Social Media
Table of Contents
Abstract ................................................................................................................................................................................... 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................................. 1 Current Service Providers ....................................................................................................................................................... 2 Early Adopters ........................................................................................................................................................................ 3 PwC‘s Potential Service Offerings ......................................................................................................................................... 3 Target Market in India ............................................................................................................................................................ 3 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................................................. 4
Abstract
At the end of 2006, Time magazine quoted Thomas Carlyle as saying that ―the history of the world is but the biography of great men.‖ They went on to explain that he believed that it is the few, the powerful and the famous who shape our collective destiny as a species. This theory took a serious beating last year. For the first time in history, technology has reached a point where everyone has a voice. This voice, articulated through social media, can be extremely powerful and can force individuals, companies and communities to change the way they behave. In 2007, results of the Edelman‘s 2007 Barometer (a survey of 3,100 opinion leaders that measures trust in institutions, companies, and sources of information in 18 countries) showed that employees or ‗someone like me‘ are trusted far more than any other group of people. Combined with the advent of social media tools like blogs, photograph and link-sharing sites, wikis and on-line forums and emergence of social media sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter has created a critical mass of users who are voicing their opinions online. The emergence of social media has caused a paradigm shift in the field of corporate marketing and communication: Companies are no longer in full control of how their products and services are being perceived. Social media participation has become a key to the new reality of corporate branding and communication.
Introduction
At its most basic sense, social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content. It's a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologues (one-to-many) into dialogues (many-to-many) and is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers. Social media has become extremely popular because it allows people to connect in the online world to form relationships for personal, political and business use. Businesses also refer to social media as usergenerated content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM). Social media is a blanket term used to describe any of several online platforms that utilize the technology of the internet to facilitate social interaction through written, visual, or audible communication. Examples of social media include blogging, podcasts, forums, online press releases, and social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. The use of social media as a marketing tool is quickly becoming prominent in the
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modern business world, and it can be an extremely effective way to promote products and services to a targeted audience. Websites function as a static billboard to promote your products, services, or ideas, but social media opens up dynamic dialogue with your audience, allowing for interaction and personal connection. Social media marketing has several advantages over traditional marketing strategies. Efficiency - Unlike many traditional marketing methods, social media marketing provides an instant connection to target audience. As soon as information is up on the internet, it immediately becomes easily available to a large number of people. By contrast, television or radio commercials can take weeks to produce, billboards take time to print and install, and postcards and mailers can take several days to travel through the postal service. Cost - Social media marketing is extremely cost-effective when compared to other marketing methods. Many social networking platforms charge little or no fee to register, allowing utilization of their services to interact with target audience without having to spend large amounts to do so. Effectiveness - Social media makes your information available to millions of people through the internet, but can also be used to reach very specific niches, ensuring that your marketing is catching the attention of people who will be interested in what you have to say. Listing your blog on directory websites allows people to find it by searching for specific subjects or causes. Social networking platforms allow you to join or create groups, inviting like-minded individuals to share dialogue with you about your products, services, or ideas. Achieving top rankings on search engines, which can be aided by building relationships through various forms of social media, helps to promote your site and your company or organization to readers who would otherwise be unaware if its existence. Personal Connection - Unlike most traditional marketing strategies, social media allows you to open up a conversation with your audience, allowing them to provide feedback and express their ideas and suggestions about your business. Customers who have a personal connection with your business and feel as though you care about their feelings and opinions are more likely to return to you when they need your services again. For organizations trying to promote an idea or cause, social media allows discussions with people, informing them about your cause and potentially changing minds.
Current Service Providers
ComScore (the global source of digital market intelligence) keeps a list of what it calls ―social networking‖ sites, but these include blogging platforms and other social media sites as well. While the audience for blogs is still showing healthy growth overall, Facebook stands out as the social gorilla taking share from not only other social networks but blogs and other social media as well. The Top Social Media Sites ranked by unique worldwide visitors as of November, 2008 are 1. Blogger (222 million) 2. Facebook (200 million) 3. MySpace (126 million) 4. Wordpress (114 million) 5. Windows Live Spaces (87 million) Service Providers organized by the categories of services 1. Blogs: Blogger, LiveJournal, Open Diary, TypePad, WordPress, Vox, ExpressionEngine
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2. Micro-blogging / Presence applications: Twitter, Plurk, Pownce, Jaiku 3. Social networking: Bebo, Facebook, SocialMediaV, LinkedIn, MySpace, Orkut, Skyrock, Hi5, Ning 4. Social bookmarking: Delicious, StumbleUpon, Stumpedia, Google Reader, CiteULike 5. Opinion sites: epinions, Yelp, mouthshut.com, City-data.com
Early Adopters
Some of the most successful social media campaigns are from the earliest adopters of the phenomenon. These include
Queensland Tourist Board - Last year Queensland tourist board proposed a publicity stunt involving one person inhabiting Hamilton Island for 6 months and implemented a social media to record their experience by blogging, taking photos & producing videos of their experience, whilst being paid $150,000! Launched in July 2008, this idea created such a buzz that over 35,000 applications had been submitted. It is estimated to have cost Queensland tourism board no more than $1 million but, with the excellent leverage of social media, experts estimate that the board received over $80 million worth of publicity from the competition. FedEx Customize Package campaign - It‘s not possible to send attachments on Facebook. Fedex saw an opportunity and developed an application with which users could send photos, links, and videos in a customizable FedEx package. The success of the campaign is highlighted by 100,000 installs in 72 hours by 300K users in 6 days, an uninstall rate less than 10 percent, and usage by people from over 200 countries. Dell’s Direct2Dell – Dell‘s social media campaign was directly responsible for creating $3 Million worth of direct business for the computing giant Dell by using the micro-blogging phenomenon Twitter to offer interesting and worthwhile contact and information for customers and users. In such a situation, the reported revenue would have been a complete profit! The cost of this marketing on Twitter is almost cost nothing, other than a little time and effort and thinking of what and when to post
Market in India
The penetration of social media marketing in India has been minimalistic thus far. On the demand side, companies/brands are showing willingness to engage with social media, and on the supply side, there are players who offer a gamut of social media services including social media monitoring, social media outreach, and community manager services.
PwC’s Potential Service Offerings
PwC can make the following service offerings: Help businesses understand the ins and outs of social media and online marketing Review existing online marketing and communications activities to measure effectiveness and cost-efficiency, while also identifying gaps and areas for improvement Help put together content strategies for the social media selected, and assist with the copywriting Look at the current online reputation of businesses amongst digital citizens and the social media landscape, and make suggestions on how to improve same on the Internet
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Put together a social media strategy that helps set businesses apart from their competition, while delivering results Provide insight into target market‘s online activities and preferences, and list key opportunities across various online marketing and social media channels Identify and define online marketing, communications and social media opportunities and tactics for a business‘ products and services that delivers on various business outcomes and needs Research key competitors‘ marketing materials and identify opportunities for differentiation and improvement Share PwC‘s wealth of experience and knowledge on creating and applying social media and online marketing strategies
Conclusion
This study documents the coming shift in the use of social media—from a helpful tool for a variety of communication needs, to an essential tool for customer engagement. As organizations invest in social media programs, incorporating this shift into the plans should be considered a high priority. It would be a mistake to assume that this shift toward customer-centric usage of social media is temporary. In fact, the shift toward customer engagement, and away from general communications, shows a more important role for social media use at organizations. As Peter Drucker said, ―The purpose of a business is to create a customer.‖
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