How do you define social media? At the risk of appearing haughty [disclaimer], let me venture some guesses.

If you're a marketer Social Media is the new fad, an "add-on" for clients, the new cool thing you're planning to soon offer services around

If you've been exposed to Facebook Facebook. A bit of Twitter. Previously Orkut, but now it's all Facebook - statuses, sharing links and apps.

If you're a social media marketer Conversations. Making the brand relevant. Measuring everything, though the ROI of social media is yet to be nailed. Being honest, being where your target is - and on a daily basis. A great tool for celebrities, the ultimate PR tool. A game changer.

You rarely hear the Indian masses discussing the OTHER SIDE of social media.

The utility side.
For a moment, think beyond branded conversations on Facebook & Twitter.

Bright Kite, Foursquare & Location-Based networks - to see if you're friends are around
Groupon - connecting strangers and allowing them to buy items in bulk and at discounts
Postcrossing - to send and receive postcards from all over the world without leaving your city
Dopplr - to learn about places you're about to visit from other travelers who have just been there
Couchsurfing - to travel the world cost-effectively by staying on couches of like-minded travelers around the world
Have2p - an iPhone app that allows you to find the nearest restrooms and to list loos you yourself frequent
Wikipedia - to create a one-place database on everything
Fmylife.com / Texts From Last Night - to share embarrassing stories anonymously with millions
StumbleUpon / Digg / Delicious / Reddit - to share interesting links and to find new things

The similarity amongst the above networks is that they connect people around a passion to the mutual benefit of everyone involved. Each of the above networks addresses a certain, very specific need, and the networks survive because they solve real needs. This is quite different from branded conversations, since every member of the network can add a unique flavor and has the opportunity to shape the network.

Brands can very well benefit from the other side of social media, as well as the conventionally understood social media - a.k.a. outreach over Facebook and Twitter. We're all familiar with the example of Dell successfully selling millions of dollars worth of merchandise over the web; of Hippo finely-extending it's distribution using Twitter; brands like Fastrack gel-ing with the Youth over Facebook.

But as more and more brands become social-media-ready, there's bound to be saturation of branded conversations on these two social networks. That's when the merits of the OTHER SIDE of social media will become painfully clear (unless your brand is the early bird and did something new first.

Take for example My Starbucks Idea. A perfect mix of brand-specific-conversation built around a need - the need of millions of Starbucks customers to have their individual wishlists met. Another good example is Amazon's Shelfari, a platform over which book lovers can share reviews and ask one another for reviews around books they're considering to read.

It's all well and good to see everyone talking about social media and acknowledging the benefits of brands opening up two-way communication streams. But we should all caution against mistaking social media to be equivalent to outreach on the most popular social networks only.

The Indian Premier League for Cricket is still in its infancy, but it has already taken the world of sports by storm. Though it is premature to compare IPL with big brother English Premier League a.k.a. EPL, we know that the growth of the Brand has been spectacular. Now in its third year, news about IPL has not only touched Indians in different parts of the world, but managed to attract loyal following from diverse communities around the world, who just love Cricket.

As an agency, responsible for managing the digital assets and presence online for Club Royal Challengers, we have been intrigued with the issue of “Fan Identity” from Day 1. Before IPL, all cricket lovers were either fans of Team India, or iconic cricket masters from around the world. With IPL, loyalties became divided between community/state of origin, city of residence, iconic players and glamorous owners - to a point where this author (as an example) was not sure if he should support Kolkata Knight Riders (from native city Kolkata), or Mumbai Indians (from his current home town Mumbai) or Royal Challengers Bangalore (in which he could come close to iconic Anil Kumble), or even Kings XI Punjab (for glam owner Preity Zinta). I think lot of people were facing the same predicament, and gleefully switching their support for teams, as the tournament progressed. It was obvious from Day one that IPL teams were not going to be just about “local fans” from a city, but a lot more.

I wondered about EPL and how teams from seemingly small cities in England had managed to grow so large in stature and not just whip up passions of fans from one country, but managed to flame the passions of soccer fans around the world. So I turned to the web for some supporting data on EPL Fan Base and stumbled upon a report published in 2007 here. To quote a section of the PR for the report, it seems

Manchester United attracted 2.2 million unique visitors to its Web site during March 2007, making it the world’s most popular football club online. The study also shows that roughly 60 percent, or 1.3 million, of Manchester United’s 2.2 million monthly visitors do not reside in the U.K. – quantifying the global reach and appeal of the Manchester United brand franchise.

That piece of data, led to digging into our own insights on Club RCB Fan Base from Facebook, and we were pleasantly surprised. The total fan-base for Club RCB (which exceeds 100K as on date, with over 62K unique active users every month) was not lop-sided towards its city-of-origin Bengaluru at all; the largest blocks of fans (online) actually came from Delhi and Mumbai.




Another interesting fact was that cities such as Houston, Riyadh, Dallas, and London were already in the TOP 20 cities where the facebook fan base was spread. In small percentages yes, but these locations had already lit up on the world map, and that was important to know.

We have already heard about the IPL dreams of taking the tournament in different formats around the world, to garner more fan support from around the world. Also we know for a fact that all the clubs are vying to be a national brand and not content to stay local. Though slightly dated, an excellent comparison (in terms of Brand Vision and Value) was made by the author of this blog between IPL and EPL.

Reading that post and sensing the fanatic participation of fans from around the world on RCB online, we are convinced that Globalization of IPL is not just a possibility, but an absolute certainty.

Individuals are increasingly besotted with media, creating and consuming at a frenetic pace. The numbers of screens that demand our attention have increased, and a jamboree of marketing messages are pouring in from the roadside to our bedside. What is left? A spoof video on Onion News Network (ONN) paints the future of marketing, when Google might decide to allow phone-calls (on the new Google phone) for free, but in return whisper contextual ads via bots listening in on the conversation.


New Google Phone Service Whispers Targeted Ads Directly Into Users' Ears
(Follow this link if you can't view the video embedded above)

The fallout is predictable. Publishers already know about the increasing attention deficiency of their audience, and brand managers (who care to measure) are fretting about lower recall. Amidst all this cacophony, how much does your carefully crafted “message” really matter?

Brands have two key attributes (a) the image and (b) the experience. Traditional marketing has focused on winning the battle in the consumer’s psyche hammering in the image (name, sign, symbol, color, message). Fragmentation of media has wreaked havoc with the exposure strategy. Even for mediums that deliver, uncontrolled frequency and volume of messages (triggered by publisher greed) have led to consumers tuning out. How good is a cover-on-cover in your daily newspaper, if it comes every alternate day? You just flip the cover. You tune out!

Internet Media Version 1.0 made the mistake of accelerating the hammer-it-in approach – though adding depth to the dimensions of ‘context’ and being ‘just-in-time’, and of course it professed (to brand managers) that it offered interactivity! But all it did in name of interactivity was coerce the consumer into reading more marketing material on a micro-site and fill up a form, which was certainly helpful but only to a point. Then Brands get greedy, and fascinated with acquisition of databases for pennies, start ‘hammer-it-in’ again, now spamming with emails and SMS, till the irate consumer tunes out yet again.

Consumers don’t buy products or services anymore; they buy the ‘experience’. We believe that amidst all the marketing noise, what sticks in the consumers mind (and thus creates recall) is the experience, and more often that you would like to believe the experience with your brand starts online!

Savvy marketeers, who are bold to bet their money on brand experience, know that it is a difficult game to play. It is relatively easy for consumers to fall in love with the dog, slouched back as couch potatoes, but when he calls the helpline and is treated like a dog himself it is game over for Mr. Phone Company. Solve that problem Mr. God of Advertising.



We believe the web is an integral part of your customers experience lifecycle. For high engagement products and services (like an automobile, travel service or telecom provider) the web is the more compelling medium where the consumer is going to come back again and again. From the point of curiosity, to the point of sale, to the point of customer service, for him web will be a natural touch-point. For low involvement categories, the web can accentuate the positive. You will still need the mass medium to blow your horn, but differentiate the web experience and you can come out a winner; and that can only happen if the experience we deliver, blows away your consumers mind!

Thus Experience Commerce
Because, consumers buy experience.

http://www.experiencecommerce.com/images/blog_new/blogpic1.jpg

“Hi meet Nidhi, she does social media!”
“Social media? So you get paid to twitter and facebook?”

That conversation has been on auto-playback every Saturday night when friends introduce me to someone new… I’m sure that’s how most ‘digital marketers’ get introduced. While some might be happy with their “Social Media Rockstar” cap, I’d fall into the group that isn’t so thrilled with the mass-media-induced-synonym of “social media” as “twitterati.” As a marketer who works with the online medium, I do far more. There’s management of online communities, infusing social media features into websites, coming up with concepts that can go viral, executing campaigns, playing the Google-Search-Rank game, monitoring Adwords, finding social media tools that will automate tasks and make work easier….. and so on and on and on. Yes we handle some some of our clients’ Twitter and Facebook presences. But that’s by no means a majority of what we spend their time on.

At the end of the day, unless you’re using social media as a customer service tool or to keep fans informed on latest happenings and offers, you should only be on social media if you have something meaningful to say.*

*Or alternatively, are serious about listening to customer complaints and suggestions. I could go on forever about the ‘could be benefits’ of Twitter, my point is, Twitter is not the answer-to-all-problems, but a very good tool that can be beneficial when clubbed into a greater marketing strategy.

This post was inspired by the following brilliant ad by Economic Times

http://www.experiencecommerce.com/ee/images/uploads/youreinsocial_media_soyoutweetallthetime.jpg

Social Media Case Study - Mitsubishi Great Driving Challenge

The Video linked on the concluding slide ” Highway Karma” can be viewed here >

http://www.experiencecommerce.com/ee/images/uploads/thinkdigitalwithgoogle.jpg

It’s another facebook article when I've just finished one, but the hype and hullabaloo around facebook won't let me ignore it. My views may seem absurd, exaggerated and anti-social but in my defence I have my black hat on while writing this.

The current trend of adapting to the new facebook api's before the next site in your browser window, reminds me of the story of the pied piper of Hamlin. The new pied piper from Palo Alto plays his annual social tune to which all of us joyously sway and dance to, not really knowing what’s the final destination. We are busy enjoying the journey. We love new apis, new scripts, having our empty white-spaces on empty white pages filled with smiling thumbnails branded by the famous blue 'f'. In no time we would have our sites ready to be showcased on facebook’s ideal api adoption examples list.



My black hat whispers to me "what is all this leading to?” Isn't facebook making us dance to its own growth? It is in the process of building infinite scaffolds across the internet. Soon the scaffolds will turn into solid rigid supports making it omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent.

With all the connect scripts and widgets, its like having small baby ships (the facebook scripts) on our websites each communicating with the mother ship (facebook.com) all the while without we knowing.
Remember the movie independence day ?

Seems creepy when I think what the mother ship did in the movie!!!

Facebook id is now fast achieving what open id couldn't. Many sites do not have a site login and rely on facebook id for logging in. They violate the "do not put all your eggs in one basket" rule. While we do get a share of our average 10-15% traffic from facebook we repay it with nearly 2x returns. Looking back we are all facebook's brand ambassadors. If there was a CPM on the facebook button, that would add up to a hell lotta money.

Facebook is tipped to be the Goliath of the social world. Not too long before there was a Goliath named Microsoft. Do all Goliaths want to rule the worlds they created and nurtured?

A few days ago like all other facebook pages you could comment on facebook's facebook page (reminds me of recursive acronyms like GNU and wiki.com/wiki) viz http://www.facebook.com/facebook. Come f8, users can no longer post on facebook's facebook page, they can only comment on what facebook has written.The last user written comment seen was on Monday 26th April ‘10. A current snapshot of the page show there are no user posts, all being purged by facebook.

Doesn't facebook believe in a fair social world? Food for thought? Unless you are done eating the social pies.

http://www.experiencecommerce.com/ee/images/uploads/the_pied_piper_of_palo_alto.jpg

Dear Facebook,

Your f8 is quite an event,a code changing event. I was working on launching a "not so yet another" facebook app.The facebook API was in place; this was just another app tour which I was so familiar with.

And then f8 happened ...

The next day I opened my facebook page and wanted to rattle on some code on the dev console. Opened my bookmarks http://developer.facebook.com/tools.php ; Oopsie Daisy - Page not found. The Dev console has vanished. Soon I will access my data using the graph API and the social tools.

Am I complying to your plan? Was this your plan?

Being the epicenter of the social wave you surely can change the APIs overnight and developers would scrap their code and rewrite. Would developers do the same if there was a competing social network who took better care of their "contributors" ? Maybe not.

The documentation does state that the older APIs would be around till June 1, but after an app is launched and is a month old, would I go under the hood and take down a well oiled machine and try powering it up with a new API? Hell no! The clients do not care about the new APIs and nor do my users. So I will end up burning the candle at both ends and power it with your new APIs to avoid the trouble.

You could call me ill-informed, maybe I did not use Google, to the best of my abilities, to find out more in time about f8. No, I could not view the live web-cast of f8 because my darned internet was not up for a web-cast. The least you could do, is place a notice as you normally put up, when you launch a new feature, telling the developers that the console is going to be moved. A weeks notice would have been greatly appreciated.

The change was too sudden to go live with the APIs after f8. Maybe the apps could have been tried with the new APIs in a newapi.facebook.com sub-domain for a while. I'm sure you could have come up with far better ideas than these.

Things are a little inconsistent at the moment in this transition period. By the time they stabilize and developers feel happy about mastering the new facebook API would it be time for the next f8 ?

Your truly,

http://www.facebook.com/amythical

The EC team is not just about business and technology. Yes we work hard, but we can party harder.
Catch Team EC amidst all the action at Goafest 2010.

Mitsubishi Great Driving Challenge wins Silver ABBY for Integrated Digital Campaign, beating Vodafone ZooZoo (which got bronze).

The metal looks like this.

and here is Team EC collecting the same.

The incredible success of our social media led campaign to garner fans and fanatic fans for CLUB Royal Challengers (both on the Website and Facebook pages), needs no further evidence; (see the graph below). The exponential, hockey-stick curve which is every social marketeer’s dream, has now come alive for us; and honestly is a treat to see the numbers leap, everyday. Team RCB has given a big helping hand, notching up 4 wins on the trot, and providing content ‘on-demand for the fans (smiling, singing, blogging whatever) and the traffic is just pouring in from around the world.

While industry pundits continue to wax eloquent about digital extensions to multi-crore advertising blockbusters (Tiger, ZooZoo et al.) and social media pundits mash-up and re-tweet the same, sterling examples such as Royal Challengers social-media powered website, fly completely below the radar.

Not a surprise, because traditional media has been given a ‘pass’ by fans who, instead, gorge on more exciting and original content churned out daily by Club RCB fans themselves on royalchallengers website . The crowd has taken over, and the website is now source of ‘original news, pictures and anecdotes’ for traditional media.

Instead of running gimmicky campaigns promising fans the world (and delivering peanuts), Team EC has carefully nurtured a small group of fanatic fans who are treated as esteemed guests of the Club. There is 2-way communication on several channels (including the coach). Several fans are now accredited and provided special access to players, post IPL parties, free-tickets to watch the match as group titled “Mighty 14”. We say this, because it is important for organizations to understand that the road to “engagement” does not often end by adding one new ‘fan’ on a facebook page - many a times it is just the beginning.

Coming back to the topic of “viral growth”, what we are seeing on Club RC is the result of 3-4 month long intense curation of content and profiles on site. We had the ‘core audience’ engaged and active long before the crowds arrived. A well-oiled machine was just more effective in converting casual visitors to fans.

Readers, we assure you that the journey does not end here. Whatever be the outcome of IPL 2010. Club RC is ready to raise the bar and take fan engagement to the next level.