Tagged: Brands RSS

  • Gaurav Mishra 8:43 am on December 3, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Brands, , , , , Michael Jackson, , , Sysomos   

    New Research on Facebook Pages: Top Three Insights for Brands 

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    Michael_Jackson_Most_Popular_Facebook_Page

    Sysomos, the company behind social media analytics products Heartbeat and Map, is quickly becoming my favorite source of research on how we use social platforms.

    Sysomos had put together an excellent report on Twitter users in June 2009. Now, Sysomos has followed up with an equally useful report on Facebook pages: Inside Facebook Pages.

    Sysomos analyzed nearly 600,000 Facebook Pages to investigate usage patterns related to popularity, amount of content posted, number of fans, and categories. Here are the most interesting findings and the insights they translate into for brands:

    Finding 1: The average Facebook page has 4,596 fans while the median page has 218 fans. 4% of pages have more than 10,000 fans, 0.76% of pages have more than 100,000 fans, and 0.05% of pages (or 297 in total) have more than a million fans.

    Insight 1: These numbers can serve as a good starting point for setting targets for branded Facebook pages: a big brand should aim for between 10,000 to 100,000 fans, but is unlikely to attract a million fans.

    Finding 2: Pages with more than one million fans have nearly three times as much owner-generated content as the average Facebook page (70 against 27), but nearly 60 times as much fan-generated content (587 against 10). The frequency of administrator wall posts remains constant as the number of fans increases (about twice a month).

    Insight 2: Facebook fan pages reach a tipping point (at about 5000 fans) after which the fans start creating more content than the page owner. Brands should try to reach this tipping point earlier by actively encouraging fans to create content through contests and giveaways.

    Finding 3: Amongst Facebook pages with more than one million fans, the most popular pages are for musicians/bands (16.7%), celebrities (16.0%), products (11.9%), television shows (8.5%), and films (3.4%). Michael Jackson is the most popular page on Facebook, with 10 million fans.

    Insight 3: Entertainment and pop culture driven Facebook pages have the highest number of fans. Brands should encourage their celebrity brand ambassadors to create and promote their own Facebook pages and use them to cross-promote the brand.

    For more details, see the excellent Inside Facebook Pages report from Sysomos.

    Cross-posted at 2020 Social: Because Business is Social.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 12:08 am on September 18, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Brands, , , ,   

    Live Mint Story on Indian Brands Embracing Social Media 

    I was quoted recently in a Live Mint story on Indian brands embracing social media. I talked about how the social web is more than just another media channel for pushing advertising messages.

    Last week, Dave and I had written a position paper on the 20:20 Social Approach to Social Business Strategy and talked about how we need to break away from the “media” and “marketing” terminology associated with social technologies and leverage them to collaboratively design a talk-worthy Experience Ecosystem.

    Here is the full text of the story –

    Firms logging into networking sites to connect with customers
    Poornima Mohandas
    Bangalore: Diwakar Kaushik, 25, is an active tweeter, putting out short messages on everything from the weather in Gurgaon, where he resides, to cricket on the microblogging site Twitter.

    Last Thursday, the management student tweeted, “Trying to decide between a Lenovo or an Acer laptop.”

    Soon, and much to his surprise, he had a reply from the Chinese computer maker’s India arm, Lenovo India Pvt. Ltd. “I only expected some users to respond,” he said.

    Lenovo got in touch with Kaushik, asked him for his specifications, gave him suggestions on various computer models and a list of authorized dealers from whom he could purchase the laptop. “Lenovo helped with the (purchase) decision,” said Kaushik who bought a Lenovo G450 laptop two days after the company reached out to him.

    Lenovo India went on social media’s newest and least understood avatar, Twitter, in end-July.

    Members on the networking site communicate through messages shorter than 140 characters—a concept that has become a rage globally and continues to grow as users find new applications for it.

    “Our expectation was only to listen to customers,” said K. Ramakrishnan, country manager, marketing, at Lenovo India.

    In less than two months, the company has generated enquiries and translated some of them into sales, for both individuals and bulk buyers.

    Several Indian companies are advertising and closely tracking themselves on social media on the Internet—all the content generated on a gamut of blogs, online video and photo sharing sites, social networking sites and even on the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia. Few have been effective.

    Unlike Lenovo, whose social media strategy is to listen to potential customers, many companies treat the Internet as yet another channel to plug their products. Often, they launch television or print advertising campaigns and blare them via YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

    “They have failure written all over,” says Gaurav Mishra, chief executive of Delhi-based social media research and strategy company Twenty Twenty WebTech Pvt. Ltd. “There’s no conversation. It’s an advertising campaign.”

    Mishra thinks such approaches fail because social media users are not looking for advertising and see through the sloganeering.

    “Social media is not a one-way traffic,” said Shashank Srivastava, chief general manager, marketing, at Maruti Suzuki India Ltd.

    India’s largest car maker was one of the early adopters of social media two years back, riding blogs, YouTube and Flickr, but is still evolving its strategy to start having conversations rather than just send advertising messages.

    “I’m not satisfied at all,” says Srivastava. He thinks Indian companies on social media are far behind global peers such as Virgin Group LtdVirgin Radio or German car maker Audi AG.

    Driving an engaging conversation is far from easy.

    The Indian arm of microchip maker Freescale Semiconductor Inc. went on Twitter last month to promote its technology forum held earlier in September in Bangalore. Now that the event is over, “We are figuring out how to keep the conversation alive,” said a spokeswoman for Freescale, who cannot be named because of the company’s policy.

    “Presence on social media has become a hygiene factor,” said Unny Radhakrishnan, national director digital at Maxus, a media agency of British advertising and media firm WPP Plc.

    He sees more brands embracing social media than there were 6-12 months back. “Everyone wants to see what to do with this animal.”

    And those that are already there are changing tack.

    Fastrack, a brand of watches and sunglasses from Titan Industries Ltd, started communities on Facebook and Twitter in October 2007. Managing those communities was ousourced till April but the brand decided to bring the job in-house so it could respond in real time, improve efficiency and reduce cost.

    “If somebody writes: my watch stopped working in two days. You need to be real time,” said Anshul Nanda, assistant brand manager, Fastrack.

    Travel portal Cleartrip sees great value in dealing with customer requests and complaints over social media.

    “Servicing a customer over social media is cheaper than over phone,” said Hrush Bhatt, founder and director (product and strategy), Cleartrip.

    And surely instantaneous, customer-oriented tweeting does make a difference to brand perception.

    “From the kind of replies I got I can tell it is not a robot,” said Kaushik who bought the Lenovo laptop. “They were human replies. That gives me faith in the company.”

     

    • barbara70976 1:28 am on October 24, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      Thanks for the Information…..I agree with the above thought.Nice conversation is going on and I am very happy to post here.
      barbara
      Social Media Advertising

  • Gaurav Mishra 5:38 pm on July 13, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Brands, , Consumer Complaints, , ,   

    CNN-IBN Story on Consumers Using Social Media for Complaining About Brands 

    20:20 WebTech was recently featured in a CNN-IBN story on consumers using social media for complaining about brands.

    My view is that consumers will increasingly use social media platforms like blogs, forums, consumer review websites, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook to complain about brands. Brands need to monitor these conversations and respond to complaints, to resolve them before they spread out of control.

    However, brands also need to use both positive and negative social media conversations as an input into their product and process design, and make changes wherever necessary. That, in my opinion, is the true value in listening to social media conversations.

    Here is the video of the CNN-IBN story. Between 1:15 and 1:30, along with the voiceover about  “social media specialists”, there’s a screenshot of the 20:20 WebTech website –

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 12:00 pm on May 27, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , Brands, , , , Indian Social Media Survey 2009, , , , , , , , Tribalization of Business Study 2009   

    Comparing the Results of Two Surveys of Social Media Usage Amongst Indian and International Brands 

    I have spent the morning comparing the results of two surveys of social media usage amongst Indian and international brands and some of the findings are fascinating.

    The Deloitte/ SNCR/ Beeline Labs Tribalization of Business Study 2009 is based on responses from 430 international companies who have experimented with online communities.

    The Exchange4Media/ Blogworks Indian Social Media Survey 2009 is based on responses from 267 Indian marketers, who may or may not have run social media programs.

    Here are the highlights from the Tribalization of Business Study 2009 –

    - The top five business objectives for online communities are: amplify word of mouth, increase customer loyalty, increase brand awareness, get market insight, generate new ideas, and improve customer support.

    - The top five business measures to for online communities are: greater awareness, word of mouth, improved brand perception, buzz in mainstream media and blogosphere, and increased sales.

    - The top five web analytics measures to for online communities are: number of active users, number of visitors, frequency of posts/ comments, number of registered users and number of repeat visitors.

    - The top five reasons for the failure of online communities are: getting people to participate, attracting people to community, getting people to come back, finding time to manage the community, and getting people to populate their profiles.

    - The top five reasons for the success of online communities are: ability of members to connect with like-minded people, ability of members to help others, choice of hot topic for the community, facilitation by moderators, ability of members to develop reputation.

    - Most communities are managed by marketing, less than one year old, and still in pilot mode.

    - Most communities are managed by internal employees and one third of the communities don’t yet have full time employees.

    Here are the highlights from the Indian Social Media Survey 2009 –

    - The five top stakeholders being addressed using social media are: customers, media, employees, influencers, and analysts.

    - The top five deliverables from social media are: word of mouth, insights, engagement, design inputs, and sales.

    - The top five metrics to evaluate social media programs are: increase in brand awareness, volume of user generated content, number of touch points with consumers, increase in website traffic, and positive comments and reviews.

    - Most social media programs are still handled in-house, and marketers’ trust in own and advertising/ public relations agencies’ understanding of social media is low.

    - Perceived importance of, engagement in and spends on social media programs are expected to rise.

    You can now download the full Indian Social Media Survey 2009 report.

    Here are some observations on the results of the two surveys –

    - On the aggregate, Indian and international marketers have similar objectives for social media programs and measure them using similar metrics.

    - There’s a disconnect between the business objectives, business measures and web analytics measures for social media programs. For instance, generating new ideas and market insights is one of the most important stated business objective but isn’t measured at all.

    - In both India, and internationally, social media programs still tend to be ad hoc and tactical and there is still need for educating both marketers and agencies on how to design, run and measure social media programs.

    At 20:20 Web Tech, we recognize that social media programs can operate at any of the four levels of Content, Collaboration, Community and Collective Intelligence, and each layer has a corresponding set of metrics, which need to be measured using a mix of onsite/ offsite web analytics, network/ influence analysis and semantic/ content analysis. We believe that social media program need to be planned, designed, run and monitored using this holistic understanding of the multi-layered nature of social media.

    To start a conversation on how we can help you plan, design and measure your social media programs, write to us at gaurav AT 2020webtech DOT com.

    Cross-posted on the 20:20 Social Media Analytics Blog.

     

    • Manpreet Kaur 6:01 pm on June 3, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      Hi Gaurav,

      Thanks for sharing the survey with your readers. This being the first attempt of it’s kind for India, sought to outline a baseline for the social media industry and marketers at large to work with.

      Look forward to the feedback. It will help us ensure even more rigorous a study in it’s next edition.

      Cheers,

      Manpreet

  • Gaurav Mishra 3:16 pm on September 28, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Brands, , , Sarah Marchetti, State of the Blogosphere 2008,   

    Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2008: Nine in Ten Bloggers Blog About the Brands They Love (or Hate) 

    Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2008 report has some interesting data on the who, why and how of blogging. The analysis is based on a survey of 1290 bloggers from 66 countries, apart from their own index.

    However, it was the data on brands in the blogosphere that I found most interesting.

    Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2008: Blogging About Brands

    The big revelation for me was that more than nine in ten bloggers blog about the brands that they love (or hate). I don’t remember seeing a similar statistic before (and I’ll be grateful if you share a link to a similar study with me) but this means that blogging about brands is more ubiquitous than most brand managers realize. Bloggers also write about a wide range of topics related to brands — from brand or product reviews to news or gossip about brands and their experience with store or customer support employees. It would have been interesting to get a sense of how many of these posts are positive, negative or neutral and how blogging about brands varies across geographies.

    Brands are beginning to become aware of the increasing influence of bloggers and trying to engage with them. One in three bloggers has been approached to be a brand advocate and, of these, more than six in ten were offered payments of some kind. These numbers also seem very high to me.

    For more details, read the report or read a nice summary of the top five statistics from the report from the perspective of marketers compiled by Sarah Marchetti from Ovilgy PR.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 9:36 am on June 18, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Authenticity, , , , Brands, Chinese Blogosphere, Daily News and Analysis, , , , , , ,   

    My Interview With Indian Daily DNA on Blogging as a Change Agent 

    Quick Summary: I was quoted yesterday in Indian newspaper DNA in a story on whether blogging in India is mature enough to act as a change agent.

    - X – X – X -

    I was quoted copiously in Indian daily DNA in a story on whether blogging in India is mature enough to act as a change agent.

    A good approach to answer this question is to compare social media usage in India with social media usage in China –

    Social media usage in Metro India and Metro China is driven by very different consumer behavior. In Metro China, Creators, Critics and Joiners all play an important role, whereas in India, Joiners are the predominant drivers of social media usage.

    Social media usage in India and China also have significant differences in terms of the topics that drive conversation. Richard Edelman has written an interesting introduction to the Chinese blogosphere –

    Social media in China has two constant themes: the rich/poor divide and nationalism… The best Chinese bloggers are… incredibly impressive, committed to change, convinced that they were part of a new China where individual expression and frank speaking will win.

    This type of strong activism isn’t really visible at least in the more popular Indian blogs.

    In the interview, I also talked about how brands can use social media to build authentic relationships with customers and citizens and how individuals can use social media to build solid reputations as experts in a topic.

    Here’s the complete text of the story –

    Blogging Pains in Mumbai
    Surekha S
    Tuesday, June 17, 2008 20:34 IST

    In the US elections, blogs are seen as an effective medium to sway voters’ minds. But in Mumbai, the impact of desi blogs to bring about social change is minimal, say bloggers

    In a bid for the presidential seat, US senator, Barack Obama relies on a team of bloggers whose sole job is to quell any negative publicity during the course of the campaign. And the fact, that Internet-savvy Obama is successfully harnessing the power of the web is a point worth noting.

    Which makes one wonder whether the blogging medium in Mumbai, and the India, has that kind of power. Can it be used as effectively here for political campaigns, for promoting companies, products or to bring about a social change?

    “The Batti Band campaign, which saw the participation of a large number of Mumbaikars, was promoted primarily through blogs,” says Gaurav Mishra, who has been blogging for the last three years. However, he says, that while activism through blogs is very strong in China, it has still to pick up in India.

    As the head of sales and marketing for a national automobile company, Gaurav writes about how marketing is changing, how people are tired of being bombarded by commercial messages, and how marketing needs to adopt a more humane approach. “Though blogging as a trend is picking up, the blogging community is still very small. It is not big enough to bring about a change in the election results, but it surely can mobilise 3,000 to 5,000 people”, he says.

    With the increasing popularity of social networking sites like Orkut and Facebook, the next trend is blogging to bring about change. And this trend is seen not only among youngsters, but also among companies and marketing agencies, that have recognised the potential of a blog to reach out to a new generation of users.

    But we still have a long way to go. Ramya, a suburban resident who has been blogging for the last four years, says, “In India, Internet usage is low, and blogging is still a new concept. It surely will be ineffective in political campaigns as among the voters, only a small section have access to the web.”

    The bottom line is simple: Blogging as medium of change and a tool to spread awareness is picking up, but the impact is marginal. “Most people do not understand the scope of the medium. Also, there is the question of reliability and responsibility. There are many random blogs, and most of them deal with personal issues,” says Ramya.

    Nineteen-year-old Yashashri got hooked to blogging around two years ago thanks to her brother who was an avid blogger. “You can write about your experiences, you can use it to spread messages and most importantly, it helps connect with like-minded people across the globe,” she says. “It can also act as a platform to talk about socially relevant issues and get the participation and perspective of people miles away.”

    Most people in Mumbai blog at a personal level, and see it as a means to connect with other people. Nikita Banerjee, a journalist with the magazine Animation Reporter, sees blogging as a great medium to meet new people and make new friends. “Blogs are also a good place to showcase your work.”

    Even our celebrities have got into the act. “Though blogging is becoming increasingly popular, it still seems far fetched to think of a day when every second person will have a blog. In India we still do not feel the desperate need to be heard,” says Mishra.

    And more importantly, will the blogs have traction among surfers? “We need more blog readers, but more than that we need knowledgeable people to write. Authenticity is driven by the person writing the blog. It is not about how well you write, but how much you know about what you write,” says Mishra.

    And while it might take us a few more years to get there, we seem to be on the right track.

     

    • ashish 10:06 am on June 18, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      I’d rather ask – how many serious bloggers do we have in India?
      I see more aggregators than bloggers!

    • vivek khandelwal 4:50 pm on June 18, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Hmmm so we do have scope of a .com that can take this initiative of creating Intelluctual Maturity …on Expressing opinions..
      Thts a +1 for me ..
      Nways good to see the media catching up bloggers..And one day they Wud feel j.
      AMEN.

    • vivek khandelwal 4:59 pm on June 18, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      hey ..this seems to be interesting ..perhaps one day the media wud feel j..Btw nybody willing to Create Awareness has loads and loads of scope..

    • Gaurav Mishra 9:18 am on June 22, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      @Ashish: Yes, that’s a good question too, although if you look at the data , we aren’t Collectors either, we are Joiners.

      @Vivek: Mainstream media has been interested in bloggers for a while now. I get pinged for stories at least once a month. :-)

    • Reveda 3:24 am on November 24, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Well I think that there are lot of change agents in India in the space you talked about. People in India are beginning to express themselves in a big way. I am just a 21 day old kid and I have a blog- a blog that captures my original thoughts from my perspective. My dad is writing this for me and I am sure this blog will have a profound effect on my developmnt as a kid.

      Please give me your honest feedback and if possible follow me at

      http://reveda.blogspot.com/

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