I have been having these conversations, discussions, arguments with these young learned friends of mine on Twitter as well as some learned experts on social media whom I follow to understand or rather simplify the theory of social media.
What I see are just links of blogs, articles written by americans, british on case studies done in their countries for their consumers, speaking their One language. AND yes there are some few indians amongst these experts who also talk about such case studies only. Perhaps taking pity on me Vijay Rayapati sent me a message yesterday “Hi @anaggh, We do have many Indian brands using Social Media for engaging with consumers - U can find info at” http://bit.ly/D38WW
Full of optimism I visited his blog Social Media Marketing in India and poured over the case study list.
First, having understood and remembered the name opened Sunsilk gang of girls . Case study is brief with just some numbers etc. I could not make sense of how the numbers came about, what caused the constant stickiness, how much money was spent on offline advertising to drive people to the web etc. which is most crucial was missing.
Secondly, I visited Indian Brands & Businesses on Twitter written by Santosh Maharshi who has been clear in informing his readers “This is the list of (now 75) Indian brands and businesses on Twitter. However, the ownership of these brands is not verified. For example, satyam computers which is a news update account for the company and not by the company. Some of the media brands are actually extending their services through twitter and not necessarily communicating with their users. Some of them can also be bots. Enjoy the list and please feel to add the ones that you come across in the comments section.”
Now nowhere are these case studies as promised but I decided to make a case study of these & share my findings with you:
50 updates
Nothing worth even commenting about here.
Updates 104 - What can one say?:)
Updates 1022 - Follower, Following does not make a social media
http://twitter.com/kingfisherworld
965 updates
Absolutely beer related to & fro; then the winding is over
189updates
Imagine a computer company with pathetic updates, when they have so much to talk about!
http://twitter.com/AOL_India_News
2747 updates
This left me completely zapped! Cannot understand the logic here at all.
137 updates
This was a company written about by Asfaq here recently. However to be honest, not impressive at all, for a net business model.
1575 updates
Much better for someone who is not completely net driven.
963 updates
I expected something exciting, but looks more like an afterthought than anything else.
http://twitter.com/cricketnext
3327 updates
Chalo kuch nahi toh yeh sahi!
http://twitter.com/Cricinfo_news
5675 updates
Guess the IPL has to be accorded for the number of followers & updates.
http://twitter.com/FlyKingfisher
50 updates - follow us for amazing offers & latest updates says the bio
Yeah Sure with just 50 updates.
30162 updates
Just links…..which could be RSS also.
http://twitter.com/myirisdotcom
3990 updates
Again only links, information.
194 updates
Bit of interaction visible. And it is early days yet. Sanjeev should be able to do this right.
19 updates
A Net Business, what more can one say.
http://twitter.com/RediffShopping
59 updates
Nothing. Still stuck in old web!
http://twitter.com/TravelsGuru
105 updates
Imagine these kind of numbers in season time. Wonder what would happen during off season or probably they are outsold everywhere.
28 updates - India’s full service interactive agency. The most shocking discovery of all, unless they have started yesterday evening.
335 updates
Looks internal information only.
4675 updates
Again just links & information. Nary an attempt to be interactive.
iXiGO India @iXiGOIndia
Shows as suspended from my browser both IE & firefox
CONCLUSIONS:
- None of them have any idea of Social Media
- Their expert is the new management trainee or customer service rep or a friend who has spoken about it over beer or coffee
- Their fear of domain squatting has translated into twitter squatting
- Keeping up with the Joneses and not knowing how
- Do not know the meaning of “Interactive” & “Integration” which are the key to offline & online marriage
- Content, SEO, et all are words they had heard & given it to the SM manager (trainee or enthusiast) forgetting that he/she had got their resume written by some one else & use templates for leave application.
- India is not ready for Social Media Revolution & the small number of evangelists & large numbers of experts need to work hard to bridge the gap. I had earlier written about this here but do not think that it would matter since my twitter bio does not say I am an Expert.
In the meantime, I welcome a chance to discuss specific Social Media case studies on Brands & Businesses with Experts & Non Experts.
Tags: 
An exhaustive list and well written conclusion. But the fact here is that, Indian Brands are in infancy when it comes to adopting Social Media.
However, naukri and timejobs are a few which actually interact and justify their social presence.
It is however a decent move to be early to avoid twitter squatting as you rightly mentioned.
These companies need to take a leaf out of the new startups taking to Social Media.
In the end, a good read:D
June 3rd, 2009 at 3:59 amHi Anaggh,
Love this comment … “Their fear of domain squatting has translated into twitter squatting”
And on second notes, about social media in India, I would love to meet some experts myself and understand from them what exactly do they mean by social Media. I remember having these conversations where I want to just understand the meaning of the term and I am returned empty handed.
Anyways, a nice long list and too bad to see that none of the companies have actually been able to harness such an obvious medium to reach their customers.
And just curious, if most of the work done around social media in fail, how come we have so many “social media marketing companies”, “social media evangelizers” and “experts” in India?
Isn’t money supposed to follow oil rather than water?
As perplexed as you are.
Regards,
June 3rd, 2009 at 4:08 amSG
Brilliant work and I tend to agree with you based on my twitter experience . I think the coporates have no idea what they are saying/doing on twitter .
June 3rd, 2009 at 5:42 amThanks for sharing your findings. I agree that Indian brands are not yet ready for adopting the Social Media. It will be a while before Social Media becomes an integral part of the brand-building exercise. While this is still acceptable for the non-technology brands, given the number of IT companies and the technology brands available in India, their limited presence on twitter is worrying.
A case in point of a technology brand not using twitter/Social media well is http://twitter.com/techedindia2009. A technology event conducted by Microsoft featuring 112 technologists and attended by over 2000 people all across India. This has 308 updates.
The reasons could be many (not listed in any order):
>they do not know how to integrate Social Media with their businesses
>they do not which social media vehicle to focus on
>They do not know whether Social Media will help their business and
>Whether they can afford to be transparent and authentic directly with customers and prospective buyers and
I am not including the issues of manpower, time and expenses involved here.
Please keep writing the case studies, I would like to learn more from your insights.
I also look forward to the Case Studies discussion on this topic. Thank you.
June 3rd, 2009 at 6:35 amInteresting and thoughtful post, glad that my tweet to you played a small role in it:).
Regarding Sunsilk Gang of Girls post on my blog, it was more of a case study summary post sourced from digital marketing case studies shared by “Internet And Mobile Association Of India”. While Sunsilk has done some offline advertisement to support this initiative using their traditional marketing channels to create awareness among their target group/users, the numbers like how much money spent? was not available to me but this campaign related numbers like no of users, communities and page views etc were shared by bcwebwise that ran this campaign for Sunsilk and also gangofgirls website shares these numbers regularly - I felt success of this campaign is majorly driven by the community element and platform that encourages young women to share/discuss interesting things revolving around their life stream.My intention of sharing numbers was to make a point that Indian consumers are ready and infact use new media platforms :).
Few personal thoughts on social media in India:
The reality as known to everybody like you and me is that our brands/marketers doesn’t focus much on online platforms as a medium to share, connect, engage with consumers - but slowly this psyche is changing and will change in future. Sanjay Mehta has written a good post on why customer service sucks in India? and How Social Media can help changing it? at http://bit.ly/16pRIx - worth reading.
Everybody start from square-one while learning new things so it is fine that we have minimal understanding of social web platforms as a medium for customer engagement/service, marketing & communications but our guys have to focus on identifying the social engagement with a strategy on why?,how? and where? to engage with their target consumers instead of just using tools like twitter for the sake of branding themselves as social organizations - Recent studies like “India Social Media Report 2009″ conducted by exchange4media and blogworks.in with respondents including brands & marketers from India also points that we are in the early stage of using social platforms. This could be another reason why our Indian brands engagement on Twitter seems very naive but I hope our guys can and will learn:) with constructive feedback from online consumers like us.
The more Indian consumers move online and become active participants/contributors/digital activists by sharing their opinions, feedback and experiences of using services, products and brands then the importance of the need to be on social web becomes very evident for brands and organizations.
So how soon these things can happen for us to say Indian brands and consumers are expert/heavy users of Social Web - I don’t know but being a Gen Y guy I think it will happen very soon considering mobile & internet penetration in India and changing nature of consumers from passive product or service consumption state to an active participation age of sharing their thoughts/opinions/feedback etc to drive digital technology adoption in India.
Personally I feel that social media success just doesn’t depend on few experts or digital marketers or evangelists talking about it but the technology reach, availability, need of use and adoption factors drive it’s growth.
Finally insightful posts like this can help brands to think about their engagement strategy.
June 3rd, 2009 at 10:00 amHi,
Was hoping to meet up and discuss, but not sure when and if that is happening soon! So here are a few thoughts:
1. Yes, indeed, Indian brands are yet to find their feet in the Social Media space.
2. It may not necessarily be their own fault. They have not seen the compelling need for their resources to REPLACE the work they already do, and take serious notice of this space.
3. They are open to consultants and agencies to show them the light. But these consultants need to have their own clarity and then, the conviction to recommend right. Too often, they fall into the trap of picking up business at whatever cost.
4. There is tendency to experiment. Which is fine. But the experiment needs to also be based on strategy and have clarity about results expectation. World will not turn upside down in a 3-months stint. When it doesn’t, one gives up. And then you find abandoned FB pages and Twitter accounts, which hurt the brand more than not having anything at all.
5. Where is the real strategy anyway? Why do people jump to technology first? What says that being on Twitter and being active there, is the way to go?? There are very few active Social Media strategists, who understand the multiple aspects of consumer behavior, brands, strategy, business, bottomlines, economics, costs, returns, etc. to really give a comprehensive strategy. In the midst of this, we will find failed experiments.
6. I have met with enough brand managers and marketers who are open to be shown the path. Their own expectations are perfect from their standpoint. And from within some of these will emerge some very interesting Social Media strategies. I am absolutely sure of that.
In the meantime, let me assure you that there are enough and more random experiments going on, in the US as well. As I discuss on various forums with US experts, I can see that they are as lost as anyone else. So this world is evolving. There are few Forresters, Communispaces, Chris Brogans, etc. and they all have only 24 hours in their days, and for the rest, there is randomness. Good strategists can make a big difference, in India, or outside India too.
- Sanjay
June 7th, 2009 at 10:56 pmI really like this discussion.. All i can say is wait and watch. Earlier Social Media is itself an experiment for each and every brand. Coz we dont know the real nature of people connected to it. All this while we were beating the bush by using one way communication i.e Advertising, PR, TV. We never offered any room for the people to react on it or never tried listening to it. Naturally now it gets into experimenting stage, where mess ups may happen initially, but we will surely learn to what people are looking for.
June 9th, 2009 at 2:02 am