Author Archives: David

A lot of people are confused about the differences between WhatsApp and Twitter. After all, both services are very similar on the surface: Both offer almost instant communication in short bursts.

Despite that, there are some very important differences that make WhatsApp a far more popular social media solution. The major difference between the two is that WhatsApp is a messaging solution and Twitter is a microblog.

Microblogs vs. Messaging Solutions

A messaging solution is designed to facilitate communication between individuals much like email is. Unlike email, messaging services are designed as a less formal and more personal kind of communication. Another key difference is that WhatsApp is designed to facilitate communication over smartphones, while email was designed for the Internet.

A microblog is designed as a communication to be read by large groups of people at once. That is why celebrities such as writers, journalists, politicians, and movie stars make wide use of Twitter in the United States and Great Britain. A messaging app is designed to facilitate communication between two people or small groups of people.

A good way to think of it is like this: A message is designed to get a response. A microblog is not necessarily designed to get a response. Instead, microblogs such as Twitter are designed to get thoughts, ideas, or concepts before large groups of people. That means Twitter was designed basically as a marketing medium, while WhatsApp was designed as a communications venue.

This explains why Twitter has been so successful in North America, where there are large numbers of people that want to broadcast their thoughts to large audiences. It also explains why WhatsApp is so popular in less affluent nations, where people are looking for a cheap communications medium.

Is WhatsApp Becoming More Like Twitter?

Strangely enough, WhatsApp and Twitter do have one thing in common. Both solutions are losing a lot of money. WhatsApp apparently lost $138 million before it was acquired by Facebook.

Twitter, which is a publically-traded company that trades under the ticker TWTR on the New York Stock Exchange, lost $556.15 million in the third quarter of 2015. The promoters of neither solution have figured out how to make money, unlike Facebook (NASDAQ: FB), which reported making $2.28 billion during the third quarter of 2015.

WhatsApp’s management team of Jan Koum and Brian Acton has tried to rectify this situation with a feature called Broadcast Lists. Broadcast Lists works sort of like a mini Twitter inside WhatsApp that allows users to send out a microblog to around 250 people.

Unfortunately, this feature has not yet attracted the popularity or prominence of Twitter, probably because it cannot reach as many people at once. No media have so far reported on Broadcast List messages the way America media often report on tweets.

Nor do politicians and other celebrities seem to be sending out Broadcast Lists deliberately designed to attract attention in the way that some individuals send out tweets. Tweets have actually become a major occurrence in American politics.

One strong possibility is that WhatsApp could expand Broadcast Lists to reach large numbers of people and form a sort of Twitter with a global reach. This might be Mark Zuckerberg’s plan for WhatsApp. The Facebook CEO has famously stated that he plans to concentrate on WhatsApp growth for now and monetize the solution later on.

WhatsApp and Twitter around the World

WhatsApp has been far more successful than Twitter has; it currently has around 900 million users worldwide, according to Statista . Twitter only has around 300 million users, making it about a third the size of WhatsApp.

That indicates that WhatsApp seems to be a far more popular idea than Twitter and more appealing to people in a wide variety of nations and cultures. The numbers seem to show us that microblogging lacks the popular appeal of messaging.

Twitter has not been able to achieve the kind of rapid growth WhatsApp has, possibly because people have to go out of their way to use the service. Another problem that Twitter faces in some places is that some people, particularly in the United States, find it very obnoxious and annoying.

The association with celebrities and politicians drives away many ordinary people, especially those that find celebrity culture and American politics crass. Another problem that Twitter could face is that many people consider it a distinctly American service. That could drive away persons in other countries that feel offended or threatened by the United States.

One thing is certain: Twitter will have to make some major changes if it wants to seriously compete with WhatsApp. A possible solution would be to add a messaging service to Twitter or to combine with a more successful messaging solution such as Viber.

WhatsApp Is Winning the Social Media Wars

Currently, WhatsApp seems to be winning the social media wars, which is bad news for Twitter. The messaging solution has been widely adopted around the world in a way that Twitter has not.

WhatsApp’s creators have also been able to expand their app into a full media solution. It now contains video, audio, and photographs and offers users the ability to make telephone calls. This utility makes it more versatile than Twitter and opens up the possibility of a wide variety of ecommerce usages, including payment.

Payment could be the most profitable area of messaging. Mobile payment is now a $90 billion a year industry in China, Quartz reported . The leading players there are the ecommerce giant Alibaba and Tencent, which owns the popular messaging solution WeChat.

In the United States, a number of companies, including Apple, Alphabet (the company formerly known as Google), PayPal , and the nation’s largest bank, JPMorgan Chase, are developing mobile payment solutions. If one or more of these solutions could be combined with WhatsApp, that could make it the world’s dominant and most profitable messaging solution.

It is hard to see how Twitter could be used for payment but easy to see how WhatsApp could be adapted for payment. Venmo, which allows people to send money to friends and family, seems the most likely fit for WhatsApp. Venmo is currently owned by PayPal Holdings.

Therefore WhatsApp is the future of social media, while Twitter could be doomed to the status of a footnote in the history books. The microblogging solution’s nature could keep it from reaching the kind of vast global audience that WhatsApp has achieved.

WhatsApp seems to be almost as popular as soccer in Spain; the use of the application in the nation has risen to incredible levels. More interestingly, Spaniards appear to be among the world’s biggest consumers of messenger solutions of all kinds.

The leading solution is WhatsApp, which is now present on 98% of the smartphones sold in the kingdom, El Pais reported . Around 51.5% of Spanish smartphone users send messages via WhatsApp each day.

Statista found that around 70% of the Internet users in Spain also utilize WhatsApp. Interestingly enough, Spaniards are Europe’s largest users of WhatsApp, and their use of the app exceeds that of many developing countries.

The rate of WhatsApp usage in Spain is actually higher than in India, Brazil, and Mexico. The success of WhatsApp in Spain seems to contradict the argument that the application is primarily a solution for developing nations because Spain is a highly advanced country and a member of the European Union. Therefore it would be a good idea to ask why WhatsApp is so popular in Spain and if those conditions exist in other countries.

Why Is WhatsApp So Successful in Spain?

A good way to begin would be to identify those factors that make WhatsApp so popular in Spain. This could help marketers and entrepreneurs trying to utilize the application market to Spaniards and people in other countries. It could also help ecommerce professionals identify other nations that have similar characteristics to Spain.

One reason why WhatsApp is so successful in Spain is that it is a very advanced country with extensive wireless coverage and many Wi-Fi hotspots. That makes it very easy to stay in touch using messaging solutions.

Phones also seem to lend themselves to Spanish culture because the Spaniards are a highly talkative people. They like to communicate verbally, unlike some of the Northern Europeans, who prefer written or verbal communications.

Economics also plays a role. Spain’s lousy economy and the high cost of cell phone service make WhatsApp, which can be used for free by utilizing Wi-Fi, very attractive. A person that takes it to a Wi-Fi hotspot can send unlimited amounts of data.

WhatsApp is also designed to facilitate communication among groups such as coworkers and families. That is very appealing in a country with strong family ties.

People in Latin cultures such as Spain prefer direct communication without commercial interference, Lisbon University sociologist Gustavo Leitao Cardaso told El Pais. Latins seem to prefer written communication that is more like a face-to-face conversation than the quick messaging on sites like Twitter and Facebook, which is more of a bulletin board.

Part of the reason for this is that Facebook and Twitter seem to be designed for North Americans, who prefer some degree of anonymity and speed in conversation. English-speaking people are also more tolerant of advertising than people in Spain seem to be.

Advertising and other features that Americans or Englishmen might ignore are very offensive to Spaniards. The Spanish seem to look to the Internet as an intimate means of communication.

How to Use WhatsApp to Reach People in Spain

Marketers need to keep this in mind when they are trying to use WhatsApp to reach people in Spain. Spanish people are interested in conversation, not advertising. They want to hear real people speaking about a product or service, not a pitch from a salesperson.

This means the best way to market on WhatsApp in Spain would be to create content that will spread virally. Spaniards will ignore advertising, but they will pay attention to messages from friends and family. Pictures of products or descriptions of low prices might spread quickly in that fashion, particularly if they can reach members of WhatsApp groups.

People that want to reach Spanish customers where they live will need to utilize social media, and WhatsApp appears to be the most popular social media there. More importantly, it offers a tool for reaching consumers in the form of WhatsApp Broadcast Lists.

How WhatsApp in Spain Could Help You Reach People in Other Nations

Spain could also serve as a testing ground for WhatsApp marketing designed to reach people in other Spanish-speaking countries. WhatsApp is very popular in some other nations that use the Spanish language, including Mexico and Argentina. Around 75% of Argentine Internet users and 67% of Mexicans take advantage of WhatsApp.

This indicates that some of the same cultural factors that drive WhatsApp usage in Spain could be present in those nations. WhatsApp is also very successful in at least two other nations with Latin cultures; around 62% of Internet users in Italy and 57% in Brazil also use WhatsApp for messaging.

High usage of WhatsApp is also becoming a problem in Spain. Psychologist Jose Antonio Molina told El Pais that social media addiction is a growing problem in Spain, particularly among young people.

Poor social skills, delusions and compulsive behavior, and sleeping problems are among the symptoms associated with such addictions, according to Molina. If such addictions become widespread, it could create a backlash against WhatsApp and inspire efforts to curtail social media usage.

Another insight that Molina offered is that WhatsApp is very popular with young people in Spain. Data uncovered by El Pais indicates that seven out of 10 people between the ages of 16 and 34 in Spain have Internet connections on their phones. That number is higher than the average in the European Union, which indicates some differences in Spanish culture.

A major difference could be that traditional computers are less pervasive in Spain. That makes phones the more popular means of accessing the Internet in the nation. Another is that younger Spaniards, who have one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, around 49.2% according to Statista, simply cannot afford computers. Phones are the only means that they have of accessing the Internet and popular entertainment.

That means social media like WhatsApp could now be a primary means of entertainment for many in Spain. Therefore persons that want to expand entertainment enterprises to Spain might want to take advantage of solutions like WhatsApp.

The high levels of WhatsApp usage in Spain should serve as a reminder of this application’s potential. Those that can understand it might be able to leverage its power for other purposes.

One of the most fascinating things about WhatsApp is its popularity in Europe. Even though the solution is often hailed as a cutting-edge messaging app for developing nations, it is almost as popular in some European countries.

The statistics prove that Europeans love WhatsApp and cannot get enough of it. Data provided by
Statista
proves that WhatsApp use is as widespread in some European countries as it is in the developing world. These numbers show just how popular WhatsApp is in the European Union:

• 70% of Spain’s Internet users also chatted on WhatsApp.

• 62% of Italians were WhatsApp users.

• 61% of the Internet users in the Netherlands were also utilizing WhatsApp.

• 57% of Germany’s Internet users were sending messages through WhatsApp.

• Around 34% of people in the United Kingdom and Ireland were WhatsApp users.

How Divorce Can Teach Us about WhatsApp Marketing in Italy

These numbers show us that ecommerce entrepreneurs looking for a communications solution that can reach Europeans, including some of the world’s most affluent people, should definitely take a look at WhatsApp. The humble messaging app seems to be as popular in the land of high-speed trains and fine wine as it is in developing nations filled with oxcarts and muddy water.

WhatsApp also seems to be very well suited for some European cultures, including those of Spain and Italy. The Italian Association of Matrimonial Lawyers reported that WhatsApp evidence is now being used in 40% of the divorce cases in Italy, an article in Britain’s Independent indicates.

WhatsApp has actually encouraged the return of the Latin Lover, the Association’s President Gian Ettore Gassani told The Times of London. This would seem to indicate that WhatsApp is both a part of people’s lives and a behavior-changing solution. That obviously means its potential for marketing and other ecommerce applications is vast as people are willing to adopt it quickly.

Social Media Marketing in Europe

Persons that want to reach Italians where they live should definitely consider taking advantage of WhatsApp. One excellent means of using WhatsApp to market to Italians is to send pictures on it.

Risqué pictures of lovers sent through WhatsApp is one of the main uses of WhatsApp in Italian divorces, Gassani noted. Obviously, people willing to send out pictures of lovers would be willing to send out pictures of other items they like, such as cars, clothing, or shoes.

One way a fashion designer could get the word out about her creations in Italy would be to use a WhatsApp Broadcast List to send picture of them to Italian contacts. The idea would be to try to get the pictures to go viral. A fashion designer would want to reach Italians because that country still plays a disproportionate role in the world’s fashion business. Designs and products from Milan are still sold around the world.

Another would be to place pictures of them on Pinterest , which is a social media solution for pictures. People can post images to Pinterest, which are then shared with others.

Others that could take advantage of this kind of marketing would be artists, persons selling items such as antiques or cars, and professionals such as models. Anybody in an image-conscious business could use WhatsApp to reach people in Italy.

An Ideal Marketing Solution for Europe and the World

The popularity of WhatsApp in Europe could help ecommerce entrepreneurs with one of their biggest challenges: marketing to people in different countries with very different cultures.

Social media marketing efforts designed to reach Americans and Canadians often fall in flat for a variety of reasons. Europeans use different media socials; for example, Americans and Canadians seem to prefer Twitter and Facebook. North Americans are also more likely to connect to the Internet with a traditional desktop or laptop computer, while Southern Europeans are more likely to use a phone.

The way people view the Internet is often different as well. North Americans and Northern Europeans seem to view the Internet as primarily a source of information. Southern Europeans and people in some regions such as South America seem to see it as more of a communications channel.

One reason for this is how people connect to the net. Italians and Spaniards are more likely to connect through a smartphone. Swedes, Englishmen, and Americans are more likely to use a tablet.

A critical difference here is that Americans and Brits are more likely to get their information from a website, while Italians or Spaniards are more likely to get it from a phone. WhatsApp is also more effective in cultures that place a higher value on word of mouth and face-to-face contact, such as that in Italy.

Some people seem to prefer getting their information directly from an individual. Others seem to trust institutions or organizations more. This has to do with history and culture. Many Latins view most institutions as corrupt, so they place a greater store on individuals. People from English-speaking countries think in the reverse; they often view institutions as trustworthy and distrust individuals.

Tailor Marketing for Different Countries

What this means is that marketing and promotion efforts have to be tailored for different countries and different cultures. Formerly, only very large and rich companies like Coca-Cola and Volkswagen were able to do that.

Now individuals and small businesses can do the same thing by taking advantage of applications such as WhatsApp. WhatsApp Broadcast Lists in particular can now enable a person to create small-scale marketing efforts aimed at specific countries or groups. A marketer could create one list for Germany, one for the Netherlands, and one for Italy.

The material sent through these lists would be very different. It would be in different languages and emphasize different aspects of the product. Material sent to England might contain more written messages, and that sent to Italy would contain more pictures.

The popularity of WhatsApp in Europe could be a tremendous opportunity for marketers and ecommerce entrepreneurs. Those that learn how to market through WhatsApp in Europe should be able to leverage its power to market all over the world.

It is not hard to see why large numbers of entrepreneurs would be skeptical of the idea of using WhatsApp for ecommerce . Many earlier social media solutions, including Twitter, have proven themselves to be of little use for commerce.

To make matters worse, some of these social media solutions have turned into black holes that suck in advertising money but deliver no results. WhatsApp, to its credit, is advertisement free and will probably remain that way. Yet many skeptics will point out that the solution appears to be designed for individual communication, not for business.

Despite the well-founded skepticism, it is possible to use WhatsApp for ecommerce purposes. Some businesses, particularly in India, are using WhatsApp for ecommerce. Their experience indicates that WhatsApp can be a powerful ecommerce tool if it is used creatively.

Use WhatsApp to Improve Customer Communication and Customer Service

The most obvious and potent use of WhatsApp is to improve customer service. Since it is a cross platform messaging solution , WhatsApp can facilitate instant communication between a business and a customer.

This can greatly improve customer service in fields like delivery because it can make managers instantly aware of a problem such as a missed delivery. That can enable a business to quickly and sometimes instantly address a problem.

For example, a taxi service could instantly send out another cab if a customer reported that his ride did not arrive. A retailer could quickly learn of a delayed shipment or an order that was wrong.

A business could also use WhatsApp to instantly notify its customers of changes or problems. Customers could be made immediately aware of potential troubles, such as delayed shipments.

Improved Delivery

Many Indian companies are trying to use WhatsApp to improve delivery, which is often the weak link of ecommerce, Digital Marketing Magazine reported. The uses of WhatsApp for delivery are obviously limited to companies that provide their own delivery service.

WhatsApp could eliminate some of the security and other concerns some delivery services face. A delivery person could use it to tell a customer that he or she is about to drop off a package or to ask a customer when something could be dropped. If the delivery person took the package to another location, such as a local business, he or she could simply send out a message telling the customer where to pick it up.

Another use would be for a delivery person that needs to collect payment to tell a customer when he or she is coming. That way a person that ordered a pizza could be at the door with the cash to pay for it as the deliverer drove up to the house.

Couriers in particular could make their runs more efficient with WhatsApp. They could tell customers when to open the door and when they were about to arrive.

Integrating Ecommerce and Service with WhatsApp

WhatsApp could also enable service businesses to take advantage of ecommerce. Many service businesses and professionals have had a hard time taking advantage of ecommerce because they have no way to contact customers directly.

WhatsApp could provide a very cheap means for a service professional such as a plumber or a cleaning lady to contact his or her customers directly. A plumber that could miss an appointment because of a delay on another job could use WhatsApp to tell his next customer he will be late. The same plumber could also use WhatsApp to dispatch somebody else from his company to cover his next service call.

One potential use of WhatsApp would be for dispatching professionals to calls. Another would be to keep service or even sales professionals in the field updated with the latest information. Service people could know where their colleagues were and who was available.

A serviceperson in the field could use WhatsApp to keep the office or the dispatch informed of his activities. A repairman could send out a message when he was on lunch or when he was going off duty and not available to cover a call. A manager or dispatcher could know which of her repairmen were available to cover a call.

WhatsApp Groups for Ecommerce

One of the most powerful WhatsApp features for business is the ability to create groups of people that are in constant contact with each other. Naturally, this could be of tremendous advantage to business.

It would be most useful in businesses where managers or others need to maintain regular contact with team members, particularly team members that are out in the field. A WhatsApp Group and smartphones, which most of the employees will presumably own, could replace expensive radios or pagers for team communications.

WhatsApp Groups are very useful for business because it is possible to chat with up to 100 people at once using WhatsApp. More importantly, you can now add unlimited numbers of such groups. That means a CEO could conceivably chat with everybody in her company using WhatsApp.

A WhatsApp Broadcast List could be used to send out regular updates to the team members. WhatsApp could also be used to send out information, including documents and pictures, to members of the team.

The manager could send a person making a delivery a picture of the address he is going to in order to make it easier to find that location for example. He could also use WhatsApp to contact the person at the address and tell him or her when the delivery is about to arrive.

Immediate Follow Up

Another use would be to do immediate follow up with the customer to see if he or she was satisfied with the delivery. That way any problems could be addressed as quickly as possible. For example, if the order was wrong, the manager could immediately dispatch a second delivery person with the right order.

Such immediate follow up allows instant improvements in customer service. It is also the next frontier for both service businesses and ecommerce.

A long-term development will allow for fast or instant service in which a customer uses WhatsApp to contact the company. A customer could use WhatsApp to call a plumber and make the plumber’s job easier by taking a picture of a broken pipe or fixture that needs service. That way the plumber might know what is wrong and which tools or parts to take along.

The ultimate benefit of WhatsApp will be to transform many service businesses into ecommerce operations and bring a higher level of service to ecommerce. Those companies that adapt to it could be able to greatly increase their customer service and their profits.

Even though Broadcast Lists could be one of WhatsApp’s most powerful tools, many people are unfamiliar with them. Others are confused by this tool and how it works.

Basically, a Broadcast List is a feature that allows a WhatsApp user to create a list of contacts and send messages to them. The messages look like a regular chat, but there are some key differences. These differences make Broadcast Lists ideal for marketing, merchandising, and other business functions.

The best way to understand what a WhatsApp Broadcast List is and how it works is to learn the differences between such a list and a regular WhatsApp Group. Once you understand these differences, you will see why Broadcast Lists could be the key to WhatsApp’s future.

Broadcast Lists vs. WhatsApp Groups

Here are the major differences between Broadcast Lists and groups in WhatsApp:

• A Broadcast List is a one-way communication. The recipients of the list cannot respond to it like chat recipients can. This enables a person to send a message to large numbers of people without having his or her account flooded with responses.

• Broadcast Lists were designed for business communications—to enable a retailer to send a coupon or a notification about a sale to all of her customers for example.

• Broadcast Lists and group chat cannot be done at the same time.

• Group chat is designed to facilitate communication between a group of people. Broadcast Lists are designed to facilitate communication between one person and the group.

• Contact information is not shared through Broadcast Lists.

• A person on a Broadcast List is not notified if anybody else is receiving a message. In a group chat, everybody is notified about everybody else’s communications.

• Only one person, the administrator or creator of the list, can send messages or add people to the broadcast. The administrator also has the ability to remove recipients from the list.

As you can see, Broadcast Lists were created as a means of facilitating mass communications through WhatsApp. The idea was to open up WhatsApp for use by journalists, marketers, and others that want to reach large numbers of people at once.

How to Create WhatsApp Broadcast Lists

Creating and sending out a Broadcast List is actually easier than a lot of people think. Here are the basic steps needed to create and send out such a list:

• Open WhatsApp.

• Click on the options button in the top right-hand corner of WhatsApp.

• Select New Broadcast.

• Add the names of contacts from your address book. You can only add contacts from your own address book. That means you will have to add contacts to your address book before creating a list.

• Click on the Create button.

• You will be able to send text messages to every member of the group and send out any sort of media allowed on WhatsApp, including video and photos.

Currently, there is a limit to the number of people you can add to a Broadcast List. The current limit is around 256 recipients unless WhatsApp expands it.

How to Take Advantage of WhatsApp Broadcast Lists

WhatsApp Broadcast Lists have the potential to become a powerful marketing and communication tool. That tool could be utilized by a wide variety of people and institutions.

Some of those who could take advantage of WhatsApp Broadcast Lists include the following:

• Small businesspeople
• Politicians
• Clergy
• Teachers
• College professors
• Government officials
• Marketers
• Salespeople
• Entertainers
• Service professionals
• Leaders of community organizations, such as Parent Teacher Associations (the PTA)
• Community activists

• Police officers
• Agents
• Executives
• Military officers
• Business owners
• Managers
• School administrators
• Administrators
• Government administrators
• Coaches
• Mothers
• Fathers
• Grandparents
• Parents
• Journalists
• Writers

Basically, anybody that needs to reach a group of people with communications can take advantage of Broadcast Lists through WhatsApp. Since most people carry and use smartphones these days, such a list could be a cheap and convenient means of reaching members of the group.

A teacher could use a list to send lessons to the members of her class. A coach could use a Broadcast List to reach members of his team. A manager could use a list to contact employees and notify them of changes. A business owner could use a list to send updates to customers.

For example, the coach could notify team members if practice has been cancelled. A delivery person could use a broadcast list to notify customers when their package will arrive. The driver of a carpool could use WhatsApp to let riders know what time he will reach them.

Are Broadcast Lists the Future of WhatsApp?

Not surprisingly, many people will be wondering if Broadcast Lists are the future of WhatsApp. After all such lists could be the catalyst that transforms WhatsApp from a simple messaging solution.

Since WhatsApp has around 900 million users around the world, the audience that Broadcast Lists could one day reach could be vast. A logical extension of this application would be to create Broadcast Lists capable of reaching thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of people at once.

Naturally, advertisers and media creators such as newspapers or musicians would want to utilize such a solution, although it would also conflict with the legendary aversion to advertising shown by WhatsApp creator Jan Koum, who currently serves as the company’s CEO.

Broadcast Lists Could Be the Future of Marketing

One strong possibility is that Facebook, which now owns WhatsApp, will enable some sort of widespread Broadcast List solution after the solution reaches a wide audience. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has spoken about concentrating on WhatsApp’s growth now and monetizing it later. One has to imagine that WhatsApp Broadcast Lists will be part of that plan.

That might mean he already has a large-scale WhatsApp Broadcast List feature in the works. The smaller lists currently available could be a beta test for a larger application.

This means that those that want to get in on the future of marketing and potentially utilize a media that could reach hundreds of millions of people around the globe should start experimenting with WhatsApp Broadcast Lists now. WhatsApp Broadcast Lists could be the future of marketing.