Case Study - Walmart Social Media Strategy – Engaging with customers on Twitter

Walmart uses Twitter as one of the important social media channels to engage with customers and also improve its brand reputation. They have seven total Twitter handles with @WalmartHub being the “parent” handle that only retweets the best performing content from the other handles to its largest following. The primary Walmart Twitter presence is @Walmart, which the Marketing team manages. The main Corporate Affairs Twitter presence is @WalmartHub, with a variety of sub handles (@WalmartGreen, @WalmartHealthy, @WalmartGiving, @WalmartNewsroom, @WalmartAction) for specific content areas.

@WalmartNewsroom is company official "corporate spokesperson handle" where it issue press releases and other announcements. @WalmartGreen is channel for talking about sustainability. @WalmartGiving is where company addresses the philanthropic efforts. The Walmart Foundation gave over a $1 billion to worthy organizations in 2012 and we give grants in communities across the country so this handle works very well for reaching those audiences. @WalmartAction focuses on public policy issues and supports company efforts in the communities they serve. @WalmartHealthy shares news about their ongoing efforts to help customers get fresh and healthy foods without having to pay more. @WalmartVeterans is our newest handle designed to support the ongoing conversation around veterans hiring and other veterans-related issues.

Walmart primarily chose Twitter as it believes customers it wants to reach for corporate affairs are mostly present on Twitter. Walmart  Digital Communications team manages approximately 80,000 mentions of significance on Twitter per day that are specific to Walmart’s reputation or two major missions —tweets related to its two primary missions first one informing the customers about the lowest prices offered compared to competitors that will lead to savings and better lives and second mission to enhance the company reputation. 

Walmart understands it is impossible to handle a volume of 80,000 interactions daily and respond to each, they have utilised data to target and respond to those that are important and filtering through these missives to identify important ones to reach. The social team responds selectively, pinpointing the tweets where they will most likely make a difference by responding. Walmart promotes its best-performing tweets to extend their reach and story lifecycles. It also promotes messages to counter negative mentions with the hope of putting an alternative view in place. It also comments on negative stories to expose its own perspective more broadly. Relative to answering questions, the response gap has been generally narrowed from two or more days to 10-15 minutes, especially on simple, fact-oriented questions. Underlying its social sharing strategy is the idea that, “It’s not about when you want to send a message, but when the audience wants to consume it.” In light of this, Walmart uses an application to handle and score content while also assessing the company’s real-time audience presence. 

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 Marketing Strategy @ JPMorgan Chase – Customer Service & Relationship Management on Twitter

JPMorgan Chase, United States biggest bank has been actively using Twitter majorly for customer service as the bank's customer-service team responded to complaints, queries and also offered solutions to the problems and redressed the customer grievances. J.P. Morgan's customer-service account alone has more than 26,000 followers on Twitter and has sent more than 90,000 tweets since its inception. “A lot of people think that Twitter is a fad and you can’t really use it effectively to talk to customers,” Bianca Buckridee, a VP of social media with JP Morgan Chase told a recent panel discussion, according to a report by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school. Buckridee’s team responds directly to questions, using personalized accounts with photos attached – making for a more intimate connection with JP Morgan Chase staff. In November 2013, JPMorgan tried to conduct an online discussion with one of its executives by asking questions via the Twitter hashtag "#AskJPM" and was forced to cancel the even within six hours as Twitter users tweeted hundreds of messages for the event that were either jokes or negative questions about the company's business practices. The planned Q&A was quickly aborted. "Tomorrow's Q&A is canceled. Bad idea. Back to the drawing board," the bank tweeted. JPMorgan Chase also uses its twitter account to also provide the news, policy changes and also information about bank’s product and service offerings.

In January 2014, JPMorgan Chase promoted Kristin Lemkau to chief marketing officer who announced her plans to build out the bank's online digital marketing capabilities and also rework the bank’s social media presence that took beating due to the twitter fiasco. In an interview with American Banker, Kristin Lemkau said, "If you look at our digitally owned channels, we just don't have as rich a strategy as some of our competitors do," she added, citing the company's lack of a main Facebook page and room for improvement with its website. She feels the bank needs to talk more about the good things it is doing on various social networking sites so as to improve its social media reputation. Mobile phones are another area where Lemkau is hoping to "find better ways frankly of reaching our customers." Despite many challenges and regulatory issues Banks have to increase their presence and consumer engagement significantly as the customers are actively engaging g on various social media platforms and networking sites and address the grievances and also provide the necessary information related to policy changes, rules, regulations and products and services. To further strengthen its efforts JPMorgan Chase recruited Susan Canavari as Chief Brand Officer for Chase for leading strategy and development for the consumer brand, including advertising, creative services and social media marketing and reports to Kristin Lemkau, the firm’s Chief Marketing Officer. JPMorgan Chase is not only looking at social media as way of engaging with customers but also use the data on various social networking sites to further improve the bank’s product and service offerings. 

Case Study: Audi Social Media Strategy – Twitter & Hashtags linked to Super bowl Ads

Audi is one of the world’s leading premium brands and is among the most admired manufacturer of high-quality and  innovative luxury cars and represented in 110 countries  worldwide. Company success can be attributed to pioneering concepts in the domains of advanced technology and design. Audi had been aggressively building its social media presence for the past few years and the company has widely acclaimed for its innovative social media campaigns particularly its twitter campaigns, a unique bridge between social media and TV, being an early adopter of using hashtags in TV ads. Audi was the first Super Bowl advertiser to attach a hashtag to a Super Bowl spot in 2011 for its ad “#ProgressIs” for “Luxury Prison” that encouraged conversation on Twitter prior to, during and after the game, and Audi also used this similar strategy in its 2014 super bowl ad with #StayUncompromised, based on the “no compromise” strategy promoted in “Doberhuahua.” #WantAnR8 hashtag was originally started by one of Audi company’s followers, was initially organic and then supported by Audi with paid advertising through an ad agency and was also featured in a nationally run TV advertising campaign, along with over a year of social messaging and this hashtag is widely synonymous with Audi social. Audi has presence on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

Audi social media strategy is based on long-term goal to "connect consumers in bold new ways and break through the traditional approach to social media platforms." Audi’s largest social media entities including Audi USA on Facebook and @Audi on Twitter are operated by Audi of America. The official Audi R8 has more than 28 million likes, Audi USA page has more than 7.9 million likes and also maintains individual Facebook pages for different countries. Audi used Tagboard to display certain tweets from consumers on a large display screen near its vehicles at the New York Auto show. The automaker has promoted the Tagboard through its Twitter and Facebook channels. Consumers can contribute to the Tagboard by using two hashtags – #Audi and #NYIAS – in their tweet. Audi had been using the various social networking sites to promote its brand and company also utilizes its social user engagement platform to really understand the fans, boost engagement levels and improve the overall user experience. Audi believes fans are most important for the brand success and use the social data about their fans and develop content that significantly improves the customer engagement. 

Audi social media success highlights the fact the automakers can look at social media as a reliable way of engaging with customers and followers. Audi opened digital showrooms in prime city centre retail estate to attract luxury car buyers where vehicles will be displayed virtually, with Audi’s displays being on show on Berlin’s grand Kurfuerstendamm Boulevard in a shop four times smaller than a traditional dealership. All 49 models are available to be seen on multimedia screens without the need for time-squeezed prospective buyers who cannot go on test drive. The digital solution also solves the problem of being able to display a big product range in a small space where footfall is much greater than on the outskirts of urban centres. Audi’s showroom comes with the comforts of a customer lounge alongside its car dealers, who face a new challenge in selling cars which potential buyers are yet to sit in or drive.

Case Study: Starbucks Social Media Strategy – Cross Promotion & Sharing Customer experiences

Starbucks, the premium coffee chain that competes with a unique selling proposition rather comfort and luxury rather than convenient quick service concept has built a significant social media presence across various social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, etc. The company has millions of fans and followers on the social networks and Starbucks uses social media not only to advertise its offerings but also occasionally drives customers to various stores located across the globe through promotional offerings. The Starbucks Facebook Page was created in 2008, with a total fan count of around 17,544,417 and 36,359,483 likes and Starbucks Twitter page has more than 18,300 tweets and 58 million followers. Apart from Facebook and Twitter Facebook social media strategy is built around their company web site and additional social platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, Youtube, and My Starbucks Ideas. On Instagram the company has 400 posts and more than 2.1 million followers. Starbucks has more than a million followers and posts content every few days with nearly all of it taken from its Facebook page and Twitter feed.

One of the most important for Starbucks social media success can be attributed to the fact that the fans and followers of the company can easily post the pictures, videos, tweets and status updates on the various social networking sites. Company actively encourages to share the in store experiences of the customers and also talk about their coffee and also promotes the customer stories on its social network pages which has encouraged the customer to build a long term relationship with the company and the company also benefited from the active consumer following on the social networking sites. Starbucks also is very active on the image based social networking sites like Pinterest and Instagram, where customers share their Starbucks moments—whether it be the return of a favorite holiday drink or just an artsy coffee cup shot. Customers along with their happy moments also share the promotional offers and new product launches too. Starbucks promotional programs include My Starbucks Rewards, personalized "signature" drinks, and localized store experiences. Social cross-promotion has been gaining prominence in the digital world and the company uses this strategy well as when Starbucks takes a photo, it shares it on Instagram, posts it to Facebook, tweets it on Twitter, pins it on Pinterest.

Starbucks has over the years built a strong loyal customer base of coffee drinkers who are not bothered about price but like the company’s unique selling proposition of good coffee, quality service, and a nice environment to hang around. Along with focusing on high quality coffee and customer service the company also works on many charitable initiatives. A team of five people manage the company’s social media presence and the company is sticking to principle of more customer created content rather than the company creating and posting the content on the social networking sites. Starbucks also understands the fact that each social networking site has its own unique set of users and the company needs to reach the users with appropriate content which can be done by encouraging their customers to share their experience actively through pictures, videos, posts, status updates and comments. This strategy has helped the company dominate the social media space and rank among the top companies in terms of social media presence. 

Social Media Marketing Strategy @ IBM – Active Listening & Employee driven

IBM had restructured its Marketing Teams with a focus of increased presence and engagement with customers on various social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Google hangouts, etc. Social Media will supplement traditional marketing channels in improving further its product, brand and channel marketing strategy in future, according to Ed Abrams, IBM Midmarket Business Vice President. Marketing Teams were retrained to use social media channels, understand the company guidelines that need to follow while on various social media platforms and drive demand for IBM’s products and services along with actively listening and engaging with customers and prospective customers. The success of the IBM social media marketing strategy can be attributed to the training that was given to the marketing teams as it is very essential for the marketing managers to have right skills to actively engage with customers on various social media platforms and any mistakes or wrong moves will out rightly affect the brand image of IBM. IBM employees are trained and validated before allowing them to engage with customers on social media platforms.

IBM social media training for employees includes how to get started on various social media platforms and improve their skills blogging, tweeting and using other social media to share their expertise and connect with IBM customers. IBM’s social media marketing strategy is based on fundamental of   “active listening” on social media channels, understand the customer concerns, gather details, in case of prospective customers initiate the fist contact and providing content that is relevant. “In that context, we’ll deliver proof points, access to experts and expertise to solve IT problems of our audience,” Abrams said. “IBM wants to be responsive to our customers,” Abrams said. “We’re out there with our own tools listening to conversations going on in social stratosphere. We’re building a library of influencers who in real time can get involved in those conversations to provide content.” With social media, IBM’s positioning and market direction can be altered quickly: “You have options for the 8-minute, 8-hour or 8-day reaction,” Abrams said in an interview with The VAR Guy.

IBM has decentralized its social media and content marketing by relying on the employees particularly the specialists and subject matter experts related to various technologies and products from across the company and including their personal blogs, tweets and posts into the company’s marketing mix, crucial success factor. Employee engagement is at the heart of how IBM creates great experiences for its customers, explained Ethan McCarty, IBM’s director of enterprise social programs. “We want to create the most innovative, leading-edge experiences” for customers with employees actively engaged in the process. IBM’s social team that includes the HR and legal teams too have been working develop a program to encourage employees to actively participate and proactively manage their digital footprint. It all started in 2005 when the company internally crowd sourced “blogging guidelines” which were necessitated by the fact that employees then were actively engaged on both internal and external blogs and over period of time these guidelines ultimately became the social media policy of IBM that included various other platforms along with blogs and wikis. IBM is having positive returns by allowing the employees discuss and link to IBM products on their blogs and social media posts. 

Social Media Marketing Strategy @ Kentucky Fried Chicken- Customer Service & Engagement

Kentucky Fried Chicken has been actively and aggressively using the various social media platforms to promote their menu offerings, promotions, contests, new product launches and most importantly focusing on the freshness and juiciness of their chicken compared to its competitors “It’s really about connecting with fans and making sure the brand remains relevant,” said Rick Maynard, manager of public relations at KFC. KFC is active on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. and all of these channels play a crucial role in connecting with consumers all over the world. KFC has a highly loyal customer base who loves their food as they go to their restaurants across the world and also engage actively on various social media platforms. This prompted the company to actively build and maintain social media presence and engage with customers on day to day basis. Most of the fans, followers and likes that KFC garnered on various social media platforms are due to their loyal customer base and they did not spend much on building this except for occasional promotional offers and discounts to enhance customer engagement.

The KFC Facebook page has millions of likes, thousands of people talking about the company and thousands of them are checking in and updating their Facebook status. KFC has restaurants in more than 100 countries and KFC’s Facebook pages of specific countries highlight their international audience and customers actively post KFC-themed photos of their KFC restaurant visits from around the world. KFC only posts about 15-20% of promotional content and most of the posts are customer generated content uploaded and shared by customers mostly their experience in the KFC restaurants. The KFC Twitter feed has a good following and the focus is not on pushing sales but most of the tweets are related to genuine fun which most of the company fans appreciate and the two-way communication is working well for the company. Twitter campaign presented a high school senior with a $20,000 Colonel’s scholarship based on a 140-character Twitter application which also highlighted the Colonel Sanders’ dedication to kids and education. The company received nearly 3,000 tweet applications, national news coverage for the program that awards 75 $20,000 college scholarships each year.

KFC manages its corporate social media tools internally, with a cross-functional team and the strategy: to connect and engage with KFC followers, cultivate relationships and respond to any inquiries. Customers are actively contacting through social media platforms both positively and negatively which forced KFC to use social media for customer service purposes. The company does not remove negative posts and if any customer posts a negative comment/post via social media instead of a phone, company ask for details, handle it and thank them for bringing it to our attention. Since customers are looking for quick response on social media platforms the company has exclusive people online for customers’ service during all normal business hours. KFC sees the social media scene as more of an opportunity to interact and engage their customers, not much focus is placed on the return on investment the activity generates. We don’t get a lot of pressure to justify [the return on investment]. It’s a very important customer-service element, and that’s enough for us. It’s about cultivating relationships, and that has a real business output,” Maynard said.

Social Media Strategy @ McDonald’s – Real time monitoring & quick response

McDonald’s engages actively with their customers and fans actively on various social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, etc. and is a complex task for the company to do so as it operates in 118 countries across the world. Company has to make sure it is sending a consistent and uniform message to its customers across the globe.  According to McDonald's Global Director of Digital and Social Media Sosti Ropaitis, McDonald’s is global decentralized brand and the local marketing teams within each market take their own decisions exclusively for those markets. It is even more required because of the social, cultural changes that each market has and also the different menus that company customizes according to each market requirements. But the company headquarters will take care of the global campaigns related to global sporting events like Olympics and World Cups. Some of the regional or country specific campaigns like the McDonald’s Canada Campaign “Our Food. Your Questions” giving people a chance to ask the company anything about its food are highly successful.

Real time monitoring is essential part of McDonald’s Social Media strategy. Every month, McDonald's tracks between 2.5 million and 3 million conversations on social media sites in an effort to identify consumer trends. The company uses tools like Radian6 and Sprout Social that helped in increase the speed and visibility of certain issues as they emerge.The company relies on true engagement, which is a function of content, context and timeliness. Lot of time is spent on creating real-time content; create unique transparent campaigns that connect with audiences. Internally with the help of Legal teams, company developed guidelines that help in taking advantage of real-time marketing opportunities like celebrities walking into McDonald’s Restaurants and taking pictures with the company products or tweeting about their experience with McDonald’s, the company retweet the original tweet without adding anything to the tweet.

McDonald’s adopted the constant test-and-learn mode, wherein the company tests and evaluates the different marketing messages whenever they are rolling a new product. Company constantly talks about the various attributes of the product rather than the product itself and this engagement drives significant volumes for the new product. Quick response is also essential for the company to survive as the customers have to be answered and also the company needs to control the social conversations across the various social media platforms. McDonald’s also had certain bad experiences earlier with their social media campaigns and the company seems to have learnt lesson and realized the fact that it is better to keep a constant monitoring on the social conversations and respond as and when there is a negative conversation and try contain the damage or else the company’s brand reputation will take a beating. The biggest learning from McDonald’s Strategy is that for quick response on social media platforms first social conversations have to be monitored on a day to day basis and create an internal framework, guidelines and teams that can respond without wasting time. 

Social Media Marketing Strategy Case Study – Intel Inc. presence on Facebook, YouTube

Intel was one of the first companies that adopted social media, actively present on major social media platforms like Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. and also uses social network styled platforms both internally to engage with employees and externally to engage with community. The company currently has 75 Intel-related accounts with nearly 180,000 followers. The company has 19 different topical or regional blogs. The company has 11 communities in several different languages plus software community for developers. Intel’s Facebook presence comprises 50 Facebook Fan Pages in different countries, led by Facebook.com/Intel, which has 1.5 million fans, plus a YouTube Intel Channel. The company is everywhere - blogs, Facebook (close to 23 million likes, close to 400,000 people are talking about the company on Facebook), Twitter (close to 2.2 million followers, more than 400 tweets and more than 1,150 followers!), YouTube (2 channels, close to 5,000 videos, more than 45 million video views and close to 63,000 subscribers!), Instagram (more than 200 posts and close to 6,000 followers), Google+, LinkedIn, etc. Intel Free Press is a tech news site from Intel Corporation, covering technology and innovation stories focused on people, technology, events and topics relevant to Intel and the computing industry.

Under Intel’s global social media strategist, Ekaterina Walter leadership, Intel has seen a good 10% to 12% monthly fan base growth. Her principles for Facebook engagement include original content, not just automated, and original videos, not just YouTube links. In August 2012, Intel’s campaign “How computers were made” post on Facebook attracted 102,5K+ likes in a week since it was published on August 9. More than 34,069 people have chosen to share the link, while 3,258 commented on it. 80%, of the conversations around Intel and products happen on blogs and twitter. Facebook usage within the business has also increased with 250 individually created and managed pages which was becoming difficult to co-ordinate and manage multi market campaigns. After reviewing 250 Facebook pages  and 250 Twitter handles/account  presence,  Intel took the decision to alter their social media strategy from being decentralized to a centralized global strategy supported by internal guidelines, training programs, content editorial, publishing schedules, supplemented by a suite of publishing Vitrue, listening, Radian6, & internal reporting tools. This centralized strategy allows them to listen and respond globally, locally or to individuals, based on the context of the conversation.

Intel’s marketing is not just about hardware, chips and engineering--“experience” is the new focus.  "People don’t buy processors…they buy experiences," said David Veneski U.S. Media Director, at Intel Corporation. “You need to turn a moment into a momentum, and a momentum into a movement,” Veneski said. Projects like Intel’s Museum of Me use social media to encourage users to create a “visual archive of their social life.” Another campaign, “Intel Ultrabook Temptations” is a collaborative social experiment to assess how desperate people will be to get their hands on the product. In this experiment users are encouraged to jump around on a custom-built measurement device to generate their “excitement” rating and the event is captured on video and shared socially as the feature on Intel’s YouTube page.

“The focus has shifted from being iconic to posting a status update," said Veneski which makes Intel more humanized and relatable to the consumer. Intel is embracing social media and using it as a key element to understand the driving factors behind day-to-day experiences. Intel’s products are at the core of technologies that people use, and users like to capture those experiences, talk about them, and share them with friends, families and others. Through blogs, video, and social networks like Twitter, Intel is actively onboarding new customers’ faster and strengthening relationships with existing customers. Like most companies, the online community was initially built by marketing. "It is integrated into our marketing plan," explains Laurie Buczek, who heads enterprise marketing for Intel's Storage Group and works closely with the leaders of Intel's 3,000 to 4,000 salespeople. Intel also uses YouTube, which enables product managers to vividly demonstrate new technologies and Twitter (@Intel). Intel’s Social Media Center of Excellence sets the strategy and guidelines for all social media content across the company’s far-reaching locations and business units. 

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.

Social Media adoption @ Fortune 500 companies – Exxon Mobil Perspective Blog, etc.

Exxon Mobil is the largest refiner and marketer of petroleum products in the world and was formed by the merger of Exxon and Mobil in 1999. The company is also the world's largest company by revenue and largest publicly traded international Oil and Gas Company according to Fortune 500 2012. Exxon Mobil adopted various social media channels to be in touch with its customers and various other stakeholders. Since April 2006, Exxon Mobil has been active on YouTube and the channel has more than 1200 subscribers and close to 700,000 views. The official channel of the company has videos highlighting the real time updates of the company, employee videos, advertisement campaigns, and videos from the top management and leadership discussing various issues regarding the company and its products, environment issues, challenges and the company efforts.

Another major effort of Exxon Mobil is its Perspectives blog which is run by Ken Cohen, ExxonMobil's vice president of public and government affairs. The blog talks about company's views on the issues, policies, technologies and trends that are shaping the energy industry and Ken Cohen talks about ideas and actions from industry, governments, researchers and many others that affect the world of energy. The blog was started in November 2011 and it is widely followed and read by many people online. Exxon Mobil also has an official twitter account with close to 26,000 followers and more than 1000 tweets and the company only provides news about the company and various activities of the company in different locations. For further discussions, people are directed to Perspectives blog.

Exxon Mobil does not have an official Facebook page but there are many pages on Facebook that is filled with lot of negative criticism. The company does not seem to be interested in a Facebook page but is very active with a blog, Twitter account and YouTube channel. Exxon Mobil uses Facebook to aggressively market its flagship brand Mobil 1 — the world's leading synthetic motor oil. Mobil 1 Facebook page was launched in March 2008 and has close to 60,000 likes. With a focus on making new friends and market its brand along with a Facebook page, a dedicated channel on YouTube and an online game was launched enabling players to take part in a virtual race against Lewis Hamilton, awareness of the brand is going from strength to strength – the game alone has been played over five million times worldwide.

Exxon Mobil has also launched Apple iPad, iPhone and Android applications for their customers. The ExxonMobil application for iPad provides immediate access to ExxonMobil’s Perspectives Blog, a vital source of energy news and analysis, continually refreshed and relevant, and includes access to ExxonMobil’s library of publications, stock information, news, videos and more. Exxon and Esso Mobile Fuel Finder apps provide real-time maps, driving directions and station information for nearly 10,000 Exxon and Mobil retail locations across the continental United States and Europe. Overall Exxon Mobil is active on those social media platforms which it feels relevant for its engagement strategy with customers and other stakeholders. 

Case Study: Morgan Stanley Smith Barney advisers allowed partial access to LinkedIn & Twitter

In June 2011, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney (MSSB) allowed a test group of 600 advisers, almost full use of LinkedIn and restricted use of Twitter and after a yearlong trial the Wall Street firm allowed 17,000 financial advisers partial access to Twitter and LinkedIn significantly increasing its social media presence. According to the 600 advisors involved in the trial, 40% cited new business through their LinkedIn & Twitter use, and of those 240, 60% said those new customers had more than $1 million worth of assets. According to Lauren W. Boyman, the firm’s head of social media, using Twitter & LinkedIn has helped financial advisers win more business over the past year and Advisers who have used the platforms have come to think of LinkedIn as a tool for networking and finding clients, while Twitter allows them to have more direct marketing campaigns. The full social media roll out across Morgan Stanley Smith Barney allowing access to all 17,000 advisers was always there and the firm had to do the trial to make sure that it has the capability & policy in place so that they can monitor, archive and manage the social media content as there are stringent regulations by the Financial regulators like SEC who had mandated the same rule & guidelines as in the case of email and physical communications & content.

Morgan Stanley’s risk management committee has given the go-ahead for all of the retail brokerage’s financial advisers to use the two sites.To comply with stringent rules governing what and how financial advisers & bankers can communicate, financial advisers of the firm will tweet only prewritten tweets from preapproved library and submit all LinkedIn postings for approval, using software designed by Socialware, and through this software the firm tracks and captures communication of its brokers and retains it for regulators. For using LinkedIn, advisers have to set up a profile that discusses their practice and specialties, receive compliance training, submit all LinkedIn postings for approval and can use all the LinkedIn functions--from requesting an introduction to search features to joining groups which are powerful networking tools and thus increase business. In case of Twitter account advisers can only tweet prewritten tweets from preapproved library, which contains content related to reports on market moves; the firm’s research on investment strategy; wealth management topics such as retirement, women and wealth and divorce; and general lifestyle content. According to Lauren Boyman, wealth management themes tend to do particularly well, and are frequently retweeted on Twitter.

In case MSSB Advisors require help with the LinkedIn, Twitter & their business usage have to contact firm’s business development organization which will guide them in term of how to use the sites and also a call center is established to answer adviser questions and finally advisers can also seek additional coaching from technology vendor Socialware. A lot of financial advice is emerging from many growing sources and technologies like blogs, Twitter, and LinkedIn, etc. and all the Financial Institutions like Retail Banks, Wealth management Firms, Investment Banks, Asset Management firms, etc. have to see this content as a competitive threat and should also make themselves present on the various social media platforms as the customers are becoming more social media savvy and social media has become an integral part of their day to day life. MSSB is successfully using social media in client interaction & Business Development.

Case Study: Social Media presence of Goldman Sachs: Looking to improve presence

Despite being one of the biggest investor in Social Media companies like Facebook, Goldman Sachs presence on Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube is quite lackluster. Goldman Sachs joined Facebook in June 2009 and till now it has only 20,000 fans, mere 16,000 likes which is far below when compared to its peers in the Financial Services industry and also has many negative comments about the bank on the Facebook page. It started its twitter account in May 2012 and since then it has 22,000 followers and the twitter account highlights the events, work, research and employees.  Goldman Sachs official twitter account is nothing compared to a parody feed called @GSElevator Gossip, which has over 320,000 followers which reports the various conversations overheard in the bank’s elevators. Goldman Sachs LinkedIn presence has 90,000 followers and is limited to job openings, recruiting interns and informing about employee update and new hires. In February 2012, Goldman Sachs launched YouTube channel and it features videos of employees discussing careers; experts interviewed on topics such as the global economy; clients talking about relationship & work and its corporate citizenship programs. Goldman Sachs is looking to hire a fulltime social community manager who will manage its social media presence and will also monitor the activity.

The reason for such a lackluster presence for Goldman Sachs and slowly improving social media presence for most of the Banks and Financial Institutions is due to the stringent financial regulations by the regulators. Broker, dealers, Relationship managers must comply with very stringent regulations regarding communications with their clients which had become a negating factor. The SEC and FINRA quickly classified social media interactions as records just like emails or physical communications which means they must be archived and managed according to the same rules and which also means tight policing and steep sanctions these institutions face in terms of violations from the SEC/other regulators will also be applied to social media records. Most of the financial institutions were not confident that they could comply with such stringent regulations while using social media so they avoided using it. But there are significant benefits in using social media like advisors/traders/relationship managers can build trust with clients, network more effectively and use social media as a marketing tool for more business and with new tools available that help in archiving and managing social media interactions effectively, Goldman Sachs and other Financial institutions & banks have been actively improving their social media presence. Social Media policy is in place and employees are being trained in terms of how to utilize and manage the social media presence, regulatory aspects and precautions to be taken during client interactions is also provided to all the client facing teams.

Banks & Financial Institutions need to understand that the new era financial customers, clients and public are social media savvy users which also has become an active part of their day to day lives and Social media is disrupting the financial industry with the emergence of social media real time money, investment and trading communities and crowd financing which is funding new players. All the above factors have forced the financial institutions to enter the open and transparent world of Social media. Goldman Sachs too is following and improving presence.

Social Media @ Lenovo - Customer Service to improved presence on Social Media sites

Lenovo social media engagement started post their acquisition of IBM PC business in 2005 when Lenovo found that there is lot of discussion happening on various online discussion forums & blogs and customers were actively engaging and discussing the various product offerings and Lenovo decided that they should take control and own the responsibility for responding to customer queries and feedback which is critical for future business growth and improve the reputation of the company. Lenovo was a small Chinese player and with IBM PC business acquisition they became a global player with significant market share. Not only they felt the need to respond to customers but also thought that the social media customer engagement strategy will help them in making Lenovo brand a global brand. Within Lenovo all the departments from legal to marketing were assigned responsibility of interacting and managing social media presence. Legal department framed policy and guidelines for social media engagement, marketing and sales have launched specific campaigns targeting customers on various social media platforms, Customer service was provided not only by company’s employees but Lenovo also engaged peer-to-peer customer service communities for interacting with the customers and solving their problems and technical issues.

Customer Service Success - Lenovo created interdepartmental collaboration and powerful partnerships within the organization between the marketing, sales, product development and engineering teams for tackling the customer services issues. Lenovo realized in 2005 that social media could help them understand the customer's point-of-view, the major issues with service, product features, functions, delays in shipments and their impact on the global customers. According to Forrester Case Study “How Lenovo Implemented Customer Service Social Media Best Practices” social media alignment of marketing, sales, service and other departments to accelerate changes and improvements to the customer experience has led to a 20% decrease in laptop service call volumes, an increase in customer service agent productivity, a shortened product problem-resolution cycle and an increase their Net Promoter Scores. The net-net is a reduction in customer service support costs and an increase in sales. Social media engagement with customer was even more necessitated due to the fact that customer service costs for personal computing products was rising constantly, putting pressure on margins and since products were becoming complex, the level of expertise for the customer service representatives also had to be improved by constant training which was adding to the costs and effecting margins.

Social Presence on various sites - Lenovo social media program moved from customer service to a larger program where along with customer service the company used the various social media platforms for marketing its products, new launches, and enhance brand reputation. Lenovo’s has an internal social media team which works round the clock to not only develop but also constantly refresh content (text, images and videos) for all of Lenovo social media pages which include Lenovo Vision YouTube Channel ( Around 9000 subscribers & 14 million video views), official Lenovo Facebook page ( Around 10,000 people talking about Lenovo on Facebook & 350,000 Likes), Flickr stream, Lenovo Blog, Lenovo Twitter feed (not to mention various regional feeds & around 5000 tweets & 22,000 followers) and it’s customized social media website, Lenovo Social which  aggregates all the content from different social media sites in one central location to provide an easy and complete view of all things social wise. Lenovo launched its Community forums in 2007 and it has more than 15,000 volunteers and the forum site is visited by millions of users every month. Till early 2012 Lenovo had pursued multiple blogs strategy by publishing many blogs on various topics but the blogging strategy was changed and redesigned to centralize Lenovo's existing blogs and social media in an engaging, navigable, and branded way, using one easily maintainable CMS.

Social Media use at CES 2012 - During International Consumer Electronics Show or CES 2012 held at Las Vegas, Lenovo used various social media tools and its presence on various social media platforms to reach its targeted audience effectively. Gavin O’Hara, Lenovo’s social media editorial lead, gave Text100.com an in-depth overview of Lenovo’s social numbers as well as measurement tools from CES and a snapshot of the outcome of Lenovo’s social activities during CES, both online and offline were as follows:

• Twitter: Lenovo CES tweets reached a potential audience of 17 million people
• Facebook: Lenovo posts reached an audience of 250,000 people while generating more than 1.3 million impressions. For the week, the Lenovo Facebook page received 3,000 likes, 800 comments & 300 “shares” 
• Flickr: Photos of products, parties and people got more than 25,000 views on the Lenovo photo library
• Lenovo Blogs: The behind-the-scenes blog posts got more than 25,000 page views
• YouTube: Lenovo CES-focused videos were watched by more than 50,000 people in a week. An astonishing 25,000 alone watched the Yoga “Hands On” interview. 

Lenovo Social site which aggregates content from the various social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, blogs, YouTube, Flickr etc. into one place and also helps customers, volunteers and Lenovo teams effectively navigate and manage the back-end of the site to manage blog content, and each contributing author gets his own account with necessary controls to access the content areas relevant to him. Another unique feature of the site is a new tagging schema that de-compartmentalizes blog topics so that users can find content easily, filter by topics, products, recent, or popularity and users can click through all blog posts in one place. Lenovo had set up a digital & social hub in Singapore in 2011 that centralized digital thinking and strategy planning to support marketing plans in various regions and also execute marketing campaigns, monitor buzz, and form support teams dedicated to answer technical questions on social channels. Lenovo social media strategy is all about engaging with customers, informing them about various products & services, solving customer issues and technical problems, and company is effectively using various social media platforms and has achieved its target of being the Global brand. The recently launched “The Do Network”, a new social media-fueled brand engagement highlights the importance of social media presence and engagement in overall Lenovo future growth strategy.  

Twitter origin of most of the Social Media Crises in 2011- How to handle

According to a study titled Epicenters of Social Media Crises by Christian Faller, most of the social media crises in 2011 originated from Twitter and the author studied 30 social media crises in 2011, out of which 16 of the crises (53%) originated from twitter followed by Facebook (17%), Blogs (13%), YouTube (7%) and other platforms (10%). Most of the crisis are triggered by organization’s customers (54%) followed by organizations themselves (34%) and rest by opposing stakeholders (13%). Organizations customers complain about negative customer experiences (28.6%) followed by violations of ethical guidelines through the organization itself or its employees (25%), inappropriate content (10.7%), rogue employees (10.7%), failure to respond quickly (7.1%), violation of legal guidelines (3.6%), security breach (3.6%), inappropriate response(3.6%), community censorship(3.6%), lack of fact checking(3.6%) are the top causes of social media crises.  As is evident in the study Twitter is the favorite platform for customers to vent their anger or negative feedback and the reason for this seems to be brevity of information as Twitter allows only 140 characters per update, users can exchange many different updates in a relatively short amount of time and information spreads much faster than on other channels which users can easily understand. Since many twitter users often forward messages even without reading them and the culture of sharing and forwarding messages as part of the social media culture which also leads to rise in self esteem as spreading message will obviously lead to increased reputation among the circle and the density of influencers and opinion leaders is very high on Twitter and they can easily share information through micro blogging in short messages. There has been a sudden spurt in twitter traffic for the particular company during the social media crisis that highlights the significance.

The study highlighted the fact that Twitter is a major epicenter for social media crises and businesses should have a proper strategy for managing their presence on the twitter. There should be a social media crisis tackling plan with a particular focus on twitter, businesses should be very careful in identifying and engaging the key influencers and opinion leaders that are dominating, regular communication with the twitter users and for this businesses should give the responsibility of managing the communication to specialist teams who not only engage with customers but also manage the content in terms of videos, photos, website links, etc, engage specialists if necessary for developing the content that engages the users. Businesses should be responding in a proper manner to customer’s positive and negative feedback. Particularly in case of negative feedback and social media crisis appropriate response should be given with a focus to lighten the mood, if necessary apology has to be tendered and make amends to the customers. Businesses should make sure that the crisis is properly handled by the responsible people and necessary steps need to be taken so that this will not be repeated in future. Not only is it difficult to build a presence on twitter but also it is equally difficult to maintain the presence on twitter and any negligence in maintaining the twitter presence will have a direct impact on the brand and company reputation. Christian Faller study highlights the major social media crises in 2011 and how companies have faltered. For maintaining the twitter presence businesses should train the employees and if necessary engage the specialist from the relevant agencies to develop and maintain the relevant Twitter strategy for the business.

Social Media in India 2012 – User Base & engagement expected to increase

Similar to the global phenomenon Social media in India is driven by young and educated in the cities and towns across India and 2011 saw a tremendous rise in the number of users and their activity in terms of time spent, engagement levels and quality on various social networking sites. According to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India there has been rapid rise in the number of internet users in India and has reached 121 million users in 2011. Broadband too has seen significant growth in 2011with 13.30 million users (22% YoY) compared to 10.92 million users in 2010 and is expected to reach 15.9 million users by end of 2012. 80% of the internet users are urban users and 20% are rural users in India and educated young people and professionals across industry verticals like IT, BFSI, Retail, Automobile, Pharma, etc are driving the social networking sites usage in India. Indians migrate to United States (US) for education and jobs and most of them will be in constant touch with friends in India which led to the rise in usage of social networks and it was even more increased as US companies set up offices in India employing thousands of people here, Indians using more technology products like mobiles, laptops, other computing devices like PCs, tablets and finally the voyeuristic appeal with open networks drove the usage further.

Most popular social networking site in India is Facebook as recently it has dethroned Indonesia from the number 2 slot with 46 million monthly active users in February 2012 on the site, an increase of 132% from the prior year. 75% of Facebook users in India are male and metro cities dominate the usage in India. Google+ has a total user base of 12.3 million in India with 86% of the users being male and dominated by students and young professionals. Twitter has a total user base of more than 14 million in India and is the sixth largest country in terms of accounts and the micro blogging in India has not risen in India when compared to other social networking sites as Indians are not comfortable with a 140 character limit. LinkedIn the professional networking site has more than 14million user base in India and is one of the rapidly growing social networks in India.  Orkut was the initial dominant social networking site in India until Facebook entry and it has around 18 million user base in India but the network which was acquired by Google is fading into oblivion as Google is more focused on Google+. Indian social networking sites too have significant user base in India and Ibibo has around 12 million users base and BharatStudent has around 7 million users base.

Urban cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad and other tier 1and 2 cities and towns dominate the social networking usage in India. 75% is dominated by male and mostly the young students and professionals in the age group of 18-24 are dominating the social media usage followed by the 25-34 age group. They spend hours every month on the various social networking sites and actively engage with friends and others. Most of the users are using social media to stay in touch with friends, track and update their activities, social gaming, follow groups and communities, discuss social, political cultural and entertainment topics and also look for information about brands, products and also provide their feedback. People are actively voicing their opinions on the social networks as was evident during the Jan Lokpal movement by Anna Hazare and his team in 2011 and the movement was supported by people actively through the various social networks. Accessing and using the social networking sites through mobiles is also on the rise as most of the cell phone manufacturers selling in India are selling handsets that are easy to use for social networking and are having inbuilt social networking applications of the popular social networks at low prices.

There has been rapid rise in the number of ecommerce portals in India and also businesses selling their products and services online. Most of these businesses are actively engaging their consumers on the various social networks through games, contest, and other content. Telecommunications services providers like Tata Docomo, Airtel, Vodafone, Mobile handsets makers like Samsung, LG, Nokia, HTC, Automobile manufacturers like Ford, Maruti Suzuki, Mahindra & Mahindra, Volkswagen, ecommerce sites like Flipkart, sports goods manufacturers like Nike, Adidas, beverages like Bacardi, Pepsi, Coke and consumer products like Nestle Maggi, etc are all very active in India and many Indian users are actively engaging with these brands and companies. Content focused at Indian users both by businesses and individuals is being created and Indian users of the various social networking sites like the content and making the content viral like the recent song Kolaveri Di. Most of the celebrities belonging to the cinema world, sports personalities, politicians, artists, business leaders and activists are all actively engaging and participating in the various social networking sites. Indian Users are also actively engaging in the global issues and events on the social networking sites and voicing their opinions.

There also have been some issues with social networking sites in India and the government had issued notices to all the major players in the country in relation to the derogatory content and content that is hurting the feelings of certain sections of the people. The government has instructed the social networking companies to sensor such content and remove it immediately failing which strict penalties and legal actions will be taken against the companies responsible. The rapid rise in the social media usage in the recent years has forced the government for regulating the usage and the policy was framed last year in this regards. There were protests against too much regulation by the government as the users were concerned about their right to express themselves freely but due to certain incidents over the various social networks that hurt the sentiments and feelings of people government were forced to act and frame the policy.

With increasing penetration of the internet and improvement in the technology infrastructure in India, the social media usage in India is expected to increase and this will be even pushed further with significant rise in the sales of the mobiles, laptops, tablets and other computing devices in India. With availability of more information about brands, companies, issues, hobbies, interest etc and increase in presence of companies, governments, politicians, celebrities etc the social media usage across all the age groups is also expected to increase in near future. There is also significant push from the social networking companies and social gaming companies focusing on the Indian User base will also see growth in user base. These companies are localizing the content, providing language supports in local languages and also improving the underlying technologies so that the users can use these sites easily. Privacy issues in terms of individual privacy, personal data security, government and regulatory policy issues in terms of content and the issue of targeting the ads based on personal sensitive information are the significant negative factors that may hamper the growth in near future. 2012 will be interesting and exciting year for social media in India.

Social Media @ Indian IT Vendors – Adoption of Internal Social Networking tools/platforms on the rise – Key Statistics

Adoption of social media is on the rise in Indian IT companies as the internal social networking tools that are similar to Facebook, twitter and collaborative tools like blogs & wikis help in communication among employees and between employees and managements, knowledge management, and also helps in curbing the higher attrition levels in the companies. The rise of social networks like the Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc and millions of users that log on to these networks and actively engage with friends, communities and others have forced the Indian IT companies to build internal social networks for their employees as the employees particularly the young employees fresh from the colleges and universities (average age 22-26 years) who are already active on various external social networks are also looking for similar platforms for interacting within their organizations as these companies have more than 1,00,000 employees spread across the globe. Employees use these internal social networks not only to collaborate on projects, share knowledge and interact with colleagues and clients but also share their personal information & opinions, passions, hobbies and participate in various cultural events. Social networking tools and platforms provide employees an opportunity to engage with the management and actively participate in the organizational development activities and voice their opinions on the various strategies and policies. Employees will be motivated and will work with greater commitment for the organizational goals.

Indian IT vendors are investing in these internal social networking platforms both for engaging their employees and also sell these platforms to their clients who can use them in their employee engagement. Significant investments have been made by Indian IT vendors over the past few years as the social networks have seen tremendous growth and most of the companies be it large, medium and small are all making sure that they are present on all the major social networks and are also encouraging their employees to actively participate and interact on these networks. Most of the companies have formulated a social media policy and guidelines for their employees too. This provides an opportunity for the Indian IT vendors to extend their offerings into the social media platforms and help their clients in communicating with the employees, clients and other stakeholders, increase collaboration and knowledge management and monitor the social networks in terms of the employee engagement, brand reputation, consumer opinions, feedback and complaints so as to avoid any brand or reputation damage. Companies are looking for social network platforms that are secure, do not violate the intellectual property rights, and provide an easy to use platform for their employees, customers and other stakeholders.

Employees in Indian IT companies are actively engaging in the internal social networking platforms as evident by the details provided by major Indian IT vendors like TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL and Cognizant Technology. Employees are actively creating their work and personal profiles, expressing their interest, hobbies, affiliations and uploading content like photos, music, and videos. Lakhs of employees spread across the globe are actively interacting, understanding and appreciating the different cultures and working on their hobbies like forming music bands, dance groups, literary groups that are totally unrelated to their work or company. Managements are allowing these activities with an expectation that employees will stick with the company for longer periods, be loyal and actively involve in developing innovative products and services and improve the brand reputation of the company and ultimately increase the revenues and profitability. Some of the Indian IT vendors have announced that there has been significant reduction in the attrition levels and employee engagement and satisfaction levels have also increased.

These internal social network platforms are not totally internal but also allow consumers and other external stakeholders to communicate with the company and its employees. Consumers and other external stakeholders are provided with necessary access and secured logins. Communication among these groups is significant as it will help in innovations and development of products and services. Innovation is critical for the Indian IT vendors and the employees as well as the management have to constantly learn about new technologies and developments that are happening in the industry so as to incorporate them into their products and service offerings. Operational efficiency will increase and the costs of communication will come down significantly as employees will be using the internal social network platforms for communication and these communications will be more productive. Indian IT vendors have to use the various social media and networking tools internally for their employees before they go to their clients offering various social media related service offerings. Their implementation and usage internally will be the best testimonial for the social media service offerings. The competition among the Indian Vendors and Global Vendors is so tight and any lapses in identifying the emerging and disruptive trends and consumer preferences and necessities will have drastic effects on the business and its survival.

Social Media in Customer Service Case Study – Dell Social Media Strategy since Dell Hell

In June of 2005, Jeff Jarvis bought a Dell Lemon and paid a premium for four year in home service plan. He started to face problems with the machine immediately and he contacted Dell for fixing the problems, but there was no proper response from Dell. Dell did not provide good service to Jarvis and with no other option he posted his angry bust on poor Dell Service on his blog Buzz Machine titled "Dell lies. dell sucks”. His blog post generated severe criticism of Dell and other unhappy customers joined and the whole blogosphere started a critical discussion of poor quality of products and how bad is Dell Technical Support service. Dell which was already struggling with poor revenues and blogosphere criticism added fuel to the poor financial performance and hurt Dell reputation badly. The problem of poor customer service and quality of products was not new as Dell was not listening to the customer complaints for long and the blogs had just publicized and gave an opportunity for the aggrieved customers to vent their anger. Dell had the first hand experience how social media can impact the business and how critical it is to listen to customer complaints and fix them fast.

It took one year for Dell to realize the extent of damage caused by the blogs and forced the company to announce a new business plan, called Dell 2.0 in 2006 that included an additional $150m investment in their customer service. The investment included sales channels, both in sales contacts & its online presence, in its website front and back end and expand the scope of Dell Connect, which enables a Dell technician to take control of a customer's system should they be encountering problems. In March 2006 a community outreach team was formed that included group of technical support experts with good interpersonal skills that listens, monitors and reaches out to bloggers around the world who have questions or may require assistance. Direct2Dell was launched in July, 2006 and in August Dell expanded blog outreach to include any conversations about Dell. Initially Direct2Dell blog was received with negative skepticism, but chief blogger Lionel Menchaca convinced bloggers that Dell was seriously listening to the bloggers and he diligently responded and linked to critics. Dell’s team staunched flow of bad buzz and by Dell’s measure negative blog posts about it have dropped from 49% to 22%. Dell even engaged external agency to monitors online conversations about Dell.

In February 2007 Dell launched IdeaStorm that allowed Dell users to provide feedback & valuable insights about the company and its products and vote for those they find most relevant. The Linux community used this platform and suggested Dell brought back XP as an option for customers who wanted it, reduced trialware and listen to customers discuss ideas in real time. StudioDell (January 07) is a place where Dell users could share videos about Dell-related topics and videos and podcasts were used to educate users on various emerging technologies and also offers tips, tricks and support to get the best out of a Dell product. Dell operated blogs and forums for dedicated customer engagement topics, joined Twitter (June 07) with a number of ids. Dell set up a centralized team, appointed a separate leadership and resources were taken from multiple teams (IT, online) to test and launch social engagement tools and websites quickly. This team had developed formal social media strategy and set of social media policies and governance were set in place.

In 2008 Dell social media presence started to yield results in terms of ROI and social media has become part of the business strategy and the various business units were provided specific targets for the social media. Employees were trained and encouraged to actively participate in various social media channels, provide customer support through blogs, twitter, etc and community managers who were responsible for listening and resolution, content planning, technology testing, planning, and measurement were named for various business units. Dell even went further with its social media initiatives a blog for the channel community was launched, online communities were launched for Dell's environmental efforts called Regeneration and technophiles called Digital Nomads and social content appeared on Dell.com (homepage navigation, product pages with ratings & reviews). The Dell outlet, small business and home offers available on Twitter had $500,000 in revenues. Dell started a page focusing on SMBs and fan pages on Facebook.

In 2009, due to the recession pressure social media team had to reduce headcount which led to the departure of key people in the social media facing teams within the Dell. The departures had an impact on the Dell social media presence had seen consolidation in number of blogs & twitter accounts, slow down in response and lack of experience had further worsened the situation. But Dell managed to keep up and worldwide community has grown to more than 3.5 million people across the social web, including places like Twitter, Facebook, Direct2Dell and IdeaStorm. @DellOutlet had close to 1.5 million followers on Twitter with $3 million in revenue and in total Twitter has resulted in more than $6.5 million in revenue. Dell launched the Dell Tech Center in 2009 to revitalize the brand and increase awareness of Dell's solutions capabilities as customers valued a trusted advisor relationship.

Dell consolidated its social media strategy in 2010 with appointment of new leadership to the social media division and together with the old members of dell social media team Dell tried to regain its focus. Another effort from Dell to maintain its focus on social media was to open up a Social Media Listening Command Center in Austin Texas under the leadership of Chief Listening Officer where real-time data is collected and visualized by Radian6 and displayed across rows of monitors that show a unique dashboard, offering instant insights into things like customer sentiment, share of voice and geography. Dell also started on Customer Advisory Panel events with a goal to bring key customers and key advocates to Dell HQ in June 2010 to understand their delights and frustrations. Other DellCAP events were held in China in November 2010, in Germany in January 2011 and again in Round Rock in March 2011, focused on Sustainability topics.

Dell continued to improve its social media presence in 2011 and Social Media Listening Command center is playing a critical role in these efforts. Dell is tracking 25,000 online mentions both posts and tweets about Dell every day and understand this information based on topics, sentiment, share of voice, geography, and trends and use it answer customer questions, address their concerns, build better products, and improve the overall customer experience. Dell has around 5000 employees trained as Social Media professionals and turned them into frontline social marketers who engage in Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, and more on the company's behalf. Dell views employees’ social media participation as an asset rather than a liability and accordingly doesn’t restrict team members from utilizing mobile devices, apps or social media. Dell is using social media as a platform to support various campaigns and used it in the promotion of its first Customer Event Dell World and launched website, EnterpriseEfficiency.com which is a micro site featured daily, topical blogs written by InformationWeek editors and writers as well as Dell executives to gain insights.

Social media has provided an opportunity for Dell not only to interact with customers, understand their opinions and needs but also provided a marketing platform where in they can advertise their products, improve the brand image and loyalty and improve their revenues with rise in sales. Dell initially entered into social media not to sell its products but to respond to its customer complaints and feedback but customers wanted to access to special deals from its social feeds that link to products, reviews or discounts. Dell is committed to improving overall level of customer service continuously which is 24×7 “always-on” customer service philosophy through social media and has made it a critical part of business strategy with clearly defined policy and is considered as on of the top companies in the world that is significantly profiting through the use of Social media.

Discussion points:

1. How to manage the social media presence and what strategy the company should adopt for its social media presence? ( Control, Policy & Feedback)
2. How to engage employees and other stakeholders in the social media platforms and how to use the information in organizational decision making?
3. How to generate good ROI from the social media marketing initiatives and profit from social media presence?
4. What technologies and platforms are to be used for social media and how to measure ROI?