Clearly, if blogs spelt the beginning of the end, turning Guttenberg economics on its head and exploding the myth of consumers as mere spectators, social networks are only too happy to pick up where blogs finish, virtually ending the reign of ivory tower marketers. Statistics prove that next to email, social networking sites are the most visited user platform on the World Wide Web. Give in to number crunching and just the top 10 social networking sites globally cross a cool 600 million members. And it’s not just traditional media that is feeling the pinch from these do-it-yourself publishing tools, marketers, whether political, social or business are gradually abandoning their earlier mass-market approach to follow their target consumers into their preferred leisure space.
At the time of going to press, the US Election results had just thundered in with a historic mandate. Barack Obama had become the 44th US President and the first African-American to make it to the White House. Among others, Obama’s crack team of intelligence and marketing gurus must’ve also thanked Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, all of which allowed Obama to gain massive popularity and acceptance among American youth. According to an assessment by web strategy analyst, Jeremiah Owyang, on the eve of going to polls, Obama had a 380% lead over McCain in his social media campaign on the portal with about 2,379,102 registered supporters; while McCain languished behind with 620,359 supporters. A similar story was true for even MySpace. On the video uploading community network of YouTube, Obama had uploaded 1792 videos since 2006 while McCain uploaded only 329 videos. Obama had 905% more viewers than McCain on the website. Clearly, this was a historic election, given the first time ever heavy strategic usage of social media in the campaign game.
So whether it’s Mini USA (the American branch of BMW’s Mini Cooper) that routinely tracks everything being said about its brand on online social networks; or the 50 selected executives at Hewlett-Packard’s corporate office in Palo Alto who log into their individual blogs every morning to catch the ongoing online conversation about each of their product lines; the online social community is changing the dynamics of companies around the world, and also in India. Only difference is that while in the US, the networks of choice remain MySpace and Facebook and the choice hinges around Bebo (AOL) and MySpace in the UK, in India, the most popular connectors are Google’s Orkut, followed by Facebook. The money-spinning mathematics of social networking platforms has coerced even big Indian businesses to start taking the game seriously. Anil Ambani’s BigAdda.com launched last year and Sabeer (hotmail) Bhatia’s ApnaCircle.com are proof of this desi pudding. The mandate is clear. As more and more ‘aware’ consumers shun traditional advertising and as trust develops among online communities, consumers are more willing to take a purchase suggestion from an online peer rather than the traditional marketer. Says Navin Mittal, Business Head, Fropper.com, “Social networking started off as a concept to simply ‘keep in touch’ with friends, but has evolved as a popular medium for big brands to connect to their audience.”
When asked, Atul Hegde, CEO, Ignitee said that the type of content on social networking websites must be tailored to grab the attention of net freaks. “Creative directors should create content which is ‘non advertising’ and the kind that net workers will want to spread around,” he believes. Ashish Kashyap, CEO, ibibo.com agrees. “Social media platform cannot be used in the way you advertise on a portal or search engine. Social media marketing can only be done by engaging intimately with the audience i.e. by developing products and applications to trap the audience,” he says.
Explains Mahesh Murthy, CEO, Pinstorm, a search marketing firm, “Social networks are not useful for RoI-based advertising,” adding that social
media is more useful for brand building. He believes that unlike search advertising, where people go to a site like Google to click and go somewhere else, social networks are immersive and users tend not to click on ads here. So, while you may not expect a high click-through rate for banner ads on social networks, some like NIIT have found more effective ways to build their brand here. Preeti Technani, the virtual character created by NIIT on Orkut, answers daily queries related to careers and has been a huge success so far. But there are still many that are missing from the social networking buzz. Analysts blame it on the lack of education and evangelising. “Only a few understand the big picture,” laments Hegde, adding that the ‘hit now, score now’ syndrome – a throwback to the conventional advertising era – is prevalent among marketers. In contrast, “social media marketing is a slow but sure burner,” he says.
At the time of going to press, the US Election results had just thundered in with a historic mandate. Barack Obama had become the 44th US President and the first African-American to make it to the White House. Among others, Obama’s crack team of intelligence and marketing gurus must’ve also thanked Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, all of which allowed Obama to gain massive popularity and acceptance among American youth. According to an assessment by web strategy analyst, Jeremiah Owyang, on the eve of going to polls, Obama had a 380% lead over McCain in his social media campaign on the portal with about 2,379,102 registered supporters; while McCain languished behind with 620,359 supporters. A similar story was true for even MySpace. On the video uploading community network of YouTube, Obama had uploaded 1792 videos since 2006 while McCain uploaded only 329 videos. Obama had 905% more viewers than McCain on the website. Clearly, this was a historic election, given the first time ever heavy strategic usage of social media in the campaign game.
So whether it’s Mini USA (the American branch of BMW’s Mini Cooper) that routinely tracks everything being said about its brand on online social networks; or the 50 selected executives at Hewlett-Packard’s corporate office in Palo Alto who log into their individual blogs every morning to catch the ongoing online conversation about each of their product lines; the online social community is changing the dynamics of companies around the world, and also in India. Only difference is that while in the US, the networks of choice remain MySpace and Facebook and the choice hinges around Bebo (AOL) and MySpace in the UK, in India, the most popular connectors are Google’s Orkut, followed by Facebook. The money-spinning mathematics of social networking platforms has coerced even big Indian businesses to start taking the game seriously. Anil Ambani’s BigAdda.com launched last year and Sabeer (hotmail) Bhatia’s ApnaCircle.com are proof of this desi pudding. The mandate is clear. As more and more ‘aware’ consumers shun traditional advertising and as trust develops among online communities, consumers are more willing to take a purchase suggestion from an online peer rather than the traditional marketer. Says Navin Mittal, Business Head, Fropper.com, “Social networking started off as a concept to simply ‘keep in touch’ with friends, but has evolved as a popular medium for big brands to connect to their audience.”
When asked, Atul Hegde, CEO, Ignitee said that the type of content on social networking websites must be tailored to grab the attention of net freaks. “Creative directors should create content which is ‘non advertising’ and the kind that net workers will want to spread around,” he believes. Ashish Kashyap, CEO, ibibo.com agrees. “Social media platform cannot be used in the way you advertise on a portal or search engine. Social media marketing can only be done by engaging intimately with the audience i.e. by developing products and applications to trap the audience,” he says.
Explains Mahesh Murthy, CEO, Pinstorm, a search marketing firm, “Social networks are not useful for RoI-based advertising,” adding that social
media is more useful for brand building. He believes that unlike search advertising, where people go to a site like Google to click and go somewhere else, social networks are immersive and users tend not to click on ads here. So, while you may not expect a high click-through rate for banner ads on social networks, some like NIIT have found more effective ways to build their brand here. Preeti Technani, the virtual character created by NIIT on Orkut, answers daily queries related to careers and has been a huge success so far. But there are still many that are missing from the social networking buzz. Analysts blame it on the lack of education and evangelising. “Only a few understand the big picture,” laments Hegde, adding that the ‘hit now, score now’ syndrome – a throwback to the conventional advertising era – is prevalent among marketers. In contrast, “social media marketing is a slow but sure burner,” he says.Read these article :-
ZEE BUSINESS BEST B SCHOOL SURVEY
B-schooled in India, Placed Abroad (Print Version)
IIPM in Financial times (Print Version)
IIPM makes business education truly global (Print Version)
The Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM)
IIPM Campus
Top Articles on IIPM:-
'This is one of Big B's best performances'
IIPM to come up at Rajarhat
IIPM awards four Bengali novelists
IIPM makes business education truly global-Education-The Times of ...
The Hindu : Education Plus : Honour for IIPM
IIPM ranked No.1 B-School in India, Management News - By ...
IIPM Ranked No1 B-School in India
Moneycontrol >> News >> Press- News >> IIPM ranked No1 B-School in ...
IIPM ranked No. 1 B-school in India- Zee Business Survey ...
IIPM ranked No1 B-School in India :: Education, Careers ...
The Hindu Business Line : IIPM placements hit a high of over 2000 jobs
Deccan Herald - IIPM ranked as top B-School in India
India eNews - IIPM Ranked No1 B-School in India
IIPM Delhi - Indian Institute of Planning and Management New Delhi ...
IIPM ranked ahead of IIMs
No comments:
Post a Comment