afaqs! Campus: Demystifying social media

afaqs! Campus organised the Basic Social Media Marketing workshop at the Le Sutra Hotel, Mumbai. The sessions were conducted by Nimesh Shah and Sandhya Sadanand Gupta of Windchimes Communications.

The workshop on the basics of social media marketing and how it can be leveraged by brands to boost a product or service saw participants from various organisations such as Madison, NOmads, IDBI and Shemaroo, amongst others.

The workshop attempted to demystify social media and ensure that brands gain the most out of it. It was kicked off by Shah, who explained that social media is all about social interaction, clubbed with technology. Giving out some statistics on growth of social media, Shah said, "The '90s was all about browsing, which changed to search in the next decade; this has further transformed into discovery. The growth of social media can be judged by the fact that social media has overtaken pornography as the favourite online activity. Over 80 per cent of the companies use social media at some stage or the other to recruit and 50 per cent of internet users have now started accessing the net through their mobile handsets."

He further explained how the process of building brands has changed after the evolution of the social media phenomenon. He said, "Brand building earlier constituted of three major elements - creating awareness about the product or service, developing consideration about the product wherein the consumer may think of whether or not to buy or use a particular product, and finally conversion, where the consumer buys the product. Now, with the advent of social media, these steps have been altered and an additional step has been introduced between the awareness and consideration stage. That is engagement."

He summed up the mantras for success on social media, saying that the brands should create value for the community, allow users to generate content to facilitate conversations, and seek user participation or involvement to get more stickiness.

Gupta said, "The value proposition for brands with the usage of social media is that they now have an opportunity to directly communicate with the consumer. Also, social media can now be used as a platform to get relevant feedback and for customer relationship management."

Shah and Gupta then described the various social media platforms available for a brand. Gupta specified that each platform has a different set of values and identity, and the brand should behave and act according to that particular set of values to ensure that it gets positive outcome.

Describing Facebook, the most popular social media platform that brands can leverage, Shah averred that there are numerous ways brands can design successful social media plans to use the platform. She said, "Facebook started out as a platform for individuals to connect. But that has changed as brands have now realised that they can get a lot out of it if used optimally. Brands can use Facebook to raise awareness about the product and propagate brand philosophy. It can aid business as a great source of lead generation and can drive online transactions. Also, it serves as a great platform for feedback collection."

Throwing light on the Facebook Insights tab, Gupta said that the platform now gives various parameters to judge the performance of a brand. "Now, we can measure the success of a particular page or post on the basis of the number of likes, the total number of people exposed to the page through the entire network and the total reach potential. Brands can now study reaction and results of content. On the basis of this, they can alter communication strategy."

Gupta added that the newly introduced format of the popular social networking site now offers more for brands as it enables them to extend their offline or other digital campaigns, trace their legacy and use it as an effective repository of feedback.

Explaining about Twitter, Shah said that brands can use their Twitter profiles as a platform to develop thought leadership, a medium to connect with their target audience, a tool for dissemination of news and updates about the product and services, and a tool to collect feedback and foster customer relation. He said, "The brand's Twitter page should be a true reflection of its personality and philosophy. Only then will brands be able to engage consumers on a sustainable level."

Coming on to YouTube, Gupta explained that visual content results in more interaction than text. "Being one of the top five search engines, YouTube forms an important part of the social media marketing plan. It can be best used to showcase the brand and its employees to develop an instant connect with the consumer. It can also act as a repository for videos, which can be monetised, too," explained Shah.