Yes, Social Media is fun. If what you are doing is not fun then why do it.  Same goes for Social Media.

If you want to promote your business through social media and business networking, but still have your doubts on it, then I suggest you drop it.

Like I said earlier, if what you are doing is not fun then don’t do it at all. Promoting your business through the social media sites can prove to be very beneficial to your business and bring in a high ROI.

We often hear people say that promoting your business has to be taken seriously.  That is true, but who said that serious cannot be fun.

When businesses drop their feelings and hide behind their logos and not show their face, it brings in more fun, curiosity and excitement to Social Media. Getting them to do it is hard and not fun, but once they do it more business comes to them from consumers though having better trust in whom, it is they are doing business. A positive result in business is where the fun begins.

Sites like Facebook, Twitter, My Space, etc helps create a network with friends and other people, with whom one can establish contact and not just share what’s happening in and around their little world, but also exchange some very important information, like important links, or create homepages, etc which could prove to be very useful in the future.

Sites like LinkedIn, which is a business related though, can also be fun too, where people can exchange contacts and important information on any events happening related to their business.

The entire premise of Social Media is based on drawing attention to something by using effective communication through social channels.  What draws consumers to something is fun. If it is fun and exciting, they will come.

So what are you still waiting for? Unless you give Social Media a try, you will never know what you’re missing out on.

Contributed by Pooja Giri

The internet is abuzz with the launch of Apple’s iPad. Modestly priced at $499 for the 16GB base version, this gadget packs in quite a punch. The iPad has received mixed reactions online. In order to better understand the reactions, we would like to present the share of voice analysis followed by overall popularity and sentiment analysis.

Share of Voice analysis

The iPad has drawn the wrath of a few critics owing to missing features such as a camera, flash and the fact that it cannot multitask. But the sleek new design and ebook features are definitely praise worthy. Overall, iPad had 2,900,000 twitter mentions, 106,816 blog mentions, 87,513 forum mentions and 83,513 news mentions.

Share of voice analysis

Overall popularity

The fact that iPad’s popularity has been decreasing is worth a mention. On the 27^th of January 2010, it had 898,000 mentions whereas on the 31^st of January 2010 it had 299,334 mentions. A 68% decrease in mentions in just 4 days. Are people losing interest?

Blogs

In the blogosphere, the overall sentiment was neutral at 49%. Positive sentiment constituted 32% whereas negative sentiment was a mere 19%. Negative sentiment towards the iPad is decreasing whereas positive sentiment is increasing. Country wise, U.S blogs talked most about the iPad followed by U.K and Germany.

Sentiment analysis – blogs

Sentiment trends – blogs

Top countries – blogs

Twitter

Twitterverse had a field day with the launch of the iPad. Globally, iPad had 2, 900,000 mentions on Twitter. While 74% of tweets were regular, 15% were retweets and 11% were replies. The popular phrases for iPad show that the most discussed keyword was ‘Grammys’. It was a popular phrase because Stephen Colbert touted the iPad at the Grammys to read out the song of the year nominees. Other most discussed phrases were ‘iPad tablet’ and ‘iPad may get video’.

Twitter popularity

The fact that iPad’s popularity has been decreasing is worth a mention. On the 27^th of January 2010, it had 757396 mentions whereas on the 31^th of January 2010 it had 159055 mentions. Will iPad die with the hype?

Popularity – Twitter