Social Commerce drives Online Business

The below article was published in Qatar Today - Oct 2011 issue. The article highlights the way Social Media has redefined itself and a financial perspective to it.

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Social Commerce drives Online Business

Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver- Ayn Rand

Human beings always like to be in control of things. However, in today’s world humans are being controlled by money. Internet and Social Media are no exceptions to the greenback.

Last week, I was looking for a SLR camera to gift someone that would be easy to operate. While I would never have taken the time to email or call all my friends to ask which SLRs they liked, I felt updating my status on Facebook and asking for help would be a good choice. Guess what within an hour, a stream of comments and suggestions started to list on my Facebook wall. This helped me to take a decision to buy the SLR.

Social commerce is an emerging buzzword that has caught the attention of many including people who called Social Media a fad. It is an area which may redefine the way people engage with social media, and how will they share information. It may also change the way we share information and content with peers.

As we share information and converse with people on Social Media site, the level of trust has increased, so has our comfort level to perform financial transactions. At present, like any other new trends, social commerce is surrounded by uncertainty on issues like

• how will people use the platform to make payments,

• which type of devices will be used to share content,

• how will the brands capitalize on this opportunity

Currently, major developments are taking place on the Facebook platform, as brands want to engage 750 million active users, and develop a platform to purchase products and facilitate payments. This development has been given a new name called F-Commerce

Buddy Media, a Facebook marketing company gives us examples of how successful F-Commerce is: -

• Groupon made 11 million dollars in one day on a GAP promotion

• Pampers – a baby care website, sold 1000 diapers in 1 hour on its Facebook store.

• Ticket Fly – 3.25 average sales generated through Facebook shares.

“Share” (on Facebook) drives Sales; more the people share and recommend better chances of increase in sales.

According to Buddy Media: -

• The predicted revenue for the social commerce market in 2015 will be over $30 billion.

• 90% of all purchase decisions are subject to influence

• 67% spend more online after recommendations

Coca Cola has also got a transaction page set up on Facebook, which enables a fan to purchase branded merchandise directly on the page and make payments.

Take a look at where have Venture Capitalists invested their money in 2011 to ensure maximum returns.

• Groupon (group-buy) $950m

• StoreEnvy (social marketplace) $1.5m

• PlumDistrict (group-buy) $8.5m

• ShopSocial (social shopping/rewards) $1.2m

• Snapdeal (group-buy) $12m

• VillageVines (flash-sales club) $3m

• Baynote (ratings, reviews and recommendations) $13m

• Pose (social shopping/rewards) $1.6m

• Vitrue (Facebook commerce) $17m

All the above sites are closely related to the Share and Buy phenomenon. Your peers recommend a product or a service which may encourage you to buy the same.

Google has also taken a plunge in Social Commerce and is working to commercialize its homepage. This would help balance the competition, as both the giants’ battle for the market share.

The other side to the F-Commerce is the privacy issue, which Facebook has been battling for a while. Some people may not want their social interactions and graphs to be monetized at all. Rather they could do their 'social commerce' on Amazon, or the actual online retail store.

Some brands may actually try to influence their products and services by writing fake reviews. However in the past many brands have been busted for artificially raising their rankings online.

According to techcrunch.com, PowerReviews, a company that provides customer review technology for retailers and e-commerce sites has raised $10 million in new funding this year. This investment brings PowerReview’s total venture funding to $37 million. It shows how powerful online reviews are and how many companies may try to control and get their hands on it.

The social media hype is good for giants like Coca-Cola and Pampers, as they can afford million dollars in advertising. However, the mom and pop stores need to spend significant time to crack a solution which gives them returns. Social Commerce drivers need to give affordable option to small and medium enterprises to break into this stream.

It’s great to see that we are starting to analyze online conversation using numbers which will highlight the results and effectiveness of social media.

Fujitsu Lifebook - T 901

I have recently got a Fujitsu Lifebook T 901, which is an awesome notebook. 

The laptop has some awesome features like: - 

• Finger print sensor
• Bi-directional rotatable display
• Multi touch - screen pad
• Charge you phones/media devices even when the system is turned off via the USB port
• 3G port to help you be connected anytime
• Intel Core i7 vProNext 

Having a Modular bay for an optional second hard disk drive or another battery makes my life so easy and the notebook will become my travel companion. 

The notebook only weighs 2.0 kg, which makes it possible to carry around.

The left hand side pic shows a list of items received in the box, including the accessories. 


The items include:-

• The notebook
• Additional Battery pack
• A carry case
• CD/Manuals
• Charger/Cables
• Cleaning cloth

Check out some more reviews of the Lifebook T901 here.

Emergence of Mocial Marketing

The below article was published in Qatar Today magazine, September 2011 issue. The article highlights innovative mobile marketing technique adopted by brands. Click on the below pics to continue reading.

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Emergence of Mocial Marketing

Mobile marketing has come way beyond sending the 160 character text. With the growing popularity of smart phones the scope of reaching your customer via the mobile channel has grown.

Mobile and social media are merging and this integration of social networking and mobile will change the way we reach out to our customers.

According to Silverpop, an email marketing firm, a survey revealed the following results –

More than 75 percent of the marketers polled stated that their campaigns are only somewhat “mocially” integrated or not at all integrated.

Twitter and Facebook dominate the social scene, while only four percent of respondents are currently using location-based services, such as Foursquare and Gowalla, in their marketing efforts.

  

QR (Quick Response) is one of the popular tools that has been successfully adopted by Online marketers for mocial marketing. QR codes, a decades-old technology that was first used in the supply chain and now has become a way of mobile marketing.

  

A QR code is a matrix or two-dimensional bar code readable by dedicated smart phone (camera enabled).

How do you use QR code: when you see the code on a billboard, magazine page, on the metro, etc, scan it with a smart phone that has the necessary code-reading software. The code can contain a text, image or can a redirect the person to a mobile website.

How can marketers use it – Share your campaign information that can include anything from special promotion and competitions to images. Use it on your print media to share additional info or some other message.

  

Benefit – You can always change the URL code in the QR to show different content. Unlike in print media, if there is a mistake in your marketing campaign you don’t need to reprint the content. When you hand out brochures, collection of data is almost close to impossible unless you conduct a survey later on. QR marketing is able to collect details of each access of the QR Code instantly.

QR Codes Fact Sheet (via Queaar a social communication platform): -

• Q2-2011, QR scanning traffic was rising at an astonishing rate of 9840% vs Q2 2010
• QR codes are scanned more by women (64%) than men (36%)
• 35-44 year old users have scanned the most
• 87% of users expect a coupon or deal when they scan a code
• 68% of scans are done via iPhone
• New York is the leading city in the US for QR code scanning
• The most QR codes scanned globally are in Japan

Who is using QR Codes?

Starbucks wanted to allow their customers to pay for their latte’s via mobile media. They thought it would be an old fashioned way giving them prepaid cards and then swiping them on POS machines. So they decided to develop an app for iPhone to help customer pay and top up their ‘e-card’ using their own mobile phones.

It works like this –

- punch in your Starbucks card info

- verify some details, and the iPhone app becomes the gift/e-card.

- A secure QR code is generated for the store to scan when you pay the bill.

This payment mode is now enabled over 1000 Starbucks stores in USA.

Nissan Motor Company has begun fixing QR codes on vehicle window of their 2012 Altima. The QR codes link users directly to a mobile optimized page that includes videos, features, vehicle inventory levels and more. The customer can give feedback and know more about the car they have bought.

  

Try creating your QR codes on : -

http://www.mobile-barcodes.com/

http://www.createqrcode.appspot.com/

The study of human behavior shows that incentives offered for completing a task, tend to be addictive.

An outright example for this is location based website – Foursquare. The mobile app encourages people to share their location wherever they are. The users try to check-in to locations several times to receive one of the several badges offered by the site.

  

The entire experience of achieving the “Mayor” status of a particular location gives users immense pleasure. The commercial side of this is that many retailers give their customers discounts/freebies upon achieving “Mayor” badge (or any other badge prescribed by the retailer). E.g. Dominos pizza in UK offers exclusive discount to anybody who checks into their outlet frequently and becomes the Mayor of that particular outlet.

As per a report published by ICT Qatar in 2011, on average, each household in Qatar owns 3.9 mobile phones and the country has a mobile penetration rate of 99%. About 57% of the individuals who own a mobile phone access internet via mobile. With access to high speed networks combined with usage of smart phones, makes a clear case of experimenting with Mocial Marketing in the country.

The emergence of this new marketing technique gives marketers a new channel to reach out their customers and build relationships. Customer engagement via mobile would be taken to the next level once brands are able to customize the experience.

Online Reputation Management - A Middle East Perspective

The below article was published in Qatar Today, August 2011 issue, highlighting how few brands in Middle East have started thinking about online reputation management. The article highlights issues faced by brands who completely ignore the importance of monitoring their online presence. Click on the below pics to continue reading.

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Online Reputation Management

On 17th June 2010 @sandeepgeetla tweeted the below rumour which led to a slide in the ICICI shares by 3.5 % in the intra day trading hours, however within hours the stock price recovered due to prompt action by the bank.

@gulpanag ICICI committed 3k crore fraud in US. Sebi fined 1 billion dollar on ICICI bank as the news goes..

ICICI bank is known to monitor 3-5k tweets per day via its Twitter handler @icici_care. The bank also monitors online conversations on Facebook, Blogs and other social mediums, to help stop rumors.

The bank responded to the user on twitter as follows:-

@sandeepgeetla These r baseless rumours abt ICICI Bank, request u to not pay heed to them & also not spread them further…”

ICICI has gone ahead and filed a complaint against the person with the cyber crime cell of the police and market watchdog SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India)

This is just an example of how a false rumor could damage your brand’s reputation online.

But, how many brands in GCC monitor Social Media Conversations?

The person may have had a bad experience with your brand; however there is a possibility that he or she was never heard. However, customers have found the web to share the experience with people.

There are many groups on Facebook, where customers share their experiences with other potential bank customers, which do influence choices to an extent. Many people resort to share their personal experience about anything on the web as it is a feasible medium to voice their opinion. This makes many brands vulnerable to online abuse, as some of these opinions may be rumors, which further emphasizes the need to have online monitoring tools.

You can use some of the below listed tools which are available online for free:-

Blog Monitoring - BlogPulse – is a blog search engine with several complementary tools such as Trend Search and Conversion Tracker that analyzes the data it collects.

Twitter Monitoring - Monitter – A real-time Twitter monitor for up to three keywords at a time.

Other Tools - Google Alerts – Your keyword search results are sent via e-mail for keyword mentions in news, web, blogs, video and groups categories.

Digimond – an online competitive intelligence solution company – has forecasted that by 2013, 4 million SMEs will be using online reputation platform to monitor their brands. According to Digimond 58% of the executives believe that risk reputation should be addressed by the management, however only 15% of them monitor it.

Recently there have been similar incidences in the online world in Qatar. Many Qtel users retorted against the poor customer service of the telecom company on Twitter using the hashtag #qtelfail. Qtel instantly responded to customer complains on Twitter to address issues.

I personally witnessed a change in the customer service of Qtel when I tweeted them about my Internet issue. I was called back by a service representative to understand my issue and a technician was at my home within few hours.

Recently Arabian Business reported that Qatar Airways was facing a series of complains from customers that claim to be local nationals about its services on Twitter using hashtag #qatarairwaysfail.

What is the Impact of such online posts? One bad customer experience would cost your brand many others.

Does the brand monitor these tweets/posts? It could be competitor brand spreading the rumor.

Many organizations have Internal Communication Departments who monitor print media for news but discount online conversations. What can a brand do to minimize the impact?

- Have a communications team to monitor online conversations and tackle rumors/complaints.

- Hire a PR/Marketing agency that can monitor the web 24x7.

- Have a strong e-Marketing team that can create a positive perception of your brand online.

- A negative review/complain demands special attention. Post public responses to apologize and try to win back the customer. You can privately message the reviewer to get detailed feedback.

Negative comments about your brand can hang an albatross around your neck if they appear frequently in online searches. A positive comment about your brand by clients is traditionally the best source of new business; online forums and recently sites like twitter and facebook act as a powerful word-of-mouth. Having an online presence is a must but tackling rumors/complains is a challenge. Brands will have to bear the brunt of online conversations if they continue to ignore this medium. Online conversations will make or break customer relations in the future as more and more people seek feedback from peers on the web.

Iwep Features in Creative Commons Qatar

I wannna Express blog has been listed on Creative Commons Qatar website as one of the featured works. This is a proud moment for me. A bit about creative commons - Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share.[1] The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons licenses free of charge to the public. These licenses allow creators to communicate which rights they reserve, and which rights they waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators. (via Wikipedia). 

Get your CC license from Creative Commons website today.

Financial Institutions and Online Media - finding the right hook

The below article was published in Qatar Today magazine - July 2011 issue. The article summarizes various initiatives taken by banks to adopt Online Media to communicate with their customers. Click on the below image to contiue reading.

 

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Today most of the financial services companies are on a recovery mode and looking for optimistic signs in their books. While the financial pundits predict the possibility of economic recovery, I believe listening to your customers is what’s missing in most of the companies. Many financial and non financial companies are busy implementing what they want to but not what the customer needs.

In the era of Internet, Financial Institutions need to cautiously but firmly make place in the Online Media world to interact with the customer. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn are some of the many sites which can act as agents for these companies to spread their message.

Many banks have presence on Facebook, but lack of transactional capability may not attract customers to become a fan or member of that particular page. Having an information page about the products and services would be a good way to start with, but may not be immensely popular with the customers. Tapping Facebook will require banks to come up with a tricky formula of entertainment, sales and information in addition to providing a secure environment. Yet Facebook’s urge to go public with its user data may be discouraging for many financial intuitions to associate themselves with this website. To meet the legal and compliance requirements would be another horrendous task.

During my research, I came across an application on Facebook that allows users to perform financial transactions - Fiserv's My Money, which is now only available to credit unions, and may be offered to banks in the near future. Facebook users download the application, which helps them find and join a credit union, view account histories and balances, and make transfers.

Bank of America, Wells Fargo, ING DIRECT and First American Bank are among the many financial institutions using Twitter for marketing. Twitter is a tool which can be used to directly interact with your customers and inform them about the services. The online reply facility on Twitter can help a company obtain feedback or resolve customer issues.

The National Bank of Australia has managed to effectively use Twitter as a tool to deal with customer complaints and enquires. The bank gets 30 million calls a year on its Call Centre channel and Twitter may be an alternative to it.

Twitter can help banks build long term relationships and give more personal feel to it.

1. Reaching customers.

Public websites hold the transaction capability and remain the primary form of communication for the banks with customers. Increased communication and transparency, would help banks gain customer confidence and trust.  Having online presence would allow your customers to evaluate and discuss the bank’s brand and offerings. Direct feedback from customers would help banks improve those offerings and brand image. HSBC Direct, a U.K based bank uses its interactive website to get and publish customer feedback and discuss community issues. It uses blogs, Facebook and Twitter to interact with "Generation C," or the “Connected, Communicating, Content-centric, Generation."

2. Reducing costs.

Online communication would help the bank reduce costs significantly. Selling products, cross selling products to existing customers would help justify the online presence. Twitter as a communication medium is being seen as an alternative to Call Centers. It may not replace call centers but definitely help in optimizing call center resources. Usage of new technologies can help cut branch operations cost; for example, Deutsche Bank in Germany uses video chat for interacting with customers, thus reducing customer dependence on expensive channels like branches.

As I said before, financial institutions need to be Cautious with their presence in Social Media. One of the possible threats could be a fraudster posing as a bank employee and asking customer for credentials by setting up a similar profile. Online squatter could register themselves on behalf of financial institutions on social media sites and then negotiate with the companies to buy them back. Alternatively, phishing attacks are anyways looming on the Internet and you may be redirected to a site where there is possibility of compromising your personal details.

Banks are experimenting with this space but are yet to come out with a successful working model. Expecting a ROI on spend is not the way forward, as Social Media is still in its adolescence trying to develop such a model. This is just another form of communication tool available to reach to your customers which will ultimately in long term bring the dollars.