Well things are changing rapidly and individuals are not wasting time to monetize their contacts and use them to increase their business. I read an article in Economice times regarding how the youngsters are using social network to promote their businesses. There are tattoo artists, comperers, models etc. who are promoting themselves. And not only are these self employed junta using social network but also people who are starting a business of their own or want to promote an event etc. The list goes on and on.

As such while starting up they are short on capital, and social media gives them a cheap yet effective avenue for self promotion. This leaves them with cash to focus on other activities.

Ibibo is an Indian site which gives the option of showcasing your talent. And there are special sections for music, modelling, arts etc. And Ibibo acts as the interface between potential employees and employers. This is a different approach than the other social networking sites where there are specific sections for specific talents. Something which they have used as a differentiating medium when in race with the social media biggies like orkut, facebook and linkedin.

As information flow becomes faster with internet and social media, the word-of-mouth promotion takes on a whole new speed and effectiveness. This also means, as short time as it takes for your business to become popular, if one is not good, it will take even shorter time for one’s downfall.

Now these figures are just the initial ones being reported and no conclusions can be made from these since these are the pre-paid cards being bought by people. It does not require much investment and a card can be bought for a measly amount of Rs, 50 ($1). And pre-paid also has the maximum churn rate too.

But what I found interesting is that, this is a feat in itself for gaining such huge numbers in such a short time. This is because they came out with a very different but very relevant offering. I would like to compare it with other newcomers into the mobile service industry.

Aircel made a big splash during its launch in states other than Tamil Nadu, roping in none other than the captain of Indian cricket team, Mahendra Singh Dhoni. But their focus was on the various services especially on the data and VAS (Value added services) front. They are not doing so well (other than in North East India for different reasons) possibly because the other established players were also focusing on the same aspect as Aircel and a new player was competing with the established brand names on similar ground. That is usually not a good strategy. The other newcomer is Sistema-Shyam under the brand name of MTS. They launched with the offer of 1 million minutes free with a cap of 150 minutes in a day. It was different but somehow it could not gain traction. But probably being in the CDMA space caused the difference and it could not gain the initial traction. Even Reliance GSM could not gain the numbers. They were all offering similar stuff. How to differentiate among the mobile service providers?

What did Tata Docomo do that was different from these players ? They studied the Indian mindset very carefully. And Indians just adore cheap stuff. Although one would think that the call rates in India are one of the lowest in the world, how much lower can it get. But Tata is already world famous with its Nano car, didn’t think so. It made the calls still cheaper. It just thought different and changed the pulse. Pulse rate of one second, local and STD dosen’t make a difference. What more could an Indian customer want. Today most of the places, Tata Sim cards are not available at all.

This wasn’t a new innovative thinking. It could always have been done by others, but the margins would have shrunk. But being a new player one had to first bring in the customer and then earn money from him. This is something the other could not achieve and Tata Docomo has done.

I have written earlier about Tata Docomo using social media marketing.  The article can be found here. Tata Docomo was doing things differently and that is what created the difference.  I would like to repeat again, that this is just the initial numbers. And with already well entrenched players in the mobile market, it would take a company a long time to actually say it has achieved success. But I would like to appreciate Tata Docomo to have taken the first step correct. Here is something for all the marketing students to learn from.

The signs of this can be seen these days. Recently Airtel slashed their rates for broadband rates. There are advertisements everywhere for getting new broadband connections without installation charges and lot many offers. Lots of investment done for laying of optical fibre intercity and intra cities. The introduction of 3G which will bring in faster internet rates in mobile telephones. WiMax gaining ground all over the country. These are all signs that internet is going to spread across the country in a big big way.

So what implications does this have on companies, businesses and people? Something similar to what has happenned in US a few days ago. Lots of companies to come up with an online business model. Ecommerce is going to spread and we can presume to have higher sales online as the days come.

But most of all, as more and more people come online, these people will be joining social networks. And that means social media marketing will gain more and more importance. I don’t know whether Facebook is going to survive, or Twitter is going to survive. What I do believe is that social media marketing is going to survive. And marketers need to catch this wave before the competitors take advantage and get ahead.

I feel this is a very significant move. There are about 5-6 new players about to or already launched their mobile service in the market all over India. Also we have about 4 players well entrenched in the market with more than 200 million customers in their kitty. With all the new players coming in, the telecom sector is going to be a very crowded place and it becomes very important for the newer players to differentiate themselves. Also with Mobile Number Portability (MNP)  hanging around, it becomes all the more important for the new players to entrench themselves in the minds of the customers very fast and effectively.

Tata Docomo has probably understood that the Indians are increasingly found online using various social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. And it probably wants to at least capture the attention of these people. That does not mean they have left out the traditional routes of advertising. They have invested heavily into outdoor, print and television media. But the fact that they are open to the idea of using social media marketing is in itself laudable.

Now I have no idea how successful will it be using the social media for their marketing. But the very fact that they are one of the initial players to be using it should be appreciated. And if they learn the rules of the game early enough, they are already on their way to creating a difference, and isn’t marketing all about creating the difference for the customer. And I wish Tata Docomo all the very best.

Well I would like to put my thought on this topic with an analogy. And what better analogy than the fashion industry. This is probably the only industry other than the online world in which things come and go very quickly. Now in fashion industry, do we have a few big names. Yes we do. Names like Armani, Ralph Lauren etc. And have they been in the fashion industry for long. Yes they have been. But for one Armani or one Ralph Lauren to be made, thousands of newbie fashion designers start and end their career. Despite this industry is not so stable and fashions and fads are the defining character of this industry, do people stop following fashion or stop buying designer clothes. NO.

That is exactly my point here. Things may come and go. Twitter may or may not remain or Facebook may or may not remain. But social media may remain. It is the broader concept that is important and not the tools necesserily. So when I suggest that companies should start adopting social media marketing, it does not mean that they should use Facebook or Twitter. Those are the tools in the process of social media marketing. It is the concept of the marketing that has to be considered.

So social media is nothing but a basic form of word-of-mouth marketing. Only thing is the medium of communication has changed. So instead of worrying about whether Twitter or Facebook or Digg is here to stay or not, one should embrace the concept of social media marketing and the one who establishes his dominance by understanding the rules of the game, will ultimately rule this space. And that won’t come by being on the side lines and having a wait and watch approach.

One major factor that has made the marketing personnels to look at social media and online marketing as a viable option is the arrival of recessionary conditions which pruned the marketing budget of companies drastically. And as they say, necessity is the mother of all invention, the marketing people were forced to look beyond the conventional promotion mediums, and not surprisingly they got hooked on to social media and the online world.

The other major factor for companies taking up social media marketing has been the exponential growth of social mediums like Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Digg etc. A recent survey by Neilson online has shown that in the year 2008-09 the time spent on these social networks overall have doubled. The time spent by people on Facebook increased by 700% from 1.7 billion in April 2008 to 13.9 billion in April 2009. The number of minutes spent on micro-blogging site Twitter has grown beyond all possible expectation. It increased from 7.9 million in April 2008 to 300 million in April 2009.

Not only has the amount of time spent on social networks grown exponentially but the membership of such networks have also risen hugely. Facebook today has more than 200 million users. Linkedin has more than 41 million members and growing at the rate of 1 user per second.  When such huge numbers are joining various social networks, the companies have found this to be the best place to have a brand presence and use the social networking tools to strengthen or build a brand image. 

So with the recession looming, the social networks are like the lush green fields for the companies to come and graze upon. Only if it were so simple. Social media marketing is at its infancy as of now, and no tried and tested methods are present to succeed and no metrics available to test the success. So as of now social media marketing is in “no man’s land”. But inspite of all this, social media is too huge and too important to be ignored by any company wanting to connect with their audience. And since brand is all about connecting with the target audience, it will be foolish not to use social media marketing.

Yes, this search engine claims to be totally privacy safe because they do not keep any “personally identifiable information”. In fact the statement above is the only one in their privacy policy. With all their search results, they also provide a link which enables a user to browse to that particular search result anonymously.

There has been a lot of talk recently about competition to Google from Twitter and Stephen Wolfram. Yauba adds another name to the list of the potential competition to Google. In my opinion Yauba would score above Twitter atleast with its Search Quality. The best thing about this search engine is that it gives you an option to search at different places like Internet Websites, Blogs, Mainstream News, Social Networks etc. In fact, when you choose to search all the channels, the results you get are very organized according to the different channels and it becomes much easier to get to the desired result.

I even tried to compare the search results of Yauba with Cuil (another much hyped-about search engine which was launched sometime back), and found Yauba to be way better than Cuil. All in all, I would treat Yauba as a potential threat to google considering its search quality.

One thing which does not gives very good signals is that this company does not seem to have a stable revenue model yet, Google adsense units are clearly visible on Yauba pages.

One thing that should make some of you feel good is that it comes from India (at least I feel good about it ).  With that, wishing a happy and colorful Holi to all fellow bloggers and readers.

Right now when searches are being made, the key wods in the search bar are matched with those in the webpages and using the algorithm the pages are ranked according to their relevancy. It was working fine but now people want more. The problem comes up when people search for factual questions, and Google cannot come up with the relevant answers because it is not a human brain which can process the meaning in the question, but it can only looks at the words and match them with those in the websites. 

Scientist Stephen Wolfram claims to have a solution to this problem and has created a search engine by the name of WolframAlpha. Although this search engine is scheduled to be released in May, and many of its details are yet to come out, search engine expert Nova Spivack in this post says that although this project is “absurdly amibitious” yet it has the potential to touch our lives in the same way as Google had.

The secret of the new search engine as said by Stephen Wolfram is as follows:

I had two crucial ingredients: Mathematica and NKS. With Mathematica, I had a symbolic language to represent anything—as well as the algorithmic power to do any kind of computation. And with NKS, I had a paradigm for understanding how all sorts of complexity could arise from simple rules.

So with the tools of Mathematica and NKS, Wolfram is trying to create a sort of artificial intelligence system which will try to think in a similar way as the humans do who are trying to searching the internet amonst the terabytes of data.

Now in marketing strategy, one of the ways of being successful in the market is to have a differentiation strategy. None of the search engines could beat Google because either they were not able to differentiate themselves from Google or when they tried to differentiate, they were not effective enough. So this will be the real challenge for WolframAlpha, to be effective and deliver what they are promising. Else this will also go down the history as a wishful David who tried ot kill Goliath but didn’t have the skills to do so.

So along with Twitter and Facebook, right now considered by many experts as the threats to Google, comes in WolframAlpha to beat Google in its own game.

The first most prominent initiative which I came across was the online community Inside Intel (see image below) which is aimed at engaging tech savvy consumers world wide in conversation (with Intel and with each other) and tell stories that show how the processor empowers everyday life. This is an excellent step towards building it’s brand and giving an opportunity to your consumers to engage with the company. Making use of the Social Power, this community has built a loyal clientele of Intel products. On this online community, consumers can upload photos, videos and their stories about how Intel processors have made their lives better.

Coming to blogs, Intel is very active posting news and information about Intel on its blog. Intel blogs feature several of Intel’s top leaders, researchers and technology people who share their opinions, perspectives and invite discussion on the issues they are facing. The problems faced by the customers are also discussed via these blogs, so in a way, these form a good channel to take feedback from the customers spread around the world.

If we look at Twitter, searching for Intel produced a lot of results. Browsing through them brought out 8 genuine looking profiles. Intel has kept different profiles for different target audiences, for example, there is a different Twitter account for recruitment and a different one for it’s Social activities. The 8 profiles are:

• Intel - Views on technology and Innovation
• IntelPRUK - Intel UK PR team
• intelevents - Information about conferences & events Intel is participating in
• Intel_Education - Each year Intel invests USD 100 million to help teachers teach, students learn and universities around the world innovate-particularly in the areas of math, science and technology. This account spreads information about Intel’s Education initiative
• intelinspire - Information about Inspire, Inspire is a Intel supported community of people who hope of becoming a catalyst for action and a voice for change in global education
• IntelSoftware - News about the Intel Software Network to connect with the develpers and the engineers
• JobsatIntel - To aid recruitment at Intel
• intelchallenge - About Small Things Challenge, an initiative aimed at improving education and economic development

On Facebook too, Intel has a presence (Intel Facebook Page) with more than 29k fans. It also has a page dedicated to it’s Science Talent Search participants on Facebook. You can see a lot of activity on it Facebook page in form of videos uploaded by Intel, information about events etc. Also, Intel has a mention to the faceook page on their corporate website too.

One thing which comes out very clearly about Intel is that it is very active on all these platforms. It is not just another company who has forgot to updtae it’s page after making it. And this is not all, Intel has gone much forward implementing it’s Social Media strategies. This is very clear from the fact that Intel has well defined Social Media Guidelines for all people who in any way are participating to it’s Social Media campaign.

In my opinion, being regular and active with your Social Media efforts is very important for their success. It is difficult to catch attention with irregular pings, rather sustained efforts are needed to make a mark. I cannot comment on the effectiveness and the results of all these efforts, but one thing is for sure that SM initiatives have found stable slots in the corporate strategies of organizations and for companies who haven’t done so yet, it might become too late before they realize the importance of these efforts.

To look at the initiatives taken by Infosys in the Social Media space, I visited Infosys website, it was good to see that they have given enough visibility to Social Media on their home page itself. The home page contains a section called Opinions which contains links to some of the posts on its blog.

Also, Infosys has taken a approach where it has designed different blogs catering to the different target audiences. It has blogs which are dedicated to topics like CRM, Web 2.0, SCM etc. Please refer the image to see the different categories on which blogs are maintained. Some of these blogs have been maintained since long while most have been added recently.

Other than blogs, Infosys also has an account on Twitter (Twitter Profile). Infosys has been on Twitter since April 2008 and has been decently regular in sending out updates regarding the company to its followers. Most of the tweets link back to the corporate website or to their blogs.Unlike other companies which have presence on Twitter, I found the corporate website having a link to its Twitter profile.

All this tells us that Infosys do have some presence in this space. Coming back to the question asked in the initial part of the post, we should try to find whether Social Media is a good practice for such companies? Is this the way technology companies should take to engage it’s customers or build it’s brand? When companies have customers who are themselves companies (not individual customers), then I don’t think such initiatives will have a major impact. But if they are looking for other objectives like recruitment using Social Media initiatives, then maybe this channel could be leveraged. We can say, that Social Media strategy for any company must be closely related to the objectives the company wants to satisfy using SM. Brand building and Customer Engagement objectives will need a very different approach from objectives like recruitment.