Hah!!!

Life can be so ironical it's almost funny!

Dear Brand, are you losing me ?

My First article which I wrote after joining here :) Thought I should share the same on my own blog as well!

A little different from my usual blog posts!!

So here it goes...

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Deeksha Rajpal

Okay, I confess, I am a Facebook-aholic! Social Networking is a very important part of my life that I find hard to do without! Sounds familiar? May be you are also one of my partners-in-crime. A crime which has nothing to do with the run-of-the-mill murders!

So what crime is it exactly that I am going gaga about? Let me share with you a small story. This story has me, the consumer, it has got most of the brands under the sun today and it has got a small button. A small innocent LIKE button! So easy it is to click that button that without even realizing it, I am responsible for changing a brand’s identity!

When I joined Facebook ages ago, it was just something new and exciting. It gave me the freedom to share my life with the people I care about-my friends, my long-distance extended family and many more people who make my life what it is. It was so exciting to share my new look with everyone instantly as soon as I got a haircut!

Soon, some of the others things that are a part of my life started springing up. Things like a coffee-chain who’s Irish coffee I swear by. And the particular brand of jeans I’ve been wearing since I was a teenager! The brands which were oh-so-far-away soon started interacting with me! So exciting! I could actually talk to the brands. Who thought such a day would arrive?

Then the harsh reality bit me. HARD! An year down the line, when more and more of my friends, colleagues, families started FACEBOOKing, all I could see on my wall were the all too frequent messages from X, Y, Z brand. Where have the people I care about gone? Why can’t I see their messages? Soon, I got to know who the real culprit was! It was the thousands of community managers who were taking care of multiple brands and working overtime to ensure it was their brand that I saw whenever I logged in to my Facebook page. As a result, my homepage was flooded by TV channels, too many apparel brands, tech pages and more than a few arbit pages.

So, I started doing what many other poor mortal souls would surely be doing. I either deleted half the pages from the 356 brand pages I liked or I simply hid their posts. So sure was I that I won’t be missed that I didn’t even think twice before UNLIKing a page!

And I was not disappointed! My ex-brand pages went on with their lives, adding thousands of LIKERS or followers every month, losing a large chunk of them at the same time. While they must surely be overjoyed by the continued followers, they didn’t care two hoots about those who were no longer a part of their social media journey.

Do you know there are 55% of the Facebook users who are just like me, unliking a page after liking it, simply because they no longer wanted to see the brand/company’s posts! The even worse case is that, there are only 57% of these people who bother to formally unlike the pages. The rest either simply ignore the posts or delete posts from their newsfeed!

Have you, as a brand or an advertiser, ever missed my absence? Ever realized that I was once a part of your journey too? Ever tried to find out what exactly was it that broke us apart? Or are you just too busy accumulating the number of followers and comments?

Anyways, that is one part of the story. The other part involves those friends of mine who keep on adding every brand page on earth, without EVER interacting with those brands. WHY? They simply don’t care. Facebook is just a medium for them to interact with their friends or fellow strangers! So why exactly are these people a part of the brand’s community page? Well, they could be among those lakhs of people who add a page simply because everyone else is doing it. Because my best friend LIKED page, I automatically assume it would be something interesting. I add it as well, and then simply forget about it.

After liking a page, I’ll again go back to my life, throwing the page out of my memory, never even bothering to even once visit the company’s pages after liking it. Why? One, I may not be interested. Neither interested in what the brand has to say, nor interested in sharing my views.

Do you know that 51% fans confess that they RARELY or NEVER visit a brand’s page after liking it? In fact, 26% of consumers have liked a page because they were interested in a one-time offer and they simply unlike the page after getting what they wanted. How do we retain these fans?

Companies have to realize that every lost fan is impacting the brand? Because I don’t talk to you, I’m in simple words a dead follower. And hence, the other 1000 people I have in my friend’s list, the potential brand followers, are now automatically out of the radar. Why don’t you try to reach out to me? To interest and engage me?

Mapping the behaviour of a Facebook fan should give a heart-attack to any brand or advertiser worth his salt because of so many gory facts. Right now, shockingly, these advertisers aren’t even aware that such a trend is happening!

Facts prove that 19% of the Facebook fans simply ignore posts. They are too lazy to bother hiding a post or deleting a brand’s page. 38% of the fans might bother to click the small “x” button in their news feeds to remove irrelevant feeds or posts from their wall! A staggering 71% of Facebook fans say they have become more selective about liking companies of Facebook. Mostly because, their wall is peppered with brand communications, they feel suffocated by the humongous number of brands, each trying hard to gain the poor guy’s attention or because their expectations as a fan aren’t being met.

Why? May be you are giving them content which is irrelevant to them. Or maybe, your posts are too frequent and are simply crowding their news feed. One may also argue that it is because you have tried to smother them with your brand name and your product with every communication of yours. I would request you to please not drive your fans away.

Now, another thing that can be heard oft repeated is the problem of fake profiles which are crawling all over Facebook. You might be doing great as a brand on social media, you might be shelving out great content and engagement activities to your consumer, but how do you distinguish which of these fans are real and not just a fake profile? Why these fake profiles are there in the first place, one can’t really comment. But statistics prove that if taken on a case by case basis, at least 3-4% of the followers are just fake or bogus profiles. So if even 40,000 out of a million followers are a bogus profile, that doesn’t really bear well for the brand.

Why don’t you brand custodians send me your views on this trend? You know the brands, you understand the prospective consumers.

What do you think you can do to counter this gnawing problem which might just prove to be a slow poison for your brand?

At the end of the day, are you interested in forming a life-long lasting relationship with your consumer or are you just interested in a one-night stand? I’d love to hear your part of your story.

The Vicious Circle!!!

What happens when you are holding on so long to something, and suddenly reality hits you - wham bam thank you ma'am?!

You know you should move away... you know it's time to separate yourself from things that won't do any good to you in the long run... Inspite of you being the one who has been running away from things... suddenly you wish you had stopped by... may be then the regret of not able to hold on to something now you know you could never get wouldn't hit you so hard?

We need things we can't get... we get things we think we don't need... when we get things we need, we don't realize we need them at that time... and when those very things have bypassed their timeline, you realize what a fool you had been then?

At the end of it all, it keeps on going around in circles... encircling you and entwining you... but you know you haven't seen the end of it yet... nowhere close by... May be it's time to take that first step... That one step which is always the most difficult.. It can lead to anywhere... but then again... when you think of what little you have at the moment, you are caught up in two different world.. One world has a little of something and none of what you want... The other has neither of these... One is a small-win, a lot-to-lose kinda situation.. The other is... today I just lose-lose for something I MAY win tomorrow... As I said before... it's just a vicious circle... going round and round and round....

On A Silent Night

When night falls
silent thoughts come to me
I wonder what you're doing up there
and do you still remember me?

It's been quite a while
since we sat face to face
when I could laugh up at you
and see the smile light your face

Days have gone
more days to come
I wonder who still remembers you
after all has been said and done?

Wish I could  catch a shooting star
write your name and send afar
I now know how quickly the time flies
You blink and are left with.. just the silent cries...

Turning ONE!

March 16,2011 - A day in my life which would end up meaning so much more to me than just  a new chapter in the book of my life..

For a change... I am not ranting here... This is just a feeling you get from thinking back, a fortnight before a very important day in your life...

I was a novice when I started working in my first company in 2011. Straight out of college and having no intentions of persuing  Economics further on, I was pretty lost on the path I was taking.

The harsh realities and drama of life aside, I really didn't know what to do next. I had no idea how to start looking out for a job. Should I also start encircling vacant job positions columns in newspapers or do I keep on checking out Naukri, Monster and Shine - hoping to land up a decent job (whatever that meant!).

I was just a graduate. Not even a topper or anyone that great or SHINING! I tried my hands here, there, everywhere. I knew I did not want to be a banker. Nor did I want to be a teacher. I did not want to study economics. I definitely had no desire to try my hands at Hotel Management. So what was it actually that I could do???? The one MBA entrance exam I cracked turned out to be the only one I was actually interested in cracking. As luck would have it, I did not clear the interview but the experience I had there was unforgettable. I made new friends. Got to know people from different backgrounds.. different cultures... They were all just.. so.. different!!!

I moved on.. finally landing up in a Marketing communications company. I was doing officially what I was anyways doing at home after my college - Facebooking!! My parents, not fully understanding what their daughter actually WORKED, used to tell relatives and friends that she gets paid to check out Facebook from office! :P

I have always enjoyed playing with words and this gave me ample opportunity to EXPLORE!! It was a good six months there and I pretty well enjoyed it.. But I always craved for something MORE!!

Again life intervened... inspite of all the on-going drama it keeps on shoving, this time it managed to hit me.. HARD!!

I still moved on... But now what... I either could sit and mope around or again give entrance exams for MBA or else I could start looking out for another job. But what now? My colleagues from my previous organization had moved to similar roles in bigger companies. I wasn't sure I really wanted that. As confessed above, I wanted MORE. I wanted to learn more.. I wanted to explore more.. I wanted to open my eyes and myself to things I did not know existed, beyond the realm of what I was doing inspite of knowing fully well there was a whole world left to be explored in my area of 6-month expertise.

It is true.. opportunities come when you least expect them. A friend of mine suggested this big media agency to me. Hah! I laughed on his face, wondering why would such an agency take me - an almost-fresher. I still went ahead and gave the interview.

Honestly, I was not that impressed with myself. I wanted to have researched more.. dug out more.. But when the D-Day came, it just came and went past.

Again I told this friend of mine of my uncertainty of cracking this particular interview. In the meanwhile some other, very well-performing social media agency offered me a job.. I hesitated... I had a feeling there was something else that was waiting in the wings.. What.. How... Where... When? I had no idea!!

But soon something wonderful happened! I actually got through my 2nd home as I call it - GroupM!! And I must say, I felt verrry verrrry excited and hopeful than I had felt in a loong loong time. Yes.. that was it! It gave me something to dream about.. something to put my heart and soul into..

I know I owe a lot to my seniors and colleagues of my previous company .. all of them so different from each other.... yet soo similar in a lot of things... Each and everyone carried sucha warmth. I still sorely miss the morning samosas and chaii... but then again the last one year in GroupM has taught me soo much... with sooo sooo much more to learn. Again, what.. how.. where.. when.. I have no idea...

Sometimes I get a feeeling, I now know this and I now know that. The very next day I realize, my slate might still be almost blank... with a plethora of things yet to be learnt...

But yes.. I am gonna turn One very soon.. And I shall blow candles celebrating my 1st birthday.. with GroupM!!! :)

The talks...

Not having anything to talk about either means you have shared all your "talks" with someone else or you have reached a stage where "talks" just don't matter anymore... Which one is it I wonder...