Social Media Strategies and Technologies

Well, I am not writing this post to throw more  rants at Indian companies, brands and marketers for not actively using  online platforms to engage with their consumers but would like to share my understanding of why people expect Indian businesses and brands to be on social web channels and what drives the adoption of social media among Indian organizations and consumers?.

Addicted social web users like you and me believe that social web is a great platform  for individuals, businesses and society. Everyday we read,share and discuss,  how companies or brands across world (mostly west) are using social web channels for customer service or engagement, online branding and reputation management, as a marketing, pr and communications medium so we think why the hell our guys don’t get it? when they can benefit from using it.

While the rest of  the world is catching up on using new media platforms for business exposure, engagement & growth, it is very common for us to get surprised on why very few Indian businesses  focus on new media platforms.

Sanjay Mehta has written a great post on “Why Customer Service In India Sucks and How Social Media Can Change It?”. Most of us are frustrated with the customer service attitude of many Indian brands because we already had enough of the poor experiences and looking for some communication channel with brands or companies to participate in conversations with us related using their product, service experiences while listening to our (customer)  feedback but why still many Indian marketers or brands doesn’t consider it as a medium to focus on?.

My recent conversation with Anaggh played a small role  in writing his insightful post on “Indian Brands and Businesses On Twitter - Social Media Case Study” and my comment on his post was the primary motivation behind writing this post and sharing my thoughts.

Why Indian Businesses Doesn’t Focus On Online Web?

Everybody like you and me know that our brands/marketers doesn’t focus much on online platforms as a medium to share, connect, engage with consumers as part of their brand communications. I think the main reason could be the stats on Internet users from India isn’t as encouraging as it is in the west for businesses to seriously consider online media as new platform for their brands engagement with target users and also most companies  think that their target consumers aren’t their yet or very few people in India use online media so it’s not worth spending resources to create a brand online communications - but slowly this psyche is changing and will change in future, thanks to rapid growth of Internet and mobile usage in India.

Do Indian Consumers Use Online Media?

Just recollect how many of us in India were apprehensive while using debit or credit card details online just few years back but now use it without a second thought for buying stuff, moving from just using Internet for email to heavy use of social web tools, being shy to post a comment on our favorite blogs to posting our product/service experiences in social review or rating sites  and using mobile for e-commerce &  bill payments, browsing Internet and sending messages to friends and social networks - don’t you think our people and their online psychology towards Internet is changing faster than somebody could predict.

Indian Businesses And Brands Don’t Get Social Web? - Lets Stop Cribbing.

We all start from square-one while learning new things so it is fine that Indian brands or marketers have minimal understanding of social web platforms as a medium for customer engagement or service, marketing & communications because they are still trying to understand the dynamics of online engagement.

But what I  would like to see is our brands  to focus on identifying their social engagement need with a strategy on why?, how? and where? to engage with their target consumers instead of just trying to use tools like twitter, social network profile pages and corporate blogs (because everybody else at other side of the world is using it) for the sake of branding themselves as social organizations  because it just helps your brand in getting rants from users/so called experts/analysts  for not engaging properly.

While Ford has generated lot of online and offline buzz for using social media with prime focus on Twitter using @Ford, @FordAPA and @FordFiesta channels but they don’t have an active corporate blogs like what GM manages. While GM again doesn’t use as many Twitter accounts as Ford is using but both of them are perceived to be social engaging brands with their target group so the point I’m trying to make here is that  “don’t focus on tools instead focus on strategy for your brand online engagement“.

For Indian brands or companies to quickly adopt social media as a part of their marketing, communications and customer engagement channel - first Indian marketers need to focus on making themselves comfortable in using social web tools and then focus on adopting it as a medium to engage with target audience for their brand or product or service message while educating their bosses, clients and decision makers on benefits of using online media as a new participation platform.

What Is The State of Social Media In India?

Recent studies like “India Social Media Report 2009″ conducted by exchange4media and blogworks points that our brands or marketers are in the early stage of using social platforms and have minimal understanding of the new medium.This could be another reason why our Indian brands engagement on Twitter seems very naive as pointed out in the Anaggh blog post but I strongly hope our brands/marketers can and will learn with constructive feedback from online consumers like us.

When the more Indian consumers move online and become active participants/contributors/digital activists by sharing their opinions, feedback or experiences of using a service, product and brand then the importance of the need to be on social web becomes very clear for brands and organizations.

So how soon these things can happen for us to say Indian brands and consumers are expert/heavy users of Social Web - I don’t know but being a Gen Y guy, I think it will happen very soon considering mobile & internet penetration in India and changing nature of consumers from passive product or service consumption state to an active participation age of sharing their thoughts/opinions/feedback etc will aid to drive social web adoption in India.

Personally I feel that social media success just doesn’t depend on few online media experts or digital marketers or evangelists talking about it but mostly on the technology reach, availability, need of use and adoption factors will drive it’s growth but it is essential for Indian companies to have focus on online media for their brand communications because already some of your consumers are there.

What is your take? - would love to know your perspective?.