomment it to all , but its important to know or to identify the takebacks that you need from the  course well in advance.

Outbound marketing is dead whether its a product or it is a service, that is applicable for job hunting also. You are sending your resume to companies for a particular job where 1000 of millions of people send their resumes, it is really hard to get an entry. Moreover 60% of the whole jobs are not advertised and they employ mostly through personal references.

The best way to find entrance is to identify your sneezer’s.  Sneezer’s are people who can help refer you to the right place at the right time, also they can market you. They might have the right commanding power to recommend you to the place.  By identifying your sneezer’s you are essentially converting yourself as a inbound marketing product.

Where can you find your sneezer’s?

1. Go to different networking Events and network with people who are in the same segment you are interested in. Pitch yourself to them and get in touch with them regularly make him/her as a friend.
2. Join different LinkedIn groups which you are interested in and contribute your thoughts in various discussions. Try to be a “purple cow” answering questions in the discussion(s). Not like I second this point that guy and all.
3. Finally create your own portfolio and brand yourself in professional social networks.

The most important thing when you are at starting up a business is to find a mentor who will advocate for you. The mentor means someone who can help you to grow and act as a business advocate and introduce you to business community. One more important thing is that this mentor can be your investor in future or he can refer you to the right investor. We can name these kind of people who invest in your business initially with reference from the mentor or the mentor itself an “Angel Investor”.

Potentially angel investor can be a family investor (parents or relatives), relationship investor (co-workers or friends who knows your potential of idea and you as a person), reference investor (those who don’t know you or your idea but they know the people who referred you they convert the trust in the person who refer into business) or idea investor (investor who may works in the same sector which your business targets).

Things to be keep in mind while approaching angel investor from my personal experience

1) Due diligence: The investor should be take care of the business from big harm that may affect the business. The potential harm can be financial loss, legal problems, business risks etc.

2) Experience: It is better to select “idea investor” as your angel because investor can help you to grow by giving strategic advice to the business situations and also able to provide industry insights.

3) Make Investor a active participator:  This will give double effects for the business to grow.

4) Negotiate proper terms and regulation: This is very important to agree with pre-defined terms and regulation before agreeing to the investments. The terms should include the working policies, lock in periods, share transfer policies etc. Lock in periods are very important because of the uncertainty about the idea or business and effort the innovator should put through for a certain period of time.

5) Share transfer: Agree upon the investment and share transfer periods. It is not a good decision to get entire investment and transfer the entire stake agreed initially, because there is no sense in getting the money and depositing it in the bank. Make the investment and period wise (say for eg monthly or quarterly) according to your requirements and transfer shares accordingly upon the money invested in the business.This will also gives a good cash flow in the business. If the business doesn’t require capital to go ahead stop getting money from the investor, this will give you a better liquidity of share.

6) Second round investments: If the business want more money to grow, it is not a good idea to get money from the same investor because your % shares will severely be affected.

7) CA firms: Keep another CA firm rather than using the same chartered accountant firm of the angel investor.

And finally the best way to get an angel investor is to approach the best chartered accountancy firm at your place. The truth behind this is chartered accountants know who has the real money to invest and their background experience.