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I was quoted today in Indian daily The Hindu in a story on how social media can be useful for small and medium IT businesses.

Social media is especially useful for IT SMEs as their customers, partners and employees are likely to be early adopters of social media tools. My recommendation is that IT SMEs should use social media first to listen to conversations in their industry, then to participate in those conversations and finaly to build thought leadership in their industry. Given the natures of most IT SMEs, even ten new business relationships established via social media can be critical.

Here is the full text of the story –

Small and medium IT firms reap benefits of online networking sites

Sruthi Krishnan

“There is a culture today that respects an online connection”

CHENNAI: While looking up the profile of a prospective client on LinkedIn, a business networking site, the salesperson of a small and medium IT firm found that he had a Twitter account. The salesperson followed the client on Twitter, an online messaging service, and messaged him about the company. On a working day, in 15 minutes, the salesperson got a response: “Get back in touch with me.”

I had the great pleasure of spending a week with Dave Evans, the best-selling author of “Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day”, as we traveled across the country to conduct three full-day social media marketing workshops in Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai.

The workshops were organized by my partner Sunil Agarwal’s public relations firm 20:20 Media. We had a full house at all the three workshops and it was the perfect setting to launch our new social media company 20:20 WebTech.

Sunil started off the workshops with an overview of what to expect and I briefly talked about my 4Cs social media framework. Then, Dave took over and gave a great conceptual and practical perspective on how to use social media technologies, in strategic and tactical ways, to achieve business objectives.

The workshops were attended by communications, public relations, advertising and marketing professionals, including some Chief Marketing Officers.

Several attendees live-tweeted the workshop and said good things about us –

- In Delhi: @aakriti, @_anshul, @naukri, @smrite, @srivastavanitin, @palinn, @arushsogani, @shrutigupta7, @vidhithakur

- In Bangalore: @jessie_paul, @hardrockk, @zeitgeisthuntin, @dhempe @meher_taj, @rahkulk, @ashw1n, @santoshmaharshi, @vidder911

- In Mumbai: @primaveron, @swatidwivedi, @mysti, @gitaagarwal, @krushant

(This guest post is written by Freddie Benjamin (Twitter).)

On May 20, 2009 Brave New Films (BNF) – the media firm behind Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price – stretched the limits of digital activism as it declared war on Starbucks. Its battle cry: “Twitter bombs away!”

Twitter turned into a battleground when media campaigns from BNF and Starbucks collided on the same day. Brave New Film’s newest project “Stop Starbucks” is aimed at raising awareness of Starbucks’ anti-union position and its murky past in dealing with union employees. It was a co-incidence that its YouTube launch coincided with Starbucks’ ad campaign asking people to take pictures of Starbucks posters in six major cities across the US and post them on Twitter. The very next day a post on Brave New Film’s blog urged people to take pictures of themselves in front of a Starbucks holding signs protesting Starbucks’ anti-union stance and to post them to twitter – and hence started an ‘anti-campaign’. The stand-out feature that turned this affair into a twitter-war was BNF urging people to use the same hashtags (#top3percent and #starbucks) that Starbucks had decided upon for its promotional campaign.

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 and Electrosocial.

My 20:20 WebTech partner Sunil Agarwal’s public relations firm 20:20 Media is organizing a series of full-day social media marketing workshops in Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai on June 22, 24 and 26 respectively.

The hands-on workshops are designed for communications, public relations, advertising and marketing professionals who want to use social media technologies, in strategic and tactical ways, to achieve their business objectives.

Here’s a brief outline of the sessions –

8:30-8:45 am - Outline
8:45-9:45 am -Understanding Social Media
9:45-10:45 am -Social Media Channels
10:45-11:00 am -BREAK
11:00-12:00 pm -Social Media Metrics
12:00-1:00 pm -LUNCH
1:15-1:30 pm -Course Review
1:30-2:00 pm -Social Media Monitoring
2:00-2:30 pm -Creating Your Framework
2:30-2:45 pm -BREAK
2:45-4:00 pm -Creating Your Framework (continued)
4:00-5:00 pm -Wrap-up and Review Session

The workshops will be conducted by Dave Evans, the best-selling author of “Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day”.

I have seen Dave’s training material and he does a really good job of putting together both the conceptual and practical aspects of social media marketing, from developing a strategy based on business objectives, to implementing the campaign, and measuring results.

Leading Indian blog community BlogAdda recently did an interview with me.

We talked about the use of social media technologies in the 2009 Indian elections, about our crowd-sourced election monitoring platform Vote Report India, about my approach to social media, and about my new social media analytics company 20:20 Web Tech.

In response to a question on how I promote my blog, I mentioned that the directionality needs to be the other way round. If positioned well, your blog should be able to promote you and your ideas.

I also said that the most gratifying aspect of blogging is being able to develop an idea in public over time. I first wrote about social media outsourcing more than one year back and now my series of posts on the subject has led to 20:20 Web Tech.

My advice to a new blogger? Use your blog to learn, share what you have learned and build a reputation. My blog, for instance, has led to a fellowship, a teaching gig, numerous speaking opportunities, a few book chapters, and now a company.

You can read my full BlogAdda interview here.

After the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) guidelines on social media ad metrics, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) has come out with a draft of its guidebook on measurement and metrics for word of mouth marketing (PDF).

The guidebook seeks to “offer a broad overview of the types of metrics available, key considerations for their use, and specific examples of their application.” WOMMA also cautions that “the guidebook is not intended to offer industry standards or a definitive statement on the one right way to measure word of mouth”.

The first draft of the guidebook looks at seven different types of metrics –

- Advocacy: Measures the intent and/ or behavior of making recommendations using approaches offline surveys or online network and content analysis.

- Conversation Share: Measures the volume and share of conversation using ongoing online buzz monitoring and offline syndicated research, and campaign specific custom research.

- Cost Per Conversion: Measures the cost of getting one person (prospect) to perform the desired action (purchase), after factoring in conversion value, conversion attribution and incremental conversions.

- Conversational Reach: Measures the cumulative penetration of a brand message within a given target audience through conversations, by using a multi-generational approach.

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 20:20 Approach to Social Media Analytics is based on nuanced understanding of the multi-layered nature of social media.

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 also believe that social media analytics is at the core of all the five steps of a social media program: planning, listening, understanding, engaging and monitoring.

Step 1: Plan

- Start with shared understanding on strategic objectives.
- Identify metrics for each level in 4Cs Framework: Content, Collaboration, Community and Collective Intelligence.
- Select web analytics, network analysis and content analysis tools to measure identified metrics.

Step 2: Listen

- Set up keywords list and use tool(s) to crawl data.
- Use network analysis to identify relevant segments.
- Use machine content analysis to auto-tag data and identify related content clusters.
- Use human content analysis to deal with duplication, spam, slang, sarcasm and sentiment.

Step 3: Understand

Stephen Baker at BusinessWeek has a great cover story on how social networking companies and marketers are using network and influence analysis to map social media consumer behavior and target ads to cluster of friends who share similar interests.

While research has shown that friends tend to behave similarly online, it has also raised lots of questions about the nature of online friendships. Most researchers now agree that all friendships networks aren’t the same.

Microsoft Research sociologist dana boyd explains the difference between personal, behavioral and articulated networks –

Facebook researcher Cameron Marlow differentiates between maintained relationships, one-way communications and two-way communications.

Duncan Watts from Yahoo! Research studies the structure and evolution of social networks, the origins and consequences of social influence, and the nature of distributed social search.

Apart from citing cutting edge network analysis research at Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo!, the article also features the work of network analysis firms such as 33Across and Rapleaf.

33Across’s SocialDNA platform maps the social characteristics of tens of millions of people to enable its clients to target users who are most likely to respond to their marketing campaigns.