Valedictory Session of ICSM 2014

Geoffrey Chaucer, the father of English literature, first said, "All good things must come to an end." No matter how hackneyed this idiom becomes, it never loses its pertinence. After two days of learning and introspection, the International Conference on Social Media on Business came to an end.

Mr. Anand K. Pillai, Senior EVP & CLO, Reliance Industries and Member WEF, reiterated the importance of social media to management graduates and corporate employees. On the issue of using social media for recruitment, he said, "A potential recruiter will know about you even before you tell him anything about you. It is important to stay aware about the kind of digital footprint we leave." 

On the issue of importance of social media to the governmental machinery, Mr. Aman Singh, Principal Secretary, Government of Chhattisgarh, said, "Any government needs to look outside the offices and into what is going on in the lives of the common people... Social media is going to impact 160 out of the 540-odd seats in the 2014 General Elections." Towards the end, it was also brought about that while media vehicles and platforms are important, the real strength of social media lies in its calibration with the culture, both local and global.

It is important to understand that all the research and discussion on social media not only underlines the importance of this platform but also points to the vast potential of this media, not just for interaction but also for value creation. Nevertheless, the successful conclusion of the International Conference on Social Media for Business 2014 is another feather added in the cap of Indian Institute of Management Raipur. Kudos to all those involved for all the efforts, blessings and opinions.

This post was written by Jayesh Surisetti, PGP 2013-15. He can be contacted at pgp13082.jayesh@iimraipur.ac.in

Panel Discussion: Creating and building brands in the digital world

Societally speaking, there has been a sea shift in the basic driving ideology behind marketing, especially advertising. Marketing, has become more about a purpose - what the customer wants can simply no longer be confined to positioning, it has to be about a specific purpose. Mr. Aswath Ganesan, National Strategy Director, Social@Ogilvy, Ogilvy&Mather, pointed, "The desire of all brands is to be long-lasting, like Superman. However, as time progresses, brands have to realise that they have move from an image [positioning] to an idea [purpose]."

Brand creation is not just about the market, it is also about how those brands affect people's lives. In order to create and build sustainiable brands, it is important for the forces behind these brands to understand that the current social media vehicles are an easy doorway into what people want, what their motivations are as opposed to simply having a social media presence. "Social media is more about social sciences of culture than social technology", said Mr. Atulit Saxena, COO-Brands, Futurebrands.

There are a lot of peripheral factors associated with brand building. Brands, in a more digital sense, are what they are perceived as. No brand in the current scenario can survive in its communication without being perceived as valuable, especially by the target audience. Mr. Varun Gupta, Marketing Manager, Dharma Productions, said, "Even with everything else remaining the same, brands survive on their perceived value by the TG."

Brand building is essentially very experiential - brands are built on user experiences. The very process of brand building is continuous and cyclical in nature. Digital media enables marketers to get in touch with the emotions of the customers constantly and evolve the brands with changing times, it is here that the real potential of digital media lies.

This post was written by Jayesh Surisetti, PGP 2013-15. He can be contacted at pgp13082.jayesh@iimraipur.ac.in

Panel Discussion: Real time, location-based marketing and e-tailing strategies

Day 2 of the Intenational Conference on Social Media for Business saw the 3rd panel discussion of the conference. The customers of today have evolved; the advent of social media has ensured that the communication between consumers and brands is very immediate and direct. According to Mr. Sanjay Mehta, CEO, Social Wavelength, "The customer of todaylikes or comments or tweets about the brand as soon as he sees a banner or an ad. If a marketer waits for then conventional marketing responses, he is likely to lose out on a lot of customers." 

In these changing times, speed of marketing responses has become a critical success factor. The traditional way of having annual marketing plans and running up the organisational ladder will very soon become obsolete. Moreover, the front-end of marketing is in much more direct contact of customer expectations and consequently, they are in a much better position to deal with them. Mr. Ummed Singh, Head-Marketing, ColorPlus Fashion Ltd., said, "It is very necessary and beneficial to empower the marketing teams, they are in constant contact with the customer and are the torch bearers of the brand."

With the response time becoming very short, real time marketing, in its essence has become very important. Brands have began capitalising on the various situations that keep arising through rela time marketing. "All real time marketing efforts need to have high visibility but more importantly, they need be relevant to the context and meaningful", said Mr. Manuj Bajaj, Vice President (Marketing), GreyBox Technologies.

Just to put things into perspective, the tools of real-time, location-based marketing and e-tailing are essentially to solve or mollify customer problems. These tools, if utilised via social media properly, can provide the quintessential solutions to what the customer wants, when he wants it and how he wants it.

This post was written by Jayesh Surisetti, PGP 2013-15. He can be contacted at pgp13082.jayesh@iimraipur.ac.in

Social Media Analytics – Knowledge and Insights at marketers’ fingertips!

The reach, impact and frequency of social media are truly breath-taking, even more so considering its advent was just a couple of years ago.  This medium has innocuously brought about a sea change in how brands seek to promote themselves, listen to, disseminate info to, engage and seek feedback from their customers.  Analytics is the key to equipping corporations in gauging their marketing efforts; understand customer behaviour and in turn incorporating them in their decision making. 

Some translations from marketing concepts into analytical terms and specific metrics used to measure these can be as follows-

Some of the popular tools that can be used for social media analytics used across different social platforms include –

                                                      

These tools mentioned can be used to arrive at the ROI. The ROI can be chosen to b e from either financial or non-financial outcomes. The non - financial outcomes include followers increase, engagement levels increase, etc. Also, the number of redirections to the company's web page through social medium can be taken as a non-financial outcome. For example, using Google Analytics, this can be got and also how many of these visits actually resulted in further obtainment of information and subsequently requesting a quote or placing an order can be derived. Also, enterprise tools like Salesforce Buddy Media and Adobe Social can be used to measure the ROI.

                                                                 Written by-

                                                                 Shravan Kumar Kailasa
                                                                 E-Mail ID: pgp13119.shravan@iimraipur.ac.in

Valuation of a Social Network

Introduction

Everyday millions of people are interacting ,creating and sharing content on social networks such as facebook ,twitter,instagram etc. These social networks are collectively called social media. Such large number of people on social networking websites make business and marketers perceive that these networks are high value to them. They can use these networks to effectively interact with their customers .Social media has helped businesses to treat consumers as assets as  they use the feedbacks and opinions of consumers to develop their next business strategy.

To use a social network  for their marketing campaigns business must be able to evaluate it’s value. A manager always wants to quantify the perceived value. He must have some method or data to understand the importance of facebook or twitter for his marketing strategies.

Laws such as Metcalfe’s and Zipf’s  can help to estimate the value of a social network.

Metcalfe’s Law:

Metcalfe’s  law is an optimistic but widely used method to assess a social network. It is quite intuitive. It states that value of a communication network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system.

The law is nothing but an extension of simple problem of combinatorics in mathematics. Suppose there are n nodes in a network. The number of combination of  two people that one can form is n(n-1)/2.Therefore the value of network is proportional to n^2.Interesting thing to note is that cost of adding a node increases linearly .In fact just a day before IPO of facebook AOL Daily finance valued it using one of the variants of Metcalfe’s   Law.

Limitations of Metcalfe’s   Law:

As already said Metcalfe’s   law is an optimistic approach so it has got it's obvious limitations. Inception of  Metcalfe’s   law was based on the number of Ethernets in a network. Ethernets are homogeneous entities but people in a social network are not. There are cultural and linguistic barriers among people which decreases the effectiveness of a network.

There are so many things on facebook or social networking sites but things that interest people are things that come from their core network. Robert Dunbar a British anthropologist researched and found that a person can maintain a stable social relationship with only 150 people. Thus adding a person beyond core network does not increase the overall effectiveness of network similar to marginal law of productivity in network.Thus valuation of social network based on the number of people in it does not give  a clear picture of effectiveness.

Zipf's law is more conservative approach and it states that valuation of social network is proportional to nlogn. But it is also marred by similar limitations.

DAU vs MAU:

DAU stands for daily average users and monthly average users. A network having high daily average users are very effective. Content sharing and creation is very high on these networks, hence they have high capability to make a story viral. Facebook has been able to maintain this ratio above 50% for quite some time now while other networks are struggling to keep it even 5 percent. Therefore a product launch or brand building exercise on Facebook  can be more effective than any other network.

Conclusion:

To estimate the value of a social one must not look on sheer number of people in that network but look at the interaction level of consumers on that network. A network which has higher level of content. sharing and creation can make a story viral easily.The feedbacks from consumers are fast and abundant.These responses can be used to build effective marketing strategies.

 Before spending any time or labour on any social network one must estimate its effectiveness in accordance with his marketing strategy.

Panel Discussion: Leveraging Social Media for HR and Allied Perspectives

Apart from having a very direct impact on core business areas like marketing, social media has also had an impact on other functions viz., HR. Since there is no directly apparent correlation between social media and certain peripheral business functions, the potential of social media has been underutilised.

Preceding the core business functions, there is the case of individual scouting and development. Social media has this characteristic of making geographic boundaries meaningless. Making the case for allied perspectives, Mr. Gaurava Yadav, founder, UPEPL said, "When a boy in Faizabad can share information with somebody sitting in Chennai, that is something which speaks about the power of social media."

It is however, to be understood that social media platforms are being customised to suit the needs of businesses. Moreover, there are several social media vehicles which aren't being developed and utilised. For instance, China, the most populous country in the world, isn't so big on the conventional social media sites. One such opportunity is real-time translation. In the words of Mr. Rohit Bansal, CEO, India Strategy Group, "Why can't a Chinese talk to us as we talk to one another?"

There is an HR perspective to social media, most importantly focused on employees. The employees are the backbone of every organisation, thus the popular tenet "employee first." Be it recruitment, acquisition or engagement, social media, in a variety of forms such as games, networking sites, has huge potential for the HR function. Ms. Gargi Banerjee, Managing Consultant, PriceWaterhouseCoopers India is of the opinion, "Social media, especially gamification, takes into account the kind of employees that are in an organisation, which makes it very effective in employee engagement."

In its essence, social media is centred around communication, and that is the key to leveraging social media for HR and other associated aspects of core business functions. Business enterprises of the future need to understand this potential capability of social meida and utilise it in non-conventional forms as well to gain maximum benefit out of it.

This post was written by Jayesh Surisetti, PGP 2013-15. He can be contacted at pgp13082.jayesh@iimraipur.ac.in

Panel Discussion: Future of Digital Businesses and Innovations in Social Media

New age enterprises have started taking social media as a strong link between the message, what they want to convey and the audience, to whom the message is to be conveyed. Social media has opened up new avenues of communicating and linking with the target audience; there are so many things which are being experimented upon on social media platforms, things which would never have been on the face of conventional media vehicles. Brands have begun to realise that they can be made or broken by way of social media.

A trend which has emerged is in the field of advertising. Big-time corporate firms have shifted a lot of their advertising and other promotional expenditure to online, digital and social platforms; this is not only frugal in its approach but also very high on penetration. What the social media has also done is that it has made content very entertaining and engaging, having positive ramifications. From the business perspective, this had led to an increasing involvement of social media in key strategic business functions and more prima facie, customer engagement functions.

For individuals and potential consumers, all support and engagement activities come at the cost of privacy. According to Ms. Sweta Sharma, COO and co-founder, Simplify360, "there has been a marked rise in instances of targeted adverts and big data, but the customer is not aware of that." We, as individual entities and consumers, have begun "inventing and re-inventing ourselves" on a digital platform. In light of these rapidly occuring changes, the key is in synchronising the evolution of individuals and consumers with the evolution of social media and the information available. In words of Mr. Thennavan Subbiah, Head, Digital Marketing, Adobe, "the challenge [here] is to utilise the information available and identify what matters to the customers."

The most important point that the panel members reiterated was the importance of content. The key to success of any business in the social media scenario lies majorly in the quality and focus of content; as Mr. Anant Goenka, Director and Head-New Media, Indian Express Limited, put it aptly, "Content is the King, Queen and Jack of social media."

In nuce, the fact is that social media is here to stay. With all its dynamism, social media has a lot to offer. Therefore, it can and should be leveraged by businesses in their future endeavours.

This post was written by Jayesh Surisetti, PGP 2013-15. He can be reached at pgp13082.jayesh@iimraipur.ac.in

Inaugural session of ICSM 2014

The chilly morning of 10th of January 2014 marked the beginning of IIM Raipur's International Conference on Social Media for Business, and with some aplomb at that. With social media coming to the fore of human interaction in this decade, this conference was organised with the objective of pondering over the implications of this emerging pattern on the business world. The conference was inaugurated on an inquisitive note, posing questions on social media, ranging from the longevity of this trend of social media to its utility, both psychological and financial, for the corporate. On the extent of impact that social media has had on the homo sapiens, it was so touted by Prof. Vinita Sahay, Conference co-chair, that the quintessential myth of Narcissus has been realised at large, with today's youth posting selfies online and yearning for likes, comments and shares.

The importance of social media has been brought to the front very often. But the reason why this change that social media has brought about is so effective is that the entire way of life has changed. Our interactions have changed, our social needs have evolved and the social media has fueled this transition. Mr. Tushar Vyas, Managing Partner (South-Asia), GroupM said, "There is no more social inside the web, the entire web has become social... The kind of disruption that social media has caused in the existing inertia is unparalleled." The implications that have emerged from the homogenisation of social media range from issues as grave as politics, crime-fighting, natural disasters, governance and social activism to as bourgeois as fashion trends, sports and entertainment.

Social media, in its essence, is nothing but a manifestation of who we are, as humans. Mr. Niteen Bhagwat, Managing Director, Asterii Analytics defined social media as "human behaviour, amplified by technology." We as human beings have certain traits which define our most base, innate desires. Social media websites have put these traits on display for the entire world to see. It is this newfound broadbase of traits and desires that are being levergaed by the corporate entities and even other people to forge connections, catalysing a new-age social revolution and consequently, en masse social transformation.

As the age-old adage goes, "well begun is half-done." Suffice to say, what an enlightening start to a probing endeavour that is ICSM 2014.

This post is written by Jayesh Surisetti, PGP 2013-15. He can be contacted at pgp13082.jayesh@iimraipur.ac.in

Recent Trends in Social Media

Marketing in a nutshell is identifying the target market, informing people about the product and creating desire in them to buy the product. It is very important for any marketer to find whether the target market will spend more time watching television, reading print media or using digital media. The intelligence of the marketer lies in identifying this and providing the relevant content to grab the attention of the consumer.

Gone are the days when people used to meet personally to share information. Gone are the days when people used e-mails to share photos. Gone are the days when buzz was created through word of mouth.  All this now happens on social media. Social media has brought a widespread change in the lifestyle of the people.

“1.15 billion+ users on Facebook”.

“500 million+ users on Twitter”.

“500 million+ users on Google+”.

“238 million+ users on Linkedin”.

“Social media has become #1 activity on web”.                                       

The above statements give an idea of how much time is being spent on social media. It proves that a marketer cannot simply ignore it. More and more brands are using social media to create a buzz about their brands and grab eyeballs.

Social media has assumed such an importance that over 22% of Indian marketers are spending more than 50% of marketing budget on social media with a majority spending more than 70%.

As social media is already popular, it does not take much time for the companies to garner publicity on it. But the crucial factor is how to attract more and more users and how to retain the existing ones. The clutter on the social media is increasing day by day. Hence to reap the expected results, the companies have to come up with novel ways to catch attention of users. Here are a few of the current trends:

Visual Content:

Visual content is garnering importance across all various social networking sites due to the attractiveness and the interesting content being shared in visual form. More content is being shared through image and video compared to text-data. Growing popularity of Pinterest, YouTube and Instagram mirrors this. Other sites like Tumbler, Path and Mobli are yet to gain momentum. The ‘sharability’ factor makes them more popular.

Few brands which have identified this trend have focused more on this. Brands are releasing their ad-videos first on social networking sites to create buzz. Monster.com launched its new campaign ‘wake-up call’ without the brand name on social media which created enough buzz. Later on the company revealed its brand name before extending the campaign to other traditional marketing platforms. Few brands are also posting confessions of their consumers or celebrity endorsers in the form of videos. Example: Pantene video featuring Pareneeti Chopra.

Visual content creates interest depending on how attractive it is. Hence the onus lies on the brands to make the content more interesting to drive the point home.

Increasing popularity of Twitter:

Social media was a synonym to Facebook for many till few days back. But now other social networking sites are also becoming popular. The one that is close to Facebook in terms of number of users is twitter. Twitter, the micro blogging site is becoming more popular by the day. The hash tags are becoming the scaling factors to determine the trending topics. Though Facebook introduced hash tags, it is yet to become popular.

The consumers can be engaged through conversations on Twitter easily. Twitter is also widely used to take customer feedback. Companies are coming up with innovative ideas to engage Twitter users with their brands. Starbucks launched a campaign-‘Buy your friend a coffee with a Tweet’. This campaign provided the users with the provision of gifting coffee to a friend publicly.

‘Bingo’ used Twitter as a platform to identify the retail outlets where the product is not available. It offered goodies to the consumers who tweeted. This helped the company to expand its distribution. It resulted in nearly 150% increase in the sales.

The micro blogging site is still untapped to a great extent. The brands have to come up with more interesting ideas to engage more users.

Engaging the users:

Just providing the users with content about the brands is no more sufficient. Number of likes or shares is no more a measure of popularity of the brand on the social media. How well are the brands engaging users on their site, is more important. Campaigns which engage the users are gaining popularity on these sites. They are coming up with new campaigns according to the occasion. On the eve of Christmas and New Year, Britannia Good Day came up with a campaign where the users can post customized greeting cards on the walls of their friends.

Few brands are also offering professional advice to the customers to engage them. Revlon India launched the campaign ‘Choices by Revlon’. It chooses one topic for discussion every month and offers professional advice through twitter. Starbucks has its own way of engaging with customers. It follows back the users who follow it on Twitter.

Engaging the audience must be done very carefully. The brand must respond positively even if it receives negative feedback.  Utmost care is to be taken while engaging in conversations with the customers. Otherwise it will tarnish the image of the brand.  

Viral marketing:

Viral videos, memes, pictures, tweets, status updates, blogs etc that gain huge popularity in a very short span of time. It shows an immediate burst of interest. It is a result of generation of mass curiosity. Brands are creating content that creates interest in the users to make it viral.

It is not easy to evoke interest in the public to make the content go viral. The content should either evoke strong emotions or it should be humorous. It should generate curiosity and also should be able to use multiple platforms.

Recent example of viral campaigns is that of Volvo trucks. Van Damme`s split on two Volvo trucks vent viral. The benefit of viral marketing is the message reaches wide number of people in a very short time. It is also inexpensive compared to other forms of marketing.

At times these post may go viral accidentally. But these posts will be forgotten once the interest dies. The company does not have control over spread of the content. It may lead to spamming resulting in ‘negative marketing’.

But the success formula lies if the brand could handle the viral content appropriately.  

These are a few current marketing trends on social media sites. Social media is helping brands to build their image and getting closer to their consumers. It is helping them to drive their point easily and effectively. The brands which haven’t forayed into social media are losing a large chunk of consumers. The future of marketing definitely lies in social media. 

This article is written by Shivani Kolala, PGP 2013-15. She can be contacted at pgp13028.shivani@iimraipur.ac.in

Social Media Ode.

Social media is all about interactions,

Of different cultures, societies even factions.

Web 2.0 gave internet new capabilities,

Marketers are endowed with new abilities.

Now internet has become more interactive,

Marketing strategy can be more effective.

Smartphones have made browsing pervasive,

For target audience messages can be exclusive.

For brand building use facebook page,

For launching new product it can be stage.

For instant feedbacks about the craze,

Now need not wait for an age.

Responses can be on facebook or twitter,

Sometimes sweet Sometimes bitter.

Collect these data Analyze these Data,

Use them and reach market top strata.

Customers are trendy and hap,

So provide them with phone app.

Provide stories that arouse interest ,

Then you use social media at it’s best.

Find new trends, track consumer activities,

Make them happy; provide desired utilities.