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Social Media Platforms Have To Remove Content Within 36 Hours: Govt of India

Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter will have to remove content as soon as possible, but not later than 36 hours, after a government passed a legal order, according to new Information Technology rules released on February 25, 2021.

Social Media platforms to remove their content within 36 hours on Govt of India order

These companies must also have to inform and help with investigations within 72 hours of a request from the authorities. – Information Technology (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.

All platforms must remove content that sees an individual in a sexual act or conduct, or in full or partial nudity, within 24 hours of receiving a the complaint.

Along with these new rules, Govt. of India joins other various nations that are looking forward to regulating Big Tech firms. In India, Twitter had recently only partially complied with the government orders to remove the tweets over protests by farmers over the new agricultural laws.

All the social media intermediaries should prominently publish on their site or app the rules and regulations and privacy policy and user agreement for their access or usage.

Moreover, an intermediary shall also inform the user of computer resource not to host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, store, update or share any sort of information that is false, misleading and defamatory in nature. Users should also be informed to not publish any information that is harmful to minors, infringes the patents, or violates the law.

They also need to inform users to not post any content that threatens the unity, integrity, defence, security or sovereignty of India, friendly relations with the foreign states.

The intermediary should also inform users at least once every year, in case of non-compliance with the rules and regulations, privacy policy or user agreement for access or usage of the computer resource of such intermediary. They have the right to terminate the access or usage rights of the users to the computer resource immediately or remove it in case of non-compliance.

Also, the social media latforms should appoint a Chief Compliance Officer who shall be responsible for ensuring compliance with the Act and rules. Moreover, they should also appoint a nodal person of contact for 24×7 coordination with law enforcement agencies and officers to ensure compliance to their orders or requisitions which should be made in accordance with the provisions of law or rules made thereunder.

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Digital Marketing News

E-commerce Startups Can Stand Out In The Crowded Online Marketplace

There has never been a good time for ecommerce startups. Given the pandemic induced global slowdown, ecommerce has offered a lifeline for B2B2C businesses across the world to continue some semblance of a normal life even in the toughest lockdowns.

The fear of the virus got even the most conservative shoppers and those from tier 2 and 3 markets to seek out their needs online. And even as life is trudging back to its normalcy and we all come to terms with the new way of life, the ecommerce trend does not show any signs of slowing down. Moreover, there has been a measurable shift in consumer behavior, with many new first time online shoppers. The ecommerce industry is also registering higher gross merchandising values (GMVs) as compared to the pre-Pandemic levels, and this is indeed a good news for all businesses operating in this sector.

Know your audience and competition

Being in the ecommerce sector makes it easy to find your competition and audience, as you would know exactly where to find them – online. You could scroll through search engine results pages, and research on social media to look for your competitors and audience and what they are doing. You could filter those businesses that are in a similar field as you or target the same customers as you wish to, and learn from their online presence. This would give you a strong hold of what is working or not working, and would serve as a wonderful starting point for you to plan your strategy.

As the digital industry allows for very precise targeting, you could also create rich customer personas of your ideal customer, so that you know exactly who you will be targeting. This would not only include the demographic details, but also the specifics like interests, mobile usage patterns, income levels, online browsing behavior and social media platforms that are popular with them. Doing this will help you not only create marketing content that will resonate with them, but also it can help you evaluate what tactics and online mediums might work better with this group.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is a must!

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is an evergreen method to help you stay in the race from a long term perspective, and help your business be found by the right audience. Implementing the right SEO strategies is one of the keys to the success of any modern business. If this isn’t done correctly, then it would be difficult for your prospective target customers to even know about the existence of your business! However, SEO efforts can also take time to start showing results, and this is why you should get started on this as soon as possible. The best time to start off with this would be while you are building your blog website, but in case that was missed, you could do it once it is complete as well.

Also Read: How to Optimize Your Blog for SEO in 2021

One thing that you might want to keep in mind is to take care of the landing pages (Means it should be optimised for SEO) for each of your product listings and search queries, which include the right keywords, good quality image and video content, and a strong call to action.

Avail our SEO services here and get a free consultation.

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Digital Marketing News

SMBs can leverage celebrities after going digital

The brands signing celebrities as an ambassador has proved to be an effective strategy in marketing. In 2020, the advent of new channels and with diversified consumer behavior, the marketing strategy needs to factor people’s time and attention. Moreover, businesses also believe that endorsements provide a higher degree of recall.

In this generation, brands must consider celebrities as their own brand ambassadors who can recommend their brand freely without any monetary implication. There are also many passionate fans who derive immense satisfaction by engaging with the brand and getting acknowledged by the brand. However, the task is to simply convert a regular user into a brand ambassador.

Also Read: India’s Resilience Celebrated by Microsoft: Holiday ad film update

Social media has become a game changer and has also lead to the concept of influencer marketing. Based on research, 80% of the customers believes in all information provided by social media influencers on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram & Twitter. However, 60% of the consumers make their purchase decisions after considering the information provided by the top influencers in the country.

Soon the brand ambassadors will expand from mainstream celebrities to influencers. With new channels coming up, the engagement levels are also being changed regularly in order to keep pace with the audience. The craft lies in creating different kinds of disruption which invloves the influencers to arrest the eyeballs.

Also Read: Digital Marketing is on rise since SMB’s are moving digital since pandemic

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Digital Marketing News

Digital Marketing is on rise since SMBs are moving digital since pandemic

Many businesses including the small companies are looking to have online presence and choose digital marketing after the COVID pandemic and following lockdowns brought about a negative shift in the customer’s behaviour.

Moreover, many businesses are seeing a bunch of changes in consumer behavior which have emerged – increase in online food shopping, online education, online medical consultation, online grocery shopping, etc.

These macro changes in customer’s behavior are pushing changes at the business level too.

Nowadays, more and more businesses are looking forward at creating online presence, especially the small businesses. The SMBs are now accelerating their move to go online – whether it is creating their own website or social media pages, PPC campaigns and lot of such things,” Rungta added.

Also Read: Digital marketing Still Makes Sense During This Economic Turmoil

Businesses have now realised the importance of digital marketing

Along with several smaller businesses, the larger brands have also realised the power of digital and online marketing.

Small businesses have also realised that a lot of their own customers and their target audience can be found online, and they can reach them out easily with email finder tools such as Contact Out.

Many of the businesses have also figured that if they want to expand beyond a particular location, they can do online marketing and reach out to the whole nation, which some of the businesses were not able to understand earlier.

Also Read: SMBs can leverage celebrities after going digital

While some of these trends had already started, they have been accelerated by the COVID pandemic. Instead of taking two to three years, these have now happened over the last four months.

“It’s true that many businesses have suffered due to this pandemic. Moreover, I have been seeing that many new businesses have started advertising digitally, right from the automotive companies to food outlets, and that’s a great start.”

Mohammed Huzaifa – CEO, Grandiose Digital Media Pvt Ltd

Businesses are now expecting to see a hike in the number of sales in the second half of the year with the opening up of the economy.

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TikTok Chooses Oracle Over Microsoft

It’s a big news that TikTok has chosen Oracle over Microsoft as its preferred suitor to buy the popular video-sharing app. However, Microsoft had announced on this Sunday that its bid to purchase TikTok has been rejected, which lead in removing a leading suitor for the Chinese-owned app a week before President Donald Trump had promised to follow through with a plan to ban it in the United States.

“Let us know today they would not be selling TikTok’s US operations to Microsoft.”

Microsoft said in a Sunday statement to TikTok’s parent company, Bytedance.

Moreover, the Trump administration has also threatened to ban TikTok by mid-September and has ordered ByteDance to sell its US business, further claiming the national-security risks due to its Chinese ownership. However, in this stage, the government worries about user data being funneled to the Chinese authorities. TikTok has denied it is a national-security risk and is also suing to stop the administration from the threatened ban.

Walmart may not be interested in Microsoft now

Walmart had planned to become partner with Microsoft on the deal. However, it’s not clear if Walmart is still interested in partnering with Microsoft. Oracle has declined to comment.

“Keeping this proposal as confidential would have been good for TikTok’s users, while protecting national security interests. It would have made significant changes to ensure the service met the highest standards for security.”

Microsoft said on Sunday.

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Now Influencers may have to cross check before pushing ads as Centre finalises guidelines for the online endorsements

The Social media influencers and also the digital marketers could face a bumpy ride in order to abide with the veracity of claims made in advertisements that could fall upon them real soon. Moreover, the government’s draft guidelines has also targeted at preventing the misleading advertisements that has an entire section on due diligence that needs to be made by the endorsers. However, it has sought feedback on the guidelines before September 18, 2020.

The guidelines will be further applicable to manufacturers or service providers, the advertising agencies and endorsers, covering all advertising or marketing communications, regardless of the form, format or the medium. Moreover, the proposed rules can also increase the litigation on the endorsers, including the social media influencers, and raise their compliance burden, however, they could streamline what is an otherwise highly unorganised and a fast-growing sector.

“The guidelines will certainly be applicable to the influencers and they will have to be more informed about whatever they are endorsing. The guidelines say obtaining advice from an advertising self-regulatory organisation or any legal opinion from a legal practitioner about the accuracy of endorsements can be considered as sufficient due diligence.”

Source: Economic Times