Social Media Marketing

INDEX:

SR No. Particulars Page no.

1. Overview 2

2. Purpose, Objectives & Scope of study 3

3. Limitations of study & Research Methodology 4

4. Introduction – Social marketing 5

5. Channels of Social marketing 7

6. Role of Social Media Marketing 8

7. Benefits 9

8. Problems 10

9. Social marketing strategy 11

10. Steps to Social marketing 13

11. SN – integral part of marketing strategy 18

12. Social networking sites 20

13. Facebook 22

14. Tata Docomo – case in action 23

15. Adidas – BMW – case in action 29

16. Conclusion 31

17. Bibliography 33

1

OVERVIEW

Social marketing is a recent component of organizations' integrated marketing

communications plans. Integrated marketing communications coordinates the elements of

the promotional mix—advertising, personal selling, public relations, publicity, direct

marketing, and sales promotion—to produce a customer focused message.

In the traditional marketing communications model, the content, frequency, timing, and

medium of communications by the organization is in collaboration with an external

agent, i.e. advertising agencies, marketing research firms, and public relations firms.

However, the growth of social media has impacted the way organizations communicate

with their customers. In the emergence of Web 2.0, the internet provides a set of tools

that allow people to build social and business connections, share information and

collaborate on projects online.

Social marketing programs usually center on efforts to create content that attracts

attention, generates online conversations, and encourages readers to share it with their

social networks. The message spreads from user to user and presumably resonates

because it is coming from a trusted source, as opposed to the brand or company itself.

Social media has become a platform that is easily accessible to anyone with internet

access, opening doors for organizations to increase their brand awareness and facilitate

conversations with the customer. Organizations can receive direct feedback from their

customers and targeted markets.

However, as with any shift in philosophy and trend adoption, understanding the true

benefits of leveraging social media in marketing initiatives continues to be a challenge

for business organisations. Many question the value of investment in social media and its

direct influence on revenue generation.

Nonetheless, this sentiment is beginning to change and marketers are increasingly

embarking on social media campaigns in support of traditional marketing efforts.

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PURPOSE OF STUDY

I have selected this study because social networking has become an important element of

day to day task. Thanks to this development that people are connected even though they

are far away from their homes. The importance of such media has reached to the levels

where many companies are realizing its benefits and value it derives. Various companies

are now-a-days using such medium very effectively. It is cost efficient and creates

customer touch points. Social networking has become the niche segment of its own and

generates almost 7-8 % revenues if used effectively.

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

To understand concept of social marketing with respect to Facebook

To study process, steps and various platforms provided by social networking

To determine application of concept and it study various benefits created by it

To study facebook in detail along with case study Tata docomo, adidas and BMW

SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The study understands facebook and its role in social marketing. It studies various

concepts with the help of social networking websites. It covers concepts, application of

concepts and cases in action:

Overview and reasons for choosing this particular study

Concept of social marketing, time lines, channels of social marketing, role, benefits

and problems of social marketing

Social networking concept, development and various social networking websites.

Analyzes various social networking websites

Case studies on Tata docomo, adidas and BMW

Conclusion, references and annexure

3

LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

Study limits itself to the following:

Does not study various other mediums like blogs, podcasts etc

Facebook is taken into consideration so as to narrow down the concept and

make the study more specific

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Research Methodology used is secondary research. Referred to:

Journals

Websites

Books on Social Media Marketing

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INTRODUCTION

Social marketing is the process of promoting your site or business through social media

channels and it is a powerful strategy that will get you links, attention and massive

amounts of traffic.

There is no other low-cost promotional method out there that will easily give you large

numbers of visitors, some of whom may come back to your website again and again.

If you are selling products/services or just publishing content for ad revenue, social media

marketing is a potent method that will make your site profitable over time.

Those who ignore the efficacy of social media usually fall into three categories; the ones

who don’t know much or anything about social media, the ones who are interested but

don’t know how to use it and those who don’t believe in the value that a social media

strategy can bring to any site or business.

Social marketing consists of the attempt to use social media to persuade consumers that

one's company, products and/or services are worthwhile.

Businesses using social media want to sell their products or services of course. But as

blatant advertising on social media would, in most cases, alienate their intended audience

or even get them kicked out of the particular social community they're trying to infiltrate,

businesses need to use other methods to promote themselves.

To use social media marketing effectively, businesses have to be perceived as members

of the social media community, willing to interact with other members.

The main problem with social marketing from a business perspective is that it can be

incredibly time-consuming. Social media marketing campaigns are not one-shot affairs;

they need to be nurtured over time. While big businesses such as Dell, Microsoft and HP

have been using social media marketing effectively, they have the kinds of marketing

budgets that allow them to assign x number of staff to conduct and manage social media

marketing campaigns, resources that a lot of small businesses don't have.

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Still, social marketing is a type of marketing that many small businesses could benefit

from, if only to find out more about what their customers are thinking - and saying -

about their brand and their products.

Four Reasons to Practice Social Marketing

Following are reasons for using social marketing:

1. It’s natural. Not only do you get natural links without any discernible pattern,

your website is exposed to large groups of people in a spontaneous fashion. This

differs from paid advertising which has overt commercial overtones.

2. It’s defensible. Once successfully mastered, social communities can be a great

source of web traffic on top of any traffic you are already receiving from search

engines. While you can’t easily increase your search engine traffic, social media

traffic can be very easily controlled through strategic marketing.

3. It’s low-cost/high returns. If done by you, costs are limited to only time and

perhaps the expenses involved in hiring a freelance programmer/designer. The

benefits will often exceed the cost. It would take you thousands of dollars to buy

many links; social media has the ability to give you that for free.

4. It complements other efforts. Social media optimization and marketing is

usually community-specific. It doesn’t interfere with any other methods of getting

traffic to your website. It can and will fit perfectly with an advertising campaign

targeting other websites or search engines.

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CHANNELS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

1. Social Networks:

These sites let you create your own personal page and connect with friends and family to

share content and connect. The largest social networking site today is Facebook with

more than 400 million users.

2. Blogs

Perhaps the most common form of social media are blogs. Blogs are online journals,

generally open to read and comment by anyone. Blogs often contain product reviews that

are sponsored by the producing company.

3. Wikis

Wikis are websites that comprises the work of many different authors on different

subjects. A wiki allows anyone to edit, delete or add content. The most commonly known

wiki is Wikipedia with over 3 million articles today.

4. Podcasts

Podcasts is a series of audio or video files that are episodically released.

5. Forums

Forums are websites for public or private online discussions, often around specific topics.

6. Content communities

These are sites where you share content, like video (YouTube), images (Flickr) and

bookmarks (del.icio.us).

7. Micro blogging

These are commonly downsized blogs with a touch of social networking. Twitter is the

most common micro blogging platform

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ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Social media marketing represents low-cost tools that are used to combine technology

and social interaction with the use of words. These tools are typically internet or mobile

based. A few that you have probably heard of include Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and

YouTube.

Social media marketing gives marketers a voice and a way to communicate with peers,

customers and potential consumers. It personalizes the "brand" and helps you to spread

your message in a relaxed and conversational way.

The downfall to social media, if you could call it that is that it must be a part of your

everyday life in order to keep the momentum and attention you need for it to be

successful.

Following are companies that have involved in social media sucessfully:

Absolut Vodka - Online Video on YouTube and Using Facebook to house their Top

Bartender fan page.

BMW - Utilizing Facebook to promote their 1-Series Road Trip and they have

created a Rampenfest Page for fans.

Dunkin Donuts - That's right they've found value in social media and have set up a

microblogging Twitter account.

Barack Obama - He has been seen as a leader in the use of Twitter during the

Presidential Election. He has over 3,66,59,000 followers and is following over

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BENEFITS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

The two-way communication feature of social media enables organizations to

communicate with their customers. This type of communication is a good thing –

organizations can form more personal relationships with customers by letting them

become part of a community around the brand they want to support. Creating a

community around the brand increases the possibility of having customers for life. The

community can also gain new customers or find new professional partners for new

ventures and expand the brand to new markets.

Using powerful tools such as Twit Links, Socialwhois, and Social Too to do real-time

searches on the latest feeds and tweets around your social community your organization

can gain valuable market data about what your customers like and dislike and you can

also do searches around new markets if you are in the expanding stage.

Few of the major benefits of Social Media Marketing are:

1. Generates exposure for business

2. Increases online traffic/subscribers

3. Results in new business partnerships

4. Helps the company rise in search rankings

5. Reduces overall marketing expenses

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PROBLEMS

Social media includes risks and other problems you can encounter as an individual as

well as an organization. Several major organizations have encountered social media

disasters. Domino’s Pizzas social media disaster occurred about a year ago when two

Domino’s Pizza workers posted a video on YouTube that showed the employees doing

disgusting things with pizza toppings. The employees were fired and faced criminal

charges, but Domino’s Pizza had to deal with a disaster that could have been prevented.

Problems and risk within organizations

1. Create a social media handbook for your employees; a pamphlet with a set of

common sense guidelines that lay out the organization’s policies regarding social

media.

2. Create a social networking crisis management team to manage any negative or false

information.

3. Put the social networking crisis management team to monitor your company’s name

on social networking sites via Twitscoop, RSS feeds, and Technorati to track recent

posts about your organization.

Problems and risk for individuals

1. It’s easy to give away personal information that can enable people to find you or your

family´s members. Never put your personal address, phone number or full name on a

social networking site.

2. People can easily use this information to find your exact location and address.

3. Connecting on social networking sites are great, but people there are not always who

they seem to be. People pretend to be someone else and private accounts have been

stolen (identity theft).

4. Identity theft is increasingly common and usually the motive to identity theft is

financial gain.

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SOCIAL MARKETING STRATEGY:

As a marketing strategy social media marketing strategy can deliver value in three main

ways:

1. Community and relationship building

Engagement, being part of the conversation around particular topics or areas of interest,

builds familiarity and trust with people, and garners notice. Being an active, positive

brand in the marketplace = good brand image. Customers want to deal with businesses

they feel a connection with.

2. Creating authority

By helping people, giving away info/expertise, answering questions, providing insight,

etc. in the social network arena a company establishes its credibility, its value, its quality.

Customers want to do business with authoritative, quality brands.

3. Creating Content

The heart of any social media marketing programme is content, usually created through a

blog but also can include video, pictures, polls, whitepapers, ebooks, reports, e-

newsletters, etc. In general content is information in one form or another that makes

people want to pay attention to you. It’s helpful, informative, interesting. It is through this

content that customers or referrers find out about you, what you do, and how you can

help them. This is a subsection of social media marketing called content marketing.

Content marketing refers to the technique of creating and freely sharing informative

content as a means of converting prospects into customers and customers into repeat

buyers.

Creating great content for your marketing is important. But great content doesn’t

distribute itself. It needs vehicles (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) for people to pass it

along, discuss its merits, argue over its controversies, blog it, mash it, tweet it and even

scrape it. This is where the social networks come in.

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The best distribution network in the world is pointless if you have nothing to deliver

across it. You might have a million followers on Twitter, but unless you engage those

followers, they won’t listen and you will achieve nothing. Equally, what is the point in

fabulous content if no one ever hears about it? Social media is an unsurpassed tool for

getting content distributed. On the flip side, great content gives social media life, by

giving people something more interesting to talk about than what they’re ordering right

now at Starbucks.

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STEPS TO SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING:

Find your audience. Listen. Learn.

Find out where your customers, competitors, or people who share similar interests,

values, etc are online and be there yourself. Monitor the social networks to find out what

is being said about you, your products, your competition, and your industry. This will

give you an idea of the current landscape; this is competitive and industry analysis.

Record this information as a starting point against which to measure the impact of your

social media strategy over time.

Strategize and plan

Is a social media effort right for you? How can it help your overall business goals and

marketing strategy? What are you looking to achieve? Set a goal (or goals) and set

measurable objectives against the goal(s) that will help determine the success or failure of

the effort and allow you to adjust the strategy if required. Then, with an understanding of

the landscape and established objectives, write a strategic plan and a financial model to

achieve the objectives. Finally, develop the tactical implementation to undertake the

strategic plan. Decide who will be responsible. Within

what timeframe do you plan to achieve the (goals)? What milestones should be targeted?

What tools, platforms and programs are required? How will you measure the outcomes

along the way?

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Implement

Plug the tactical plan into the organization. Are you hiring new staff, reassigning existing

ones, or simply allocating internal responsibilities differently? Establish those roles,

responsibilities and working practices. If the strategy calls for cross-departmental effort,

build those communication lines and workflows. Train the staff (and management) on the

“what” and the “how” but also on the “why” of the social media program. Set up the tools

and platforms that will be used. Integrate those tools into existing platforms/procedures.

Create guidelines for corporate/employee social media usage (note: I said “guidelines”

not “rules” – the best results in social networking come from allowing employees to be as

personal, natural and authentic as possible in their dealings with others).

Manage

This is the day-to-day execution of the program. Depending on the strategy, it may

include some or all of these: content production and publishing, content distribution,

reputation management, community engagement, customer support, business intelligence

(competitor activity, customer insights), brand management, market research, monitoring,

measurement and analytics.

Measure

Measurement is a part of the management function because there is a regular ongoing

aspect to it, It is through proper measurement that you understand if your objective are

being met and, if not, to help you reassess your strategy and/or tactics (or even the people

responsible for carrying them out). Measuring is defined by both the “what” and the

“how.” What are we going to measure? Is it measurable? Is it the right thing to measure?

The “what” question goes back to the strategy development piece and should have been

defined then and there. The currency here is probably numbers or statistics: numbers of

followers/friends, number of social mentions, click-through, comments, website visitors,

discussions, emails delivered, and, ideally, sales. But the currency might also be less

defined: positive or negative press, change in sentiment about your brand, company or

product, tone of discussions, and positive or negative word of mouth.

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The “how” begins with monitoring (which should have started even before the strategy

work) using tools and processes that enable you to track the results of your activities.

This means social media monitoring tools, conversion metrics, web analytics, RSS feed

counters, even things like feedback forms, surveys, and customer recommendations.

However, monitoring is not measuring. People often get them mixed up. Measuring is

how we calculate the results of our monitoring over time against our objectives to test

whether we are achieving them. Again, measuring is so important because tells us if we

are having success.

Review

As your social media plan progresses you should be analyzing your results against the

milestone expectations you established at the outset. Review your plan regularly and if

things aren’t working as you intended, adjust your approach. It is a cyclical process of

regular reviewing and refining.

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“Social networks grow 23% worldwide; India sees the fastest

growth”

According to new estimates by E-Marketer, over 1.2 billion people worldwide used social

networking sites at least once per month as of December 2012.  By the end of 2013, this

number will climb to more than 1.5 billion internet users.  The study also examines the

number of social networking users, penetration rates and growth rates in countries around

the world, as well as the projected global growth of Facebook from 2011-2014.

Worldwide, social networking saw 23.1% growth over 2011, and while the growth rate

will drop in the next few years, it will remain in the double digits. This growth is largely

fueled by Facebook’s expansion – except in China, where the site is banned – which is

expected to pass the billion-user mark by the end of 2013.  Facebook saw 44% growth in

2011; this is expected to drop to 13.9% in 2014.

India will see the fastest growth in social networking this year (51.7%), followed closely

by Indonesia with 51.6%, and China lagging further back with 19.9%.

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Countries were also ranked by social network penetration, or having the greatest share of

social network users as a percentage of the total population:

• US took the lead with 49.9%

• followed by Canada (49.3%)

• South Korea (46.6%)

• Australia (44.4%)

• Russia (41.9%)

Developing countries – where fewer people are online overall – showed social

networking as a highly popular activity for those who are online.  In Brazil, 87.6% of

internet users will use social networking sites in 2012 (Indonesia follows closely behind

with 87.5%).

In terms of overall users, the Asia-Pacific region has the highest number of social

network users in the world, with 615.9 million internet users logging on to social sites by

the end of this year. Nearly half of those users will be in China, where social network

users will outnumber their counterparts in the US by nearly two to one (despite the

absence of Facebook).  China and the US are the two countries with the highest number

of social network users overall.

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SOCIAL MEDIA- INTEGRAL PART OF MARKETING:

As usually happens with hype we are going through a pendulum swing now. Wharton’s

Van den Bulte comments on this, “Yes, there is much more information flow among

consumers, and not all of them beat the same drum as the companies, so firms have lost

power. Living in denial is not going to be healthy. On the other hand, totally surrendering

and letting go of all control may be too much…I think firms need to find a balance.

In the end, any marketing campaign a company wants to launch is going to use all the

channels and mechanisms available. They will continue to make extensive use of

traditional broadcasting tools and complement them with other social networking

mechanisms that provide additional benefits. Considering that Social networking is

becoming pervasive, traditional broadcasting and new social marketing will benefit from

each other. As individuals can bring their profiles beyond the social networking

platforms, they can start leveraging this fact when they visit traditional media. This is

possible today with Facebook as some media sites provide a log in that syncs up with the

Facebook and hence identifies your profile.

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New metrics for social marketing

Multiple analyses point out that marketers today are not satisfied with the way they

measure the effectiveness of their social campaigns. The measurement and accountability

of social marketing goes along two dimensions: being able to measure what happens in a

meaningful way and, being able to provide measurement to anticipate or predict the

effectiveness of a given campaign. Traditional measures like hits and pages viewed do

not really focus on the specific value of social marketing. According to Paula

Amunátegui Perelló, project manager for new media at Switzerland-based General

Motors Europe, the traditional metrics won’t do. Simply looking at the number of people

who visit a website is not sufficient. Her team looks at metrics like how many blogs link

to the web site, how many people subscribe to the site’s content or watch videos and the

number and quality of comments posted directly on the site.

As social marketing becomes more mainstream we expect a significant development of

the type of data captured and measured. This will evolve into new behavioral marketing

techniques that will help launch effective campaigns by understanding the diffusion paths

within social networks. For example, key influencers for a given product or service could

be identified, and specific campaign messaging channeled through them to hit their

followers.

We expect measures such as the speed of propagation, the density of networks and the

variety of networks to enter the lingo of social marketing in the near future. Together

with the pervasiveness of the social networking profile, will come a pervasiveness of

social analysis; a comprehensive use and understanding of the social graph. This means

sophisticated analytics of patterns of diffusion of ideas or products will become

mainstream. Predictive engines will therefore emerge that focus on these patterns using

techniques like psychographics and semantic analysis.

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VARIOUS SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES

1) Orkut

Orkut is a social networking website that is owned and operated by Google Inc. The

service is designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships.

The website is named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten.

2) Flickr

Flickr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online

community created by Ludicorp and later acquired by Yahoo!. In addition to being a

popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely

used by bloggers to host images that they embed in blogs and social media. As of august

2010, it claims to host more than 4 billion images.

3) Hi5

Hi5 is a social networking website. The company was founded in 2003 by Ramu

Yalamanchi. Bill Gossman was appointed CEO in April 2009. In early 2010, hi5 acquired

social gaming company, Big Six. The company raised $20 million in series A venture

capital from Mohr Davidow Ventures, as well as $15 million in venture debt, in 2007,

and announced it had raised $3 million convertible note from existing investor Mohr

Davidow, bringing the funding up to $38 million.

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4) Linkedln

LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and

launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. As of 9 August

2010 (2010 -08-09), LinkedIn had more than 75 million registered users, spanning more

than 200 countries and territories worldwide. The site is available in English, French,

German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.

5) MySpace

MySpace is a social networking website. Its headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California

where it shares an office building with its immediate owner, News Corp. Digital Media,

owned by News Corporation. MySpace became the most popular social networking site

in the United States in June 2006. According to comScore, MySpace was overtaken

internationally by its main competitor, Facebook, in April 2008, based on monthly unique

visitors. MySpace employs 1,000 employees, after laying off 30 percent of its workforce

in June 2009; the company does not disclose revenues or profits separately from News

Corporation. The 100 millionth account was created on August 9, 2006, in the

Netherlands.

6) Twitter

Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service, owned and operated by Twitter

Inc., that enables its users to send and read other users' messages called tweets. Tweets

are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page. Tweets

are publicly visible by default, however senders can restrict message delivery to their

friends list. Users may subscribe to other author tweets—this is known as following and

subscribers are known as followers. All users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter

website, compatible external applications (such as, for smartphones), or by Short

Message Service (SMS) available in certain countries. While the service is free, accessing

it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees.

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FACEBOOK

Facebook is a social networking website launched in February 2004 that is operated and

privately owned by Facebook, Inc., with more than 500 million active users in July 2012.

Users can add people as friends and send them messages, and update their personal

profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally, users can join networks

organized by workplace, school, or college. The website's name stems from the colloquial

name of books given to students at the start of the academic year by university

administrations in the US with the intention of helping students to get to know each other

better. Facebook allows anyone who declares themselves to be aged 13 or older to

become a member of the website.

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow

computer science students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. The

website's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was

expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It

gradually added support for students at various other universities before opening to high

school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over. The original concept for

Facebook was borrowed from a product produced by Zuckerberg's prep school Phillips

Exeter Academy, which for decades published and distributed a printed manual of all

students and faculty, unofficially called the "face book".

Facebook has met with some controversy. It has been blocked intermittently in several

countries including Pakistan, Syria, China, Vietnam, and Iran. It has also been banned at

many places of work to discourage employees from wasting time using the service.

Privacy has also been an issue, and it has been compromised several times. Facebook

settled a lawsuit regarding claims over source code and intellectual property. The site has

also been involved in controversy over the sale of fans and friends.

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CASE STUDY: TATA DOCOMO

Many independent observers refer to Tata DOCOMO as a “child of Social Media”. In

effect that is quite close to being the strategy for Tata DOCOMO even before the time the

brand was officially unveiled.

Why Social Media?

When Tata DOCOMO was planning to enter the Indian market as the 9th GSM operator,

it faced entrenched incumbents and strong brand communication barriers from other

telecom operators. However Tata DOCOMO was determined to change the game and cut

through the clutter through pure innovation and doing the New.

Social Media became the first opportunity which had not been picked up by most Indian

brands in June 2009 leave alone the telecom operators. It was unchartered waters but we

knew that Social Media connects us with the exact TG that the brand wanted to associate

with. It further had the wow element and was clearly doing the New. The perfect reason

for Tata DOCOMO to draw up an extensive strategy to harness the power of Social

Media and build the brand with its consumers.

Laying the Social Media Strategy

At the very core of the Social Media strategy was the idea of humanizing a telecom brand

and make it warm, friendly and conversational. The strategy was simple yet brilliant.

Reach out to every corner of the web and to every possible TG not as a corporate brand

but as a friend willing to engage the consumer in a one-on-one dialogue on anything and

everything pertaining to the brand, its offers, its deficiencies as well as anything to do

with telecom per se. The desired outcome was clear in everyone's mind – to build the

most loyal set of beta customers who will champion the brand in their micro-

communities at every moment.

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The execution

A dedicated Social Media team at Interface was built to execute the plan. Twitter,

Facebook, Orkut, Youtube accounts were opened up and optimized even before the brand

launch took place. The website itself actively solicited visitors to signup to the Tata

DOCOMO communities months before it became a fad for others. The Social Media

team set about targeting each of the Social Media platforms differently.

TWITTER:

Twitter typically has a more evolved and techy audience that other Social Media

platforms. Tata DOCOMO acknowledged the importance of these thought leaders and

made sure they got their worth by following the brand. All products, offers and schemes

were first announced to our Twitter followers before they were allowed on any other

media. On many occasions Twitter followers were given teasers and prelaunch feelers

much before the product was even in a state of launch readiness.

Today Tata DOCOMO has more than 7500 followers and they know most of them by

name. They have solved their telecom problems, passed on their messages to relevant

people in the company and brought about resolutions or simply just said a hello when

someone was missing in action for an extended period of time.

FACEBOOK:

Facebook clearly has a large influential community that was identified right at the start as

being a major influencer of brand advocacy. Tata DOCOMO set about creating

conversations among its fans on Facebook.

Like Twitter a one-on-one communication was maintained with all its fans helping

resolve problems, providing information and escalating issues. The community was kept

engaged through a variety of status updated including discussions on TV commercials,

jingles, product service launches and fun and games.

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ORKUT:

Orkut has a mass user base and was identified as an important element in managing mass

sentiment around the brand. The forum has been used both as a community feedback tool

as well as a platform where free discussions were enabled on specific topics (either

product-service related or band related). The platform has also extensively been used for

contests to keep community members engaged.

YOUTUBE:

Youtube has been a central repository for all brand commercials and videos. Tata

DOCOMO has made a departure from the traditional way of only uploading videos

created by the brand to also showcasing user generated content, specifically animation

videos submitted by users at the create.tatadocomo.com platform.

In continuation of its strategy to be omnipresent in Social Media, Tata DOCOMO is

perhaps one of the few Indian brands to have reached out to less popular social

networking and community portals in India. It carries through the same brand promise of

being everywhere that out potential consumers could be however small the reach of the

portal might be.

The Tata DOCOMO strategy with respect to third party blogs and forums were both

proactive and reactive. Everyday 100s and 1000s of blogs and forums were scanned or

any mention of Tata DOCOMO and whenever a user had posted a question, comment

and complaint, the Social Media team made it a point to go and respond to resolve

(wherever necessary) every post or comment.

Tata DOCOMO is probably the only brand in the Indian landscape who have gone ahead

and created official accounts on hundreds of blogs and forums and have always

responded through its official id.

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Demystifying the strategy

The Tata DOCOMO social media strategy has been carefully built on five pillars.

1. Build consumer engagement

Beyond the day-to-day and one-on-one interactions with our fans and followers, Tata

DOCOMO has constantly launched consumer engagement programs with a heavy social

media angle. This has helped us build repeat engagement points with a large number of

our fans. Be it dietsms which was rolled out exclusively through social media, ageekthing

which involved Orkut, gadgets , Facebook applications and automated Twitter tools or

happy DOYear which could be played through Facebook, Twitter and Orkut.

2. Address and resolve complaints

Even before the launch of social media engagements, a dedicated customer response

mechanism was laid out for priority resolution of all social media grievances / enquiries.

Top management at Tata DOCOMO has taken great pains to make sure that literally the

buck stops when an issue is raised through social media channels. From activation

problems, network issues, handset settings or billing related matters, every single issue

has been promptly addressed and resolved. Comes as no wonder therefore that initially

the Tata DOCOMO Twitter account was nicknamed the “unofficial helpline”.

3. Crowd sourcing

Very early in the social lifecycle of the brand Tata DOCOMO realized it had hundreds of

well wishers who were all brimming with ideas on new product-service offerings that

could be a real differentiator for the company. The social team has repeatedly engaged

with its beta consumers, collecting feedback about usage, preferences, bounced off

product ideas and pretested concepts to help the product team develop compelling

product service offerings. The icing on the cake was when we involved our techy Twitter

followers to hack into a social game launched by Tata DOCOMO as part of the

ageekthing contest and suggest ways to prevent others from doing so. Many of the recent

product service launches like gprs packs and parts of the buddyNet program have been

built on crowd sourcing inputs.

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4. Build brand advocacy

Continuous engagement and proactive problem resolution has helped Tata DOCOMO

build extremely loyal fans on social media. Innovative ways of recognizing such efforts

through fan of the week on Facebook and Twitter has further enhanced the cause.

5. Micro communication

With close to 100,000 direct followers and over 6 million secondary reach, all

communication from Tata DOCOMO enjoys a sizeable instant audience. However our

social team remembers the names, occupations and past communications with thousands

and thousands of our fans. This helps us micro communicate with each individual

building a personal touch and therefore a high impact to our messaging.

The Outcome

Each media of the social media strategy has helped Tata DOCOMO build a strong and

loyal fanbase amongst the youth and has unmistakably taken ownership of the innovator

platform this firmly establishing the brand essence of do the New. The brand values of

honesty, transparency and sincerity have been well established in the minds of

consumers. Tata DOCOMO  social presence is not seen to be  a marketing gimmick but a

genuine effort to connect and engage with every fan and follower with sincerity and with

the authority to solve their problems. Perhaps the apt summary of the success of Tata

DOCOMO’s social media has been a comment posted on Twitter.

“In the world of telecom if airtel is Microsoft, Tata DOCOMO is google. DoDo do Do

Do...”

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Quantifying the Outcome

Tata DOCOMO has significant Klout on Twitter even when compared against global

heavyweights

 Today Tata DOCOMO’s Twitter Klout is equal to AT&T though it has been achieved in

a very short period as is evident by the meteoric rise displayed in the graph below

The social mention parameters like strength and passion outscore competition by a good

distance

Twitter: Grade of 99.8 Means the Tata DOCOMO Twitter Account Ranks Higher than

99.6% of all Twitter Accounts

Facebook: Grade of 87 Means the Tata Docomo Facebook Account Ranks Higher than

87% of all Facebook Accounts

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CASE STUDY: ADIDAS AND BMW

Social networking is a new online territory. In our one-on-one interviews with marketers,

some expressed that social networking is a new ballgame and they don’t know how to

keep score – they don’t even know the rules. Some marketers feel they’re playing on

unfamiliar turf, where the consumer names the rules and controls the filed. Most

marketers don’t have the equipment to play, and for some, there is comfort with the

traditional advertising model: pay a media owner to insert an advertisement, and assume

it generates impact (or measure impact using traditional measurement models). When it

comes to social marketing, how does a marketer know if value is created?

The fact that social Marketing is different and requires fresh thinking might explain why

the past decade of digital marketing has focused on translating the game they knew

(advertising) to the new landscape of the Internet. The common thread of this past decade

of digital Marketing and Research is the traditional advertising model translated into new

digital environments. Times are changing. Enough marketers have conceptualized how

traditional marketing models transferred online, and now many are focusing attention on

a new model for brand value creation. To help them, we need a well developed

framework to quantify and analyze how value is created.

If marketers have a framework to measure and manage value creation in social

networking, it significantly expands usage of social networking as a meaningful element

of the Marketing mix; hence Marketers achieve better overall ROI. Developing a

standard framework across community sites is one of the central aims of the research, so

let’s get started.

How is value created for brands in a social network?

First, let’s defi ne value. The definition of value begins with understanding the Brand

Manager’s Marketing goals. Generally, the Marketing goals revolve around the following

core branding metrics:

Brand awareness (unaided and aided)

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Positive brand image (such as agreement that the brand is better than others)

Intent to take action (such as purchasing the product)

Action (actual purchase of the product)

Loyalty

Advocacy

Some ask, why isn’t sales (or profit) the sole measure of value?

Sales and profit is a legitimate business goal, but most Marketing programs can’t achieve

sales on their own. Marketing is one key component that generates sales and profit.

Marketing can positively influence conditions resulting in sales. Other factors such as

product distribution, sales force acumen, pricing, promotions plus a host of externals such

as competitive activities, weather and so forth all influence the actual purchase. By

focusing directly on what marketing can influence and control, we get a clear measure of

marketing value creation.

The Campaign

The adidas soccer custom community on MySpace has been in existence since 2006, with

the most recent refresh launched in February 2007. The new campaign is focused on

fostering an environment of friendly discussion and debate of adidas’ two models of elite

soccer cleats/boots, Predator and F50 TUNIT. Visitors to the community have the

opportunity to align themselves with one product “team” and offer comments in support

of their preferred model. Additionally, the new content offers information about

professional adidas soccer players on each “team,” rotational product views,

downloadable graphics, forum discussions, a link to additional product information, and a

link to the adidas Mexico Fútbol profi le page. One of the most sophisticated aspects of

the adidas custom community is the way that consumers can align their own personality

with the choice of adidas brands. Once a brand is picked, the consumer’s locked in with

the brand experience.

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CONCLUSION:

Marketing has always been a crucial part of a business. Good companies have become

great on the sheer basis of effective marketing strategies. In the era of huge competition,

organizations are going great length to advertise and promote their products and earn

valuable customer loyalty.

The concept of marketing has kept evolving with the passage of time. Companies are

forced to adopt new changes in their marketing strategies to remain relevant. If there is

one factor that has really affected the way marketing plans are being defined then it must

be technology.

In the new century, the marketing tools of earlier years were rendered obsolete. Those

who manage to anticipate the changes and adopt them quickly have better chances of

survival. Social media marketing is one such great change that many companies have

started to accept in a big way. Though, it is still in a nascent stage but canny marketing

strategists are already harping onto the next big marketing revolution taking place in form

of social media marketing.

Social media is an extremely useful tool using which companies can get their

information, product descriptions, promotions all ingrained in the chain of networking

world. Considering the newness of this marketing method, organizations are coming up

with innovative ways to develop their marketing plans. New platforms are being created

to approach potential clients. A large number of business organizations are allocating

budget for online business development using social media marketing. It is a booming

sector which is going to redefine the way marketing strategies are being formed and

promoted. Social media marketing is a potent method applied by progressive companies

for selling their products/services or for just publishing content for ad revenue.

Although social media is a recent arsenal to the field of business marketing, its potential

as a marketing tool cannot be overlooked. However, further development in its practice

and usage is required in order to increase corporate adoption. Also, a study into the

measurement of social media’s effectiveness and its return on investment must also be

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undertaken. Only then can the real value of social media to an enterprise be ascertained.

Nonetheless, social media is a powerful tool for any organisation moving in the Web 2.0

space and beyond.

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