The big similarity between facebook and newspaper

Both charge to reach my audience/friends. If I don't pay, it's difficult to reach them.

The thing about newspapers is they use so much of physical resources that they have to charge anyway.

FB's algorithms are, for obvious reasons, not public. In the realm of deliberate snuffing out of reach, I don't understand the viral phenomenon any better. Newspapers' reach and readership is anyway difficult to understand, no matter what the metrics.

Do you read the entire newspaper? No! Same goes for FB now. If you spend a lot of time amidst clutter, you don't have the space to create the clutter-breaking.

Should you build a bazaar?

I just saw this ad on the front page of today's TOI. Buildabazaar.com is a platform to open your online shop. It's a venture of the now quite famous e-commerce portal infibeam.com.

Opening an online shop sounds easy. Sounds glamorous too (doesn't it?). And why not? E-com ventures are a talk of the town. Lotsa ads appearing on television. And for a long time, ever since I did my stint at flora2000.com (now goldboxx.in), I felt the same.

We've been trying to set up Mississippi online. And it has been one mighty task. This, I say, in spite of the innumerable e-commerce sites which have come up in the recent years.

My context is setting up a small e-commerce enterprise. If one tries to set up an independent e-commerce site, unless one knows coding for the web, one needs to collaborate with some amazing coders. 'Amazing' needs qualification. Coders who really try to understand your ambitions, your products and the audience for your products. Difficult to meet such guys. More difficult considering the money one has in the pocket when starting a small enterprise.

Suppose you don't set up an independent site. Then? You oughta have amazing writing skills, great visual merchandising skills (especially photography and graphical skills). But you would say one can outsource all that. Then the guy who takes such an outsourced work should have a good understanding of the same things I discussed in the last paragraph. I am not sure writing beautifully (don't confuse it with using flowering words) about products is an easy task. Nor am I sure about visual merchandising.

Is that all? Even if using an already existing platform, getting used to using it efficiently takes a good time. Software is machine. It takes time to become adept at using the machine.

Lastly, you need an amazing ability of sitting-in-front-of-the-screen. For once, I don't possess that. And while I spend a good time on the laptop, I just find it extremely difficult to stay focussed on just one application/website/piece of software.

So build a bazaar? Actually, build a bazaar in literal terms is 'build a shop'. Bazaar means you have an audience. I'm afraid here that isn't the case. Even if infibeam.com has its audience and displays your products to that audience, for your shop to work, you need to be able to garner good attention.

And while you need all the skills mentioned above, you need exceptional skills to garner attention and convert it into 'trust' for your shop. That takes some doing.

My recommendation, garner attention and build trust, first. If need be, build skills to garner attention and to build trust. And then build a shop.

Too eager to sell?

Since the assembly line were set up quite a few years back and the greatest efficiency is when the assembly line keeps churning out stuff 24 hours a day, marketing men are also expected to work with greatest efficiency. As a result of which whatever gets loaded onto them to sell, they try conjuring up ideas to sell all that.

So an idea which was terrific and which initially helped sell a certain amount of stuff now comes under increasing pressure to sell more. So another idea gets added to the earlier genius-like idea, so that the two ideas combined start selling more.

Efficiency. Churn out more and more and more. Load. And explode. Either bend their backs or expand their tummies. Obesity and back problems are some of the most common problems among corporates, are they?

Social media has its origins in the desire to express and converse and create. Conversations flow in innumerable directions. Not just selling. Some brand marketers want to ring in the same message in response to every conversation and perhaps expect that every conversation converts into a sale. Sure, selling is their task. But selling is just one of the many conversations that can happen. You can't fill social media with just that kind of conversation. If you do, you become boring.

Beyond SEO?

Since I've been trying to make people aware of missi.in for a while, I've come observe web-marketing efforts far more closely than I earlier used to.

I observe that SEO is touted as almost a magical strategy to get business online. Here's what the wikipedia entry on Search Engine Optimization has to say:

According to Google's CEO, Erick Schmidt, in 2010, Google made over 500 algorithm changes - almost 1.5 per day. It is considered wise business practice for website operators to liberate themselves from dependence on search engine traffic.

It goes on:

Seomoz.org has suggested that "search marketers, in a twist of irony, receive a very small share of their traffic from search engines." Instead, their main sources of traffic are links from other websites.

Now that doesn't mean SEO doesn't help. Great web-architecture and site-structure and the right words always help. But, if another observation that most (I understand this needs a good number) people do not go beyond the first 4-5 search results (at best, the first page) thrown by search engines, is true, then I wonder how all sites deploying search engine optimization will benefit!

In any given category, there are businesses in multiples of 10, if not hundred. Surely all of them can't feature on the first page. Even second page for that matter. So then?

People say 'link building'. So to get results in a hurry, some take it to the level of essay-spamming and perhaps even 'bribing' :).

I suppose link-building best happens through conversations. Not necessarily the kind deployed on FB by a PizzaHut for once. PizzaHut and big brands like that have ample money to make people aware of their presence online through mass-media and then translate that into some sort of conversation. No, SMEs don't quite have the resources to pull off a staged stunt like that.

I am talking about conversations of the kind that consumers get involved in. What do they do? They want information so they search in Google, visit the pages which seem relevant, read up and talk if necessary. For SMEs it could work like this... They want consumers so they search in Google, visit the pages where consumers have asked questions, answer them and lead them to their respective sites if necessary. If the conversation strikes the right notes, a lot more people might take notice and patronize the business.

What's needed to make these conversations interesting are not necessarily mass-media ads. But a sense of wit and timing and authenticity. Link-building will happen not just among websites and not just with URLs, but also between the business-representative and the consumer.

Breaking the Clutter Online Through Advertisements: A Perspective

The TV Screen, The Laptop/Desktop/Tablet screen, The Mobile Screen: the three prominent screens in our day-to-day lives. And marketers/advertisers have been, and are still, vying somehow to occupy space on all the three screens. While the TV screen was fairly well-captured long back, the confidence on other two screens is at best shaky.

How was the TV screen captured? You watching some drama, some action and snap... Bang. There's a new jingly wall in front. Yes, the one view was completely obliterated to show you another. All space gone in one go. Typical interruption strategy. After the ad's done, there's drama and action again. Action-Ad-Action-Ad. It's sequential.

So what's happening on the Laptop screen? There's some spot there, some spot here. The page remains for perusal, but some space is allotted to advertisements. Which means the content-for-perusal and the ad-for-interruption show up in close vicinity and at the same time. Advertising on Web Screen is largely space-sharing, unlike on television where it is largely sequential (one-after-another).

If researches on usability and eye-scanning-on-the-web are to go by, people develop blind spots when they become familiar with the web-page in question. It means certain spaces just don't register any more. Very similar phenomenon to your behavior in places that you are very familiar with. No matter how many obstructions or projections come in your way, after a while, your movement becomes smooth enough to dodge them.

This gives rise to an inference: if page-designs (especially layouts) remain the same/are standardized, ad-spots will typically become blind spots. Bling spots are always reserved for content, in whatever form. Whether marketers know this or not, that's the reason there is so much emphasis on engagement (or conversation). And engagement would only happen through content spots.

TV Screen erects ad-walls but Laptop/Web Screen cannot.

TV Screen uses dramatic breaks during dramas to drill into the consumer's heads, Web Screen allows great conversations to be soaked up by consumer's senses.

So what do ya got to talk about? Who's doing the talking? Does he know how to talk?

Discussing Maggi Soup on Social Media

Lately, I've read a lot about social media and their importance in marketing and building brands. Watching an ad for Maggi Soup on the TV just a while back, I questioned, "What would social media do for a product category like that?" Conversations dominate social media. Do people talk and build communities around Maggi Soup? I doubt. But do people connect through talking about bikes? Of course, endless conversations can follow.

For brands in certain product categories (especially FMCG), mass media could continue to play an important role. But what if mass media lose out to social media? That could bring to light the insignificance of these product categories like Maggi Soups and keep the sanctity of TV programming intact for purists :) like me.