The sixth edition of the cash-rich Indian Premier League has more than 100 corporate advertisers generating Rs 1,500 crore through direct advertising or innovative association with the franchises. Most big advertisers are leveraging social media with incremental budgets to connect with their audiences.

Twitter is an integral part of the Pepsi IPL 2013, with a variety of applications and features which promise to make the tournament an unprecedented interactive experience, for the fans.  Google+ is doing special Hangout sessions that will generate post match conversations. Youtube has made the experience of watching IPL more social with the ability to chat live and has integrated Google+.

Initiatives by leading Brands:

From title and presenting sponsor PepsiCo to others like telecom services provider Vodafone, to personal care maker Garnier, and multi-business Muthoot Group, all have a well laid out strategy to engage with their audiences through IPL. As title sponsor of the tournament and co-presenting sponsor on broadcaster SET Max, Pepsi has launched a Tweet20 tournament on Twitter - a Twitter API-based application, which allows people to play cricket on Twitter. For Vodafone, the ZooZoos return this year in a new avatar and the new campaign has hit social media a day before it hit television screens. The Muthoot Group is leveraging association with Delhi Daredevils by launching CSR initiatives this IPL season. One of their campaigns is a platform through which slum children of Delhi get a chance to become ball boys and ball girls for Delhi’s home matches. 

Twitter Magic Mirror: For the first time, this application will be used worldwide throughout a professional sports tournament season. The Mirror will, in select celebratory settings, allow Cricketers and Celebrities to tweet out candid pictures with one click through the @IPL account. The Mirror will travel the country, and give fans an authentic view of the IPL.

The phrase ‘money talks honey!’ is appropriate for cricket’s biggest festival. Everyone is running to get a piece of the pie. Whether we agree or not, IPL still remains the most lucrative option as far as sports marketing in India is concerned.

LinkedIn launched Mentions yesterday, a new way for members to engage in professional conversations by mentioning connections and companies on the LinkedIn Homepage. 

Here’s How it works : 

• Begin by typing the name of a connection or a company in your status update box or a comment field on the Homepage.
• Select someone from the list of your connections that appear in the drop-down, complete your status or comment and post it.
• The person or company you mentioned will receive a notification alerting them that they have been mentioned.

In addition to first-degree connections, you can also mention other LinkedIn members engaged in conversations in the comment sections of posts on the LinkedIn Homepage. Mentions will make it easier for you to start conversations with your network while also enabling you to respond in real-time when someone begins a conversation with you.

Here are some interesting ways to use this latest LinkedIn feature:

1. Share content a connection may be interested in
2. Give kudos to someone in your network who is in the news
3. Highlight a connection who wrote a great blog post
4. Mention a connection who is featured in a (work appropriate) video
5. Thank colleagues you just completed a project with
6. Highlight peers you’re looking forward to seeing at an upcoming conference
7. Give a shout out to people you’re speaking on a panel with
8. Share a memorable quote by someone you’re connected to
9. Respond to someone who commented in a status update you’ve engaged with
10. Congratulate someone on a promotion or a new job
11. Show appreciation to a company that just provided you with great service
12. Mention a company that’s featured in a positive light in the news

If you don’t see Mentions in your LinkedIn experience yet, check out the Slideshare below for a sneak preview.

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Can Facebook Graph Search give us the Best of Both Worlds? Can it possibly combine Google Search’s relevancy with it’s social serendipitous discoveries? Will we graduate from Content Search to Interest Search? Read on to find out..

Google has been, without doubt, the best Content Search Engine. But, it can seldom answer questions like: “How many Single Women Engineers are there in Australia” or “Restaurants in New York Liked by people from India” or “My friends who like Ice skating” ? This is the variety of questions that Facebook Graph search intends to answer.

The potential for Facebook’s new Graph Search feature is huge. Brands, digital marketers, and publishers can with it target precise groups like “CEOs in India who run marathons”.

Graph search is a friend finder, a story teller, can be a dating service and a way to learn about friends and family that you never knew about. Facebook has traditionally been more of a online catalog of online friends and family than a reliable means to expand social circles. Beyond the ‘prey on Catfish’, who among us is really seeking to meet new people on the service or make friends with strangers? Graph Search could change this limitation. There are some great things about it such as:

1. Facebook Graph Search is completely personalized (unique for every individual)
2. It’s a great Photograph search engine (where most like ones come of top)
3. It’s superb for Marketers, Recruiters and Interest based Search

But there are a few design flaws that need to be ironed out, such as: 

1. Can Find, but Can’t Discover:

Discovery is finding what you didn’t know you were looking for. While we all want to be entertained, surprised, and educated, we also hate being spammed or being fed irrelevant content from loose social connections. So till the time you’re not searching “Biking Trip”, you wouldn’t know if there’s an exciting trip coming up.

So you can find, but you can’t discover stuff with Facebook Graphs.

    2. Like today, may not mean Like tomorrow:

Facebook is capturing data about what you doing right now but a large chunk of that data becomes irrelevant over a period of time. Facebook algorithm is not clever enough to judge if you really like a page or was it just sarcasm. Unlike computer code, which needs to be clear and consistent in order to run at all, human language and behavior is inherently complicated and filled with multiple, often conflicting, meanings.

Fact is that Facebook ‘likes’ and profile settings aren’t necessarily accurate reflections of reality.

   3. Privacy Impossibility:

Even though users have been asked to fine tune their privacy settings, they are confused and at risk. Facebook has changed privacy settings so many times that there’s a common lagging awareness. If you haven’t taken privacy settings seriously until now, it’s time you do.

You might not mind if people specifically interested in you look at your Likes, but you may not want to have a market researcher pull the list and add it to an ad targeting profile.

Conclusion

Social scientists and media consultants say that the tool will work if there is a behavioral change in people’s attitude to sharing information about themselves. Graph Search can create huge advertising opportunities for Facebook. But that all depends on the social network convincing us that when we have a question to answer, you don’t just have to Google it. Now you can Facebook it.

Thomas Edison had only a few months of formal education. After being told by his headmaster that he was unmanageable, his mother, a teacher, home-schooled him. Passionately curious, Edison sought answers for why things happened. He tried hatching eggs by sitting on them. He accidentally burned down his father’s barn attempting an experiment, and he gave a friend some gas-producing potion to drink to see if the gas would make him fly. He drove adults crazy with the constant questions of why, how, and if. His bedroom was a minefield that no person would dare enter without fear of harm. In truth, his headmaster was right: Edison was unmanageable. But he was also brilliant.

Edison viewed the world as a place of strange and wonderful things, and he wanted to know about everything. He became the most prolific inventor of our time by pushing questions into discovery. It was best known to him as the analogy: If you want to make a sculpture, take a block of stone and carve away what doesn’t need to be there…all while he learned that he was an inventor, Edison took the opposite direction…by taking pieces and putting them together to create something new and useful. Hence, one of his infamous quotes: “To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.”

Inventing is the purest form of entrepreneurship. Yet many good ideas for inventions are never completed because people are intimidated by the process: not only must your idea come fruition, you also need to patent it, make it in large numbers, and sell it. The type of entrepreneur who seeks to market or produce an invention of his or her own creation is known as an “Inventrepreneur”. Inventreprenuers can exist in any industry that moves forward from new inventions or discoveries, such as technology, communications, transportation or heavy industry.

We need to be reminded that so much to be learned in life isn’t learnt in school. Each day presents a chance to figure out a way to view your life. Look for the opportunity to learn new things about yourself and you business that no graduate school course could possibly teach.

Walmart had 5563 unanswered questions from consumers on December 11 - the height of Christmas shopping season - according to Social Bakers, the social media analytics firm. That’s a lot! but bear in mind that Walmart was asked 10,496 questions on Facebook from Sept 1 through Dec 11, and it answered 4933. ie 47 percent of them.

The numbers give a glimpse of how labor intensive it can be for a big brand to have a popular Facebook page. Walmart has about 26 million Facebook fans. Once you establish an army of fans on social media, you have to deal with an ‘always on’ communication channel, whether you like it or not.

You absolutely must build much more than enough credibility, especially on the Internet. When you first go into business, people don’t know who you are, how you do business, which values and ethics you hold, and the quality of your products and services. 

There’s a lot more to building online credibility than just packaging your value proposition in good content and design… after all, offline you seldom trust a person if he is only dressed right….

So, here are a few ways to establish online credibility: 

• Be Real

Let your audience connect with a real caring person having a real phone number or email address. Your business get’s zero points for sending leads to info@”e-mail address”, or forcing people who are interested in reaching out to fill an anonymous-feeling form. Amplify the voice of your brand by personalizing your online bios with interesting details or stories; these can convey a lot about what it’s like to work with you.

• Create an Personal Brand

Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You. Choose a handful of qualities about yourself that you want to be known for.

• Social Proofing Trumps all !

Social proof is the best way to gain credibility. Having someone else mention you, link to you, praise you, etc. solidifies your awesomeness in other people’s minds and jumps you leagues ahead of your competitors.

• Build relations 

You need to identify the influencers in your industry and network with them so that you build solid relationships. Those relationships will carry you very far when it comes to your own credibility. Successful online interactions are successful because you put the other person’s needs and wants before your own.

•  Talk the Talk- Walk the Walk

Be responsive to the people connecting with you. To build credibility back-up the things you say. If you say you will do something, do it. Have a conversation, speak about things you know about, confer with others about a special niche or interest. Then, refer the same “group” to others, a site, a service, a product, or other knowledgeable source.

Finally you cant become credible overnight it has to be earned piece by piece so lets conclude with what experts preach “Show, don’t say. And give results in advance.”