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Indian Social Media Agencies in Early 2008
Last year, I had created the first list of social media agencies in India, which included –
- Digital Advertising Agencies like Webchutney, Quasar Media/ Quasar Talk and Phonethics offering social media marketing services with a focus on virals, social network apps, social media campaigns etc.
- Public Relations Practitioners like Rajesh Lalwani’s Blogworks offering social media services with a focus on online reputation monitoring and social media outreach etc.
- Prominent Bloggers like Kiruba Shankar, Dina Mehta’s Mosoci, and Rajiv Dingra’s WATConsult offering, basically, corporate blogging consulting services and workshops.
Indian Social Media Agencies in Mid 2009
A year later, I can see at least six type of companies offering social media services in India –
1. Independent Social Media Agencies offer social media monitoring, social media outreach, and community manager services. Blogworks and WATConsult are the most visible example, but other examples include Windchimes, Social Wavelength, Bloggers’ Mind, Sulmoz, Zapylacz, Mercury Communication, Ripple Links, Superchooha and Electrosocial.
2. Advertising Agencies Offering Social Media Services run social media campaigns, using viral videos and Facebook/ OpenSocial applications, to supplement display and search advertising campaigns, typically to promote brand microsites. Webchutney/ Drizzlin, Quasar Media/ Quasar Talk, Pinstorm, BCWebwise, Interactive Avenues, Ignitee, Media2Win, and Phonethics are good examples of this category. Other examples include Infovedics, Blueliner, ID8Labs, New Media Guru, Foxymoron, Smursh, iConcept, Experience Commerce, D’zine Garage and iStrat. Apart from these digital advertising agencies, almost all traditional advertising agencies typically create micro-sites or run ads on social networking websites, as part of an integrated advertising campaign.
3. Public Relations Agencies Offering Social Media Services typically offer online reputation management and word of mouth marketing services, to complement their offline offerings. Leaders 20:20 Media, Fleishman Hillard, Genesis Burson-Marsteller (via Puretech Internet), Hanmer MSL, Ogilvy PR, Text100 and Weber Shandwick and even smaller players like Renaissance PR now offer well-developed social media offerings. I am surprised that Edelman isn’t promoting its social media services in India yet.
4. Social Media Research and Analytics Companies focus on monitoring social media conversations using human and machine analysis. These companies include Informm, LogicBowl, Fractal Analytics, Empower Research and Germinait. I don’t think that Nielsen Buzzmetrics, TNS Cymfony or JD Power Web Intelligence are offering their social media analytics services in India yet.
5. Bloggers-Turned-Consultants typically offer corporate blogging and social media consulting services, and conduct social media workshops. Kiruba Shankar and Dina Mehta are the most prominent examples in this category, but other include Moksh Juneja and Vijay Rayapati.
6. Search Engine Optimization Companies are beginning to offer social media optimization services. Examples of such companies include Search Engine Factors, Development India, Empowered SEO, Innovate, iSMO, BrainPulse, IT Chimes, BrainWork, WildNet Technologies, Mosaic ITES Services, SEO Outsourcing India, Kneoteric, Semaphore, Magnon Solutions and dozens of others, each indistinguishable from the others.
Going forward, I won’t be surprised if community platforms like BrandAdda, BlogAdda and IndiBlogger also start leveraging their communities to offer social media consulting services to brands.
I said last year that “it seems that, by the end of 2008, we’ll have 25-30 serious social media players in the Indian market.” Like a lot of my social media predictions, this one has also come true, even if we exclude the SEO/ SEM/ SMM companies.
A Call for Collaboration
I think that this space will continue to attract both new startups and established advertising and public relations companies. By the end of 2009, I expect the number of categories to go up from 6 to 8-10 and the number of players to go up from 35 to 50-60.
Some of my friends who run these agencies are worried that the social media space in India has already become too cluttered. As the co-founder of a new specialized social media company, I see this frantic activity as an opportunity.
On one hand, most traditional advertising and public relations agencies won’t be able to build serious competencies in the social media space, unless they start independent social media agencies. The people in these companies who understand social media will be tempted to strike out on their own and start specialized social media agencies.
On the other hand, many specialized social media agencies won’t survive the year. Most companies that survive won’t be able to scale beyond the small founding team working out of a home office. Some of us, hopefully, will both survive, and scale, and profitably.
The entrepreneurial activity in this space is extremely encouraging because the same people who will fail at running their small companies will build strong personal brands in the process and succeed at senior roles at the companies that emerge as leaders in this space.
So, there’s value in our seeing each other as potential collaborators, instead of competitors, and working together to evangelize social media to Indian brands. The market opportunity here is huge and we haven’t even scraped the surface yet.
Nice list of Social Media agencies in India http://tinyurl.com/lpmjzp I still believe its best to look at individual free-lancers for VFM
Do any of these companies market themselves to the non-profit niche (either local Indian non-profits or international ones?)
@Mary: Many of these agencies work with startups and non-profits, but I don’t know of any which is focused on them.
Gaurav: Are you plans for visiting Mumbai on the 15th on track? I hope you can find time to visit Germinait when you are here.
Mary: At Germinait, we would work with non-profits if their problem is compelling and fits with the technology we have developed or are in the process of developing. Please contact me ranjit dot nair at germinait dot com if you would like to discuss it further.
I agree. There definitely will be more categories. In fact i think already the 2 other categories that come to mind are tech focussed app companies which enable the mobilization of certain technologies that not everyone can work with. Social web factory and Experience Commerce are names that come to mind.
Then there are also the social media copy paste workshops – especially for number based outreach that some clients surprisingly prefer. Can’t think of names here but i do know that its being done.
At FoxyMoron i always go to clients and tell them that we create loyalists – and i think that is the differentiating factor of this medium. Apart from that, i’ve started to look at all projects using your 4Cs approach. There is also another 4Cs approach that we have been additionally trying to add to your broad based approach – this is more brand specific. We also try and look at ‘Cause – helping people do what they like to do better’, ‘Commodity – tangible stuff that people can interact with’, ‘Content – what do we create that will propel people in their cause of doing what they like to do better’ and Conversations for CoOperative Growth – which is very similar to your idea of Collective Intelligence.
I don’t believe that social media marketing if looked at from the 4Cs perspective is/ or should be treated as a specialized service that only a certain kind of agency can/ should perform. In terms of analytics and end point distribution – yes we need specialists but in terms of strategy per say i think we have to try and introduce this culture of ‘helping the consumer’ into the mainstream creative process.
I would love to collaborate. I would love to bring more traditional marketing specialists into the fold as well. And i agree that we haven’t even scraped the service yet.
@Mary, we have worked with 4 non profits for their web needs and have also hosted an event that ties in 6 of India’s largest non profits and promoted the same. Having said that we haven’t worked on a focussed year long campaign for any non profit as yet but would be keen to do so. Do email me – harshil (at) foxymoron (dot) org if you find it suitable.
I would also recommend my friend Rupesh Mandal’s work on the United Nations STAND UP Take Action movement – http://fundubytes.blogspot.com/2008/10/stand-up-take-action-orkut-community.html
(he’s awesome – one of the best guys in this space and i can assure you that if we do work together i’ll be taking a lot of his inputs)
Also, looking at your business model its clear that you see a global opportunity.
The above mentioned words relate to Indian brands largely speaking. To capitalize on this global opportunity, i think this association of sorts can be a place to showcase work – maybe even a gateway to social media consultants in India where potential clients can pick and choose who they want to connect with. I do believe that we can add a lot of value to global clients as well in terms of monitoring, content, analytics – in terms of a creative focussed social media strategy – i have my reservations because effectively its as good as creating a print campaign over and over again to meet brand needs. And you can’t create a good campaign if you don’t know the market, the culture, the problem you need to solve. If there’s a watertight way to work around that then its another gateway altogether.
Zapylacz gets listed in gauravonomics’s Six types of social media agencies in India.Thanks @gauravonomics. http://tinyurl.com/lpmjzp
RT @zapylacz. Zapylacz gets listed in Six types of social media agencies in India.Thanks @gauravonomics. http://tinyurl.com/lpmjzp
Hey Gaurav.. Thanks a lot picking up Ripplelinks in the list of independent social media agencies. We have got good response from a lot of prospects… and it seems social media marketing is gaining momentum in India as well.
Thanks Gaurav, for considering our company i.e Hanmermsl as one of PR agencies who carries out Social Media and Digital Communication practices in house. We will surely update you on our developments equally.. Thanks for referring us.
Bhanu
Thank You for this article. I just wanted to add to this conversation that even I cover this space. and wanted to tell your blog is extremely essential.
Hi Gaurav,
You have mentioned my company iSMO under #6 category. I would like to emphatically clarify that we are not an SEO company ‘also’ offering social media consultancy. We are a 100% social media agency with expertise in Social Media Space. In fact, we have no where mentioned on the website also that we provide SEO services. I hope you will correct that and put us under relevant category.
I just wanted our positioning to be correct on ‘social media’.
Many thanks in advance
Harsh
I absolutely agree with your view that the opportunity is huge and 1 big guy is better than 10 smaller ones. What sort of a collaboration model do you suggest?
Gaurav was just going through the article,noticed you havent spoken about any of the mainline agencies which have digital divisions & now doing social media for clients.(My current employer,Ogilvy One is a classic case)
Also, Drizzlin is a completely separate business entinty now with a more global reach.