Category Archives: News

Story in Afaqs Reporter – Are Online Tools the best way to measure Digital Influence

By Amita on September 20, 2011

Afaqs recently did a story on – “Are online tools the best way to measure Digital Influence” for their magazine – Afaqs Reporter.

My experience as part of the Insights & Analytics practice at Blogworks has been that technology has not reached the point where 100% automation can be relied upon. Here is my original comment on the story:

Social is a new industry and like any new industry it will go through a churn before best practices and standard metrics are put in place. At this point of time, there are several tools which give an automated influence score but accuracy of these is still a question mark for several reasons. First, most of these tools at this point are limited to specific channels and don’t take into account the entire online presence. Therefore their score tends to be limited to say the person’s influence on Twitter and not credit for say their blog or participation on LinkedIn. Second, there is research to prove that “high popularity does not imply high influence and vice-versa”, while many of these tools are trying to delve beyond populist metrics such as the number of followers, they are quite vulnerable at this point to manipulation. Third, while standardisation is important, a one size fits all approach does not work well. Different businesses may find different metrics of value and an effective tool should work on a series of metrics (some may find Topic Posts or comment count to be of equal or more value than say just number of visitors and inbound link count) which is still to happen.

Therefore, these tools can’t be blindly relied on.The answer lies in finding the balance between automation and human intervention. Automation can help scale up influencer identification process, human intelligence on the other hand can keep a tab on the accuracy and relevance of results to the subject/domain under consideration.

You can read the complete story in the recent edition of Afaqs Reporter.

What have your experiences been in influencer measurement? Do share your learnings and experiences.

Also posted in Social Media | Tagged afaqs, afaqs reporter, gaurav mishra, influencer identification, karthik srinivasan, measuring digital influence, social lsitening, Social Media Analytics, Social Media India, social media insights, social media tools | Comments (0)

Story in IAMAI’s magazine – Leveraging Social Listening Strategically

By Amita on September 20, 2011

 

In the past few months, I have been closely involved with the Analytics & Insights practice at Blogworks. When the team from Thinking Aloud, a magazine from IAMAI reached out, I shared some of my thoughts and learnings on how the social listening space is evolving and how brands can leverage it strategically.

Read the complete post below:

One of the notable trends of 2011 in context of social media adoption by brands and corporates in India has been the growing need for Social Listening. While listening is the natural first step in the social media journey, Indian marketers have so far been heavily focused on a) creating a presence b) gaining critical mass and c) engagement. With these three in place, there has been a need felt to make sense of these conversations. What are consumers saying? What’s the overall mood? Why are they engaged with us/motives? Which part of our promise/communication resonates with them? Which are the most common pain points? There is a need to listen-in and analyse.

Social Listening can be used at a very basic level to slice and dice data to understand the health of a corporate/brand on social media. But its real power lies in being able to assess the overall health of a corporate/brand. Tactical views such as volume, influencers, key associations, media type etc are useful but give only a surface view. A deeper dive can enable companies gain strategic views that can help assess the impact at a business level. I will be touching upon one such view that we developed over past few months and find valuable.

Before that, I want to briefly touch upon the social media scenario in India over the past 2 years. 2010 was coming of age of social media usage in terms of customer engagement. In a matter of nine months, Facebook grew from 20.87 million in June 2010 to 23.02 million users by March 2011. These consumers started speak and share more and more about their lives, a part of which was around brand related experiences. This led to an increase in the volume of organic conversations (users speaking on their own about a brand without any prompt). Brands saw an opportunity to engage these users and also co-opt new users and therefore set out to create their social media presence. They extensively used inorganic (paid) routes such as applications and ads which helped scale-up their engagement rapidly.

Suddenly, from ‘no. of fans’, ‘page stats’, the buzz words also started including ‘social media tracking’, ‘social media analysis’, ‘ORM’ and similar variants. While some companies continued to rely on good old Google Alerts, others realised the need for more detailed reports on the social landscape. While there are new tracking and measurement tools launched very day and more sophisticated forms of visual data become accessible, there are no short-cuts to automate insights. Technology can be leveraged effectively to pull data we seek but human intelligence helps define what data we need to pull and what we make of that data.

Participation is at the heart of social media and therefore one of the most powerful views to track is of level of participation of a social media programme. In 2010, Forrester had shared a framework called ‘Social Technographics’ to classify people according to their “usage” of social media technologies –

This gives a sense of profile of people basis activities undertaken by them – Inactives, Spectators, Joiners, Collectors, Critics and finally Creators. This can be a useful view for understanding the profiles of people in your community and customising your brand’s engagement to target each segment differently/relevant segments.

While the Social Technographics Ladder gives a hierarchy basis how they are engaging using social media, we felt it would be interesting to have a hierarchy basis how the users are engaging specifically with a brand or a corporate. A matrix that measures influence not by activities on social media in general, but actions undertaken in context of the brand or the corporate. We call this view, the Participation Hierarchy –

This framework helps us evaluate the ‘level of involvement’ of a user with a specific programme basis action taken.  From bottom to top, it shows the evolution of a social media programme basis the depth of engagement with its stakeholders. If a majority of users are involved in curation (sharing links, organising information) the programme is fairly reactive. However, as it moves up, from opinions to feedback & questions to ideas and further user driven content and initiatives, it reflects a growing degree of proactiveness by the users.

Hence, a bottom-heavy programme would indicate a nascent programme where users are not deeply engaged in terms of their participation. On the other hand, a top-heavy programme driven by user-generated content and user-driven initiatives signal maturity.

The interesting paradox of social media is that while it was supposed to remove hierarchies, it actually has created more hierarchies than ever.  ‘Influence’ decides how people get classified and companies want to invest into those users who are ‘influential’ or ‘relevant’ to their specific needs.

We are working at developing this and similar frameworks further but the larger point is about how deep we investigate defines the depth of answers that we get. It’s time to move beyond scratching the surface and look for trends that have an impact at a strategic level.

It is time to look beyond just engagement and tap social media for its real value – Insights.

You can also read the story here

Also posted in Social Media | Tagged amita malhotra, facebook, forrester, iamai, Social Media India, social media insights, social media listening, social media monitoring, Social Media Strategy, social media tools, social technographics, thinking aloud | Comments (0)

Business Line: Dell picks online ambassadors to boost client relations

By Rajesh on September 18, 2011

Business Line recently did a post on Dell’s social media programme. When the journalist who wrote the piece reached out, I was excited to be a part of the story as I had recently been a part of the Dell Unconference in Bangalore. However the story went on to quote me incorrectly. I have written to @businessline  on Twitter and they assured to look into the matter – no correction yet, but I am correcting the comment to what it was meant to be though I obviously don’t remember the exact words.

I am increasingly wary of giving quotes on a telephonic interview for obvious reasons.

Here’s the full text of the story:

PC maker Dell which has two billion online interactions with clients annually resulting in revenues of over $13 billion a year has in a unique initiative identified 3,000 of its employees as its online ambassadors.

These employees are trained and also awarded certificates after which they can participate in the company’s social media for his or her job on behalf of the company. While employees are allowed to use their own profiles, only SMaC (Social Media and Communities University) certified employees are allowed to participate on behalf of Dell.

According to Ms Allison Dew, Executive Director, Social Media and Online Marketing, Dell, the company launched the programme because “it is really about constantly listening to customers rather than just revenue returns.”

Apart from participating in the social media, the SMaC certification also enables a Dell team member to make use of the Dell branded Twitter profile, says Ms Dew.

While over 3,000 employees worldwide have been SMaC certified, in India, the certification numbers are across three categories: More than 200 employees across all business functions including sales, customer service, product group are SMaC Professional certified (ie., completed all eight hours), about 350 employees are certified Enthusiasts (completed a two-hour policy class and allowed to share Dell news online personal networks) and 900 plus employees have attended SMaC University classes.

Ms Allison says there are no restrictions on participation in the certification programme but “they need to take the required classes to get certified.”

Mr Rajesh Lalwani, Founder and Principal of social media consulting firm Blogworks, says that this is a unique initiative. “Dell’s focus on customer relationship is clear. If you have a focussed team for social media participation, the postings will be more responsible than if you have thousands of employees voicing their opinion. If you have a large, certified team for social media participation, it would help scale up Dell’s presence online and ensure responsible engagement by the Dell team.”

 

The original story is here.

Also posted in Social Media | Tagged Business Line, Dell India, DellSTUblr, SMAC | Comments (0)

Business Today: Cooling virtual tempers

By Rajesh on September 18, 2011

Business Today did a story on how:

Customers are turning to social media to make companies accountable for lapses in service.

I was quoted a few places in the story. Here are some comments I shared:

1. In turn, many companies have hired special handlers to respond to irate online messages. “Social media matters now, thanks to the increasing number of people on Facebook and Twitter and the rising volume of their conversations,” says Rajesh Lalwani, Founder of Blogworks, a Delhi-based social media consultancy, whose clients include Samsung (former client as I clarified to the journalist who wrote the piece), Madura Garments. Companies are spending more and more of their marketing budgets on digital media, sometimes as much as 10 per cent, he says.

2. For every complaint we have a set process,” says Blogworks’s Lalwani. “We try to anticipate every possible reaction and keep a process ready. It is not enough to merely reply to a complaint on a social networking site. For us, the problem does not end until a solution is found. To do that you need to have the right mechanism.

3. Lalwani feels marketers should look beyond Facebook and Twitter. “Social media is about handling real businesses,” he says. “It is about facing challenges in this space and coming up with different business goals to engage the brand’s stakeholders.”

The original story is here.

Also posted in Social Media | Tagged Business Today, India, Social Media | Comments (1)

The Hindu: In India, civil and political movements warm to social media

By Rajesh on August 21, 2011

I was quoted in this story – full text below:

Facebook and Twitter hum with conversation on corruption, Lokpal.

There is no shying away from a conversation these days. Certainly not, when it is happening online.

If recent trends are anything to go by, Indian netizens are getting all too vocal on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Topics like ‘India Against Corruption’ and key words, including ‘Lokpal,’ are trending.

Today, India has one of the fastest growing communities on Facebook globally, with more than 29 million registered accounts. According to the latest Internet usage statistics published by www.internetworldstats.com, India has more than 100 million unique users, ranking second in Asia in actual numbers, even overtaking Japan. Twitter has close to 6 million accounts.

In western countries with higher Internet penetration, it is the not-for-profit and civil rights groups that have dug deep into the resources of social networks. The trend is catching up here, too. Rajesh Lalwani, founder, Blogworks (www.blogworks.in), a strategic social media consulting firm, says that in the past two years, things have changed drastically. “The biggest change has been that most people are logging on to their social networks immediately after getting online. The opportunities for participating in a conversation are more than ever before.”

All details online

As is the case with the India Against Corruption campaign, volunteers are putting out everything, from details about where the protests are being organised to even documents comparing the Jan Lokpal and the government-sponsored Lokpal to mobilise popular support.

There are other innovative options being explored. The Chennai chapter of India Against Corruption, which maintains its website at www.iacchennai.org, organised a video web-stream of a lecture featuring activist Arvind Kejriwal on the IIT-Madras campus in July. It invited those logging on to interact with him. Filmmaker M.S. Chandramohan, one of the media strategists for India Against Corruption, said: “We received more than 2,300 questions and had more than 20,000 unique users for the webcast.”

Increasingly, groups are willing to chalk out elaborate social media strategies, Mr. Lalwani says. “Serious discussions used to be on a 1:1 un-dispersed basis but not any more.” A case in point, he says, is ‘Bell Bajao-campaign against domestic violence.’

Breakthrough, an international human rights organisation, decided to tap all media tools to drive home its message on domestic violence. Its blog, www.bellbajao.org, continues to give people a platform to share their experiences of and encounters with domestic violence.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has also jumped on the social media bandwagon to reach out to more people. While the global @PETA is drawing nigh on 2,00,000 followers, the Indian @PetaIndia has just over 2,000 followers on Twitter.

Application for Anna

No stone is left unturned to reach out to the people through networks. Juvenis Technologies Private Limited, a start-up in Mumbai, has put out an application for India against Corruption on the Android marketplace. Apart from keeping users updated, the application allows them to show their solidarity with the movement by making a missed call to a number held by India Against Corruption. So far, it claims to have received close to 1.3 crore missed calls.

Deepansh Jain, founder of Juvenis Technologies, was himself a volunteer with India Against Corruption in Mumbai. “We initially put up an app just for Anna Hazare, and we started getting enquiries from Indians abroad asking us to put out more information on the mobile networks. We contacted India Against Corruption’s core committee and it has helped us.”

The not-for-profit movements and civil rights groups apart, the Bharatiya Janata Party has been taking its Facebook page seriously for a year now, running a proactive campaign. It has close to 3.5 lakh ‘likes’ to its page, even having an online fund-raising video campaign featuring national president Nitin Gadkari.

Feedback mechanism

Arvind Gupta of the party’s IT cell that oversees the strategy said: “The BJP believes in using social media effectively for listening, engaging and responding to its members, workers, supporters and citizens. Social media acts as a continuous feedback mechanism between the party leaders and citizens at large.”

The party organises regular online discussion forums, with its senior leaders addressing queries through its official Facebook page: www.facebook.com/ BJP4India.

Also posted in Social Media | Tagged Anna Hazare, Blogworks, facebook, Social Media | Comments (0)