1. Understanding Social Media and its benefits for Brands. By HarbinderNarula

2. What is Social Media? Social Media allows creation and exchange of knowledge & information to a large number of users online. This is through digital media i.e. Internet and mobile. It is online media where news, photos, videos and podcasts are made public using social media websites in a participative manner which may be made popular using invitations to the other users in the network. Social media is usually characterized by a communication thread such as reviews, comments that users leave on the social media leaving trail of what users think about the content.

3. What is in it for brands? For a brand, Social Media are all about online conversations that form a huge marketplace for brand engagement. Social media is about what your online community of supporters (may or may not be customers) can do to help your brand and business. These conversations of such individuals & their impact are similar to traditional Word-of-Mouth. Anyone who has an opinion and has access to internet is a player in this marketplace. This characteristic makes it a reputation management tool.

4. Impact on Purchase Funnel AIDA Model Marketing Consider: Interest & Desire Attention / Awareness Action / Purchase Use Form Opinion Talk User Generated Consideration Markets are moving from marketers control to consumer control

5. Scoble’s Social Media Starfish Robert Scoble, blogger & technology evangelist introduced a starfish model where he lists down media channels organized around conversion. Two marketing elements arise: Social Media involved diverse set of activities and secondly its effectiveness depends upon the right mix of traditional & social media channels that the audience is interested in.

6. Forms of Social Media: Social Networks Social Networks allow user to build pages online and then connect with friends to share content and communicate. These are built around general interests. Such social networks provide targeted advertising and the size of the base makes it important for some brands. Types of Social Networks: Personal Social Networks E.g. Facebook, Orkut, Bebo, Hi5 etc. Business Social Networks E.g. Linkedin, Plaxo etc. Example of Successful Campaign: Barrack Obama election campaign on Facebook Linkedin’s April fool campaign 2008 about Linkedin ending its free service

7. Forms of Social Media: Blogs BLOGS are online journals, where you write for people who are eager t consume your information and experiences in form of text, images and video. No matter what ypur motivation is, you have the right to create a blog. Blogs may be Personal blogs or Corporate blogs Many bloggers have huge fan following and are opinion leaders in their area of expertise and have immense influence over potential buyers. Blogs that are properly identified and used can be a great channel to tell your customers what you do and invite them to share their thoughts. It is simple and cost effective approach in social media.

8. Forms of Social Media: Micro-blogs Micro-blogs, as the name suggests, is a bite sized blogging with small amount of content updates online. With micro-blogs, user can post quick and short bursts of text & video. Others can comment on your post. Twitter is the most popular example of micro-blogging.

9. Forms of Social Media: Content Communities A Photo and a Video can engage the user in ways that are more effective than words. As a marketer, you could just showcase photos of your products or upload your video advertisement. More effective uses can be uploading videos of product demonstration, or a user reviewing your product or uploading an interesting video which users can forward to create a viral. Flikr & YouTube are classic examples

10. Forms of Social Media: Podcasting Audio / Video podcasting is different from an Audio / Video clip in terms of the way it is delivered. Podcast like blogging is created and uploaded and are automatically delivered to specific players such itunes, hand held devices and computers. Other users who may have subscribed to your channel will be notified and content will be downloaded to their device. Advertising in podcasts is known to be more effective than other online video.

11. Forms of Social Media: Forums & Groups Forums are around specific interests and topics where discussions can be started by the members on that specific interest area. These discussions are called a thread and are used for seeking advice, sharing news, discussing any specific topic etc. Such forums are generally moderated to maintain the sanity and avoid unsuitable comments or posts. Example of interest areas could be music, cars, mobile phones etc.

12. Why include Social Media in the Marketing Mix? Better engagement Traditional media is NOT bad and social media does not replace, but complements & extends the current efforts. But the nature of social media, specially with web 2.0, is such that it is interactive and can engage the user with the brand. Builds trust Similar to word of mouth, social media lets individuals connect and influence purchase decisions. Satisfied users can act as brand ambassadors. Market feedback Open feedback from the consumers using social media can give more insights than the information available through traditional channels. Negative feedback can dilute the work done through money spent using traditional media. Competition Sometimes it becomes imperative for the company to have presence on the digital media because its competitor is active on there.

13. How will Social Media benefit your brand? Reputation Management Generate exposure for business Create buzz for campaigns Find new customers & generate leads New Business partnerships Improve Search Engine visibility Competitive analysis

14. Implementing Social Media 1. Plan 2. Create 3. Publish 4. Promote 5. Manage 6. Analyze

16. Number of unique visitors

17. Tone of the comments

18. Search Engine Ranking

19. Message inclusions

20. Share of online discussions

21. Net positive comments

22. Click through

23. Views

24. Repeat visitors

25. Duration

26. Subscribe to feeds

27. RSS links

28. Relevance

29. Articles / Post readership

30. Comments to posts ration

31. Message recall & retention

32. Purchase consideration

33. Change in awareness

34. Change in attitude

35. Association with the brand

36. Likelihood to recommend to a friend

37. Visits to the store

38. Attendance at the event

39. Tell a friend

40. Buy the product