India -Social Media Landscape
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Overview
Social Media is very rapidly gaining ground in India. Terms like Social Media Optimization and Social Media Marketing have started making sense to marketers and communication people over here.Including Social Media in the marketing plan has become almost indispensable now.
This is an attempt to share some surveys/reports that gives an insights into the impact of Social Media in India
India Social Media Survey Report by Blogworks
The Indian Social Media Scene is in a state of positive ferment. With 90 percent of the respondents believing that Social Media (SM) has impact on Brands, the study results are a clear indicator of the markets waking up to a new age consumer. And not just her, Brands and Corporates are now addressing, through SM, a whole array of stakeholders. As these conversations diversify, Indian Marketers are beginning to feel the need to step into this new-media Jungle and get their boots dirty! 55 percent of respondents have seen brands influenced by SM, while 33 percent have seen impact on their own brands. There is a call to engage, influence and track – especially the more intense pockets of conversations.
While Brand awareness and positive buzz tops the chart of SM deliverables, a size-able majority also recognize SM’s influence on purchase decisions. Select handfuls have well rounded campaigns paying rigorous attention to insights and engagement as well. The engagement and measurement matrices are in place, as we’ll note in the detailed survey findings, albeit still at a developing stage. There still remains a gap to be bridged – to supplement the use of the tool with a deep know-how of the macro-environment and an adequate fore-sight of its impact.
The motto of the times therefore, as can be culled from the survey findings, is an enhanced focus on strategic approaches to SM engagements, possibly even leading to bifurcation of services into strategy-specialists and operations-agencies.
Detailed Report: India Social Media Survey Report – Edition 1
Digital Media Outlook 2009 by Webchutney
With global trends indicating continuing decline of ad spends in the traditional media, budget spends on interactive media continue to grow and deliver quantifiable results for the brand advertisers. Given the surge of interest in digital advertising in 2008, many consider 2009 to be the year when digital finally gets the spotlight in the 4 billion dollar Indian advertising and marketing space.
A frenzy of new media and emerging communication channels have led to a more connected and in-control consumer, who drives powerful conversations, becomes a brand evangelist and generates buzz for the marketer. This does not equate to brands losing control over their marketing strategies, but provides new challenging opportunities to reach out to the user through better, more meaningful consumer experiences online.
The pace at which these trends emerge, consume and disappear leave brands unsatiated and confused. Since yesterday's digital best practices may be obsolete today, marketers need to constantly adapt themselves to the vast and ever evolving digital landscape to leverage their brands.
Detailed Report: Digital Media Outlook
Milestones
What do you think are the milestones in the journey of Social Media in India?Lets try and make note of the events that made us realize the importance and impact of Social Media in India
Social Media in India is relatively a new concept.Lets try and list the major milestones in the Indian Social Media landscape.
The Tsunami Blog
The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake was an undersea megathrust earthquake that occurred at 00:58:53 UTC on December 26, 2004, with an epicentre off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. The quake itself is known by the scientific community as the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake. The earthquake was caused by subduction and triggered a series of devastating tsunamis along the coasts of most landmasses bordering the Indian Ocean, killing nearly 230,000 people in fourteen countries, and inundating coastal communities with waves up to 30 meters (100 feet) high. It was one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history. Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand were the hardest hit.
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Facebook opens doors to 3rd party apps
Singularly responsible for changing Internet consumption habits of users in India, converted many million non-users into regulars.In April 2009, Facebook allowed third-party developers to build applications and services that, with users' permission, access user videos, photos, notes and comments.
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Jaago Re Campaign
Tata Tea partnered with Janaagraha to launch ‘Jaago Re One Billion Votes’, a campaign to mobilize citizens of India to register and cast their votes in the assembly elections. It was a drive against apathy and cynicism towards political system. Against a belief that one vote in a billion does not matter. The impact is visible - above 6.5 lakh Indians have used the Jaago Re platform till date to register as voters.
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Mumbai Terrorist Attack coverage on Social Media
The 2008 Mumbai attacks were more than ten coordinated shooting and bombing attacks across Mumbai, India's largest city, by Muslim terrorists from Pakistan. The attacks, which drew widespread condemnation across the world, began on 26 November 2008 and lasted until 29 November, killing at least 173 people and wounding at least 308.
Citizen journalism played an important role in covering the 11/26 Mumbai terror attack and several observers, both in the mainstream media and the tech blogosphere, have written about it from many perspectives.
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Pink Chaddhi Campaign
The Pink Chaddi Campaign (Pink Underwear Campaign) is a nonviolent protest movement launched in India in February 2009 in response to notable incidences of violent conservative and right-wing activism against perceived violations of Indian culture, when a group of women were attacked in a pub in Mangalore. The campaign was conceived particularly in protest against a threat by Pramod Muthalik of the Sri Ram Sena (also spelled as Sri Ram Sena, Sri Ram Sene and Sriram Sena), an orthodox Hindu group based in Mangalore. Mr.Muthalik threatened to marry off and take other action on any young couples found together on Valentine's Day.Read more inside.
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Indian Elections 2009
The 2009 Indian elections is often referred as “Election 2.0” — the first Indian election where the Internet played a defining role.
The election campaign saw political parties across the board take to cyberspace in different ways — almost every national party launched new websites for this campaign, political leaders for the first time started blogs to communicate with voters and some candidates opened Facebook pages to appeal to young, urban voters.
The Twitter tag "#indiavotes09" was the number one topic on the trends list of Twitter search, demonstrating once again the strength of Indians using these new technology tools.
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Issues - to be updated
- Comparatively a new form of Media
Social Media is at a very nascent stage in India and hence the problems associated with it are many and yet to be answered. Most of the companies do not understand what Social Media is exactly about, let alone understand how to use it.
- Accreditation
Since it is all very new, the biggest problem that arises is the right person for your social media needs.Generally people end up with a person from an IT background who understands the technical aspects of social media channels but does not understand the strategy that is needed before starting the campaign. Social Media campaigns generally fail because they are applied with a wrong approach and makes the organization lose support for the concept of internet medium.
- Return of Investment
As Sampad Swain says: Where, How and What are the metrics: One of the biggest problem of social media is that there aren’t too many identifiable metrics to track the much needed ROI to convert the analog dollars into digital pennies. Also another major problem is the existent tracking tools and software which may look very simple for a marketing technopologist but its a big deal for traditional dinosaurs. So until & unless we are able to resolve such issues, social media in India or elsewhere will not sail smoothly- rough edges will still remain!
- The perfect mix is the success mantra
Social Media alone cannot provide you with 360 degree solution . Most of the veterans in this industry say that to be truly effective, social media must be integrated with existing marketing efforts. Social media works pretty well with SEO, email, print, radio, TV, direct mail etc.And if that can be measured we can find the real success from an ROI perspective.
- Ever Changing
The field of Social Media is an ever changing platform.New tools are made almost every fortnight and thus changing the whole dynamics of the game every now and then. Claiming a certified procedure to for social media right now will be useless to the generation that grows up with these tools because they would be obsolete by then. But they will still need to learn the business practices that have long been associated with education, training — and certification.
