Every business thrives because of its customers. Without customers to purchase your products or services, there’s no way for your business to grow or develop further. Many businesses focus on acquiring new customers. However, in today’s competitive market, just acquiring new customers isn’t enough to reach success effectively. One of the key elements for business success is being able to retain customers and encourage loyalty. Returning customers oftentimes spend as much as 67% more than new customers.
Not to mention that is much more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain one. Establishing long-lasting relationships with customers can be very beneficial for your company. Not only that, but those relationships also benefit your revenue and bottom line. Another reason why customer retention is important is because the market is overcrowded. If you don’t give a good reason to your customers to stay, they’ll simply pick another brand to do business with. With that in mind, here are a few effective customer retention strategies for businesses.
Understand your customers
The first step toward retaining your customers is making an effort to understand them. Modern consumers have specific expectations, needs, and demands when dealing with various businesses. By understanding your audience, you’re able to understand their needs as well. Also, being able to meet their expectations or even exceed them, helps you establish a good groundwork for retention.
Provide a seamless experience
Nowadays, consumers are more willing to do business with companies that can provide a seamless experience. The experience lasts from the moment you acquire a lead to even after that lead converted into a customer. That includes improving your marketing efforts to involve personalization, communicating with customers during each step of their buyer’s journey, offering a seamless experience on your website and maintaining a good relationship with customers even after the sales have been made.
Caring for customers can easily improve your retention rates. As mentioned before, consumers prefer doing business with brands that develop good relations with their customers, as well as brands that provide a good experience. Therefore, it’s no longer about retaining customers with quality products or services, but about retaining customers through a seamless experience.
Offer convenience to customers
One of the main expectations consumers have these days is convenience. Your customers are more likely to come back for repeat business if it’s convenient for them to do so. You don’t have to come up with something unique to retain customers. Simply having your customers’ best interests in mind is enough in most cases. For example, one of the best ways to offer convenience to your customers is to offer multiple payment options. It allows your customers to pay for goods in any way they see fit.
To that end, also ensure you accept multiple currencies, especially if you operate internationally. That way, you provide convenience to customers around the world and make it easy for them to buy from you again. However, don’t let convenience harm your revenue with missed or late payments. A reliable direct debit system will automate your incoming payments and ensure you get paid on time.
Improve customer service and support
Customer service and support are crucial factors that determine customer satisfaction. And, customer satisfaction is essential for their retention. As a matter of fact, 86% of consumers are willing to pay up to 25% more for a better customer service. If you cannot provide good service and support, your customers will abandon your business. Many businesses implement various strategies to improve customer service and offer a unique experience that will ensure customer retention.
Some companies even leverage the latest technology and implement chatbots to help provide a seamless service and support. You can also leverage live chat options on your website to become more available to customers when they need to sort out any issues they might have. Which strategy you’ll use depends on your customers and their preferences. Just make sure you make an extra effort to improve customer service and support, in order to guarantee customer retention
Provide customers with value
One of the essential aspects of customer retention is your relationship with them. You can’t expect customers to keep buying from you unless you give something back. That’s why it’s important to establish more personal relationships with your customers and provide them with value whenever you can. For instance, actively engage in conversations with your audience through social media or other media channels.
Also, develop and post relevant content that will inform, educate and entertain your customers. Moreover, offer discounts, coupons and other incentives to encourage repeat business. Last but not least, consider implementing a loyalty program that will reward customers for their loyalty. The more you value your customers, the more likely they are to become trusted and loyal customers.
Retaining customers is as equally important as acquiring them. No business can succeed without customers and in today’s competitive and highly crowded market, having loyal customers is more important than ever.
WhatsApp has moved a lot of steps forward from being just an application to chat with others, to present supporting different types of files in various formats and then introducing the WhatsApp Ads and WhatsApp stickers for business. WhatsApp has become a part and parcel of everybody’s life. these days people are using this medium to connect with each other. It has turned out to be world’s most used and loved online media to communicate. As a mostly engaging digital media channel, it has made the area vast and increased the features from just being a channel for communicating and chatting to a channel for the business that is when we all know about the WhatsApp for business. WhatsApp earlier this day made a huge reveal by adding WhatsApp stickers as a new feature.
The chat app is being owned by the Social Media giant Facebook. In the market, there is a tough competition for everything these days and to survive in the market it requires a lot. That’s why WhatsApp kept on adding new things to be in the market and keep all the people engaging in the platform. One of the recent and most trending updates in WhatsApp is the WhatsApp stickers. First in Hike, SnapChat, Instagram, Facebook Messengers and now in WhatsApp. It started rolling out from past one week in both iOS and Android platform.
Let us dive deep into WhatsApp and the WhatsApp stickers the new feature and learn about how it is benefitting the business persons
Why should we use WhatsApp?
In the late 90’s and early 20’s SMS were introduced and it was the big deal back in time and a lot of people used SMS, it became so huge that it was used for the business purposes also. For various advertisement purpose in WhatsApp, sending bank statements and bills for various purposed SMS or normal text messages were used.
While coming to WhatsApp it is also one of the huge sites which people use like anything. It is having a total of 1.2 billion active users. From the total world population of 7.6 billion, 1.2 billion people are using WhatsApp. In these 1.2 Billion people 70% of people which is estimated to be 84 million people are using WhatsApp Daily on a regular basis. It is world Second mostly used application of the world. Everyday 55 billion messages are being sent and received in WhatsApp messenger. Daily 175 Billion people are watching the WhatsApp Status. More than 100 million voice calls take place in WhatsApp on a regular basis. At last, it is considered to be as the top social media site, 55.6% of the world use this online media for connecting with each other.
These all statistics show clearly that how WhatsApp is important and why one person should incorporate the WhatsApp Business for all the business work. If this is incorporated in the business then it will give immense results to your Business and for sure your Business will excel like anything.
What are new features added to WhatsApp?
WhatsApp Sticker
Last week WhatsApp introduced a very new and advanced feature to the World’s popular messaging site WhatsApp that is the WhatsApp Stickers. It is available for both the iOS and Android users. To receive this feature you just have to update the WhatsApp using the Google Play Store or Apple App store.
Steps to use the stickers:
First is to update the Application to get the new feature.
For every conversation you do in WhatsApp you will find the emoji symbol which you have to click it.
After clicking on the emoji symbol you will get an extra option beside the GIF that is the “sticker”.
You can choose any of the stickers from the total gallery of the stickers.
Steps to add more stickers:
You will get a “+” plus icon in the stickers section click on it.
Tap on the download button which is present below all the stickers.
To get a number of stickers or custom stickers to get down and click on “Get more stickers”.
Or you can download directly from WASticker app directly for your choice of stickers.
The important thing to keep in mind is that:
First, you have to update your WhatsApp to enjoy this feature. Some of the WhatsApp versions are not supporting these stickers feature wait for sometime till the new improved version comes up. The mobiles having 2.18.329 version and more can access the stickers while lower than this version will not support the WhatsApp stickers. After you update your OS version you can use it easily.
WhatsApp Ads
WhatsApp has released another feature just some days before WhatsApp stickers, that is the WhatsApp Ads for the business. As a way of connecting to a lot of people and the Advertisement can be added to the WhatsApp status. WhatsApp story was actually the copied version of the Instagram stories and Snapchat. The WhatsApp status is just for a limited period of time that is 24 hours. This function was from past 2 years for the users but recently it gave the access to the business people to use it for the branding or advertising of their business.
(source: news4c)
The vice president of WhatsApp has earlier said that “it is a very innovative and new way to connect the users and the target customers”. It has quickly become a vast place for not only the normal people but also the business person’s and the number of users in this platform have increased enormously. Facebook the owner of WhatsApp got benefitted a lot in a short period of time.
Group Calling and Video
(source: digital trends)
Earlier this year WhatsApp introduced this feature in which you can have a group call or a group video chat with your friend, family, acquaintances. It was in the testing period for one month later the idea of Group calling and video chat was succeeded. It is allowing the users to gather together and perform the formal and informal calls with ease, making it convenient of the users to talk, those are widely spread all over the world.
Link Detector
It is most popular in the WhatsApp beta, this Android version was released in the mid of the year July 2018. It detects all the suspicious links that are being shared in the online platform. The motive is to cut down the spam, spoofing and phishing rates in the social media platform and generating more security to the people using WhatsApp. Android 2.18.221 includes this feature and identifies the suspicious links if anyone sends it and whenever it is located by the app. It usually warns the people whenever they are going to open the malicious website from the link.
Swipe Right to reply
In WhatsApp, you can swipe right to reply you don’t have to use the usual long way in which you earlier used to connect or chat with the people. This feature allows you to respond to a specific message individually or whether in a group by just swiping right.
For the Android mobiles, you have to tap and hold the message to which you want to reply and then have to swipe to right at the chat top. Then you directly enter the conversation, later type and send the text as you normally do.
While, coming for the iOS mobile, you have to tap and hold the message or the conversation you want to have and tap on the reply button, that’s it. Then you are directed to the conversation where you can chat freely.
If you want to cancel the conversation you can click the X on the top right. That’s where you end up.
These are some of the top new features that have been added to WhatsApp to increase the opportunities of the Business in the WhatsApp channel.
How to use the new WhatsApp Stickers for business?
This can be said as one of the most awaited and unexpected updates in WhatsApp. Unexpected because WhatsApp being a platform were only people used to chat with each other who are in their contacts so embedding this update in the WhatsApp is pity unexpected. Most Awaited because till now there were only minor updates in WhatsApp except the WhatsApp ADs and WhatsApp Business. So, it was believed that WhatsApp will include something good and engaging. Facebook has taken a troll and introduced the WhatsApp stickers. Most importantly the youngsters believe in sending the messages in an easier way rather than typing it all, that is where the stickers came for the rescue. Until we are into a serious conversation people like to use the stickers.
These stickers are available in the online platform. You just have to update the application in Google Play store for the Android users and Apple App store for the iOS users. It contains the featured characters which include Cuppy, Salty, Komo, Bibimbap Friends, Unchi & Rollie, Shiba Inu, The Maladroits, Koko, Hatch, Fearless and Fabulous, Banana, and Biscuit. From all these types of WhatsApp stickers, you can download the one which you like most.
you can also create your own stickers and ask people to use them. You can create amazing stickers for different festive occasions like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas. It is a brilliant idea to grab the attention of the users. Just imagine the stickers which you created are being used by people in WhatsApp to communicate with each other.
Similar to this we have also tried to create the WhatsApp stickers for one of our Indian Festival Diwali and created a lot of stickers that are related to this festival. We made different stickers using different languages present in India. The application which we created is named as Diwali WhatsApp stickers. It supports both Android and iOS. It is very simple to design but gains the attention of a lot of people towards your business.
For those who want to use our app and add different stickers to their WhatsApp conversation should follow the below steps:
Download the stickers application.
For Android, you can download and whereas on the other side you can also download it for iOS also.
Tap on the ‘+’ or the Add to WhatsApp option.
Confirm the action and then it will be added to your WhatsApp.
Follow all the mentioned points on the top the steps to use stickers.
Voila! that’s it you can find all the stickers in your WhatsApp.
The most crucial thing that should be noted is that
First, you have to update your WhatsApp to enjoy this feature. Some of the WhatsApp version is not supporting these stickers feature wait for sometime till the new improved version comes up for every mobile version.
The WhatsApp stickers are very cool and new to use so people are very excited to use it. Eventually, this is the time when you can make your mark in the market and drag the attention of a lot of people towards your business. Moreover, people, them-self are very excited to use this new feature in WhatsApp.
Maybe this your time, grab the chance and gain the attention of customers while making your mark simultaneously, so, don’t let it go!
This is the time which will help make your business to a brand.
If you face any difficulty feel free to contact us or your comment below about the problem you are facing we will revert back you. We are always there to help you!
“It is the HOLIDAY season, and the fun has begun!” To make everything easy for the marketers we bring you the best holiday marketing ideas which include all the social media marketing for holidays that will make customers go buoyant.
The onset of festive season fills everyone with ecstasy and frenzy. People wait for the season, loosen their purse strings and go on a shopping spree. Similarly, the marketers crave for the best holiday marketing ideas which make the users crazy. Shopping, these days is nothing less than a marathon. All the brands – big or small vie for this and compete, trying their best to make the marathon easy for the people by making everything available to the customer in the easiest possible ways. People, being shopaholics, find it difficult to resist their urge to buy the products and easily succumb to the fanfare and influence of advertising campaigns, that is so very enticing, they just can’t be ignored.
HOLIDAY SEASON
Online marketers are gearing themselves up as the two major festivals – the Black Friday and Cyber Monday are just around the corner. The opportune time to grab the chance, become a maniac and make some money.
In this article, you will get to know some of the most alluring and insane ideas to drive a lot of traffic to your website and increase the sales of your brand. Do every possible thing that will bring you profit and propel the customers to buy exclusively from your brand. Who knows, maybe this is your chance to make your mark in the market!!!
After conducting a thorough research, we made a list of marketing ideas – tried and tested, which, if implemented in your business, are sure to usher in immense business and positive result:
LANDING PAGE
If you have an e-commerce business and everything works online for your business, the most important thing in a festive or holiday season is the landing page of your website. Yes, because this is the first thing that a customer will see after logging into your site.
(Source: invescro.com)
First and foremost, having a long and amazing landing page transforms your viewers to customers and your customers to loyal subscribers. Customizing your website according to the viewers and subscribers is very important. Always keep yourself at the place of your customers, view things from their perspective and design everything as how they would want it to be. Check for all those things which a customer would need in this festive season; giveaway all the deals on those products and flash out the items on your landing page.
(Source: invescro.com)
However, when it is the holiday season, the landing page must be very attractive for showcasing all the discounts, coupons etc., being offered on various brands. It is also important to remember that the landing should be decorated or made according to the festive day. For the upcoming holidays, i.e. the Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas, which are knocking at our doors, these ideas will work wonders.
PROMOTIONAL EMAIL MARKETING
(Source: Pinterest)
An email consisting of some gift guides to customers is bound to increase the sales by 48%. Woo! With Black Friday and Cyber Monday on the cards, it is a great chance to lure the attention of people to your brand. Unmissable, Isn’t it?
(Source: Pinterest)
To add a boost to the already existing subscribers’ list or the already existing list of trusted customers, go for this technique. Try to create a scenario of urgency among the people and make them feel that if they lose this opportunity, they might not get another one. “Buy it from us…Buy it Now” kind of an email marketing. This will induce them to buy the products immediately from you. In an analogous way, improve the offerings for your brand by creating this feel in the minds of your customers. Whenever they have a look at your offers, they would feel “Oh My God! What an amazing offer. I cannot afford to miss it.”
(Source: Pinterest)
Boosting the subscriber’s list or already the trusted customer list is very important. Always create an urgency among the people and make them feel that if they lose this they will not be able to get another. Show the urgency to people and make them feel they will lose something if they don’t buy from you, in a similar way improve the offerings for your brand through when the customer will take a look at it they will feel “How can they miss it!!!”
(Source: Pinterest)
You can use emails to target various people in various methods. For example, if you run a clothing, cosmetics or footwear business, you can target separately for both genders. Like, you can send discount coupons on cosmetics, clothes, accessories, footwear etc. to women, or provide discounts on brands – exclusively the brands’ women go crazy for. Similarly, for men, you can offer discounts, coupons on products like clothing, footwear etc. If you concentrate specifically according to the customers’ choice, the results will be quick, huge and profitable.
SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGNS
This is a digital world and social media is an indispensable platform that plays a key role in building up the reputation of your site in the digital world. You only need to make judicious, effective and wide use of this platform to reach out to most of the people, thus enhancing your outreach and getting in a lot of positive clients.
80% of the consumers active in the digital media are always on the lookout for the latest trends. They keep a constant eye on the discounts, coupons, etc. is offered. It is quite easy to catch their attention and attract them to your website.
Facebook
(Source: Facebook)
(Source: Facebook)
(Source: Facebook)
The above are just a few of the examples of the Facebook campaigns. These ideas can be adapted to draw the attention of your valuable audience. Video content is another feature that can work magically in Facebook marketing, because people, rather than browsing the contents of the offers, easily get attracted to video content that is much more appealing to the eye. You can personally reach out to your exclusive customers, who, you feel are the main target audience of your business and draw in a lot of business.
Instagram
(Source: Instagram)
(Source: Instagram)
“Pictures speak a thousand words”. The best place to promote your brand using pictures is Instagram. Gif’s, pictures work like magic on Instagram, and Instagram stories are not only easy to upload but help a lot in improving your brand and spread the word. People these days are much fascinated by Instagram stories, which are a rage, especially with the younger generation and a great tool for improving business. Summing up everything we can say that Instagram helps imporving the business.
(Source: Instagram)
Twitter
(Source: Twitter)
(Source: Twitter)
Twitter is an online news and social networking service, wherein people post and interact with one another through messages. These messages or so called “tweets” surface around a lot of topics ranging from entertainment to news, from sports to politics. People browse twitter hashtags to get complete stories on the latest news, events or trends, and even to find people, photos and hashtags on any topic under the sun.
This is the best place where you can flaunt your advertisements for free. Contests and campaigns in twitter reach out to a huge audience base. People’s tweets and retweets reach all over the world and most importantly, you can target the people you want.
Pinterest
(Source: Pinterest)
(Source: Pinterest)
It is another social media platform which has been gaining popularity, with a lot of users turning towards it. According to statistics, the maximum number of users on Pinterest are women and it is also found that before buying anything on the e-commerce site or elsewhere, people visit this social media site and then decide to make a purchase from any of the places.
(Source: Pinterest)
HASHTAGS
Hashtags are very important in social media campaigns. Use hashtags that are related and try to create your own hashtags. The hashtags you create will have a wide outreach. Hashtags help in getting your advertisements and contents across to your viewers and are very popular on Twitter and Instagram. Using hashtags is highly beneficial for the growth of your business.
The popular hashtags that you may use are #BlackFriday #BlackFriday2018 #CyberMonday #Christmas #Christmas2018 #wishlist #HolidayShopping etc. These hashtags are used by a lot of audiences during the holiday season and if used well, can promise to gather a lot many viewers.
HOURLY DEALS
Hourly deals in the e-commerce platform give thumping results. People like to shop a lot during these short periods of time and the rush is huge when offers are made on an hourly basis. For example, you can offer three different deals in three different timeframes. Like, in the first hour, you give deals for electronic goods, then the next hour, you give deals on clothing and then, on the third hour, you give deals on kitchenware. This works like magic and paves way for a drastic increase in sales. The crucial thing to remember here is to offer this facility to your exclusive subscribers. In this way, you can increase your subscribers, as well as your sales. The number of sales is sure to touch the sky.
(Source: express.co.uk)
You should also make sure that you connect with your subscribers at regular intervals of time and make them aware, using emails. Preserving the mails of the subscribers and users comes in very handy here, as, during the holiday season, you can convert these leads to customers and the customers to subscribers. This will immensely help you extend the horizon of your business.
(Source: Dell)
DEALS EXTENSION
Extending the deals past the holidays is a tried and tested method and gives the best results. For example, if your deal is until Cyber Monday, try to extend it for a few more days, not necessary until Christmas. All the same, it can be extended by a day or two. This way, you would extend your reach to customers who have missed the deals and the deadlines and are thus left disappointed. They would only be too glad to grab the second opportunity. Thus, your business is also happy
(Source: Shopify)
Usually, there is always a huge rush during the festive season. If you extend the deals by one to two days, the customers would feel happy and you can get customers post-holidays too. People normally skip a lot of things just because of the festive rush and their busy schedule, if they find deals lasting long, this will add a lot in converting the leads to subscribers or loyal customers.
This will help you maintain the scarcity and exclusivity of your promotions and people will feel the difference and consider you to be unique and exclusive. Give the stress and make it look catchy on the days which you have extended.
(Source: Studio Yoga)
Thus, the customers who have missed the sale and the amazing deals can still shop. This would make the customer feel they haven’t lost the chance to buy the products with the same deals, discounts etc. As mentioned this, will make you the talk of the town and make your brand a known brand in the mindsets of the viewers, and people will remember you for a long time.
VIP DISCOUNTS, GIFT CARDS, AND HOLIDAY COUPONS
VIP Discounts are for those who are your Pro-Subscribers or who make a lot of purchases from your online websites. These are your most prized, valued and loyal customers. Make them feel more special and provide them with extra discounts. This can make them feel much exclusive and, there is an increased chance of such customers buying more than the quantity they had planned in their minds – maybe even double, for personal use or for gifting purposes.
(Source: Canoga Park)
Give such exclusive discounts only to the top-end buyers and not to everyone. This would make them feel special and stick to your brand out of loyalty.
You can even surprise the top buyers with gift cards – virtual, physical or even both. This works like wonder. Not only do you gift them, but instead motivate them to gift to their near and dear ones in the festive season. Make them realize that these are the best gifts which they can gift to their family, friends or anyone special to them in these holidays.
(Source: Fanjoy)
Who says we can’t apply the offline tactic online? Of Course, we can. Other than normal coupon codes for discounts, you can go a step forward and gift a holiday trip. You can make a list of your active customers and encourage them to buy and grab a chance to win holiday tickets. Holiday season and holiday tickets? What more would one want? You can even select your top loyal customers and offer them a free holiday trip, with a written personalized note to make them feel even more special. This might not show an immediate result but would be cherished by them for a long time and thus give you a long-lasting output in the long-run.
KEYNOTES
More than these, the human touch – a peppy greeting, a wish from the heart, and a beautiful smile would go a long way. Don’t forget to greet them or wish them this festive season. It will delight them. Always try to make your customers happy with your creative ideas. By this, not only would you make your customers happy and gay, you yourself will stand to be benefitted and gain profits. Make sure to implement all the ideas wisely.
Happy Holidays!!!!
Enjoy it with loads of Fun, Laughter, Celebrations, Gifts, and Smiles. ?
Every morning, as soon as we wake up, we hear the alarming news about Data Security Breaches or the recent data breach that occurred or some MNC data that was breached or hacked. This is the scenario that occurs every second day. This causes a sense of insecurity in the minds of people and tends to scare them no end. People are now worried about the secured data that they provide in online media. People need to be extra cautious and extremely careful while providing their personal information and data in the digital platform.
What is data security breach?
Data Breach occurs when the personal data of a person gets accessed by some other person also known as a hacker. When the data of a person or an organisation geta accessed by these hackers without their knowledge, then the situation is referred to as data breach. The data which the hacker gets access to, is very sensitive and the personal information gets into the danger zone, when the hacker gets access to it. This threatening situation is possible in two different ways:
By the hacker personally accessing the computer or network of the user and stealing the sensitive data and files.
By the hacker, sitting at the comfort of his/her home and getting access to the target person’s computer data, or rather, by bypassing the network remotely and getting access to the desired data.
The second means i.e. by remotely having complete control over the data has become one of the most widely used techniques employed by the cyber hackers. This is one of the reasons for data breach – the data gets breached and the identity of the hackers is not known.
How data breach occur?
Below are some of the ways in which data breach occurs:
Background Research
The cyber hackers always carry out the background research and act accordingly. For any hacking to be a success, background research is mandatory. Importantly, the cyber hackers look for weaknesses or a weak link of the target person or the target company. When they find this weak link, they use it against the person or the company. In other ways, this is the strength that the cyber hackers get and they use this for data breaching.
Take Action
The cybercriminal slowly comes in contact with the users’ system or network and gains an upper hand on it. First, he/she tries to make a contact in the social media site of the user, then slowly digs into the details and gets full access to the user data. The time of the attack is not sudden, instead, it is very slow and he/she obtains the full data of the target user or the company.
Attack on Network or Social
When a hacker gets access to the company’s infrastructure, system, applications and also gets a hang of all the weakness of the company, he/she filtrates them to get access to the company completely. This is a network attack. On the other hand, social attack means tricking the employees of a particular organisation and getting all the data from him/her, like extracting information about- “How to get access to the organisation network?” This can lead to a situation wherein the employee is tricked and his/her user credentials are taken. They may even be asked to provide access to the attachments. This is a strategic malicious move, that can lead to a data breach in an indirect way.
Exfiltration
Once the hacker gets complete access to one system in the network of the organisation, he/she can easily attack the whole company’s software system and gather all the essential and confidential data. If the hacker gets all the data successfully without any hurdles, then the mission of the hacker is accomplished. The company’s data is hacked and the data breach is successful.
Few of the biggest data breaches of the decade:
Below mentioned companies faced some of the biggest data breaches of the era:
Yahoo Security Breach
In the year 2013, a lot of Yahoo accounts-approximately 3 billion were hacked. Yes, you heard it right – 3 billion Yahoo accounts were hacked. It is considered as the biggest data breach of this era. All the users, of Yahoo, were affected by this data breach. The reason behind this mishap, has not yet been found. The US government suspect Russia to be the hacker behind this breach.
eBay
On March 2014, around 145 million customers of eBay received an email to change the password or reset the password. The data breach usually includes encrypted passwords that connect directly to the personal information of the person. Like all other data breaches, the cybercriminals got access to the users to account through the stolen login credentials. The twist here is, the hackers didn’t gather the credentials from the users, whereas they got it from the employees of eBay. Thankfully, the payment option of the users was safe, as it was linked to PayPal, which needed an encrypted password for completing the transaction. So, the users were just asked to change their passwords.
Equifax Security Breach
The Credit Bureau, Equifax was breached in the year 2017, due to which 143 million Americans and many other people from different countries got affected. The unique identities of thousands of people were stolen. Data Breach in Equifax took place several months before it was announced publicly. Equifax had a vulnerable open source software “Apache Struts”, from where the hackers got easy access to the customers’ accounts.
Facebook
The recent data breach that took place was in September this year, when the world’s most used social media site, Facebook got hacked. Around 50 million Facebook accounts were hacked all over the world and 90 million people were sent emails for password resets. This was caused due to some technical glitches at Facebook’s end. Through this, hackers gained access to the private and confidential data of the users. The European Government has taken strict action against it, Facebook had to face the trial in the court and CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg had to be present in the court trials to testify himself.
Google+
The most recent one, on October 9th, Alphabet, announced that they are going to shut down Google+ soon. This was after the incidence of the data of 500,000 people being exposed. The reason here also was similar – the data got leaked because of the vulnerability in the application which made it easy to gain access for the hackers and the app developers to get into the personal data of the users and exploit it. The data actually was leaked earlier in March 2018, but it was reportedly leaked in October 2018. After a thorough check with the Google employees, it was found that the developers had no clue about it. Presently, all the user data is safe. Following this, a news came that the Google+ will soon be shut-down by Alphabet.
Social media outrages
All these kinds of data breach and the recent data breach that keep surfacing every now and then, make people worry about their valuable personal and sensitive information. People now are facing a big dilemma whether to feel secure with these digital sites or to avoid these sites.
October 16th morning-6:41 EDT: YouTube was down and the network was lost for almost two hours. Not only YouTube, Slack – a professional site for office usage got network Glitches on June 27th this year and lost its network for almost three hours, and people were not able to connect to their workplaces. Those three hours were said to be the most difficult time for the employees and the organisations.
What are all these things leading us to? Whether to believe social media or not? In my view, the data which is much sensitive and important should not be shared in any social platform. Instead, it should be kept at a place where the information would be safe. To secure your social media site, always use several options like double check while login, having security questions, connect to email and access only when scrupulously checked by you. These steps will help in making your information safe in the social media or in the digital platform.
Twitter hashtags are one the crucial and omnipresent thing used in social media platforms nowadays. These had their humble beginnings from Twitter, but have now become quite trending. People, these days even talk using these hashtags. Every tweet, every post in the current scenario, contains hashtags in it. Hashtags render people more active in social media. These hashtags, may, at times, result in providing the required engagements, but not at all the times.
By using Hashtags, you can organise everything in social media. You will also get an opportunity to know who is talking about similar things as the ones you are talking about. A person should know: when to use hashtags, where to use hashtags, and also the hashtags one should use? Most importantly, how will these hashtags help you leverage your brand and company in the social media.
What are Hashtags?
On Social media, mainly Twitter, when you use “#” and continue writing the words without any spaces, then the phrase is a “hashtag”. When we write a hashtag for a tweet, it gets linked to all the other people who use the same hashtag. One more advantage is that these hashtags also increase the visibility in the masses. It can even increase the conversation to last for a longer period of time.
When you add “#” with any phrase, then the resultant hashtag will act as a link. Whenever someone clicks the hashtag, that person is redirected to the place or people who use the same hashtag. You can see and know the range or people who use the hashtag.
Hashtags are tags that anyone can create. In fact, anyone can use these, but one can’t restrict people from using them. Sometimes, the hashtags can trend organically without including any popular brand. Hashtags grab people’s attention and encourage them to read the content. In this way, you can increase the engagements and viewers for your page in Social media.
Keeping all these things aside one more crucial thing that comes up on everyone’s mind is:
Would I be able to enroll my hashtag?
The answer to this is “YES”. Anyone who has created his/her hashtag can enroll it. The only thing they can’t stop people from using it, unless the hashtag is promoting a brand.
It clearly means, you can register a hashtag as yours but you can’t own it as you do in case of websites created by you.
Why should we use Hashtags?
Hashtags usually ease the process and make your brand visible to the audience. When people search for the hashtag, each and every post which contains the hashtag will pop up all the results. Using the hashtags, you can reach the audience who are the target customers for your business. This makes things easy for you, because people themselves will search for your business, using the hashtags and will find you. Hashtags are also used to create an action because people use it and automatically get attracted towards it.
If your hashtag is relevant enough, then people will be automatically get enticed and spend more time on your social media page. After some time, you can redirect them to your official website. In this way, you can increase the number of engagements. Hashtags are also used by various social media platforms except Twitter. This somehow affects the use of hashtags in social media. It also impacts the use of Hashtags as the amount of information given increases and puts everything on the front page, while you search in the social media.
The Hashtags created give only the distinctive results. For people, who are active in social media, it becomes easy to find all the information for the users in the social media platform. If a hashtag is unique and you combine it with the content, then it makes the whole content unique and makes your post stand out amongst the social media users. The users can also find it useful and valuable and will also copy your hashtag.
How to use Hashtags on Twitter?
The series of hashtags started from Twitter only. Hashtagging has a major impact on your Twitter account, when you start considering the follower count. Using the general and non-specific hashtags doesn’t drive the required traffic. If you use some of the hashtags which are trending and most of the people are using it, then such hashtags will attract a lot of people. Below are a few similar kinds of hashtags:
Hashtagging in twitter encourages people to take part in various activities taking place in the social media platform. Always make sure that all the hashtags that you create and the tweets you tweet in the twitter aim at grabbing more audience, or you can say, followers. This is useful, even if people don’t follow you.
If you have a good content with unique and grabbing hashtags, people will automatically start engaging in your posts. From the next time, people will automatically consider you to be effective and your work to be amazing and they will start following you.
How to do Campaign in Twitter using effective Hashtags?
For any digital marketing company or organisations who are selling their products on the digital platform:
All those companies for whom the digital platform is a business, have to make their presence felt on the online platform. Grabbing the attention of the people is the main motto of any company. The audience, most of the time, gather in social networking because many people stay active on the social media platform and people communicate with each other here. Social media has become a part and parcel of everyone’s everyday life these days.
Coming to the Twitter, it is one if such platform where people are always active. There are a lot of biggies, companies, celebrities, social activists who use this platform, almost incessantly. Most of the people all over the world follow these people. Not only the people, but celebrities are also interested in various activities that go on in the social media platform.
To promote your brand amidst all these is a major challenge and grabbing the attention of the people becomes a bit difficult. To overcome this challenge, companies do campaigns on different occasions. Being a digital marketing agency, we also embarked on digital campaigns. Having a sound knowledge of Twitter and its use, we too started campaigning.
CAMPAIGNS
Independence Day
Our first campaign on Twitter was the Independence day campaign, in which we made a video about giving up plastic flags and use flags made of fabric or paper. Indirectly, we were requesting our viewers to stop using plastic and turn to use biodegradable materials. This was to highlight the adverse effects of our addiction to plastic, resulting in pollution and killing of land animals and marine mammals, the resultant plastic pollution and the interminable loss to the environment.
This was our very first campaign in Twitter. A maiden attempt by us, we just used trending and relevant hashtags. We didn’t use or make our own hashtag. Our main motto was to reach the masses by hook or by crook, and create awareness. It truly was a boon in disguise, and proved a boost for using social media as a viable platform for sharing our ideas.
Our second campaign was on Raksha Bandhan, a festival signifying the bond between a brother and a sister. The festival is characterised by the sister tying a Rakhi or the sacred thread on her brother’s wrist. The brother then takes a vow to protect her lifelong. On this day, we planned a campaign and made a contest with hashtag #IamwithYouSister. The campaign ran like this – the brother and sister had to take a selfie, with the rakhi tied on the brother’s wrist. People had to take the picture and use the hashtags #IamwithYouSister and #RakhiAtSoftscripts. Gift vouchers were given away to randomly selected participants.
The outreach of this campaign was moderate. Here also, we neither created our own hashtags, nor used or framed our own hashtags. The response was not very encouraging.
Our learnings:
It is not necessary that every campaign will grab the audience’s attention. Some campaigns might be a huge success and grab a lot of response, and yet a few might not be upto the expected level. This is a fact that must be accepted with grace. We should never give up and stop, but should move on.
Ganesh Chaturthi
Ganesh Chaturthi or Ganapati Puja, as it is more popularly known, is one of India’s famous festivals, celebrating the birth of Lord Ganesha – the elephant-headed God. Every house is adorned with Ganesha idols made of different materials – Tumeric, mud, or the idols made from metal. We collaborated with another company that produced eco-friendly idols of Lord Ganesha, which could easily dissolve, and started our campaign.
We shot a 30 second video that displayed the idea of stopping usage of Idols made up of POP or Plaster of Paris. Instead, it showcased the usage of Green Ganesha or biodegradable idols. For this video, we received 1,146 organic views and the people not only viewed the video but gave positive response and engaged themselves actively. Hence, we need to upload good and relevant content such that viewers can be easily attracted.
Collaborating and doing campaigns also saves a lot of time. This is always a win-win situation, you can increase the number of users by attracting and retaining your own viewers, and also by gain the users of the collaborated company.
MORE ABOUT THE CAMPAIGN
On the same occasion, we also ran another campaign – selfie with eco-friendly Ganesha. That was when we started using our own hashtag, that is #SelfiewithEcoGanesha. People participated enthusiastically and came up with their unique selfies with biodegradable and environment-friendly idols of Lord Ganesha and posted them, using the #SelfiewithEcoGanesha. It was mandatory to have the selfies only with Eco-friendly Ganesha. Selfies with other forms of idols were not considered. The top 5 contestants were awarded gift vouchers.
The campaign was live on all the 10 days of Ganesh Chaturthi and a lot of people participated with their amazing selfies. They also came up with different ideas on celebrating the eco-friendly Ganesh Chaturthi. The response was overwhelming and we had, by this time, gathered a group of loyal followers and people who follow us regularly. They are still with us!
World Tourism Day
We not only concentrated on the local or national events. In fact, we tried to cover almost everything that was going on in the whole world. We mostly concentrated our campaigns on trending topics. For instance, we conducted a campaign on World Tourism Day too. However, here also, we didn’t create any hashtag of ours. Yet the campaign was successful with a huge crowd of people who visited the campaign. The people who had participated in our earlier campaigns, now became our trusted audience. The campaign was all about sharing their travel pictures.
In this campaign, we gathered a decent number of comments and retweets, where people posted their travel pictures in India with the hashtag #WorldTourismDay.
Our motto was not only to promote our brand. We had the vision of promoting our brand along with the concept of improving the Indian Tourism on a worldwide spectrum. Our efforts bore fruit and we landed up getting thousands of lovely pictures with nature at the backdrop.
Indonesia
We did not restrict our campaigns exclusively to promotion of our brand, instead, we also focussed on the current scenario and the present world conditions. For example, we created awareness, empathy and sympathy in the minds and hearts of people when Tsunami struck Indonesia. This was for a social cause and with the noble idea of helping people in distress.
Gandhi Jayanti
Considered to be a national festival in India, Gandhi Jayanti is celebrated to mark the birth of the father of our nation – Mahatma Gandhi – our great leader who freed India from the shackles of British supremacy. We created a campaign to accomplish his vision of keeping India clean and green. We also supported the Honourable Prime Minister’s vision of #SwacchBharat. Here, we created a Hashtag #WeSupportBapusdream. In the campaign, people had to post their images supporting the #SwaachBharat campaign and how they are contributing their bit in keeping the country clean.
The top participants got away with alluring Gift Coupons, sponsored by us.
Most of our campaigns are aimed towards social causes and also make people aware of the present day scenario in our country.
Indian Air Force Day
We created a campaign on the Indian Air Force Day to support our Sky Warriors and make people realise the fact that it is because of them we are safe and sound inside the comfort of our home and have a happy sleep. After this, we asked people to write 2-3 lines about these real heroes whom they know. We created our own hashtag #HumVayuSenakeSaath, which means “we are with the air force” We also promised to give Gift hampers at the end of the campaign. A huge number of people participated in it, and came up with a lot many stories – told and untold of these real heroes.
Dusshera
This was our latest campaign which ended with the culmination of Dussehra – a 10-day long festival or Navratri, where people worship Goddess Durga. The festival signifies the victory of good over evil. Our idea was to support women and the concept of women empowerment. We created a hashtag #HumNaarikeSaath which means “We support women”.
In this campaign, we encouraged people to tag their friends and family, whomever they wanted to gift this festive season. For this, they had to use the hashtag #UtsavKaMausam which was created by us. At the end of the festival, some randomly chosen participants were given Gift Coupons.
KEY THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND
Always giveaway the prizes and gifts which were promised in the campaign. Never ever try to bluff people, because if you do so, people will not only feel cheated but would lose their trust in you and eventually leave. Your campaigns will be considered fake and you will lose your integrity.
Conduct the campaigns according to your budget and limit yourself till the point your budget permits you. It will only be stupidity if you promise something and struggle hard to fulfil it.
Have some guidelines for each and every campaign. Ask the contestants to follow the guidelines and make everything fair for the audience. This will reduce your stress levels, while selecting the deserving persons as winners of the campaigns.
These are some of the things that, if meticulously followed, will yield good results and positive outcomes, in the twitter campaigns.
This article throws light on how hashtags help promote twitter campaigns.
Hope this gives you a good idea about campaigning on social media.
