Social Marketing.docx

1. Brand Promotion
through Social
Networking Sites
Social networking online community sites bring millions
of people of various origins and interests together. It
can be considered an alternate community especially for
people who spend most of their times in front of their
PCs, either for recreation or for business.

2. Contents
1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 3
2. Emerging trends in social networks ...................................................................................................... 4
2.1 Business model ....................................................................................................................................... 4
2.2 TWITTER .................................................................................................................................................. 5
2.3 FACEBOOK ............................................................................................................................................... 6
2.4 Orkut ....................................................................................................................................................... 7
2.5 Linkedln ................................................................................................................................................... 8
3. How To Boost Business Promotion Using Social Networking Online Community Sites ..................... 10
4. Interviews of prominent CFOs and Business leaders on “Why Social Networking Sites?” ................ 11
5. PRODUCT PROMOTION....................................................................................................................... 12
Linkedln ............................................................................................................................................... 13
Mazda.................................................................................................................................................. 13
FICO ..................................................................................................................................................... 13
6. Indian Companies using Social Networking Sites: .............................................................................. 14
Starbucks using Social Networking sites for product promotion ............................................................... 14
7. Online Advertisement Expenditure .................................................................................................... 15
8. New product launch ............................................................................................................................ 16
9. SURVEY RESULTS ................................................................................................................................. 20
10. CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................... 22
2|Page

3. 1. Introduction on Social Networking Sites
A social network service focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social
relations among people, e.g., who share interests and/or activities. A social network service
essentially consists of a representation of each user (often a profile), his/her social links, and a
variety of additional services. Most social network services are web based and provide means
for users to interact over the internet, such as e-mail and instant messaging. Although online
community services are sometimes considered as a social network service, in a broader sense,
social network service usually means an individual-centered service whereas online
community services are group-centered. Social networking sites allow users share ideas,
activities, events, and interests within their individual networks.
The main types of social networking services are those which contain category places (such as
former school-year or classmates), means to connect with friends (usually with self-description
pages) and a recommendation system linked to trust. Popular methods now combine many of
these, with Facebook, Bebo and Twitter widely used worldwide; MySpace and Linkedln being
the most widely used in North America; Nexopia (mostly in Canada); Bebo, Hi5, StudiVZ (mostly
in Germany), iWiW (mostly in Hungary), Tuenti (mostly in Spain), Decayenne, Tagged, XING;
Badoo and Skyrock in parts of Europe; Orkut and Hi5 in South America and Central
America; and Friendster, Mixi, Multiply,Orkut, Wretch, renren and Cyworld in Asia and the
Pacific Islands and Orkut and Facebook in India.
There have been some attempts to standardize these services to avoid the need to duplicate
entries of friends and interests (see the FOAF standard and the Open Source Initiative), but this
has led to some concerns about privacy.
Although some of the largest social networks were founded on the notion of digitizing real
world connections, many other networks as seen in the List of social networking websites focus
on categories from books and music to non-profit business to motherhood as ways to provide
both services and community to individuals with shared interests.
3|Page

4. 2. Emerging trends in social networks
As the increase in popularity of social networking is on a constant rise, new uses for the
technology are constantly being observed.
At the forefront of emerging trends in social networking sites is the concept of "real time" and
"location based." Real time allows users to contribute content, which is then broadcasted as it
is being uploaded - the concept is similar to live television broadcasts. Twitter set the trend for
"real time" services, where users can broadcast to the world what they are doing, or what is on
their minds within a 140 character limit. Facebook followed suit with their "Live Feed" where
users' activities are streamed as soon as it happens. While Twitter focuses on words, Clixtr,
another real time service, focuses on group photo sharing where users can update their photo
streams with photos while at an event. Friends and nearby users can contribute their own
photos and comments to that event stream, thus contributing to the "real time" aspect of
broadcasting photos and comments as it is being uploaded. In the location based social
networking space, Foursquare gained popularity as it allowed for users to "check-in" to places
that they are frequenting at that moment. Gowalla is another such service which functions in
much the same way that Foursquare does, leveraging the GPS in phones to create a location
based user experience. Clixtr, though in the real time space, is also a location based social
networking site since events created by users are automatically geotagged, and users can view
events occurring nearby through the Clixtr iPhone app. Recently, Yelp announced its entrance
into the location based social networking space through check-ins with their mobile app;
whether or not this becomes detrimental to Foursquare or Gowalla is yet to be seen as it is still
considered a new space in the internet technology industry
2.1 Business model
Few social networks currently charge money for membership. In part, this may be because
social networking is a relatively new service, and the value of using them has not been firmly
established in customers' minds. Companies such as MySpace and Facebook sell online
advertising on their site. Hence, they are seeking large memberships, and charging for
membership would be counterproductive. Some believe that the deeper information that the
sites have on each user will allow much better targeted advertising than any other site can
currently provide.
Social networks operate under an autonomous business model, in which a social network's
members serve dual roles as both the suppliers and the consumers of content. This is in
4|Page

5. contrast to a traditional business model, where the suppliers and consumers are distinct
agents. Revenue is typically gained in the autonomous business model via advertisements, but
subscription-based revenue is possible when membership and content levels are sufficiently
high
2.2 TWITTER
Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read
messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on
the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers.
Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access.
Since late 2009, users can follow lists of authors instead of following individual authors. All
users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or
external applications. While the service itself costs nothing to use, accessing it through SMS
may incur phone service provider fees.
Finances
Twitter's San Francisco headquarters located at 795 Folsom St.
In total, Twitter has raised over US$57 million from venture capitalists. The exact amounts of
funding have not been publicly released. Twitter's first round of funding was for an undisclosed
amount that is rumored to have been between $1 million and $5 million. Its B round of funding
in 2008 was for $22 million and its C round of funding in 2009 was for $35 million from
Institutional Venture Partners and Benchmark Capital along with an undisclosed amount from
5|Page

6. other investors including Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital and Insight Venture
Partners. Twitter is backed by Union Square Ventures, Digital Garage, Spark Capital, and Bezos
Expeditions.[
Content of tweets
Content of Tweets according to Pear Analytics.
San Antonio-based market research firm Pear Analytics analyzed 2,000 tweets (originating from
the US and in English) over a 2-week period from 11:00a.m. to 5:00p.m. (CST) and separated
them into six categories:
 Pointless babble - 41%
 Conversational - 38%
 Pass-along value - 9%
 Self-promotion - 6%
 Spam - 4%
 News - 4%
2.3 FACEBOOK
Facebook is a social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc.
Since September 2006, anyone over the age of 13 with a valid e-mail address can become a
Facebook user. Users can add friends and send them messages, and update their personal
profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally, users can join networks organized by
6|Page

7. workplace, school, or college. The website's name stems from the colloquial name of books
given to students at the start of the academic year by university administrations in the US with
the intention of helping students to get to know each other better.
The website currently has more than 400 million active users worldwide.
Financials
Facebook received its first investment of US$500,000 in June 2004 from PayPal co-
founder Peter Thiel. This was followed a year later by $12.7 million in venture
capital from Accel Partners, and then $27.5 million more from Greylock Partners. A leaked cash
flow statementshowed that during the 2005 fiscal year, Facebook had a net loss of
$3.63 million.
With the sale of social networking website MySpace to News Corp on July 19, 2005, rumors
surfaced about the possible sale of Facebook to a larger media company. Zuckerberg had
already said he did not want to sell the company, and denied rumors to the contrary. On March
28, 2006, BusinessWeek reported that a potential acquisition of Facebook was under
negotiation. Facebook reportedly declined an offer of $750 million from an unknown bidder,
and it was rumored the asking price rose as high as $2 billion.
In September 2006, serious talks between Facebook and Yahoo! took place concerning
acquisition of Facebook, with prices reaching as high as $1 billion. Thiel, by then a board
member of Facebook, indicated that Facebook's internal valuation was around $8 billion based
on their projected revenues of $1 billion by 2015, comparable to Viacom's MTV brand, a
company with a shared target demographic audience.
2.4 Orkut
Orkut is a social networking website that is owned and operated by Google Inc. The service is
designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships. The website is
named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten.
Although Orkut is less popular in the United States than competitors Facebook and MySpace, it
is one of the most visited websites in Indiaand Brazil. In fact, as of December 2009, 51.09% of
Orkut's users are from Brazil, followed by India with 20.02% and United States with 17.28%.
7|Page

8. Originally hosted in California, in August 2008 Google announced that Orkut would be fully
managed and operated in Brazil, by Google Brazil, in the city of Belo Horizonte. This was
decided due to the large Brazilian user base and growth of legal issues.
As of February 2010, Alexa traffic ranked Orkut 57th in the world; the website currently has
more than 100 million active users
2.5 Linkedln
Linkedln is a business-oriented social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and launched
in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. As of 11 February 2010, Linkedln had
more than 60 million registered users, spanning more than 200 countries and territories
worldwide.
Linkedln's CEO is Jeff Weiner, previously a Yahoo! Inc. executive.
Founder Reid Hoffman, previously CEO of Linkedln and now executive vice president of PayPal,
oversees day-to-day operations and is also Chairman of the Board. Dipchand Nishar is Vice
President of Products. Linkedln is headquartered in Mountain View, California, with offices
in Omaha, Chicago, New York and London. They are funded by Greylock, Sequoia Capital,
Bessemer Venture Partners and the European Founders Fund. Linkedln reached profitability in
March 2006.
On June 17, 2008, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, and other venture capital firms
purchased a 5% stake in the company for $53 million, giving the company a post-money
valuation of approximately $1 billion.
SERVICES
Membership
Linkedln has more than 60 million users worldwide, of which approximately half are in the
United States. 11 million are from Europe. With 3 million users, India is the fastest-growing
country as of 2009. The Netherlands has the highest adoption rate per capita at 30%.
8|Page

9. Features
The purpose of the site is to allow registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people
they know and trust in business. The people in the list are called Connections. Users can invite
anyone (whether a site user or not) to become a connection.
This list of connections can then be used in a number of ways:
 A contact network is built up consisting of their direct connections, the connections of each
of their connections (termed second-degree connections) and also the connections of
second-degree connections (termed third-degree connections). This can be used to gain an
introduction to someone a person wishes to know through a mutual, trusted contact.
 It can then be used to find jobs, people and business opportunities recommended by
someone in one's contact network.
 Employers can list jobs and search for potential candidates.
 Job seekers can review the profile of hiring managers and discover which of their existing
contacts can introduce them.
9|Page

10. 3. How To Boost Business Promotion Using Social Networking Online
Community Sites
Social networking online community sites bring millions of people of various origins and
interests together. It can be considered an alternate community especially for people who
spend most of their times in front of their PCs, either for recreation, business, or whatever
purpose they have. Either way, Internet users flock to these sites because they allow these
people to do a lot of things, from searching for long lost classmates to uploading their favorite
videos.
This huge number of people put together in a community is exactly the reason why social
networking online community sites are good avenues to promote your business.
The main benefits of using Social Networking Sites for Brand Promotion:
- Builds credibility and trust
- Lower cost/free advertising
- Create an online presence
- Boost and advertise a new business
- Stay in contact with customers
- Send instant updates
- Find employees or business partners
Social networking sites such as Facebook (400 million users worldwide) and Orkut (100 million),
or the micro-blogging site Twitter (which crossed 10 billion tweets recently) may offer engaging
distractions to the average user. But the numbers add up to a dizzying truth for brands: social
networking sites (SNS) and sites like Twitter are prodigiously fertile spaces to harvest ad
business.
10 | P a g e

11. 4. Interviews of prominent CFOs and Business leaders on “Why Social
Networking Sites?”
“India’s population puts us at an advantage!” said Arun Mehra, the COO of Zapak Digital
Entertainment Ltd. ”The online penetration is just 3-4 per cent, and less than 1 per cent of our
total population has a Facebook account. And the percentage of people using Twitter is even
smaller.” Mehra said that despite the percentages, India was already the 5th largest consumer
of Twitter in the world, owing largely to Bollywood’s enthusiasm for it. “And we are in the Top
10 list of consumers of Facebook. The influential audience is definitely online and things are
getting better by the day,” he said.
Rahul Mehta, the business head of Ching’s Secret, said, “There are approximately 5 crore
Indians and 1 crore NRIs online. Facebook alone has 1.2 crore Indians and 40 lakh NRIs.” Mehta
said the RoI on social media was substantially higher than what was offered by traditional
media. “These numbers are comparable to most national newspapers,” Mehta said. “Facebook
is best place to reach Sec A+, A and B+. With internet penetration deepening, the numbers will
rise in the next three to four years,” he said. Ching’s Secret has 98,826 (and counting) fans on
Facebook.
Khushboo Maheshwari, the head (digital) of OMD, said, “Today, 5% of Indian population has an
online presence and it is growing at a rate of 35% CAGR. In other words, 50 million users have a
presence on social media.” And the numbers were growing, Maheshwari said. “With the
government planning to spend Rs18,000 crore over the next three years to lay a 5 lakh km optic
fibre cable network to reach every gram panchayat, the growth rate is going to touch 100%
CAGR,” Maheshwari said. Mobile, web, and broadband will be critical to the growth in the
coming years, Maheshwari said.
Mihir Ferrao, who looks into Social Media Optimization and ORM at Starcom IP feels that
Internet in India needs to grow by atleast 20 to 25% year on year, to shake off the constant
comparisons with TV and Print. He said, “The only reason why we do not get a fare share of
advertising budgets is because, next to the reach & penetration of TV or Print, we are very
small. But if we look at the concentration of brand TGs on TV & Internet, then surely the
Internet will have higher traction.”
Saagar Dhoke, the founder of FunElement said that the e-revolution had helped to bridge the
gap between the product and the end consumer, be it for a movie or an FMCG product.
As for the group being targeted online by marketers, Ritesh Patel, the brand manager of CEAT,
said, “Social media has indeed proved to be a very useful medium for a brand like CEAT.” He
said that CEAT aspired to be a youthful brand. “And it finds complete match of TG in this
medium,” he said.
11 | P a g e

12. 5. PRODUCT PROMOTION
Twitter
Twitter promotion is one of the main reasons that businesses of all sizes have been flocking to
Twitter.Twitter lets you instantly get the word out about your product, service, project, or idea.
But to use Twitter promotion, you have to be the sort of Twitterer that people will choose to
follow, as only your followers will ever see your tweets (posts).
Twitter as a parent, advises promoters to follow below illustrated philosophies in order to make
a successful product launch.
Don't sell – converse-: Your goal on Twitter is to converse with people, not send them
running. They'll get interested in your products and/or services without you waving
them in their faces all the time.
Listen more than you tweet: The first thing to do is to find out who they are and what
they’re talking about. That's the only way you can figure out how you might fit into
what’s going on and make your own contribution.
Be helpful: Helpful people are people that other people want to converse with. People
that you actually converse with are going to be the most receptive to your message.
Give your followers what they want: Keep your follower's expectations in mind and be
sure you're meeting them.
Don't just feed them feeds: use Twitter feed to get your RSS feed picked up and sent
out automatically as part of your Twitter promotion strategy, but make sure you're also
reading other tweets, responding to them, and sending out other tweets of your own.
Twitter has been used effectively by the few companies to reap benefit in their business. The
two examples presented below established that.
1. DELL: One of the best examples of successful business use of Twitter is by Dell. Dell uses
twitter to understand after sales customer opinions, raising awareness, giving the discount
coupons to people who followed them. This results in increase in sales and cost effectiveness in
terms of cheap paid search results and email marketing.
2. IBM uses twitter to engage the techno-managers and researchers in their new developments
and thus getting help in making their new initiative known as well as in grinding new ideas from
the people.
12 | P a g e

13. Linkedln
Mazda: Mazda launched A fun and engaging series of poll questions created high-levels of
participation among members. Unique poll questions spoke to members’ professional and
personal interests as it relates to the cars they drive.
Strategy
Increase awareness of the new MAZDA6 design among an influential and savvy audience
Engage with decision-making professionals through a thought-provoking series of
questions
Interactive results platform encouraged members to collaborate
Results
Linkedln drove highly users to the MAZDA6 site and delivered some of the highest KPI
ratings of all lifestyle sites on the plan
FICO: FICO(credit scores) leverages promotional strategies on Linkedln by Messaging directed
to busy professionals valuable information and advice.
Promotional media invited businesses to join FICO’s social network: Decisions.FICO.com
Targeted messaging promoted upcoming FICO Events and Webinars
FICO Strategy
Reach influential professionals as they are in a decision-making mindset.
Target media to specific audience segments most likely to sign-up for FICO Events and
Webinars
Generate awareness among business decision makers for the FICO Social Network
Results
10-20% of signups for FICO World came from Linkedln
B2B Magazine designed and published a case study on FICO’s success on Linkedln
13 | P a g e

14. 6. Indian Companies using Social Networking Sites:
Motilal Oswal Financial Services Limited has been quite active on the social media
The company has uploaded Wealth Creation Study (WCS) Videos on YouTube and also created
a Linkedln event page for the WCS awards ceremony. Besides, we they also have a Orkut page
to upload different annual WC Studies. The creation of Wikipedia pages on the Motilal Oswal
Group, on Motilal Oswal and Raamdeo Agrawal had been completed.
As a result of these activities, seven out of 10 results on Google are owned and controlled by
Brand Motilal Oswal for the search Wealth Creation Study.
Zapak has carried out several similar campaigns; Axe, Ponds, and Mahindra campaigns — which
used a mix of available options. It created fan pages and groups, gaming and other fun
applications on platforms like Orkut and Facebook, and an active handle on Twitter, to link the
APIs (application programming interface) like OpenID and Facebook Connect to one’s site to
promote easy communication and conversations.
Ching’s Secret advertises regularly on Facebook and YouTube, the brand’s gets lots of traffic
generated virally because of the content, quizzes, and contests on Facebook. He said that in the
end, social media is a long-term strategic investment, it is not brand building but genuine
relationship creation and maintenance.
Starbucks using Social Networking sites for product promotion
Starbucks Facebook Promotion
Starbucks is promoting their newly launched ice cream on Facebook. If you go to the Starbucks
Ice Cream Facebook page (must be a registered user) you can send a coupon for a free pint of
ice cream to a friend (quantities are limited each hour). After you send the coupon, you would
be asked to tell a friend about the program and easily directed back to the Starbucks Ice Cream
Web site. Several touch points were tied into this marketing plan. These included the share-a-
pint, tell-a-friend, the downloadable discount coupon and the redirect to their site.
14 | P a g e

15. 7. Online Advertisement Expenditure
A report by Zenith Optimedia forecasts the future spends in online advertising and its growth
around the world. A look at the report and it justifies the increased interest that India as a
market is seeing as far as many advertising players launching digital arms in India are
concerned.
The global online advertisement spend country wise is as follows
Report by: Zenith Optimedia 2010.
Indian online Advertisement market is all set to reach Rs 3600 Cr in 2010, 8 times more than
the figure in 1995. Social media shall also have a sizeable piece of the pie from that 36 billion.
15 | P a g e

16. 8. New product launch
To explore the reach and appeal of Social Networking and online promotions, our group
launched active and aggressive campaign of Continuum (a rolling seminar series of SJMSOM) on
Orkut, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedln. We promoted the Continuum website through
references and communities on Orkut and Facebook. As a result we got several hits for
information and enquiry, which were routed to the Continuum website. The results of
awareness of the event through various sites is as follows-
We got a total of 112 visits through Orkut and 83 through Facebook, all this by not even spending a
single penny.
The link of Continuum website on Sushil’s Orkut Account
16 | P a g e

17. SOME STATS ABOUT OUR PRODUCT PROMOTION
A glimpse of promotion on TWITTER:-
17 | P a g e

18. Our Twitter account has 250 Followers overall.Above, some tweets that we sent out for the
event to our followers on Twitter.
Global Appeal:
One key advantage of social networking sites is their global appeal. For our event too, we got
hits from several countries of the world including USA and China.
18 | P a g e

19. Overall it was a wonderful experience as we were able to reach out to 1000s of people within a
short period of time without incurring any cost for the promotion of the Continuum
19 | P a g e

20. 9. SURVEY RESULTS
Sample size: 78 students of IIT Bombay and 22 people working in the industry aged between 18 and 29.
Do you use Social Which all social
Networking Site? networking sites do you
use?
No
6% 90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
Yes 10
94% 0
Facebook Orkut Twitter Linkedln
Have you noticed Have you participated
advertisements and in any promotion
promotions on social campaign on social
networking sites? networking sites?
No
29% No
48% Yes
52%
Yes
71%
20 | P a g e

21. Online promotion is better and more
informative than television promotion?
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Strongly agree Agree Neither Agree nor Disagree Strongly Disagree
Disagree
Results
1. Social Networking sites has a very high usage rate among youths
2. Orkut and Facebook are the most commonly used Social Networking sites
3. Lot of people notice and participate in online promotion campaigns on social
networking sites and feel that online promotion are more informative than television
promotions
4. Brand promotion through Social Networking is a cost effective and more effective way
of brand promotion in today’s world
21 | P a g e

22. 10. CONCLUSION
Thanks to online platforms of promotion like Orkut, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedln, we were
successfully able to launch and promote the Continuum event to the world at 0 cost to us. The
response has been quite satisfactory with about 2478 visits to the website and high average
time spent on the website by the users.
Twitter can be used extensively by firms to understand the changing consumer preferences and
the needs and wants of the vast online community. Orkut and Facebook on the other hand are
more suited for launching a full fledged promotion campaign around the product and to create
a buzz about it.
Social networking online community sites bring millions of people of various origins and
interests together. It can be considered an alternate community especially for people who
spend most of their times in front of their PCs, either for recreation or for business.
This huge number of people put together in a community is exactly the reason why social
networking online community sites are good avenues to promote ones business.
22 | P a g e