Social Media Club Mumbai

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.

Cross posted from the Superchooha blog

Someone off late showed some interest in my friend. My advise to her was of course Google him. To her surprise [not mine], within minutes she knew a lot about him. Let’s take the very talented and the lady’s man Mayur Makheri as our case study here.

Ladies, he is also the Head, Social Media Strategy at Superchooha. Go follow him!

A Google search reveals this
http://www.google.co.in/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=DCM&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&q=mayur+makheri&start=10&sa=N

His Linkedin tells me

• His educational background. Good enough to tell the parents. [MBA kiya hai bhai]
• His work ex. Has a marketing background, will give a good sales pitch to the relatives
• Is currently at a leading position at Superchooha. That means access to credit cards with high credit limit.

His Twitter tells me

• Passionate about social media. Good!
• Is a happy go lucky person http://twitter.com/admads/status/10209106475
• Can get naughty http://twitter.com/admads/status/9972195493

His Facebook tells me

• http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3115098&id=502864919 Can be absolute nuts
• We have x friends in common, is not a fake id
• Is a Cancerian, perfect! [source- FB birthday]
• The photos tell me his friends love and adore him. Awww how cute
• And he loves traveling

He seems like a great guy to be with and take home. Woohoo! Who needs Shaadi.com? On these lines do check http://www.youpid.in/ an Indian initiative on a matrimonial social network. [We have no association with them whatsoever, just that it's a pretty cool concept]

Mr. Mayur Makheri you are socially [media] naked now. Go figure!

Cross posted from the Superchooha blog

I myself being a recent graduate (engineer) I know how frustrating it was to learn everything on my own. I think the Indian schools and colleges, right from primary to top IIMs and IITs are very very deficient right now in teaching our country’s students about the new media.

I have seen people coming out from IIMs with MBA in journalism and not knowing what Twitter or Blogs are. Suggesting some ideas from my own personal experience – please put in yours in the comments and work together to change this!

1. What should be the right age to expose a student to new media technologies?

I think it should start from 7-8th grade itself which is the usual age when kids come in touch with computers and internet. And if they can be moulded in the right way, some percentage of them will grow up to use Twitter and Facebook in the right way and not to send ‘fraandhsip requests’ to anon chicks

2. What are we doing about teaching in B schools and journalism schools? What about the top marketing schools like MICA?

Any thoughts or personal observations here? I find the results woefully low. Even small efforts like guest lectures are not being taken.

3. Can we implement an industry / government defined course?

We will have to find interested colleges. Professors. Some survey of readiness of students to this topic. Then work together to define goals and results of the course. Its timing etc.

Amit Klein, Product Manager at Directi is doing some pretty good stuff in this regards. teaching online monitoring and marketing at NMIMS, Mumbai and ISB, Hyderabad. He’s been experimenting a lot even using Google Wave for internal collaboration.

Wat do you guys think? Can this dream be realised?