Online lecture series Digi Dialogues

Workshop on Social Media and Marketing By Pulak Sharma Date: 9-12th February Time: 12:00-1:00 pm Duration- 4 days Platform: Zoom Meeting DAY 1 First day of Digi-Dialogues, an advertising workshop hosted by a well experienced advertising expert named Pulak Sharma started with the introduction of digital marketing or say social media marketing.It began with a brief detail about digital evolution I.e. how rapidly usage of smartphones grewfrom the launch of first cellphone. Digital media has transformed in such a massive way that passing a new checkpoint didn’t get time to celebrate. Launch of Linked-in in 2003, Facebook in 2004, YouTube in 2005, Instagram in 2010 and more such creative internet application were observed as the production of one time. Such remarkable developments in digital field are also backed by another study which further differentiate among the years taken by companies’ to reach the consumer base of 50 millions. In this research, it has been founded that airline companies took almost 50 years to attain the consumer base of 50 millions whereas PokemonGo (an online gaming application) took only 19 days to attain such height. In addition to this information, today more than 59% of world’s population uses internet and more than 53% is active on social media. The numbers are still growing around the globe with a faster rate of increase. After establishing more such facts, the workshop went into how this huge user base is getting converted into a hub of marketers. Further, Mr. Pulak made awarded about the transition towards 3Vs (Vernacular, Voice, Video) from the traditional advertising approach of 4Ps. On the basis of some growing demands of consumers i.e. comfort, connection and pursuance these 3Vs are being proven the most useful catalyst to win the users or to convert the users into customers in the world of social media. Reaching towards end, he discussed about the major growth drivers of social media like mobile phones, vernacular users,social conditions etc. He also briefly explained the aspects on which digital marketing is based i.e. Performance, branding, social and content. The first day concluded with the study of the role of Consumer Funnel in Digital Marketing. Digi Dialogues Day 2 Date: 10/02/2021 Report: The second day of lecture series on the topic Digi Dialogues by Pulak Sharma, started around 12:15 pm. The lecture started with the introduction of Performance Marketing. It is one of the aspects of digital marketing and it is number driven. Performance marketing is all about sales, leads which are the potential prospects, traffic which is the number of visitors who come to a website, and app downloads. It is about paying for results that can be directly attributed. Then the discussion moves forward to the topic of Performance Marketing Areas. Performance marketing ensures three things tracking, monitoring and controlling. Affiliate marketing, social media, display media, SEA, SEO, couponing and E-mail marketing, these are the areas of performance marketing. Display media are the banner ads. SEA/SEM stands for search engine marketing, the information which is shown to us when we search for a particular product/service keyword. SEO is search engine optimization. Couponing means giving away of coupons containing discounts. E-mail marketing is a cost-effective way of doing performance marketing. Social media including FB, WhatsApp etc. Affiliate marketing is similar to E-mail marketing based on data collection of the users or potential users. Majority of the performance marketing happens through search which is controlled by Google and Bing. A lot of performance marketing happens on FB, it is the second largest advertising platform. The largest is Google. Then there is display which is largely controlled by Google. Important terminologies are; Traffic – website visitors, CPC – cost per click, CPL – cost per load, CPV – cost per view, CPD – cost per download, CPA - cost per acquisition. Then the discussion solely focuses on SEM – search engine marketing. It works on a Keyboard based bidding model. Google and Bing are the largest search engines. Bing is owned by Microsoft. Google owns about 90% of the searches that happens across the world followed by Bing at roughly 8%. The advertisers will pay Google to show their ads. Whatever we type in a search box are known as search terms. The words that we type are called keywords. Whichever results show up if ‘ad’ is mentioned at the top of any result that means that the advertisement is paid. Other results can be called as the organic results which are usually non paid form ads. The advertisers have to win the bidding for the top spots while searched for those keywords related to the advertisements. The lecture continues to further discuss SEO, which is search engine optimization. SEO is smart compared to SEM and doesn’t pay Google. For SEO a lot of content optimization has to be done. The best content optimized result will be selected and recognized by Google and be given the top spot while searched upon. For understanding SEO, three R’s are important, namely Reputation, Relevance and Recognition. Google has a software called crawler/spider, every hour this program crawls and reads through all the websites in the world. Based on the readings, crawler ranks those websites and that is how Google shows us the result. If a result is on the top spot that means the crawler has found the website best in terms of the 3R’s. Reputation is built over the years. People writing reviews also affect the reputation. The content in the website have to relevant. The website has to be recognized. Recognition happens through reviews and the mention of the website in other websites. After this the lecture moves on to the topic of display marketing. Any websites have smaller ads known as the display ads. Google has bonded with around 80% of the websites in the world. Google has bought the ad spaces from them and pays them in terms of the visitors it sends to each website. This is the Google display network. The discussion then shifts to the topic of remarketing. When an individual moves from one website to another website, the same ads are again present on the latter websites. This is called remarketing. Most of the websites asks for the individual’s permission. There is a privacy policy that needs to be accepted. Accepting the privacy policy, the individual is identified in terms of his/her choices and gets tagged. Hence the website now contains and stores the behavioral information of the individual. The session finally comes to an end at around 1:25 pm. Day 3: Digi Drive Topic: Social media marketing Time : 12-1:00 pm Platform: Zoom drive The workshop was started with a question by Pulak Sharma, who compared the popularity of different forms of social media, taking YouTube and Facebook as the primary examples. He asked the students about their opinion on the comparative popularity of these media platforms. He then described the scope of YouTube as a broadcast medium, which was followed by stats. Focus was given on the measuring impact and exposure measuring aspects of these medium on the audience which revolved around topics such as reach and engagements. Facebook being the largest media platform for engagement has infinite scope. The emergence of local platforms such as KOO as an alternative of Twitter gives rise to regionalism. These platforms gives in scope for various local language which results in more participation. Native languages and regionalism is fuelling such local apps and as communicators it is our role to understand it's importance. The workshop then proceeded to understand platforms based on time spent and perspectives. Facebook and WhatsApp leading in this scenario, WhatsApp had introduced a new payment form and brands are adapting to WhatsApp as a new medium of one to one communication. This is because of its effectiveness. Moreover WhatsApp is quick and provides a personalized touch. Brands such as make my trip have started to venture in this platform. WhatsApp was bought by Facebook around six seven years back for 19 billion USD. All apps are constantly improved first. The aspect of monetization comes in late. The age group ranging from 16-54 years are usually active on social media. India dominates this scene. Answering to the question if a student, Pulak Sharma introduced the monetization of WhatsApp. He stated that WhatsApp is monetizing through brands and charging license fee. Brands are incredibly using Facebook and other social media to reach out it's customers. One can now search for the brand in any social media especially Facebook before purchasing a product. Thus, brand research on social media is emerging and flourishing. Businesses too use social media for brand research. The demographic of Facebook allows more flexibility to the brand's. Social media can also be used as a method of brand discovery. One can be exposed to new products through these ads. As communicators one must have a content strategy, as to what to produce and when. This growth is due to various factors, the first side being the consumer side. Social networking allows connectivity, it lends us a strong platform of voice and expression. It provides a sense of self worth and entertainment. An advertiser spends time on social media due to factors such as size of audience, the sticky characteristics of audience and the time spending nature on social media. It also helps in the precise targeting opportunities and the virality factor is content. Consumer needs and brand needs are perfectly intertwined here. Some social networking platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram have now become an integral part of the consumer mind-set. Social media helps spark a conversation through campaigns and spark discussion and debated. It can create awareness about a brand, product or service; leading to the consideration of such brands, products and services. This can be done deploying influencers etc. An example of a case study was given #DRIVELIKEALADY by Kodak for car insurance. This campaign comes with an embedded social message and is backed by statistics. This campaign consisted of real life human stories of achievement of ordinary people. The campaign was divided into three parts Head (emotional aspect), Heart (connectivity with audience aspect) and Hand (incentives for target consumers). Examples of Twitter campaign which can be used for the advantage of brands were given. Leverage of each medium for the brand's was emphasized upon. In conclusion focus was given on the creation and maintenance of brand images. A brand image must always be free from scandals and must not do anything that would hurt the sentiments of it's consumers. The rise of internet connectivity can also result in trolling of the brand, this is where Online Reputation Management branch of brands come in. They communicate with the leads and consumers. ORM branch should be creative and constantly analysing and monitoring to identify new leads. The workshop then ended with a question round by the students to Pulak Sharma, who addressed their doors and queries. Day 4 – Digi Dialogue Date - 12th January Time – 12am to 1pm Workshop on Social media marketing By Pulak Sharmah On 12th January at 12 am, students of MCJ and C4D participated in the 4th day of Digi Dialogue by Pulak Sharmah, Media Manager at Kotak Mahindra. On virtual platform Zoom, Mrs Anjuman welcomed the guest speaker to the department of mass communication and journalism at Tezpur university. Event brief by the guest Speaker:- Social media platforms details Advantages and disadvantages of social media platforms Demo for setting up page Analyzing a web page’s growth and data The workshop started by showing the cover page of ‘The Guardian Weekly’ a magazine which is a leading publication. Mr. Pulak asked the participants ‘what’s special about the cover page? The cover contained the picture of Jeff bezoz which the logo of Amazon painted with his smile, many participants replied with enthusiasm. After the kick start of the workshop, he started with the topic social media management, which is the key to find the right platform for instant in the movie ‘Dear Zindagi’ the question arises, Have you ever bought a chair? Finding the right chair is very important similarly finding the right platform for message/advertisement is Important. Facebook: one should have an active content strategy regarding what he /she is going to talk about? How frequently will he/she talk? The strategy must be clear before setting up any page on social media. Small businesses are coming to Facebook, almost all brands are there, Food, Travel, E-commerce, are some of the biggest categories. Facebook has:- Good Audience Reach Better Engagement Visual Appeal Storytelling Precise Targeting Shareable Low Investment Example - On Television you have 30 second to tell your message which cost you around 30 lakh but on social media you will get more time with less money. Instagram: it is a visual experiential platform where attractive filters catch the attention of users. Instagram provides good exposure for personal branding and Influencers. It is extremely popular among home businesses and visual bloggers. Further the workshop proceeded with the Case study on ‘Facebook Thumbstopper’ a new property in vertical form in which a 10 sec video will be uploaded by brands and directors like Prakash Verma, Kiran rao, Kotak and many more contested from across India. The idea was to promote a shorter vertical format of video as the user time span is decreasing day by day. The thumb stopper stories were highly creative and engaging; the participants interacted while explaining each one of them and discussed the idea of it. Youtube : one of the biggest advertising platforms in terms of money earner. Brands are increasingly using it as a broadcast medium and a good replacement of television. The platform could be used as a content repository for all the users and creators. Youtube promotes their key influencers by annual events. It has:- High Audience Reach High Visual Appeal Engagement Precise Targeting Low Investment For Entries The information aroused the curiosity of the participants, Bishal asked the Question about the money advertisers get on uploading their advertisement as youtube works on views, like and subscribe. The participants get to know that the channel is under the brand category where youtube don’t pay the advertisers. Twitter – Is more of ORM Hygiene of brands, it is good for announcement, thought leadership of individual and personal branding. It is also being used by brands for customer service purpose and reputation management. The platform provides:- Intellectual appeal Conversational Engagement Linkden: is a platform with good targeting opportunity for corporates, employers branding and highlighting employers in good light is been done of Linkden. Recruitment demands and freelancers are major content creators here. Mostly used by good employers, universities, college, courses, etc to built in their image around professionals. Professional imagery Intellectual appeal Precise targeting The session further proceeded with the live facebook page of Mr. Pulak which is his own travel and food page ‘tummies on tour’. He had given the live example of how to promote a post, select the target audience, the location and interest of the TA, and their age group. He stated that the broader the location will be the more people will get to target. More text on the image will be disapproved by FB to advertise as they have their own protocols for the advertisers. He further took the participants into the insight growth of his page, which shows how to check audience, it shows how many people visited your page, liked it, and reached to it and other post engagement. After all It is all about engagement on the page not the followers, he explained with the example of a singer Badsha, he had many followers but later exposed that they were fake. The key learning was the more you interact the more your post will be shown to the people. This is how social media earns money. Without paying, a brand could only reach only 2% of its followers but after paying, it could reach 29 to 30%. ‘Create good content not followers’ he stated. The workshop ended with some questions asked by the participants, which is ‘If on posting something one of your friends does not get your notification, is it a glitch or FB purposefully does it? It’s all about engagements, to whom you are interacting frequently will get notified, others won’t. Mr. Pulak answered. The session concluded with gratitude and Thanks from all the participants for organizing such a workshop.