Posts made in January, 2012
Influence, measure
Is the size of your fan base or following an accurate measure of your brand’s success in social media? To an extent, yes. A large following does indicate your brand’s substantial reach into consumer minds. It also suggests that those fans are, to an extent, favourably disposed towards your brand. But, does it represent your brand’s influence over consumer choice and decision? Come to think of it, how does one calculate influence? We believe, in social media, as it is in real life, influence can be determined by any measure that leads to action. That means a measure that clearly demonstrates an actual brand-user engagement. Preferably something as finite as sales...
Read MorePlaying the odds
Here are the odds: not all of your consumers are online or are using social media to connect with each other, nor following your brand or engaging with it over social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube… or your brand/company blog. Facebook, the most successful of all social networks till date, claims 800 million active users worldwide – of which approximately 5% are users from India. That’s around 40 million users. If one were to believe internet and social media experts, 50% of these users are inactive (having created a personal profile and done nothing much with it thereafter), leaving a mere 20 million Facebook users in India for brands like yours to...
Read More3 basic tenets
As it has always been, people are talking with each other, generating the buzz of conversations we hear around us. Considering the fact that they are talking about a million things that interest them or affect their lives, the sheer volume of conversation is high. In numbers, probably one conversation among these million things is about my brand. But that’s good enough for me. The odds may not be much, but what matters is that my brand is a part of these conversations. You see, presence is important. If my brand is a part of these conversations, I have a chance of getting my brand’s message across to these people sooner or later. To do this, I have to listen in to...
Read MoreSocial media fuels consumer voice in the US
India is no stranger to the collective voice of her people. When I think of all the rallies organised by the political parties, they conjure up memories of hundreds of thousands of people milling about in maidans or some such open public spaces. The recent support for Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption campaigns has shown us several of these. I remember times when a small increase in bus or train fares would have the Indian collective voice spilling over, stopping traffic on the streets or on the railway tracks. But let me not pin this on the political movements alone. Add a touch of the collective mood to the collective voice, and most religious festivals in India would...
Read MorePower to the people
Arab Spring. Occupy Wall Street. Anna Hazare’s fight against corruption in India. It’s not every day that we see mobilisation of the masses in this order around the world. But 2011 was an exception. If anything, the year taught us that John Lennon’s famous 1971 song ‘Power to the People’ is now a reality. This reality is made possible to a great extent by leveraging the internet and social media. Don’t get me wrong. Good old word of mouth and media coverage (TV, press particularly) still play critical roles in spreading the word and motivating people. But the internet and social media bring in an instant and accelerated drive that is unseen and unmatched in...
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