Outcome = IndiaSocial CaseBook 1 is in your hands

Download a copy and also win an HP Mini 110.

Here are 5 reasons why the IndiaSocial Casebook is a great resource for marketers and all those seeking to understand social media usage and impact in India:

• One stop shop for case studies, best practices around social media across verticals ranging from not-for-profit, B2B, lifestyle, telecom, travel, and more.
• Straight from the horse’s mouth- These case studies are in the voice of people behind these campaigns – they have been authored by brands, organisations and their partners themselves.
• Right questions to get the right answers – we didn’t make it any easy for the brands and organisations to be featured as a case study. An exhaustive set of questions on the objectives, reasoning, approach, impact and measures of success were built-in to ensure that the outcome was of very high quality. Many wrote to us how the form compelled them to ‘think through’ their own initiatives and understand the gaps.
• Experts Speak – we have tried to amalgamate diverse views from stakeholders across the spectrum of marketing communication in India.

Prema Sagar, Principal & Founder of Genesis Burson Marsteller speaks about how social media’s reach and speed of delivery impacts corporate social responsibility (CSR) and on the other end, leading branding consultant and Founder Brand-Comm, Ramanujam Sridhar talks about the challenges around clients experimenting with social media much like the radio in nineties without going the whole hog. Hari V Krishnan, Country Manager, LinkedIn India speaks about how companies are using social networks effectively to find and acquire new customers and Karthik Nagarajan, Head of Nielsen Online, India shares how discussion forums, message boards and review sites are the most underrated social segment.

There are many more interesting insights and perspectives by Anurag Batra, CEO, Exchange4Media (‘Why Social Media can be so unsocial’), Jessie Paul, CEO, Paul Writer (‘Communities Next Big Thing’), Toby Bloomberg (‘Social Media Strategy – 10 steps to create raving fans” and Faisal I. Farooqui, Founder & CEO, Mouthshut.com (‘Dear Brands, Let’s Get Social’).

• Know where you are – this resource will hopefully set you on your path of social media discovery; if you are already on one – it will enable you to benchmark your initiatives and if you are already a pioneer – it will hopefully inspire you to set higher targets.

We would like to thank all the brands and organisations who have shared their insights and learnings through their case studies and helped us create this wonderful resource.

We would like to thank our lead sponsor HP and associate sponsor NM Incite (a Nielsen/ McKinsey Company) for their support and encouragement.

We are grateful to George Skaria, Founder, ThoughtSpring and Former Editor, Indian Management for all his guidance and inputs on the Casebook.
We would love to hear your feedback on this edition of the CaseBook and suggestions on how we can produce an even better one next time.

Also, we would be soon announcing the IndiaSocial Case Challenge 2. Stay tuned!

Download a copy and also win an HP Mini 110.

“The National Program Director, India serves as the Wikimedia Foundation’s chief representative in India with responsibility for partnering with the Wikimedia community to grow participation in our projects and support the establishment of strong organizational capacity across the country to support the movement’s growth in a sustainable way”, explains the job description.

Since the Foundation would like to have more people apply, it has just extended the deadline to 8 October, 2010.

An email from GK John seeking help in finding the right person, explained:

“The job pays well, on par with experience and at international non-profit levels. The person we’re looking for is someone with either corporate or non-profit experience or both, with a knowledge/love/acquaintance of Wikipedia, and some tech/online community experience. Needless to say, for the right person, this could be a very exciting job.”

Read more about the responsibilities, position characteristics, candidate background and compensation package or apply for the position by going to the website.

Going forward when you select India as the targeted country, you are asked to fill in cities you wish to target. Everything else remains as earlier.

Facebook will likely gain in terms of yield too – more targeted the ad, higher the bids.

We will try an update this post with more inputs.

UPDATED: 1940 hours, IST, 27 September 2010.

So, what else could be in store for Indian users? Here are a few points that could help Facebook scale up its advertising revenues from India.

1. New resellers: Other than retail advertisers, who use their credit cards to pay for social ads, Facebook has been working with Komli Media for sales to large advertisers, and for special positions such as home page videos, polls etc.   Would we see other partners being appointed?
2. Payment in Indian Rupees: Retail advertisers, paying through their credit cards, end up paying a conversion surcharge to the bank, taking up the overall cost. Including Indian Rupee in accepted currencies could make Facebook ads more attractive for Indian advertisers
3. Post paid options: We live in the times of ‘self-serve’ and many unofficial partners/agencies (other than Komli) offer ‘social ad management’ as part of their offerings to clients; based on payment records/ volumes, Facebook might want to consider extending credit to select partners, given that it’s the norm in advertising business.

What are the key market moves you expect Facebook India to make as its India team warms up.

The Breakthrough’s Google Map initiative is part of a larger initiative, Maps for Making Change, which uses technologically advanced geographical mapping techniques to support various programs that strive to provide social justice in India.

Breakthrough has used the application to help raise awareness about Domestic Violence by providing survivors with vital information including important information about Protection of Women Against Domestic Violence Act 2005 (PWDVA) and how can they access the law. The map is based on case data sourced from the Lawyers Collective, Delhi.

The first step to implementation is awareness among the affected community, of their right to a violence free life. The next step is to make resources available to women facing violence, and this map attempts to do that. The more interactive it is, the more successful it will be.

said Indira Jaising, Project Director, Lawyers Collective Women’s Rights Initiative and Additional Solicitor General India.

For now the organization has focused on Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka. The maps have been built using Google Maps platform and made user-friendly. Basically, these maps contain comprehensive contact information on resources that people can access like local police stations, legal advocates etc. The map also includes court orders of the cases that have successfully used the PWDVA 2005 and videos that build awareness on the issue.

Sonali Khan, Breakthrough’s Country Director- India says,

We hope that people and organizations will also contribute to the map. Silence around domestic violence can be broken if we enter into a dialogue and make joint action possible.

One can access the Breakthrough’s Google Map initiative here.

Hope this helps the many teams, we know are working towards meeting the timeline.

Some great cases already in – we are keeping the surprise element live and not sharing names here

Keep them coming.

This has now been fixed and you can submit the case-studies at http://www.indiasocial.in/submit-case/

If you have queries, do write to us at open (at) indiasocial (dot) in

Open 3 February 2010, through 28 February 2010 (IST), the IndiaSocial™ Case Challenge invites  submissions of their social media work in India,  from brands, private and government organisations, not-for-profits, media bodies, celebrity brands…

So, if you think you have done case-study social media work for your brand/ organisation, let our esteemed panel decide if your case is truly gold standard

Top 3 cases, as selected by our judging panel, will get featured in impact Weekly and also get an opportunity to present their case at a future event hosted by us.

Top 10 case-studies will be featured on IndiaSocial.in under a special Gold Class section.

We’ve tied up with impact Weekly and exchange4media to help us get the word out.

Do spread the word please and help promote in any way you can.

On the judging panel are:

1. Dina Mehta, Co-Founder & Head of Research, Mosoci
2. George Skaria, Founder, ThoughtSpring and Former Editor, Indian Management
3. Kiruba Shankar, CEO, Business Blogging
4. Peter Griffin, Editor, Caferati; co-founder SEA-EAT and the World Wide Help Group
5. Pradyuman Maheshwari, Group Editor, exchange4media Group
6. Rajesh Lalwani, Founder, Blogworks and Principal Coordinator, IndiaSocial™

We are looking for both strategic and tactical cases; cases that showcase rigour; cases that made (and continue to make) an impact. When asked about what would decide winners, our panel spoke about…

Framing of clear objectives

Alignment of results with goals

Rigour in measurement

RoI

Stakeholder engagement

Innovation & differentiation

Delight factors

as some…

Now, did we just give you some winning tips?

We’d like to thank our partners and judges for their support to this initiative.

Come on,  join the challenge, it’s an Open invitation.

Submit your case-studies for the Case challenge here.

There has been a 100 per cent increase in brand mentions between October – December 2009, from the first Digital Brand Index (July – September 2009).

Twitter has become the de facto channel for sharing news about technology brands, with 76 per cent of all mentions (118,150) found on the micro-blog platform – up from 60 per cent in DBI 1.0

Despite the buzz generated by Microsoft around Windows 7, Google continued to be the most discussed brand online in India, generating 31,220 mentions around topics like the Chrome and Android operating systems and the pre-release buzz around Nexus One smart phone.

Yahoo’s new marketing campaign gets prominent online buzz even as the sentiments were mixed.

While there was a huge lift in mentions of consumer technology brands during the holiday season, business brands such as Adobe (which made it to the top ten) and Oracle were also a part of significant conversations online.

Among online forums, TechArena Community forums displaced Chip India forum, as the most popular technology forum in India, followed by the thinkdigit discussion forum.

TechieBuzz debuts as the first blog in the Top-5 on the DBI.

The online conversation boom in India coincided with global patterns, during the holiday and gifting season. It was a boon for consumer technology firms, with overall mentions increasing 13 per cent in December, over the months of November and October. The beneficiaries were brands like Samsung (whose mentions grew over 120 per cent), Dell and Sony, telecom firms like Bharti Airtel with significant announcements on pricing and plans, and software brands like Microsoft with Windows 7.

However, the holiday quarter also saw a large lift in conversations for technology firms like Adobe (4,923 mentions) and Oracle (3230 mentions). The strong results of these more business-to-business brands demonstrate the fact that all brands can gain conversations online.

While Twitter was the buzziest channel, an analysis of the pattern of conversation on a weekly basis during DBI 2.0 showed that online conversations tend to grow early in the week, spike on a Wednesday and then taper off into the  weekend, where the relative levels of mentions drop by approximately half. Underscoring this point, the two days with by far the highest one-day conversation volumes were Wednesdays – 30th December (4865 mentions) and 23rd December (4841 mentions) – double that of the average daily rate of 2,329 mentions.

“The 100 per cent growth in overall mentions, driven by Twitter, demonstrates the growing importance of deep and insightful social media planning. While DBI 1.0 advocated the importance of using online intelligence to plan appropriate content for the right channels and influencers, DBI 2.0 adds the complexities of timing the outreach for best results and the need for strategic inputs from firms which have a deep understanding of the online patterns.”

Kelly Choo, Co-founder & Business Development Director of Brandtology, added: “Brands owners should not only measure their online buzz and engagement levels, but also actively identify and engage influential channels and voices. This would translate to goodwill and brand preference and ultimately an increase in sales”.

Read the study in detail here.