New Year resolution - Back to Basics

Back to Basics

With just a few days away from a year end, I set out thinking about what should be my new year resolution. Out in a flash came the phrase " Back to Basics". Then I started on a nostalgic sojourn of  blissful memories of my childhood. One of the things that I enjoyed th most was to go to the daily market with my dad to pick vegetables and fresh fruits. The experience was amazing as it involved a wonderful conversation between the buyer and the seller about the goods. The seller was proud of quality of goods that he had many stories to tell us... like stories about green vegetables from a particular village and how different was it from the ones that come from cities. This was followed by a healthy rate negotiations. At the end of the purchase both the buyer and seller stood to gain for the relationship was based on so much of trust and faith..

Absolutely no post purchase dissonance.

Now, think about our current daily experiences. Any purchase that we make on a daily basis is not without dissonance. Forget dissonance. Is there a conversation between buyer and seller? We behave like humanoids that walk-through the store picking up stuff that we need and walkout. Convenience is buzzword. Relationships exist only at a loyalty card level.Brands behave like inanimate objects. There is no talk/conversation between brands and buyers. Then where is the question of relationships.

Part of this problem can solved by Social Media. For a moment stop thinking of Internet and Social Media as an alternate platform for selling/brand building. In simple terms,Internet or Social Media are like the markets. These are meeting places out to humanize our day-day interactions. They are fast turning out to be the credible alternative to the real markets as customers are already talking on the web.

All that the brands have to do is to be

• Honest
• Sincere
• Responsive

This will help build conversations hence relationship. Don't worry about making mistakes. You will redeem yourselves through honest transactions with customers. But be paranoid about inaction.

Ain't these Basics!!!

Facebook User - Do you have a "Status Fatigue?"

Status Fatigue

After Google, its now Facebook's turn to become a verb. People are hooked on to Facebook with rapt attention and curosity. Updates happens every second about one's dress, movies, iPhone, friends and what not.

An average Facebook user may have atleast 250-300 friends in his/her list. Usually, it starts with school/ college friends and extends to people with common interests whom we may have never met. This friends list is now an eclectic mix with or without a common connection.

In a friends list with no common connection, there is a good chance a status update may appeal to a set of friends while it may be irrelavant to the others in the friends list. For example:old school reunion may be relevant to my school friends but not to my Digital Marketing friendsters. When the status  is irrelevnt  to a set of friends for a certain time period , it may cause something called as " Status Hyperopia" ( friendsters losing sightof my status updates) and will result in my friends/friensters hiding the status updates or changing privacy settings to block my status updates.

Solution: Right content to relevant people

The way to avoid this is to tag status updates to specific /relevent audiences. This can be done using @friends name in status box or using custom settings near the status update box.

The idea is ensure relevent updates goes to the right audiences to avoid "Status Fatigue".

So, what's your status? Customized