Indian Social Media Landscape

Banking sector has always been very careful of adopting new technology and rightly so. While technology will eventually make life convenient for the consumer, the banks need to venture in to new space only when they are absolutely sure that the financial data of the consumers are not compromised at any stage

The Truth

While 800 million people may be on Facebook, it would be interesting to see how many of them would actually go ahead and use this platform or any other social media platform for that matter for actual banking transaction. A good indicator of this comes from the Javelin Strategy & Research’s latest report that investigates consumer personal finance behaviors toward social media. According to their report, only one in ten consumers are comfortable using social media sites to review or check account balances.

The year 2011 has borne witness too many ups and downs and dynamism in the world of Social Media. Radical changes in the interface for two of the most ubiquitously popular Social networking sites, Facebook and Twitter, Klout’s remarkable drop in the ranks, Google+ and Facebook in close encounters, viral videos being recognised as a potent medium to catch eyeballs, augmented reality entering the Social Media Space et al.

Let’s take a look at some of the ways in which brands could maximize user engagement in the year to come.

No less than TIME magazine themselves asked whether Facebook is on a decline. While I understand it’s fashionable to ask whether products that are seemingly approaching the plateau of their product life cycle – are dying out, I do not think Facebook’s going anywhere.

And why? (I like to analyse questions like these from an emprical and this-is-how-we-work way rather than cull out numbers, graphs and stats that can be used to say anything)

1. It’s become our Flickr and Picasa: Apart from professional photographers and enthusiasts who benefit from pro features, I can’t recall too many people using either service anymore. Let me put it this way – you’re just back after a vacation. Or a friend’s birthday party. Or just transferring photos you’ve taken using your phone cam. What do you do with them? My guess is, Facebook and tag. And one doesn’t need stats to say how important photos are to the Facebook experience.

This article of ours was first published in Business Today’s 20th Anniversary edition

It was only in 2008 when social media took its fledgling steps in India. 2011 was the year social media got truly established with Indian corporates as 20 million Indians went social! In 2015, we foresee, an exponential growth and significant innovations as 500 million Indians log on given the high mobile penetration and $35 tablets!

With so much happening, social media promises to be like the plot of a Bollywood blockbuster in the coming years – full of drama, triumphs and twists. Let’s take a quick peek into some of the future trends.

• Emergence of Rural Social Media:

Airtel believes that 700 mn rural Indian Internet users exist that remain untapped. Given that, Indian businesses will have to think rural in all aspects – social communication strategies, customized content as media consumption will be drastically different from urban centers, and rural workforce. Companies will have to divert advertising resources into creating content that is both captivating, relevant and ultimately building brand affinity with the users – be it in the form of videos, applications or plain text.  Also companies will need to educate and nurture rural workforce. After all a 24-year old executive in Gurgaon will not be able to write content for a farmer in Warangal!

• Community Development:

There already is a shift in advertising spends as more monies are being diverted to BTL activities. This trend will see as significant boost as going forward companies will have to start investing in creating and maintaining social ecosystems for their brand. Ecosystems would involve building community of individuals who will spend their time and effort by being not just customers for the brand but also product innovators and ideators! Brands especially those operating in passion-led sectors like photography, bikes, etc will need to identify these individuals and panelize them to seek their ideas from product development stage to marketing and distributing it!

Few brands in India that have taken first steps in this direction are Royal Enfield and Canon. Both companies have built a social ecosystem that helps them leverage it not just for sales but also engage in a more profitable and wholesome manner! By doing that, they are betting that the collective social presence of this group will endorse and influence a much wider and larger audience towards their products as close to 40 million Indians today base their purchase decision based on online reviews.

• Profiles of brand managers:

The biggest change that we anticipate will be a change in the profile of the brand manager. Today, several corporates have global brand teams that manage the larger nuances of brand building and the local teams are involved with execution and activation work around the brand. The profile of the local brand activation team will undergo a drastic shift as social media gains significance. In order to operate successful online communities as mentioned in the previous point, corporates will seek out individuals who exhibit and follow their hobbies & interests that are in sync with their business. A clear case in point is Red Bull that has individuals on board with specific skill sets and inherent passion who lead their various sports & cultural initiatives! Hence an employee list that boasts of former cricketers and sports journalists!

• Social Media for Senior Leadership:

As Indian companies go global, it will be imperative for the senior leadership to build their presence in the social space. Global media would want to know more about the company and its team and would look at social media presence for the same. It is not uncommon today to read CEO tweets as newspaper headlines.

Also senior leadership will have to address other stakeholders – employees, customers and shareholders to help build connect with the company, receive direct feedback on their brands and assure safety on the monies invested respectively. Few good examples of this that come to mind are Mr. Anand Mahindra’s Twitter presence, HCL’s Mr Vineet  Nayyar’s blog and GE India’s CEO Mr. John Flannery’s internal blog meant for employees.

• Individual Celebrities:

Brand endorsers will change completely. Gone will the days where the Bollywood and Sports brigade lapped up everything! Brands will sign up more real life individuals to bring in relevance and connect with their customers. These real life celebrities will be specialists in their own field and hence influencers on social media platforms. Offlate, various writers such as Chetan Bhagat (Revolution 20-20), Ashwin Sanghi (Chanakya Chants) and Sidin Vadukut (Dork & God Save the Dork) have successfully leveraged social media to gain celebrity status! Given that, Huawei India signed Chetan Bhagat so that they could connect with his fan base for their mobile and tablet offerings.

2011 has been a remarkable year for many startups and stalwarts in the arena of Social Media. For most part, the socially active would remember this year as the year of major changes being rolled out by most social networking sites.

Even the most popular micro blogging site, Twitter, underwent a major UI changes. The ‘New Twitter’ was launched amidst much talked about anticipations and apprehensions. Here is a look at how the tweaks make Twitter grow.

Navigation Keys

At the top panel of the newly refurbished Twitter, users have 4 easy to navigate keys which are essentially the Home, Connect, Discover and Me keys. Besides, there is also a Tweet icon that is omnipresent so that one can tweet no matter where they are on the page.

Home

This is essentially where one views tweets from the people they are essentially following including their retweets. With the new twitter, photos, videos and conversations are embedded directly in tweets so that one can see the whole story at a glance.

                                              Image courtesy: www.fly.twitter.com

Connect

An easy conversation ready reckoner where one can initiate or continue conversations, see their RT’s, favourites, followers(these 3 clubbed under Interactions) and mentions.

                                              Image courtesy: www.fly.twitter.com

Discover

By far the most significant and distinct feature highlighted in the new twitter, discover aims to stream customized content and in most cases they are different for each user (Stories). Along with this, it has integrated the last rolled out Activity tab where one can keep a track on their followers, find friends from various mail portals, browse categories(according to the interest areas).

The Stories are visually presented with much revelry, aesthetically speaking. They highlight the name of the topic on the masthead where tweets regarding them can be viewed by a single click and are supplemented with a recent article on the same beneath.

All about Me

The last of the tabs is a personal dashboard to the lists one has subscribed to/is a member of and an all new window to the Direct Messages which now appears in a separate window. The layout of the DM window is a lot more user friendly and packed. Clicking upon each interaction opens up a chat like window within the existing window with the latest messages exchanged appearing last.

The most prominent feature in the Me being the display and layout of the page that offers one to showcase to the world their identity. With an enlarged masthead where the profile picture is big enough to create a statement with enough space to key in an individual’s story. Not to leave out space to provide a link to one’s website.

This however, is one of the key benefits that Twitter Brand Pages would have in customizing there page layout.

                                            Image courtesy: www.fly.twitter.com

Also, when one gets’ to Browse categories, this is where the major development comes into foray. This is where most Brands would be interested and looking forward to. This is one stop shop for any brand or person with a public profile that are clubbed together in broad categories in order of their relevance. For e.g.: Sports, Music, Technology, Books, television etc.

Branded Tweets

Interface facelift and the potent mobile platform

Now that twitter has revamped its web interface with additional features, brands and users can exploit it like never before. Earlier high-powered twitter users made use of 3^rd party tools like hootsuite, TweetDeck etc. which enabled them to manage their twitter presence because of elaborate and feature enriched interfaces. With the advent of the new twitter this trend is likely to get more users get hooked on to the web interface. The simultaneous launch of mobile apps also shows that Twitter is gearing up for the future.

Preemptive content curating

For brands, to build engagement it’s essential that they do a preemptive study on the nature of their followers. By knowing how their followers function could really work wonders. This way, the brands can think ahead of their followers and develop content that would have definitive response to.

The Activity tab has the Discover element under it. This lets the users and brand pages find out relevant content material that is in sync with their followers interests. This can subsequently be incorporated in their further dissemination of information/tweets.

The Brand Pages & Advertising

Twitter’s brand pages that were much anticipated has come with power packed features and is definitely a boost in the arm to woo major brands into the twitter ecosystem especially by integrating richer content and using paid advertising through its in-house developed advertising tool.

Last but not the least, as previously mentioned, brands could now use the page layout in doling out information about them in a much enhanced fashion. For e.g.: The mast head on top of the brand page has a huge space for bio and relevant/connected websites and makes for a promising stand out statement.

Also, the backgrounds could include more elements from the brand portfolio that defines it’s core fabric.

The final tweet

Although it is still dicey as to how twitter would go about this, the content diggers on twitter will definitely discover twitter as a great reserve. As time rolls by and the brand pages gain prominence in the brandscape, the new twitter will definitely prove its mettle as far as effectively reaching out to consumers is concerned.