Description
It explains the detailed report on Brand Promotion through social networking sites. It describes the emerging trends in social netwroks. It then describes the business model of the twitter, Facebook, orkut, linkedln. It then describes the main benefits of social networks as a means of marketing medium. It then highlights a few examples product promotion through these social networking sites.
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.
Contents
1. 2. Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 3 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. 4. 5. How To Boost Business Promotion Using Social Networking Online Community Sites ..................... 10 Interviews of prominent CFOs and Business leaders on “Why Social Networking Sites?” ................ 11 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. 8. 9. 10. Online Advertisement Expenditure .................................................................................................... 15 New product launch ............................................................................................................................ 16 SURVEY RESULTS ................................................................................................................................. 20 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................... 22
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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 cofounder 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.
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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%. 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
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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%. 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:
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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.
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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.
? ?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 ? ? ? Results ? 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
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 ? ? ? Results ? ? 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
10-20% of signups for FICO World came from Linkedln B2B Magazine designed and published a case study on FICO’s success on Linkedln
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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-apint, tell-a-friend, the downloadable discount coupon and the redirect to their site.
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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.
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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
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SOME STATS ABOUT OUR PRODUCT PROMOTION
A glimpse of promotion on TWITTER:-
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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.
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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
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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 Networking Site?
No 6%
Which all social networking sites do you use?
90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Facebook Orkut Twitter Linkedln
Yes 94%
Have you noticed advertisements and promotions on social networking sites?
No 29%
Have you participated in any promotion campaign on social networking sites?
No 48% Yes 71%
Yes 52%
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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 Disagree Strongly 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
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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.
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doc_460423907.docx
It explains the detailed report on Brand Promotion through social networking sites. It describes the emerging trends in social netwroks. It then describes the business model of the twitter, Facebook, orkut, linkedln. It then describes the main benefits of social networks as a means of marketing medium. It then highlights a few examples product promotion through these social networking sites.
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.
Contents
1. 2. Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 3 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. 4. 5. How To Boost Business Promotion Using Social Networking Online Community Sites ..................... 10 Interviews of prominent CFOs and Business leaders on “Why Social Networking Sites?” ................ 11 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. 8. 9. 10. Online Advertisement Expenditure .................................................................................................... 15 New product launch ............................................................................................................................ 16 SURVEY RESULTS ................................................................................................................................. 20 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................... 22
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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.
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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
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
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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
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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 cofounder 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.
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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%. 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
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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%. 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:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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5. PRODUCT PROMOTION
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.
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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 ? ? ? Results ? 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
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 ? ? ? Results ? ? 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
10-20% of signups for FICO World came from Linkedln B2B Magazine designed and published a case study on FICO’s success on Linkedln
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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-apint, tell-a-friend, the downloadable discount coupon and the redirect to their site.
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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.
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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
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SOME STATS ABOUT OUR PRODUCT PROMOTION
A glimpse of promotion on TWITTER:-
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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.
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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
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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 Networking Site?
No 6%
Which all social networking sites do you use?
90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Facebook Orkut Twitter Linkedln
Yes 94%
Have you noticed advertisements and promotions on social networking sites?
No 29%
Have you participated in any promotion campaign on social networking sites?
No 48% Yes 71%
Yes 52%
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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 Disagree Strongly 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
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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.
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