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"My objective is to educate the market about how to use Twitter better": Taranjeet Singh, business head, Twitter
Brand managers, social entrepreneurs and media honchos discuss the power of digital media at 'Rise with Twitter', an event organised by the micro-blogging site in Mumbai.
Twitter has become an intrinsic part in the lives of the young generation. And hence, for brands and marketers, it is a platform that offers numerous opportunities. Sharing stories and tips of how Twitter can help brands, the micro-blogging site organised an event called 'Rise with Twitter' - a series of talks and panel discussions in Mumbai's Palladium Hotel on June 30, 2015.
Goswami further asked people to neither overestimate nor underestimate the digital platform. Because overestimating it would make people feel that only on the digital platform they have a say, while underestimating it would mean brands and people would not use digital at all and, therefore, stay away from the benefits of it.
The next session was moderated by Anant Goenka, columnist with The Indian Express, on 'Engaging a Mobile Audience'. The panel here consisted of business journalist, moderator and golf specialist Shaili Chopra; Manan Mehta, VP, marketing at Yash Raj Films, and Abu Mathen from the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). While MEA had become the first government ministry to have a Twitter account in 2009, Mathen laid emphasis on the rising importance of reporting in real time. Mehta too agreed and spoke about the role of the digital medium to talk to the mass influencers. Chopra, meanwhile, brought out the interesting topic of credibility and trust in user generated content.
Nitish Tipnis, director, marketing and sales, Nissan; Deepali Naair, chief marketing officer, Mahindra Holidays and Shivnath Thukral, group president, corporate branding & strategic initiatives at Essar Group, took to the dais next and discussed the role of Twitter in humanising brands. According to the trio, there is a need for a brand to come across as a 'person' and not as just another brand. While Tipnis shared his ideas about the strength of social media, he also lamented that most people do not think before commenting on social media, once again raising the discussion on trust-ability. According to Naair, engaging listeners with stories that are of interest to them is one way of humanising brands. Thukral touched upon the topic of tonality for brands and said that even a B2B brand can have a good conversation with its followers.
On the sidelines of the event, Twitter India's business head, Taranjeet Singh, also spoke about new experiences that the platform is bringing to users.
"Twitter has the best native form of advertising which makes it very compelling. So, the primary source of revenue is ad-sales. All this is targetted. When you sign up on Twitter, all you need is a telephone number or email ID. We monitor the kind of engagement, the kind of keywords you are searching on Twitter, the kind of news and brands you follow, so we exactly know what kind of content will engage you. This makes the targetting capabilities very strong," explained Singh.
He further said that Twitter is transitioning a lot of business in-house and building up teams. "We are trying to make Twitter more accessible from the sales and servicing perspective, to most clients," he further added. However, Singh is of the opinion that every brand is not using Twitter to its full potential.
"My primary objective right now is to educate the market about how to use the platform better. Different stages of education may be required depending on where they are. You can talk to a brand and create a human touch," added Singh.