afaqs! Campus: Making sense of social media and using it better

afaqs! Campus organised a Basic Social Media Marketing Workshop at Country Inn, Gurgaon, on January 20.

The workshop was conducted by Shubhomoy Sengupta, digital marketing consultant, and Girish Mahajan, co-founder and director, strategy, Webitude. The workshop was attended by participants from companies such as American Express, Comviva, Child Rights and You (CRY), Idea Cellular, Religare, Turner International, BBC, Honeywell, Equus Red Cell, and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), who were appraised on how social media can be harnessed better for the benefit of a brand.

"Consumers don't visit brand sites and even if they do, they do it for deals and bargains, and not necessarily to know the brand better," he said. Referring to Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs theory, he said people go online mainly to gain self-esteem, confidence, and respect of others.

The trainer cited multiple examples of social media usage in Brazil. According to him, Brazil is quite similar to India in terms of the social psyche and the multitude of content generated by online users. Giving examples from a research done in Brazil, Sengupta enumerated that 13 per cent of online users shared someone else's story, whereas 87 per cent shared their own stories on social networks. As a piece of advice for brands, he said, "It's not about the stories we tell about ourselves, it's about the stories we allow our consumers to tell about themselves."

Commenting on how social media should be used to a brand's benefit, he highlighted that social media is device-agnostic. A brand should leverage existing platforms and should not create new ones. Social media, he added, should unify and segment, and not fragment consumers. He emphasised that a brand should worry more about engagement with consumers than ownership and control. Giving some handy tips on how a brand should use the social network to its benefit, Sengupta highlighted that it should create and enable the content on the social networks on a 365-day, always-in-always-on basis. Regular moderation ensures that all conversations taking place around it are heard.

Setting the pace of the workshop, Mahajan spoke about setting the correct social media strategy. Highlighting various measurement tools like Radian-6, Alterian SM2, Google Analytics, Social Mention, Icerocket and Hootsuite, Mahajan highlighted what to search (brand name, category, product name, competitor and employee activities), and where to search (video sharing sites, newsgroups, blogs, Facebook, forums, micro-blogs and product postings).

Inferring insights from the analysis of social media, a brand should check how people feel about it, the words they associate while talking about it, what drives conversations, and the emerging trends and influencers, he added.

After explaining the social media strategy, he gave the participants a small exercise, wherein they were asked to take a brand or business of their choice and list the keyword relevant to it, and why the chosen keyword was most relevant.

Explaining how to convert the buzz generated in the social media into actionable insights, Mahajan described a grid through which company activities could be divided into quadrants based on buzz created and sentiment generated.

Giving the example of Best Buy's twelpforce, he explained how the initiative helps fulfil the brand promise, educates customers about technology and its integration with day-to-day life, decreases customer's technology-related stress, and drives online product discussions.

Talking about crisis management and how to tackle negativity, Mahajan said that a brand or company facing a crisis should respond quickly, tell the truth, reach out to customers and take every negative comment seriously. He suggested that the company should share the situation internally, make a note and give a face to the organisation. In support, he gave the example of a particular crisis that FedEx faced, and how the company handled it.

Explaining the parameters of measurement, Mahajan highlighted awareness and reach, relationship building, advocacy and conversions. While detailing awareness and reach of a social network, he explained Facebook advertising in depth, and explained jargons like cost per reach, cost per fan and the viral factor.