Have you ever been trolled on social media? Received comments that have upset you? Ever been body-shamed?
Founder of the popular lifestyle blog MissMalini, Malini Aggarwal has experienced the Internet at its best and worst. As a pioneering content creator, she has seen tremendous success and also made mistakes on the medium – and she’s learnt vital lessons from it all.
In Under the Influence: How to Survive and Thrive Online, Malini deep dives into the psychology of rampant online hate culture, explaining why it exists and provides practical tools to tackle it. With insight and empathy, she guides today’s users on how to deal with trolls and cancel culture, respond to hate and provocation, and combat negativity with positive action and mindfulness.
Complete with interviews with prominent influencers and psychologists, personality self-assessment tests and interactive quizzes, this book is an invaluable resource for anyone navigating the complex battlefield that is social media today.
Review
Miss Malini, a popular social media icon and a columnist has given the readers a glimpse of how the dynamics in social media are. This book will take you on a journey across the world of influencers, online presence, and social media.
Diversifying across generations and the various platforms there is, Malini has crafted the book for everyone interested in social media. I love how the book is very interactive, that it involves the readers in engaging activities. Belonging to the same generation as that of the author, the insights provided are much more relatable. Not only relatable they can also be termed as valuable. Sharing her mistake from when she was a novice brings out the honesty in her approach to providing real information to the readers and upcoming influencers. Not only hers, but the experiences of fellow influencers like Sakshi and Vir also add varied perspectives on topics such as online presence, handling trolls, and negative feedback.
In the daunting online world, this book serves as a guide for every upcoming influencer. I’d say the book gives you a better understanding of why people spread hatred online and ways to tackle it. Malini with her experience helps you with listing out ways to handle them by fighting back with positivity. From someone who is considered the OG content creator, she helps people heal from online hatred and negativity. The book is an apt read for someone who wants to start their journey as a creator in the online world or even for someone who has been there for a while. On the whole, it caters to reading likes of people in the digital world. From being an inspiration to me, to getting featured on her page, Malini has been a beacon for content creators like me. I’m truly honored to have had the opportunity to read this wonderful guide.
If you’re thinking that the online space is only for big or mid-sized companies, you might need to rethink again before you are sure of it next time. A variable increase in the number of traditional, small businesses is now adopting the digital way to a varying extent and for good reason.
Going digital should not be seen as a way to build an image but has several other leveraging advantages. In today’s world, you will find yourself in the online space on a beneficial need. No matter what sort of business you do, the type of customers you handle, the model that you follow or create for you, what category of Business it comes under, you make it a necessity to mark your presence in the online world.
Choosing to establish a digital presence sure does have value in it. A quick google search would land you any business sure does have a mark on the digital space or in simpler terms have an online footprint.
Today even if you are having a hardware or a supplies business, you could say that even if not a giant, you do have an identification on the online space. With a simple receipt of money from accepting cards, UPI, or e-wallets which are something like mobile application-based payment, congratulations you have made good progress.
There is always scope for improvement similarly, if you are already into the digital world, there is still a possibility to expand the digital footprint to magnify your presence.
Digital trends impacting MSME
Increased number of small businesses moving online.
A recent study that was conducted indicated that 63% of MSMEs wanted to go digital but only 5% went in the real digital world. A majority of MSMEs reported positive responses to post moving into the digital world. One more study mentioned that businesses that opted for the digital way doubled their growth in a quicker span than their offline counterparts which is a seemingly big achievement. SO on the whole considering both the case study above it is evident that small businesses are continually moving towards digitization.
Adopting cloud technology
Several small businesses adopted cloud technology to improvise their way of working. This included solutions that help in password management, mailing lists, and handling customer relationships. This helps organizations achieve productivity and make a competitive achievement. This was agreed by a majority of MSMEs where the results were proven to be positive. The cloud-based technology solutions that were opted for by the organizations are affordable and could be tailored to suit any business scenario.
Encouragement from the Government to adopt a cloud strategy
To raise the contribution of MSMEs GDP to 50% in the next 5 years the Government has placed the adoption of cloud-based solutions as one of the priorities. !8 tool rooms have been set up to assist the MSMEs in the cloud-based solution adoption which is expected to be increased to over 150 training centers.
Understanding and adjusting to the millennials
In terms of the sheer number and purchase power, the millennials rule the online world. So to get your business on their radar the small businesses must adapt video content for promotion, influencer marketing, and usage of social media.
Power of social media and its dominance
In terms of reach, impact, and conversion to sales social media dominate the marketing strategy. Facebook and Instagram in particular are the key players to focus on.
Chatbots for customer service
Better customer service is the key to financial growth. Given limited resources, automating customer service and response to customer queries help in streamlining the process. The quicker the turnaround for a customer query the more you get to score in terms of valuable service and definitely, that paves way for word of mouth growth, which in turn means more number of customers and could be possible conversion to sales.
How can it serve to be a springboard to success?
Adopting digital methods or digitization is served to be a springboard and bring in exponential growth
A representative of business transformation
Adopting cloud-based solutions helps to streamline the operating process and helps in improving growth and productivity. The most powerful effect on Business would be from adopting digitization.
Versatile and dominant medium of business
High impact branding and communication in the form of text, audio, and video is possible and thereby bringing in unprecedented reach. Helps enable real-time two-way communication through dedicated brand platforms that help in driving interaction and engagement.
The ultimate path for sales
With e-commerce raising the curtain for the show of online shopping from the comfort of homes and at suitable times, the products are available at ease, and payments are also made hassle-free.
A deeper insight into above-sighted advantages is below.
Triggering business transformation
These cloud-based solutions are plug and play which in other words mean they can be tailored to suit your business needs. With Big- data analytics-enabled it helps access patterns and insights and enabled to choose business decisions accordingly. From manufacturing to supply chain to CRMs they are tailored accordingly. Mailing Management – MS Outlook ,Gmail Storage management – One drive and Google Drive, Accounting software – Intuit QuickBooks Online, CRM software – Apptivo Though it requires time and effort to choose the best that suits your needs, the return on investment is exponential.
Versatile cost-effective medium
To reach out to prospects nationwide and worldwide is the best means. Another added advantage being the ability to effectively narrow down the target prospects based on purchase power, demography, and many such factors. Online videos on Youtube, are a great way to capture the eyeballs and register your brand to the target audience. A key performance metric is an engagement that decides the success rate. The prospects’ progress journey that lands on sales are the result every business looks out for. This can be achieved by content creating that is compelling and interactive enough to initiate engagement.
Sales enablement
An eCommerce platform could either be your own or can be chosen to be a part of eCommerce aggregator platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, Paytm, snapdeal, and Shopclues.
The deeper you go into digital, the number of benefits it would reap you. But the ultimate choice of what solutions you select should take your business to the next level. This should be the ultimate goal. The digital space has a lot of aspects to offer so choose wisely. If done appropriately, it can propel growth to greater heights. But bad customer experiences could get blown out of proportion so that needs to be taken care of.
Double or triple check before you dive into a digital initiative. So make wise choices and keep testing for loopholes that need attention. Investments into these solutions could be counted as risks, but if you have everything in place and confident about what lies ahead then definitely the results would overshadow the risks that you take.
Written as part of Blogchatter’s campaign #ECommerceInnovation. Read more posts in the campaign here.
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