Leveraging social media for Business, does it make sense? Some will say yes some will say no. To get an answer for this one, Digital Vidya on Facebook asked people to contribute Indian Social Media case studies to see what brands/organizations/individual have been able to mark a success in it.
Social-Media-India-Case-Studies
Along with some great case studies, the answer we got is – Yes, leveraging Social Media for Business makes an absolute sense.
Let’s know about the case studies:
Taxi Driver Devesh Mishra in Banaras does great amount of business (including lots of foreigners as his customers) by leveraging his video on YouTube.
Ching’s Secret is considered one of the most successful Indian case studies on Social Media. They have a range of Chinese Soups, Sauces, Sauce mixes, Hakka and Instant Noodles that they promote through Facebook. It has 108,642Fans.
TED India leveraged Social Media (especially Twitter) to fill 800 seats. Their event cost was more than Rs 100,000.
An auto driver Samson in Chennai doing great amount of business using his own website. We posted a detailed blog on him. He may not fit directly in ‘Social Media’ but virality of the concept is the winner here.
Cocoberry Frozen Yoghurt Ice-cream parlors facebook fan page has more than 35,613fans with a high degree of engagement. They provide their fans the latest of happenings in the parlor.
Shashi Tharoor used Twitter very intelligently. He had a fan following of more than 7 lakh people which is among the highest number of fans in India
SCJP – Success, Certified is another great example of community development and help using SM. Going by the fan following, the numbers may not be much as compared to other pages. But this page catering to a particular segment – those preparing for SCJP exam in a novel “Quiz of the Day” way. It is not just another page or group that’s impressive JUST because of its name.
Amazing level of engagement at Tirupati Balaji fan page on Facebook with 13,400 fans.
With a satisfying service on phone Just Dial has more than 63,935 fans on Facebook.
Gunpowder restaurant in Hauz Khas is taking table bookings on Facebook fan page, what an interesting use of Social Media has grabbed almost 1944 fans.
Tata Docomo has fan following of 84,253peopleon their facebook fan page.
The very recent – StripeytheCub, a very recent save tigers campaign has a facebook fan following of a tremendous 239,589people providing information around tigers.
Another very interesting case study was Pantaloons webcasts fashion show on Facebook. Glamour world is also making an effective use of the Social Media.
Healthcaremagic’s twitter campaign is an impressive one; they give daily health tips and have around 40000 followers on twitter.
ZooZoo can be another good example. Although they heavily leveraged on TV and other traditional media but their current success with 105,259fans on Facebook speaks a lot about their success in Social Media.
Reliance money has reached to 10,135 friends with a lot of interaction with their fans.
Kashmir fan page has 11,803 fans and the number is increasing very rapidly.
A very interesting B2B Indian case study is Deskaway, which is doing a great job in leveraging Social Media to reach out to and engage with Global Audience.
Fastrack is another success story with 180,783fans and more adding to it everyday.
Love in Jeans, a condom brand Facebook fan page is catching up with 6,362fans. Apart from brand promotion they are also spreading awareness through Social Media.
Basics Life, a cloth brand with multiple stores across India has 8254 fans and they are still growing. They have able to promote their brand in a better way.
This is just the beginning. Social Media is vigorously catching up in India. Digital Vidya will bring you face to face to the accomplishments of Social Media and we hope that the above compilation of case studies by Digital Vidya (Facebook) is useful for you. Do share with us if it inspires you in any way. Also, feel free to share any case study.
What we at Digital Vidya aspire people to do is exactly what an auto driver is doing to get customers. Samson, an auto-rickshaw driver from Chennai has set up his own website www.tuktastic.comwhich not only gets him customer but has also made him the only auto-rickshaw driver within Asia to own a website. It is a very rare fact that in a country like India where only 75 million people use Internet, an auto driver has made a quality place for himself.
Thirty Eight year-old Samson failed in class V, dropped out of the school after class VII, and ran away to work as a cleaning boy in hotels before returning home. He also worked as a tailor and a leather jacket maker before he got into driving auto-rickshaw. But since 2006, Samson became the most sought after auto driver for the foreign customers with his website. His service can be booked over an email, phone call or simply by an SMS, while locals can find him outside Taj Coromandel hotel, Chennai.
With www.tuktastic.com his reach has outgrown to a huge number of foreign customers who come to take a ride in ‘Tuk Tuk’. He claims that Tuk Tuk is safe to ride on and apart from being a cost effective mode of traveling its much more fun than any car or taxi.
Samson, on his website, not only speaks about himself but has also provided all the relevant information about Chennai that a tourist would need including eating joints, shopping and places to travel. The idea of engagement is well used by Samson as he has also created a section of Happy customer where they can post pictures, share their experience and give a feedback about their ride in tuk tuk.
There are many famous people who have traveled with Samson in his Tuk Tuk that includes South African cricketer McKenzie and Hashim Amla and once their entire team, Australian cricket team, Salman Rushdie and Padma Laksmi to name a few.
How it actually started? In 1997, after five years he became an auto driver, an English passenger prompted Samson to consider learning more about language and technology.
“I didn’t understand anything he said. First day he asked me to take him to Marina beach and bring back. When I dropped him back at his hotel, he asked me if it was possible for me to come back the next day morning. I only understood a word ‘tomorrow’. I said ok. He asked me to drop him off at an office and pick him in the evening. It became a routine after the second day,” added Samson.
When the Englishman was leaving Chennai, he introduced Samson to a new customer. The newcomer needed a guide and paid Samson good money in return. This rotation went on for three years during which he learnt to speak English.
During that time Samson took a woman from Japan on a ride, who later became a regular customer. He used to take her to a nearby internet café almost twice a day. “Regularly watching her going to the cyber café, I became curious to know about the Internet and e-mail and asked her more about it. Seeing my interest, she opened an e-mail address for me. I started requesting all my foreign passengers to send the pictures they take in Chennai to this id,” he said.
In 2006, a British pilot who has been a regular passenger on Samson’s auto helped him open his website. “He suggested many names from which I selected ‘tuktastic’, a combination of tuk-tuk and fantastic. It sounded quite nice. I printed a card with my e-mail ID and internet address to distribute to my foreign clients.”
After getting the hang of e-mail, Internet and its potential, Samson now hosts another website, NetwayAdvertise.com. Samson understands the dynamics and earns money by hosting online banner advertisements from local businessmen who can’t advertise in print or TV due to their high ad rates. He charges Rs 500 for a year for hosting a display ad on his website. At present, he is running 15 banner ads and he earns around Rs 7,500 a year from his online advertising business.
Isn’t it inspiring enough to start getting serious about leveraging Digital Marketing? We will continue to inspire you with more such stories. Please feel to share about any similar case studies you are aware of.
Digital Vidya’s Social Media for B2C bootcamp on April 14, 2010 concluded with two new communities Delhi Deals – Shop Till You drop and Dilli Ki Kahani…Dilli Ki Zubaani on Facebook, made by participants as a hands-on exercise on Community building. Both the communities were given $30 and a week’s time to promote their community to get high degree of engagement and maximum number of fans. On April 21, 2010, after a two-hour of web session review of the pages, Delhi Deals was declared as the winner. Dilli Ki Kahani managed to get 740 fans but Delhi Deals outperformed them by getting 1084 fans. Both the communities were promoting Delhi. Delhi Deals – Shop Till You Drop was confined to the shopping destinations in Delhi. However Dilli Ki Kahani…Dilli Ki Zubaani kept its topic broad; this included anything in regards to Delhi.
Live community building exercise resulted in two new communities on Facebook - Delhi Deals and Dilli ki kahaani dilli ki zubaani
Delhi Deals came out as winner because of the continuous and aggressive participation as a team. They made sure to post something new every hour and constantly interacted with their fans. The information provided was very specific which attracted fans. The second primary reason being Delhi Deals got 339 fans with over 70% conversion rate at 0.06$ CPC under US$ 28 budget over a week,
explained Pradeep Chopra analyzing the highlights of the winning team during the webinar.
On the other hand, Dilli ki Kahani could not manage to put team efforts. One or two participants were active in the initial days which slowly faded. The topic was huge which could include anything about Delhi but the specific information that could attract fans was not there. Also they had got 115 fans with only 48.9% conversion rate at 0.12$ CPC under US$ 28 budget over a week,
added Kapil Nakra highlighting the analytics of Dilli Ki Kahani.
During the workshop the participants were provided insights from case studies like Ching’s Secret (101,354 fans) and unofficial Commonwealth Games – 2010 (23,792 fans) which have been able to run a successful campaign as well as have generated a huge fan following. For any individual it would be a challenge to create a successful fan page on Social Media Platform but speakers Kapil and Pradeep’s continuous guidance and support throughout the community building exercise build the confidence and competitive feeling among the teams to create the two fan pages.
The participants were divided in two groups of six people each including the trainers Pradeep and Kapil. The total duration for the exercise was 2 hours. In the beginning, the teams were given 15 minutes to think of an individual topic to build their community. Once the two communities were created, they were also given $30 each to promote their pages. It was decided that the communities will be promoted through team’s engagement and minimally through the advertisement for a week.
Throughout the week the teams kept doing the wall posts, likes, comments and inviting friends to promote the fan pages.
High degree of egnagement - Delhi Deals
Wall post by Dilli ki kahani...
After a week, in the 2 hours of web session, various aspects of both the pages were discussed.
It is very important for any fan page to have a reputation because of which it is followed. If you want to be followed, you need to have visibility, relevancy and credibility,
added Kapil.
I did many things that attracted fans to Delhi Deals page, I targeted various groups and posted about my page, I asked my friends who have more than 500 friends to post it as their status message and by doing this we got around 100 fans,
added Vaibhav Jaiswal, one of the participants of Delhi Deals fan page.
The first day after making the fan page we saw that we (Delhi Deals) were way too behind from the other team (Dilli ki Kahaani). It was then we took a challenge to put in efforts as team. We exchanged mails, discussed strategy to make our page more interesting, made sure that we are visible, relevant and credible to our fans. We stood as a team and the result is great. We stand as winners. I believe this is how it goes for any campaign on any Social Media platform,
Vaibhav added further.
The first day Dilli Ki Kahaani was leading with over 100 fans because of spending the allocated amount of $25 in a single day. On the contrary Delhi Deals used only $5 per day and hence the conversion rate was much more in the latter. The most interesting part was that the ad spending was done by Pradeep and Kapil without disclosing it to the teams while the participants were busy promoting pages through engagement. The ad spending was shared only at the time of result during the webinar while reviewing and discussing the analytics of the pages with participants.
Another interesting aspect was shared by Adarsh Jain when he posted about Delhi Deals on another fan page promoting Delhi, he was banned immediately.
I posted about Delhi Deals on another community promoting Delhi and I was banned. Then I realized that before promoting any brand you need to listen to what people are saying and accordingly you have to build its credibility. This is an important learning point of this exercise.
Getting banned this way is more like when you do door to door sales and they shut the door at your face. It implies that you need to have some credibility before you take your product to someone,
added Pradeep.
Another surprising insight from Delhi Deals was the male (67%) to female (33%) participation ratio. General perception is however opposite when we talk about shopping.
Surprising Insight from Delhi Deals page analytics
In fact initially we strategize targeting woman oriented groups and posted all our female friends to get more fans but the result came out surprising,
added Adarsh Jain.
The learning through this whole exercise is that the Facebook ad plays a very important role – great initial points and then if the content is enriching the effect multiplies,
explained Kapil.
Ads Comparison of both pages
Overall it was a wonderful experience for all the participants.
It has been a great learning experience and would love to be part of future camps by Digital Vidya,
added Naveen Arora, Quasar.
The idea of this Facebook Community building hands-on exercise was to give the real feel of it to the participants and the actual winner was the spirit of participation of all the participants,
concluded Pradeep Chopra.
If you want to leverage Social Media for your business, you may want to attend Digital Vidya’s upcoming Social Media Marketing bootcamps taking place in Delhi on May 14, 2010, in Mumbai on June 4, 2010 and in Pune on June 5, 2010.
Social Media for B2B Businesses Bootcamp (Apr 9 | Delhi)
Digital Vidya has recently started an initiative to support B2B organizations to explore relatively unknown territory of leveraging Social Media for B2B Businesses. Digital Vidya recently conducted one-day bootcamp in Bangalore on “Social Media for B2B Businesses” on March 26, 2010 and in Delhi on April 9, 2010. The bootcamp started with the discussion on why B2B businesses should care about social media.
According to the data published by Cisco, 96% of all Indian IT decision makers prohibit the use of social media applications in the workplace, highest for any country across the world. It’s really surprising. Even though they understand their “employees” are their key asset, they are not letting the inner talent exposed to potential Customers. Companies like IBM and Cisco are exploring and experimenting various initiatives like creating online newsrooms, video sharing platform, building organization wide thought leadership to fulfill multiple objectives including lead generation and direct sales. The key is to use Social Media channels effectively while having the employees focus on their key accountabilities,
said speaker Kapil Nakra while beginning the session.
In India, Social Media is primarily used by B2C businesses to fulfill the objectives of spreading the buzz, listening and engaging with target audience but not many B2B companies has realized the need for their organization. They still believe that Social Media is primarily a kid’s playground. It does have any role to play in large ticket size deals. But that’s not true any more.
There are several aspects in B2B Businesses like lead generation, direct sales, reducing client acquisition cycle, lead qualification, improving the conversion ratio, resource hiring, competitive analysis and vendor evaluation to which Social Media can be leveraged effectively,
explained the speaker Pradeep Chopra, Digital Vidya.
There was a discussion of Indian case studies like Deskaway, an online Project Management Software company which is generating effective leads in global market place through various Social Media channels including Facebook and Twitter.
Digital Vidya itself is a successful example to generate direct sales through Social Media. More than 100 people have participated in Digital Vidya Bootcamps in last 3 months, out of which 75% can be attributed to Social Media channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Online PR.
I am thankful to Digital Vidya for putting together a very useful bootcamp on Social Media. I am extremely satisfied with the knowledge and ability of both the instructors to deliver the curriculum,
said Kaushik Satish, NenTel.
After the B2B businesses are clear that they need to care about Social Media, the next major question that comes is how to effectively use Social Media to fulfill on business objectives. The key channels that are most widely used in B2B businesses are LinkedIn, Blogging and Discussion forums.
One of the key principle one needs to understand is the fact that fundamentally B2B Business are not different from B2C. Even though its about business dealing with Business but fundamentally it about an individual dealing with another individual,
explained Kapil Nakra.
LinkedIn is the largest and highly active Social Media community where over 60 million professionals across the world are using it to exchange information, ideas and opportunities. It represents more than 200 countries and only in India there are over 5 million members.
To get maximum benefit out of it an organization need to create visibility by ensuring all their employees’ particularly all the sales team member’s active participation on LinkedIn. The basic purpose is to increase your visibility. Once you are visible, build your credibility, create engagement and make sure you are relevant,
said Kapil.
But what is in it for a Business? The answers are many. From getting potential vendors/ Employee evaluation tool to competitive analysis research tool to sales pitch for potential customers to engage and get relevant information. From getting direct sales to generating search engine traffic, all of it can be done at one place called LinkedIn.
The workshop provided a hands-on experience on creating thought leadership in online space. In the same context, Blogging was discussed as an important tool to market offerings in an online space. Participants did hands-on work by writing a blog post as per the guidelines. Even the participants who have written more than 100 posts till now were amazed to see the common mistakes they usually commit in their blog posts.
The content of the workshop was very relevant and clear. The case studies made it more tangible as we could connect the concept with the real time results,”
said participant Mita Patnaik, CEO, Vianza Inc, California (U.S.).
The workshop also inquired into the impact of Social Media popularity on Search Engine results. In fact it has led to emergence of a relatively new marketing approach to optimize results on search engine called – Social Search Optimization.
Nowadays if you search your name on any of the search engines, you will see that most the search results with come from social media sites rather than your corporate profiles. This shows the acceptance of Social Media sites by search engines. This change has drastically shifted the approach to market a business on search engines. In fact, search has become social, real-time and local,
added Pradeep.
The curriculum of the workshop was up to the mark, very informative and the speakers were good. Digital Vidya must take it to as many corporate and professionals as possible,
said another participant Girish Kulkarni, Infratel.
Digital Vidya aims to contribute to the growth of the Digital Marketing Industry by nurturing right talent through its hands-on workshops on various facets of Digital Marketing. The next SMM bootcamps organized by Digital Vidya are ‘Leveraging Social Media for B2B’ (21 May’10, Delhi) and ‘Leveraging Social Media for Branding and Community Building (21 May’10, Mumbai; 22 May’10, Pune; 14 May’10, Delhi). If you are serious about leveraging Social Media for your organization, you may want to be part of these upcoming Social Media Marketing Bootcamps by Digital Vidya.
Blogging was discussed as one of the most powerful tools in Social Media Marketing. Participants were given an opportunity to write a blog post as a part of the exercise. Pradeep highlighted
One has to have a passion for writing and patience to get the result out of blogging. The combination of both leads you to be a successful blogger. Those who have all the elements of SUCCESs model (S-Simple, U-Unexpected, C-Concrete, C-Credible, E-Emotions and S-Stories), derived from the book ‘Made to Stick’, in their blog are the ones who will be the most credible.
After attending the workshop, I have realized that there are so many opportunities through Social Media Marketing. It is a feeling of immense power
added Sanjay Beswal, CEO of Andees Consulting.
The speakers not only spoke but also engaged with the participants while helping them do some hands-on exercise after every session to give them a real taste of the opportunity. The most interesting part of the bootcamp was live Facebook Community Building competition. The participants were divided into 2 groups and they launched and promoted a new Facebook community within the bootcamp. The participants used all the insights they learnt about community building to promote their Facebook fan pages.
They were also given Facebook Advertising credits to boost up their promotion. Finally, the group discussed the key success and failure parameters for their individual communities. The participants discovered for themselves some of the key benchmarks regarding Facebook Advertising, which will help them replicate the success for the communities relevant to their businesses. Here are some of the learning acquired by the participants through live Facebook Advertising – one can expect around US$ 0.10 – 0.15 as the CPC (Cost Per Click) for a new visitor in India on Facebook. One can expect to achieve a CTR (Click Through Rate) of 0.05-0.1% and a Fan conversation (i.e. conversions/click) rate of around 40-60%.
The most interesting part was making a fan page on Facebook and analyzing it. It gave us an actual feel of what it needs to make a fan page on any Social Media. I have realized that unless you do it, you do not get it
explained Saurabh Nigam, Ericsson.
“I liked the format of the bootcamp. We have worked a lot in just two days. This bootcamp leaves me behind to think more about Social Media. Secondly, the case studies really help to understand the actual analytics of Social Media Marketing,”
said Gayatri Buddha, ex-AVP, MakeMyTrip. Another particiapant Apeksha Bobde from Impetus Infotech, who came to attend the bootcamp especially from Indore said
The sessions were informative and interactive. I will have some value-adds, once I get back to work I will have a better framework.
The workshop came to an end with a message to Listen, Follow and Engage to get meaningful results through Social Media Marketing.
Digital Vidya aims to contribute to the growth of the Digital Marketing Industry by nurturing right talent through its hands-on workshops on various facets of Digital Marketing. The next SMM bootcamps organized by Digital Vidya are ‘Leveraging Social Media for B2B’ (Apr 9, Delhi) and ‘Leveraging Social Media for Branding and Community Building (Apr 14, Delhi). You can find more about them at http://www.digitalvidya.com.
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