2020 Social: Because Business is Social

How to make e-commerce a social activity

Posted on 26. Feb, 2010 by Achintya in Reviews

Background: Purchase has for long been considered a social activity and often leverages conversations. Recommendations and reviews by a friend or a third party are often very helpful in making purchase decisions. It is interesting to see how some online shopping and e-commerce platforms have leveraged social web into converting a whole shopping experience into a social activity.

Some of the interesting social features that I came upon can be categorized as below:

At the initial levels of these social engagements are websites having ratings & reviews features where users can review the product databases, rate the products which can be compared by the viewers using comparison engines. Then there are websites having comment sections for conversations regarding the products, other member’s review etc. People can also add products to their ‘wishlists’ so that they can remember and let other see what are they planning to buy next. Amazon makes very good use of these review and rating features for its vast product database.

On the next level of social engagement architecture are product aggregation websites where the focus is on aggregating products from various sources and getting the members to recommend or review the product. These websites can cater to niche segments like shopstyle which aggregates fashion products from various sources and  lets its members curate the aggregated products. There are also social commerce websites like thisnext where the members themselves submit products from various other e-commerce websites and others curate ( rate, vote, review it) them. Hence such platform give people the opportunity to discuss products belonging to e-commerce websites which do not use such social applications. To add to this list, there are platforms like deals plus where instead of best products, the best deals and offers are featured.

Moving forward there are social commerce platforms with a special focus on community features. So social commerce communities like Kaboodle have people submitting products from various sources but then there are also profile, relationships and interactions among these members resulting in better social engagement. Similarly crowdstorm is architectured to let the community choose product for its members. Wishpot is a social commerce community focused on members and wishlists. So you can see what your friends are buying, help them out with their wishlists, see the most wished products. etc. Ebay has created product neighborhood groups ( like art, video games etc.) and leveraged these evangelist groups to drive purchases.

Then there are communities like product wiki, which is a wiki for product information and ratings. In Zlio members can get their own online store, showcase articles from zlio directory, promote products and earn purchase commission.Many social commerce platform also run periodic UGC campaigns and tactical programs to generate buzz and traffic. Woot for instance keeps doing such contests and campaigns.

Many of these platforms also have good integrations with social networks like facebook, twitter etc to carry the feed activity to their user’s friends and social network. Wishpot, productwiki have some good facebook and twitter integration. Ebay has an application for showcasing your favorite items on ebay to your network.

Acknowledgments: Special thanks to mohit for making all the research easy

How are banks, financial services leveraging social media

Posted on 25. Jan, 2010 by Achintya in Case Studies

I was reading the latest blog post on 2020 Social blog by mohit on Social Community efforts by banks and financial institutions and realized that I might have something interesting to add here. In my view the thing worth noticing about the social media efforts by these BFSI institutions is the difference in the way their communities are architectured when they are targeting different segments of customers.

Background: When it comes to investing & saving ones own hard earned money , people prefer researching, asking others, going for tried and tested methods and moreover playing safe. Investments and savings are something that are although done by almost everyone but then not everybody has an expertise and hence people generally prefer taking expert advice, ask peers, research, read news just to keep themselves informed and updated. Many banks, financial institutions, trading and brokerage companies have realized this behaviour and are using a social web presence to solve their problems.

Scope: In this post I have covered three types of social media efforts by the BFSI sector. The first category represents the social media efforts by banks & financial services towards personal banking, the second category of efforts are towards targeting corporates, SMEs & entrepreneurs while the third is towards targeting the investors into stocks to make them smart traders. You will see a fundamental difference in the way these institutions use social web to target these three different categories.

Illustration:

a) Social media efforts towards personal banking: A large no. of BFSI institutions have realized that providing a platform to people to talk and learn about their business needs helps them multifold. Firstly, it helps them position themselves as an institution which cares to enable people to make smart savings and investments. Secondly, it helps them listen relevant conversations and establish conversations and relationships for business development. Thirdly, it helps them understand the current needs and feedback of customers which is like the best market research ever. In this a very inspiring effort has been made by the Young&Free Alberta community powered by the Servus Credit Union to give a voice to the young generation. Y&F launches annual contest where the community chooses its spokesperson. This spokesperson then participates in the community as Y&F ambassador and educates and converses with others through blogs, videos etc. Y&F also oganizes many events for its commuity which include year round online contests and offline events. (For more details see mohit’s post at 2020 Social blog).

ING Direct is also making several efforts in wooing savers on social web. They have a Saver’s Blog and a community for publishing feel good news about markets and investment called Savings feel good. The news is either submitted from press or by community members. The community also runs timely contests to build interests.

Another interesting effort in this direction is by mint.com which is a maney management and budgeting software company. They have a tweet aggregator platform with tweets from various experts on savings, budgeting, retirement, loans etc.They also have an official blog on similar topics.

As you must have realized that all these communities are architectured around people expressing their financial needs and helping people make smart savings and gain important informations about investments.

b) Social media efforts for corporates, SMEs and entrepreneurs: In such efforts the focus is to help the SMEs and entrepreneurs network and gain valuable information and aid related to their business. For example the Visa Business Network helps you find out businesses in your locality, related vendors, partners, suppliers and customs. It also helps you discuss important information in your work related discussion group, set up business related goals and get help from others to achieve them. A possible goal can be ‘to same some xy amount of money by year end. The person can get interesting article links from the community on savings. Or a goal can be ‘to find business through referrals’

Effectively you can see that the aim of the community is to help businesses communicate, learn and network. It helps the financial institute powering the community listen about the financial needs and ideas among entrepreneurs. Also it sends across the message that the bank reaches out to help businesses which helps them bringing in more business. Amrican Express, HSBC and Bank of America also has similar business networks the details about which you can get from mohit’s  last blog post

Another interesting effort here is by Kiva which is a one to one micro lending community where entrepreneurs submit their business idea. For this kiva partners with micro lending institutions. The community helps the entrepreneurs reach financial targets.

c) Social media efforts focussing on stocks and trading: There are a bunch of trading communities which are helping people become smart investors, invest in right direction, communicate with expert and get relevant market information. Also these communities help professional traders gain reputation as influencers. A good example is Covester where members can follow other members investments, read and write information blogs and if they see a trader making very good investments, the can align their investments with him and give him a share in profits for sharing his data.

There are other online invester’s communities like Zecco, Moneyrec, Stockhouse and Trade2win. Tipd gives a stock and financial news aggregation platform and news community. People consume, curate and create news articles on a model similar to digg.com. The value for these stock related conversations can be estimated from the face that certain corporates like Berkshire Hathaway have discussion forums for their own stocks.

Visiting these communities are worth it. We would love to have some such India focussed communities by large banks as there are many people here who because of dearth of good investing knowledge  and lack of trust on private banks go for safest government investments like FDs and RDs giving very low returns. Also there are many who do not understand the financial jargons of the large investment products given by these banks. Banking communities can definitely help there.

What’s happening in Health 2.0

Posted on 12. Jan, 2010 by Achintya in Case Studies, Reviews

While researching on health and wellness communities I fell upon various platforms worth of interest. It is fascinating to see that people understand that with changing times and health demands people are more interested in discussing out their health problems, helping each other referring the best practitioners and using similar social tools for health related purposes. When research shows that a majority of people seek the initial help of internet for any health research or related problems, it makes sense to make the entire health research and discussions social which is popularly known as Health 2.0.

There are a vast number of health related platforms running on the social web. On a broad scale they can be grouped as Health 2.0 communities, Health Applications and Health online tactical programs. I have discussed each of these platforms in detail below:

1) Health 2.0 communities: There are a bunch of Health 2.0 communities following roughly the same engagement architecture for the members. There are influencers (doctors, health experts, coaches, sportpersons) writing blogs and news articles on various health related topics, support forums on various topics various the influencers are participating and providing expert advice. The community members can interact with the experts on their blogs and discuss and find help for their problems on the support forums. Some such popular communities are Web MD (see pic) and Aarp.org’s health page. There are various other communities like Steady Health using news aggregation models similar to digg.com where members submit their health related news and others curate (rate/vote) the news articles to get the most popular news on the homepage. In India similar health 2.0 communities like Bolohealth are gaining interest. Similarly Quaker oats too has health related discussion forum on its Good morning heart community.

Apart from these independent health and wellness communities, there are some hospitals powering such communities too. Mayoclinc for example supports blogs and stories from patients, relatives, friends and staff of Mayo hospital at sharing.mayoclinic.org

2) Health Applications: There are many interesting health applications on the social web. One such application is Patients like me where you can enter various communities, feed your personal health data and find patients like you and get relevant help. Another interesting health application is by Gold’s gym (see pic) which is running of facebook. Here the members can set their personal health goals ( like losing weight etc.), find people like them, recruit supporters and post their progress. Other members can provide support and comment on their progress. In India saffola ( an Indian edible oil company) is currently running a health application where people can set up goals for better living, find people like them and get health tips.

3) Online tactical programs:  These include short user generated contests or advocacy programs run on the social web. An example of such a user generated contest to promote health was run by Gimme20 health community where participants were asked to submit their fitness stories in form of pictures, text or videos to win prizes. Mayoclinic Hospital runs an advocacy program where the patients can submit stories about their experiences with mayo clinic. Similarly another hospital chain Porter Adventis Hospital allows members to start free ‘carepage’ which are personalized web pages by/to patients and their families /friends to provide emotional and moral support.

What’s happening in social media on climate change

Posted on 04. Dec, 2009 by Achintya in Trends

Background
I follow Indian Express and almost everyday when I pick up the morning daily I see something being written on Copenhagen 2009 summit. Then there was the Blog Action day on Oct 15, 2009 when thousands of bloggers wrote about climate change the same day. Hence no prizes for guessing but a lot is happening over environment in social and traditional media. Therefore I thought it would be interesting to see how specifically social media is helping us make our planet a greener place to live.

Scope
Honestly social web is seeing a lot of activities on climate change and a greener planet. There are a bunch of facebook apps, many websites  and applications on organizing events and creating petitions, online communities targeting environment and wild life etc but I would specifically like to focus on social applications targeting aggregation of environment related news and influencer platforms. The reason for the preference is that some of the most popular efforts in social media for environment have gone in these two directions.

News Aggregation

Various websites are using different models for aggregating environemnt news. The most popular of them is using the digg.com model for aggregating news. Users bookmark the environement related news they like and others curate/vote for their favorite news. The most popular news gets features on the homepage. Ngopost.org is using this kind of model in India. Then there is care2.com which is also the largest environment promoting online community and uses this kind of aggregation model. Care2 in fact does a lot more than this. It has a online petition site where people can start their own petitions and sign the petitions they support. Members can donate, read expert’s views on healthy living etc.

The other popular model is importing stories and news feeds from top news websites and blogs. Greenedia.com for example, aggregates blogs, podcasts, videos by experts on green living, climate change, global warming and other topics who have been vetted by Greenedia. Experts can submit their credential for contributing to the platform or users can suggest popular blogs to be tracked by Greenedia. Alltop.com is another popular website which uses this model for many topics like food, photography, health etc and it has a separate platform for aggregating news on climate change.

The third news aggregation model is something that was adopted by change.org for Blog action day where they asked everybody to register and write on the climate change. Presently their homepage features the link to the most popular web platforms that participated in the event and also gives links to all the participating blogs.

Influencer Platform

Influencer platform are a great way to generate opinions, gain traffic and trigger word of mouth. Presently the platform getting most attention and traffic is change.org which has an influencer platform called ‘Changemakers’. Users can nominate influencial people whom they want to see as the changemakers and others vote for the nominees. The selected changemakers will then be invited to write on the platform and their opinions will be pushed through change.org’s network of partners, bloggers and activists.

The other types of influencer platforms are ecorazzy which aggragates news about what celebrities are doing for environemnt. With news like ‘Brand Pitt to donate various hats to charity’ and ‘Roger Moore continues his battle with the Foie Grass Industry’, this brings another way of getting influencer’s say. Similarly Huffington Post has a environemnt news category called ‘Green’ which showcases celebrities taking about various environment related issues.

How to run an advocacy program on social web

Posted on 04. Dec, 2009 by Achintya in How To Guides

Background: Advocacy programs provide a win-win situation for any brand or product on social web. On one hand it lets you recognize that set of evangelists who would be ready to promote your brand/product free of cost and on the other hand it leads effective promotion of your offerings to your consumers. We at 20:20 Social have researched some of the most effective advocacy programs to seek out varous ways in which these advocacy programs on social web can be modeled.

Scope: In our research we have focussed ourselves in studying how advocacy programs can take consumers and visitors across different levels of Ladder of Engagement. The Ladder of Engagement involves identifying various levels at which the consumers ( or site visitors/partners/employees ) can be engaged. It begins with content consumption, then moves on to content curation ( rating, voting, commenting ) , content creation, collaboration and then subsequently to trial, purchase and finally to evangelizing and recommendation( hereby mentioned as advocacy) to others.
Our research on some of the most popular Advocacy programs shows that advocacy can be used to transition consumers across the following levels:
1) Advocacy to content consumption and curation
2) Advocacy leading to content consumption, curation and even creation
3) Advocacy leading to product trial and purchase
4) Advocacy leading to content collaboration

Advocacy to content consumption and curation:

One of the most effective strategies of modelling an Advocacy program on social web is to find a bunch of evangelists who appreciate your brand/product and are ready to write good about them. These evangelists can be popular bloggers or influencers having a lot of connections on social web. A good example of such a program is Microsoft MVP ( most valued professional ) program where the company recognizes talented influencers in the field who write about the businesses Microsoft is related to. Another case where influencial bloggers were leveraged for brand advocacy was in the marketing campaign of Chrystler’s Dodge Grand Caravan where the company loaned the car to influential mom bloggers for a week for trial run, which triggerred a lot of conversation in the blogospere. Similarly Redwood Creak ( An Ameircan wine making company ) has created a community platform around passion for outdoor adventures and recognizes wine evangelists known as ‘The Trailblazers’ as their official brand ambassadors who talk about wines and adventures on the company blogs and forums. Sometime influencers need not be popular and advocacy can be leveraged from consumers who have a strong social network. Something similar was done by MTV in its ‘Elite Influencer Network Contest‘ where members were asked to promote their obsession for the MTV culture on their blogs, websites, social networks like Facebook, YouTube and through this MTV tried to find out the most influential individuals on social web. These contest winners will now participate in further upcoming events.

Advocacy leading to content consumption, curation and even creation

Advocacy programs can even be modelled to take consumers upto creation level on the ladder of engagement, which can be used to find your next set of evangelists. A good example of such a tactic is HP 31 days of Dragon contest which is a user generated contest lanched by the company for the promotion of its HP HDX dragon notebook. The company found 31 popular blogger evangelists/ websites who created their own User Generated Contests on their personal webpages. Thus the task of planning, designing and promoting the contest was taken up by the participating evangelist websites and involved taking the consumers across various engagement levels. Another example is walmart’s eleven moms community which has the popular mom bloggers blogging about money saving ways ( which is core to the brand value itself ) and the consumers interacting with them and sharing their own money saving tips etc.

Advocacy leading to product trial and purchase

Many of the cases we researched showed brands leveraging consumer and evangelist advocacy for product trial and purchase. The Indian gaming website zapak.com uses  a facebook application to give the users an option to recommend the game they are playing to their freinds on facebook and also embed it in your personal webpage. Similarly the cleaning products company ‘Method’ launched a campaign called ‘people against dirty‘ which aimed at finding product appreciators who were ready to share their experience of the brand with others.

Advocacy leading to content collaboration

Now the reason I took up this point last is because I am still not sure about this, but product help communities like that of Intuit can qualify as advocacy programs. This is because if somebody is ready to help you out with a solution on a product help community then that means a) he has already tried the product b) He finds the product interesting enough to make him participate on the community c) if in the future any other problem crops up then there would surely be more people like him to help you out with that product. If such a thing qualifies as advocacy then product help programs can be instrumental in collaborating efforts around a particular problem.

Social Media in India: International Software and services company review

Posted on 20. Nov, 2009 by Achintya in Reviews

Software and Services companies have been believed to be making good use of social media for their marketing and promotion. Our research on the Fortune 50 international companies in India not just confirms this but also shows that these companies have made special efforts for Indian customers. Hence in this blog we will review the social media efforts of these Fortune 50 international companies in India.

The Fortune 2009 lists IBM (#28) and Microsoft (#49) among the top 50 in the software and services sector. Interestingly both the companies have customized social platforms for the Indian consumers. While Microsoft targets the Indian social web with Mera Windows, IBM has an India Page for IBM Smartmarket to target the Indian SMBs (small and medium businesses)

IBM Smartmarket

IBM smartmarket is basically a social commerce platform targeted to SMBs. This platform is specifically designed as a one stop shop where SMBs can find vendors for their required software products, thereby reducing their research and purchasing costs. IBM smartmarket has an India website customised for Indian vendors and clients. Here members can research available software in their industry area and read product information, reviews, ratings etc. Members can also get their queries answered by other members regarding the specific product, compare different software, rate software products and write their own review. Smartmarket also gives access to online product trial and purchase. Moreover there are expert blogs, community forums and a separate blog for it’’s India webpage called India Insights to learn and discuss. That said however there are certain questions which still are to be figured out, like how do these vendors get on the social commerce platform? How does IBM make money from Smartmarket ( if it does) ?? How does one software gets listed above others in a search? (it does not appear to be sorted in terms of ratings)\n\nOverall IBM smartmarket is actually a smart move to engage SMBs on IBM platform. However a social commerce platform can be more than this. For example Xbox XNA community allows third party developers to develop applications which can then be curated and purchased by the community. Wishpot allows users to create their wishlists of the products they want to purchase in future and others can collaborate to suggest the best offers, places, products and prices etc.

Mera Windows

Mera Windows is Microsoft India’s effort in the social web. Presently this community is very actively being used for the promotion of Windows 7 in India. The community platform holds many interesting features like a blogroll of expert blogs and news feed which aggregates the latest updates on the homepage. There are also discussion forums with discussion ranging from ”12 common Windows 7 problems solved” to ”how healthy is your PC battery”.  The community recently hosted the launch party of Windows 7 where all community members were given free invites and a chance to get the RC version of Windows 7 uploaded on their notebooks, which is a good example to leveraging an existing social community platform for promoting an offline launch cum trial event.

We can see Microsoft India is on the right path and has made some right decisions in its social business strategies. However a community of Microsoft Windows in a market as important as India deserves more engagement from the consumers. Microsoft has already set many benchmark examples in social media like Microsoft Dynamics Community for an SMB network and Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP) award for an advocacy program and hence in the near future we would like to see similar efforts from them for the Indian social web.

Social Media in India report: International automobile company review

Posted on 20. Oct, 2009 by Achintya in Reviews

This is the third post in a series where we will review performance of companies (and brands) using Social media to connect with Indian customers. As mentioned in our methodology post on soon to be published Social Media in India report, we are reviewing top Indian and International companies from the Forbes list for their presence in social media in India.  In the previous posts we had reviewed some of the Indian companies” ( like the Tatas, Airtel, Reliance Communications) presence on Social Media. In this post we will be reviewing the presence of some international automobile companies on the Indian social web.

The Forbes 2009 list features 4 automobile companies in the top 50 having an Indian market presence. They are Toyota (3), Volkswagen (15) , Mitsubishi ( actually the list ranks Mitsubishi UFJ Financial as the 21st company but since the parent company also has an Indian presence in the car & SUV market, we have considered it for this review ) and Honda (39). Out of these, we found Toyota & Mitsubishi doing something interesting specific to Indian consumers.

We begin with Toyota, the Forbes 2009 rank 3 company. The international automobile major has an Indian presence through cars like Corolla, Camry, Innova, Altis, Land Cruiser, Prado etc. Owing to its global positioning as a company that is concerned about environment, the company has partnered with NDTV ( an Indian news and media company ) for its ”Green Future” web platform. ”Green Future” is essentially an environment news platform which features many influencers speaking on environmental causes and supporting various campaigns conducted by the company and the news channel. However, this social platform is more than just environment gyan. It has many social applications which takes its readers across multiple levels of social engagement. Readers can read news, watch videos, post comments and opinions on various topics. There is also an ideation platform called ”24-hour green ideas” where members can pool in their creative ideas for an eco-friendly future. Moreover, there is a separate kid’’s platform called ”Kid’’s club” where the next generation is being guided to a cleaner environment by engaging them to share their stories and thoughts, poems etc on environment.

Overall, Toyota’’s ”Green Future” is an interesting social website built around a noble cause which the company has known to support for years. It is an impressive start as an environment news channels that features many influencers and celebrities talking about a greener earth. Perhaps in the future they would like to have these celebrities blogging and interacting with readers- something on the lines of Huffington Post- or adopt a user generated environment news aggregation model like ngopost.org. In the future we would also like to see Toyota leveraging its user engagement to promote trial and purchase of its products also.

Moving on to Mitsubishi; the Forbes international rank 21 company has presence in India through cars like Lancer, Cedia, Pajero, Montero, Outlander. The Japanese auto major recently launched an online reality contest called The Great Driving Challenge for the promotion of Mitsubishi Cedia. Contestants were shortlisted on the basis of votes from visitors/members who rated the contestant based on their testimonials, profile and uploaded online content like blogs, photos, videos etc. The final 3 contestants were then sponsored for a paid road trip on Mitsubishi Cedia sports car on their chosen circuit where they were supposed to post blogs, photos and videos based on their trip experiences. Finally the winner was decided on the number of posts, content quality, user votes and number of profile visitors.

The Great Driving challenge is a good example of an online reality show. It effectively integrates the product marketing with the social media campaign. Unfortunately many such campaigns die out after some time and so does the buzz around it. If such social media campaigns are kept alive all round the year, we think it would add a lot more value to the company. Young and Free Alberta is one such example of an online reality contest where members & participants are kept engaged all round the year.

Summarizing, we can see international car companies making special efforts in social media for Indian customers. This shows that these companies recognize the importance of engaging customers around their product or social object (lifestyle, passion or cause) as well as customizing social media campaigns for target markets. In the near future we would like to see companies like Toyota and others, which have excellent social platforms and applications for international markets ( e.g. togethergreen.org) , bringing their Indian counterparts to an equivalent level.

Social Media in India: Methodology and Scope

Posted on 07. Oct, 2009 by Achintya in Reviews

With the advent of social technologies grabbing marketing spaces, many brands can be seen embracing social media for adding value to themselves. Dell, IBM and Starbucks are some of the best examples of companies having a majority of their marketing efforts directed towards social media. In India you can see Tata, Airtel, Reliance BIG, HT Media, Toyota and many more doing the same. Hence we at 20:20 social thought it would be interesting to see how different companies are performing in social media specifically in the Indian Ecosystem and document it in form of a report.

In this report we want to look at 2 sets of companies; International companies having a separate social media presence specifically for India and Indian Companies again having a social media presence in their parent country; and rank them on the basis of their presence and engagement. This is to ensure that Companies are compared on an equal platform since most of the international companies have been using social technologies for quite some time while many Indian Companies have recently realized their importance. Also as we want this set of companies to be internationally recognized, we have chosen Forbes top 50 International companies having Indian presence and top 50 Indian companies in Forbes 2000 list as our sample space.

Moreover we will limit our scope of research to either company websites building conversations around a social object like a lifestyle, passion or cause bigger than the company itself. ( eg: Tata tea for jaagore.com) or Community platforms like Sunsilk gang of girls or social applications like Tata Indica Xeta Shootouts.\n\nHaving said that we will particularly look into four things to rate Companies” social media engagement and presence :

1) Social Object: Since communities and conversations don”t happen in vacuum, they coalesce around a social object which can be a lifestyle, cause or passion. We will see whether the company’’s website/ community platform which is meant to engage users or utilize their social behaviour is built around any social object ( See our position paper)

2) Infrastructure for engagement: Brands/ companies can engage their consumers on various levels of engagement like content consumption, curation, creating, collaboration, trial, purchase and recommendation. We will see whether the company’’s social platform has infrastructure to engage consumers on these levels of engagement.

3) Interactions on the social platforms: Once seen that the company has infrastructure to engage consumers, the next logical step would be to see that till what levels on the ladder of engagement ( consume, curate, create content etc.) do the consumers actually interact.  We will be rate companies on their company to user and user to user conversations in social media.

4) Multiple presence: Many companies like Tata, Reliance, Airtel etc have multiple social media platforms and we think that some credit must be given to this.

Also as there is a scope that many outliers who do not appear on the Forbes list might be doing something exceptional worth deserving a mention and for this report we will also look for some such benchmark examples.

However we would like to keep the scope and parameters open to readers for discussions. Any comments, suggestions are most welcome

Social Media in India: Airtel Review

Posted on 29. Sep, 2009 by Achintya in Reviews

This is the second post in a series where we will review performance of companies (and brands) using Social media to connect with Indian customers. In the last post we had reviewed the Indian conglomerate Tata. For this post we will review the Indian telecom major Airtel. Airtel is currently the biggest telecom operator in India in terms of annual revenue and operates in businesses like mobiles networks, home phones, broadband, internet and conferencing services etc.

The most prominent presence of Airtel in social media can be seen through their community platform built around the Airtel Delhi Half Marathon (ADHM), which is to be held on 1st of November this year. The first interesting thing you will notice on the website is the runner’’s wall, where all ADHM community members can share their running stories. The platform also encourages discussions on the joy of running and you will see hundreds of registered ADHM community users discussing their running sagas on the discussion forums.With topics ranging from ”whom would you like to run with?” to ”how to improve your running stamina” the ADMH discussions not only keep the participants engaged but also encourage those who are still not sure of their participation. Interestingly, ADHM community also gets running and health experts to participate in the discussions, who impart valuable health and fitness related information to the community members.

Unfortunately, in the past it has been seen that such community platforms promoting a mega offline event die out post event completion. However we see ADHM community as a social platform designed around the passion for running and has the potential of retaining itself by building more user engaging models and applications.

Other than the ADHM, Airtel is also using social media to promote its multi-million dollar deal with Manchester United football club which would give access to ManU’’s football content over their mobile phones. The Airtel-ManU web platform takes you to a virtual Old Trafford stadium where you can book seats beside your friends and get virtual props. Interestingly, there is a well designed reward and recognition system which ranks you on your engagement on the platform. There are points associated with downloading ringtones, wallpapers and inviting/recommending friends and the highest grosser gets free tickets to Old Trafford. We feel that this platform is built around a very strong social object (lifestyle, passion, cause) which is the passion for Soccer and can be used to interact with users on multiple levels of engagement. Royal Challenge whisky is doing something similar for cricket in social media and we would await Airtel’’s similar feat for Indian soccer fans.

Finally, we talk about Airtel broadband services interactive social platform built around the ”fast life” lifestyle where impatience is considered the new way of living for the youth. It features some youth icons namely ”The Impatient Ones” with their blogs, favourite videos and tweet updates. The channel also holds contest for selecting the next ”impatient one”. Hence we see a platform where users are getting to interact with their icons and also getting a chance to become like them. In the near future we see this community using many other social applications to build more conversations around ”an impatient way of life” to engage their target audience.

Summarizing, it can be said that the Indian telecom major Airtel is making a significant online social media presence. It has chosen some very strong social objects (lifestyle, passion, cause) in all of its platforms like soccer, running & adventure, fast life etc. Hence they have got very good foundations to build  rewarding communities along their brand. It is just a matter of time that we see them reaching highers levels of engagement for the users

Social Media in India: Tata review

Posted on 19. Sep, 2009 by Achintya in Reviews

This is the first post in a series where we will review performance of companies (and brands) using Social media to connect with Indian customers.Here we will review a large Indian conglomerate – The Tata group. This 140 year old group of companies is currently headed by Ratan Tata and operates in a large number of businesses like software services, energy, materials to products like cars, watches, beverages etc. The group was lately in the news for acquisition of Cores, Jaguar & Land Rover and for launching the world’s most economic car – Tata Nano.  We researched the umbrella of Tata companies and found Tata Motors (especially Tata Nano), TCS, Tata Docomo, Tata Tea and Fast Track watches worth discussion in this review.

We begin with Jaagore.com ( meaning ”be awakened” in Hindi ) , the Tata tea and Janaagraha (a non profit NGO) initiative for awakening Indian youth. Jaagore.com ‘one billion votes’ is an online voter registration campaign with the mission of generating one billion votes in India. Launched around the time of 2009 general assembly polls in India, it created a lot of media hype. This social platform gave all the necessary information to the user on how to become a registered Indian voter along with registration status. Moreover the ‘awakened’ were encouraged to recommend the initiative to their friends and invite them to join the movement. The Jaagore volunteers took the initiative offline and went to colleges to talk about the campaign and get people registered on Jaagore.com. No doubt in the first year itself it had more than 600,000 registrations. Post the Jaagore success during the elections; Tata tea and Janaagraha have relaunched the Jaagore campaign to eradicate corruption in India. They are currently using the same web platform to publicize their TV advertisement and get members to pledge against corruption. Awakening the Indian citizen and making them aware are clearly an excellent choice of a social object for Tata tea. Also the current Jaagore platform shows excellent member engagement around content consumption, collaboration and recommendation. In the near future, we would like to see engagement building around other steps of the ladder of engagement like content curation, creation, trial, purchase etc.

A substantial social media presence can be seen for Fastrack, the Titan (Tata group Watch Company) brand targeting Indian youth. Impressively, although the company has a 140 year old brand heritage, yet it has a fresh and youthful appearance on social media for Fastrack. What we like most about their facebook and twitter outposts is that they are more than just official pages and we see them brimming with activity. There are genuine interactions on the platform and the brand participating in them, which is something you rarely see. For example, on Fastrack’s facebook page you see more than 90 brand to user and user to user interactions in the last 15 days, which is commendable given that most companies just post basic content without initiating any interactions. With 800 tweets and 7,500 facebook fans, Fastrack is making great use of social media. The Fastrack official website fastrack.in is a cool community platform which entertains users through comic strips, wall discussions, avatars and chill zone. What we love most is that it is concerned whether your internet connection is ‘Go-Kart’ or ‘Bullock-Kart’ ( broadband or dial-up in fastrack.in lingo). In the future, we would like to see more social applications that aid youth interactions to build a vibrant fastrack community.

Another Tata brand using social media for its marketing applications is Tata Docomo. The Indian conglomerate and the Japanese telecom major JV is making some news in the social web. Their web presence is limited to Twitter, Facebook, Orkut, Bigadda and Youtube with no single dedicated community. However, the interaction levels are high and users feel a ‘personal’ touch in communications.

Other Tata entities like Tata Nano, TCS (Tata Consultancy Services: Tata’s software services arm) and Tata Motors also have a huge fan base on Facebook, Youtube and Twitter. Similarly Tata Indicom interacts with consumers through its coporate blog.  We expect that these Tata companies will graduate from outpost pages and corporate blogs to cohesive communities built around strong social objects.

Summarizing, here is a conglomerate that has let each of its brands nurture its own social media identity. Most of their social media outposts are brimming with two way interactions. Not only have they touched civic social causes with jaagore.com but they have also developed youth centric engagement platforms like fastrack.in. In the future, Tata Group can bring people together around larger than life social objects to form strong communities with a shared purpose not only because that would mean more economic rewards for Tata but also because big corporations like them can do it with their resources and brand power.