Impact of Social Media on businesses
Songita Banerjee Verma
The rise of virtual societies on the web in the form of social networking sites, micro communities, independent blogs and news blogs is creating a new marketplace for companies.
Social media enjoys all the necessary ingredients of what a marketer can think of. From presence, relevance, reach, timing to buzz that leads to maximum impact. This isn’t simply about advertising on the right spots but more importantly about listening to what consumers feel about your brand, what they want and what they don’t like! Compare this with traditional methods such as telemarketing, door to door surveys…the usual response would be…”sorry not interested”.
With no offense though, marketers have been slow to realize the need to go beyond traditional methods and adopt innovative ways of creating buzz.
Social Media is emerging as a powerful platform generating consumer opinion through millions of voices and conversations that occur every day. There are around 40,000 new ones popping up each day and these simply can’t be ignored. Think of examples such as Kryptonite, Club Mahindra or FastLaneBlog by General Motors Vice-Chairman, Bob Lutz. These have generated huge turmoil and in turn have helped brands in faster damage control, take precautionary measures and mold their strategies.
In India, the social media phenomenon is witnessing a promising trend. According to industry estimates, close to 50% of Internet Users in India participate in social networking. With some of the large internet communities like Facebook, Orkut and Flickr alone have close to 15 lakh members in India.
With a large section of the society spending more time on the Internet, opportunities for marketers to tap the Social Media segment for research and buzz generation are galore.
Next on…tips for running a successful social media campaign.
Songita B Verma
This entry was posted on February 24, 2008 at 4:40 am and is filed under New media trends and its impact. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.
Tags: Club Mahindra, Facebook, FastLaneblog, Flickr, Impact on brands, Kryptonite, Orkut, Social Media, Social Media Campaign, Social Media Phenomenon in India, virtual communities
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February 25, 2008 at 2:39 am
The insight you have given has been projected by the international media as well, particularly the growth. I tend to agree with you. Can you tell us about few case studies which may be relevant on the ground. May be a company which is using the power of Social Networking in a big way. Thanks and Cheers