Vol. 1 Issue: 3 Date: 11th Feb. 2009

Podcasting, online reputation management, community building, RSS feeds, blogs, tweets… how often have you heard these words in everyday conversation? Chances are—very often! Welcome to the new age currency of communicating with the audience—Social Media Communication.

So what exactly is this new phenomenon? Wikipedia defines it as “Social media defines the online tools and applications that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences and perspectives with each other. This can take on various forms—audio, video, text or images.” However, a more accurate definition would be “Social media is a dynamic, exciting and relevant communications tool that is highly effective in engaging consumers. It comprises of digital (internet and mobile) tools for sharing and discussing information. It is basically an integration of technology, and social interaction via words, pictures, videos and audio.”
 
  • Conversation: which is at the heart of social media
  • Relationships: between people, their views, perceptions and ideas
  • Self expression: comments and views on and reference to existing information and
    ideas

For a marketer, it is an excellent tool for building brand value with a healthy combination of awareness, positive brand perceptions, purchase intent, loyalty and advocacy. But to use it effectively, one needs to understand and embrace the key shift in the consumer. It is the consumer calling the shots—creating, filtering and moderating conversations. As marketers, therefore, we need to start looking at market places as conversation places. Some tools that prove effective in these communications are social networks, RSS feeds, blogs, podcasts, photo sharing, video sharing, message boards, widgets, micro blogging, wikis, tweets, tagging etc.
 

Globally, social media is also the fastest growing form of digital communication
according to a recent survey* on social media:
  1. Blogging shows no signs of slowing down and it is not necessarily for the geeks—personal and family blogs lead. Music, TV, films and news are the some of the
    most frequented destinations.
        India Global
    Internet users who have ever read a blog 85.00% 70.20%
      Frequency of reading the blog (amongst blog readers only)    
      Daily 39.00% 31.00%
      Weekly 42.00% 40.00%
      Monthly 10.00% 16.00%
     
  2. Blogging is becoming increasingly participatory. The concept of citizen journalists is
    becoming a reality.
        India Global
    Internet users who have started their own blog 49.00% 35.20%
      Frequency of writing/updating the blog (amongst blog writers only)    
      Daily 23.00% 30.00%
      Weekly 39.00% 30.00%
      Monthly 12.00% 13.00%
     
  3. Social communities are fast increasing in penetration, connecting people globally
    and becoming social utilities for managing peer-to-peer relationships.
        India Global
    Internet users who have created a profile on a social network 66.00% 58.80%
      Frequency of managing/updating the social network page ( social network users only)    
      Daily 41.00% 31.00%
      Weekly 34.00% 33.00%
      Monthly 15.00% 19.00%
     
  4. Photo sharing, uploading videos and watching video clips are activities that are fast
    growing in penetration and reflect high frequency of usage.
        India Global
    Internet users who have watched a video clip 86.00% 82.80%
      Frequency of watching a video clip ( video clip viewers only)    
      Daily 41.00% 27.00%
      Weekly 39.00% 44.00%
      Monthly 13.00% 19.00%
     
  5. Podcasting was initially slow to take off, but has recently reflected real significant
    growth with users being actively involved.
        India Global
    Internet users who have downloaded a podcast 58.00% 48.80%
      Frequency of downloading a podcast ( podcast users only)    
      Daily 26.00% 20.00%
      Weekly 46.00% 40.00%
      Monthly 12.00% 19.00%
     
  6. With increasing user awareness and knowledge, RSS feeds have also reflected a
    tipping point in adoption.
        India Global
    Internet users who have subscribed to a RSS feed 44.00% 38.20%
      Frequency of subscribing ( RSS users only)    
      Daily 25.00% 27.00%
      Weekly 42.00% 32.00%
      Monthly 15.00% 17.00%
     
 
Mystarbucksidea.com (March 2008) is a community set up by Starbucks to enhance interaction between the company and their customers. It serves two primary functions: to respond to the community and to review and promote ideas. Starbucks not only created a community but has been actively involved so as to keep the community fresh, updated and exciting for consumers. So much so that till now Starbucks has made approximately 50 changes based on customer suggestions. Mystarbucksidea.com includes dynamic new features to keep up the consumer engagement. One such successful tool has been polls–like one asking: “If the Baristas were able to have tattoos, would you still come?”
Results since launch:
  • 3 million unique visitors
  • 60,000 ideas submitted
  • Over 1,00,000 comments
  • 4,60,000 votes
  • 2,500 moderator comments

Dell revealed some time back that Twitter has produced $1 million in revenue for Dell over the past year and a half through sale alerts. People who sign up to follow Dell on Twitter receive messages when discounted products are available the company’s Home Outlet Store. They can click over to purchase the product or forward the information to others.

While the one million dollar amount may not be much to a company like Dell, for some smaller companies that are also using Twitter as a sales/promotional tool, it is no doubt invaluable.
Congress Rajasthan
To expose the electoral video to the online population in Rajasthan and nearby regions.
We used YouTube to reach out to not online the Rajasthan population, but we exposed it PAN India to get even more traffic and views. We used video ads across sites such as Yahoo, Rediff, MSN and NDTV. In addition, we also used popular social networking sites such as YouTube and Facebook and ran social marketing optimisation campaigns—to emerge the winner.
We were the most discussed, top rated and most viewed video of the day on YouTube.
 
 
Incredible India
To reach out to foreign tourists looking for a holiday in Asia.
We again used videos as our primary tool, but we went beyond YouTube to over a dozen plus video sharing sites. Plus we created communities and groups and populated it to social networks as well.
We have achieved over 5 lakh video views till now and it’s going strong.
   

What do we make of all this? Social media is the next level in advertising. It will no longer be ‘online advertising’, but it will take the place of mainstream advertising. And don’t wait for the future—participate, connect and empower your consumer. Think big, because the consumer already is. Social media has well and truly arrived
 
 
*McCann Wave 3
 
   
 
   
 

Google has launched Google Latitude, a new feature in Google Maps for mobiles that allow users to share their location with their friends and family. The service uses Google’s technology to judge a user’s location not just by Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite, but also by proximity to mobile phone towers and wireless networks.

“We are encouraging the use of internet on mobile phones through our compelling applications. However, now telecom operators need to provide cheaper data plans to push this movement,” Vinay Goel, Product Chief, Google India, has said.

  
 
   
 

In the face of tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Digg and so on, one tool stands out as the most effective, according to a new study from Hubspot. That is a corporate blog, which is deemed to be the most useful social media tool in the enterprise. Hubspot queried 167 respondents. Of those asked, 75% said their blogging activities where "useful", "important" and "critical" to their businesses' survivability. All this activity aids in search engine optimisation which is another way to attract web traffic and attention to your company.

  
 
   
 

Facebook is testing a new form of advertising: Polls.

Advertisers can run a poll on a member’s home page, and when a user answers a poll question — like “which team will win [the Super Bowl] this weekend” — they can see how this member’s Facebook friends and other people have voted. The poll ads will begin running for CareerBuilder.com as part of a larger online and offline Super Bowl advertising campaign.

The social network says it will offer the new polling service to its other “direct sales clients” after it has completed testing.

  
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