Preventing Social Media Spam

Image by Josh Russell via Flickr

Sometimes it feels really sorry to see the tactics of a select group of folks in the name of using Social media as a Conversation Medium ! By-and-large this is applicable to Twitter baring the first couple of points.

The Problem

1. Email spam: They  continue to send you bulk promotional emails, although you never opted-in for their newsletter. On the name of customization, they start the email with your name prefix and believe they are not spamming your email box.  To your surprise, you are not allowed to copy & reproduce their email although they didn’t take your permission at the first place.
2. Blog Spameeters: They start a one-dimensional blog to blatantly promote the poor client’s new product offerings.
3. RTing & RTing: They create multiple accounts on twitter, send tweet from one id and then re-tweet from others. End-result = The user ends up thinking that there is a great conversation going on.
4. Follow mania: They follow all the celebrities and all those who have more than 1000 followers in a hope to attract some eyeballs.
5. Twomit dosage: While it is the lifeline of many, they continue to talk about the color of their underwear on twitter. Eating food, walking dog, brushing their teeth. It’s a moral obligation.They all know twitter has a threshold when it comes to maximum requests at an instance and maximum no. of tweets. However, they never refrain to curse twitter every time it suffers from an outage.

Indians in Social Media (2009)

By-and-large most of us would agree with that  Social media is still in a nascent stage in the Indian context and there is a lot that remains to be explored in the Social media space.

Having said that the ripples in the social media wave created by many Indians involved are ensuring that Social Media is taken to the next level.

Note: For (businesses [small or large] or individual/s) who are trying to understand the online medium and how they can use it.  You should definitely follow these guys, not because some of them qualify as so-called thought leaders, but since they’re early-starters, they might have a degree of influence on your mind with their observations.

Social Media Jobs in India

Image by markhillary via Flickr

Ever since the Web2.0 wave has caught up in India there has been a tremendous shift ! Shift in our thinking, our perception and the way we have looked towards internet & its capabilities. If you talk about an average business owner, he is looking very carefully at the dynamics of Web2.0 [conversations, community, culture, collaboration]. Irrespective of the domain he is trying to tap on its potential an learn from this medium.

However he knows that before making a leap and jumping into the pool, his brand needs an expert advice for creating a successful strategy.

For building a strategy you need helping hands, you need the ‘services’ of experts who can understand your needs to the core and guide you. This is where different schools of thought come-in.

The conservatives
As a business owner, I believe that I have an understanding of the Web 2.0 platform, I know what I need to do and where I need to go.I don’t think we need a specialist position or assistance from an agency/consultant for this.

The Street-smarts
I don’t think we have the in-house capabilities to drive our entire web2.0-strategy for us. I think it is best if we discuss our problems with an expert media agencies. The only compromise is in this case

The Futurists
I understand that I need to engage in healthy conversations for my brand and I think we need to hire chaps who can help us in doing just this. I might go in for one guy or a team of individuals depending on what my goals are. I don’t think agency will best serve our case as their perception will always be external. On the flip-side, if we have people are deeply engaged in our daily organizational activities they will certainly execute the plans in a much better way.

So which roles are these and what do these guys need to do? Lets have a look at some real job-descriptions from some Indian companies:

Social-media specialist [via Jobs India]

What does he do?

As a Social Media Specialist, you will be responsible for marketing and socialization of our client’s online content. Familiarity with the internet, social media sites, search engines, discussion boards, blogs, video sharing sites and pod casting is an asset but a willingness to learn is essential. You must possess excellent written and verbal communication skills in order to write and edit high quality content. A background in interactive marketing or public relations is considered a plus. The ability to find solutions in order to generate measurable results for clients is necessary as well as the generation of reports on those efforts.

Social-media marketing/campaign strategist [via Naukri.com]

– Conceptualize the innovative social media solutions to increase traffic to the web sites / portals
– Define strategy to improve end user involvement through Social Networks
– Define the avenues of revenue generation through increased and focused traffic
– Provide valuable insight and strategy for social media campaigns

Community Manager

I think this is one role that is evolving quite well. In bits-nd-pieces you will see some roles in the organization that are performing some actions from this role. Earlier this year, I had talked about the job-description and the need for Community manager at length.

Job-description [via a web portal]

• Growing membership and site traffic
• Designing and executing marketing initiatives
• Working with members to make them successful
• Finding members to contribute content to the communities
• Contributing product ideas

Not to forget the traditional roles of SEO analysts and Online marketers.

What is your take on this? Please do share other roles that I did miss? In the Indian context do you think we’ll see more such roles in the future?

Suggested reading:

Six types of social media agencies in India

Indian startups need more community managers

Social Media Scores over Mass Media Again

Are you a budding singer? Have you been rejected by one of the reality music shows? Is it curtains for you?

Nah.. think twice before actually coming to the conclusion that it is the end of the road for your singing career. The main-page story about Dr K Chaudhry in today’s Metro Now grabbed my attention.

Social Media trumps Mass Media?

Have you seen Pepsi‘s newest ad which is a spoof on Akshay Kumar‘s coke advertisement? Yeah the same ad which picks up from Akshay Kumar left us in the Thumbs up commercial.

Pepsi has certainly marked the rise of a new dawn with its ‘Youngistan Campaign’ by releasing the advertisement on YouTube before it actually hit the mass media.

The ad was prepared before IPL and was ready for launch on the mass media platform. As IPL still had sometime, thats when the Pepsi decided to zero in on YouTube.

• The concept behind Youngistan, the war b/w old and new was one of the reasons for selecting a new format. Youngistan is all about cool and young people and in India a heavy bunch of netizens are youngsters.
• It has hit the target audience in no time and ad posting didn’t cost a penny.
• The release has had a big time viral effect and is being reciprocated across multiple places.

Its a first for the Indian companies and definitely an example for others to follow. It would be too early to lookat the comparison statistics between the two different forms of media. However, if you’ve a product with internet penetration here’s one option for you to consider.

Related Youtube India Launch