Determining Success of Your Social Media Campaigns- 4 Suggestions

Vitality of social media for the business is beyond any doubt. Of course, not a single sensible marketer can skip this borderless market. It’s one of the famous jokes that ‘First populous country is China, Second India and third is Facebook (because it has over 850 million users)’.  However, there are few professionals who consider checking the ROI of their social media activity. Or in more simple words; social media audit is one of the most neglected areas of the whole campaign. Looking at the following suggestions, you can easily determine the success rate of your so far campaigns and also plan for better future promotions.

Conduct a Strategy Analysis:

A strategic analysis will help you remind what was planned initially and calculate the proportion of the tasks achieved. Strategy analysis covers your predetermined goals, platform selected for the marketing and bookmarking, bullet-points of marketing techniques, velocity and volume of activity and other related things. Also list the integrated services and applications (HotSuite, Skype etc.) and their results. Many people forget to do this and hence remain unable to calculate the profits/loss of the integrated experience or synergy.

Set Benchmarks:

Benchmarks are one of the best methods to analyze and calculate the progress of the projects. They help you manage the work in a balanced and disciplined manner. You can adopt two approaches in setting benchmark. Either set it initially before starting the campaign in terms of leads, likes or participation of the group members in your account. Or you can set periodical benchmarks and analyze the performance of your activity after a fixed interval in terms of good, better, average, bad or excellent.

When to Conduct the Audit/Analysis:

This is highly important factor that enables you to determine the success level of your analysis. At least one quarter of the year is a must time for conducting the social media audit because if you will do this exercise in the less amount of days, you might not be able to analyze the trends or make a rational conclusion. Moreover, as it’s a general trend that you analyze your SEO and online marketing campaigns after every 3-4 months, so this would be pretty good idea to look at social media perspectives of your e-marketing function.

What Should Be Focus Of Attention?

When you perform and analysis, your primary goal is to review your current success rate and then devise a strategy for future. When conducting social media audit, keep your focus on the individual factors and platforms (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and MySpace etc.) and collective output of integrated things. Many people keep on using Skype, Hotsuite, eBuddy etc. for social media platforms, but don’t perform performance analysis of these applications and their usage. To me, these applications, tools and technologies are very integral part of your whole social media and marketing strategy. So, do conduct their individual as well as integrated experience analysis.

In short, by defining and refreshing the goals, setting benchmarks and conducing performance analysis of individual as well as collective elements of the campaign, you can visibly get pretty handsome idea of success or failure of your campaigns. Hence, the management of your business and social media campaigns become more comprehensive and successful manner.

The Idea of Success and Successful Life

One of the quotes that influenced my thinking about life was by a football coach; John Wooden, who said; “Success is peace of mind which is direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming”. You might need a little concentrated effort to digest and understand the ‘heavy quote’ by one of the most successful sports coaches not only in United States, but also at the global front. His pyramid of success is understood to be one of the most popular theories in the study of success and personal development. Here is a video which might help you understand his idea in a much better and easy manner.

The fundamental objective to mention the listed theory is nothing but to give you an idea of how successful people think about success or what is their personal perception of a successful life. Brain Tracy had discussed one thing years back about ‘goal setting’ and successful life. He raised at least two main points as the core factors behind failure of majority of people. First, their inability to set goals and secondly poor selection of goals and objectives are the main problems in living a successful life. Then he came up with his own version of goals setting theory and practices.

The approach is visible in any philosopher and guru’s lectures and write-ups, as everyone will come up with his own version of success and then may also highlight certain elements, hidden from us. Even when started writing ‘Diary of a Chief Executive’, I was unaware of many areas, points and elements of success in our life that could play a very important role. The most important discovery of me in the whole writing career is that success and successful life are totally individual domains, because every one has his own version and idea of success. You may be a successful person from the perspective of one philosopher, but might not be a great person from your personal views.

The primary bone of contention here is the “definition of success” and individual theory of life and successful living. Mainly, people consider rich people as successful people as they have all the luxuries and necessities of life etc. is this right perception?

To me, “NO”, because life is not restricted to money and monetary rewards alone, they can just be a minor part of grand success theory, but earning more money is essentially not a success alone. There are many domains in life, personal, professional, family, health, societal, organizational, spiritual etc. and you have to come up with the idea of success that could accommodate every part of your life.

When Brain Tracy discusses goal-setting theory, he mentions all of the given domains and insists to specify goals for every domain. Financial goals, professional goals, health goals, family goals etc. and hence, nobody is going to declare a financial literate a successful person if his other domains depict a poor performance.

In short, a successful life is the one, which gives you satisfaction in what you have achieved and what you are achieving in various domains. However, success in one domain does not mean that a person is a successful everywhere. Making smart goals in every part of life and then strategizing to achieve those is the real art to have a successful life. However, in this life management process, your individual perception of “what is success” and a successful life matters the most. So think today, and ask yourself and come up with your own version, but do pay heed to what successful people around have said on the subject.

Wishing you a much successful life ahead!!!!

Getting Motivation from Apple and Samsung

This week was a busy week for me, and I could not find much time to write for my blog management4success. Now, when I sit to write, looking at my twitter timeline, lots of topics are emerging on the surface of my brain. However, I selected the one, which motivated my more than anything else in the last couple of days. I am sharing the motivation with you!

In the last 10 days, at least two statistical releases made news around the globe; one was by Apple Inc. and the other was from Samsung. Both of companies announced their quarterly performance reports, which made records. According to Apple, it sold over 37.04 million iPhones in the last quarter of 2011, whereas the net quarterly profit rose to over $13 billion. The detailed report indicates some astonishing figures; like, $46.33 billion quarterly revenue, over 74% increase in the annual earning and record breaking sales of iPhone.

A very interesting report indicated that Apple sold around 37.04 million smartphones in the quarter which is greater than the number of babies born in the same time period. If you take the daily average, the average sale of IPhones stood at 377,900, while the number of babies per day remained 371,000. With record breaking earnings, Apple has now vowed to come with iTV; its own version of televisions and LCDs.

On the other hand, on Friday, January 27, Samsung Electronics announced its official data for the last quarter of 2011. As per the release, the South Korean company earned over $2.5 billion net profit which is 75% more than previous year. Although there was no official figure for the volume of smartphones sold, but according to sources, the company shipped over 36.5 million galaxy tablets in the quarter, ending December 31. When it comes to annual sales, Samsung outshined Apple’s performance with selling  97.4 million smart devices in the year.

I am not going to discuss here as which brand performed better, instead; I found motivational lessons in both cases. In the case of Apple, the performance was remarkable as despite losing the main brain; Steve Jobs, the company did not lose the momentum and Tim Cook proved him to be a great successor to the best CEO of our time. The type of leadership, resilience and commitment to its slogan of ‘integrating design, innovation and service’, Apple has been remarkable. Today, Apple has become the industry leader once again, while outclassing its rivals; Nokia, RIM etc.

While Samsung is not a US based company; the South Korean brand made history this year, as it has outshined the performance of all industry players, including Apple. Some years back, the competition was in between Canadian firm RIM (The name behind BlackBerry) and Apple’s iPhone. While Nokia, LG, HTC, Motorola etc. were also few of leading cell phone makers. However, Samsung made a history by defeating brands of all developed world and today it’s global leader in terms of smartphones sales.

What do these stories basically tell you? Just few things!

• You need wisdom of Steve Jobs, not his physical existence to succeed
• Prioritization, knowing ‘what is management’ and planning to become leader, matter the most in today’s competitive world. Being American is no more a guarantee of success!
• The best CEO is not the one who leads himself, but the one, who guide others to lead the organization, even after him.
• Constant innovation, creativity, integration, team building and succession planning are the prerequisites for long term and sustainable growth as an organization.
• Getting top position does not matter as much as matters ‘retaining it’.
• People may die, companies may be formed and liquidated, but the legacy is something that still rules, not the bodies, but the souls and minds J

People like me, who are keen to know ‘how to get rid of demotivation’ should read stories like the one, listed above.

Have a successful week ahead! God Bless you !

2 Words that Write the Story of Your Success

Reblogged from Diary of A Chief Executive:

If you talk about just one factor which can determine your peak performance on the consistence basis, that would be ‘Adaptability’. Adaptability is the ability of a person to show flexibility in the changing circumstances and manage change. This ability is very critical for your success without any doubt, because of many factors. In the modern age, everything changes so fast that you find it difficult to track it completely.

Read more… 485 more words

Changing Dynamics of Social Networks Management

Social interactions and networking have become one of the most important aspects of modern day business management. You can expect to run a business without having in touch wit your audience and market in the social network.  Every social network in itself has become a separate market for the companies to target. Facebook has over 800 million; Twitter has over 300 million, while LinkedIn has around 140 million professionals registered. This is just a snapshot of what the top networking websites have to offer the businesses.

However, very few businesses are able to tab the business potential of these websites. Almost every professional organization does have a fan page, group or marketing page on the social networks, but very few companies are able to engage the customers there. First look at the possible reasons, why the businesses are not receiving better and profitable response from the customers and then some of the possible solutions are also jotted down.

Here are some of the fundamental factors that can be declared as social media bottlenecks for the businesses.

• The main hurdle in the whole social media capitalization is mindset. Majority of the business managers don’t take the social media networks anymore seriously.
• If they have any page, businesses use the fan pages for announcements, marketing press releases and promotional campaigns only.
• There is no interaction with the customer to get their feedbacks, so dead marketing and status update are relied only, which does not work in today’s rapidly changing social interactions and environmental factors.

Suggestions:

• The primary objective of social media platforms is to provide people a platform to share views, opinions, feedbacks, photos, videos etc. However, the corporate sector is unable to create and implement proper and effective the plan of action for social media management. The foremost thing which new companies need to do is to build up the professional fan pages and groups with clear intention of engaging the customers in the corporate affairs.
• If you look at general management practices of fortune 500 companies, you can visibly see that their groups are interactive and seek feedbacks. So give a platform to the customers to speak to you as it will benefit you.
• Some group-administrators block status updates from the customers, and hence, the customer cannot give the feedback on the group status bar. These restrictions might prove out to be good from privacy/anti-spamming point of view, but they are terribly bad from marketing and CRM perspectives.
• In order to get the customers’ feedback, it is virtually important to give them freedom to speak for and against you in the groups. In today’s changing corporate dynamics and environment, virtual feedback is even more important than that of third party surveys.
• The social media groups should be managed by the company’s official social media or customer relations manager. This will increase customer’s satisfaction about the reliability and authenticity of group. Moreover, people give feedback, only if they think that they will be heard.

In short, social media campaigns need to be made more interactive and less marketing oriented if you want greater results. The listed points may be debatable, but they do have some credible backing and logic behind them.

What is Time Management Indeed??

The most prominent quality of the successful people is that, they are the best time managers and use their time as the most important asset for them. As said by Brain Tracy, ‘Time management is Life management’, so the case of managing your time is much more than an expertise or ability. Those people who develop the habit of utilizing their available time in the areas, where the return on investment is higher, are indeed the best performers. Whether you talk about the personal life or professional life, your ability to divide the fair amount of time for every activity you involve in, will determine the quality of your life.

It is generally said, we are living in the era of time constrains or time-deficit, where people do not find enough time to become as competitive as their peers are. I do not agree with this simply because of the fact that, there are thousands of people, who are still making millions, earning good reputes and developing relations and networks. So, if the deficit is general, why are those people so much successful, than the rest? If the problem is common and shared, why do some of them are extraordinarily performing and getting the most out of the same 24 hours that we posses? Do they have 48 hours a day?

No, the case is not like this, indeed they too have the same 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year. However, they have developed the ability to use their time in an efficient manner like some precious asset, and hence their return on that asset is higher than that of ordinary people. Some of the people are of the view that this type of skills and abilities are natural and cannot be cultivated or adopted. To some extent this is true, that natural abilities and talent does play a very important role. However, this does not rule out the importance and significance of putting an effort to learn something.

All of us have the natural ability to learn, to speak, to live and read. Then why is that so, that some people are more expert in speaking, reading or doing something than the rest? This is simply because of the fact that, they put extra efforts to learn more, and hence, they have more knowledge, skills and abilities. Now, having said this entire let me put this in another way. Your ability to manage your time and indeed life, can be developed, sharpened and improved with the passage of time and a little but regular investment.

Time wasters are only those people, who do not value their as well as other people’s time. If you want to become successful time manager or let’s say life manager, you will have to understand the value of your time. Just remind yourself of the fact that a moment passed will never come again. Once you develop a sense of value for your time and life, you will start thinking differently and this is indeed start of a new life, the better one, the excellent one.

Beating Stress- A Question of Discipline

Job & professional responsibiities are major cause of stress and depression

A recent survey conducted by Neilson Company has indicated that majority of the women live stressfully around the globe without exception of developed and developing economies. The aforementioned survey is an indication that the psychosocial life of generations coming ahead will largely be affected as the stressful parents, mothers particularly cannot bring up children. Quoting this survey was just giving you a portrayal of our gloomy social and personal life in the modern age. This clearly indicates that our happiness cannot be guaranteed with the money only.

The economic development can be declared as an integral part of the whole system that creates a sense of happiness, but it cannot be declared as the sole guarantee of the happiness or a cool and calm societal life. Just look at the list in the survey, and you will find that India, despite growing economically, faces huge dilemma in terms of controlling stressful living of its population. Around 87% of the women there live in very stressful conditions. The case of Russia, Mexico, France and even US is not different as more than half of the female population (53%) there too live stressfully.

I am not a psychologist to give you some useful tips to control the stress level from your life; instead, being a student of management sciences, I always try to find some managerial perspective behind any success and problem. Here, whatever may be the basis of survey, questionnaires and factors of consideration; one thing is clear that this is a big problem in terms of self management. Particularly, when the official press release of the Nielsen says that, “Women are increasing their spending power, and with that they gain more control and influence over key household decisions” it clearly indicates a major factor.

Whenever, your level of responsibility increases, your decision making power is endorsed or you are promoted in the work force; you face this dilemma. When you embrace new responsibilities, you basically need new set of skills to meet the tasks, jobs and work or relationship problems. Like, when you get married, get a job, get promotion, start new business, engage in a partnership or start a new project; you face the same problem. This is called the self-management or change management crisis. This can best be described as a problem of discipline or managing your responsibilities and life equally well.

The most important thing in this regard is your mindset, as you can change everything around by simply changing your attitude and way of looking at things. Make up your mind about your life and goals. Set priorities whether you are doing a regular job or not, because it is not necessary at all that you engage in a professional work to learn and adopt disciplined approach. Impose discipline in your home, by making your life a systematic. This does not mean that you should become too rigid or boring; instead, this means that you should make up your priorities and give them the time against their relative importance. Stress management starts with self-management and the later is nothing but DISCIPLINE….!!!

WISHING YOU A STRESS-FREE LIFE…