Social Media: An Idea to Connect

LinkedIn mainly used for professional networking founded in December 2002 was launched in May 2003. As of June 2012, LinkedIn reported more than 175 million registered users in more than 200 countries and territories. Following this, we had coming of another social networking site called Facebook launched in February 2004, and reports over one billion active users, with more than half of them accessing it through their mobile devices as of September 2012. Another popular online social networking service and micro-blogging service that enabled its users to send and read text-based messages (140 characters), known as "tweets" is our Twitter. It was created in March 2006 and officially got launched in July 2006. With platforms like these having enormous customer touch points, can the brands afford to miss this train? The answer is No.

Social Media & Brand Building

In today’s competitive market where there are innumerable products available, it is important to ensure that your product stands distinct and attractive to its target audience, and the presentation plays an important role after features and benefits it offers to customers. Social media employs web- and mobile-based technologies to support interactive dialogue and introduce substantial and pervasive changes to communication between organizations, communities, and individuals. In the year 2012, social media became one of the most powerful sources for news updates through platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

Brand like Dell has always used the Web to connect directly with customers.  With the emergence of social media, since 2006 Dell has been connecting across the social web with customers wherever they are. This includes Blogs and forums, on Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and Facebook, as well as YouTube, besides their own blogs.  

With time, social media has been recognized for the way in which it has changed how public relations professionals conduct their jobs. It has provided an open arena where people are free to exchange ideas on companies, brands and products. Social media provides an environment where users and PR professionals can converse, promote their brand and improve their company's image, by responding to what the public is saying about their product. "We believe it is important to listen, learn, engage and act – constantly being connected with our customers. Dell uses Twitter to quickly share information with people interested in our products and services, gather real-time feedback, and build relationships with customers, partners and other influential people," adds Rekuram Varadharaj, Country Marketing Manager, Medium Business, Dell India. In India, Dell has a dedicated team, which is part of the Dell India Social Media Command Centre, who monitors and responds to Dell related Twitter posts daily. 

Sunil Kripalani  Senior VP - Global Sales & Marketing eScan	L.K.Gupta  Vice-President - Marketing  LG India	Sandeep Ramani  COO  Envent	Amit Nath  Country Manager - India & SAARC Trend Micro

Youth is a very important part of HP's target audience. In a research conducted by HP, they realized that the young generation is always online, even when on the move. They are typically keen on making well-informed decisions and dislike being in a blind spot. They like sharing their opinions and want brands to listen to them. They are an expressive lot and will not think before clicking the "Like" button. "This provides a great opportunity for brands to understand the needs and wants of the consumer and use these insights effectively while designing and positioning products. We, at HP, hence see social media as a strategic brand building tool and an intrinsic part of all our marketing plans. We have been using this platform effectively to engage with our consumers by encouraging a dialogue,"shares Ranjivjit Singh, CMO, Printing & Personal Systems, HP India Sales Pvt. Ltd.

Social media has seven functional building blocks that include identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, and groups. These building blocks help understand the engagement needs of the social media audience. As per a study, LinkedIn users care mostly about identity, reputation and relationships, whereas YouTube's primary building blocks are sharing, conversations, groups and reputation. "Social networking sites are powerful force in shaping public opinion on virtually every aspect of commerce. We do a lot of digital engagement activities and as a result Envent has built up a huge and active fan base on Facebook in a very short span of time. Similarly, Twitter and YouTube have been great help for us in reaching to the right audience," adds Sandeep Ramani, COO, Envent. 

Ranjivjit Singh CMO Printing & Personal Systems HP India Sales Pvt. Ltd.

The three C's of social media would be Content plus Community, which equals to Commerce. After having identified the target audience, it is important to find out where they are spending their time online. Then, a company must use its content to become a part of that conversation on that particular networking site. "LG has made great use of the social media and has received an overwhelming response on the same. On its latest smartphone launch, the Optimus 4X HD, LG held a bloggers meet, which generated a lot of blog posts, tweets and FB updates. Also, it recently launched an online consumer connect initiative, the Smartphone Idea Camp, where consumers can submit their unique app and feature ideas in LG's FB page," said L. K. Gupta, Vice-President – Marketing, LG India.

eScan, which is present across all the major social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google+, Flickr, etc., uses these platforms not only just to promote their brand but also help their customers resolve technical issues they face and keep them updated about the latest news related to the IT security landscape. "As a part of our security awareness campaign, we keep them updated about latest cyber security threats and provide them security tips. We also engage with our customers in discussions through various forums, blogs, etc.," informs Sunil Kripalani, Senior Vice-President, Global Sales & Marketing, eScan.

Is channel a part of it?

There is also an increasing trend towards using social media monitoring tools that allow users to search, track and analyze conversation on the web about their brand or about topics of interest. This can be useful in PR management, campaign tracking, proving social media ROI, competitor-auditing and engagement. Tools range from free, basic applications to subscription-based, more in-depth tools. Brands which sell through channel can use social media as an opportunity to not only build connections with customers but also with their partners and stay top-of-mind in their respective markets.

"In India, awareness regarding social media among channel partners is on the rise due to continuous exposure to the latest technologies. We have actively started engaging with our channel partners who are active on twitter through our @DellChannel twitter," informs Rekuram Varadharaj. 

Agreeing to the role of channel, Amit Nath, Country Manager, India & SAARC – Trend Micro, said, "Yes, we do reach out to our channel partners with the help of social media or social networking sites like LinkedIn. We use it as a tool to convey information, updates, industry information and we also target the channel using social-cum-business networking platforms. Brand communities and sourcing models also assist us while building contact with channels."

As social media becomes more and more integral to a company's marketing and communication strategy, it becomes even more important to integrate it to the company's channel partner engagement plan. While the channel partner community has been receptive to engaging with technology companies on platforms like LinkedIn, there is a need for companies to explore innovative ways to engage with this community where the first step would be to educate the community about the power of this medium."We have been working closely with our channel partners to enable them to leverage this medium to achieve their business goal," shares Ranjivjit Singh.

Days ahead

Although the pace of social media usage as a branding tool has increased drastically in the recent few years, experts believe that it is still in the baby stage in the Indian market. In the global markets, the impact of social media translates into revenue but in the Indian market there is still time for such a revenue model to become effective. Even though most of Indian consumers have adapted to social media very fast, the B2C interaction rarely results in sales because the psychographics of an Indian consumer still gets more convinced by offline marketing, where they have the experience of 'touch and feel' of the product. That is why brands don't take the risk of using only social media to influence customers. 

According to recent estimates by eMarketer, social network users in India are expected to increase from 50.2 million during 2011 to 129.3 million by 2014. Hence, social media is, undoubtedly, becoming a primary driver of daily digital media consumption across India. The analysis of the top online activities in the country shows that social networking accounted for 25.2% of all the time spent online in June 2012, which is an increase of 0.8 percentage points from the previous year. Thus, brands agree that very soon they will be able to match the global standards.