We’ve answered some FAQs about the position below:

What will I do at Dot Now?

As an intern, you will be responsible for researching and writing about Social Media on our blog. You may also handle Facebook pages, Twitter handles and online Ad campaigns for us.

What skills do I need to have?

Are you excited about brands on Facebook? Do you love to Tweet? Can you write delightful headlines and witty one-liners? Are you a writer with an informed opinion? If you’ve answered yes for any of these questions, then you will love our summer internship.

How long will the internship be?

The internship period is for a minimum of 6 weeks though we would prefer it if you could work with us for 8 weeks or longer.

How can I apply?

Please send your resume to deepti@dotnow.in and mark a copy to sashank@dotnow.in

About Dot Now Social

Dot Now Social is a digital marketing agency that provides services in the social media and internet marketing space. To know more please visit www.dotnow.in

www.facebook.com/dotnow

www.twitter.com/dotnow

We look forward to hearing from you soon!

Address:

Dot Now Social

Plot No. 48, Inside Kamaan

Road No. 12, Banjara Hills,

Hyderabad

Alec Ross, senior advisor on innovation and technology at the US department of State had said- “One of the greatest benefits of social media for government’s relationship with citizens is the way in which it helps strengthen democracy. “At the core of democracy is citizen participation. The more our citizens are using social media for the purpose of electioneering, communicating with government and engaging, the more robust it makes our democracy”

Keeping this in mind, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (www.fes-india.org) MICCI (www.micci.in), COVA (www.covanetwork.org) & Dot Now Social (www.dotnow.in) have come together to do a 2 day conference on the Role of Social Media in Democracy on March 24 & 25.

The conference should ideally be attended by social entrepreneurs, social media enthusiasts and pros, media persons, change-makers, students and active citizens

For the detailed itinerary, kindly go here

P.S: To follow the proceedings from the comfort of your home/office, kindly follow #sm4d on Twitter. Thanks

As we look back on a year filled with surprises, adventures, major developments, unexpected challenges, and enormous gratifications, we are keenly aware we wouldn’t be here without you, our clients, proteges, well wishers,  partners, supporters and friends.

Thank you for helping us learn and grow.

Here’s looking  forward to a wonderful and joyous 2012 together!

“Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.”
~Hal Borlan”

Cheers from all of us at Dot Now Social

First, we shared each other’s individual experiences when it came to deep listening and observed what difference it had made in that particular context. It’s sincere application made a positive impact while its non-application tended to made things worse.

When we have one-on-one conversations with our peers, family members and others, we often are put into situations where we have to do the listening part or to put it in simpler words- hear out somebody’s story. At this point of time, we often find ourselves getting distracted due to some random reason or unable to pay concentration to what the other person has to say. Deep Listening is the approach we’ve gotta take!

We further discussed on the topic and here are the inferences from the same.

• For Deep Listening to be successful, we’ve got to ask questions to get clarifications and get more info.
• We’ve got to pay utmost attention to Facts in the story, Feelings at every level and the Intent of the speaker in that context.
• There is also a need to give feedback/acknowledgement, the most critical element of effective communication, so that the other person feels ‘being listening to’. This gives him/her the ability to proceed further with their story in an uncomplicated manner
• Deep listening more often than not results in progress/positive change or shift from the previous state.
• We need to listen to the other person without any preconceived notions and an empty mind. This will help us to analyze the other person’s situation better.
• While deep listening, we’ve also got to make sure that we are non-judgmental and don’t come to any conclusions during the conversation.
• At no point of time should the speaker be sympathized with, the listener’s job is to empathize with them.
• Also, we should remember that deep listening is really about understanding the context of the speaker’s story and not about coming to an agreement with it.
• And lastly, deep listening is all about patience and willingness to hold in the heart.

Post the deep listening phase comes action time, when we need to reply to the speaker and express what we feel about the whole thing.

• Rephrase the account and narrate it to the speaker
• Name that feeling
• State the Intention

“The choice to Listen, is the choice to Love!” – Kiran Gulrajani

In this blog post, you can expect answers to the following queries:

• What is the big deal with Social CRM in the Hospitality industry?
• Is Social CRM really effective and efficient?
• Who is doing it right?
• What kind of problems you might be facing when it comes to Social CRM?
• How to implement a Social CRM strategy in 7 steps?

The Hospitality industry offers a huge potential for Social CRM. The Hospitality industry thrives on two basic factors- Segmentation & Uniqueness. Apart from the regular promises of customer satisfaction, it is the Identity or rather the personality of the hotel that really matters. And not to forget the Stand-out factor, that every hotel has on offering, as compared to its competitors. All these factors contribute towards the building of trust and customer loyalty, and eventually prolonged profitability.

Most hotels spend heavily towards enhancing customer experiences through various marketing ploys. They offer loyalty programs and other exclusive benefits to capture the customer’s attention. But, these promotions tend to become heavy on their pockets. Hence, including Social CRM mechanism in their framework will see a significant cut-down in their costs and also lessen the outreach efforts thanks to social media’s targeted reach resulting in a win-win situation.

Taking a cue from other verticals, social media is slowly but steadily being employed by players from the Hospitality industry. The InterContinental Group of Hotels was one of the first players in this field, to have successfully adopted social media to boost sales. Hotel Westin Mindspace, Hyderabad has also started really well. But, by far the best that I’ve seen is Hotel Royal Plaza on Scotts, Singapore. It seems to be doing everything right.

As we know, the Hospitality industry is heavily dependent on Word-of-Mouth. It can benefit immensely from Social CRM which is nothing but an electronic version of Word-of-Mouth. Any amount of negative feedback from customers can act as a dampener and affect sales, and the brand itself.

Another area of concern in this industry is the lack of qualified social media personnel with Hotel management background. As per a recent research, some hotels have already started including knowledge of social media as a requirement into entry-level job roles, while most hotels have simply engaged a social media agency to carry out the task and rely on them to implement effective social media marketing strategies and Social CRM to manage guest reviews, measure results, engage and communicate effectively with potential customers through social media platforms and blogs.

Also, its important to understand that Social CRM is an extension of the traditional CRM concept of an organization

I’m also listing down a couple of steps to implement Social CRM

1. Listen to what people are talking about your brand.
2. Understand the social graph of your customers and see where they’re coming from.
3. Try to identify your most frequent/best customers from the graph and see if they’re active on Social media.
4. Set your goals and objectives from the above steps.
5. Establish processes and requirements to meet those objectives.
6. Put together a Social media plan based on your requirements and processes.
7. Review and execute. Repeat these steps time and again.

The key is really to listen to your customers and see how best you can use Social CRM in your setup.

Do share with us your experiences with respect to Social CRM & Social Media in this industry. Thanks

References:

• · Towards Social CRM in Travel & Hospitality, Congnizant 20-20 Insights, 2011
• 10 Steps to start implementing Social CRM, Hotel Marketing Argentina, 2011
• Airlines, Travel And Hospitality, Overtone

People of every era or region have got their own signature fashion statement and it may be in the form of clothing, accessories or footwear.

It so happens in the Fashion industry worldwide that the fabric is manufactured in some country (for cost effectiveness), designed in another country and eventually sold in another country. The fashion industry has long been one of the largest employers globally, especially in the United States.

When it comes to the ‘Big Players’ in the Fashion industry, it’s not much of a problem to lure their audience to stores. But for small time retailers and local designers, its really an uphill task to reach out to their audience. There is no clear marketing channel for their success. For some, it may be the location of their boutiques and for some its simply word-of-mouth.

This is where Social Media can play a stellar role! Be it haute couture patrons or bargain shoppers, social media can cater to both.

The Social CRM factor, when plugged-in to this boutique work-flow can make life much easier for the local designers. It brings in the element of ‘Engagement’ into the picture, where consumers-old and new can voice their opinions, discuss the latest trends, share their feedback(good/bad) and general experiences with the store and it’s offerings on social media platforms. Listening to these interactions can help the designers work better to suit their customer’s requirements.

The retailers can take to Blogging and put up their latest range on display (with a restricted login ofcourse, so that their designs remain intact!). Facebook page and a Twitter account can be used to divert traffic to this blog. Have conversations over that and give out tips to their followers. This art of creating a tribe and facilitating a continuous flow of conversation is going to make a huge difference to these boutiques.

Special deals, promotional sales may also be promoted on social media platforms. The designers wouldn’t have to shell out big bucks for announcing their latest range to the world. All they need is a smart strategy to get the sales moving.

Fashion retailers with a youth oriented target audience are currently leading the social media show globally. In UK, TopShop is one of the leading contenders in this race. In India however, the trend is yet to catch up.

eDigitalResearch states that Facebook remains the most trusted site for fashion vendors to engage with their customers.

The Social CRM factor can thus accomplish the main objective of every Fashion Retailer/Designer, i.e to convert buyers into evangelists.

So, how’d it help the Airlines if they joined the Social Media bandwagon?

Well, following the basic principles of  Social Media which consists of communities and conversations, we can state that there are status updates, tweets, etc from passengers, doing the rounds that they are in a certain airline on the way to a certain destination, on so-and-so airways. They simply air feedback on social media platforms, describing their journeys, be it good or bad on that air carrier and the kind of service meted out to them and so on and so forth.

It is here that the airlines need to tap in and see how the customer experience has been. There are various tools on the internet to keep a track of all this chatter. Airlines need to get a team in place and monitor/listen to those conversations and make a note of all that. And also respond to queries and solve passenger grievances.

But, not every airline on the planet can do it right. It just takes some amount of effort and dedication from the airline.

In US, the twitter feed of Delta Airlines(@Delta) is very active as well as responsive. It asks it’s passengers to send in their Flight numbers to check if the Flight is on time/delayed and answers to queries along with offering apologies to unhappy passengers and more.

In India, Facebook and Twitter are being used pretty decently by Jet Airways(@jetairways) & Kingfisher Airlines (flykingfisher). They are doing their bit to get onto the bandwagon and explore other avenues with Social Media. I’m afraid the same cannot be said about the national carrier- Indian Airlines.

A couple of weeks back, severe snow and ice storms had hit the San Francisco,CA region and the customer care phone lines of United, Southwest and Delta Airlines observed a severe congestion. Travellers had to resort to Social Media platforms to know about their flight reservations and rebookings.

In late 2010, the Netherlands’ national carriers- KLM launched the KLM Surprise. It made use of Foursquare app. As soon the passengers checked-in using Foursquare, at the Amsterdam Airport, the KLM staff set out to gather their info from social media platforms. They chose a unique gift for the passenger,  located him/her in the terminal and delivered the surprise gift to them. This info was also shared on the Facebook page and Twitter accounts of KML.

Talk about Customer experience!

Remember, Business is all about forming and sustaining relationships. And, Social Media provides a fantastic platform to build these relationships.

In the coming weeks, the Dot Now Social team will come up with a series of blog posts highlighting how Social CRM can be effectively applied in some Domains/Verticals, keeping in mind the basics of Social Media (i.e- Listening, Engagement, Alignment, Integration, Measurement) and CRM (i.e-Acquiring, Servicing, Retaining) and we’ll also try to bring the SME/SMB perspective into the picture.

This series of blog posts has been named as the Social CRM-Consumerization of the Enterprise(SCE) series

Social commerce is simply the use of Social Media in an E-Commerce environment.

As we all know, with the increasing amount of users on Social Networks (especially Facebook and Twitter) every day, the scope for carrying out Business on them has grown enormously.

Almost all the Sellers/Vendors have forayed into Social Media and made a significant presence there, in terms of their brand recognition and fan following. Thanks to Social Media, all of them have been able to build their own respective communities and narrowed down on their buyers to a great extent. Social Media is a great channel to reach out to your customers. Be it the arrival of the latest range of products or promotional deals or sales, the followers are up-to-date with everything.

As per a comScore Report, 23% of Twitter users follow businesses to find special deals, promotions, or sales, while 14% of Twitter users reported taking to the stream to find and share product reviews and opinions. According to another study by Chadwick Martin Bailey, it was observed that 25% of consumers connected to brands on Facebook did so to receive discounts. Another interesting fact that comScore found was- Facebook and Twitter visitors spend 1.5x more online than average Internet users. Therefore, with growing number of users on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, the tendency to spend online also augments.

Social Commerce now has under its fold a variety of social media tools and content used in the context of e-commerce. A few of them are:

• Customer ratings
• Customer reviews
• User recommendations
• Social Shopping tools
• Dedicated platforms (Forums and communities)
• SEO
• Social Advertising

More and more companies are coming up with strategies to capitalize on Social Commerce. Facebook came out with a new strategy wherein its members who use the company’s location-based ‘Places’ feature will be alerted to special deals and discounts offered by retailers in their vicinity. The users can take advantage of this feature by showing their phones at participating stores. Facebook said that this action would be posted on users’ news feed so that their friends might also utilize the special offers. Amazon is charting out its strategy as well.

Few of the most popular Social Commerce players are Amazon, Best Buy, Starbucks, Dell and Hallmark.

Here are a list of Social Commerce sites

• ShopSocially
• Kactoos
• Groupon
• BuyWithMe

So, what more do the Sellers need now, they’ve got dedicated Communities with active Conversations happening and now even the Commerce factor comes in to play. Your time is Now!