Passionately Social :-)

Living with Deepest Passion Series-2

Passionately Social J 

Guest Blog by Khushbu Pandya

Relationships have always been close to my heart since childhood. Whether it is ingrained in me by my family or my cultural background, the truth is I have always valued relationships over any other thing in the world. I have learnt from my ancestors that taking care of tiniest thing matters a lot in any kind of relation, be it personal or professional. And as time passed, even before I realised, this personal nature developed into my personal brand. I remember the times, in my very first job; customers praised me for my regular and consistent support. I used to receive recognition e-mails for my habit of doing the work meticulously. 

Here, I simply want to portray my deep passion for relationships and everything that involves in building and maintaining strong relationships. This root of passion binds me to one thing – that is – Social Media. I see it as a single most powerful mechanism for building and maintaining strong relations, communication, global connections, personal space of creativity, discussion of ideas and problems, free space to showcase grievance and complaints with freedom, etc. Social Media is like a power-house of thoughts translated into actions by people.

My passion for social media turned deeper through the journey of Doctoral studies in respect of studying it with great detail. The result of which, I developed a model of connectivity after due research and analysis. It is known as WEAVE model of connectivity. It explains "5 factors of Social Media" that should be woven into organization's people, communications, departments, stakeholders, services and even in to the material things like paintings, hoardings, packaging, products, places, promotions, etc. Theories developed by great management thinkers and Gurus gave the fundamentals in every branch of management field. Like we have 4 P’s of Marketing, 7 P’s of Services Marketing, etc. I have meticulously worked out five factors of social media which helps any kind of organization to craft their objectives in more clear, transparent and uniform way. These five factors are:

1. Word of Mouth
2. Engage & Empower Relations
3. Authenticity & Transparency
4. Value & Trust
5. Emotional Connect

According to this the model, when setting objectives and crafting strategies to achieve the objectives in an organization, for every level, be it corporate level, business level or functional level, it should be questioned that how the designed strategies will display these five factors through it to their customers or clients? It should weave these five factors into the construct of a strategy.  Here, Word of Mouth does not only mean the marketing part but the grapevine communication inside organization. Everyone in an organization should have synergy in its communication, only then the firm will be able to reflect positivity to public. Just as threads are interlaced at right angles to form a fabric, factors of weave model should be integrated into organization’s offline and online communication. 

Some firms believe that social media is marketing department’s look-out. This is not true. Successful working of social media depends on how the whole organization thinks about it. For e.g. actions of the CEO or any other C-suite executive on social media communities and forums will impact the working of social media strategy, even if their actions are unrelated to the firm. Social media strategies in compliance with other corporate, business and functional strategies, should reflect the “care for clients” in terms of Relations Empowerment and Engagement. 

Every communication going out of the company should reflect Authenticity and Transparency. Every action by everyone in the firm, either posted on social media or acted offline should give away Value and Trust. And lastly the firm should create an Emotional Connect with everyone – employees, clients/customers & other stakeholders. 

Hence weaving social media factors into business strategies, makes a big impact on the image of an organization at every level. 

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Brief Profile

Khushbu Pandya is the Founder of Konvophilia Communications and is based in Vadodara (Baroda, Gujarat), India. Her favourite quote is "I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see. (John Burroughs)"

To know more about her visit http://www.khushbupandya.com/