Why This Kolaveri Di a Viral Marketing Hit?

Sony Music India has created a viral phenomenon, the likes of which has never been seen before in India, for the cros- cultural Tamil-English musical hit "Why this Kolaveri Di."Reaching over 29 million hits and 85,792 comments on Youtube in just over four short weeks. In just 10 hours, Why This Kolaveri Di, written and sung by Dhanush, became the most-searched song on Google and most-shared on Facebook. The song Kolaveri appeared as the number one Indian trend on Twitter on November 21, with many tweeting random bits of the song.

The term Kolaveri, meaning ‘murderous rage’, is now being picked up by marketers and brands alike and people in other parts of the work as a form of expression. The track is also the first regional language (Tamil) song ever to see a high rotation on Mainstream Music Channels - play listed on 43 Radio Stations Pan-India and gaining.

In fact , the song has got many versions released, “Female Version”, “Give me Milk Version by Naveen Nigam”, and “One Random Remix” after its sentional hit on the internet. There are almost 1000 search results appearing for the search query Kolaveri Di on YouTube.

Now there are many spoof videos floating around the YouTube based on Kolaveri Di, which indicates the height of popularity of the song.

According to social media analytics firm Social Hues, Between 1 and 10 November (even before the official launch of the song), there were 43,800 mentions of Kolaver in the US, 7,000 in France and 4,000 from the UAE. Tamil movie fanatics (mostly male) and non-resident Indians drove most of the traffic in the US and the Gulf, and students studying abroad made up the majority of mentions in Europe.

From 16 November on, according to Social Hues, the rate of Twitter mentions of Kolaveri increased by nearly 200% every day, starting at 179 and peaking a week later at 14,907 tweets on 24 November—the day after it became the first Tamil film song to be played on MTV and Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan (Famous Bollywood Actor) had tweeted about his admiration for the tune. Most traffic was driven by Facebook, which accounted for nearly 80% of social media mentions of the song, followed by Twitter and YouTube, according to Social Hues.

Life Goes On Without You...

It has been a few months, long and tiring months, since my love, Juhi, was killed in United States. Although the journey hasn't been easy, I can say with thanks to friends and God, for making it bearable. The overwhelming of support can be summed up in a single word: humbling. I cannot ever express enough thanks to the men and women around me; you held me up when I stumbled, you gave me the strength to continue, you reminded me to breath.

I still remember how fun my times were with her. Its hard to believe now that she is long gone. I am not sure how hard it is for others who are forced to lose their loved one's to an crappy accident. For me, time stopped when I heard that she met with an terrible accident while heading home and struggling for life. Eventually, she couldn't make it and I had to lose her. I was scared to believe that I could see those beautiful smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die!

Every now and then my mind would linger on a single thought - about Juhi's life and her accomplishments, and I wondered how I influenced her, if at all. I always described her as being able to do anything I could do, "only better". Hearing all sort of things of her furthered this perception. She was adorable, a good lover, probably the most beautiful girl in the world, and she made people laugh and feel good about themselves and most importantly to me.

Each one of us goes on with the lives we were given. What scares me most is that this wouldn't change, this sorrow, this mourning, this sense of loss. And I would be changing, moving on to new relationships, new friendships, and new interests and still be dead inside. As I continue on my journey, I will heal and grow. Life goes on without you, I wish you here…

Certain Things You Must Know About Social Media

It is now a buzz that social media marketing will merge into other marketing activities and there will not be opportunity for a separate Social Media marketer. So, Do you have a career in social media marketing? Will social media have a life apart of all other marketing activities? Well, I think that the answer to both of these questions YES.

As it said, Brand is the community of people who feel affinity to it. We use different tools like TV, Facebook, print ads, events, Twitter to communicate with that group. The main goal is the connection between community members and the brand. You would want to make existing members more engaged and bring in new people.

It’s a bit like public relations, but on a much more personalized way. In some cases you will be talking to a single person or a small group on the other hand you can use TV to reach millions in a way that community expects you to. For example TV ads will be personalized… though! Not just that we show ads based on the interests and behavior of the viewer but the ad content itself will be personalized with the name of the person, favorite color, earlier purchases or activity on the social networks.

The community manager’s work will span all channels and strive to be as personal as possible. So, you could say that you are doing web banners or TV ads, but they wouldn’t work without the social context. This is insanely powerful! One ad agency used my name and the name of my girlfriend in the character dialog. This ad ran a few months ago and I still remember the ad and the context. This can be scaled!

Social networks will be the core and marketing will be the tools to build it. Post-sale interaction will grow in tremendously as the real experience of using the brand will make people more engaged and willing to share their experiences. You lay your marketing plans by analyzing the underlying social graph. Then you put a post here, a discount there, maybe a TV ad in certain region, etc.

As Jeremiah Owyang pointed out one on one social media doesn’t scale. This means that the task of social media marketer will be to build and nurture the true fans of the brand. True fans will be the group that helps you scale without losing personal touch. You will give away a lot of control but the rewards will be worth it.

In contrast, the social media marketer has to train the people inside the company to interact with the community. Achieving authenticity may be difficult for some and helping them to relate to the consumers of their work is very important.

Social media marketer, community manager or SMO, call her what you will. The one who builds the stickiest social graph around their brand will win. Now technology has given us the tools to actually measure and work with that social graph...

How Important Is It To Measure ROI In Social Media

A lot of excitement and optimism surround the potential of social media for marketers-after all, that is where attractive audience segments are starting to amass-but just like any marketing medium, measurement is a critical component for success.

But how do you turn data into dollars when you don’t have the right metrics to tell you why you’re getting your current results? How do you prevent future failure?

The key is actionable metrics: data that help you understand the ‘why’ behind a result, while supporting your efforts to reach higher performance targets. Such metrics are the little heroes of the data world, because they deliver actionable insights to help you make smart decisions that positively affect your bottom line.

Social media measurement is quite immature, just as Web analytics was back in the mid-1990s. It will evolve quickly as marketers attempt different approaches and hold enterprise measurement firms accountable to help make sense of all the activity data generated by social media interactions. In turn, social media can seem very challenging, and at times even impossible, to measure with regard to its effects. At its core, digital measurement is contingent on controlling the customer experience and laying tracking hooks along the way to understand response and subsequent behavior. However, social media's foundation challenges this very tenet: The consumer is now in control after all!

Three Useful Points to Consider in Social Media Marketing and Measurement

1) Clarity is key: define your success
As with all media, before diving in, ask yourself: what will it take for you to look back at the campaign and say that it was successful? Perhaps it will be based on the number of coupons downloaded, the number of 18-24 year olds who become fans on Facebook, CRM signups or overall brand effectiveness measures and attitudinal shifts… Only you know what is important, but whatever it is, be clear about it so you can prepare to measure it, and adjust your campaign on the fly if need be.

2) Keep measurement simple and familiar

To break this down, separate quantity questions from quality questions. On the quantity side, keep it simple: know how many people you want to reach, and then measure how many you actually reached post-campaign. Make these metrics as familiar as possible – if they are expressed in comparable terms to other parts of your campaign, they are more likely to be tangible and accepted. Reach and frequency metrics are not going away any time soon.

The quality question allows for a bit more creativity – here is where you can bring in ‘engagement’ and otherwise tie in your KPI’s from (1) back into your web program. Basically, you are building a track record with your brand and making the case that there were quality elements which underscored that social media marketing was a good choice. Depending on what your success markers were, these metrics will vary – but can range from ‘branding” metrics (e.g. as measured through comScore’s Brand Metrix studies) all the way to the lift in offline purchasing.

3) Control is not the point, listening is

We know, we know… this is a scary premise. But even the best clarity, choreography and execution cannot completely guarantee control in a social media campaign. So let’s imagine for a moment that we can suspend our disbelief about relinquishing control and needing to communicate, and focus instead on how to be heard -- because attention, after all, is a scarce commodity. How might this be valuable, and what is the added value of being able to listen directly, and adjust when needed?

The value proposition here is also the trade-off – this is two-way, and frequently one-to-many. Listen to the good. Respond quickly to the bad, and respond even faster to the ugly. Enable the conversation, rather than attempting to put it in a chokehold. People are talking about your brand anyway, so you may as well get down in the weeds and know what’s going on.

Social Media Measurement - 6 Key Metrics

Today number of social media monitoring tools are available to monitor conversations that are relevant to your brand or company. Many of these tools also now offer built-in engagement components which allows you to easily engage in relevant conversations. In addition to ease of use, another key benefit of these tools is that you can also track and measure the conversations you participate in through one easy solution.

This makes social media engagement much more easier to manage, However a key point is still missing. You got to have a true social media measurement dashboard to understand the impact of your social media efforts.

That's because there aren't any truly robust tools that go beyond monitoring social media to measuring your social media efforts, you'll likely need to create your own dashboard for now. The following are six key metrics that should be part of your social media measurement dashboard.

1. Gross Views/Total Views

It's the aggregate of views across your various social media channels. It represents the number of times users were exposed to your brand through your social media channels. The calculation will vary depending on the channels that you use, but some of the metrics that go into this calculation include:

* Facebook page views
* Blog page views
* YouTube channel views
* YouTube video views
* Flickr photo views

2. Connections

This is a calculation of anyone who has explicitly expressed an interest in your brand or company. By expressing their interest, the user has taken the next step beyond just being exposed to your brand or company to now having a relationship where a conversation can take place.

Some of the metrics that will fall under the connection calculation include:

* Blog subscribers
* Facebook fans/likes
* Twitter followers
* YouTube friends and subscribers
* LinkedIn group members

3. Audience Engagements

Audience engagement is a measure of how actively your audience is engaging with or talking about your brand or company. A few of the key metrics that go into the calculation include:

* Blog comments
* Twitter retweets and @ tweets
* Facebook interactions
* YouTube interactions
* Social media brand mentions

4. Social Media Referrals

Likely one of your ultimate goals of a social media campaign is to drive visitors to a site where a conversion can take place. Measuring social media referrals to your site is thus a critical component of a social media measurement dashboard.

In order to properly measure social media referrals, there will need to be some set up and configuration with your web analytics tool. Once this has been completed, you'll be able to measure social media referrals that can be tied directly to your efforts as well as social media referrals that aren't directly attributed to your efforts.

To learn more about setting up and configuring your web analytics tool, check out part one and part two of "Measuring Social Media With Web Analytics."

5. Social Media Conversions

You'll likely be judged based on the business value that you deliver through your social media efforts, so just showing metrics (e.g., connections and audience engagement) won't impress your superiors. You need to show how these types of metrics translate into conversions that provide value to your company.

If you've properly set up and configured your web analytics tool to measure social media referrals and you've defined your site goals, then you're ready to measure conversions. You should measure conversions from each social media channel and then roll it up into total conversions that can be attributed to social media.

6. My Engagements

This is a measure of your activity within the social media space and is increasingly a type of metric that social media monitoring tools are including. Looking at how this metric correlates with the other metrics included in your dashboard can begin to show the impact that your social media efforts are having.

Some of the metrics that should be included in the engagement calculation are:

* Internal blog posts
* External blog and forum comments
* Facebook posts
* Twitter retweets, @ tweets, and general tweets
* YouTube video posts

While these six metrics in a dashboard aren't going to show a complete picture of your social media efforts, they will put you on the right path to justifying the resources that are being directed towards social media.

Your social media dashboard should include additional metrics that are custom to your business needs and how you're engaging in social media. By creating your own social media dashboard that has the ability to show the impact of your social media efforts, you'll be in great position to bide time until a truly robust social media measurement tool is available.

Social Networking - The Art of Driving Online Traffic

Traffic is the life blood of Online business and social media marketing is a way to have your traffic find you. Today you will find millions of baby boomers out there today taking the skills they have developed over their career and applying them to new businesses. The traffic through Social networking is free and can be very beneficial for those new businesses.



When you get internet traffic to your business the following good things will happen..

People will see your message, find out who you are and what you have to offer. You will be watched on Social Media, it is up to you to be consistent in your message in order for people to know, like and trust you.

You can become an authority in your niche. Become well known in your niche. The more internet traffic you can direct to your site the more well known your site will become. The days of "build it and they will come" are long gone, you will have to work to get traffic to your site. The good news is that it gets easier as time goes by when you are consistent and provide value.

More internet traffic will result in more sales. As always the more eyes on your product or service the more sales you will make. We all like to believe that our product is good for everyone, but that is never the case. People are all at different times and places in their lives and business and will not all be ready for what you have to offer. I teach social marketing to clients or maintain their accounts for them and I know that people who do not even have a business yet will not be interested in my products and services. They are not ready.

More internet traffic will also result in you being able to make more money. When I started on the journey of building my business I had a coach who kept telling me "it's not about the money" and that I needed to do things for free. I now understand that is not true, without money coming in I was unable to continue because it was costing me money to provide the information he kept telling me to provide. As a business professional it is your responsibility to make money, you must do so in order to sustain in business.

Kumar - Social Networking Expert Author

Are You Ready to Rock The Interview..

Introduction in a corporate world holds a huge importance of an individual to introduce himself/herself efficiently before a stranger. Unfortunately, in majority of the Interviews, I have seen people with really good academic records stumbling badly and it all starts with inability to introduce yourself.

The job interview is made up of several parts, and each part is instrumental in telling the interviewer more about the candidate.

Needless to say that the first part, the introduction part, is one of the most important parts in any job interview – the initial impression, the first interview seconds/minutes, affect the entire application process for a prospective candidate.

The first question you will probably be asked in an interview is:

“Can you please introduce yourself?” or "Can you tell me about yourself”.

Here are some tips to help you make a strong first impression.

What to Say when Introducing Yourself?

The interviewer doesn’t want to know details about your personal life, but to know that you can do the job based on your qualification and what you’ve achieved in your previous jobs – that your professional abilities fit into the job and its requirements.

Think of these first words, the introduction words, as a preview of yourself, so that you focus your answer to address what really maters the interviewer – tell enough interesting information, main topics, about yoursel so that the interviewer can easily take the lead of the conversation and continue the interview.

How to introduce yourself professionally in an Interview?
Few key points about yourself

As it is the beginning of the interview, you will be able to provide only few key points about yourself that are interesting and yet useful for the continuity of the job interview:

In two or three sentences focus on what most interests the interviewer – start with your most recent job, explain why you are interested in this position and why you are well qualified for the position – your key qualification and professional qualities.
Highlight your greatest achievements – put forward short statements (or a short story) that draw attention to your accomplishments.

Answer the Questions Concisely:

While introducing yourself, try to be precise. A long and winding introduction may put off the interviewer right from the beginning – the best way to introduce oneself in an interview is to prepare a brief speech, an oral profile, which would be easy to remember, so that one can say it out flawlessly, confidently, subtly and yet has good impression on the interviewer.

Never make it too long – make it up to 1 minute top. You would want to interact with the interviewer as soon as possible, giving him a chance to lead the conversation rather than missing your way right at the beginning of the conversation.

Don’t repeat phrases from your resume:

Remember that your resume is already on the table – your resume is in front of the interviewer. Of course, you will be able to expend more about info that is written in the resume during the interview flow.

Asking this question, the interviewer wants an introduction speech, a briefer – he/she will wait to hear the main points about you.