Social Media Marketing is taking off and a clear sign is the number of agencies and companies offering services around it. Though I belong to the evangelist side of social media marketing i.e. we also offer social media marketing (SMM) services but after interacting with many marketers Ive started to understand their dilemma when it comes to judging the effectiveness of a social media marketing campaign. This post will try and throw some light upon that dilemma which i call as clicks vs conversations.

Still Living in the CPC (Cost per click) Era?

Lots of marketers still look at clicks as a metric to measure the effectiveness of any campaign online. I guess its got to do more with the revolutionary adwords model of google which shifted the metric for online advertising from CPM to CPC and made it far more measurable and accountable than any other medium.

Does CPC work for SMM?

Social Media Marketing entails engaging with users on social media sites like blogs, social networks, video and picture community portals, knowledge sharing communities like qna’s and wikipedia etc. While engaging with users the goal is the following:

1) Identification of Audience ( Analysis of Social Media Channels and identifying your target audience - TG)

2) Spreading Awareness (this could be for a brand, company, products or events.. basically whatever requires social media marketing from the clients end)

3) Creating Engagement (Involving the TG in a conversation which could be topical, industry oriented or issues that concerns the brand i.e. basically befriending the TG)

4) Propagating Evangelism

(Recruiting evangelists. Recruiting here doesn’t stand for formal recruitment it stands for identification of those users that will drive the brand message to others and making sure they are rewarded with either a title i.e. group moderator etc or there is an end benefit in notional terms i.e. I helped spread awareness on aids or I was having more information than my friends on a certain topic.)

5) End Result Viral Impact (Social Media Marketing efforts should have a ripple effect which in turn becomes buzz or viral)

Now as you would notice in the above process it doesn’t matter whether how many clicks (infact its very difficult to track clicks as well as they coul come 1 month later after you had the conversation) did the user do or whether or not he visited the site what matters is how many conversations took place that were meaningful. Because if the conversations were meaningful word would spread and eventually there would be a buzz impact.

Short term Vs Longterm

Also with the on-off capability of the web marketers patience with building awareness is very limited. For example the google ads on any ads on the web can be turned on and off almost instantaneously. But the social media marketing campaign is unlike these normal ads that can be placed on a google or rediff homepage. Its not an on and off campaign instead its a gradual scale up exercise that require far more strategy input and qualitative execution than a click and upload banner does.

Conclusion: On the whole marketers are caught between the ROI metrics of the traditional online marketing campaigns where clicks are of prime importance and conversations are close to zero. But with social media coming to the party and with marketers and companies alike indulging in it I think conversations/engagement as a metric to judge campaign effectiveness will be given more emphasis in the future.

Yes you read it right! WATConsult now provides facebook application development as a service! We always have review facebook applications on our blog but we thought its about time we got into it ourselves! So whose wanting a killer facebook application? Well those of you who dont know what facebook is and what all it can do here is a presentation which gives 5 reasons to have a facebook application.

Do contact us and know more on how you can create a buzz on facebook by launching your own facebook application.

Rajiv Dingra the Founder and Lead WATConsultant, WATConsult.com just contributed an article which got published in the latest issues of IT Magazine. The article makes an attempt at listing down all the trends in web 2.0 Indian and International of last year i.e. 2007 and I also try my hand at some crystal ball gazing by looking into what key trends could affect the web 2.0 space in 2008.

Here is a synopsis from the article

The key trends to watch out for in 2008 in the Web 2.0 space based on the trends of 2007
The Year 2007 has been a great year for the Web now known as Web 2.0 the world over. On one hand there have been an upswing in the number of web 2.0 startups globally on the other hand popular web 2.0 startups like Facebook.com, jaiku.com, feedburner.com and others have been acquired or invested in by the giants of the web like Microsoft and Google.
Closer home in India the trends have been similar though still at a nascent stage as social networking became a buzz word with Orkut which led to the birth of startups like Minglebox.com (which got funded by Sequoia Capital), BigAdda.com (Reliance Backed), Desimartini.com (Which recently got acquired by HTMedia) and many others. Though at a less frequency than the US, India has seen over 150 web 2.0 startups (According to a WATConsult Internal Research) been launched this year in different spaces right from social networking, social bookmarking, Blogging, Media Sharing, Local Search etc.

So in order to understand where the Web 2.0 trends are headed in the Coming Year 2008 one needs to analyze what has happened both internationally and in India in 2007.
Key Trends Seen Internationally in Web 2.0 2007

• Open Api’s
  
• Widgetization of the Web
  
• Personalization of the Web
  
• The Web is the New Desktop

Key Trends Seen In India in web 2.0 2007

• Social Networking Phenomenon
  
• Blogging Phenomenon
  
• Media Sharing Phenomenon

Future Trends in India & International Web 2.0 2008 and Ahead..

• Corporate Blogging
• Niche Social Networking
• Employee Communities
• Vitual Worlds
• Enterprise 2.0
• Mobile 2.0

For all those who would like to read the entire article you can download the pdf key trends web 2.0 2008 or grab a copy of the latest IT Magazine. Do drop your thoughts on the article.

Well this question may seem absurd to most as I have seen people having an issue with even understanding what web 2.0 is forget actually having a web 2.0 strategy in place to leverage the power of community, collaboration and collective expertise to bring great results for one’s business.

So lets simplify the question.. into many questions..

• Does your company have a website? Do customers/employees/suppliers visit your website?
• Does your company engage in any kind of (small or big) market research?
• Does your company interact with customers regularly? (Once a day, week, month on phone, email, chat?)
• Does your company have employee that are widely dispersed? (i.e. you have multiple branches across the country coordinating with each other?)

If your answer to any of the above questions is YES then your company needs a web 2.0 strategy in place!

Here is what a web 2.0 strategy means and what it can do for your company..

Web 2.0 is all about individuals creating conversations using Web-based platforms that connect them through enhanced interaction, collective content creation and shared expertise. Hence whether its a corporate blog or a online employee network/community/wiki or an online community of your customers it all falls under web 2.0.

Internationally the Web 2.0 techniques that businesses are experimenting with are RSS feeds, podcasts, wikis, blogs and social networks as these Web 2.0 tools can be extremely powerful in engaging your customers/partners/ suppliers/employees. Individually, they also provide utility that can help grow the connection you’re making with your customers.

One does this by evaluating the needs, wants, demographic and other details of ones customers and also what brings them to use your products or brands. Once the common aspect among them is figured out (the common aspect could be either linked or independant to your product) you can start building your customers into a community which does the following..

• Free feedback both negative and positive i.e. Market Research
• Engages in future ideation for your products i.e. Product development
• Recommends you to other new customers i.e. Word of mouth marketing
• Free content for you around your brand i.e. Brand communication
• Gives you information on competition i.e. Competitor Analysis

The same method could be applied to bothe employees and other partners and the value derived through web 2.0 collaboration would bring great business benefits.

For those companies in internet businesses its even more imperative to look at a web 2.0 strategy this is because you mode of business itself is through the online medium thereby making your users much more receptive to online platforms and their use. Hence online businesses can derive a higher adoption rate to their web 2.0 initiatives and can see them bringing value instantly.

How is Web 2.0 changing businesses?

(For futher details Contact us at +91-9820761167 or Email Us )

The presentation below covers the following points:

1. Elements of Social Networking
2. Current Status of Orkut in India
3. Why did Orkut become so Popular in India?
4. Analysis of Indian youth on Orkut
5. Upcoming Indian Social Networks (Their Strategy)
6. Life Cycle of a Social Network

Click here to download the presentation

Do contact us if you need an explanation or clarification.

Corporate blogs, have been making news more often than not. Asia Times, on 25th April, wrote an in-depth article on Corporate blogging in the Indian context, covering its impact on companies like TATA, Infosys, Fritolay etc. The article, true to its nature spoke about the risk’s that corporate blogging carries with it, and in the same context mentioned about WATConsult, as a "social media management"  firm, that is  giving  Indian corporates professional help in blogging.

The article carried illuminating quotes from Rajiv Dingra creator and "chief blogger" of WATConsult on the Indian Corporate blogging and what, WATConsulant is doing to make Corporate Blogging more Understood. 

Rajiv’s Quotes from the article:

Like other blogs, corporate blogs informally exchange feedback and information inside and outside the organization, but they run risks of suffering more damage than other blogs from legal and public relations disasters. So a new marketing and PR breed called "social media management" firms, such as New Delhi-based BlogWorks and WATConsult, are opening shop to give Indian corporates professional help in blogging.

Rajiv Dingra, creator and "chief blogger" of WATConsult, told ATol that many leading Indian companies are expressing interest in starting blogs.

"We are conducting a workshop in May on corporate blogging," said Dingra. "We tell companies that just as we have offline conversations, blogs are necessary online conversations with clients, customers and employees."

Dingra is convinced that blogs will be a standard corporate communication tool just like a website and e-mail ID, particularly in India, where more than 35% of the population is under 15 and the Internet is increasingly their basic medium of communication.

"Without publicity, Orkut has 6.13 million India profiles," said Dingra, "and that should give an idea of how much a blog type of networking is necessary for any brand targeting the young in India."

With an inherent freewheeling structure, blogs are unsure territory for nervous corporates for whom blogging could be uncorking a genie that could turn out to be a monster. But if it is executed well there is little to worry about, said Dingra, and even negative communication can be turned to advantage. "We even offer negative feedback management to our blog clients."

The article also carried interesting quotes and insights from Tata Interactive systems - Ankush Gupta and Abhijit Bhaduri, who run’s the Fritolay blog amongst many others.

WATConsult in its attempt to make corporate blogging more understood has started conducted workshops. It’s currently in process of carrying workshops for companies. To enquiry about the same …contact us!

To read the entire article click here

Blogging has been considered to be vague when it comes to calculating its ROI be it corporate blogging or blog marketing.

So we were more than glad to come across a published paper by Forrester’s Charlene Li that has taken the first step in measuring ROI for corporate blogs.

Here is how to evaluate your corporate blog and compare it to value generated from offline or other mediums.

The above chart can be extremely helpful as a starting point at evaluating your corporate blog efforts though the measurement criterias would differ depending on your corporate blog objectives. Corporate blogs objectives could range from being an initiative to connect with the customer to a platform for hiring new staff or for deriving consumer insights. In each of the above cases the ROI to be measured would be different.

Also if you ever need blog strategy consulting you can always contact us

Click here to download this presentation

Click here to download the presentation