Social Media Club Mumbai

Social Media and Crime from SMC Mumbai on Vimeo.

Cross posted from Superchooha blog by Ralston D’ Souza.

It is very difficult to track the beginning or the end of Social media accurately. It is a vast realm that is changing at all times. The first known socially interactive platform in the world emerged in 1979. It was called Usenet. Its inventors were two computer scientists by the names of Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis. In the interim of 1979 and the early 90’s, there were a number of platforms like BBS (Bulletin Board Systems) which were in some small abstract way an equivalent of social media today. IRC better known as Internet Relay Chat was in one sense the father of modern day chat platforms we have on almost every social networking website and mail client today. IRC’s were first used in order to share links and generally stay in touch. Also, ‘Leetspeak’ began at this juncture.

The comparison between modern Social media platforms and Usenet is based on the premise that both of them united people and contained the foremost essence or the crux of any social media platform: interaction emerging from common interests.

Over the years, marketing has adapted to social media and the fact that there is an increase in the presence of more and more people coming online and interacting. It is human tendency to trust people in a new medium of interaction. Cases in point being social media platforms like face book and twitter when they first emerged. Although niche, social media platforms are greater influencers as compared to television today because people get the missing dimension of interactivity which a TVC or a print commercial cannot give. Secondly, the user can choose who to interact with.

The clue train manifesto is a set of 95 theses regarding new market places. These theses are a call to action for businesses in the new market place. An instance of one such new market place is the internet. The manifesto goes on to say, that ‘a powerful global conversation has begun. Owing to a marketplace, which is more informed, and share relevant knowledge at a blinding speed, the stress is on having a conversation with people. So the more informed you are, the better the relevance and hence, better will be the quality of your conversations.

In social media, there is one paradigm of engagement only:

Attention ——> Relevance
As a newcomer to social media, I have realized that the online audience is smart. More so, they seek relevance. “What’s in it for me?” is generally their first and foremost question before they join your community or interact with you. Taking a patronizing tone with an audience this sharp, is the equivalent of social media suicide.

Although not all of them have what Daniel Goleman calls EQ, they can find out if the information is accurate, just in case you are taking the high ground by Pfaffing.

Why is it ‘Social’ Media?
The word ‘Social’ in its most basic sense refers to the interaction of organisms with other organisms and to their collective co-existence, irrespective of whether they are aware of it or not, and irrespective of whether the interaction is voluntary or involuntary. Social Media is media meant to be disseminated through the use of the internet. Now this broad definition of Social Media can include Microblogging, Social networking (which is distinct from Social media), Social bookmarking, Blogging, Social network aggregation, Photo/video sharing and so much more.

Heraclitus wrote once, that you cannot enter the same river twice. For a beginner in Social Media all I can say is that there are many aspects of it that I have not completely discovered as yet and by the time I discover them, the river is not quite the same anymore!

Name – Sanjay Mehta

Designation- Jt. CEO

Organization- Social Wavelength

How important do you think Social Media platforms are? Or do you think this is just a passing fad?

They are big. They are here to stay. Not a passing fad by any chance. Social Media enables people to do, what they naturally like to do, e.g. staying in touch, making new friends, belonging to groups, getting validation, etc. When something helps you do, what you anyway want to do, its here to stay!

Do you see an ROI from the medium? How would you define it?

ROI for sure, if we are talking of “Risk of Inaction”! Then again, what is the ROI of the telephone? Of the accountant? Social media is part of the business ecosystem, and it recovers money at end of the day, via various contributions or alternately cost savings, that it enables. In some cases, it can drive transactions as well, and those are the cases, where ROI is faster.

What challenges do you think people/brands/organizations will face in accepting this medium?

The biggest challenge is one that is faced by all new breakthroughs in technology related space. Waiting for others to do it first. Waiting for case studies to happen. Waiting for later. Waiting for references. In short.. waiting!

Then, when it gets to the point where competition or a senior in the company drives one to the space, then there are mistakes made. Because decisions are made hurriedly. This will then see, knee-jerks that don’t work.

Obsession with the way things used to happen, is another challenge. Benchmarking with different types of traditional media is a challenge, when these are not comparable.

by

Ankita Gaba

The real challenge for social media just like for other digital media advertising or marketing initiatives is the ROI. But the mistake made by Banner s/SEM or SEO per se has been the metrics used for what was termed as ‘value’. ‘Clicks’ have been both the boon and bane for the digital medium and has possibly been the most measured and over measured metric. The question that marketers in the real world have always been asking is what value does that click bring to my brand, sales and business at the end of the day?

The same rule has started to apply to Social Media as well. While the Search marketers went from clicks to leads to conversions in search of value and some have even gone to measuring the lifetime value of those converted social media which is still in its infancy has to still define its value or ROI.

In a recent conversation with one of our clients I realized that the clients want to see a metric they understand. They want to put Digital and social media on the same platter as TV, Print and others and serve that to their management. The metrics he came up with were brand awareness, brand salience and lead generation. He asked can you tell me how can social media deliver these 3 in what way, to how many people, across how many geographies and for how many months?

This question made me realize that we need to start talking about social media marketing and its deliverables in real world metrics and not clicks, conversations, followers or fans. While these numbers are indicative they by no means are a true measure of the success of a campaign. I believe sooner or later someone has to bridge the real world and the virtual world divide in terms of understanding of value and then and only then would the real advertisers and marketers jump on to the social media bandwagon in a big way.

Cross Posted from {enygmatic}

I’ve had an interesting back and forth debate with Sanjay Mehta (@sm63) on twitter on what lessons we ought to learn from the recent Nestle social media debacle. For those who don’t know the story behind the Nestle debacle, here is a brief snapshot of what I have understood from various online accounts:

Greenpeace bought out a video that showed the effect that palm oil cultivation (a key ingredient in the chocolates that Nestle makes) has on the ecology and how it’s leading to a shrinking habitat for the orangutan. The video, which was up on YouTube, showed the KitKat logo (a Nestle product), with words “Killer” instead of KitKat. Nestle, citing trademark violations, had the video pulled down from YouTube. Greenpeace then turned to its army of twitter followers to help in hosting the video elsewhere on the Internet and the video went viral. All this also attracted attention to Nestle’s Facebook Fan Page, where Greenpeace activists turned “fans” were already launching an assault on the brand. A number of people started posting comments using the morphed logo with the words “Killer” as their avatar. This led to Nestle putting out a request to people to stop “violating” their trademark. A couple of high handed comments from the Nestle people managing the fan page ensured that this snowballed into an all out assault. People joined up as “fans” just to put in their 10 cents on how much they hated Nestle and how Nestle shouldn’t have asserted their right to their trademark. In the end it seems that Nestle has one big great PR screw-up in the hands. (more…)

Name – Gaurav Sharma

Designation- Business Head, C2W Digital

Organization – C2W Digital, the digital arm of contests2win

How important do you think Social Media platforms are? Or do you think this is just a passing fad?

Social Media is just as important as any other medium, if not more and in fact deserves much more detailing and thinking for a branded campaign. I have always likened social media marketing on the part of a brand as entering the ‘home’ of a user and talking to him / her unlike any other medium. This is why it is so important how a brand says, “Hello, may I come in?” to the user. It is definitely not a fad like a few brand owners would like to believe.

Do you see an ROI from the medium? How would you define it?

Yes, of course there is visible ROI in the medium but it takes time to happen. One cannot view the medium as a lead generation catchment area or just the ‘number of conversations’ generated around the brand. It is much more than that. It is about organic spread amongst the community. Let me illustrate this with an example – we had released the ‘Happy Diwali’ app on FB for Cadbury last year in which users could gift virtual chocolates to their friends. More than 215000 chocolates have been gifted since the app was launched and all this without the brand having to spend any money to advertise and ‘push’ the app.

What challenges do you think people/brands/organizations will face in accepting this medium?

Knowing what the medium can and cannot do is the biggest challenge according to me. Most brand owners feel that if they do a month long campaign on SM, they should see some visible results, whereas for a social movement  to happen, it takes more time than that. The point I am trying to make is that you need to sustain your act on SM and can’t do it to just to show it in the annual review presentation to highlight you did something on SM.