Digital Media Is Definitely Headed To A Place Where Maximum Time Spent On Smartphones Will Be In One Major Environment And Not Scattered Or Fragmented Between Various Apps- Aakriti Sinha, Isobar
Take us through your journey from Manager to Social Media Director?
I come from a mainline advertising and PR background, but I had started my journey with social media a little before Isobar. I was strengthening my basics with community management, content writing, social media analytics, and social media strategy. I grew and evolved along with this dynamic and challenging space itself. Social Media is not a straight-jacket job where you get done with a set task list in a day and thankfully at Isobar with the flexibility and understanding given to society and its changing face, I could very well adapt to changes with time. Before I realized, I was managing a large team, training them while managing some exciting social media brands across categories. Being a part of Dentsu-Aegis Network meant that the identified emerging leaders did get their much-needed training and guidance from seniors to progress from managing your work to managing teams. From a one-man army to leading the social practice at Isobar India, it has been a fun journey.
According to you, where is digital media headed?
I can throw umpteen buzzwords like voice, chatbots, data, AR and blockchain etc. Because the truth is, it really is an interesting time where the convergence of all platforms is resulting in interesting products and services. In fact, influencer marketing has also changed over time. But digital media is definitely headed in a place where maximum time spent on smartphones will be in one major environment and not scattered or fragmented between various apps. Everyone is replicating and tweaking features for stickiness, but millennials and Gen Z would want to stay and explore and consume from max 2 or 3 major platforms that cater their need for dependency in day-to-day lives. E-commerce integration will bring about a huge change.
Keeping the ever-changing digital consumption behavior in mind, through a social media lens… expirable content, micro-moments, nano-influencers, and dark social media is the present and near-future. We’re going to see a lot more change in our digital marketing in the next two years than in the last 10.
How do you deal with negative comments or a brand reputations crisis?
The strategy for almost all brands differ, but the first and the most important step is listening and sentiment mapping. With our social media command center in place, we make sure that we do a thorough deep analysis of the crisis first before jumping on to releasing clarification tweets or digital PR. We even have tools (ViewCent) in place to map virality factor of YouTube videos, so let’s say if it a video content crisis or surround video content about the crisis. The tool enables us to prepares us to effectively strategize our plan of action on the crisis. Sometimes, when we know that there is an unwanted and uncalled for chaos which is not directly related to the brand, maintaining silence on social about the matter also helps.
Social media is full of opinions and sometimes pseudo-intellectuals and bullies who use unethical means and inappropriate or misdirected anger at personalities and brands, so it is best to clarify or do effective management when required.
How do you check and stay on the top of the latest updates, innovations and new platforms on social media?
I consume a lot of social platform news form the channels directly beside subscribing to industry publishers in both social and marketing space, like Social Media Examiner, Social Media Today, Mad Over Marketing, Social Samosa etc.
What project would you consider to be the most significant contributor to the success of your career?
I can’t name one project honestly, because every project, every campaign, every social media crisis, and the new business pitch has been a significant contributor in my journey. It is a cliché but I am thankful for all the ‘difficult’ and ‘tough’ brands I got an opportunity to work on, because even though I must have complained or got temporarily demotivated at that time, but thanks to a fantastic team and collaboration, we did overcome that and it contributed a lot to our learning curve.
What are your life and work mantra?
The fact that I am quite analog in this digital world brings all the balance in life ☺
Work wise, I have learned to embrace the chaos! Work is greater than anyone’s ego, work hard, do good work and leave it at that.