Social Media | Indian Social Media Landscape - Part 14 Indian Social Media Landscape

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Sky is the limit with Social Media

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012

Aviation industry has always looked at doing things in their marketing plan that can match the service quality that they offer in their flights. With increasing cost of advertising and marketing, innovating in these areas would only add to the ever increasing cost of the industry. Social Media, hence, has emerged as a very feasible platform for the industry.

Getting your routes right

Social Media engagement has allowed airlines to create awareness about their flight route. Effective planning has not only made the brand come out with better recall but also enabled an increased awareness of its network.

Cathay Pacific used Facebook to build awareness about its network with an interesting yet simple ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ contest. Participants were invited to create their flight pattern across the world in 80 days using the airlines network and one lucky winner was rewarded with their plan. The contest not only generated a lot of buzz about the airlines but also helped in increasing the airlines recall value in previously unknown sectors.

Cathay Pacific ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ Contest

Friendly Flier

The idea of getting onto social media is to reach out to as many probable customers as possible and what better way to do that by crowd sourcing your customers. Cebu Pacific invited people on its page to fill an entire aircraft with friends and the ones who filled the aircraft in the shortest possible time were given a free flight to a chosen destination.

The campaign saw an exponential increase in the number of participants. And a sharp hike in the brand likeability quotient. What it also did in the process was give the airlines a lot of probable customers which was at the core of any campaign.

Cebu Pacific ‘Fly One, Fly All, Fly Free’ Campaign

Lift off before take off

KLM airlines realized that a flight experience starts way before the passenger boards the aircraft. The journey begins the moment the flier reaches the airport. The Dutch airline’s ‘Surprise campaign’ aimed at delighting passengers in a most unconventional way. Customers checking into the airport through either Foursquare or twitter were handed over surprise gifts ranging from champagne, city guides, travel related gifts etc. The ‘happiness album’ was later uploaded on Facebook for their friends to see.

KLM ‘Surprise’ Campaign

The result of this camapign was phenominal. ‎By reaching out to just 28 passengers in 3 weeks, over a million social media impressions were generated! The campaign was rated amongst one of the best social media campaigns of the year. It also propelled the image of airlines sky high.

In flight entertainment

While a lot of airlines decide to go the extra mile with their in-flight entertainment, few would have thought of the route taken by Finnair. On board their flight from Helsinki to New Delhi on 26^th January 2012, the flight attendants broke into an impromptu dance on a hindi song, dressed in indian costume and matching every step from a bollywood movie. A video was shot soon after take off was duly uploaded in no time on various social media platforms.

Celebrating Indian Republic Day on board Finnair

The result was an astonishing 4.4 million hits in less than a month. Now, that’s some mileage the airlines attained with the least possible investment. It also endeared the brands to many Indians traveling to Europe.

Ground Control

Lots of airports have also jumped onto the social media bandwagon. They realize the opportunity to interact with the fliers and getting crowd sourced information about the maintenance of the terminal was never so easy.

Delhi Airport Facebook Update

It also gave the terminals an opportunity to become a friendlier place than the earlier notion of a cold garish cube structure where people only came in to go out as quickly as possible. With the terminals changing in the way they operate, the platform provides these establishments a way to inform the travelers about all the possible luxuries and opportunities that await them while they are in the terminal.

Touch Down

With the aviation sector looking in every possible direction to cut cost, social media provides them with a tool that can help them reach out to a lot more customers at much lower cost. It also provides them with the opportunity to extend the brand association from just a few hours of flying to a much longer duration, thus, enhancing the brand recall.

Tags:Airlines, Airports, Aviation, Cathay Pacific, Delhi, Facebook, Finnair, Foursquare, KLM
Posted in Brand Promotion, Social Media, Social Media Marketing | No Comments »

Very Pinteresting

Wednesday, February 8th, 2012

This is 21^st century. Here, we pin our interests and how? Pinterest, one of the fastest growing social networking platforms in the recent times, boasts of acquiring close to 12 million unique users in a little over a month and is already creating shockwaves across the web.

Touted to be one of the hottest start ups, Pinterest that came into being in March 2010 has lots in its arsenal to be claiming so. As Wikipedia puts it across, ‘Pinterest is vision board -styled social photo sharing website and app where users can create and manage theme-based image collections.’

Let’s take a look at how this new social media sensation is stacked up.

Visual Treat

A visually dominant interface that it has, Pinterest provides a user with an experience that few can complain about. With features embedded into the interface that allows one to comment,like and/or repin on the photo itself, it is a one stop console that displays interactions as well as shares, right on the user’s homepage.

Pinterest Homepage

The moment one logs in with their username and password (currently by invitation only), one is greeted with the posts that have been recently submitted, which like mentioned earlier, are in an image board format. To the top left hand corner of the screen appears the recent activity, feeds/notifications that let the user know who has followed them, who has repined, commented on their pins and/or liked their pins.

Comfortable Navigation

The main controls of this page are on the bar at the top just underneath the logo. Aided by an uncluttered and easy to navigate drop down menu this is an all encompassing bucket of one’s interest fields. Everything (Image posts that are classified into various sub categories), videos, popular and gifts are the main tabs.

Navigation Bar

For the ease of navigation and maximizing the available space, the main bar on the top provides 3 tabs for instant post upload, knowing more about Pinterest and user profile access. They are as namely: Add+, About & <The User name>

Adding Mechanism

Add+ is one stop image or link uploader and a new board creator. About, hosts a gamut of information regarding the use of Pinterest. The policies, etiquettes, help, careers, team, privacy, copyright and terms are included in this section and acts as a ready reckoner. <The User name> allows one to invite or search for friends who are already present or there through linked facebook or twitter accounts.

Gift Store

Gifts, is one of Pinterest’s most promising offering that opens a world of delight to its users. Regardless of any occasion, one gets to scan a repertoire of items displayed in a similar manner depending on their interests. Each item is marked with a price tag at the top left hand corner and clicking upon them reveals the details of how they can be procured. Also, there is an option to repin/like it for future reference. One can comment and engage with the one who posted the item to know details about it in the comment section available right under the magnified view. The same feature is not visible in the thumbnail format.

A Gift on Display

By Popular Demand

On the lines of the gift section, the Popular tab provides the best of Pinterest in one place. This is the most amazing section of the platform. You get to see the images which have created the maximum buzz at one place. And these images can keep you glued for hours on.

Video Library

The Video section is a work in progress right now. Although it has the similar layout to the entire platform, the mere dumping of all videos, one after the other, is something that Pinterest will have to look into at some point of time. A category wise segmentation or a mechanism to add pages rather than an ever expanding scroll is much needed.

Video Pins

Mobile Madness

Any platform worth its salt today launches with a mobile application and Pinterest, too, has an iPhone version available as of now. Keeping with the web platform, the mobile version is also as easy and simple to use. The sections on mobile platform are:

Following Explore

Activity Profile

While the function of these tabs on mobile phone are same as the web version, it is the process of adding a pin via mobile that is a winner. With a tap and drag photo editing option, the image can be pinned with amazing corrections done with a touch.

Pinning for business glory

The platform looks an absolute winner. There are few glitches that need to be ironed out but this platform can be an absolute delight as a classified platform. The Gift section is already drawing in small business enterprise. It wouldn’t be surprising if big players jump in too and soon!

Tags:Board, Gifts, Photo Sharing, Pin, Pinterest, Social Media, Videos
Posted in Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Research | 1 Comment »

Killing The Messenger

Monday, January 23rd, 2012

Over the past few months, the netizens have been irked about various developments surrounding the much talked about Anti piracy acts and censorship debate. Leading the pack are PIPA and SOPA. Various other issues have also cropped up on similar lines. Concerns pertaining to censorship of social media in India being one of them. For the ease of understanding let’s break them down and do a quick recap on what has been causing the stir in the cyber space.

The PIPA-SOPA effect

PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) and SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) were both bills introduced in the US Congress. Introduced by Patrick Leahy on May 12, 2011, PIPA is a law enactment (awaiting a sanction) that aims at providing the US government and copyright holders with additional tools to combat websites that cater to infringement or counterfeiting goods, especially outside the US.

Support against PIPA & SOPA

The PROTECT IP Act says that an "information location tool shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures, as expeditiously as possible, to remove or disable access to the Internet site associated with the domain name set forth in the order. In addition, it must delete all hyperlinks to the offending "Internet site"

The Stop Online Privacy Act was introduced by Lamar S. Smith on October 26, 2011 on the lines of the previously launched PIPA months ago. This bill was propounded with similar aims to fight online trafficking in contented Intellectual Property and counterfeited goods. Provisions include the requesting of court orders to bar advertising networks and payment facilities from conducting business with infringing websites, and search engines from linking to the sites, and court orders requiring Internet service providers to block access to the sites. The law would expand existing criminal laws to include unauthorized streaming of copyright material, imposing a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

What followed next and what’s lying ahead:

Aided by a visible support from entertainment related groups like the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and National Music Publishers Association, major pharmaceutical corporations, etc. along with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other law enforcement agencies, the PIPA and SOPA picked up steam. But was quickly opposed by a widespread opposition from the biggies of the internet namely, Wikipedia, Facebook, Google, Amazon.com, Yahoo!, Twitter et al.

In the weeks that followed, things seemed to have stalled for the activists. Wikipedia (English) called for a blanket ban on what the world would be like without access to free knowledge. Google also did their bit by creating a dedicated landing page (with a blackened logo) on 18^th of January, 2011, the day to be remembered in recent times as the day the internet went dark. Social networking giant Facebook voiced its concern over the Act considering the huge user base of Facebook and taking into account that majority of them are based outside the geographical boundary of USA. It stated it is a nearly impossible task to monitor what a single user is uploading. Facebook and many other social networking sites are platforms and not content filtering sites.

Wikipedia Blackout on 18th January as a support to ban PIPA & SOPA

A recent setback of sorts was Twitter’s (a youth oriented social networking platform that has in its basic fabric, promoting freedom of expression, 140 characters at a time) has now put a system in a place to have region specific censorship of its tweets. Considering the fresh infusion of US$ 300 million from a Saudi investment holding company one could only speculate why. This rather surprising move by twitter was opposed by major activists like those based out of Egypt and Libya where Twitter played a major role in ousting the then existing government tyranny just about a year ago. Also, a Twitter blackout day was observed on January 28^th, 2012 to protest against Twitters decision.

On the Indian shores

Closer home, In India, the limited but an ever growing internet audience is fighting its own battle against the government’s censorship policy that has proposals to add more clauses in the Information Technology (IT) Act specifically targeting the content that is posted online on social networking sites at large. This includes previously enlisted clauses like monitoring of digital signatures, security and hacking.

Following a string of posts that have surfaced up lately on various social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter, ibibo etc. where strong sentiments are made vocal by exploiting various tools like pictures, videos, updates, notes, tweets etc. the government is looking to pull the chord on the social media platforms.

This has made some 80 million Indians very unhappy. With all the censorship and the unrest that has been going on with various people led campaigns and the support garnered through social media, this has been taken as a way of governments attempt at curtailing the fundamental right of freedom to expression. Many have suggested that such a step is like killing the messenger.

Social Media Censorship Ban

Cause for concern?

For any brand, such a step of preventing free speech or even an open platform for expression is a cause of concern. No other platform gives you such easy access to more than a billion people with such little investment. Although PIPA and SOPA acts have been put to rest for now, the fight in India is still going on. Many have said that the Indian government cannot take a totalitarian stand like China.

Also, the government of India would have better sense to go back to 80s when foreign MNCs were asked to leave the country. With Facebook IPO just round the corner, killing investment opportunities with such giants would eventually harm the country’s economics. Something which the government can’t afford.

Tags:Facebook, Google, Internet Censorship, PIPA, social networking, SOPA, Twitter, Wikipedia
Posted in Social Media | No Comments »

Banking on social media

Monday, January 9th, 2012

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.

What’s on offer?

But that doesn’t mean that the platform cannot be used by banks at all. In fact, nothing can be further from the truth. In the weeks of protest against Bank of America’s announcement and retraction of $5 debit card fees, Bank Transfer Day and Occupy Wall Street protests, Twitter volume jumped threefold at the customer service "handles" of most banks. Amongst them, Citibank was able to resolve almost 36% of its customer service conversations within Twitter.

So what all can banks look to do on social media? Well the answer is lots. Other than the usual customer service, new product information and lead generation, few banks have shown that the platform can transform a bank in to something most people come to Facebook and such platforms in search of, a friend.

Transcending the brand

Imagine a 150 year old bank trying to woo the youth of today that spends most of its time watching the twitter timeline or YouTube videos on Facebook. It would probably need some real soul searching and courage to be able to handle such a task. but that is exactly what Wells Fargo did. Considered to be one of the early adopters of social media, Wells Fargo realized that social media is the best way for the bank to learn the language that the youth speaks today. Once the decision was made, the bank went the whole hog. they even announced their new presence in Manhattan through a flash mob video which they posted on YouTube, which has garnered over 2 million views till date.

Click the image to watch the video

Creating a knowledge pool

Imagine a 28 year old trying to grapple with finance related problems and all that s/he can get is page after page of complicated terminology that would make zero sense to her/him. What would be the best way to address her/his concern? Let her/him relate to someone else’s story which is same/similar to her/his situation and give them the solution that would solve their problem. Once the bank is able to address the consumer’s simplest yet biggest problem, the connect is established. And one novel way of doing this is to create a shared knowledge pool. ING Direct, for example, publishes the "We the savers" blog to promote its savings products, specifically to attract young professionals. Customers are invited to comment on the blog and integrate savings tips into the search landing page. Thus, helping the readers relate to a situation and those solving their problem.

ING Direct Blog ‘we the savers’

Crowd sourcing for better service

Crowd sourcing is one of the best possible utility of social networking sites. Imagine tapping into 40 million responses without having to pay anything? This is the true power of platforms like Facebook and Twitter. And using these data to improve your reach and service is but a natural extension. Banks can use these platforms to conduct opinion polls/surveys on Facebook and also reward the participants. For example, Citibank has asked questions such as ‘Where would you like to see the next Citibank ATM in Bangalore?’ and ‘Which utility bill would you like to get cash-back on?’ The answers to these questions helps a bank understand customers’ requirements and act accordingly. This not only makes the bank reach to its clients but also give them exactly what they want.

Overcoming Fears

This is one of the most important aspect that needs to be addressed. For youth today, banking process is one of the most complicated things. Although they might be pros at handling multi processor super intelligent laptops, banking is still something that needs to be understood very carefully. It is not something one can do on a hit and trial basis. Social media is emerging as a cultural change, not a fad. And this is a positive tool that can be used to alienate their fear. This is the place where the bank can become the friend who helps them with their money. Example of this comes from HDFC Banks ‘Money Matters’ posts on its Facebook page. In these posts, the bank attempts at explaining complex banking and financial problems in simple manner.

HDFC Bank’s Money Matters Post on Facebook

Social media is the next frontier for financial institutions and consumer relationship. In ten years times, this platform will become as important as ATMs and Mobile banking system are today. But just like mobile and net banking had to be patient and adopt a wait and watch policy, so to must banks be with social media. Slow and steady will definitely win them the race.

Tags:Bank, blog, crowd sourcing, Flash mob, HDFC, ING Direct, Wells Fargo
Posted in Social Media, Social Media Marketing | 2 Comments »

Social Media Trends to look out for in 2012

Monday, January 2nd, 2012

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.

Social Media as a 360° Brand Promotion Enabler:

Social Media platforms would be expected to aggravate and play a greater role in enabling a 360° communication. When efficiently integrated with outdoor activation and ATL communication it could lead brands to have a much enhanced user engagement with their potential consumers.

This could have a twofold approach. One, a campaign solely triggered on the social media platform supported by an ATL medium could be a building block to establish a much larger audience base. Two, campaigns initially launched on the mass media vehicles and later on reinforced by the social media. There are enough and more examples of brands that have been practicing these two strategies internationally. In India, the scope is huge considering that not many players are either not aware of the potency of combining SM with ATL or they are plain wary.

A look at Aviva’s ‘the big picture’ campaign where Aviva highlighted stories of their customers, partners and employees and brought alive the brand promise of individual recognition, gives us the idea of integrated campaigns that can be done. Entries were invited through Facebook where interested people could submit their photos and get a chance to feature on building facades of 6 big cities of the world. A classic campaign that that got triggered through the social media and supported by outdoor activation.

Aviva’s ‘Donate a Picture’ Outdoor Campaign

Another interesting campaign took place post the inflammatory tweet made by English cricketer Michael Vaughan about Vaseline. Vaseline spawned a campaign in defense of its brand identity and reinforced the message through facebook, where supporters were asked to tag themselves on the page. Needless to say, the campaign did steer in favour of Vaseline’s brand identity and generated a lot of positive reviews.

Print Facebook Ad

Google+ Hangout:

Although relatively new in the arena of Social Media, Google+ Hangout, in all probabilities is a great platform that Google+ could provide brands to create a niche user engagement. Brands, businesses, movies, musicians etc. are always on a lookout to grow their fan base. Internationally Dell and Macy’s have already used Google + hangout successfully to provide customer service and engage with their target audience base face to face. The Muppets (movie) had collaborated with Google+ hangout to create a pre-release.

Characters from ‘The Muppets’ on Google+ Hangout with the makers

In the Indian context, Google+ hangout is still at a very nascent stage. Barring a few popular incidences like Shah Rukh Khan doing a Google+ hangout for his Ra.one, cricketer Virender Sehwag catching up with fans etc., for many brands Google + hangout is still a gold mine waiting to be explored.

Shahrukh Khan and Kareena Kapoor on Google+ Hangout with fans

Google+ hangout provides 2 options for hangout: private and public. Although it has limitations on the number of people in a group who could participate in a hangout (10), if carefully planned out, a brand could really build a relationship with its customer/potential customer/stakeholder.

Viral Videos as an Attraction Enabler:

Viral videos have been a talk of the town for many years now, including the year gone by. 2012 will only see it emerging further up the ranks of a marketer’s favourite way to garner attention.

Again, looking closely into the aspect of how many brands are actually doing it and creating enough buzz in the local scenario is important. Internationally brands have been using viral videos to develop pre-launch, launch time, post launch videos at regular intervals and provide exciting content for their consumers that can further grow with the word of mouth.

For example, T-mobile did a pre-planned flash-mob invade Liverpool St train station in London and made a crowd groove to some funky beats. The sheer number of views on their official channel itself were in the tune of 15 million+. Let alone other social networking sites. Closer home, HUL’s Dove evolution’s stop motion video that talks about having self-esteem and keeping it real went viral and in the first year itself it got around 12 million+ hits.

Click on the image below to check out the video:

The point is, there are many brands in India that have still not recognised the potential of a

video in either directly or subtly present the brand to its audience. The recent success of an

Insanely popular video, ‘why this kolaveri di’ is a proof how the film makers of the south Indian film, ‘3’ utilized social network as a pre buzz marketing tool and are soon to set the cash registers ringing.

Location Based sites as a Market Research tool:

Much has been talked about the efficacy of location based Social networking sites like Foursquare, Gowalla, BOOYA, Google Latitude etc. The year 2011 has seen a steady rise in the number of ‘check ins’ happening across platforms. In fact, despite not being able to take off as expected by all, Facebook places has also had a decent number of people checking in through this feature, introduced not so long ago. The point being, geosocial networking is growing fast and is expected to go full throttle in 2012 in all likelihood.

Considering that there is an ever increasing footfall on these LBSN sites, the possibility of using such platforms as a market research tool is quite huge. Tracking the usage and the check in patterns of users and the titles that they win when they check in is just the start. Recognise people’s check in patterns at various locations and earmark them to do related brand promotions.

For e.g.: Considering the demographic profile of a group of users who checks in at a TGIF at regular intervals could be potential customers for say an energy brand like a Red Bull or Cloud 9. Triggering a promo campaign at the POS could be one of the things that could be done. Organising contests, quizzes with a definite brand agenda in mind is just some of the other things what associated brands could look into.

Foursquare Check In

Augmented Reality integration into Social Media:

Augmented Reality has been quite a buzz word in the advertising circles lately. A lot many premium brands have already jumped on to the band wagon recognizing it as a key driver to brand communication and customer engagement. And coming from the understanding that most of them would mostly be live on mobile space in delivering relevant targeted content in a contextual environment, it makes more sense for us in India to tap into that.

Augmented reality has already been here in India and brands like Nike and Ford Figo have already demonstrated the use of quick response codes in their various print campaigns. AR essentially brings alive the dormant senses that usually are not quite active for traditional mass media dissemination channels.

AR for social media is to soon see a rise in 2012 based on the ever increasing presence of the target audience on various social networking sites. A simple .jpeg could contain coded information which when integrated with mobile applications could provide a much engaging experience for users.

For example, Volkswagen’s all new Beetles’ ‘Juiced up’ campaign where Augmented Reality was used to bring alive the spirit of car that was all over the hoardings. All one had to do was point their mobile devices enabled with a decoding app and see the all new Beetle do what it does best. Thrill.

Click on the image below to check out the video:

Although it cannot be said with surety how successful the aforementioned trends are going to be, riding high on the waves of last year’s success stories, they seemingly hold promise. A meticulous and timely dissemination of the message at the right time could spell wonder for brands.

Tags:360 Communication, ATL, Augmented Reality, BTL, Digital, Foursquare, Google, Hangout, Shah Rukh Khan, Social Media, Viral
Posted in Brand Promotion, Predictions, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Research | 3 Comments »

FACEBOOK RIP? NOT SO FAST…

Sunday, January 1st, 2012

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.

2. It’s too well entrenched in the ecosystem: Ecosystems will always survive. Or rather, killing them off is more difficult. Cases in point – Apple’s iPod-iTunes Store, Kindle-Kindle Store-third party sites (like Kindlefeeder). This is why these products will always have an edge over say, a Philips MP3 player or Barnes & Noble’s Nook. And really, it’s hard to picture a website that’s so well placed itself across the web as much as Facebook. From Like buttons on your favourite sports websites, to Fanboxes on your favourite brand page. Companies too, are rapidly reaching the point where the number of people on their Facebook page is akin to ‘mine’s bigger than yours’.

3. Facebook adapts: Some would say a little too well, with way too many changes made in the last year alone. But that’s a good sign – one of constant evolution. The news feed allows you to filter things out, and is increasingly delivering feeds of friends and pages you really interact with. Photo tagging has become stunningly easier. Design changes make Facebook so well integrated with your life. If there’s a trend happening on social media, I don’t think Zuck’s got a team of people who’re going to be clueless. If worldwide, people stop sharing links, then Facebook will change accordingly. Facebook’s shown that it’s not scared to kill off features that it feels are no longer required.

4. Facebook backs itself: Sure, it takes a lot of user feedback into consideration, we’re sure, but you’ve got to hand it to them – they back themselves. I see a lot of Steve Jobs’ old philosophies here – including the legendary “It’s not the consumer’s job to know what he wants.”

5. What, we’ve got to shift again?: No matter what happens in the online space, I cannot fathom us not having thousands of our photos online, a space to pimp our blogposts and a place to be connected (in a level at least one step above email) to our friends. If Facebook goes away, where do we do all this? I definitely do not envision ANOTHER social networking site (heck, we just got over hi5, Orkut and Myspace). Neither is Twitter going to steal FB’s audience. People are comfortable with Facebook, and I cannot see the network migration happening again. Not for a long, long time.

We’ve seen how loath people are to shifting to a new networking site, one even with the money and user data of Google. One popular cartoon shows how to post on social networking sites using a flowchart. One arrow, answering ‘No’ to ‘Do you want anyone to see the update?’ points to Google+.

Go ahead and post that update and water those plants. Facebook ain’t going anywhere.

Tags:Facebook, Flickr, ipod, kindle, Picasa, Social Media
Posted in Facebook, Social Media, Social Media Marketing | No Comments »

Through the Looking Glass

Sunday, December 25th, 2011

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.

Tags:Business Today, Future Trends, nimesh shah, Sandhya Sadananda, Social Media, windchimes communications
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