A short sketch of history of social networks
The last few years had been a revolution of sorts when all those connected to internet started becoming subscribers of one social media or the other. The initial years, i.e., before 2006, it was more of a quest to decipher what is a web site and what the dot coms are all about and how one can create a web presence for one self and see what could be done with that. while in the west, people were more in the know of the power and capabilities of a dotcom, in the emerging networked societies such as India, the inquisitiveness was multifold - on one side, the entrepreneurial zeal of people to unlock the secret of a dot com promoted many a business to hit on the web and create a web site, for people like me, it was all about having a personal web page that showcases a simple profile and allow me to present myself to all - known and unknown and keep on boasting about or rather, bragging about the small and irrelevant accomplishments. That was the time when the concept of social network sites came into popularity and people started creating personal webpages as part of a larger website and make it become viewable to others.
Social Networks and their connect with common people
The initial networking sites promoted their services in one or the other ways, where individuals were encouraged to create and provide personal profiles, with the options of giving their photograph, email id, and most cases, their work place's web url as the bare minimal information tags to start with. some of the pioneering networking sites like Hi5, multiply started offering the services of profile based micro web pages as early as 2005, and some of the specialised networking sites like academia.edu began to offer their services by 2006/07. However, the advent of Facebook, and soon joined by the Linkedin and Twitter changed the way social networks operate. Here, I am not attempting at documenting the growth of these sites, lets do it in a different post or visit some interesting blogs on the same elsewhere, for an update.
Increasing importance of social media networks
The last five years have seen the technologies taking these social network sites services to grow from basic profile and connectivity link providers to develop avenues for sharing and interacting with individuals, organisations, brands, services, causes and many other purposes, through their service offers. most important among them all, had been the service of engaging of brands with their customers, fans and followers, taking the concept of marketing to a new level.
Today, no marketing firm can afford to ignore the role of facebook or twitter, in brand building and cultivating customers. While this essay is not to deal with the intricacies of how to build a social media based marketing strategy, it attempts to look at other services that have emerged as supportive and complimentary to social media marketing.
Social Media Analytics
business analytics in physical and overall sense deals with the domain of assessing the competitiveness of a firm in its industry and functions as a support tool for strategy and business model evolution for its market goals. similarly, internet based analytics - especially, the search engine analytics, advertising analytics help in analysis of effectiveness of firms in their web presence and online advertising. taking these competencies further ahead, social media analytics have emerged, that assess the effectiveness and impact of brands in the internet based social media and offer insights to marketers about the strategy monitoring and revision.
One such service is offered by a website called social bakers, who are working on continuous analysis of brands in various social media and offer statistics and analysed results. Visiting their site on the early hours of 11th Jan, 2014, i was surprised to find the details of top 100 brands on twitter, facebook, youtube and google, not just for the leading markets like USA, or UK, but for almost every country which has an internet presence. My curiosity to know who figure in the top 100 brands on facebook for India, led to some surprising details cropping up. This site throws the names of LIC of India Forever, Harley Davidson, Junglee.com, Aircel and amazon.com as the top five fastest growing pages in India, on facebook. And a little below, is the list of top hundred brands of India, on Facebook, along with the numbers of fans internationally and within India.
The moment these details come up on the website, several questions came in mind. Looking at the fastest growing pages on Facebook, these are the lingering questions:
Why is LIC of India on top of the list of fastest growing pages? Was it because, the newly emerging fifty plus age population is in the throes of redeeming their matured LIC policies? Was it because, facebook helps such policy processing happen in a seamless manner?
How come a bike which not even a fraction of percentage of bike market volume register such a huge addition of fan following? Was the popularity of Harley Davidsons a result of the aspirational model of consumption getting manifest on the Facebook page growth rate?
How come a country, whose book buying and reading habits are reflected by sunday morning footpath spread-out book pedlars suddenly show a reversal in the trends for book buying? Was it because amazon and its indian arm, are revving up their retailing presence through some path-breaking service models? Was it because one can lay hands on their choice books as easily as they can browse the books on footpath and after gleaning them, leave them out without buying - online too?
Why is Aircel suddenly showing a surge in its Facebook page fan growth, when the most popular mobile service providers are some other brands? Was it because, Aircel is in a position to address the needs of its fans differently through Facebook?
Or, am i in the midst of a different phenomena with regard to how people connect to their choice service providers or brand deliverers?
Well, each of these can be answered using a well developed marketing case study and gain some valueble insights on these brands.
The questions were highly academic on one side and highly intriguing from industry point of view. While their answers could pave way to a different understanding the emerging customer behaviour, the current discussion that i am raising is to underline the role that advanced service providers like social bakers provide, in a technology centred virtual social life booming in today's life.
Meta-Analysis as the new order of marketing research
It will be interesting to understand the model that such websites offer, and also to understand the science involved in developing a new science that i may call, virtual marketing research and meta-analysis of social media habits. How valuable will learning such a science be and how could it be applied by a business analyst for a brand or for a social networking site?
How does a website offering such services operate? what is its business model? who are its customers? What is the revenue model? How should it develop its in-bound marketing and link it to its out-bound marketing efforts? do these depend upon technology or innovative thinking on the part of such analysis service providers?
Today, online marketing has a lot to do with learning the skills and art of digital media manifestations of brands and their service on one-side and approaching the strategy makers with services of meta-analysis. which one should be the cup of an upcoming marketing professional?
The last few years had been a revolution of sorts when all those connected to internet started becoming subscribers of one social media or the other. The initial years, i.e., before 2006, it was more of a quest to decipher what is a web site and what the dot coms are all about and how one can create a web presence for one self and see what could be done with that. while in the west, people were more in the know of the power and capabilities of a dotcom, in the emerging networked societies such as India, the inquisitiveness was multifold - on one side, the entrepreneurial zeal of people to unlock the secret of a dot com promoted many a business to hit on the web and create a web site, for people like me, it was all about having a personal web page that showcases a simple profile and allow me to present myself to all - known and unknown and keep on boasting about or rather, bragging about the small and irrelevant accomplishments. That was the time when the concept of social network sites came into popularity and people started creating personal webpages as part of a larger website and make it become viewable to others.
Social Networks and their connect with common people
The initial networking sites promoted their services in one or the other ways, where individuals were encouraged to create and provide personal profiles, with the options of giving their photograph, email id, and most cases, their work place's web url as the bare minimal information tags to start with. some of the pioneering networking sites like Hi5, multiply started offering the services of profile based micro web pages as early as 2005, and some of the specialised networking sites like academia.edu began to offer their services by 2006/07. However, the advent of Facebook, and soon joined by the Linkedin and Twitter changed the way social networks operate. Here, I am not attempting at documenting the growth of these sites, lets do it in a different post or visit some interesting blogs on the same elsewhere, for an update.
Increasing importance of social media networks
The last five years have seen the technologies taking these social network sites services to grow from basic profile and connectivity link providers to develop avenues for sharing and interacting with individuals, organisations, brands, services, causes and many other purposes, through their service offers. most important among them all, had been the service of engaging of brands with their customers, fans and followers, taking the concept of marketing to a new level.
Today, no marketing firm can afford to ignore the role of facebook or twitter, in brand building and cultivating customers. While this essay is not to deal with the intricacies of how to build a social media based marketing strategy, it attempts to look at other services that have emerged as supportive and complimentary to social media marketing.
Social Media Analytics
business analytics in physical and overall sense deals with the domain of assessing the competitiveness of a firm in its industry and functions as a support tool for strategy and business model evolution for its market goals. similarly, internet based analytics - especially, the search engine analytics, advertising analytics help in analysis of effectiveness of firms in their web presence and online advertising. taking these competencies further ahead, social media analytics have emerged, that assess the effectiveness and impact of brands in the internet based social media and offer insights to marketers about the strategy monitoring and revision.
One such service is offered by a website called social bakers, who are working on continuous analysis of brands in various social media and offer statistics and analysed results. Visiting their site on the early hours of 11th Jan, 2014, i was surprised to find the details of top 100 brands on twitter, facebook, youtube and google, not just for the leading markets like USA, or UK, but for almost every country which has an internet presence. My curiosity to know who figure in the top 100 brands on facebook for India, led to some surprising details cropping up. This site throws the names of LIC of India Forever, Harley Davidson, Junglee.com, Aircel and amazon.com as the top five fastest growing pages in India, on facebook. And a little below, is the list of top hundred brands of India, on Facebook, along with the numbers of fans internationally and within India.
The moment these details come up on the website, several questions came in mind. Looking at the fastest growing pages on Facebook, these are the lingering questions:
Why is LIC of India on top of the list of fastest growing pages? Was it because, the newly emerging fifty plus age population is in the throes of redeeming their matured LIC policies? Was it because, facebook helps such policy processing happen in a seamless manner?
How come a bike which not even a fraction of percentage of bike market volume register such a huge addition of fan following? Was the popularity of Harley Davidsons a result of the aspirational model of consumption getting manifest on the Facebook page growth rate?
How come a country, whose book buying and reading habits are reflected by sunday morning footpath spread-out book pedlars suddenly show a reversal in the trends for book buying? Was it because amazon and its indian arm, are revving up their retailing presence through some path-breaking service models? Was it because one can lay hands on their choice books as easily as they can browse the books on footpath and after gleaning them, leave them out without buying - online too?
Why is Aircel suddenly showing a surge in its Facebook page fan growth, when the most popular mobile service providers are some other brands? Was it because, Aircel is in a position to address the needs of its fans differently through Facebook?
Or, am i in the midst of a different phenomena with regard to how people connect to their choice service providers or brand deliverers?
Well, each of these can be answered using a well developed marketing case study and gain some valueble insights on these brands.
Meta-Analysis as the new order of marketing research
It will be interesting to understand the model that such websites offer, and also to understand the science involved in developing a new science that i may call, virtual marketing research and meta-analysis of social media habits. How valuable will learning such a science be and how could it be applied by a business analyst for a brand or for a social networking site?
How does a website offering such services operate? what is its business model? who are its customers? What is the revenue model? How should it develop its in-bound marketing and link it to its out-bound marketing efforts? do these depend upon technology or innovative thinking on the part of such analysis service providers?
Today, online marketing has a lot to do with learning the skills and art of digital media manifestations of brands and their service on one-side and approaching the strategy makers with services of meta-analysis. which one should be the cup of an upcoming marketing professional?
No comments:
Post a Comment