Archive | April, 2010

How to calculate ROI in Social Media

30 Apr

Hey,
I’m Varun, the new intern at Drizzlin. I joined the team exactly a month back and have been able to learn a lot of new things about the internet since then.

Before I joined Drizzling I could have called myself an internet addict, I would open 20+ tabs on Mozilla every time I used the internet. The reason I depend on the internet so much because unlike the TV, the web provides you with unlimited information about anything and everything.

I had always wondered who managed the Facebook and Youtube pages of companies like Ferrari, Barack Obama . It obviously wouldn’t be the drivers or Obama himself, so I did more research and found out that Social Media Marketing agencies across the globe take over such jobs.

Their job is basically to create a platform for the brand/person to interact with the consumer. This is done to understand what makes the consumer tick. What are his/her wants? What changes would he/she will like? Etc

I have come to realize that the possibilities are endless with social media marketing and the internet. Some of the world’s biggest names are making use of Social Media to spread their word, but have you ever wondered how they can get to know whether their SM investment is producing relevant results?

Here a look at how they or you can do that:
Social media marketing campaigns are a completely different from any other marketing campaign. The main problem with social media is that you have no tangible means to measure the return out of the initial investment made by you.

When you invest in social media, there is no money involved unlike advertising where you get money in return.

Social media is free and you are dealing with goods like human interactions and conversations, which are all resources that are not easily assessable.

The three main types of resources that you put to use when marketing with Social Media are:

  • People: The workforce you employ. It may be only you or your team
  • Technology: The social media you use to attain your goals.
  • Time: The amount of the day you dedicate to social media marketing

Here is a five-step procedure you can follow to calculate whether you’re social media investment is producing relevant results:

Analyze: Your first step is to understand your presence, limits and areas of improvements you have when using social media

Plan: Secondly, you need to establish a clear goal, something tangible you want to accomplish that is based on your analysis. Brand awareness, buzz, inbound links, you name it.

Accomplish: Third, you need to take action and employ the resources you possess to achieve the specific goal you have set.

Evaluate: Fourth, after some time spent on your campaign, you need to measure your performance to make sense of what went wrong (eventually) and what is leading you to the right direction.

Repeat: Finally, when you have achieved some good results, start over and focus your efforts on another goal.

- Varun Patra

Goa Ad Fest

16 Apr

Latest news, Bossman at Goa Ad Fest. The Who’s Who of the agency business were there. The fest had a few media men, and a few brand marketers. Deepak had a lot to bring back from the fest! “Interestingly 90% (and I am not exaggerating :) ) of the conversation was around how marketing could make sense of New Media and essentially digital”, says Deepak.

The theme this year was ‘Survival of the Freshest’. “GoaFest is about how even one great piece of idea can be celebrated”, said National Creative Director, Leo Burnett.

Being the seminar-lover that he is, tells us about a few speakers with intriguing facts. Arun Tadanki, CEO Yahoo gave the comparison between online and offline news readership in the country. Newspaper readership is one third of online news readership in the country. The fact to grab is that while spends on the newspaper industry are 6500 crores, only a tenth of it, 600 crores is spent on news online!

Arun Tadanki also brought forward an important concern in the agencies these days and presented a very good counter argument to that. Every medium be it television, print or outdoor advertising, has a minimal threshold of spends that a brand needs to give in to in order to achieve the desired results. For example, if a big FMCG product launch needs to be promoted, one cannot expect them to spend just 1 lac on OOH Media. Then WHY do marketers ask us for cheaper solutions when it comes to digital? We need to stop compromising and start asking this question to the marketers who think social media is free.

Tom Doctroff (CEO, JWT China) was the keynote speaker of the Conclave. He put across an interesting note. When they came to China, 90% of their clients were multi-national companies. Today, the split is such that 45% of their clients are local Chinese brands!

There was one sad part about the fest though. Not many agencies entered this year. Sridhar said the agency had sent 30% less entries than in 2009. But, “the reason given by some agencies for not participating is disappointing,” he said.
Colvyn Harris, chairman of GoaFest 2010, concurred. “How can you go one whole year without any quality work?” Sridhar, who also heads the print jury, said, “Though there have not been many quality entries, there are some 5-6 great pieces.”

Deepak also had a good chat with Richard Pinder(COO, Publicis) and Tim Mellors(Chief Creative Officer, Grey Worldwide). He loves meeting people. Deepak’s a very friendly guy! Yes.

Now to the fun part, the inauguration was something fancy. Calvin Harris(CEO, JWT) and Sam Balsara(Co-Chairman, Conclave) came on water scooters to inaugurate. It was lavish and everyone went woohoo!

Most of the people around just had a great time dipping into the waters, enjoying water sports, paragliding, rain-dance, and other JAM sessions.

Deepak got us some photographs from the fest. Apparently he had a lot of fun. Check out:






Politics & Social Media

15 Apr

It was good to see Obama on twitter, But it’s great to see that Indian Politicians are making use of Web 2.0.

Shashi Tharoor, Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi are the few who realized the real value of Social Media. Its is great way for our politicians to reach out to the citizens and give opinions on matters that are important. Even though the number on followers of our politicians are not as high as Obama & McCain, its just great to see Twitter being used by our Nation heads.

Twitter & Facebook are great platforms for spreading a message or giving an update as it reaches out to a network of so many people. Our politicians have realized that there is more than a mike on a stage now a days to spread a message.

Some people say Politics and Social Media aren’t a good mix. All politicians want is to spread their message, doesn’t Social Media enhance that?

- Varun Patra

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.