2020 Social: Because Business is Social

Leadership in the time of Social Media

Posted on 30. Nov, 2009 by Gautam in Trends

(Cross posted from Gautam Ghosh on Organizations 2.0)

As organizations get more and more linked to external stakeholders, and their people become unofficial spokespeople on social networks like Twitter and Facebook and become marketers whether or not it is their role.

In such times – specially for organizations that are living in this hyper-linked worlds – what are the leadership behaviors that should be adopted.

Not surprisingly, these behaviors are not new. As I mentioned earlier, the tools of web 2.0 promise real organization development, and therefore, the behaviors of leaders must reflect the tenets of OD and these times.

They are:

1. Openness and Transparency – In the web 2.0 world there is little there is hidden, even vague terms of services cannot be changed without people noticing. A leader always has to remember and more importantly live this with the utmost sincerity – both within and externally
2. Conversation – It is not just about being transparent, leaders should also engage with employees and external stakeholders about what issues they face and if nothing else – they should acknowledge it, and if needed communicate what they are willing to do about it. Of course, sometimes legal and stockmarket requirements can require executives not to make forward looking statements. In earlier non-internet times I reckon this was known simply within the organization as MBWA

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

Community Platforms: What makes a good one?

Posted on 18. Nov, 2009 by karthick in Reports, Reviews

How do you categorise and cherry pick the best community platform? What would be the baseline that you would target? This the purpose of the post and what follow sis an analysis of what we have put together.

The breakdown.

First a definition is in order. What is a Community platform?

A community platform refers to the community platform “tool”. This is a tool (open source or otherwise) that enables people to build their own community networks or groups. So if I wanted to start a community for Kawasaki Bikes or Micheal Jackson dance moves club, what is the community platform tool that I should look into?

That’s my purpose in the series of blog posts that will follow. I plan to analyse a bunch of various tools, each bringing it’s unique features to the table, and then see what would broadly fit your (and well mine too) needs.

The Methodology of Analysis.

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.

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.

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.