Brand your Company through LinkedIn

When social media agencies in Cochin usually prefer social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc for businesses and brand building, there is one social media site which is given less attention and importance – LinkedIn. Other social media websites concentrate on building and maintaining the social side of the brand or service, LinkedIn minds the professional positioning. It is basically a business networking website for people in professional occupations. It is founded by Reid Hoffman, Allen Blue, Kostantin Guericke, Eric Ly and Jean-Luc Vaillant in December 2002 and launched on May 5, 2003. With the primary function of professional networking, as of June 2013, LinkedIn reportedly has more than 259 million acquired users in more than 200 countries and territories.

The main aim of LinkedIn is to and enable professional networking and build up networks through adding registered users called Connections. Users can invite anyone to become a connection. Company accounts could list their job vacancies and search for potential candidates, while the users could seek out a job, professional veterans and business opportunities using this list of connections. Another feature of LinkedIn is that users could follow different companies and receive notifications about their latest news and other offers. LinkedIn also allows sponsored updates & advertisement services which would enable the individuals and companies to spread the content to their user base.

 

Pin your Social Media using Pinterest

Being a social media agency in Kerala, we have equal preference for all social media platforms and clearly understand that, for each brand or business, there are a set of social media sites instead of the all, which would add value to their brand & services. Taking that matter under consideration, we have observed that Pinterest is one of that social media platform which will showcase the products or services, at the same time augment the sales and be in constant touch with the customers while attracting new ones. You will be wondering what advantage Pinterest, a photo sharing social media platform, has over Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites.

Pinterest is that social media site which has active 70 million users worldwide, with 2.5 million page views monthly and attracts 1090 users per minute. As per the statistics, the international traffic has grown to 125% in 2013 and Pinterest users stay on site for a good 15.8 minutes. It’s female – male user ratio is 83% and 17% respectively, which is much higher than Facebook and Twitter. It also has category wise boards – Cooking & Dining, Do It Yourself & Crafts, Health info, Fashion & Beauty, Technology etc to help users to follow their respective interests and get maximum information in it.

Users use Pinterest for many reasons apart from finding it fun and interesting to use, like

• To get special offers on brands or people that they have pinned
• To associate with brand or retailers they identify
• To connect with people who have similar likes and interests
• To keep track of or collect things they like
• To get better information or expert opinion on what to buy
• To keep up with the latest trends they like such as fashion, home décor etc

If a brand or business could leverage on these facts, then it could convert their Pinterest activity into sales for sure. The facts – 50% of female Pinterest users would follow a brand if rewards are offered to them and 81% women who have online presence trust Pinterest as a reliable source of information and advice, will surely convince you of Pinterest’s power in supporting your brand and increasing the sales.

 

Snapchat & Facebook’s $3 Billion Offer – An Introspection by a Social Media Agency in Cochin

In our previous blogs, we talked about Snapchat and its popularity. However it won’t be fair if we do not talk about the deal which made Snapchat the uber popular within the social media circles and enthusiasts. Yes, it is about the Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel’s most discussed rejection of $3 billion acquisition deal made Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. The rejection was undoubtedly a blow to Facebook and Zuckerberg who acquired and owned biggies like Instagram. This has further strengthened the reports that Facebook is losing its users within the teenage and young adult user category, who are switching to other social network platforms out of lack of interest in Facebook.

Having able to bag 400 million users within the 2 years of its inception, Snapchat’s growth is mind blowing and envy inducing to any other social media platform. If Spiegel has accepted the $3 billion acquisition offer, Spiegel and his co-founder Bobby Murphy would each have got to take home a good $750 million from the Facebook offer. However they did n’t accepted the offer as Spiegel found both the offer and meeting to be “basically like, ‘we’re (Facebook) going to crush you’”, as given in the interview to the Forbes magazine. Facebook apparently was planning to launch its messaging app called Poke at that time and Snapchat created a threat to the success of Poke. And this is the very reason why Facebook was eager to buy out Snapchat. However Snapchat’s founders felt they had an edge, as Zuckerberg made another visit to make a bid to buy out the company. But the founders sensed Facebook’s weakness and opportunity and found “trading that for some short-term gain isn’t very interesting.” What followed it is history.

Snapchat has since raised another $50 million at a reported $2 billion valuation – less than Facebook’s reported bid, but getting there. And the app Facebook Poke proved to be a major flop. Now, its time for some trivia. Read Spiegel’s $3 billion satirical rejection letter to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, which has done great rounds in the social media circles, and Forbes magazine’s cover story on Snapchat.