Digital and Social Media has forced companies to reinvent themselves. Content is moving online forcing entire generation of industries to re‐think and re‐invent their fundamental identity and business model.

Whether it be News and Content, Entertainment, Media and Advertising, Publishing, Banking or Customer Care, all sectors need to develop a viable Digital Strategy and move their functions online. Online may be the only contact left with prospective customers who are widespread and large in number. Online Search has become a popular way to be found in the world. Customers and partners reach for Google search on every topic possible. Digital Media is beginning to attract increasingly larger part of marketing budgets. A lot of firms ask us in CellStrat – “Should we be on Facebook, LinkedIn, Email, Twitter etc ?” We tell them that this is the wrong question. The correct question would start like:‐ “What is my Business Strategy around Digital Media? Do I know where my audience are and how to
reach them?”

Digital is the channel which provides interactivity, engagement, two‐way conversation and dialog with the target audience. Digital is the way to influence customer behavior or proactively tackle PR issues when they arise. Digital Media and Content has left no industry untouched in its wake.

A lot of optimism is associated with the Internet as an advertising medium in India. The dot‐com bust in the 90s wiped out a substantial number of online properties and businesses, but it is heartening to see the relentless effort of folks who survived, in driving the medium to reach where it is today.

We decided to study the perceptions and understanding of companies to understand the status and usage of the Internet as a medium, and share our findings as presented in this Digital Media Survey 2010 report.

The study was conducted from March to June 2010 representing the top 75 companies in India. An indepth interview was conducted with senior management of sampled companies. (67% of them were CEOs/ VPs, 13% were GM and rest about 20% senior managers). We had an exhaustive discussion with them using a structured questionnaire.

Observations from Indian Corporate Digital Media Survey

The emerging advertising and marketing media in India include mobile advertisements, internet, direct calling (especially for financial services) and FM radio (for local businesses).

Among the participating companies, 97% companies mentioned that they use digital media in some form or the other for business purposes. About 74% companies said that they have dedicated teams for their digital media initiatives, 23% said they don’t have a dedicated team while 3% said that they are currently in process of setting up such a team.

When asked which divisions use Social Media, Sales & Marketing scored highest (93.8%) points followed immediately by PR and Corporate Communications (81.3%).

Most Companies (44%) predominantly use internal resources while about 31% also use outsourcing model here for their digital media presence. Rest 25% use both internal and external resources for maintaining their digital presence.

Interestingly most companies (60%) have just 1‐5 internal resources dedicated to digital media activities. Only 32% companies said that they have more than 5 people teams for maintaining their digital presence. But, most of these companies are multinational and may have digital marketing resources in other nations which can be leveraged in India.

Companies Use Many Digital Media Platforms…But Only a Few Deliver.

Another way to understand the Digital Media world is to see what platforms are most popular:

Clearly, Email, SMS, YouTube, Google (search ads), Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are the most used channels in corporate environment, but higher usage of these channels does not make them high‐ROI. On Effectiveness scale, Email‐marketing beats all other channels (60% firms find it effective) hands down which is almost surprising as one always thinks of Email as an old‐fashioned digital tool.

The new 140‐character Social Media sensation – Twitter is used by almost 56% firms but only 19% find it effective as a Digital Media Platform. That speaks something about this new channel. Maybe firms are still experimenting with twittering but certainly it has not provided the results that one would like, so far. Similarly, Facebook and LinkedIn are heavily used by firms for branding and marketing themselves but their effectiveness remains low.

Social Media: Can you afford not to Play?

That fateful day in March 2010 was a turning point in the life of the $265 billion oil behemoth : BP.

The Deepwater Horizon well which BP was drilling in Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana’s coast had an accident and started spewing 60,000 barrels of oil per day destroying the Gulf Coast along the tourism‐rich Gulf Coast and Florida panhandle, thereby creating massive destruction to the ecosystem, coastal wildlife and destroying the livelihood of tens of thousands of small businesses on the US’ southern coastline.

Not to get into the details of this horrific man‐made ecological disaster, BP quickly set up a PR team in Washington to counter the increasing Government and public relations nightmare and solve the “image” problem before the Obama Administration would impose such high punitive damages that would kill this behemoth of a firm. @BP_America twitter account was created along with scores of Facebook and Online campaigns to counter the negative publicity. But by the time BP got its online act together, the anti‐BP (or fake BP) twitter account @BPGlobalPR had already accumulated 150,000 followers to @BP_America’s 15,000 followers. BPGlobalPR was hard‐core anti‐BP and blasted the firm and its failures day and night and gained rapid popularity.

The point is Social Media is about proactive management and speed. The Viral nature of Social Media is insidious for corporations who don’t manage it actively or leave Social Media as a tiny best‐effort part of Marketing department. In future we expect that firms will dedicate huge marketing budgets to Social Media management and some may choose to run “Social Media Labs” (or partner with such labs) to experiment with the pros and cons, dangers and advantages of Social Network and Viral Marketing.

Responding on Social Network after the incidents is way too late, as we have seen in lots of recent situations.

Less than 15% Companies Exploit Social Media Fully.

During the Digital Media Survey, we found that social media usage is being used in only a small no of companies (12.5%) than we expected, in spite of so much of hoopla all around on this topic. Thus, we asked our audience the reasons that are hindering them from use of this media to full extent and we got some amazing answers.

50% of them gave the following reasons for not using social media:

* It’s very early for us. Thus, on roll out to larger markets, we will opt for these tools.
* Understanding the power of social media and the need to know more…
* It is in store for future and will be put to use shortly.
* Clientele mostly from International Markets. Thus, financial resources are concentrated for working on optimization efforts on search engines only…
* We have consultative approach so it is not required…
* We are a B2B company and our target audience is limited in number (about 1000 pan India).
* Can’t find a solution for my needs
* Still trying to figure the use for a professional services firm…

About 25% companies mentioned that their executives are too busy and thus have no time to tweet or blog or use such media in business. About 16% also said that “Exploiting it properly is a skill, so it should be outsourced.”

As a result of above, most companies (88%) said that social media can be exploited more than it is being currently exploited while 6% each were either not sure or were confident that social media is already being used effectively by their companies.

This document is an Excerpt for the actual Research Report. To purchase the full Research Report, please contact us at contact@cellstrat.com

Author Bio: Vishal is the CMO of http://www.CellStrat.com . He is a leader and serial entrepreneur in areas of mobile, media and hi-tech industries. He has started and run many startups like etruevalue.com, India Venture Group and most recently CellStrat. Vishal has expertise in planning, sales and marketing of mobile products, services, e-commerce and media consulting. Vishal, in his recent endeavor at CellStrat, specializes in strategy, platforms and applications related to Mobile & Digital Media.

Category: Business
Keywords: digital media, new media, social network, SEO, online, publishing, ipad, e-mail, social media