Social Media Marketing in India

Does Social Media actually working in India? Is Social Media Marketing the only facet of social media? Can you help your business through social media in India ? What should you be doing if you want to market yourself, or your brand for that matter, on social media? These are some of the questions that have been on my mind recently.

Regus, a provider of workplace solutions with over 1,100 business centers in 85 countries, recently published a study that explored the role of social media in customer acquisition. Based on input from senior managers and business owners around the world, the study found that almost one-half of small businesses are successfully connecting with prospects through social networks.

The worldwide survey also ranked countries who found success in customer acquisition in social networks. With 14 countries reporting, an average of 40% reported that social networks were indeed ripe for converting prospects into customers. At the very top of the list, 52% of businesses in India reported success followed by Mexico, Spain, The Netherlands and China with 50%, 50%, 28%, and 22% respectively. The US ranked 7th with 35%.

1. India – 52%
2. Mexico – 50%
2. Spain – 50%
3. Netherlands – 48%
4. China – 44%
5. South Africa – 43%
6. Germany – 41%
6. Australia – 41%
7. US – 35%
8. Canada – 34%
9. France – 33%
9. UK – 33%
10. Japan – 30%
11. Belgium – 27%

A report in Afaqs by Kapil Ohri discusses how a small brands like restaurants, juice centers and dental clinics in India leveraging the social channels like Facebook better than Big brands. It’s interesting to note that these brands are leveraging Facebook for customer engagement and to drive sales” not just creating fans by numbers.

It does make business sense to spend towards promotional activities in various forms of media, thronged by maximum number of people wherein lays your target customer.

One such new medium that has cropped-up, against all odds of conventional media offerings, is social networking sites. These new generation of sites, like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are attracting maximum number of ad revenues spending among other online mediums.

Social networking sites are fast emerging as the most influential medium of promotional activities for the corporate world globally.

Instead of promoting business through other traditional mediums, the corporate world is increasingly tapping innovative business prospects with their links from sites like Facebook, Twitter and even Linkedin.

ITC's clothing brand Wills Lifestyle is using Facebook and other sites to identify the latest trends among young members. Its Facebook fans can upload pictures and use discussion forums as the company looks to catch the young fashion vein.

"Trends change very frequently, so the real time research on these sites (social networks) are really helpful," said Atul Chand, CEO of ITC's lifestyle retail business. "The contribution can wary from colour schemes to textures to designs," he added.

ITC's Chand said Wills Lifestyle is looking at directly involving its consumers in product development and designing. The band is also pushing online sales through its member community on Facebook. "It's an additional revenue channel. Online sales are almost equal to business made from one store," he said.

Kishore Biyani-led Pantaloons is currently present on Facebook and it plans to extend it to other popular sites too.

"We regularly track the sites to be in touch with the latest trends," said Rajan Malhotra, president - retail strategy, Future Group that owns Pantaloons. Although the brand is not directly involving the consumers now, Mr Malhotra said it is definitely looking at it. "It has become essential."

Analysts say the trend is here to last. A number of brands are concentrating on 'you' to build their images to woo the new consumer empowered by interactive media.

Online presence offers an informal research, which is real time unlike the earlier times, when retailers had to depend on second-hand research reports," said Pinakiranjan Mishra, retail analyst at Ernst & Young.

With several netizens, particularly the geeks, preferring to shop on the net and also making revelations about their personal tastes without inhibitions, brands can ill afford to ignore the power of the mouse and 'YOU'. All sales are not made on the shopfloor, after all.

What do you think?

Don't sell jobs through social networks: Students

About 70 percent of students are not in favor of the companies using social networking sites like Twitter or Facebook to offer them jobs, despite the increasing importance of social networks in corporate hiring process, according to a survey.

As per the survey conducted by hiring solutions provider TMP Worldwide and Targetjobs, 70 percent of surveyed students did not want businesses to use sites like Twitter or Facebook to sell jobs to them as they believe that employers should not exploit social media for their own benefit. However, the survey revealed that 79 percent of the respondents believe social sites were key to employers engaging with them.

In the survey, it came across that students actively use social media to research companies and confirm whether employer brand messages live up to reality and almost half of students use social media sites to chat with peers about recruitment process. In addition, about 30 percent of students chat with current employees to check if their expectations of a particular employer were met, after being taken on.

Neil Harrison, Head of Planning and Research, TMP Worldwide said, "Employers have been saying for some time that they use social networking sites to 'check up' on potential candidates, but they must now be aware that the tables have turned. Today's students use these sites as trusted places to not only communicate with friends but to also investigate potential employers; so businesses simply cannot underestimate the power of social media when it comes to brand building and engaging with undergraduates."

The report, which was based on the study of penultimate and final year students, also revealed that 42 percent of students feel social media is the ideal platform to communicate employer brand and 56 percent agree social networking sites allow candidates to get feel for company's culture.

"Employers must not however, approach social media half heartedly. They must be consistent with their brand and maintain the values they promote online throughout the recruitment, selection and ongoing retention process," said Harrison.

Ajax and Mashup Security

Ajax and mashups represent two new Web application development approaches that both fit under the Web 2.0 umbrella.

Ajax

Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax) allows user interaction with Web pages to be decoupled from the Web browser's communication with the server. In particular, Ajax drives mashups, which integrate disparate content or services into a single user experience. However, Ajax and mashup technology introduce new types of threats because of their dynamic and multidomain nature. It is important to understand these threats and to avoid them by adhering to some best practices.

Mashups

A mashup is a web application that combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience. Usually, the mashup components interact with each other. In the classic example of a mashup, a Craigslist component is combined with a mapping component (e.g., Google or Yahoo maps) such that when a user clicks on a new Craigslist entry, the mapping component updates its view to show the new address.

Mashups typically allow the end user to discover and integrate third party, Ajax-powered mashup components onto the mashup's canvas. Examples in the consumer social networking space include Facebook Widgets and MySpace Widgets, which end users can discover and insert into their pages.

From a technology perspective, mashup components represent Ajax-powered "mini applications" that are assembled into an Ajax-powered mashup container application that provides a framework for the components to communicate with each other. Sometimes the mashup container application enables cross-site communications by providing proxy services to allow server-side redirection to Web servers that are associated with a given mashup component.

Here is a whitepaper from Open Ajax Alliance on Ajax and mashup security that you may wish to peruse.

Ajax and Mashup Security

"Web Application Security — How to Minimize Prevalent Risk of Attacks"

Vulnerabilities in web applications are now the largest vector of enterprise security attacks.

Stories about exploits that compromise sensitive data frequently mention culprits such as "cross-site scripting," "SQL injection," and "buffer overflow." Vulnerabilities like these fall often outside the traditional expertise of network security managers.

To help you understand how to minimize these risks, Qualys provides this guide as a primer to web application security. The guide covers:

• typical web application vulnerabilities
• comparison of options for web application vulnerability detection
• QualysGuard Web Application Scanning solution

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The CRM Mashup

From small to large, from the enterprise to the mid-size organization, from on-demand to on premises with consolidations aplenty, there's a sea change going on in CRM.

Enterprise mashups aim to bring business intelligence to desktops, with automated tools collecting and integrating selected Web data into a spreadsheet. Business Mashups LLC is conducting a "social CRM" experiment called Social Sales which reduces the need to leave a CRM app to gather information.

If mashups sound like the kind of Web 2.0 application best used for checking traffic jams on Google Maps, think again: Mashups within the enterprise environment are becoming common for functions such as integrating social-networking information into CRM Relevant Products/Services tools. And as they get easier to make, they'll continue to grow in popularity and usefulness.

Business Mashups LLC, which creates mashup environments for businesses, has taken some steps forward in bringing mature mashups into the corporation. In the coming week(s) we will release several mashup products that aim to bring business intelligence to desktops with little human intervention.

CRM Mashups

Customer-service management tools are also benefiting from mashups. Business Mashups LLC will provides open-source tools for rapid Web application development, in a "social CRM" experiment called Social Sales.

Today's CRM application users are tapping half a dozen other Web resources to populate their databases and get their jobs done. For example, when salespeople review trade-show leads, they may come across a familiar name. If more information about that person is not already in the CRM system, then someone needs to start researching on social-networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to find out more about that person, which provides greater social context about the sales lead.

Social Sales will drastically reduces the need to leave a CRM application to gather the required information. Thanks to rapidly deployed Ajax applications and mashup robots, companies can create powerful social CRM applications in a day or two.

Business Colloaboration Opportunities around Google Wave

Business collaboration is where people assist and co-operate with colleagues and other contacts to further a particular aspect of the business that they share.

What if you could keep track of all the changes to a document (any kind of document, not just word processor files), without mandating that everyone use the same package (especially important if you collaborate with other businesses or even just people out side your business).

You would be able collaborate with anyone, at anytime with all changes and versions kept up to date automatically. Furthermore, all changes could be traced back to whom made them and when. All old versions of documents would be available for you to check information.

With the global economy tightening as never before, collaboration between businesses is absolutely vital to business growth as well as profitability.

Brought ever closer by technological breakthroughs and increased communications around the globe, today’s world is smaller than ever. The need to constantly grow, change and innovate in today’s business landscape requires a new approach to connect, communicate and collaborate, inside and outside the enterprise, to accelerate revenues and reduce costs.

Companies everywhere rely on positive and consistent interactions with customers, partners and suppliers.

Collaboration has been described as the next phase of the Internet, and a $34 billion market opportunity.

Collaboration Is a Key Driver of Business Performance

Collaboration is a key driver of overall performance of companies around the world. Its impact is twice as significant as a company’s aggressiveness in pursuing new market opportunities (strategic orientation) and five times as significant as the external market environment (market turbulence).

A global culture of collaboration exists, but that there are regional differences in how people in various countries prefer to communicate with one another.

American professionals were more likely to enjoy working alone, and prefer to send e-mail rather than calling a person or leaving a voice mail message. They are also more comfortable with audio, video and Web conferencing technologies than people of other regions and tend to multitask the most when on conference calls.

Europeans thrive on teamwork more than their counterparts elsewhere and prefer to interact in real time with other people. They are more likely to feel it is irresponsible not to answer the phone and want people to call them back rather than leave a voice mail message.

Professionals in the Asia-Pacific region, more so than anywhere else, want to be in touch constantly during the workday. As a result, they find the phone to be an indispensable tool and prefer instant messaging to e-mail.

These differences highlight an opportunity for greater cultural understanding to improve collaborative efforts around the world.

Collaboration can positively impact each of the gold standards of performance — profitability, profit growth and sales growth — to determine a company’s overall performance in the marketplace. “As a general rule, global companies that collaborate better, perform better. Those that collaborate less, do not perform as well. It’s just that simple.” said Jaclyn Kostner, Ph.D., best-selling author and expert on high-performance virtual collaboration.

Measuring the quality and capability of collaboration in a given organization presents an opportunity for management to prioritize technology investments, encourage adoption of new tools and open up communications lines for improved collaboration.

Google Wave is an incredibly smart tool that can turn any Web browser (even a mobile one) into an über-communication hub, essentially rolling e-mail, IM, social media and document sharing into one easy-to-navigate platform, er “wave,” that can be shared among different users on a single hosted server.

In Google’s own words, a wave is equal parts conversation and document, where users can almost instantly communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps and more. Unlike e-mail, waves start out as a conversation with a set of users picked to participate in the dialogue.

Waves can have many uses in a business setting. For one, they’re highly collaborative. Wave participants can share and edit documents at the same time and use waves to track and complete projects without ever having to set foot in the same office. And since waves are live transmissions, employees can have faster conversations than they can by waiting for e-mailed replies. Waves also make managing multiple media easier. Within a single wave you can manage your Twitter and Facebook accounts, e-mail alerts, and more. As long as a gadget is open source, it can sit within a wave. Waves even come with a handy robot called Rosy, which can translate your typing as you type it into 40 different languages, allowing you to communicate with customers in real time around the world.

Collaboration Opportunities around Google Wave

What business opportunities exist around Google Wave? What can startups, software vendors, and consulting companies offer that could be profitable? Here are a couple of ideas...

1. Migration Tools and Services
   Companies today use Outlook and Exchange. If Wave is good enough, some of today's users of Outlook, Exchange, Notes, or even SharePoint could be convinced to switch, either in whole or just for a part of their workflow. Third parties could offer migration tools and services that allow companies to get started and port their existing data - Terabytes of emails and documents - into Google Wave.
   
   
2. Enterprise Wave
   The key to making organizations switch to Google Wave is to make it sufficiently full featured for enterprise use. In particular, it's hard to see anyone switching from Outlook without tightly integrated group calendaring, task lists, and mobile sync. Since Wave is open source, you could add those in and sell an "enterprise version" of Wave under your own brand.
   
   
3. Extensions
   There is no shortage of plugins, extensions, and add-ins to Microsoft Outlook: Think Xobni, Gwabbit, ClearContext, and many little helpers that can you extract attachments, schedule emails, or remove duplicate contacts. Some of these tools are highly profitable paid extensions, and it's conceivable that you could build and charge for extensions that add useful features to Google Wave.
   
   
4. Hosting
   Since Google Wave is open source, you can host the server on your own hardware. There's no shortage of hosted Exchange providers - a quick search will give you many offerings that will give you an exchange account for $9.95 a month. Similarly, you could host Google Wave accounts for a fee.
   
   
5. Wave as a Feature
   I imagine that this will be the most common type of use for Google Wave. Once it's released, websites will replace systems for commenting and user-generated content with Google Wave.
   
   

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10 things about Technology every HR Manager should know

After spending a lot of time working on HR technology, I have collated some of the technology knowledge that every HR Manager should know.

1. The Era of Excel is over, its no more the most Powerful tool.

There was a time when Excel Geeks were highly in demand. Everybody will approach them for a solution. However, with the arrival of softwares like PeopleSoft, where HR can ask the software team to create personalized reports, Excel has been moved to the corner. With the amount of analysis and metrics that appear today, Excel is just insufficient. Added to it is the cost of acquiring MS Office. Open Office and Google Docs have appeared as the free alternatives to Excel. Sharing Excels sheets is fun with Google Docs. Though none of these serves as an alternate to customized HR software.

2. Locally developed softwares are out of fashion.

The technology is growing at such a pace that the small and one-room-run software vendors are unable to infuse the technology and dynamics that world of HR needs. Don't you remember the important updates that you required but your software vendor was unable to do. People are changing, become more tech savvy, blogs are swarming all over – so how can you expect your employees to appreciate your locally developed software. And then there is no need to worry, the latest SaaS technology offers high degree of customization to develop a system meeting your specific needs.

3. Web based Software is the new affordable tool

The huge success of Monster.com, Salesforce, EmpXtrack, SuccessFactors, etc. is enough to prove that the era of web 2.0 has begun. Most of these, especially, EmpXtrack provides updates to the software at the fly, the price of these softwares is unmatched and no need to keep in-house support staff. So why would anybody keep the old, poorly interfaced software in HR. Would you?

4. Books are not the only resource of knowledge

The web 2.0 has changed the way the knowledge was store. Gone are the days when you need to read a complete book to know what you need. There are blogs (like this one), forums, communities where you can interact with people of similar interest and read their articles, opinions and blah blah. The ones that I frequent often are Cite HR, TooStep and Recruitment Blogs.

5. Email is not the only communication tool

The nightmare of writing e-mails and then waiting impatiently for the response is over, and off course of missing an important e-mail id in your list. Thanks to chat software, blogs, SaaS software, twitter, forums – you can send your message to your employees, juniors, seniors seamlessly. Web-based softwares provide employee portals for easy communication of information like News and Events to employees. Use these to make your life better.

6. Virtual Office is no more merely a 'Good Thought'

Its a reality! Employees can work equally well from home using virtual office softwares, where they can share their important files, documents, projects with your team. With the rising cost of travel, why to bother your employee to ask them to travel to office daily, when they can do the same from their home-office.

7. There are freelancers exchange forums to get the job done.

Sometimes your project managers needs an expert to do a urgent job, that is not part of their regular activity. What to do? No matter whatever you did in the past, there are sites that allow freelances and the HR managers to interact. HR managers/ project managers can post their jobs or choose a freelance of their choice to do the job. Like Elance.

8. Job sites are not the only place to find right talent.

There are social sites like Facebook, Linkedin, Ecademy, communities like Orkut, yahoo groups, and blogs etc. where people post their portfolios. Try using these, they are an alternate to the conventional job sites. They are almost free.

9. New Generation employees are very tech savvy – catch up with them

The latest generation of employees is very tech savvy. They play with gadgets, iPods, write blogs, create communities and interact in so many ways. HR needs to catch up with them, else they will find a place that suit their tastes. Given them web based softwares, blogs, and forums to be engaged – it will energize them to use their creativity for the organization.

10. Technology cannot do magic! It is not a replacement for man.

Technology can do wonders but only to the extent of helping people to do their tasks better. It cannot replace the intelligence that man carries with him. Even the best technology cannot replicate the convincing HR manager who can motivate an employee to give his best, understand complex Human problems and provide solutions, show empathy to employees.

The future of computing looks like Twitter

Marc Benioff, co-founder and chief executive of Salesforce.com, said that the world of business software and infrastructure is starting to see the same craze for real-time results that’s taking over web search. And he extolled the virtues of the pioneer of the real-time web — microblogging service Twitter.

Customers of Salesforce’s sales and and customer service web applications, as well as its Force.com platform for business applications, expect everything to happen right away, Benioff said — if they update their data, they expect those changes to appear immediately, not an hour or two in the future.

The core insight behind the Service Cloud is the fact that customer service has become decentralized and spread throughout the web. If customers need answers, they’re no longer calling into the company for help. They may not even be logging into the company’s customer service website. Instead, they’re looking on Google, on their social networks, and on other websites. The Service Cloud allows companies to use their Salesforce customer relationship management (CRM) accounts to find customer service queries across the web, to track them, and to capture those questions and answers for use elsewhere.

The Service Cloud officially launched in January, and there are now 6,800 companies using Salesforce to provide customer service. But there’s been one overwhelming request since the launch: adding Twitter. That integration will be available soon.

Let’s say you’re a mobile phone manufacturer, for example. Within Salesforce, you’ll be able to search for any relevant “tweets” — for example, complaints about a broken phone — track any responses, and then use the company’s Twitter account to respond yourself. Of course, you can already do all of those things within Twitter, but this makes the process more convenient, and, more importantly, allows you to capture that information and respond, all within a single application, one that lets you perform similar tasks on Facebook and elsewhere.

Salesforce’s emphasis on managing a process that’s become scattered throughout the web is smart, and the Twitter integration (which will be added without extra charge to the Service Cloud package) is a necessary addition.

Many companies haven’t realized this is where things are headed, Benioff said recounted attending meetings with chief information officers who all refused to believe that Twitter represents anything significant; they don’t have accounts themselves because “it’s not their generation.” Benioff’s response? He types the name of their company into Twitter search and shows that they’re missing out on a huge part of the conversation. (Benioff isn’t an impartial observer here, since Salesforce’s Service Cloud product is all about connecting companies to their customers on services like Twitter.)

I think corporations have to step it up in terms of integrating with these real-time systems.

That’s the same lesson that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has learned recently as Twitter is used to organize anti-government protesters.

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Business Mashups LLC partners with Force.com to build core business applications, like human resource management (HRM), supply chain management (SCM) and Customer relationship management (CRM).

3 Good Things About Social Media recruitment

Many entrepreneurs are using social networking and other Web 2.0 tools to recruit employees. On LinkedIn and Facebook you can learn about candidates in depth. In a typical resume, you might get a line on interests, on LinkedIn, you can find out who they associate with. On Facebook, you might find some groups and associations and even pictures. It gives us more dimensions than a static resume can offer.

The mushrooming of Web 2.0 technologies coupled with employers' heightened understanding of how to use these tools to find and hire attractive employees promises to radically reshape the recruiting landscape. There's never been a better way to proactively go out and find and hire people you think are a good fit for your position.

Todd Raphael in his post 3 Good Things About Hiring via Social Media highlights the advantages of social media recruitment:

• The company’s more prepared, and can conduct better interviews and be better at selection. If every interviewer, from recruiter to manager to senior management (if they’re involved), has read the candidate’s blog, viewed his/her videos, or perused their Tweets, they’re better prepared going in.
  
  
• The candidate’s more prepared. If the candidate has read about a company on Glassdoor.com, connected with current employees on LinkedIn, looked at what company employees are saying on Facebook, kept up with a company blog, and so on, they know more than they would by looking at company marketing-speak. They can decide themselves that they do or don’t fit.
  
  
• Onboarding. No more nervously asking random people, “tell me where the bathroom is again?” Life’s easier on the new employee because they know a lot of people on Day 1 — or at least recognize them from their Twitter photos.

8 Life Lessons We Can All Learn From 'Predator'

There is so much in the movie 'Predator' that has gone unappreciated. Below is a list of the life lessons we could learn from Dutch and his crew as they try to take on the Predator himself.

1. Don't Push Too Many Pencils

When we learn it: Dutch is reunited with his old "friend" and they lock arms to see which one has more pump left in their ridiculously huge biceps.

Why it's important: It's a simple, childish game designed to determine which participant is stronger, but in this context it helps remind us that spending too much time stuck behind a desk will leave you a puny weakling.

2. Do Whatever It Takes To Survive

When we learn it: Tracker, Billy breaks a vine in half and drinks some of the liquid from within, Man Vs. Wild-style.

Why it's important: You don't have to be heading into a jungle to benefit from some general survival skills. Not only will you make your old Boy Scout leader proud, but it might save you from becoming a meal for a hungry bear or ... a particularly sporty alien hunter.

3. Payback Is A Bitch

When we learn it: Upon discovering some of their fellow soldiers that have been skinned and strung up, our elite squadron sets out for payback.

Why it's important: Almost everyone loves getting revenge. Luckily, not everyone has access to a huge chaingun like Old Painless, but this scene should make you think twice about the consequences before you do something to piss off someone else.

4. Rank Isn't Always Important

When we learn it: Mac threatens to "bleed" Dillon if he gives up the squads position just one more time.

Why it's important: Though he outranks the rest of the team, Dillon's slip-up put the whole team at risk. Just because you're the boss doesn't mean you get a free pass to suck.

5. We Ain't Got Time To Bleed

When we learn it: Upon storming the guerrilla camp, Blain takes a bullet. When he's asked about it, he replies simply, "I ain't got time to bleed."

Why it's important: Somehow, we find time to update our Twitter and Facebook pages 30 times a day, while this guy doesn't even have time to bleed. A lot more would get done if we shared his sense of urgency. Even Jesse Ventura today keeps himself constantly occupied by acting completely insane.

6. When In Doubt, Fire Wildly Into The Woods

When we learn it: After his first encounter with the Predator who has just killed his squad-mate, Mac picks up old painless and peppers the nearby shrubbery with bullets. The rest of the team soon joins in.

Why it's important: It takes a whole hell of a lot of bullets, but one finally catches the Predator, spilling some of his blood and providing an important clue. It's not the most efficient model for getting things done, but it's a lot better than sitting back and doing nothing.

7. Never Rely On The Help Of Others

When we learn it: The situation is beyond FUBAR, but the superiors refuse to authorize air transport out of the suck.

Why it's important: Self-reliance is a valuable trait to have, whether you're in the jungle or trying to get something on a really high shelf at Home Depot.

8. If It Bleeds, We Can Kill It

When we learn it: After having a talk with their female captive, Arnold and Co. set up a series of Home Alone-worthy booby traps to snare their snarly enemy.

Why it's important: All this talk about killing is simply a metaphor for getting things done. With strategy, cooperation and lots of hard work, there really isn't anything that can't be accomplished. It also helps if you bring a bunch of of machine guns.

Source: http://www.premiere.com

Social Networks as a Market Research tool

Traditionally, marketers used demographics (compiled by market research firms) as one of the main tools to identify and target potential customers. Factors such as a person's age, sex, and where they live remain important to getting your message across to the right people.

Social networking is one of the hottest new Web technologies in sight with millions of users registering and participating around the globe. The social web is an often overlooked resource full of excellent information. Whether you’re working on a research project, building your brand, or just trying to find some information, look to social media sites to find what you’re looking for.

Participants worldwide contribute to and collaborate in readily available online discussions, creating new knowledge bases that are not yet fully recognized as information sources. Social networks typically require registration but are free to join, and significantly, to search for a vast array of reference questions, research projects, and to find experts for all kinds of requirements.

Word of mouth has always been one of the most powerful marketing methods—people more often that not use the products that their friends like and recommend. Social media sites can provide this type of data on numerous products and services. Want to find the best laptop computer? Doing a traditional Google search won't get you far. Why? Because you won't get a recommendation, or multiple recommendations. More than likely, you'll get review sites. Do a search on a social networking site, however, and I guarantee you will find a list of what people think are the best laptops.

Because of the open nature of social networking, you can easily find your customers and see what they do online and who their friends are. Friends of your customers are an excellent target market. In fact, research has shown that people are as much as five times more likely to buy a product if their friends like it.

While you may not be able to get full details of an existing customer's contacts from websites like FaceBook and MySpace, you can get a lot of valuable information. If you set up a FaceBook profile and ask to become a friend with an existing customer, you will most likely be accepted, if they liked your product. Through this one connection, you have the opportunity to identify their friends and other contacts.

Some people may argue against the ethics of this, it can certainly be effective. If you're genuine and upfront, you shouldn't have any problems. If you approach it as a problem solver, rather than a marketer, you'll be able to make some headway.

However, it's not a good idea to make unsolicited requests for friendships on these websites. You'll probably get rejected as well as banned from contacting that person again. However, if you can come up with good, interesting content you can send it along to your friend list. If people value your information, they will ultimately value you.

Use these tips to make the most out of social web research.

1. Set up alerts: Use various services to create tracking and alerts for industry keywords, your name, and any other information that is relevant to your research.
   
   
2. Filter your feeds: Monitoring social media can be time consuming, so set up your feeds to
   only deliver content that’s relevant to you.
   
   
3. Pay attention to demographics: Be sure to pay attention to the demographics of the social media users you’re using for research.
   
   
4. Monitor your reputation: Researching the social web will allow you to find out when others are talking about you and allow you to respond.
5. Use Google Search’s site: operator: By adding “site:yoursocialmediasiteofchoice,” you can delve into the depths of just about any social media site.
   
   
6. Set up feeds: Save yourself some time when researching-instead of occasionally checking for alerts, news, and other pieces of social web information, set up an RSS feed that will collect it for you.
   
   
7. Regularly assess subscriptions: Make sure you’re only following feeds that are helpful to your research by doing a review every month or quarter.
   
   
8. Perform market research on your connections: In Facebook, Twitter, and other social media tools, you can turn to your own connections and learn about their interests just by monitoring the videos, images, and information they post.
   
   
9. Use a dashboard: Create your own social media monitoring dashboard in order to keep all of your research in one place.
   
   
10. Seek out authorities: On Facebook, Twitter, and other sites, get connected with users who will provide you with excellent information.
    
    
11. Look beyond who you already know: Check out your contacts’ contacts to find people that can offer you quality knowledge as well.
    
    
12. Just ask: Make use of your social media connections, and simply ask the people you know on Twitter Facebook, LinkedIn and other social sites what you’d like to find out.
    
    
13. Use “best of” features: On FriendFeed, you can use the “best of” feature to only check out the best posts of the day, week or month, so you can just skip to the good stuff.
    
    
14. Find out what’s buzzing in your niche: Use social media to track ideas and see what’s going on in your niche.
    
    
15. Check out popular posts: Use tools that will allow you to see the most popular posts on the web.
    
    
16. Research your competitors: The social web is a great place to learn about what your competitors are putting out there, and what others are saying about them.
    
    
17. Stay on top of breaking news: Use social media research to keep up with the important events happening in your niche.
    
    
18. Always check out the comments: On blogs with a good following, the comments are often as valuable as the blog post itself.
    
    
19. Get networked: Find out who is talking about issues that are relevant to your niche through social web research.
    

Social Media Goldmines

Check out these sites for the most reliable research information on the social web.

1. Delicious: Delicious is the biggest collection of bookmarks online, and can point you to high quality resources for just about anything.
   
   
2. Wikipedia: This excellent online encyclopedia offers information on just about anything you’d like to know about.
   
   
3. Digg: Digg highlights top stories and breaking news across the web.
   
   
4. Facebook: With a large enough network, you can use Facebook to crowdsource information and perform your own market research on connections.
   
   
5. Yelp: Research local businesses through the information found on Yelp.
   
   
6. Twitter: Build your Twitter follow list to include sources that can provide you with the ongoing information you seek.
   
   
7. Flickr: Find images and photographs of people, events, and more on Flickr.
   

Polls, Q&A

Ask questions and get answers with these tools.

1. BuzzDash: Using BuzzDash, you can create a poll and get community members involved.
   
   
2. LinkedIn Polls: With LinkedIn Polls, you’ll be able to find answers to your research questions by asking your network and other professionals.
   
   
3. WikiAnswers: On WikiAnswers, users can edit answers to questions anyone asks.
   
   
4. IKnowTweet: This site monitors Twitter for questions and answers.
   
   
5. Research Aid: Use Research Aid to get information via questionnaires on Facebook.
   
   
6. Ask MetaFilter: Use MetaFilter’s tags and search to find the information you’re looking for on Ask MetaFilter.
   
   
7. ToAnswer: Ask a question to @toask, and you’ll get answers through your Twitter account.
   
   
8. Answerbag: On Answerbag, you’ll be able to post questions and receive answers that others can vote on.
   

Trends

Monitor what’s popular on social media sites using these tools.

1. TweetVolume: Find out how much your keyword is discussed, and its stats to similar terms.
   
   
2. Facebook Lexicon: Check out Facebook Lexicon to see what’s being discussed on Facebook walls.
   
   
3. Technorati: Blogger Central: Check out rising links, top blogs, and more in BloggerCentral.
   
   
4. Social Radar: Social Radar offers the Ultimate social media marketing with an overview of content from blogs, social networks, feeds, news, and forums.
   
   
5. TweetScan: TweetScan will tell you who is currently talking about the keywords you subscribe to.
   
   
6. eKstreme: eKstreme shares blog data from Technorati and social bookmarks from del.icio.us.
   
   
7. Google Trends: Google Trends shares some of the hottest search trends in social media and beyond.
   
   
8. Twendz: Stay on top of Twitter conversations and trends through Twendz.
   
   
9. BlogPulse: Nielsen Buzzmetrics’ BlogPulse offers automatic trend discovery on blogs, and what’s going on in the blogosphere.
   
   
10. Trendpedia: With Trendpedia, you can see charts that show the volume of topic discussion.
    
    
11. PostRank: Using PostRank, you’ll be able to find the most talked about posts on any RSS feed.
    
    
12. Omgili Charts: Through Omgili’s Buzz Graphs, you can measure and compare the buzz of different terms.
    

Search

These tools will make it easy for you to go straight to what you’re looking for.

1. Technorati: Use Technorati’s search to find out what’s being said in the blogosphere.
   
   
2. Google Custom Search: Google Custom Search will make it easier for you to get results only from the blogs and social media websites that you’re interested in.
   
   
3. Social Mention: Social Mention searches all over user generated content to find the information you seek.
   
   
4. compfight: compfight will search Flickr for inspiration, research, and more.
   
   
5. Yahoo! Pipes: Using Yahoo! Pipes, you’ll be able to better wrangle information on the social web and beyond.
   
   
6. Keotag: Use Keotag to tag multiple search engines and generate social bookmark links.
   
   
7. BlogCatalog Social Media Search Engine: This search engine seeks out information from the BlogCatalog directory as well as more than 20 other social media sites.
   
   
8. Addictomatic: Addictomatic makes it easy for you to create your own custom page with buzz on any topic.
   
   
9. Icerocket: Icerocket will allow you to search blogs, the web, Twitte, MySpace, and more.
   
   
10. FlickrStorm: Use FlickrStorm to find related and relevant images on Flickr.
    
    
11. WhosTalkin?: This social media research tool will allow you to find topics on more than 60 popular social media sites.
    
    
12. Google Blog Search: Find recent blog posts in your keywords to get ongoing insight.
    
    
13. BoardReader: Using BoardReader, you’ll be able to search multiple message boards and forums at once.
    
    
14. Alltop: Alltop’s “online magazine rack” will help you find information about popular topics being discussed in blogs.
    
    
15. Omgili: Omgili offers a search that focuses on user generated platforms like forums, discussion groups, and other social media.
    
    
16. Twitter Search: You can search to see current conversations on Twitter.
    

Tracking & Alerts

With these tools, you can conveniently get updated whenever your keywords are mentioned on the social web.

1. Tip’d Social Tickers: SocialTickers on Tip’d will allow you to track stock tickers all over the social web.
   
   
2. ThreatTracker: Using ThreatTracker, you can identify and assess online threats to your company, brand, or product.
   
   
3. Google Alerts: Get email updates on the latest Google results for your keyword from Google Alerts.
   
   
4. TweetDeck: TweetDeck is a Twitter application that offers grouping and notifications for keywords.
   
   
5. Technorati Watchlist: Set up a Technorati Watchlist to find out when certain URLs or keywords are mentioned in blogs.
   
   
6. Wikiscanner: Wikiscanner will help you learn about anonymous Wikipedia edits from well known organizations.
   
   
7. Monitter: Set up keywords in Monitter to keep an eye on keywords on Twitter through RSS as well as live monitoring.
   
   
8. Backtype: Backtype is an excellent tool for monitoring blog comments.
   
   
9. The BuzzMonitor: Use this open source application to listen to what people are saying on blogs and other social media.
   
   
10. BoardTracker: Track words in forums with BoardTracker.
    
    
11. Yacktrack: Through Yacktrack, you can follow comments from a variety of sources all at once.
    
    
12. Filtrbox: Use Filtrbox to track your prospects, brand, competition, and investments on the social web and all over the Internet.
    
    
13. TweetBeep: TweetBeep is a reliable tool for getting alerted when someone tweets about your selected keywords.
    

Analytics & Information Gathering

Analyze and gather information with the help of these tools.

1. Adonomics: Use Adonomics to get analytics for the Facebook platform.
   
   
2. UGC Finder: Check out this tool to get information from citizen journalists.
   
   
3. SocialToo: Get daily updates on social media analytics, create surveys, and more through SocialToo.
   
   
4. Twitter Grader: Check out Twitter Grader to learn more about a Twitter user and discover related users as well.
   

Organization

Use these tools to get your social media research conveniently organized.

1. iLeonardo: iLeonardo is a social utility that can help connect people with notebooks of information.
   
   
2. PeopleBrowsr: PeopleBrowser will allow you to keep tabs on all of your most useful social networking sites at once.
   
   
3. ThinkFold: ThinkFold makes it easy to create outlines for sharing and collaboration online.
   
   
4. Netvibes: Netvibes is an excellent tool to use as an RSS social media monitoring dashboard.
   
   
5. Google Docs and Spreadsheets: Organize your documents and spreadsheets online, and keep them open for collaboration with Google Docs and Spreadsheets.
   
   
6. Bubbl.us: With Bubbl.us, you can get your thoughts organized online.
   
   
7. Zoho Notebook: Use Zoho Notebook to keep your research notes online in a handy place.
   
   
8. Zotero: Add Zotero on to Firefox, and you can collect, manage, and cite your research sources right in your web browser.
   
   
9. WebNotes: Using WebNotes, you’ll be able to highlight text, make sticky notes, and organize them all in folders.
   
   
10. Flowchart: Flowchart makes it easy to create organized charts for your notes and research information.
    
    
11. UberNote: UberNote’s tool lives where you do your research-in your browser, email, IM, mobile device, and more.
    
    
12. Backpack: Keep all of your research information together online using Backpack.
    
    
13. Google Notebook: Use Google Notebook to keep notes, clips, and more handy, with the option to access notes from your mobile device.
    
    
14. Connotea: With Connotea, you’ll be able to organize and share research information.
    
    
15. EverNote: Research and take notes both online and on the go with EverNote.
    
    
16. Google Reader: Make Google Reader your base for collecting research information from various RSS feeds.
    
    
17. Notecentric: Notecentric will allow you to organize your notes online and share them with others.
    
    
18. ClipMarks: With ClipMarks, you can save bits and pieces of any webpage, and even share them with others.
    
    
19. Remember the Milk: Remember the Milk is a great tool for project checklists and more.
    
    
20. openonmy: Use openonmy to store files up to 1GB online, so you can access them from anywhere.
    
    
21. iLighter: Highlight portions of a webpage and save them to your notebook with iLighter.

Source: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/use-social-networking-for-market-research.html

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