Exploring Social Media Marketing – Myth or Reality
23 July, 2008
Sandeep Singh, Business Director, Quasar Media Exploring Social Media Marketing – Myth or Reality So I am back, this time taking a clue from my previous post where I mentioned about how swiftly the landscape of digital marketing is changing and how it is really critical for people like us to keep pace with this changing landscape in order to live through these changes thus making the best of these opportunities for our clients who increasingly want to engage with their customers as opposed to just reaching out to them.
One of the most significant change that has taken place is the rise of something called as “Social Media” As per the new age encyclopedia – WIKIpedia (it epitomize Social media to the core) Social media is “an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and "building" of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories, and understandings.”
Doesn’t the definition take you back to the basic principle of human survival – interactions and sharing? We have been doing these since the days of Adam and Eve! What’s different today is the ability to do it over a technology platform (which is widely and loosely called as Web 2.0) which cuts across the barriers of geography and form (interactions are taking place as text, pictures, videos and audios). The advances made in the field of digital technology is fuelling the growth of social media – today, mobile phones with an in-built high mega pixel camera are a norm, first camera purchase for most of us today is a digital camera, the sale of laptops and PCs are soaring, the connectivity and penetration of broadband is going up – all these are propellants fuelling the growth of user generated content which is getting shared with people across the globe.
For consumers it’s a journey from being a “couch potato” to “a rising star”, from being at “the periphery” to “the center stage”, from just a mere “onlooker” to “being looked upon”. For Businesses & Brands, I believe the journey is from “buying of 30-sec sponsored slot” to “buying into 30-sec of user’s time” - It’s tough but not impossible!
Now that I have highlighted the change and its implications from a consumer stand point, I am sure we all are more interested in the implications it has or can have for the marketers. To start with, it’s a not as easy as dealing with other medias where rules of interaction are very simply laid out – “in order to reach out to your target audience you buy space, slots, airtime or impressions” and “your message comes across as a paid sponsor & consumers have the means and ways to avoid it – they change channels, flip pages, close pop-ups, delete mailers”. They will react only if they are attracted towards your message in that one glimpse else forget it. It’s a very transactional relationship.
Though, it doesn’t negate the fact that repeated exposure to same messaging results in building of perceptions and helps build a strong brand connect in the consumers mind space but as we all know it still works at a subconscious level and that too over a period of time. Biting into social media space is complex and sensitive. For starters, it is bringing your brand on the same platform as your consumers – which might sound scary to lot of brand managers as it’s opening up your brand to public scrutiny! I believe, sooner or later every brand has to face the “moment of truth” so why not now! And, we all know great brands are built because they are loved by the customers and not because their advertisements were good or the most famous celebrity endorsed the brand.
To me, brands should leverage the social media in two ways – as an “observer” and as a “participant”. Most brands, can start by being an observer at least, to me it’s a no brainer unless you bring forth the argument of internet penetration in India and throw some minuscule numbers at me. My counter argument is to look at the absolute number and compare it with the penetration rate ( which is bound to go up ) – if the absolute number doesn’t convince you now, we should talk 3 years down the line but it might be too late to start, it will be time to build on the foundations then.
Brands need to get sensitized right now as there are substantial conversations already happening about their brands in the social media space – they are getting reviewed, TVCs are being uploaded, viewed and being commented upon, service levels are being talked about in blogs and forums so the time to set up processes and teams to start looking into various brand’s “references” and “presence” in the social media landscape is around the corner.
The data in the form of blog references, conversations, comments etc. can be highly meaningful in getting consumers reaction on your product, communication and service levels which may lead to a good consumer insight. Most brands spend so much money in conducting “focused group” studies and doing “consumer research” where as the unbiased & un-aided open group discussions happening about their brands over the internet are totally going un-noticed. Such open platforms, also help you get good insights into your competitors perception. If one uses proper indexing and scoring methods to quantify this data one can get to know the brand’s health in the social media space and can also do a comparison with its competitors.
Being a “participant”, requires a more “thought through” approach and just “jumping in” might not be the right strategy. There aren’t any thumb rules here, what works for one brand might not work for others. For some a corporate blog could be the starting point for others a video channel might be a starting point. Participation can start with intercepting conversations as well, guiding them in the right direction and clarifying where ever conversations are misleading or misinterpreting the facts.
As brand owners, we need to put our stand right and accept where ever we have gone wrong. Consumers would love you if you accept and make amends to your mistakes and hate you if their voice is not even heard. So, you decide what you want from your consumers. Globally, big enterprises are running corporate blogs, doing promos through user generated content, setting up web sites using social mesh ups and feeds – it’s all happening and will soon be reality in India. We need to start experimenting and to me that’s the first step every brand or corporate should take. Start small, commit mistakes and be ready when the opportunity reaches a critical mass.
As a closing remark, social media has also been quite a boom to the recruitment industry & SME’s. We have hired so many people through linkedin or blogs. First thing I do after interviewing any candidate is to search him/her through social media; it really gives you good insights about the individual (sometimes even more than you can get through a face to face interview). Also, I have been hearing stories about jewellery designers getting orders by promoting their designs through groups on social networking sites. That’s the beauty of the medium – no matter how big or small you are, if you know the rules of the game you can use the medium to your advantage else you will keep buying the expensive “30 second spots”. Signing off till next time!
Good article on Social Media Marketing.
Social media is really a great media that have given marketers easy and effective way to promote their brand, products and services. Digital media reach is global so anyone can promote their services globally(No boundary). There are so many social media sites having millions of daily visits. These sites really provide good conversion and traffic for your site.
Hi Rajesh,
Thank you for your comment.
I would like to know more on Social Media conversion. If possible can you give me ur chat id/email id..? or you could add me on gmail at ishashah86@gmail.com
Looking forward to your reply. Thanks!
@Isha
Before venturing into the measurability of conversions, it's important that we define conversion metrics and it's value.
Unlike in word of mouth marketing, conversions in social media can easily be tracked and measured in terms of the contribution such as comments, posts, votes, rates, uploads, favorites and invites sent out.
These metrics can be integrated with other actions such as a newsletter subscription, a product sale, enquiry, etc. It depends on how well the strategy is put in place.
Hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any specific questions.
GR Rajesh Kumar
www.grrajeshkumar.com
An interesting post and a nice brief introduction to the concept of 'social media'. Having said this, I thought that this post would have more clues as to how companies should harness the power of social media to better market their product, rather than just react to it. You touched upon this briefly when you mentioned that a firm might start a corporate blog / upload a video on a video channel.
As you yourself said, people will 'love you' if you accept your mistakes publicly and commit to resolving them as quickly as possible. Indeed there are several rules that one must abide by when interacting with bloggers, publishing their own blogs, creating facebook groups and so on. They can be summarized simply as:
1. Be honest / genuine
2. If you're creating your own content, then ensure that it isn't marketing speak.
An elaboration on point 2: Create useful and insightful content for your readership. For example, if you are an oil company, don't create a blog that just talks about what a wonderful, flowery, hug-a-tree company you actually are given all your alternative energy projects. If you do, you'll lose credibility faster than you can say 'fossil fuel'.
Instead, create real content that engages users. Talk about the price of crude, and what the *real* reasons for its dramatic rise are. Talk about what your competitors are doing by way of alternative energy research. React to the 'Inconvenient Truth'.
I'm writing a few posts on why social media is a great way to market your product, especially if you're a start up (for starters, its free). I'm also going to publish some reviews on two books I've read on the subject, including 'The New Rules of Marketing and PR' by David Meerman Scott (anybody reading this, please buy the book - its great!) Do check out our blog.
Gautam
www.moneyvidya.com/blog
Nice insight. and thought let me write some of my random views and not necessarily related to what Sandeep says here..guess being almost the weekend and waiting for a vendor to come to the office gives me a lot of free time :-)
Talking from a publishers point of view where when we go out to the marketers / advertisers / brand custodians / ad agencies the challenge for us is to make the above people understand all this. We have been talking this within our industry for quite some time now, and have been patting ourselves on our backs on the insights. I think its high time we go out to these brands and tell them the actual beauty of the online world which includes social marketing, mails, communications, content on demand when you want it where you want it.
Till date brands have been shouting and shouting and like sandeep says..do they really anytime stop shouting and start listening??!!. being and observer and partcipator in a social media networking platform is very good...but what is of social media we see is to be really looked at...do we see it as a platform where views are exchanged or is it just an impersonal mail platform.
The discussions here are a kind of social networking platform which revolves around content...question is how many brands do you think would like to target us guys here :-). Is this the right content for a brand like a shampoo??
Saw an example of seeding questions into a yahoo answers..something that was done on askjeeves about long time back..a very good innovation in the Indian internet scenario. but question is is the brand just observing there or even learning from their mistakes or listening to the people there. Is the brand talking back to the users of that forum or ARE They just looking at the ROIs..how many people registered...I guess the brands and us need to decide first how to use what to use...whether they want quantity or quality..and then what would they want to do about it.
There is no specific point which I am trying to make here. Except that we as an gency publsher brand and consumer are looking at quality and would spend time and money to get the same. whether it would be from a social networking platform - online or offline or from any other medium.
and yes the 30 sec spot, the 100 or 60 cc ad, or that 20 sec or 60 sec on radio, or the billboard that whizzes past you at 15 kmph or 60 kmph(depends on the traffic you know), or that word of mouth from a friend or wife, or that pesterpower from your kid...I guess all these are a part and parcel of social media which reinforces everything..and yes they are more expensive :-)
The Net is Dead!! Long Live WEB2.0 3.0 4.0...
Social Media as rightly pointed out by Sandeep gives opportunity for brands to interact with its potential customers and generate valuable data/feedback on the fly. Biggest advantage with such presence on social media is ability to create special interest group and drive following by just being communicative. Its not essential to be as big as sunsilk gang of girls but a small step by having product page or interest community with latest updates and reaction to user feedback would generate buzz on platform leading to ripple effect from single advertiser dollar spend generating impact of thousand of dollars.
To users comment on how Airtel or Nokia can use Social Network one way can be launch for Nokia can be launch on the social networking medium where a facebook app or okrut app is launched with features complementing the product like mobile photo upload and sharing on facebook or music catalog to sync to share play list with friends etc. A mobile phone can act as a bling factor on facebook profile user leading to higher buzz around the product and finally adoption.
great article..
I mean Indians would remain followers... You guys need to learn to lead the curve... not follow it... I think Mahesh Summarized it exceedingly well with his statement "if it's in the newspapers, you are late already"
Forester came out with Best and Worst of Social Network Marketing, 2008; those interested can get it here
http://likeiknowit.wordpress.com/2008/07/24/best-and-worst-of-social-net...
Amazing viewpoints, clear thought process, and your understanding of this medium comes across clearly.
Social Media is overhyped - too mucht talks and too less real action. As you rightly pointed out high time brands start off as Observers and move on to being Participants - or be left behind !
today a consumer searches for the brand reviews before making the decison - consumers are aware and they cant be bought by just the run of the mill 30 sec spots ...brands need to engage, educate, converse and communicate - thats what a BRAND is all about anyways - social media is just another (indespensible) medium !
Wake up brand managers - stop being ROI obsessed and start taking your Brand health more seriously
Expected more from this article.
Something on the lines of how specific Indian brands have used or attempted to use social media to build connect. If not actual case studies even examples of how lets say an Airtel or Nokia or MMT can use social media would've been better.
Hi All,
Nice thoughts on Social Media..It was fun reading the article. Am a student of SP Jain, Dubai and currently pursuing MBA in Service Marketing.
Dissertation: Measuring conversion in social media marketing.
Can you guys please throw some light on the same? How does one measure the returns/conversions etc for an organization while taking up SMM.
Thanks! Eagerly waiting for your views..
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