Case Study: Social Media Strategy Walmart – Informing Customers and enhancing Brand reputation

Walmart’s social media strategy is two pronged where in the primary objective is to make customers and potential customers recognize Walmart offers the lowest prices compared to its competitors in the industry with a mission to  is to save money so they can live better lives and  second objective is to protect, defend and enhance Walmart’s reputation. For Walmart, interactions with customers on social media have proven to be a pivotal of their marketing efforts. Walmart benefits from a staggering flow of daily engagement that spikes during November, the peak holiday season when customers drastically increase their spending. The objective behind the corporate affairs social effort is to have meaningful social conversations to influence perceptions about Walmart.

Walmart partnered Google, and that has a local bent, incorporating inventory at nearby stores into Google search results. If you search for any product Stephen F. Quinn, chief marketing officer at Walmart explained, Google will tell you if you’re local Walmart have that product in stock, and it will tell you that store’s location. Walmart started experimenting with this process since 2012 and has increased its efforts for the holidays. Walmart uses Facebook to announce its local store manager’s special on the various offers and discounts in its stores as these offers differ from store to store. Walmart marketing runs the sales side of digital at Walmart where four thousand of the 10,000 Walmart stores have their own Facebook pages.

Walmart predominantly depends on half-million monthly pieces of user-generated content on Facebook and Twitter. Walmart has enjoyed 60,000 daily interactions on social media across 7 dedicated social handles and claims a stunning 10x ROI. With 31 million Facebook fans, more than any other brand on the network, it is no surprise that on Black Friday last year, Walmart received comments at a rate of 42 per minute. "We have ROI that's really strong. And, it's transforming our organization. This level of engagement we now have with customers is changing a whole bunch of other aspects of our marketing," said Walmart marketing Chief Stephen Quinn.

Walmart social media strategy is to use its online platforms to connect with consumers and generate sales. Walmart identifies influencers on various social networks and communicate directly with them about programs such as natural disaster relief efforts or the number of honorably discharged veterans the company has hired to date (30,000) on the way to its goal of 100,000 hired by 2018. Walmart also stopped paid promotions that led to gaining of followers on social media sites. In 2013, Walmart's average reach through Facebook was 474,000 with an engagement rate of just under 3 percent. In the first two months and 18 posts into 2014, that reach had climbed to 2.4 million and engagement had nearly doubled to 4.7 percent.  Walmart ultimately uses social media to present a positive face of the company, benefit the customers and also increase sales for the company.

Case Study: Social Media Strategy @ Mercedes Benz – Targeting young Customers through Social Media

Mercedes Benz has been actively engaging with customers and prospective customers particularly younger generation customers as part of its marketing and sales strategy "Mercedes-Benz 2020 - Best Customer Experience". Worldwide, Mercedes Benz has around 23.5 million fans on the national and international Mercedes-Benz Facebook pages and the company has successfully set up a benchmark in the automotive sector in terms of engaging with fans and customers. Mercedes Benz has two million likes, shares and comments monthly at the international Facebook page highlights the aggressive fan engagement who discusses the brand and its products. To attract younger generation customers like 21- to 29-year-old potential consumers who felt Mercedes Benz cars as “stuffy” and more suited to their parents’ generation, the company launched the new CLA-Class cars that feature a compact design and a relatively low price — models start at less than $30,000.

Mercedes put its main marketing focus on social networking and first established a partnership with famous filmmaker Case Neistat who in exchange for a CLA car, made four videos showing his personal experience with Mercedes’ vehicles. Mercedes also invited Instagram’s five most popular photographers to drive CLA vehicles and post photos to the site. The photographer whose post garnered the most attention won a car. Mercedes-Benz’s Nathan Tan, a supervisor of advertising said that the social media marketing effort paid off as the average age for CLA buyers fell by 11 years which is younger compared to Mercedes buyers in general. “Mercedes ended up with an 82 percent conquest rate, or percentage of new buyers who had previously chosen another brand. Seventy percent of new buyers had never previously bought a luxury car. “It was the greatest advertising in Mercedes’ history,” said Nathan Tan.

Mercedes uses Instagram along with Facebook and Twitter successfully in a powerful way and has the most active fans among all car brands. Mercedes plans on increasing these social networking platforms in 2014 to further tap into a younger generation of buyers. Instagram Shootout is where car photographers can post images on the Mercedes-Benz channel which can be rated by users to determine the winner. Since 2009 the company has been using social networking when it launched a professional journalistic network to maintain close contact with a large number of international online opinion leaders from a range of different areas, from cars and technology to fashion, design and lifestyle. Mercedes-Benz marketing strategy for the all-new 2014 CLA-Class is working well and the company believes social media as a critical platform to attract a new generation of younger buyers who have never purchased a Mercedes vehicle before. Luxury car manufacturers are aggressively engaging with fans, customers and potential customers on various social networking sites as they have to constantly engage with above set of people, build brand reputation and increase the aspiration to own the brand’s products.  

Social Media @ UBS – Social Media Monitoring outsourced to Accenture to hedge reputational risk

UBS, global financial services provider started using the social media and social data to manage reputation risks since 2010 when the company deployed Jive Software, but the initial intention of monitoring is to provide customer service on social networking sites. Later UBS started combining social data and other media reports like news reports with internal data to identify reputation risks and garner insights to assess its risk exposure before doing business with clients. UBS understands the importance of reputational and professional risks in the financial industry as any damage to these risks will have a significant effect on the bank’s business. Social Media mentions, posts, comments and updates by customers and people posted on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc. have a significant effect on the firm’s brand reputation. According to Accenture Case Study titled “Keeping Track: Social Media Monitoring UBS”, “Swiss banking giant UBS is using social media monitoring as an integral component of its communication strategy. The bank wants to get a good snapshot of its public image and identify what type of issues are gaining importance in the banking industry. “First, we want to listen carefully to, and meticulously evaluate, what customers are saying about us and what they expect,” says Michael Willi, Chief Communication Officer at UBS. “If we succeed, we can use social media to better address the different target groups.” Customers are actively engaging on the various social networking sites and are posting both negative and positive comments on social networking sites and financial services firms have to monitor and respond to them or else there will be significant effect on the firm’s brand reputation in the highly competitive financial services industry.

UBS has outsourced its social media monitoring to Accenture which helps them to effectively monitor activity on social media platforms and identify the posts, comments and tweets that could affect its brand and reputation, and respond or countermeasure them fast and efficiently there by reducing the damage. Accenture employees at the Delivery Center Warsaw study comments made on German, Spanish and Portuguese social media sites located in central and southern Europe and Latin America. The Delivery Center in Mumbai, India, processes postings made in Western Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific (Source: “Keeping Track: Social Media Monitoring UBS”). Accenture tracks and monitors comments in social media in English, German, Spanish and Portuguese. Accenture delivers detailed reports on a regular (daily, weekly or ad hoc) basis and these reports are based on the tracking results and additional analysis. UBS gets a comprehensive view on the various social media platforms and UBS Brand Management and Communications Department relies on Accenture to collect and analyze information. Financial Services industry is highly regulated and firms need to follow the stringent regulations and accordingly have to manage their social media presence and customer engagement. It is not easy to keep track of the various social networking sites and it requires highly advanced technologies and analytical tools to capture and analyze social data and use it in further improving the existing and launching new products and services. 

Oracle Social Media Sales Strategy – Encouraging Sales team to actively engage on Social Networks

Business to Business marketing is effectively being done by companies using the social media platforms and social networking sites.  Social Networking world is chaotic and often lot of unrelated and unwanted content is flowing around and it is very difficult for the companies to monitor the social networking sites constantly and also need to employ resources who not only monitor but also respond on the various social networking sites. Companies have to respond to the customers instantly as the dissatisfied customers may launch a social media campaign and attack that will severely affect the brand reputation and the sales of the company. Oracle Inc. uses the social media and networking sites for increasing the sales of the company. Oracle Sales strategy integrated the social media as one of the key components and the company built a wide presence on all of the major social media networks and most of the conversations and engagements are related to company’s products and services. Oracle went a step further and encouraged its sales representatives to use Twitter to engage with prospects in meaningful, helpful dialogue during the sales process, which is quite a new initiative for a B2B company. Traditional B2B marketing strategies included monotonous cycle of emails, webinar invites, check-ins, blog content, technology updates and hoping the customers will engage. Oracle employees were trained on how to properly use social media which transformed Oracle into a social media savvy company with about five percent of the company’s 23,000 sales reps using Twitter. Oracle training program included large scale training sessions, as well as small support-style workshops and Jill Rowley also produced and starred in an internal 10-episode webinar series that focuses on social selling. 

Oracle Social Selling evangelist Jill Rowley argues that Sales professionals need to understand that buying process and buyers in today’s world are very different from earlier as they are digitally-driven, mobile, socially-connected, empowered with unlimited access to real-time information about business problems, products, companies, competitors — about all sorts of things. Social networks are where the modern sales professional can do research, networking, relationship-building, and can use these channels to earn trust.  And earn trust by sharing content that is useful, that is education and training, insightful, and informative and of value to the buyer, regardless if the buyer buys the salesperson’s product or not. Along with Oracle content mostly related to company’s products and services Oracle also encourages its employees to use a 4-1-1 Rule: sharing four pieces of relevant third-party content for every one piece of Oracle-branded content, plus an offering of lighthearted fare like a cat video or motivational quote. Lot of information is available on social networking sites like LinkedIn, Slide share, Facebook, Twitter, etc. which sales professionals can use for their advantage. Oracle is looking at social media and networking sites as one of the critical component of its sales strategy along with traditional sales and marketing strategies and since social media is also having a significant effect on the way businesses run their operations also means that company has also look at the social selling a disruptive go to market strategy and look to benefit from it and make a competitive advantage. 

AT&T Social Media Strategy: AT&T Social Circle employees as Social Advocates

AT&T social media strategy included utilizing the company’s employees who are already active on social networking sites like LinkedIn and Twitter and encourage them to share their opinions on the social media platforms and create awareness about the company’s products and services and also promote the marketing and other promotional campaigns. It all started in 2009 with a small group of employees and currently the group grew into strong 1500 employees who actively share updates and posts on Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. For eligibility into this program employees should be active on the above mentioned social networks for more than 90 days and they have to go through a training program to avoid any potential issues and problems. The company initially identified some 500 employees who were active in social networks and started a pilot project with them.

In a presentation at SocialMedia.org‘s BlogWell conference in Dallas, AT&T’s Senior Manager of Emerging Communications, Lee Diaz highlighted Nielsen survey facts that 92 % of consumers worldwide trust recommendations from friends and family more than any form of advertising and 77% of consumers are more likely to buy a product when they hear about it from someone they trust, which also encouraged AT&T to encourage their employees as social advocates. Employees are an excellent resource of knowledge and information about company’s products and services, actively participate on various social networking sites and with training, necessary tools and platforms and encouragement from company allowed employees to actively engage with consumers on social networking sites. AT&T also monitors and measures the activity and engagement of the employees so as to analyze the effectiveness of their content.

Lee Diaz also highlighted AT&T added a hub to centralize the content and the employee advocates. It allowed their advocates to explore all of the content in total and decide, for themselves, when and how they would share. The centralized hub allows AT&T to share content immediately, make announcements, etc. It was important that the employees can access the hub from any device. They used SocialChorus for the hub, which includes the embedded hashtag. One of the main components of AT&T’s social advocate program was a simple hashtag, #ATTemployee. This let their employees share content from AT&T while being transparent and staying legal. It is also important for AT&T employee advocates to engage with one another, too so as to further improve the content efficacy and AT&T has an internal platform called tSpace based on IBM Connections platform, which is available only to employee advocates. The program has seen some good results as there have been more than 20,000 influencer activities, more than 410,000 audience engagements, and estimated media value of more than US$ 1 million. AT&T is now encouraging all its 250,000 employees to participate in this program voluntarily and company is actively sharing the content that they want the employees to promote in all the internal platforms and it is up to the employees whether to share or reshare the AT&T news, information, announcements, etc. on their preferred social networking site. AT&T realizes the fact that employee engagement will have significant influence on the reputation & brand image of the company.

Case Study: Social Media Monitoring @ Toyota analyzes social media data for sales improvement, quality improvement & marketing

Toyota uses social media monitoring to analyze the social media data across social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc. to keep a track of what customers are thinking about their cars, specific models, customer feedback, and quality issues and use this data to improve the sales of cars. Social media monitoring and sentiment analysis have become a key element of social media strategy for companies as the customers actively engage on various social networking sites and voice their opinions and often criticisms about the company’s products and services. In a CIO.com article by Zack Hicks is CIO at Toyota operations in North America and group vice president for Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A, “Today, we use social media data analysis across many areas--sales, service, quality, marketing and product development. For example, if a customer expresses interest in a car, we can determine engagement by analyzing the frequency of dealership visits via their Foursquare check-ins, understand their dealership experiences, and even understand what features may have sparked their interest in a competitor's product. This allows us to stratify leads based on their readiness to buy, moving stronger leads to the top of the list.” One of the best methods of analyzing the social media data is the keyword correlation and linkages that will help the company analyze what all options the customer looking at before buying the Toyota cars and what keywords customers are using for the search and whether the key words reflect the company’s brand image and reputation.

Social media monitoring also helps in competitive intelligence by using the sentiment analysis the company will study how customers are talking about Toyota’s car models and is that talk is materializing into final purchase of the car by the customer and accordingly use the information in predictive analysis of future sales. Toyota also uses the social media data to understand more about their existing and potential customers like their hobbies, interests, what movies and TV shows they like, what sports they like and what all other social networking platforms they actively use which will help Toyota to do brand collaborations, place ads, promote such events and use their marketing and advertising budgets efficiently. Toyota is also immediately responding to the quality, product and service issues faced by Toyota customers and resolve them as soon as possible to avoid backlash. Toyota is also using social media platforms to identify the prospective customers, analyze their needs and requirements, understand what other brands of cars the customers are looking at and also target the customer with specific offers like discount coupons, providing customers the necessary information and clarifications so that they can make easy and fast decisions. Toyota also uses the data to study the effectiveness and performance of their dealerships and how dealers are pushing the sales as dealers are critical link in the car sales. Social media has become a critical platform for the automobile industry particularly car industry, as the car makers are aggressively using social media for product development and reduce lead times by testing the concepts on social networking sites. Social media monitoring has become a big competitive advantage for the auto industry and Toyota is using the social media monitoring strategy effectively. Social Media Monitoring is proactive strategy that helps companies to understand their customers and develop products accordingly.

Social Media Strategy Case Study @ Nestlé – Digital Acceleration Team key to success

Nestle faced a severe back lash on various social media platforms from customers in 2010 when Greenpeace boycotted and posted a viral video which highlighted the company’s use of palm oil produced from unsustainable practices which destroyed rainforests major  habitats of orangutans. Nestle strategy of forcefully removing the viral video and improper handling of Facebook pages protests failed which forced the company to relook at its social media strategy as a whole. Nestlé embraced a new social media strategy based on principle of open engagement to rebuild its reputation and an ethical code implemented that promoted open, honest engagement and this strategy was communicated to employees worldwide. Company developed a new framework using data and insights gained from social media activities on various platforms and used it to develop new successful and innovative campaigns. Social Media monitoring and engagement on various social media platforms by a dedicated team has enabled the company to engage with consumers and public and avoid negative sentiment and social crisis.

Nestlé created the Digital Acceleration Team (DAT) which continuously tracks consumer sentiments in real-time and instantly responds to any negative trends they identify on various social networking sites. The DAT team is responsible for listening and monitoring worldwide social media conversations and identifies early warnings about negative sentiments. The DAT team is also responsible to strategize and determine which the best approaches to social marketing both in terms of driving reach and engagement. DAT also produces training videos for Nestlé operating units worldwide, and also manages an internal social networking system that enables employees to find and work with others sharing similar interests. Blogging is encouraged, and the firm has its own YouTube-like, internal video-sharing system called DigiTube. DAT also conducts a program for company executives working at different parts of the world to the company’s headquarters for eight months of intensive training in digital trends and the skills learned there are taken to regional offices worldwide. DAT members have ‘hack-a-thons’ to solve problems, anticipate trends and search for ideas.

Nestlé’s social media strategy has been successful as the company successfully manages 1,500 pieces of content being posted every day on social media, 50 percent of all Nespresso capsules being sold online, 180 million Facebook “likes” (with growth of 5-7 percent every month) and 200,000 employees on an internal social media platform. The company has more than 170 million fans across over 750 brand pages on Facebook alone. Post the DAT model success company scaled it worldwide and launched in India, China, and Italy with plans for 12 other locations. Company has been focusing on active employee engagement on various social networking sites as content is critical and employees are the best source of the content as the company do not want to totally rely on professionals and media agencies for social content. Nestlé sells 1.2 billion products a day across the globe and significant numbers of customers are active on various social networking sites and company has to engage with them on such platforms and respond to their opinions and interests.

Social Media Marketing Strategy @ Coca-Cola – Coke Facebook Strategy

Coca-Cola has built an active presence on various social media platforms without much effort by the company as the brand is hugely popular and integral part of the daily lives of the people across the world. Moreover Coca-Cola’s customers themselves have been active on various social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Google+, etc.  A key step forward was made I the year 2012 when the company announced Content marketing Strategy 2020 where in the company moved from moving from “Creative Excellence” to “Content Excellence” Creative excellence has always been at the heart of Coca Cola’s advertising particularly the 30 second Television Ads and they have decided that content is now the key to marketing in the 21st century on a social web. Consumer engagement and collaboration model was adopted where in Consumers ideas, creativity and conversations on various social networks are tracked and use them to increase brand visibility and market the products. The purpose of content excellence is to create “Ideas” that are viral and uncontrolled which is called “liquid content”. Coca-Cola adopted 70/20/10 Investment principle to creating “Liquid content“, 70% of content should be low risk that pays the rent and is bread and butter marketing (also easy to do and consumes 50% of time), 20% of content creation should innovate off what works and 10% of content marketing is high risk ideas that may be tomorrows 70% or 20% or will fail.

The Coca-Cola Facebook Page is a collection of customer stories showing how people from around the world have helped make Coke into what it is today. Most of the content on the page is consumer created and the company’s focus is on maintaining the brand image and raising awareness of its ad campaigns. Coca-Cola, which joined Facebook in 2008, has garnered close to 75 million likes by engaging customers and fans actively and less focus on product promotion and more on its fans. Coca-Cola's success has been achieved through statuses, updates, videos and photos that increase customer engagement and interaction, supporting various social causes and integrating other forms of social media. Apart from promoting the widely popular Polar Bears campaigns, Olympics and Euro 2012 ad campaigns, Coke’s social team post questions and run polls often, but pictures and photos that are shared generate significant response from fans in terms of comments and ‘likes’. Coca-Cola also has a number of Facebook apps, including one called ‘When will happiness strike’ that is basically a video real of its ads and another called ‘Ahh Giver’ that allows users to send a personalised message and a free Coke to a Facebook friend. Coca-Cola also has Facebook pages for its other products such as Diet Coke and Coke Zero, however these have far fewer fans. But interesting fact is that Coca Cola did not start the Facebook page first, it was started by the company fans, and it is created by its loyal consumers. It all changed when Facebook introduced new rules which mandated that brand pages must be administered by the brands themselves and Coke decided to keep the existing page but manage it themselves rather that they starting a new page. Coca-Cola realized the fact that only traditional advertising is no longer relevant it has to be supported by active social media presence where customers actively engage by sharing opinions, videos, stories and photos and this highlights the fact that the company cares. 

Social Network Users Statistics India 2013 till 2017 – Maturing growth next five years

According to a new eMarketer report, “Worldwide Social Network Users: 2013 Forecast and Comparative Estimates,” the number of social network users in India is expected to cross 100 million users and reach more than 127 million users by end of 2013. The total numbers of social media users will more than double and reach close to 283 million users by 2017. But the interesting fact is that the number of users has already started to see slower growth from 2013 and the decline in the YoY growth is expected to continue which also highlights the maturing numbers for the social networks in India which is also a global trend. There has been a strong social media adoption in India since past few years as the business organizations, government organizations and even political parties are actively utilizing the various social media platforms and social network sites to reach the people. 75% of Indians who are active internet users use social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest etc. and interaction with friends, relatives, colleagues and community, live chat, status updates, image- as well as video-sharing are some of the major activities by Indians that spend close to 30 minutes every day online on the different social networks.

According to Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), the number of social media users in Urban India reached 66 million by June 2013 and by mid-2014 expected to cross 80 million users. Some 97 per cent of them are on Facebook. And they are spread beyond the big metros. One-third of social media users live in towns with a population of less than 5 million; 25 per cent of the total users live in towns with less than 2 million inhabitants. Social media usage is also fast catching up with mobile internet users. According to the report, 77 percent of the users use mobile for social media. Email, social media, search, app store and chat / IM are used every day by those accessing internet through mobile. Facebook has 78 million monthly active users (MAUs) in India for the quarter ending March 31, 2013, registering a 50% increase from the Q1 2012. LinkedIn has 20 million users, Twitter has 33 million users, Pinterest has 5.5 million users in India at the end of March 2013. Indians are very active on different social networks and are also actively increasing the amount of time they spend on the various social networking sites.

Social Media Analyst jobs on the rise in India 2013, shortage of good resources

A social media analyst is responsible for developing and maintaining a company’s presence on social media sites like Facebook, Google+, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Flickr, etc and also has to manage the blogs of the company. According to a new eMarketer report, “Worldwide Social Network Users: 2013 Forecast and Comparative Estimates,” nearly one in four people worldwide will use social networks in 2013. The number of social network users around the world will rise from 1.47 billion in 2012 to 1.73 billion this year, an 18% increase. By 2017, the global social network audience will total 2.55 billion. With such a huge audience Businesses across the globe cannot ignore them and they need to focus on the social networking sites users to promote their products and services. Social Media Marketing has hence become an essential strategy for the large, medium and small businesses across the globe. Most of the businesses are giving the responsibility of managing their social media presence to the corporate communications teams, internal marketing communication teams and some businesses who think there social media presence is crucial for their business success recruit Social Media Marketing managers and give them complete responsibility to manage the social media presence. Some companies are also outsourcing their Social media activities to third party suppliers who can be a pure play business process outsourcing vendor or any media or creative agency. Indian BPO Vendors are aggressively offering Social media services to their clients and they are recruiting social media marketing analysts in big numbers.

Most of the companies prefer graduates with bachelor's degree in public relations, marketing or business communications and also recruit candidates with prior job experience of couple of years and a proven track record. Other essential qualifications for the job include good English language skillsin terms of reading and particularly writing as a lot of content writing in the form of writing blogs, posting ads on FB, etc. Also require good knowledge of MS Excel, Power Point, and Word and good understanding of Google Analytics and Google Webmaster tools and having a good knowledge of HTML/CSS, blogspot, Word Press, and website administrations will prove handy. Freshers can expect a salary in the range of Rs.20k-25 k and if you are really good at it then within a year or so you can expect remuneration in the range of Rs.100,000. Besides that an analyst has to be well versed with the latest trends in social media and must know how to connect with the targeted groups through new as well as popular social media platforms. An analyst must remain updated with the latest social media tools and as social media emerged as a key component in marketing and communications, social media analysts can hope for a senior or expert role in that profession or eventually the roles within digital marketing and can move on to other positions such as an account manager or social media manager who takes on broader strategic duties. 

Along with posting, managing and garnering new followers and like for the company pages on the various social networking sites and platforms the social media marketing analyst have to spend time on planning and strategizing future campaigns, brainstorm content, meet with other departments to ensure that their strategies are aligned, tracking campaigns and reporting according to Farhana Sidek, digital client executive at Edelman Singapore. So simply recruiting young people who are active on social media sites simply don’t work they need to understand the concepts of search engine optimization, content management without which they will not be able to deliver the desired results for the company. In the day, the analyst would follow the requests of the client and plan for upcoming posts and campaigns for the client. Besides responding to queries on social media platforms, she noted that breaking down information was an important part of the job. "While we track basic stats like followers, click-throughs, fans, comments and traffic, we also monitor conversations happening around the brand both on and off our social media platforms and carefully structure responses that are in line with the company's strategy," she added. Indian Business process outsourcing firms like Genpact, WNS, Aegis, Infosys BPO, etc. are aggressively exploiting the lucrative opportunity in social media outsourcing services wherein they manage social media for corporations whose customers are taking to the online medium to share feedback.

Worldwide Social network Users 2013- Growth declining constantly every year till 2017

According to a new eMarketer report, “Worldwide Social Network Users: 2013 Forecast and Comparative Estimates,” nearly one in four people worldwide will use social networks in 2013. The number of social network users worldwide will rise from 1.47 billion in 2012 to 1.73 billion in 2013, an 18% increase year on year (YoY) and by 2017, and the number of users globally will total 2.55 billion. Growth rates (YoY) are coming down with the growth declining by 5% in 2014 compared to 2013 and by 2% every year till 2017 which signifies maturity in the number of users in developed markets like US, UK, etc. where the population is smaller and population growth rate is also slower compared to emerging countries like India, China, Brazil, etc. Even in the other regions like Asia Pacific, Latin America and Middle East Africa that are presently growth drivers for social network user growth will also see fall in growth starting this year.

The number of social network users is directly linked to the telecommunication and internet penetration levels particularly in emerging countries. It also depends on literacy levels, population growth rates and relevant government spending in upgrading telecom and internet infrastructure like broadband. Key players in this segment are Facebook, Google+, Twitter, YouTube, etc. have been there for years and dominate the market in terms of number of users. Many new social networking sites have emerged in the recent years but failed to build up the numbers as big as Facebook but they are also picking up slowly. The amount of services and number of applications on the various social network sites have also increased drastically and most of the business organizations across the globe be it large, medium and small in size have significantly improved their social media presence and are spending billions of dollars on the social platforms for selling and promoting their products and services.

eMarketer has increased our 2013 forecast for total social network users worldwide by 100 million since our August 2012 forecast. This upward adjustment is based on new data that indicates higher-than-expected totals for internet users in India, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Brazil, Mexico, Russia and the Middle East and Africa; new data showing higher estimates for UK social network users than previously forecast; and a new breakout of social network users in the Netherlands, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Sweden. Accessing of the social networks is done majorly by personal computers like desktops, laptops and mobile devices like tablets and mobile phones not only smart phones but also the mid-range and low range phones. Mobile manufacturers like Samsung, Nokia, LG, etc. have also selling mobile phones at low price and mid-price levels that are preloaded with social network applications like Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Businesses and Governments across the globe are also encouraging people to log into social networking sites as they are providing the necessary information related to products and services, performance and reviews, customer feedbacks and are also providing the customers to use the social network sites to complain about the poor quality of product services and actively express their dissatisfaction. Politicians are also using the social network platforms to interact with voters and citizens. There has been a significant change in the way the social networking sites are used by users as they are not only sharing their personal information about their personal life with friends, relatives and colleagues, they are also actively using to interact with business organization of whom they may or may not be customers but they are voicing their opinion sometimes critically about the businesses and governments. The recent Arab Spring where in people in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Bahrain, etc. had voiced their opinions against their respective regimes and which led to the down fall of the dictatorial regimes and blossoming of democracy. Some governments are even looking to curtail the social networking sites usage by their citizens but are failing to do so effectively. Overall the number of social network users worldwide will keep growing at a slower pace in the next five years.

There is a discussion going on in regards to the slowing down of the social network users particularly the active users, users who login every day into the social networking sites and spend considerable amount of time on these sites. This is due to the social media fatigue where in some users are simply tired of using the social networking sites extensively, got bored of it and complain that the social networking sites are not improving their services and are not offering unique applications like games and content that keep the users engage and retain them. Social media fatigue is also a growing concern for the social networking sites and they need to develop strategies to overcome them. Even the changes in the government regulations and legislations in related to data privacy, confidentiality, protection, online behavior and also related to criminal and other antisocial activities on the various social networking sites. Many laws are being passed and amended particularly in emerging countries is also a big concern. Overall the social networking sites have a unique challenge in the coming five years where in they have to make sure users remain active on their sites and new users also join the sites and retain the existing users without which they will perish as the social network sites success is directly related to number of users.

Social Media @ Honda Motors - Honda Loves you back & #Hondainnovator series

Honda Motor Company had been using social networking sites since past five years and had been present on all the major social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Pinterest, etc.  Honda social media strategy is based around supporting business and corporate goals such as new product launches, corporate communications, public relations messages, tackling rumors, engaging with customers and communities like  fans/ racing community and more. Honda is effectively using the social networking sites to humanize the brand, keeping track of the conversations about the company, deliver key messages about their corporate social responsibility efforts on topics related to the environment and innovating new technologies, and also build relationships with journalists and bloggers. Another advantage of social media is to share customer stories around Honda products And Services, events or happenings that Honda fans might like to know about and also engage the customers, fans and others in such events.

Honda was recently given the first-ever "Driver Engagement" award at the Chicago Auto Show for the Japanese automaker's campaign, “Honda Loves You Back”. The Honda campaign showcased a music video from the band “Monsters Calling Home”, as the video was filmed inside one of the band member's Honda. The car company got the band booked on" Jimmy Kimmel Live!" in a symbolic gesture of giving back to fans of the brand. Social media campaigns like this help drivers connect more personally with a brand, as they can interact with a company by uploading their stories and photos.Since social media has become an integral part of marketing for most major car companies, the Chicago Automobile Trade Association decided to introduce a new award at the 2013 Chicago Auto Show to showcase the effectiveness of marketing through sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Recently Honda launched a social media program, the #HondaInnovator Series, in support of a TV ad for its 2013 Civic that emphasizes on inventors and innovation in various fields. The series also includes social networking sites like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter and YouTube to initaite conversations about innovation and the car itself, as well as the idea that progress never stops. In a series of six one-hour tweet chats, users will be able to submit questions to inventors featured in the Civic TV spot, like baby product company 4moms co-founder Henry Thorne, Waterfall Swing inventors Ian Charnas and Drew Ratcliff and 2013 Civic Senior Product Planner Jay Guzowski. Additional content will include: Facebook posts to introduce fans to the Innovator Series; behind-the-scenes photos from the commercial and an assortment of Civic images on Instagram; and a "Things Can Be Better" board on Pinterest. In addition, on YouTube, Honda has created a so-called Innovation Playlist featuring additional content tied to the inventors featured in the Civic TV spot. Honda says its Civic TV campaign ties Honda's philosophy of innovative thinking and continuous improvement to other inventors working to develop better solutions. Promotion will include sponsored posts on the social news site Buzzfeed, promoted tweets, promoted posts on Facebook, YouTube ads and search.

Early 2012 Honda Motors launched a unique promotional campaign on Pinterest, a pinboard-style photo-sharing website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections such as events, interests, and hobbies. Users can browse other pinboards for images, ‘re-pin' images to their own pinboards, or 'like' photos.  Honda’s "Pintermission" campaign identifies top "pinners" and offers each one $500 to take a 24-hour break from Pinterest to explore some of the places or buy some of the products they've pinned about. Initially two women had been handed checks by Honda and are putting the money toward travel. The goal of the Pintermission campaign was to uniquely establish Honda’s new CR-V and promoted the vehicle’s “get out and live life” personality. Marketing the vehicle on Pinterest was a suitable choice, as target customers for this vehicle are young people on the edge of adulthood’s big milestones like marriage, children, etc. and young people plan those milestones on Pinterest. More than 4.6 million people were exposed to the #Pintermission boards, which produced more than 5,000 repins and almost 2,000 likes. Additionally, more than 16 million media impressions were garnered from the campaign.

Honda Motors social media presence include Facebook with close to 2.7 million likes, Twitter with close to 91,000 followers and more than 3,400 tweets, YouTube with close to 106,000 subscribers and more than 32 million video views and Pinterest with close to 6,600 followers. The company has also framed a Social Media policy and guidelines for its associates and employees that provide the rules and regulations they need to follow on social networking sites. Automobile industry is aggressively using the various social networking sites for marketing, customer service and customer engagement and they are allocating significant financial resources, appointing the relevant agencies that specialize in the social media and even recruiting exclusive managers as Social Media Managers within the company. Honda Motor Company has been using the social media effectively in its marketing, brand promotion, engaging customers and new product launches.

Social Media Adoption @ Fortune 500 Companies- @Wal-Mart Labs, Social Genome

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest retailer and the second largest company in terms of revenue according to the Fortune 500 2012. “Through the innovative fusion of retail, social and mobile, @WalmartLabs is redefining Commerce for the largest retailer worldwide”,according to the introduction on @WalmartLabs. Wal-Mart is developing tools and technologies that will help it analyze the relevant information hidden in the hundreds of millions of social media conversations occurring online every day and use it to understand consumer trends so that they can plan their product assortments, including new products to introduce and supply to secure. Wal-Mart acquired Kosmix, the company behind real-time Twitter filter site TweetBeat, medical search engine RightHealth, and topic-specific engine Kosmix for US$ 300 million and transformed the company into @WalmartLabs with an objective to create technologies and businesses around social and mobile commerce.

According to Anand Rajaraman, co-founder of Kosmix, the company focused on developing a social genome platform that captures the connections between people, places, topics, products and events as expressed through social media — be it a feed, a tweet or a post. WalmartLabs defines the "Social Genome" as "a giant knowledge base that captures entities and relationships of the social world." Wal-Mart has been building their own in-house Social Genome since past few years with both public and private data from social media, tweets, Facebook messages, blog posts, You Tubes, it’s all streaming into Wal-Mart. Streaming in so fast, that WalmartLabs created something they call Muppet, a solution for processing Fast Data, using large clusters of machines. The Labs describes the Social Genome as their "crown jewel." Wal-Mart is essentially looking to combine data on purchase history with data from social networks with actual transaction history.

Wal-Mart is looking to transform itself into a social media retail mega player and it is investing millions of dollars into @WalmartLabs to develop new tools, applications and technologies and also acquire companies who are actively developing mobile and social media applications. Post Kosmix and its transformation into @WalmartLabs, the company acquired mobile point-of-sale app maker Grapple, location-aware mobile ad company OneRiot and a mobile app company called Small Society known for writing apps for clients like the Democratic National Committee and Starbucks. According to recent Wal-Mart press release the @WalmartLabs team continues to evolve Polaris a semantic search engine for browsing products and ease of shopping. In the past year, the group has created Shopycat, a social gift finder; Classrooms by Wal-Mart, a program to make back-to-school shopping easer; Get on the Shelf, a crowdsourcing contest to unearth new products for Wal-Mart; and Social Media Analytics, tools that use social chatter to select items to be carried by Wal-Mart. @WalmartLabs goal is to have Wal-Mart create the next great shopping experience by melding physical stores with online search and social media input.

Case Study - General Motors Facebook Ads – Temporarily stops Paid ads, free pages to continue

General Motors (GM), the third-largest U.S. advertiser will continue to spend roughly US$30 million (includes spend on multiple ad agencies that create and manage content) on maintaining its “free” presence on Facebook through pages and content but GM announced pull back of US$10 million spend in paid ads from Facebook. GM’s Facebook spend is minuscule compared to its $1.1 billion spend on U.S. ads in 2011 and it’s spend of about $271 million (25% -30% of total ad spend) on online display and search ads excluding Facebook advertising. The reason for stopping paid ads on Facebook is due to the little impact that paid ads are having on consumer’s purchase of cars but GM said it will continue to promote its products on Facebook, but without paying Facebook. GM’s decision will also not have major affect on Facebook ad revenues as Facebook's 2011 advertising sales revenue was around US$3.15 billion and revenue from GM was tiny. Another reason for GM cutting down its Facebook paid ads spend is because of the restructuring of GM’s marketing operations for reducing billions of dollars in marketing costs and targeting to save US$2bn over the next five years. Some people believe GM did not believe in the effectiveness of advertising on social networking sites and it is using traditional measurement tools to measure the effectiveness of social media ads which is not convincing as GM being a top ad spender knows how to measure effectiveness.

According to some sources Facebook has to blame itself for GM pull back of paid ads on its site as Facebook officials' failed to convince top marketing executives at GM of the benefits of  paid ads at a meeting that was held couple of weeks before GM’s paid ads pull back announcement. Moreover Facebook officials emphasized the advantages and impact of free posted content on their website which made paid ads spend unnecessary and also suggested GM cut down its number of ad agencies it engaged to manage its ad spend and content on Facebook. Facebook's "click-through rate", also known as "clicks per page view," is half the average for ads on the Internet and the average targeted ad on the Internet is "clicked" on by a consumer once every 1,000 times it is viewed while Google's is 4 in 1,000 according to Larry Kim, founder & CTO of Internet ad consultant Wordstream. Google AdSense ads are more effectively targeted than Facebook ads and GM preferred to stick with them. GM spent more money on creating and managing content rather than advertising and the ratio of spend is $3 on brand pages for every $1 on paid ads. Also Facebook is expected to increase its ad rates after the IPO. Facebook sells ads for brand pages, sponsored posts that appear on user’s news feeds, and other formats like called "sponsored stories," that allows advertisers to pay to republish positive Facebook messages that people had posted about their brand.

But the fact is Facebook is struggling to develop a scalable revenue generator like Google AdSense and in the past few years Facebook attempts for successful ad model for marketers and businesses included charging marketers to host brand pages, featured banners ads on pages from MSN ad networks and Facebook Beacon system, that sent data from external websites to Facebook, for the purpose of allowing targeted advertisements and allowing users to share their activities with their friends. In March 2012, Facebook announced Premium, a new suite of products for marketers designed to leverage the social network’s access to friends and friends of friends. Facebook has been gradually increasing its ad revenues and recommends to marketers that unpaid content like brand pages and building a base of online fans who like a brand is successful and users will know about the unpaid content easily only when paired with paid advertisements like display ads and its "sponsored stories." Facebook said in March, for example, that only 16% of a brand's fans will see a post about the brand without paying. Facebook will use technology to ensure that the Paid ad is seen by 75% of those who click a company's "like" button on its website. Another problem area for Facebook is the mobile platform as most of its users are logging in to the site through their mobiles and the company doesn’t have a viable business model to generate revenues on the mobile devices. Facebook need to convince the marketers and businesses about paid ads, their effectiveness and also need to develop a measurement tool for measuring the effectiveness and reach of the ads that is as simple to use as TV ratings.

Facebook has more than 900 million users as of March 2012 and businesses cannot ignore such a huge platform for promoting their products and services. Realizing this fact many businesses across the globe spent millions of dollars and hired digital ad firms for creating content for their Facebook pages in order to stimulate buzz, which advertisers liken to word-of-mouth marketing campaigns. GM decision of cutting its Facebook paid ads spend is not a permanent decision and the company plans to revive it’s spend once it feels the Facebook ads are effective and reach the targeted customer who will spend in buying cars. GM is not alone in this regards as some of the companies too are apprehensive as quoted by Forrester analysts in their blog post. Businesses, Marketers and Analysts are all demanding Facebook to improve its paid advertising model, make its platform more attractive and post IPO the shareholders are also looking for significant improvement in the company revenues and business model which will increase the profitability. According to Facebook most of the businesses and marketers are still learning and experimenting with the best ways to leverage Facebook to create more social and valuable ads. Some of the GM competitors like Ford are supporting Facebook as they are effectively using the site for various promotional activities but Facebook needs to focus on improving its business model and ad platforms to attract more businesses and make sure that more businesses follow General Motors suit calling it an ineffective platform.