Home › ›

Key note by Santosh Desai, Social Media Report Edition 2 – Key Findings

by

9.40 am

Santosh Desai, MD and CEO, Future Brands is now holding the key note session.

There are two narratives in social media, one, its a thing its a phenomenon it has a place in our lives, but its at the periphery. The other narratives believes that this is the only periphery. These views are results of a big change in communications. The important thing when looking from a business point of view is to understand the nature of cascading changes that is unleashed by a changing phenomenon itself.

Media is powerful we all know that, with media human behavior changes. Business, marketing etc changes with television. When we come to social media we have to understand the new framework created by social media and its important to think how we do business within this framework.

We are moving from technologies of the body to the technologies of the mind.

Most of the ideas in the digital world is a platform idea rather than content ideas. Facebook and Twitter are platform free from limitations that exist in terms of power structure.

Brands have to configure a new model. They are traditionally scared of people. They distance consumers from themselves, they speak to them through PRs. In order to thrive in the new world brands must learn to become social beings, talk to people. It calls for changing the marketing doxa, what we think with, not what we think about.

It is easier said than done, but nothing that cannot be done.

10 am

The India Social Media Report 2010 Edition 2 is now released. We now have Karthik Nagarajan and Rajesh Lalwani sharing the insights from the report.

Research Methodology for the report: Online data collection from people who are using social media. A detailed questionnaire was hosted online to collect responses from brands/organizations and agencies/consulting firms. 73% of the respondents from brands/organizations state that they have been directly involved in managing their social media programme; Responses from those not involved were not considered. Research analysis has been done on a sample of 499 respondents coming from 3 segments –

  • Brands/organizations – 236
  • Agencies/Consultants (Agencies) – 208
  • Others (Primarily students) – 55

Statistical analysis of each question only takes into account valid responses to that specific question and not the total number of entries, thus allowing for a more precise evaluation.

Key observations:

  • Social media adoption is mainstream, last 2 years have contributed significantly
  • Majority of brands manage their social media engagements in-house; only 23% are outsourced
  • 78% social media programmes are B2C focused; B2B adoption at 41% is encouraging
  • Marketing, ORM and Lead Generation are the top 3 purposes for which brands/organizations are using social media in India
  • Facebook (90%) and Twitter (83%) are the most popular social media channels used by brands/ organizations. ‘LinkedIn Answers’ is the most preferred channel to answer brand/business questions
  • SMS GupShup enjoys highest awareness level among brands
  • 29% of brands/organizations have a strategic approach to social media 40% are in the transition phase
  • 3 out of 4 brands/ organizations have felt the need for a stated social media policy and currently have one, or are in process of putting one in place
  • 31% marketers are spending 10% of digital spends on social media; 11% are heavy spenders with more than 30% digital budgets going to social media
  • Driving critical mass? Social media is still appears a numbers game where participants/members/fans seem more important than awareness or impact on sentiment and opinion