While working on a Research project with my team at Simplify360, I came across some interesting observations. We have the habit of tracking some of the key players in each industry. Among many of the interesting things that were observed about the buzz generated around one of the top e-commerce player in India was that there was a satirical news stating that “The e-commerce portal has started a home delivery of petrol to people buying petrol worth more than Rs. 200”. Whether the news is true or totally fictional, it has succeeded in generating a buzz. The caveat here is that some news is better than no news. In a country like India, where there is more than 100 Million internet users it is imperative for organizations to constantly create buzz around their brands.
Less than 140 Characters is here to stay.
Attention span of people has reduced. News comes and goes. In this digital age, with the dominance of twitter with a maximum limit of 140 characters people get used to news content within the 140-character benchmark. It is a challenge today for many organizations today to stick to the 140 characters framework.
Even bad news is good news
At simplify360, we help organizations to listen, monitor and react to what people talked about in the social sphere. While the views of the general public is that bad news spread like a wildfire and therefore it is dangerous. According to our study, we observed that negative sentiments about a brand or products; or a disgruntled customer when given extra care could be converted to an opportunity. While the speed of bad news remains, the message and the sentiments when converted to a positive sentiments creates an opportunity for organizations to leverage upon. Therefore organizations can ride on the speed of bad news while delivering good news.
Buzz accompanies significant events like new product Launch
In the e-commerce industry study as mentioned earlier, most of the buzz-es are generated by new product launch or a significant event. Whether the e-commerce portal launches the new product directly or indirectly, a significant event certainly paid off. For example, when Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus was about to be launched on March 21 a lot of buzz about Flipkart was generated because the product can be pre-ordered on the portal. Another incident is that when BlackBerry 9220 was spotted on an e-commerce portal way ahead of the launch date. It made us think that, this must have been a hidden intentional strategy of either the e-commerce portal or the Smartphone product launching company, Blackberry. Whichever way it is, it paid off. A lot of conversation happened around that time.
If you have such interesting observation or views about whether some news is better than no news or not leave a comment at the comment section below.