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India : Case Studies
The rapid growth of social media in India has been a hot topic not just amongst the Indian blogosphere but also within traditional mainstream media as well. Blogworks™, founded by famous New Delhi blogger Rajesh Lalwani, specializes in providing information for effective marketing and communications efforts. You can find a long list of articles concerning all things to do with social media in India residing in the Blogworks™ database here.
In all the hype of the exponential growth of social media in India, observation of the country's online landscape has led us to believe that even though the Internet supposedly transcends geographical boundaries, social media activities remaincontained within cities. It is not difficult to figure out why: Indian's major metropolitans - New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, to name a few, are the size of small independent nations in terms of land size and population; although India's official langugages are Hindi and English, different Indian dialects and cultures dominant different cities.An effective utilization of social media across India calls for the capability to understand, engage and communicate across these cities. However, it is not as difficult as one might think and we are here to offer a few pointers to whoever is interested in venturing into the social media arena as a stepping stone for their businesses, or even just as a value-added function.
Web 2.0 as a Catalyst
Social media works differently for different businesses. Some businesses use it for internal purposes, from creating Wiki pages used to coordinate nationwide projects, to sharing ideas such as the next best place for a company barbecue; some companies use it specifically for their customers, garnering feedback and communicating with them to listen and understand them better. The versatility of social media is undoubtedly high, but the real test comes in being able to utilise the correct tools to cater to each individual business' needs.
With Indian cities developing at such a quick pace, businesses must be able to find the connection between their products and services, and the needs of the changing demography. Web 2.0 serves as a catalyst to speed up the process of creating the demand for your business once that connection is found. Social media and the tools it offers are meant to help you run your business better.
FirstPhera, created by Ahmedabad-based Virtual Life Style Pte Ltd, allows the creation of 'Wedsites' by wedding couples and features on this site include rich text edits, blogs, guestbooks, discussions, RSVP functions, task lists and guest lists. It can even store Internet media of nearly every form (video, photo albums, comments, etc.).
Pune-based ThnkingSpace Technologies launched ActiveCiti, an online event management tool which allows users to create an event and handle nearly all matters related to managing an event: from email invites, tracking their responses, to automatic event updates. There are also page customization options of an event: creating polls, adding images, banner ads and message boards.Social media: An Important but Small Part of a Bigger Picture
Social media is not a one-stop marketing and communications solution. By simply engaging in social media in India, do not expectoverwhelming success as the spill over effects from the online community are still very limited. Television, according to Edelman's Trust Barometer (download it here), is still the most trusted institution in India and TV advertising is here to stay in this country.
By incorporating social media as part of an integrated marketing communications campaign however, businesses can experience a big increase in synergy and positive externalities. We feel that fusing regional-level business strategies across India and engaging interactive/e-creative agencies, multinational corporations will be able to systematically penetrate the social media landscape across India. As an initial approach, this could be used to generate more hype and awareness before the main integrated marketing campaign.
Mainly based out of New Delhi or Mumbai, top interactive agencies such as Quasar Media, id8labs, New Media Guru and Webchutney dedicate their services to providing their customers with the most effective and business-enhancing interactive online solutions. We feel that for large corporations, this is probably the best approach towards embracing social media and making it an organic and profitable function of the business.
There are a number of online providers of social media peripherals that can easily adapt to the operations of smaller sized business entities. It is important however for businesses to remember that it is not their job to run social media, but to see how social media can help and enhance the running of their businesses.
Opportunities with Social Media: Social Responsibility
In our content analysis of the Indian social media landscape, especially the Indian blogosphere, common topics such as cricket, food, politics and social issues appeared in a large number of blogs and other social media content.
Businesses often engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a form of displaying goodwill and communicating its position on selective social issues for the betterment of society. We feel that there is a great opportunity to develop CSR and social enterprise in India. PR practitioner and prominent social media blogger Rajesh Lalwani identifies in one of his blog posts the missed CSR opportunities companies could have acted upon. Social media is a great way to constantly engage one's stakeholders and take small but active steps towards achieving medium to long term goals.There need not be an overheated justification on whether exercising CSR through social media brings return of investment. The use of social media is low in cost and is highly dependent on the user in terms of responsiveness, sincerity and frequency of participation. We anticipate companies embarking on this new form of social media CSR to at first experience a period of low activity from its stakeholders. Time and trust however, seem to be the correct formula to engage and converse with them.
Utilizing social media to practice CSR will test a company's true willingness to express its social goodwill. In return, the company stands to gain unprecedented credibility and trust from its customers and stakeholders. In the future we foresee the social media community expecting an active practice of CSR in the social media realm to be the an important indication of credibility.
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, May 30 2008, 5:18 AM EDT
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