Social Media Week: "Great Content Comes from Revealing your Best Self to Your Best Audience": Ashwanth Ganesan

Exactly what will social media do for marketers? Is it foolish to pay for your product's publicity in this age when people's recommendations make much more sense? Can brands not make viral videos and get the popularity it deserves? These and more questions were discussed and answered in the Social Media Week, Mumbai.

Ganesan explained that brands have moved through different stages. It started from brands just being in the dotcom sphere which was the era of the website. Then came the brand page on Facebook, which was the era of the fan. This stage signified engagement and used paid social media or display. The current stage is the era of the subscriber - where the brand's content speaks the loudest. The focus during this stage is on advocacy because people come to the brand's site to specifically consume content.

According to Ganesan, many marketers have misunderstood what 'like' on Facebook really means. It is not about pushing content or even products at them, he said. His data also showed that 80 per cent of word-of-mouth publicity happens offline, and for every one person who shares a TVC or video online, there would be four who will just talk about it but not share.

Coke used a marketing mix that had 80 per cent content and 20 per cent talk about products. Ganesan suggested that if that 20 per cent has to work, it must be paid. He explained that a brand must recognize the one thing it is best at and then create content accordingly. At the same time, just because there is a website, it should not take away the attention from other marketing channels. The mix is an important part of any marketing initiative.

"Great content comes from revealing your best self to your best audience," felt Ganesan. He used the example of the United States Department of the Interior. They have recognised that followers may not want to read about legislation and rules. And therefore, all they post on popular micro-blogging site, Twitter, are photographs from the national parks in their jurisdiction.

Coke and Red Bull made up the next part of Ganesan's presentation. He explained how these two brands had recognized the USPs. While Coke believes in 'opening happiness' and Red Bull 'gives you wings', their strength lies in packaging and distribution (for Coke) and live events (for Red Bull). Coke's use of empty cans or bottle caps to connect with the audience and Red Bull's mass events like Flugtag and the Jump from Space, are great examples of how to use your strength to lead to consumption increase.

There are certain problems in the social media marketing that brands use currently, according to Ganesan. He questioned the 'sacrosanctness' of the brand online. Using the example of recent Oreo campaigns he showed how consumers as well as brand managers sometimes can benefit from letting the product not be the main star of a campaign. According to him, the brand has to be flexible and adaptive to changes. Ganesan also threw some light on topics of measuring engagement and attribution for marketers.

Finally, he gave a simple four scale model. The easy and cheap way of marketing uses explosive virality. This is what everyone wants, but is a thing of pure luck, since virality cannot be created. Secondly, the cheap but hard way is to use internal alignment which uses stakeholders and measures brand flexibility. The third scale is easy but expensive. Though it gives marketers reach, it is done through paid and targeted media channels across all social platforms. The best method, however, according to Ganesan is the fourth and final model. This model - social media marketing - is what marketers are and should be trying to crack right now.