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It’s pretty cheap to buy followers but what good does it do you in the end? Will people trust and believe in your company more because you have a gazillion followers, or will they trust and believe because you actually have a product or service that has value to them? eeNuf said.

Not a good idea. First off, you probably shouldn’t be on ALL social networks because however highly you may think of yourself you can’t possibly be ALL things to ALL people ALL the time. Different demographics/characters/targets spend time on different networks. Whatever channel you decide to tune your message into, it should be the only (or main) channel where your buyers hang out. They can’t hang out EVERYWHERE. Research your best customers, take surveys, find out what their behaviors are on social media then focus your efforts on those channels. If it’s one – then focus on just one. Or, start with the top one to get your feet wet and incrementally add channels. You’ll find that your target customers are not spending time on every single channel so neither should you.

However you look at it – Noun or Verb – it’s not going to produce good results. It’s LAZY marketing pushing the exact same message out to the mass population. This message needs to be the right message, to the right target, at the right time for it to resonate and reflect positively on your brand. Don’t be a lazy marketer. The internet’s chock full of them and it’s not a group you want to be a member of. We, the intelligent/informed consumer, do not appreciate mass produced messages. We think of ourselves as unique, progressive, special and unique and expect to be treated at par with this.

I don’t know about you but I’ll retweet what I consider important, relevant and retweetable. In fact if you ask me to retweet I probably wont because of your lack of knowledge about cosmic internet standard practice. I mean, if I find it important and more so, if it speaks to my emotions, I will share the heck out of it. But not if you insult my intelligence.  And, while we’re at it don’t ask me to “Like” you. I’ll like you if you’re worthy of a like, not because you ask.

This doesn’t sound well to an intelligent person when coming from the entity spoken of. Not all of us are going to stampede to buy what you’re selling just because YOU SAY it’s awesome. Few will, most won’t. The ones that won’t might just be turned off by how awesome you think yourself to be. Showing a little humility is a good thing.

If your brand has to resort to emulate/stealing or extreme enticement tactics you probably don’t have a product or service worth buying. If you did it’d stand out distinctively on its own and not need BS smoke and mirrors to get attention from people. Don’t take shortcuts because you’re impatient with slow results to your social media efforts. Patience is an excellent self serving virtue.

If we didn’t hear you, and you did not hear from us the first time its likely because we CHOSE to not listen. Shouting louder is only going to turn us off a lot more. The best way to get our attention is by listening to us first. Don’t just direct dialogue towards your customers – LISTEN to what they’re saying. Have a two way meeting of the minds. That’s what social media is all about. Learn about our problems and challenges so as to provide solutions with what you’re creating or selling. I’ll invest in something that helps me solve challenges I face. Identify the value that customers need and expect from your product – and then deliver on it.

Unless you’re a hotshot celebrity you won’t see social media success before the sun sets twice. Fans, followers, likes and retweets happen in time, provided your social media strategy is all about providing value in some shape or form.

-Gil Rozenblatt

Managing Director

@ The Wiser Consultancy

Our latest research experiment shows that people are going to protests in exchange for a fee which indicates that many of the protesters do not have a genuine interest or reason for all the negative energy they expend during the activity.

This research was initiated taking cues from the methods and tactics of great social influencers such as Edward Bernays who were able to change opinions on a mass scale through the use of propaganda and media influence. Edward Bernays, an Australian-American pioneer, popularly known as “the father of public relations,” is a pioneer in the field of public relations. He combined the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud. His ideas and that of his likes who were able to make a significant impact in history using the media and journalists as powerful tools are today influencing our views on protests.
With so much energy being expelled in the anti-Trump protest, an experiment was formulated using social science to see if all the anger and other negative energies exerted can (financially) benefit the person who they are protesting against. To conduct the experiment, the website http://www.ProtesterOnDemand.com was designed and advertised on Craigslist for people who are interested in working as protesters to send in pictures of them protesting with their signs. The website was also posted on subreddits which attract anti-Trump individuals with money.

The result from this simple, yet important experiment was overwhelming. Within a short time of posting the ads, both people who want to work as protesters and many who want to hire protesters started placing orders. While individuals who were interested in becoming protesters started sending in their details, those who wanted to hire protesters were already forking over their credit card numbers with specific details as to locations, number of hours and even demographics.

The fact that people go to protests in exchange for a fee and that others hire protesters is an indicator that a lot of protesters (many of whom mentioned that they have already done such work in the past) may not have a genuine interest and reason for all the energy they expend at all. And this goes a long way to show that not everything is as it seems.

-Gil Rozenblatt

Media Contact
Gil Rozenblatt
9179300902
gil@thewiserconsultancy.com

The Wiser Consultancy is a WiserOps, Inc. Company.

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With a prosperous 2017 in mind, I’m sharing with you a close look at fintech (Financial Technologies) so that you can properly evaluate potential high growth investments you might want to consider for your portfolio this year.

Fact is, we have seen trends during 2014-2016 regarding fintech that are sure to make a splash in the industry moving forward into the new year and we are hoping to help you to consider these things before they make more of a ripple within the industry.

Banks have been realizing that innovations brought about by competing startups are best met with agility so as to evolve from  the old mentality into one that proactively, meets head on, challenges in the market, even foresees them.

1) New payment options: 

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin have been in the news both positively and negatively in the past year.
It’s important to note that such new payment technologies, Bitcoin specifically, has been warmly accepted by Governments such as the UK’s but not so much by China.
Many believe that interesting new technologies will sprout out of the cryptocurrency/digital payment market with disruptive solutions that will grow very fast.

2) Mobile payments:

Mobile payments has been a hot topic this year. Not only does mobile payment tech make life much easier, but it is set to become standard in the near future. More new entrants than ever before have been springing up with what many consider to be “disruptive” solutions, meaning they are changing the landscape with which businesses traditionally transact.
Some experts believe that Apple Pay has the potential to disrupt the entire sector. Since October 2014, US residents with an iPhone 6 have been able to pay for retailers and restaurants via their fingerprint or by holding their iPhone over an enabled Point of Sale (POS) system.

2017 promises to be a year in which the world of payments will change dramatically. The industry is at the beginning of a period of intense structural change but it is far too early to pick winners and losers in this changing market. At one end of the spectrum, the banks appear to have the most to lose, given the threat to their traditional position that alternative providers of cheap, secure and timely payments can provide. But they have long records of resilience, have strength in their existing customer relationships and reach and should not, therefore, be under-estimated. At the other end of the spectrum, who would bet against Amazon, Apple or Google, given their rapid growth and success in other sectors? And, in between, there are a multitude of offerings that must find a way to carve out a unique, lucrative and sustainable position in an increasingly competitive field.- Anthony Duffy, Management Consultant in Financial Services in UK & Ireland at Fujitsu

3) Financial Data:
With the accumulation of necessity to store more and more financial information. From front to back-office, trade operations, regulatory controls and risk management, firms have been searching for new easier to manage ways to help them cope with the velocity, volume and variety of big data.Banks are trying hard to understand their customers better. This, because they have seen disruptive startups creeping into their space with innovative solutions that are well received by consumers. An example of a way that they are trying to utilize customer data is by using it to target people with ads on their bank statements but this targeted marketing method has yet to be evaluated in terms of efficiency.

4) Customer-centricity:
Banks have come to realize that it is better to get to know their clients on a one on one basis rather than clustering them into large categorical groups. Demands for digitalisation and enabling customers to send money on the go is a task that every bank is now undertaking, whether this is through the implementation of a mobile banking app, or providing omni-channel banking over a variety of different devices.
“Embedding client-centricity into a company’s culture is a key differentiator. This is about every employee owning the client experience and using every interaction as an opportunity to delight and strengthen relationships.”  –Bill Pappas (CIO  of Global Wholesale Banking Technology & Operations at BofAML

5) Cloud Migration:
Cloud computing has become far more widely accepted during 2014. Many firms have learned that marketing, collaboration and productivity are more easily managed in the cloud. Cloud adaptation greatly reduces costs and research shows that many companies who have yet to transition plan to do so in the next year or two.In terms of security however, the cloud still poses some very real risks.

6) Integration and collaboration:
Fact is, so many startups have disrupted the fintech space this year that banks have come to realize that it is a good idea to partner with or buy several of them.All types of fintech accelerator programs have sprung up looking to help grow innovative entrepreneurs and their ideas.DevOps is a buzz word that became pretty hot in 2014. DevOps is the fusion of development and operations teams which usually work in sync around a common set of tools. The aim is for developers and operations professionals to work closer together to benefit the business and the result of this union is tighter integration that allows applications to be developed more quickly with better quality results.
There have been many more developments in the fintech space last year but these are the significant ones that are worthy of keeping an eye on.

-Gil Rozenblatt

Managing Director

@ The Wiser Consultancy