Social Media for Indian SMEs

Globally most businesses use social media marketing to build communities around their brands. These communities are then used as owned media to spark conversations, spread awareness, increase following, reward fans and on the whole have a better relationship with their online audience. These active and loyal communities fit right into companies online/offline marketing and communication campaigns. Some of the brands which adopted the Social Media in a big way in India are – Facebook, Nike, Pepsi, Vodafone, Nescafe, Tata Docomo, Nivea, Nokia and Mentos. Kingfisher and Aircel India were the only two Indian brands in the Top 20.

I have been speaking to a lot of Brand Managers, Marketers and Business Owners and most of them seem to provide a response which is quite contrary to the reports suggested by BIG consulting firms about the growth of Social Media in India. India as a nation is extremely conservative and we expect maximum bang for our buck. Business Owners want to see their marketing spend directly translate into a tangible return and believe in spending in Ads on Directory Listing Sites, Marketplaces and Google Ads than spending any money on Social Media or on Content Marketing. I was speaking to a restaurant owner the other day and he said he spends about a million rupees a year on Ad Spend on just Zomato and believes Facebook, Twitter and all other social channels are just a farce and can add no value to his business.

Ad Spend is like Virender Sehwag where you can get a quick fire knock where as Social Media Spend is like Rahul Dravid where you setup a solid base, work on your target audience and build a long innings. Ad Spend may or may not translate into direct returns but building communities, spreading awareness, increasing following, managing online reputation, rewarding fans and creating a base of Fanatics will very rarely fail.

The latest buzz word is “content marketing” which leads to the concept of “Publish or Perish”. If you aren’t bringing information of value to your target audience (whether written by you or curating content from other credible sources), they will find someone else who will. Some very interesting research has thrown up these figures –

• At least 50% of consumers will use 2 or more devices in their purchase process. ~ IBM
• 60% of mobile users expect a website to load in less than 3 seconds. ~ Gomez
• The fastest growing demographic on Twitter is 55-64 years old. ~ PEW Research
• LinkedIn is 277% more effective for lead generation than Facebook or Twitter. ~ TopDogSocialMedia
• 82% of Mobile Media Consumption is within apps and 18% from mobile browsers. ~ Nielsen

Marketers believe too much branded content may bore their audiences. Sharing branded content once a while is okay but bombarding your social audience with news, case studies, whitepapers, product specifications and company updates, not a very good idea. Compelling generic content which people like to consume and share with their friends is what marketers crave and love to post multiple times a day to keep their communities active, interesting and fun to hang out at.

To get started, here is list of questions you may want to ask yourself.

• Is my social presence compelling and does it provide value to my audience or am I just “checking the box” by having a static profile so that I can say I have a social media presence?
• What information does my audience expect from me and in what format must I deliver it to them? (Note – Facebook is not the only Social Platform out there, YouTube is almost always forgotten but remember it is a very powerful tool)
• Is my business adapting to the changing trends and communicating with clients in a manner that caters to their needs? (More than just e-mail newsletters and traditional mail)
• Do I have an Online Reputation Strategy or Do I just login into my Facebook Profile once a week and check whats going on? How do I handle negative conversations? Can I use the Social Channels as a platform to address customer grievances (Check how Emirates does this?)

With many affordable smartphones in the market and the mobile penetration rate of 71%, its likely that internet and social media will be accessible to many more in urban as well as rural India. The growth of social media is inevitable and early adopters are already driving profits and brand exposure from social relationships.

Social Media as a Branding Tool

The emergence of social media as an effective branding and sales tool is gaining in popularity in comparison to traditional advertising such as print ads, television ads and billboards. Because of this trend, a lot of brands that have been pioneers in conventional marketing plans for years and sometimes decades, often have difficulty wrapping their heads around how to begin crafting a powerful online strategy. Here are a few valuable steps that will make diving into digital more fluent.

Develop a Social Media Platform Strategy
Just because a new social media platform pops up in the news doesn’t mean a brand immediately needs to jump on the bandwagon. Instead, brands should identify which platforms their target audiences frequent most. For example, Pinterest has a predominantly female user base, and therefore, if a brand is trying to attract a male consumer, then a different platform should probably be prioritized. The choice of social channel also needs to be driven by the geography. For Example – In a country like India, Pinterest might not be a very effective tool for a market like India whereas Facebook and/or YouTube might be a better choice.

Do due diligence and carefully research each social platform you are interested in so you can clearly see which are priorities for your brand and why. Then lay out a game plan as to how you are going to proceed with populating each with content, including frequency of posts, content topics, and how you will handle community management (i.e. customer service questions, and complaints). Figure out how much of your budget is going towards paid media if that’s available, how much is going towards influencer campaigns, and whether or not you need to hire an agency or an in-house person to focus on managing all of your platforms and continuing to evolve the strategy. In social, a good strategy is an ever-evolving one.

Create Captivating Content with High Share Value
With so much competition out there, it’s important for brands to create attention grabbing content that users will be excited to share. Content with high share value is more likely to create a viral effect, exposing brands to wider audiences. Users tend to share content that is less promotional and more personal. Therefore, brands need to look for content inspiration beyond the products. They’re selling, and mix in content that is inspiring, beautiful, and useful. Sharing photos on platforms is one of the most common ways for users to communicate their interests and ideas, making it crucial for brands to participate in an effective way that portrays their brand identity. Users are more likely to engage with posts that showcase striking imagery. As an example, Twitter recently incorporated images into users’ timelines, and as a result, Tweets with images included now receive 18 percent more clicks.

Also, YouTube has one of the fastest growing user bases and reaches more U.S.-based adults, ages 18-34, than any cable network. It’s a great story-telling platform for brands, and one that should be utilized to reach big audiences. Instagram is another rapidly-growing platform that has embraced video content by allowing their users to create 15-second videos.

Optimize for Mobile
These days, people are glued to their devices, making it extremely important for brands to optimize their social efforts for mobile. This includes ensuring that all content looks great and is easy to share on small screen devices such as iPads and smart phones. The number of people accessing social platforms via mobile devices continues to increase rapidly. Since Q1 2011, the number of people who access the internet via a mobile phone has increased by 60.3 percent to 818.4 million across the 31 GWI markets.

Get Influencers and Users Involved
Influencers and bloggers tend to have a lot of social clout. Brands should partner with the ones who are on-brand for them, and create interesting content and initiatives, utilizing the influencers’ large audiences to create buzz, virality, and awareness. For example, an influencer’s involvement can be extremely helpful in the case of a brand hosting a contest or giveaway around a key sales period.

Hosting contests and giveaways (possibly promoted by a key influencer) is a great way for brands to increase exposure by incentivizing users to “like,” follow, and/or share information about the brand for a chance to win a prize. Choose a reward that will resonate with your target audience to ensure optimal engagement.

Perhaps most important of all is the willingness to take the time to explore the world of digital and all that it has to offer. Keep up with the new and exciting platforms that are constantly being released, along with the new features that established outlets like Facebook and Twitter keep rolling out. Be open to taking risks and chances on innovative initiatives. Think outside of the box, while always remaining true to your brand story. The digital space has a lot to offer your brand if you take the time to get to know it.

A joke called Sentiment Analysis

Before I dive into the details, here is what Wikipedia has to say about sentiment analysis –  use of natural language processing, text analysis and computational linguistics to identify and extract subjective information in source materials.

A lot of companies have mushroomed in the last couple of years which claim to have products which can perform sentiment analysis of your content. The offering is very simple – you give them a text and they will tell you if the content has Positive, Neutral or Negative sentiment. A lot of leading brands have employed these service providers who analyze user generated content on various digital properties of these brands such as their Brand Websites, Facebook, Twitter etc., The service providers claim to have “Advanced” natural language processing algorithms and “self learning” computation linguistics algorithms which can gauge the pulse of your audience.

We are working on a project where we are evaluating a few service providers who offer Sentiment Analysis APIs. We decided to dig deeper and analyze which was the best product in town and did a few tests. We did not take complex use cases, they were fairly straight forward use cases and the results left us dumb struck. I will list down some of the use cases and the corresponding results.

Use Case 1 – We picked a twitter comment which had a sarcastic tone to it “Price increase makes me really happy”

Result – Most of the APIs returned the result as “Positive” Sentiment. I might be asking for too much by expecting a program to gauge the tone of an user. So, we decided to take a simpler use case.

Use Case 2 – We picked another tweet “IRCTC site is down since morning”.

Result – Most of the APIs returned the result as “Neutral” sentiment where as some returned it as “Positive” sentiment. How? I don’t know. We thought of breaking it down further.

Use Case 3 – We tried the following –

“Your Brand is Good” Result – “Positive” Sentiment (Applause !!!)

“Your Brand is Bad” Result – “Neutral” Sentiment (We were surprised but gave the tools benefit of the doubt)

“Your Brand  is the worst” Result – “Negative” Sentiment

“Your Brand is the Worst. Cheers !” Result – “Neutral” Sentiment

“Your Brand is Bad. Cheers !” Result – “Positive” Sentiment

“Your Brand is screwed up” Result – “Neutral” Sentiment (Positive in some cases)

Similar to the above use cases, we tried a lot of other scenarios and found that the results were no different. Based on what we saw today, I think none of these service providers actually perform any natural language processing or computational linguistics truth be told their algorithms are not even self-learning. At best, these tools can be called as “Keyword filters”, they seem to have a two buckets of keywords (typically adjectives) – one for positive and another for negative. Your content is tagged as negative or positive based on which type of keyword resides in your content if it is not found in both of these buckets then its tagged as neutral (For example – Screwed Up) or positive in some cases (If no match found then it is defaulted to Positive they thought they will make the brand happy). What if there is one positive and one negative keyword in your content? Well, then the positive keyword is neutralized by the negative keyword and the sentiment is Neutral (For Example – “Your Brand is the worst. Cheers !”). I want to meet the genius who came up with the negative neutralizes the positive logic. It is not just one service provider who has adopted these revolutionary algorithms most of them have similar algorithms but slight variations.

I think there is a huge business opportunity for people to explore if they can put their heads together and come up with an honest product.

Note – The credit for carrying out this analysis goes to my team. I felt so strongly about this topic that I wanted a larger audience to know what we found out.

Twitter is going Public !!!

Twitter has decided to go public. The company aptly announced on its short messaging service Thursday afternoon that it has filed documents for an initial public offering of stock.

The documents Twitter filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission are sealed, as Twitter is taking advantage of federal legislation passed last year that allows companies with less than $1 billion in revenue in its last fiscal year to avoid submitting public IPO documents.

The confidentiality will likely help Twitter avoid the public hoopla and intense scrutiny that surrounded the initial public offerings of other high-profile social networking companies, including Facebook Inc., which went public in May 2012.

The San Francisco-based company posted on its official Twitter account that it has “confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO.” A subsequent tweet said simply: “Now, back to work.” It’s accompanied by a blurry photo of the company’s offices.

Under the law, Twitter’s financial statements and other sensitive information contained in the IPO filing must become publicly available at least 21 days before company’s executives begin traveling around the country to meet with potential investors — a process known as a “road show.”

Twitter’s IPO has been long expected. The company has been ramping up its advertising products and working to boost ad revenue in preparation. But it is still tiny compared with Facebook, which saw its hotly anticipated IPO implode last year amid worries about its ability to grow mobile ad revenue.

Founded in 2006 and named after a sound tiny birds make, Twitter has since grown into a communications medium of remarkable cultural significance despite its relatively small size. In seven years, Twitter has grown from a few thousand users to more than 200 million. Its users include heads of state, celebrities, revolutionaries and journalists. Unlike Facebook, which insists that its users go by their real names, Twitter leaves room for parody and anonymity. As such, there are accounts for Jesus Christ and Lord Voldemort, Harry Potter’s mortal enemy.

Twitter’s big appeal is in its simplicity. Users can send short messages — either public or private — that consist of up to 140 characters. Anyone can “follow” anyone else, but the relationship doesn’t have to be reciprocal. This has made the service especially appealing for celebrities and companies that use it to communicate directly with customers.

Most of Twitter’s revenue comes from advertising. Research firm eMarketer estimates that Twitter will generate $582.8 million in worldwide ad revenue this year, up from $288.3 million in 2012. By comparison, Facebook had ad revenue of $1.6 billion in the April-June quarter of this year. By 2015, Twitter’s annual ad revenue is expected to hit $1.33 billion.

Twitter is planning its public offering at a time of heightened investor interest in the IPO market. There have been 131 IPOs that have priced so far this year, according to IPO tracking firm Renaissance Capital. That’s a 44 percent increase from the same period the year before. If the momentum continues, 2013 will have the most IPO pricings since 2007 —a year before the financial crisis.

The law that allowed Twitter to file its initial IPO documents confidentially is called the Jumpstart Our Business Startups, or JOBS, Act. President Barack Obama signed the law in 2012. It is designed to make it easier for small businesses and startups to grow and create jobs.

The law includes a provision that allows a company with revenue below $1 billion to file its registration statement for an initial public offering of stock with the Securities and Exchange Commission confidentially. This allows the paperwork to remain private until 21 days before the company starts marketing the deal to investors.

Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter believes Twitter’s decision to tweet about the confidential filing signals the company’s intention to complete the IPO fairly quickly. “The market is hot and the end of the year is usually is a good time to go public,” Pachter said. “I think we will get to see the documents by Halloween and the IPO will be done by Thanksgiving.”

SEC regulators ultimately dictate the timing of IPOs because they must sign off on all the documents before the stock can be sold.

Images  Courtesy – CNN.

Mashable’s Android App Predicts Whats Going Viral

Mashable has launched a new Android App called Mashable Velocity. Mashable Velocity is built on top of a predictive algorithm which has the capability to predict if some content is about to go viral. If the app predicts a particular piece of content is about to go viral then it sends out an instant notification to all the users who have installed the app. The app has an adaptive design and responsively fits to a phone to a mini to an over-sized tablet. The app is available in full public release on Google Play.

Images Courtesy – Mashable

Lean In – A Social Movement

The full force of author Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” movement was on display in late July at the Facebook campus in Menlo Park, Calif., where more than 300 professionals gathered to hear her talk about breaking down gender biases that hurt women at home and in the workplace.

The event, which included an interview with Facebook COO Sandberg and questions from the audience, is part of a series called “Leaning In,” hosted by PwC, a multinational financial services and consulting agency. The forums, which are broadcast live online, are intended to spur a global conversation about the advancement of women in the workforce and tear down stereotypes, fears and misconceptions that persist.

According to Sandberg and her book (full title “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead,”) there aren’t enough women in leadership roles, and there never will be until businesses, governments and families start having an honest dialogue about the way businesses consistently reward men while discouraging women.

“This is about women having the same voice as men,” said Sandberg, mother of two and a former Google executive.

Only girls get called “bossy,” Sandberg said. But a woman who shows confidence and drive at work is actually “ambitious,” not “bossy. After all, Sandberg said, isn’t that what high-powered men are called?

Best-selling statement

The emergence of the “Lean In” phenomenon over the past few months is nothing short of amazing. What started as a book released to a highly skeptical audience quickly became a top-seller on the New York Times’ list and Amazon. The book also spawned a nonprofit organization backed by Fortune 500 companies, and the phrase “lean in” that might find its way into the Urban Dictionary.

Sandberg’s message is sort of a feminist manifesto for the modern businesswoman: Women should “lean in” to their careers, embracing ambition and resisting the tendency to hold back.

What the July event proved, though, was that the “Lean In” movement also resonates with men.

PwC Chairman Bob Moritz, who interviewed Sandberg and moderated the event, has instituted a number of programs inspired by “Lean In,” to encourage more women to climb the ranks of leadership. Moritz said CEOs in all businesses should start the “lean in” conversation at their own companies to help their workforce reach its full potential. The audience also included many men from a spectrum of businesses.

Despite its quick rise as a best-seller, the book has been plenty controversial, eliciting a range of responses from praise to snarky critiques to hostile criticism. But four months after it hit store shelves, “Lean In” has become much more than a controversial book — it’s an effort to reinvigorate the women’s movement. And if these talks are any indication, there are enough followers and high-profile leaders and enough money involved to keep the effort alive for the foreseeable future.

Worldwide audience

The “Lean In” nonprofit organization (www.leanin.org) quickly built a library of free education materials that explain the social institutions that prevent women from reaching their full potential and how to deconstruct them, and has helped dozens of companies organize “circles,” or groups of employees who meet to share their struggles and explore ways to create a workplace atmosphere that is more accepting of ambitious women.

Exactly how far Sandberg, 43, takes “Lean In” is anyone’s guess. She already has spread her message on a globe-trotting book tour — across the U.S. and to Asia and Africa. A woman in the audience told Sandberg she was from Paris and she knew women back home were watching the live-broadcast event, nodding in agreement.

There has been much speculation about how Sandberg might leverage her “Lean In” success for her next career move. The popular rumor is that she will run for office, although Sandberg has been mum on any political ambitions. As for now, Forbes ranks her as the sixth-most powerful woman in the world — up from No. 10 last year.

But Sandberg deflects questions about her plans, saying only that she loves her job at Facebook, and will stay there for a while anyway — leaning in.

Image Courtesy – CNN