Brand Promotion

Social Networking Swapnil Bagul

Introduction on Social Networking Sites• Social networking online community sites bring millions of people of

various origins and interests together.

• It can be considered an alternate community especially for people who spend most of their times in front of their PCs, either for recreation or for business.

• A social network service essentially consists of a representation of each user (often a profile), his/her social links, and a variety of additional services.

• The main types of social networking services are those which contain category places (such as former school-year or classmates), means to connect with friends (usually with self-description pages) and a recommendation system linked to trust.

Cont.…….

• Popular methods now combine many of these, with Facebook, and Twitter widely used worldwide.

• MySpace , YouTube and Linkedin are also being used .

• These social networking sites are now widely used worldwide by Major Organization’s for promoting their goods & services.

Emerging trends in social networks

• As the increase in popularity of social networking is on a constant rise, new uses for the technology are constantly being observed.

• At the forefront of emerging trends in social networking sites is the concept of "real time" and "location based."

• ." Real time allows users to contribute content, which is then broadcasted as it is being uploaded - the concept is similar to live television broadcasts.

• Twitter set the trend for "real time" services, where users can broadcast to the world what they are doing, or what is on their minds within a 140 character limit.

• Facebook followed suit with their "Live Feed" where users' activities are streamed as soon as it happens.

• In the location based social networking space, Foursquare gained popularity as it allowed for users to "check-in" to places that they are frequenting at that moment.

Business model• Few social networks currently charge money for membership.

• In part, this may be because social networking is a relatively new service, and the value of using them has not been firmly established in customers' minds.

• Companies such as MySpace and Facebook sell online advertising on their site

• Hence, they are seeking large memberships, and charging for membership would be counterproductive.

• Some believe that the deeper information that the sites have on each user will allow much better targeted advertising than any other site can currently provide.

Cont.…..• Social networks operate under an autonomous business model, in

which a social network's members serve dual roles as both the suppliers and the consumers of content.

• This is in contrast to a traditional business model, where the suppliers and consumers are distinct agents.

• Revenue is typically gained in the autonomous business model via advertisements, but subscription-based revenue is possible when membership and content levels are sufficiently high

How To Boost Business Promotion Using Social Networking Online Community Sites

• Social networking online community sites bring millions of people of various origins and interests together.

• It can be considered an alternate community especially for people who spend most of their times in front of their PCs, either for recreation, business, or whatever purpose they have.

• Either way, Internet users flock to these sites because they allow these people to do a lot of things, from searching for long lost classmates to uploading their favorite videos.

• This huge number of people put together in a community is exactly the reason why social networking online community sites are good avenues to promote your business.

The main benefits of using Social Networking Sites for Brand Promotion:

- Builds credibility and trust- Lower cost/free advertising- Create an online presence- Boost and advertise a new business- Stay in contact with customers- Send instant updates - Find employees or business partners

-Social networking sites such as Facebook (400 million users worldwide) or the micro-blogging site Twitter (which crossed 10 billion tweets recently) may offer engaging distractions to the average user.

-But the numbers add up to a dizzying truth for brands: social networking sites (SNS) and sites like Twitter are prodigiously fertile spaces to harvest ad business.

PRODUCT PROMOTION : Twitter• Twitter promotion is one of the main reasons that businesses of all

sizes have been flocking to Twitter.

• Twitter lets you instantly get the word out about your product, service, project, or idea.

• But to use Twitter promotion, you have to be the sort of Twitterer that people will choose to follow, as only your followers will ever see your tweets (posts).

• Cont.…..

Cont.…..• Twitter as a parent, advises promoters to follow below illustrated

philosophies in order to make a successful product launch.

• Don't sell – converse-: Your goal on Twitter is to converse with people, not send them running. They'll get interested in your products and/or services without you waving them in their faces all the time.

• Listen more than you tweet: The first thing to do is to find out who they are and what they’re talking about. That's the only way you can figure out how you might fit into what’s going on and make your own contribution.

• Be helpful: Helpful people are people that other people want to converse with. People that you actually converse with are going to be the most receptive to your message.

• Give your followers what they want: Keep your follower's expectations in mind and be sure you're meeting them.

• Don't just feed them feeds: use Twitter feed to get your RSS feed picked up and sent out automatically as part of your Twitter promotion strategy, but make sure you're also reading other tweets, responding to them, and sending out other tweets of your own.

Twitter Examples• Twitter has been used effectively by the few companies to reap

benefit in their business. The two examples presented below established that.

1.DELL: One of the best examples of successful business use of Twitter is by Dell. Dell uses twitter to understand after sales customer opinions, raising awareness, giving the discount coupons to people who followed them. This results in increase in sales and cost effectiveness in terms of cheap paid search results and email marketing.2. IBM uses twitter to engage the techno-managers and researchers in their new developments and thus getting help in making their new initiative known as well as in grinding new ideas from the people.

Mazda =• Mazda launched A fun and engaging series of poll questions created

high-levels of participation among members.

• Unique poll questions spoke to members’ professional and personal interests as it relates to the cars they drive.

• Strategy:-Increase awareness of the new MAZDA6 design among an influential and savvy audience-Engage with decision-making professionals through a thought-provoking series of questions

-Interactive results platform encouraged members to collaborate

Results:LinkedIn drove highly users to the MAZDA6 site and delivered some of the highest KPI ratings of all lifestyle sites on the plan

Indian Companies using Social Networking Sites:• Motilal Oswal Financial Services Limited has been quite active on the

social media.

• The company has uploaded Wealth Creation Study (WCS) Videos on YouTube and also created a LinkedIn event page for the WCS awards ceremony.

• Besides, we they also have a Orkut page to upload different annual WC Studies. The creation of Wikipedia pages on the Motilal Oswal Group, on Motilal Oswal and Raamdeo Agrawal had been completed.

• As a result of these activities, seven out of 10 results on Google are owned and controlled by Brand Motilal Oswal for the search Wealth Creation Study.

Cont.…….

Cont.…

• Zapak has carried out several similar campaigns; Axe, Ponds, and Mahindra campaigns — which used a mix of available options.

• It created fan pages and groups, gaming and other fun applications on platforms like Orkut and Facebook, and an active handle on Twitter, to link the APIs (application programming interface) like OpenID and Facebook Connect to one’s site to promote easy communication and conversations.

• Ching’s Secret advertises regularly on Facebook and YouTube, the brand’s gets lots of traffic generated virally because of the content, quizzes, and contests on Facebook.

• In the end, social media is a long-term strategic investment, it is not brand building but genuine relationship creation and maintenance.

Starbucks using Social Networking sites for product promotion

• Starbucks is promoting their newly launched ice cream on Facebook. • If you go to the Starbucks Ice Cream Facebook page (must be a

registered user) you can send a coupon for a free pint of ice cream to a friend (quantities are limited each hour).

• After you send the coupon, you would be asked to tell a friend about the program and easily directed back to the Starbucks Ice Cream Web site.

• Several touch points were tied into this marketing plan. These included the share-a-pint, tell-a-friend, the downloadable discount coupon and the redirect to their site.

Thank you