Tuesday, 27 March 2012
Unit 11 - Social Media as Marketing Channel
Structure
11.1 IntroductionObjectives
11.2 Evolution of online marketing
- Web indexing and the birth of search
- Google Ad Words and Search engine marketing
- Social media Vs. Traditional media
- Unique characteristics of social media
- Social media taxonomy
11.5 Integrating social media into marketing
11.6 Pros and cons of social media marketing
11.7 Summary
11.8 Glossary
11.9 Terminal Questions
11.10 Answers
11.11 Case Study
11.1 Introduction
In the previous unit we studied in detail about the birth and evolution of social gaming along with strategies and theories. Apart from gaming, social media can also be utilised as a marketing channel. In this unit, we will discuss in detail about online marketing, power of social media and how consumers are adapting to it faster than ever. We will then analyse the effectiveness of social media as a marketing channel and how businesses can leverage it for various purposes. Towards the end of this unit, you will be able to explain how social media helps businesses to reduce their marketing budget.
The digital society is empowering today’s consumer to think, act and shop wisely. Consumers have the freedom to express their views through digital medium and these views are available for everyone to read and discuss through social networks. As we have seen in the previous units, social networks help people to come together, collaborate, form communities and express their individual identity.
When consumers are very satisfied with a product, they tell about this to their personal network of friends. When there is a need and when the product is tempting enough, few of them in their network, end up buying it. This way, the product sale goes up purely by reference. Similarly, when the consumer is not satisfied with the product, the network of friends are alerted through the social networks. So, the sales go down. This is one example of how social media can make or break a business.
In 2010, Greenpeace – a non-governmental environmental organisation protested against Nestle, which is one of the leading health, nutrition and wellness company in the world. The protest was against Nestlé’s ’unsustainable palm oil policy’ and the company was accused for being the driving force behind the cutting down of rain forests. Reacting to this campaign, many angry Facebook followers started to post furious comments on the Nestle Facebook fan page. Nestle reacted to this campaign by deleting many fans and posted defensive comments, which fuelled the anger of its followers even more.
The problem with Nestle at that point of time was that they were not aware of social media crisis management. The campaign initiated by Greenpeace started a crisis amongst the Facebook community. Without having community managers who are trained to tackle such situations, Nestle suffered major loss of its 90,000 plus loyal fans in Facebook.Complete case study with detailed analysis and screenshots of Nestlé’s reactions can be found in this article: http://www.social-brand-value.com/2010/03/25/nestles-social-media-disaster/ (Retrieved on 12/10/2011)
Social media management and marketing activities by Dell during early half of 2000's (referred in Unit 5) and the example of Nestle during the latter half of 2000 are great examples of how social media can make or break a business. Though both these companies learnt from their mistakes, it took months for them to rebuild their reputation in the social media space. Through these incidents, many in the business segment understood the power of social media channels.
Companies are also able to create separate communities, conduct campaigns, announce contests and give away deals and discounts through different communities. All these can be achieved at very minimal or no cost, provided the business knows how to do it in proper way.
Objectives
After studying this unit, you should be able to:- describe the online marketing and its evolution
- explain the emergence of social media and its vital elements
- explain the ways in which social media can be integrated into marketing
- recognise the effectiveness of social media as a marketing channel along with its pros and cons
11.2 Evolution of Online Marketing
During the mid ‘90s, the Internet era begun. With a basic browser and a web connection via ISP (Internet Service Provider), a user could spend a lot of time in surfing the Internet and sending email messages. Over a short period of time, new online services, websites, applications etc., popped up rapidly and a large number of consumers especially in the developed nations started using the World Wide Web.
Quickly recognising the fast growth of Internet, initial experiments were made to market or sell products online. Banner advertisements, which were the first of this kind started showing up in many websites. These banner advertisements were long, rectangular in shape and contained a picture or graphic and text, asking the user to click it. Clicking it led to another website, containing related products, services or information. These banner advertisements were sold based on number of impression views or number of clicks.
In the latter half of the ‘90s, millions of people started coming online. The possibilities were growing and tons of opportunities were explored. Many experts were guiding businesses about advertising online and improving revenues. Feasible business models were worked out and online business opportunities led to a unique level of entrepreneurial activities. Every website devoted a particular amount of space for advertisements. This was one of the best ways to propagate information about a business or service available online.
Advertising also helped users to locate a business that had an online presence, visit the site and get to know about the product or services offered. For more than 3 years, banner advertising was the best online marketing opportunity for business to connect with their users. Many websites started becoming portals, providing a vast space for advertisements. These portals contained loads of information and were able to get good revenues through posting advertisements in their pages.
11.2.1 Web Indexing and Birth of Search
The number of websites were growing at a very fast pace and consumers were finding it difficult to find what they exactly wanted. To overcome this problem, Yahoo! indexed sites based on subject, added a basic search function that helped consumers to find what they needed. Web indexing is a process of segregating the websites based on the subject. Certain other companies depended on scanning the complete Web and locating specific things. This led to the evolution of popular search engines, which scan the Web completely and provide relevant information from the Web. Popular search engines were Magellan, AltaVista, AskJeeves, Lycos, and Inktomi etc. Few search engines helped consumers to get combined results of the above mentioned search engines. Instead of looking into individual websites, users started utilising search engines to find out the relevant information on the Web.
The complete Web with the sites was like a big telephone directory. People wanted an automated search engine which would find information very specific to their needs. The available search engines were gathering information for the consumers, but the relevancy was less accurate. Consumers again had to spend time in locating the exact information they wanted. Google, towards the end of ‘90’s addressed this problem in a very effective manner. The search results were very accurate, highly relevant and above all, it was fast. Regardless of the search term used, the results were consistent and relevant. These unique qualities made Google revolutionary and adaptation was very fast. People found it extremely convenient to search what they wanted and recommended this search engine to their peers.
11.2.2 Google Ad Words and Search Engine Marketing
Shortly after 2000, Google emerged as the most accurate and efficient search engine. It was far superior to its rivals and gained a considerable market share. By this time, advertisers were tired of spending a lot of money in traditional banners and lot of consumers were ignoring these advertisements. Realising this, Google abandoned the banner advertisements and launched a new type of advertising called as click-through-advertising. The click through advertising helps advertisers to put up text related to their product in the search pages. When consumers search for a product, these text advertisements appear in that page, only when the product is related to the term that the consumer searched for.
For example, Company X sells flowers and bouquets and delivers it to the customer’s doorstep on request. Company X opts for text advertisements in Google. When a consumer searches for a bouquet shop, Company X’s text advertisement appears on the right side, along with the results, which appear in the middle. This is how Google Advertising works. Google named it as Google Ad Words. The advertiser would enter text for a relevant advertisement as per the style guidelines and character limitations specified by Google. The advertiser would then add the search terms that would initiate these advertisements to appear in the results page. The advertiser would also be requested to bid for the keywords, which would be more relevant to the product or service and get most clicks. The highest bidder would get their advertisement displayed in the page, where the search results are relevant to the product or service. The advertiser would also need to set up a daily budget. An automated system would then serve advertisements based on total bid and the amount remaining in the budget for each bidder.
The advantages of search advertising as discussed are manifold such as:
- Guaranteed traffic
- Most effective reach
- Very nominal cost as compared to traditional banner advertisements
Self Assessment Questions
11.3 Emergence of Social Media
As with any auction model, prices were increasing at a significant rate year over year as more people jumped in. Large corporations, advertisement agencies and other entrepreneurs realised this ’new’ opportunity and wanted to extract the maximum benefit. This trend continued to increase for years as Google maintained and grew its search share. From 2003 to 2008, Google was the one place to go and tap into large number of internet users.
As Google continues its ‘search’ dominance, number of social networks were emerging and reaching out to mainstream consumer audiences. There was nothing special about these social networks. Online communities were part of the Internet evolution, dating back to well before the World Wide Web. Post 2003 people became very comfortable interacting with one another through the Internet. In addition to that, people wanted to share their personal information with their peers and close friends. Social networks, in one way became a personal broadcasting medium, which reached the complete network of friends and relatives.
The term ’Social Media’ describes the conversation and interaction that happens between different people online. The interaction could be in the form of plain text, images, audio and video.
Thus, social media is exclusively for social interaction through highly scalable and easy to use publishing techniques. Social networks these days have democratised knowledge and information and it has also successfully transformed consumers into presumes (producers and consumers).
The world has recently moved to Web 2.0 where a website is not only about providing information but it also interacts with users in specific ways. Unlike traditional media like the television or newspaper, now-a-days, websites offer lot of interactivity to the users so that they can participate, share their knowledge and also provide interesting insights.
Market refers to social media as online community which nurtures and encourages User-Generated Content (UGC) or Consumer-Generated Media (CGM). Sharing content gains lot of attention for the user for which this age is termed as the ‘Attention Age’. When businesses do this, its products and services gain lot of exposure amongst the target audiences as well as others. This is one of the major reasons why many small and medium businesses are accommodating social media to gain maximum exposure with minimum efforts. With the rapid growth of social networking sites, businesses are now able to get maximum effective reach all across the world. In addition, social networks have now evolved in multiple countries and languages enabling businesses to reach out to their customers in their local languages.
Social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are commonly used for socialisation and connecting with their friends and peers.
Social media can be said to have three components:
- Concept (art, information or meme).
- Media (physical, electronic or verbal).
- Social interface (intimate direct, community engagement, social viral, electronic broadcast or syndication, or other physical media such as print).
Common forms of social media are as follows:
- Concepts, slogans and statements with a high memory retention quotient that excites others to repeat
- Grass-root direct action information distribution such as public speaking, installations, performance and demonstrations
- Electronic media with sharing, syndication or search algorithm technologies (includes internet and mobile devices)
- Print media, designed to be re-distributed
11.3.1 Social Media Vs. Traditional Media
People gain information, education, news, etc. from electronic media and print media. Social media is distinct from industrial or traditional media, such as newspapers, television and film. The capability to reach small as well as large audiences is one characteristic shared by both social media and industrial media. For example, a blog post or a television show may reach zero people or millions of people. The following are few properties that describe the differences between social media and industrial media.
- Reach - Both industrial and social media technologies enable anyone to reach the required audience globally.
- Accessibility – A government or a private house owns the industrial media whereas social media tools are available to anyone free of cost.
- Usability – Unlike industrial media production, social media does not need any specialised skills or trainings. Anyone can broadcast their thoughts through social media.
- Regency - Industrial media might take days, weeks or even months to publish a particular piece of information while social media publishing is almost instantaneous (only the participants determine any delay in response). As industrial media is currently adopting social media tools, this feature may well not be distinctive anymore in the future.
- Permanence - Once created, traditional media cannot be altered (once a magazine article is printed and distributed changes cannot be made to that same article) but social media can be altered instantaneously through editing or comments.
11.3.2 Unique Characteristics of Social Media
Unlike traditional media, social media contains certain unique characteristics which are shown below.
- Participation
Social media encourages contributions and feedback from everyone who is interested. It blurs the line between media and audience. Users can contribute to the articles and also write their own content based on their interest.
- Openness
Most social media services are open to feedback and participation. They encourage voting, comments and the sharing of information. There are rarely any barriers to accessing and making use of content.
- Conversation
Traditional media is typically a one-way communication and it is broadcast to a wide audience. On the other hand, social media is a two-way conversation. Users can interact with the author of the content directly through responses. Discussions keep happening about each and every article that is published. Thus, conversation is more in social media.
- Community
Social media allows communities to form quickly and communicate effectively. Communities share common interests, such as photography, cooking, biking etc.
- Connectedness
Most kinds of social media thrive on their connectedness, making use of the links to other sites, resources and people. With the rapid penetration of smartphones, social media can be accessed from anywhere at any convenient time.
11.3.3 Social Media Taxonomy
Based on the purpose it serves for, the taxonomy of social media network can be given as follows:
- Communication
- Collaboration
- Multimedia sharing
- Reviews and opinions
- Entertainment
- Brand monitoring
For Communication
This classification of social media sites allows the users to communicate their thoughts, views and opinions about something or someone. The following are the examples.
- Blogs – Perhaps the best known form of social media, Blogs are online journals with entries appearing in a particular order based on the requirement of the blog owner. Examples for blog sites include LiveJournal, Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad, Vox etc.
- Micro-blogging - Social networking combined with bite-sized blogging, where small amount of content (‘updates’) are distributed online and through mobile phone network. Twitter is the clear leader in this field. Other micro-blogging sites include Tumblr, Qaiko etc.
- Social Networking - These sites allow people to build personal web pages and then connect with friends to share content and communication. The biggest social networks are Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, Orkut, hi5, etc.
- Events – These are collaborative sites, which update the user constantly about different calendar events of a person or an organisation on a regular basis. Examples are Meetup, Friendfeed, Upcoming, Eventful etc.
For Collaboration
Collaboration of news links to useful sites and references to relevant articles are shared here. This classification basically covers the collective knowledge the Web possesses through inputs from various users across the globe.
- Wikis – These websites allow people to add content or edit the information in them, acting as a communal document or database. The best-known wiki is wikipedia4, the online encyclopaedia that has over 2 million English language articles. Other wikis are PBWorks, Wetpaint etc.
- Social Bookmarking – These sites help users to bookmark useful website links where information is available. Many sites are bookmarked for the purpose of future reference as well as for the use of others. Technically, this process is called social tagging. Examples of social bookmarking sites include Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Google Reader, CiteULike etc.
- Social News - Sites which store information about something or someone, taken from some other website is social news. This could be information about some technical product with a link to the original site or comments from a national leader about a national event, published in his official site or blog. Examples of social news sites are Digg, Mixx, Reddit, NowPublic etc.
For Multimedia Sharing
These sites allow users to share their multimedia content like photos, videos, presentations, reports, music and audio. The key examples are as follows:
- Photography and art sharing - deviantArt, Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, SmugMug, Zooomr etc.
- Video sharing - YouTube, Viddler, Vimeo, sevenload, Zideo etc.
- Livecasting - Ustream.tv, Justin.tv, Stickam, Skype, OpenCU etc.
- Music and audio sharing - MySpace Music, The Hype Machine, Last.fm, ccMixter, ShareTheMusic etc.
- Presentation sharing - Slideshare, Scribd etc.
For Reviews and Opinions
These sites are those which primarily aim to provide reviews and ratings about products – either from the users or from experts or both.
- Product reviews - Epinions.com, MouthShut.com etc.
- Business reviews - Customer Lobby, Yelp.com etc.
- Community Q&A - Yahoo! Answers, WikiAnswers, Askville, Google Answers etc.
Entertainment related
These sites are used for entertainment related purposes like games, sharing videos and trailers. The aim is to entertain the audience.
- Media and entertainment platforms - Cisco Eos, IMDB etc.
- Virtual worlds - Second Life, The Sims Online, Forterra etc.
- Game sharing - Miniclip, Kongregate, Zapak etc.
Brand monitoring
These are sites that help to monitor conversations about a particular brand that is happening across the web. It serves as a community mirror that reflects the opinion of the people.
- Social media monitoring – Attensity, Attensity360, Sysomos Heartbeat, Webtrends etc.
- Social media analytics - Sysomos MAP etc.
Self Assessment Questions
11.4 Elements of Social Media
Having learnt about the unique characteristics of social media, it is very essential to analyse some of the key elements, which play an important role to create a buzz about a brand or a business. These elements are mentioned below.
- Content base
- Right audience
- Stickiness
- Activities
The four elements are key to success of any social media campaign, in the same order. Let us discuss about these elements.
Content base
There is a popular saying about online marketing - ’Content is King’.
Content base can be defined as collation of many articles and other informational material related to a particular domain of expertise. A company like Canon has a wide range of products and they serve their customers with useful content related to their product usage, warranty, sales and service. In the same manner, telecom giant Airtel posts many articles on its Facebook and Twitter page. This content could be anything related to product offerings, interesting facts and figures, contests, industry trends etc. This ensures that the brand engages effectively with its customers. For example, figure 11.1 is a screenshot from the fan page of ’Harvard Business Review’. It shows how a group continuously shares content.
In the fan page, the content mainly comes from the Harvard business press blog. So, a solid content base forms the backbone for engagement in social networking sites.
Right Audience
The second important element is the right audience. Without audience any effort will be ineffective. The fan page in Facebook as well the followers in Twitter should be the right target audience. If the brand succeeds in getting the right target audience, then the engagement initiatives will be fruitful, as the fans too are interested in these activities. If the group or community contains random members, then the probability of the success of engagement activities are minimal.
Companies and the agencies which are involved in online and social media marketing activities should first discuss and decide the demographics, characteristic traits and interests of their target audience. These can be different for individual products of the same company. In such a scenario, it is good to have individual fan pages or groups for different products.
Stickiness
Stickiness refers to the tendency of the users or customers to be stuck to a particular website or fan page. Following are classic examples of stickiness:
- A 16-year-old teenager keeps visiting a game site to play free online games.
- An old woman checking for new recipes from users in a cookery blog.
- A young couple participating in a contest to grab goodies from a retail chain’s online community.
- An adult job seeker visiting a job related blog for tips and advice regarding resumes, job updates etc.
The given examples clearly indicate that every user visits a particular fan page or community page or blog to get some kind of information relevant to them. They feel that, the content is useful for them. They are interested in new content / offers / contests in the respective fan page or community page or blog and this interest level is what is termed as stickiness to that particular community or blog. Sometimes, it happens such that, a user comes to a particular blog to read a specific article but keeps reading all related articles as well. It simply means that, the user likes most of the content in the blog and hence sticks to the blog for long time.
Figure 11.2 is a screenshot from a website, which tries to make the reader stick to its page by providing a recommendation of related articles.
Activities
The last element is the list of activities carried out in a group or digital community. Activities include contests, games, applications, surveys etc. The screenshot given in figure 11.3 serves as an example for some activities that are being carried out in a fan page called ’Learn Social Media’ in Facebook.
The reason behind performing activities is simple. To initiate a conversation or to encourage the customers to participate, it is necessary to ask them to do something. A question is posted for them to respond, a contest is announced for them to participate or a video is shared for them to view and comment. These are all ways to engage the customers.
More the engagement, more the word-of-mouth spreads about the product or brand. More people talking about the brand or product increases the exposure level which in turn boosts sales. Hence, activities indirectly impact the sales.
Certain brands or groups involve in certain activities in the community for building their reputation. They are not interested in sale of any product, but they aim only at improving their reputation. Similarly, activities can be aimed at getting feedback from customers about their products or for getting ideas from them and co-create products.
Thus, the elements of social media can be helpful to create sufficient exposure to a brand or a product in the social web.
Self Assessment Questions
11.5 Integrating Social Media into Marketing
During the past two years, marketers around the world have found ways to reach out to their customers directly through social networking sites. And so, the concept of social media marketing emerged.
Social media marketing utilises social networking sites to promote a product or a business. It also helps bring massive amounts of traffic to the site. Integrating social media into marketing helps companies improve their product sales through active engagement with the customers. Companies are now aligning their social media marketing activities with their offline marketing campaigns and are including their integrated marketing communication plans. Through such integrated communications plans, companies are able to coordinate the right promotional mix of advertising, personal selling, publicity, public relations, sales promotions etc.
Companies depended on agencies and market research firms for traditional marketing methods like print, television etc. These agencies helped companies to decide on the marketing strategy, plan, content, frequency, timing and media vehicles. However, when it comes to social media marketing, companies are able to utilise their employees to engage with their customers and spread the positive message.
Agencies are still available but for training and educating the employees on how to engage with their customers through various social media channels and build a good relation with them. The efforts are centred on sharing content through the company related pages and conversations are triggered through the content. Needless to say, active customers will definitely spread the content across to their friends and family through sharing it on the channels. Since the users themselves share the message, the credibility of the message goes up and other users also willingly consume the content.
According to reports by Telephone Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), approximately 10 percent of the population inIndiahas access to Internet. Internet and broadband connections have become cheaper and people from different parts of the country are able to access Internet. In addition to broadband services, 3G has enabled mobile users to access social networking sites through their mobile handsets, from remote parts of the country. Due to this, companies are able to reach out to their customers who were inaccessible before.
Through active engagement with its customers, a company can understand more details about the product or service. Social media marketing also proves to be an effective way to build online reputation of any business by actively listening to their consumers and acknowledging them in public. The success factors include relevance, integrity and value proposition from the businesses.
As mentioned before, some of the most popular platforms that are used by consumers include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Myspace etc. We also discussed that, all marketing efforts are centred on the content that gets posted in the company page.
A strong presence in different social media channels apart from the popular ones help in content sharing with a wide variety of people. Companies should be specific to choose social networking sites and engage with its audience. This helps them to effectively monitor and manage these platforms and appropriately respond to their customer needs in these specific channels. Some of the metrics that most companies use to check the engagement levels of their customers through social networking sites area as follows:
- Likes, wall posts, and fan size on the Facebook page of an organisation
- Tweets and blog posts to announce new releases
- Rating and ranking videos, as performed by YouTube
- Music posts as performed on MySpace
These days, companies have started integrating social media marketing activities as part of their marketing campaigns. Social media marketing goals and execution is aligned with offline marketing activities. In a similar manner, companies are promoting social media channels through their offline campaigns. Small and medium businesses utilise this powerful medium as it helps to reduce marketing budgets. Thus, social media has been integrated in the marketing campaigns by small, medium and large businesses.
11.6 Pros and Cons of Social Media Marketing
Like every other marketing method, social media marketing also has its own pros and cons. Let us discuss in detail. .
Pros of social media marketing
- Through social media, the reach is very effective. Companies can reach out to their desired target audience effectively.
- If the company can tap in a large network of friends, then chances are that many other friends in that network also like the company. Thus, through word of mouth, the traffic to the blog or Facebook fan page increases effectively.
- Many new leads can be generated and their profile can be captured with most details. This happens largely because people share their personal information in a transparent manner.
- By encouraging feedback from your customers and prospects, the products and services can be fine tuned precisely to meet the customer demands.
- Once the brand becomes popular, traffic increases and hence the number of visitors. This helps the marketers to analyse the visitor profile and understand the target audience in a better manner. Analysing visitor profile also helps companies to come up with new products and services appealing to them.
- As discussed in previous sections, social media marketing proves to be cost effective when compared to other offline marketing activities.
- Through social graph, marketers can understand the customers and their relationships with other customers and cluster them based on various factors. This helps businesses to evaluate potential opportunities, to add to their portfolio.
Cons of social media marketing
- For customers to visit the company page and spend time, it is very essential to keep them engaged. Marketers should come up with innovative ways to engage with the customers.
- Content is the king. The quality of content that is being shared in the company pages of social networking sites play a vital role in establishing the brand. Content includes informative articles, images, ’how-to’ videos, industry trends etc.
- A dedicated team is required to constantly monitor the social media activities that happen throughout the day. Specialised tools should be available to monitor different activities and conversations that happen across the social web that is relevant to the company.
- Return on Investment (ROI) through social media is still a debated topic among marketing experts. It takes time and dedicated efforts to build reputation in social web. Only when the reputation is good, then the marketing efforts or engagement activities are fruitful in the future.
- Unlike other marketing activities, there may be times when marketers tend to lose control over the whole activity. As people or customers are the drivers of social media, sometimes the conversations tend to take a course no matter the efforts made by marketers. This is one classic example of the speed at which word of mouth spreads.
Self Assessment Questions
Before Summarizing, here is a video which tips on how to utilize social media for business.
11.7 Summary
Let us recapitulate the important concepts discussed in this unit.
- The evolution of the online marketing started with banners advertisements in the World Wide Web. Shortly after 2000, Google emerged as the most accurate and efficient search engine.
- Social media emerged as one of the best ever marketing channels for businesses. They got to interact with their customers directly. In addition, brands were able to know what the community felt and got feedback about their products and services.
- Social media has become the new ’tool’ for effective business marketing and sales. Popular networking sites including Myspace, Facebook and Twitter are social media, most commonly used for socialisation and connecting friends, relatives and employees.
- Companies have understood the power of social media and they have started using it for listening, engaging with customers and responding to the community as required. These days, companies have dedicated social media policies that are well defined and aligned to offline marketing activities.
- As like every other marketing channel, social media has its own pros and cons. It is very essential for companies to understand the power of the medium and leverage its advantages for the benefits of the organisation.
11.8 Case Study
Tata DOCOMO is one of the leading telecom brands in India
The challenge
Tata DOCOMO was the 9th entrant in the Indian telecom sector. The market was already clogged with schemes and plans of other telecom giants. Tata DOCOMO placed itself to be an innovative operator by doing the new.
The telecom giants had already flooded the traditional media with all their promotional material wherever possible. Trying to break the clutter, Tata DOCOMO took social media to reach the required target audience effectively.
Social media strategy
The social media strategy was in line with the offline marketing activities. A human touch was required to ensure that it appears friendly and conversational. The online strategy was to reach out to the Web completely and the right target audience as a good friend who tries to engage in one-on-one dialogues on anything and everything related to the brand. The brand was also open to innovative ideas and feedback from its users towards the telecom industry and to itself.
The Plan
In all the leading social networking sites, the brand ensured its presence through creating business accounts. Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, YouTube accounts were the primary channels among the many. There was also good work which went to integrate social media channel activities to the website.
According to the brand, Twitter had good level of maturity than other social networking sites and hence they improved the follower base gradually in Twitter. The products, offers and other schemes from Tata DOCOMO were first tweeted before getting updated to any other site. Teasers and prelaunch feelers were delivered to select followers based on their engagement activities. At present, Tata DOCOMO has more than 42,000 followers in Twitter alone.
Similar engagement activities happened in Facebook strictly on a one-on-one basis to ensure friendliness in conversations. The fan page helped the company to resolve their customer issues through effective escalations and timely resolutions. The brand kept on updating the status messages regularly including television commercials, jingles, service launches and fun activities. All these activities helped Tata DOCOMO to become a leading brand in Facebook and have more than 4 million fans.
The other channels of communication included YouTube, Orkut, third party blogs and forums etc. Out of these, YouTube has been a central repository for brand commercials and videos. The brand encouraged user generated content like videos, animations etc.
The key elements of Tata DOCOMO social media strategy are – friendly approach towards consumer engagement, effective feedback mechanism, co-creation, satisfied fan base, communication and collaboration.
The Result
Through effective strategy and execution, Tata DOCOMO was able to successfully build a loyal fan base. It also took lead as an innovator among the telecom players.
Also, the brand has secured the loyalty of its customers through friendly engagement with them and ensuring actionable items.
Discussion Questions:
1. Discuss how Tata DOCOMO planned its social media activities through different channels.
2. Analyse the key elements of social media strategy developed by Tata DOCOMO.
[Sources:
http://www.indiasocial.in/tata-docomo-a-child-of-the-social-web/
http://simplify360.com/blog/how-businesses-can-use-social-media-a-case-study-of-tata-docomo/ (Retrieved on 30th August, 2011) ]
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