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Bhukya, 1:10http://dx.doi.org/10.4172/scientificreports.500
Research Article Open Access
Open Access Scientific ReportsScientific Reports
Open Access
Volume 1 • Issue 10 • 2012
Keywords: Social media presence; Brands; Social media metrics;
IntroductionWith this rise in social media, it appears that corporate
communication has been democratized. The power has been taken from those in marketing and public relations by the individuals and communities that create, share, and consume bogs, tweets, Facebook entries, movies, pictures, and so forth. Communication about brands happens, with or without permission of the firms in question. It is now up to firms to decide if they want to get serious about social media and participate in this communication, or continue to ignore it. Both have a tremendous impact. New media is about content and placing an ad alone won’t help. social media is being used not just for plain one way advertising but also for customer engagement, marketing events, generating sales, launching product buzz, introducing innovative concepts and even creating new markets for their existing brands. Social media contains a broad array of Internet-based applications but it is mostly coined with applications such as You Tube, Wikipedia, Facebook, and Second Life and has the following elements.
Literature ReviewClifton [1] stated that, the brand appears in marketing literature as
a powerful tool of differentiation for products and companies.
Kim et al. [2] and Wang et al. [3] emphasized that the Social media sites containing user generated comments and reviews can affect the creation of the brand, providing companies with greater effectiveness in the communication process for their goods and services, as well as with greater awareness in brand loyalty, perceived quality and brand associations. Accarrino [4] has stated that social media has changed everything. Mass communication with a niche community, or even the entire planet, is now direct, easy and instant. Because of social media and digital marketing, brands now have a real opportunity to create personal and genuine relationships with their customers. Just like people, company brands now need to communicate, to "network" and to reach out beyond their normal comfort zone [5]. Kim and Ko [6] have pointed out that, Brands and customers are communicating with each other without any restriction in time, place, and medium so that old-fashioned one-way communication is changed to interactive two-way direct communication. Hanna et al. [7] have concluded that the unique aspects of social media and its immense popularity have revolutionized marketing practices such as advertising and promotion. de Vries et al. (2012) have conducted a study on 355 brand posts from
Received September 05, 2012; Published November 26, 2012
Citation: Bhukya R (2012) Presence of Indian Big IT Brands on Social Media: an Empirical Study. 1:500. doi:10.4172/scientificreports.500
Copyright: © 2012 Bhukya R. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
AbstractSocial media has taken the world by storm and has quickly become an essential networking and Brand building
tool. Irrespective of their size and nature of business, most of the Brands across the world have been able to some sort of social media presence as demanded by their customers. This paper explores the concept of social media presence and analyzes the social media metrics of Indian IT Brands viz. Wipro, Infosys, TCS and HCL. Based upon the data sourced from respective brands’ social media websites and after analyzed on a 5-point simple scale, HCL and Infosys have a remarkable social media presence with scoring 3.75 points and making presence on 7 social media channels each. Wipro with 1.75 points and making presence on 5 social media channels stands ahead of TCS which scores 1.25 and making presence on 6 social media channels.
Presence of Indian Big IT Brands on Social Media: an Empirical StudyRamulu Bhukya*School of Management Studies, University of Hyderabad, India
11 international brands spread across six product categories and their results show that positioning the brand post on top of the brand fan page enhances brand post popularity. Social media have not just helped people make zillions of connections (via the social media websites) and inspire Hollywood (as evidenced by the movie The Social Network) but also transformed the way consumers interact with brands [8].
Social media gives businesses a way to advertise and promote themselves in acceptable ways. When social media is used in moderation, a business can be seen as a leader in its industry and can gain a favorable reputation, both among its clients and its competitors [9]. Slowly but definitely, social media are growing in popularity, trying to replace the corporate websites of small, medium and multinational businesses [10]. Social media networks are free to join because they will not expand without being freely available. And they earn money using customer or brand driven advertisements. Now, all kinds of brands can start their official accounts on these different social networks free of cost [11]. Burson and Marsteller study on ‘Global Social Media Check-up 2012’ has concluded that the fortune Global 100 brands have active presence on social media. 67 % of the Brands have twitter accounts while 57% have Facebook and remains have on Youtube, Google+, Pinterest and etc.
Result of a Social Media Benchmark survey conducted by http://business.com shows that 2948 businesses were involved in decentralisation of marketing plan. Over 40 percent indicated they maintained a social site presence. Further more, among then are 1,197 respondents that indicated their company maintained a profile on one or more social media sites, 80 per cent maintain a Facebook presence and 56 per cent have a company account on Twitter.
Objectives of the Study1. To know the importance of Social Media Presence
Indian IT brands
*Corresponding author: Ramulu Bhukya, School of Management Studies,University of Hyderabad, 500046, India, E-mail: [email protected]
Citation: Bhukya R (2012) Presence of Indian Big IT Brands on Social Media: an Empirical Study. 1:500. doi:10.4172/scientificreports.500
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Volume 1 • Issue 10 • 2012
2. To study the social media presence of Indian IT Brands
3. To analyze the social media metrics of select Indian IT brands
Research MethodologyBeing the study is involved with online kind of information,
secondary data is collected from respective brands’ official social media web sites. The data is processes and presented in the forms of tables. Further the data is analyzed by using a simple 5-point Interval scale.
Unit of sample
Indian IT Brand (IT Organizations)
Size of sample
4 (Wipro, TCS, Infosys and HCL)
Indian IT Brands on Social Media Presence Many Indian Brands have already cashed in on this trend and only
more are jumping onto the bandwagon of using innovative advertising campaigns on social media. No other Indian industry has created the same impact globally as IT. Infosys, Wipro, TCS and HCL are now preparing to compete with global giants. As the cost advantages of cheap labor get reduced, it is the value created by intangibles such as brand and intellectual property that will take these companies to the next orbit. Interestingly, all four companies are looking at this aspect far more seriously than in the past. Global positioning statements, big marketing budgets and brand valuations are being aggressively churned out.
Here are social media metrics of how Indian IT companies are making presence on social media, either for direct advertising or for enhancing their brand profile.
Wipro technologies
The country's third largest information technology (IT) services
exporter, Wipro is making full use of social networking media to accomplish their brand building goals. Positioning Wipro with the statement “Applied Innovation” had an impact on the awareness levels vis-à-vis competition as it articulated a powerful differentiator. The focused, low-cost, high-impact branding exercise undertaken by Wipro through innovative marketing channels moved Wipro to a new level.
They have a Twitter, Facebook accounts and are on LinkedIn, You Tube and Slide shares to make it interactive. They participate in content and whenever, say, there is a discussion around cloud computing, ecology or sustainability they would like to be present there and branding will follow. Figure 1 shows the social media presence of Wipro. Wipro is making its presence on 4 Facebook profiles (i.e. wipro.com, careers@Wipro, Xperience@Wipro and careers@Wipro BPO), 3 twitter profiles (@Wipro, @WiproCareers and @XperienceWipro), 1 LinkedIn and 1Youtube accounts. Table 1 show the social media metrics of Wipro.
Infosys
Infosys Limited, formerly Infosys Technologies Limited is an Indian multinational provider of business consulting, technology, engineering and outsourcing Services Company. Infosys is a powerful brand in the world of information technology. Infosys Technologies introduced a new brand positioning and vision statement for itself, and it’s stepping into a whole new phase that it describes as Infosys 3.0. Figure 2 shows the social media presence indications of Infosys. Infosys has presence on 7 social media channels and grabbed good numbers in social media metrics. Table 2 shows the social media metrics of Infosys.
Social Medium Name Metrices
• www.wipro.com • 10,102 like this page• 348 talk about this page
• Careers@Wipro • 18,636 like this page• 553 talk about this page
• Xperience Wipro • 5041 like this page• 113 talk about this page
• Careers@Wipro BPO • 6706 like this page• 127 talk about this page
• @Wipro • 17450 followers• 2697 tweets
• @WiproCareers • 8546 followers• 682 tweets
• XperienceWipro • 3013 followers• 2395 tweets
• Wipro Technologies N/A
Slideshare• Wipro Technologies • 78 Slide Shares
• 2 Followers
Youtube
• Wipro • 89 Videos• 385 Subscribers• 46791 Video views
Note: Metrics as on 01/09/2012Source: Compiled by author from Wipro official social media channels.
Table 1: Social media presence metrics of Wipro.
Social Medium Name Metrices
• Life beyond Work @ Infosys• 175,864 like this page• 5,391 talk about this page
• @Infosys • 28426followers• 5324 tweets
• @InfosysEdge • 335 followers• 372 tweets
• @Infosys ThoughtFloor • 31 followers• 184 tweets
• @InfosysFinSpeak • 103 followers• 74 tweets
Blogs (Major)
• Building Tomorrow’s Government• Software Tools @Infosys• Next Generation Insurance: Leading from the front.• Research @Infosys Labs• Supply Chain Management
• Infosys • N/A
Slideshare• Infosys • 188 Slide shares
• 190 Followers
Google +
• Infosys • +596 users in circle
Youtube
• Infosys• 300 Videos• 1147 Subscribers• 340,541 Video views
*Note: Metrics as on 01/09/2012Source: Compiled by author from Infosys’s corporate social media sites.
Table 2: Social media presence metrics of Infosys.
Citation: Bhukya R (2012) Presence of Indian Big IT Brands on Social Media: an Empirical Study. 1:500. doi:10.4172/scientificreports.500
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Volume 1 • Issue 10 • 2012
Social Medium Name Metrices
• Tata Consultancy Services• 35, 278 like this page• 1, 106 talk about this page
• @TCS_News • 18,972 followers• 1,556 tweets
• Tata Consultancy Services N/A
Youtube
• Tata Consultancy Services• 29 Videos• 137 Subscribers• 26,439 Video views
Slideshare• Tata Consultancy Services • 7 Slide share
• 8 Followers
RSS Feeds
• Tata Consultancy Services N/A
Note: Metrics as on 01/09/2012Source: Compiled by author from TCS’s official social media channels.
Table 3: Social media metrics of TCS.
TCS has a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube and Slideshare accounts apart from bogs. Table 3 shows its social media metrics.
HCL (Hindustan Computer Limited)
HCL is a leading global Technology and IT Enterprise with annual revenues of US$ 6.2 billion. The 35 year old enterprise, founded in 1976, is one of India's original IT garage start ups. Its range of offerings span R&D and Technology Services, Enterprise and Applications Consulting, Remote Infrastructure Management, BPO services, IT Hardware, Systems Integration and Distribution of Technology and Telecom products in India. It has presence on 7 social media channels which fetched a good quantum of Brand promotion. The figure 4 shows it clearly. HCL has 3 facebook profiles, 2 twitter profiles, LinkedIn,
TCS (Tata Consultancy Services Limited)
TCS is an Indian multinational information technology (IT) service, business solutions and outsourcing Services Company. It has been named as the world’s fourth most valuable information technology (IT) services brand by leading global brand valuation company Brand Finance. It has been investing heavily to build up its brand presence worldwide through a range of activities. It has recognized the importance of social media presence and put steps forward toward it. Figure 3 shows its presence on social media presence.
Social Medium Name Metrices
• HCL • 5,27,071 like this page• 3069 talk about this page
• HCL Technologies • 230,878 like this page• 1599 talk about this page
• HCL Technologies Official Career Page
• 10,092 like this page• 140 talk about this page
• @heltech • 63416 followers• 4088 tweets
• @HCLTechJobs • 2819 followers• 165 tweets
• @_HCL • 1626 followers• 695 tweets
• HCL Brand N/A
• Brand HCL’s photo stream • 23 photos
• HCL Brand • 12496 total read• 25 uploads 59 followers
Youtube
• HCL• 24Videos• 585 Subscribers• 4,32,487 Video views
Google +
• Brand HCL • +155 in circle
Note: Metrics as on 01/09/2012Source: Compiled by author from HCL’s official social media Channels.
Table 4: Social media presence metrics of HCL.
Presence on number
of Channels
Social media Channels scoreTotal Score
Social Score RankFace-
book Twitter Youtube Scribd/
Wipro 5 1 3 2 1 7 1.75 3Infosys 7 2 3 5 5 15 3.25 2
TCS 6 1 2 1 1 5 1.25 4HCL 7 5 5 3 2 15 3.75 1
Source: Compiled by author.
Table 5: Social media Presence Ranks of Indian IT Brands.
Source: Wipro official website: www.wipro.com
Figure 1: Screenshot of Wipro Corporate website indicating social media presence.
Source: Infosys’ official web site: www.infosys.com
Figure 2: Screenshot of Infosys corporate website indicating Social Media presence
Citation: Bhukya R (2012) Presence of Indian Big IT Brands on Social Media: an Empirical Study. 1:500. doi:10.4172/scientificreports.500
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Volume 1 • Issue 10 • 2012
Flicker, Youtube and Google+ accounts each. The social media metrics of HCL is Shown in the table 4. After compiling and considering data into account, points were assigned on the basis the fall in to group on 5-point scale. And only Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Slideshare/Scribd accounts were taken for preparation of data analysis. It has been presented in table 5. Based upon the above metrics ranks are assigned to each Brand, with 3.75 social score HCL and Infosys stand ahead of all two Brands Wipro and TCS. TCS with 1.25 social score stands behind Wipro with 1.75 social score and the rest of the two follow them with 1.25 social score each. Though TCS has presence on 6 social
media channels it stands behind Wipro which presences 5 social media channels. It is shown in figure 5.
ConclusionBased upon the data available on respective Indian IT Brands’
official social media web pages, HCL technologies and Infosys have a remarkable presence on social media by making presence over 7 each social media channels, i.e., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube, Flicker, scribd and google+ with Social score of 3.75 on 5-point scale. But compare Infosys, HCL brand has good brand following on Facebook and Twitter, while Infosys brand has on Youtube and Slideshares.
The other IT brands Wipro and Tata Consulting Services are behind Infosys and HCL. With 1.75 social presence score Wipro stands ahead of TCS which has 1.25 score.
Limitations of the Study1. Author has considered only 4 Indian IT Brands for his study
which are in top 5 in India based upon their revenue. Hence we cannot generalize it to all Indian IT Brands.
2. The result of the study is purely drawn based on the statistics available on respective Brands official social media channels.
3. The data used for this study was taken from respective brands official social media website till, so result may vary after this period.
References
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11. Singh H (2011) Thoughts on Social Media Marketing.
Source: TCS official website: www.tcs.com
Figure 3: Screenshot of TCS corporate website indicating of Social Media presence.
Source: HCL corporate web site: www.hcl.in
Figure 4: Screenshot of HCL corporate website indicating Social media presence.
3.75
1.75
1.25
Number of Channels0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Soci
al m
edia
pre
sen
ce s
core
4
3.5
3
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
Source: Compiled by author based upon data analysis
Figure 5: Graphical view of Indian IT Brands’ Social media score.
