Social media marketing in India
For 15-year-old Shraddha Sharma, uploading videos on YouTube was just another way to appease a friend who was unhappy with her… But little did she know that she would soon be the online singing sensation of India within weeks. Six months and eight video uploads later, she has almost 30,000 subscribers to her YouTube channel, more than four million video views and a whopping 110,000 fans on Facebook. She has also been signed to perform at a popular college festival in Delhi and has plans to launch her first-ever music album soon. Shraddha said: “Social networking sites are not just popular among youth but everyone else (as well). Everybody wants to remain active on these sites. So, I thought that social media and YouTube would be the best platform where I can share my talent.”
Websites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and numerous blogs have become a serious force in the digital world, making it hard for any company to ignore. According to a Burson-Marsteller report – 79 per cent of the largest fortune 500 firms use these platforms to communicate with customers and other stakeholders. Seizing the opportunity, ibibo.com, an online gaming and interaction website, has now diversified to include social media games in its stable. Rahul Razdan, President of Products and Operations at ibibo.com, said: “(The) first phase for all businesses is presence on the social media. I think a lot of businesses have already established presence, a lot more would do so in the future. “The second part after presence is engagement. What do you do after being present on social media? Social media is all about engagement. How do people react to what you are doing? It’s in the engagement phase that companies like us have added value for markets as well as consumers.”
Easy and economical, social media marketing is proving to be the most popular and fastest way for businesses to market their product and connect directly with the consumer. Online media branding firm, Meltwater, receives one client every two days, eager to find out how effective their online marketing efforts are. Ewan Ross, Managing Director of Meltwater India, said: “Indians have been very aggressive and early adopters of social media networking. If you compare Indian adoption of Facebook, it’s much greater than Singapore or Hong Kong. What we know of online media is that 200,000 are joining social networks per month. So five years down the line, it’s a huge amount of people using the social media.” Many businesses are now “tweeting” on twitter, putting up status updates on Facebook and creating groups on LinkedIn to create brand awareness. Not only is it a cheaper option, but it also gives them instant feedback.