Digital Marketing Insights

Businesses of all forms – size or type, have one crucial requisite that determines their longevity and sustainability – the ability to communicate. An idea, product or service imperatively requires validation, promotion, recommendation and interaction – essentially an effective chain of communication between the business and its consumers.

The era of digital marketing has allowed marketers to explore various opportunities to build a strong connect between buyers and sellers. A new interesting approach that gets a business’ voice up close and personal is the use of WhatsApp messenger for communication. As of April 2015, WhatsApp reached 800 million active users and being an instant messaging app, it makes your reach more personal. The concept of a WhatsAppinar as the name suggests, is essentially holding a workshop on WhatsApp.

The process involves groups being formed on WhatsApp, the industry expert or company advocate joins these groups the day the WhatsAppinar is to be held and answers any questions that members of the groups may have for him. This creates a very high speed and impromptu engagement forum.  However the challenge lies in keeping up with this high paced interaction – it is important to answer quickly, personally and satisfactorily.

A recently held Whatsappinar for HR Managers by a Background Screening company in India received a significantly warm response despite HRM presence being low on social media platforms. The Whatsappinar that was initially scheduled to last for 6 hours, was extended to 7 hours, the hashtag for the WhatsAppinar received about 2 tweets every hour on Twitter and found active participation on Twitter too. The industry expert not only reached out to HRMs on WhatsApp but also answered about 7 questions on Twitter.

However it may help to keep these pointers in mind:

1. A WhatsAppinar will have constant inflow of messages – too many of them! It is definitely advisable to keep noting the questions along with the name of the person on a separate notepad.
2. Every time you answer, be sure to start with the name of the person you are answering to, so that they can find your reply quickly.
3. Make sure the interactions do not become lopsided and remain collective, so that all members feel addressed.
4. Try and be quick to respond, use the web version of WhatsApp to increase efficiency.

Conducting a WhatsAppinar is an effective and direct way of reaching out and interacting with your audience; like they say – Simple. Personal. Real Time Messaging.

Agnayee Datta