Uncategorized – Just Storys

Survive a social media detox: How to not waste your time

Md. Suvagata Mazumder — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 13:12:13 +0000

Suddenly I felt, need to detox my social media life. A few days back I was scrolling my Facebook feed. There are many groups that have been created for the Corona Virus. Each and every group is sharing some rumor, some misleading information. I saw some are asking to have Centella Asiatica, Before Fazr. Some people did that also. Though those leaves are good for health, a rumor is not good for health. Besides this, there are many rumors. My feed was looking like a rumor field. That’s why I have decided to keep myself from social media. We need to do social media detox and keep ourselves in this toxic time and era.

What is detox?

Social Media Detox

Now the question is what is detox? Normally the word is used for the body to remove our body toxins which is harmful to us. But Social Media Detox refers to a period of time when we willingly keep ourselves away from mobile, laptop, tablet, social media and social media platforms. Social media is now becoming more and toxic. People love to show off, which causes toxic media life. She is that much beautiful, he has much more money than me, their friend circle is bigger and their bond is more powerful than us. They are always laughing and smiling. All these things making our life toxic. We are going into more depression.

Social Media and Detox

Social Media is now a part of our daily life. If you want you can’t stay away from it. For educational purposes to office work, to keep communication with near and dear ones you need to use social media. With the overuse of it toxic now we need to detox. So, you can maintain a distance from social media. You may not fully away from the internet. But You can keep a distance from it. The time you are giving on social media spend on reading books or cooking or gardening. Maybe you could practice singing or dancing or you can paint. Keep your internet connection off for a few times. On the very first, you may stay away from social media for 1 hour per day. The following day it could be 2 or 3 hours. A one week Social Media Detox period will heal you from inside.

What should we do

Give Time to yourself

Every type of toxic needed to be detoxed. As toxins that are harmful to health and mind and life. Now it’s your time to detox yourself from social media and use the time in a proper way. When you are away from social media, try to divert your mind not to go back. Read a good book, watch TV sometimes, cook food or make tea. Spend time with your family. If you have a pet or a small garden or a plant, take care of it. Every day try to spend more time without your phone or laptop. For us, its actually to remove all kinds of apps from mobile or from the laptop. You can do one thing, turn off the notifications if the internet connection is off. In the morning, when you are getting up, instead of checking Instagram feed, do some exercise for 30 minutes, before you start work. When you are working, do focus on that only. No social media scrolling, no posting or sharing photos, videos or memes.

As we are in the digital era, we can’t leave social media fully. But we can keep ourselves away from toxic content and detox ourselves. Use the extra time we used in social media in some productive work, that will not be a waste of time.

Power of Storytelling

Md. Suvagata Mazumder — Fri, 31 May 2019 10:54:31 +0000

Advertising works best when it answers the ‘why’ of our needs. And the best answer to those ‘whys’ are through powerful stories. Stories that not only make the content memorable, but also lay a strong foundation for a brand.

Storytelling can also be used as a differentiator.
How will you separate brands that have same things to offer? Eg: KFC, Burger King, Mc Donalds.

In the past, brands that’ve stuck to powerful storytelling have later evolved to be the market leaders.

Here’s an example of how Vodafone launched it’s first IPL campaign with Zoo Zoos

Here’s an example of the brand moving forward with it’s new characters Zumi

To simply put, stories that come from our daily lives are the ones that shape great brands. If a brand wants to be part of our lives, then our lives have to become part of that brand.

Here are few more examples of best use of Storytelling for Brands:

Ending this with an expert from Tyrion Lannister on storytelling

Bedtime Stories and Brands – What insights can we get from content?

Md. Suvagata Mazumder — Fri, 31 May 2019 10:44:15 +0000

The easiest way to understand what a brand is to picture the brand as person – how she talks, reacts, has an attitude, has different emotions. It’s a form of an identity. For example, what picture do you get in your mind when you think of Coca Cola? For me, its bubbly, excited, sporty, an upbeat friend, who is always up for something fun and interesting, and into celebrations. How does this personality form? Obviously, there is the logo, the setting/backdrop/context of the promotional materials, the theme song and the jingle, and the person working as the brand ambassador. But on top of all these, it’s the story that drives this identity. The story of a promotion is like having a conversation with the brand, and we human beings in the form the strongest impression of a personality through the interaction we have had with a person, regardless of appearance. This establishes the importance of having a good story. But have you ever wondered that this story telling is not a one-way process, but is indeed something that gives us a lot of insight about our customers?

Imagine telling a bedtime story to your kid. Its one of the most common and yet interesting feedback look there is in our daily lives. You are telling a horror story, you can see his eyes get wider, holding a pillow tight, at any moment the Boogey Man is going to jump out of that closet! The story behind a promotion campaign is not distinctly different than this example. Just instead of the child in bed, we have the customer, listening to our story wide-eyed, in front of a laptop screen, in cellphones and tablets, and in front of TV screens (frankly the latter group is on the road to extinction now). But how can we know how wide their eyes were when they were listening to our stories? At this age of internet, we can get a lot of information. Very easily, we can know the location of the customer (through the IP address of the view session), whether it’s a cell phone, tablet or laptop, whether they are listening to our story in YouTube or Facebook, from which web addresses did they come from to view to listen to our story, how much of it did they watch, what reactions did the give (Like/Dislike, or for Facebook – the six emotions), how many people did they tag, did they share with, and what are their comments. But these are obvious sources of insight. Often, we tend ignore one very interesting source of insight. See, the bedtime story teller often quickly adjusts his stories while saying it, based on the how wide the child’s eyes are. The exam same is the case of content of the stories that we are trying to tell for brand. The viewing data that comes is just half of the what get. The other half of the information comes from our content. But how much can we just get from text? The answer is – a hell lot! Based on the wording of the story, we can identify frequent terms and frequent term pairs, words and word pairs that appear often in our story telling. These can be connected to the reaction from the audience we are getting to identify customer reaction patters. Similarly, the content can be analyzed to identify the flow of emotions and sentiments across the whole story, and this can be paired with how long customers are listening to our stories. Even more, the content can be divided into combination of topics with which the content was designed. And then these combinations can be varied, and audiences’ reactions could be observed, giving us a very clear idea of what content widens the eye of our bedtime story listener.

Story telling is an ancient art, and trivial as it sounds like, it is one of the key arts that make our lives as it is. Just imagine how your life would be, if there were no stories to tell or hear! And stories establish the personality of the brand identity. And after this small blog post, I hope you will agree with me that stories can tell us a lot about our target markets.

The writer is a current PhD in Strategy student in National University of Singapore. He is also a community manager for Google Business Group, analytics adviser for Intelligent Machines and a trainer in strategy and analytics.

Not Patty but Sauce – Content Marketing Secret Recipe

Md. Suvagata Mazumder — Fri, 31 May 2019 10:41:40 +0000

Advertisers are on fishing while you’re chilling. People are being bombarded with ads at every stage of their leisure. Consumers of today, hate being considered “sold” for a product. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 70% of consumers prefer getting to know about a company from articles than ads. There leaves the opportunity to make advertising seamless. As the audiences evolved, advertisers got smarter. Gone are days when zipping and zapping commercials on TV will discard all the redundant advertisements. Only when people expressed their frustration with 10 second mid roll ad on Facebook in their less than 60 second video, advertiser now blend their products offering with the content itself like a sauce instead of placing it like a patty amid the content. Like an arrow to a target, content is tailored to buyer personas with relevant and valuable details. That is the recipe of a content marketing delicacy. Be it podcasts, video content, animations or infographics, content marketing can be played in any form. By building trust and delivering value to these buyer personas, customers are attracted, converted, closed and delighted. People are lazy in life but alive on social media. Let alone the traffic, they are less likely to move afoot to hunt their list but can spend hours browsing the uncountable related contents online. For an advertiser, it is most wise to identify the set of actions across screens and touch points that contribute in some manner to let the consumer reach the desired stage. Be it food, attire or luxury, advertiser can create relevant content in every stage of decision-making process for example if you are trying to advertise your new steak joint, you can perhaps create contents online like food review blogger videos, quick recipe videos or if you’re selling financial products, go for 1 min financial literacy/saving hacks, happy client storytelling, self-explanatory infographics on retail consumer trends or a simple interactive projection calculator. Disregard of the love-hate relationship, audiences are eyeing on the every day stories shared by the influencers. Hence, these social media content creators are rooting for the rise of content marketing. Collaboration being innovation, call of the hour is to ride on influencers or make solid relevant contents. At the end of the day, if the sauce on the burger taste good, they will have it anyway vice-versa.

Mahzabin Ferdous
Head of Corporate Communication
IPDC Finance Limited

Content! What is it?

Md. Suvagata Mazumder — Fri, 31 May 2019 09:44:20 +0000

Is it everything that is available on the internet? Is information content? Is news content too? Is it video? Is that selfie you took on your last foreign trip, content too?

To me, content is an engaging piece that evokes response from people who consume it. Irreverent to its length or format. And there lies the importance of storytelling in creating a successful piece of content. I remember how my friend introduced me to My Houzz and I devoured an hour-long episode where Gordon Ramsay gifted one of his star chefs a renovated house using Houzz’s services. That’s great content. It hooked me immediately with the core concept of well-known celebrities gifting their friends/colleagues/relatives the house they believe the latter deserve. How Houzz made it hassle free and convenient is incidental. The brand is present all across, but the story is so powerful and humane that the brand never overshadows it, and hence it doesn’t seem like a branded propaganda. That’s what makes it enjoyable, watchable, sharable. I mean, come on, we all know people do not like advertising. The first thing we do when an ad appears while scrolling our phones, is skip. But if it’s something that tells me a story that I can relate to, I will keep coming back to it, even if it’s sponsored by a brand. Think Coke Studio. Even before the word content became a buzzword, Coca-Cola created this platform in Pakistan which literally transcended barriers and mesmerized people season after season. Think Lego Movie. What a heartwarming and powerful content that allowed the brand to relate itself to relevant life lessons for kids e.g. remaining true to one’s self, and encouraging imagination, creativity and innovation.

The two examples I cited above are successful branded contents. Then there is this wide territory of unbranded content. Online clothing start-up Wren tackled one of the most common marketing hurdles: creating a conversational piece on a low budget. They decided to create a short film called First Kiss, where 20 strangers got together to kiss one another for the first time.

The film cost only $1,500 accumulating 110 million YouTube views, with over 1.1 million shares across Buzzfeed. It saw a significant amount of media success too with coverage from The Guardian, the New York Times and CNN. The power of engaging people over content lies in telling compelling stories that are relevant to them, that stirs them emotionally and ingrains the brand values in their minds, in a relatable fashion.

Now what does a clothing brand has to do with the first kiss? Go, figure.