ThoughtBuzz

Munnabhai’s Gandhigiri, Forgotten?

“I still believe in the judiciary. My family is with me and I am still strong.”, said the remorseful Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt after the Supreme Court sentenced him to five years in jail after upholding his conviction under Arms Act for illegally possessing prohibited weapons including an AK-56 rifle and ammunition, which were part of the consignment smuggled in by Dawood Ibrahim and associates for the serial blasts in Mumbai in March 1993.

The Black Friday of the Indian history, 12^th March 1993, witnessed a series of 13 bomb explosions that took place in Bombay (now Mumbai), Maharashtra. The single-day attacks resulted in over 250 fatalities and 700 injuries. 20 years and a week later, the Supreme Court finally gave out its verdict on the many accused along with Sanjay Dutt. The 5 year sentence for Sanjay Dutt invoked many many reactions from everywhere and everybody.

We monitored the online data from the day the sentenced was announced by the Supreme Court to a few days later (21^st March – 24^th March) on the sentiments that the same has invoked amongst the masses - who came out in support of the Bollywood star and who thought his stardom was influencing the Indian laws stand.

Public Bole Sanjay Dutt is the culprit, Bollywood he was just a “baby”

More than 1/3^rd of our data mapped contained only reactions and statements from the various celebrities from B-town, the politicians and the masses on the announced sentence on Sanjay Dutt. The picture was clear – while the Bollywood and the politicians came out all in support of the veteran actor, the masses stood by the court’s sentence.

‘Sanjay Dutt is innocent, I feel very sad’, said Jayaprada, the Indian Film Actress and Politician. The B- own and the politicians came out in full support of the actor and several statements justifying Sanjay Dutt as a noble citizen and undeserving of the sentence announced by the Supreme Court became viral on the internet within no time. ‘Sanjay Dutt is not a terrorist, he worked for riot victims’, said Abu Azmi, the state president of Maharashtra Samajwadi Party. Also stood in support Film producer Pritish Nandy and was quoted saying ‘Second jail term will destroy Sanjay Dutt’.

With about 250cr at stake in the movies industries if the veteran actor goes to jail, the Bollywood is also calculating its finances for the year. Blaming his actions to young age Digvijai Singh, Indian National Congress Leader and Former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh said, ‘Sanjay Dutt not terrorist, committed crime at young age’. The statement invoked much rage and opposition all over.

Despite the celebrities standing in full support of Sanju Baba and being ready to accept his actions as an act of young age the public does not support the actor on any grounds. A tweet supporting the court sentence read as follows ‘getting reprieve or pardon for any celebrity #sanjaydutt by means of organising protests will set a devastating precedence in the country’

Tweets and comments requesting the people to boycott the actors movies were found to be taking rounds of the internet frequently. ‘RT @alok_bhatt: I think all patriotic Indians MUST boycott movies of EVERY star coming in support of #SanjayDutt / lets show them their place!’

Press Council Chairman Justice Markandey Katju’s letter to the Maharashtra Governor seeking to commute the sentence of Sanjay Dutt also has received severe criticism from the masses. ‘RT @amishra77: I do not know about #SanjayDutt but I am large hearted enough to pardon Katju for his multiple failed attempts at being a stand up comedian.’

Bashing the B-town celebrities for their statements in support of the actor several outraged tweets were noted from the public ‘#SanjayDutt is suffering from last 20 years… Suffering it means earning money and changing political party to party?’ Disapproving of the Bollywood celebrities support to the star the public talked of the loss of life his actions had caused in the March of 1993 ‘#Sanjaydutt is innocent? for God’s sake 257ppl died, he knew the now world’s most wanted Dawood Ibrahim, he took AK 56/ grenade; still innocent?’

Source Analysis

Twitter leaded the pack by constituting for39% of the recorded  mentions that  contained reactions from different segments of the society followed by 26% of the data coming from the various News portals pushing out the news feed on the Supreme Court’s verdict

·        Facebook recorded 9% conversations and Stumbleupon 7%, followed by blogs and forums.

On the Feb, 25th 2013 Parliament Session of Singapore, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, country’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance announced the Government budget for the fiscal year starting April which he said aimed to ensure that ‘Singapore could achieve quality yet inclusive growth.’

In a recent study conducted by the Team of ThoughtBuzz, where we tracked the Online buzz around the Singapore Government Budget for the coming fiscal year  for a period of 22^nd Feb, 2013 – 27^th Feb, 2013 we tried finding out how the masses have reacted to the announced budget.

·         Did the budget meet the needs of the common man or did he feel unattended still?

·         What were the key areas the budget focused on?

An Overall Sentiment Analysis

The overall sentiment of the posts can be summarized as a 44% Neutral, 40% Negative and a much lesser 16% Positive.

It is interesting to note that 56% of Neutral posts are tweets, mentions and RT’s of the various details of the budget i.e. Budget Highlights with maximum buzz around the Rebate on taxes under different categories, increased taxes on property and Real Estate and a generous budget allocation to the Education sector with special focus on pre-school sector under the category; 12% on the various Analysis of the budget; followed by 7 % Neutral tweets on the Telecast of the Budget and the Expectations people had from it.

The Negative Tweets that constituted about 40% of the entire data were primarily around Inflation inflicted by the price rise due to the new budget. The mentions on inflation and price rise constitute for 73% of the total Negative data. Sarcastic remarks and jokes on the various inflated budget categories were the highest in number showing a clear discontent amongst the masses and a high buzz around the increased taxes on Car purchase was found. 18% mentions out of the total Negative mentions were reaction towards the announced budget and the unmet expectation. About 3% mentions on an Overall rejection of the budget.

The Positive Tweets which were a minor 16% of the total buzz monitored contained 37% mentions on Thaman’s speech in the Parliament with various statements from his speech being pushed across different online platforms. Highlights from the Budget received 24% positive response with people appreciating the increase in the investment in the educations sector and appreciating the steps taken to increase the wages. 23% of the total Positive posts were Positive reactions given by the masses towards the budget.

Top Buzz Topics Discussed Around the Budget

In our study, we wanted to understand the budget in its totality and hence we tracked data to monitor all the aspect around budget - What do masses think & what do they talk about. In process of analyzing the data for the answers to these questions the following observation were made

1.       Inflation (30%)

Inflation seems to be the most buzzed topic of discussion online while we mined through data for the Singapore Budget online. The mentions were filled with sarcasm and jokes on the topic followed by a great deal of buzz around the car price hike through taxes on car purchase.

98% of buzz monitored under inflation was found negative with several comments on the failure of the budget to meet the expectation; 1% neutral and 1% Positive  mentions were found.

2.      Budget Highlights (29%)

The facts and figures from the budget were also found going viral at a high rate online. The allocation of budget to the different sectors – Education, Tax Rebates, Real Estate etc were found to be large in number.

87% of the posts around Budget highlight were found to be Neutral with just facts and figures being quoted; 13% were positive with positive reactions from the people on the initiatives taken. 

3.      Reaction (15%)

The online data monitored for the period of 22^nd Feb 2013 – 27^th Feb 2013, found a lot of reactions coming in from people on the upcoming budget and post the announcement of the budget. Reactions included sarcastic remarks on the budget, reactions from the opposition parties, comments on the Finance Minister Tharman etc.

The reaction of the masses on the budget was found to be Negative 52%; 23% Neutral and 25% Positive with major negative reaction coming through sarcasm and jokes on the budget and positive reaction consisting of praises for the effrts made to decrease the cost of living , reducing the income gap, GST voucher funds etc.

4.      Speech (9%)

The speech given by Deputy PM and Finance Minister Tharman also received a lot mileage online through various mentions and Re-tweets of the statements he made during his 2hours long speech announcing the budget. Topics covering policies, public transport, productivity of the nation were amongst a few that received maximum mileage.

The speech given by the Finance Minister Tharman was found to have smitten people in its own ways with 68% appreciating the content in his speech and only 7% Negatove comments on his speech.

5.      Analysis (6%)

As is common came out several analysis giving details of the budget, the pros and cons of it. The same were pushed across internet on various platforms as well.

Top Buzz Topics Discussed from the Budget

We tried to closely monitor the topics from the budget – the categories and sectors, which found higher virality than the others in the online space and came out with some interesting observations as listed below. Out of the several sectors the budget caters to, the following were found to be of higher interest to the masses and were found to be creating a buzz online.

1.       Education (9%)

      The focus in the budget on pre-schools and schools with high number of children from less fortunate families was extensively covered, typically by news outlets or retweets of them. The coverage was also generally positive.

2.      GST Vouchers (8%)

GST Vouchers was amongst the mosttalked about topic. There was some criticism from those who said they don’t use them, but equally there was praise. The people believed that these vouchers would help the average household to offset the cost of living made it a favorite amongst the masses.

3.      Tax Rebate(7%)

      The  rebates given by the Government in various categories have created quite a buzz online. From rebates to all resident tax payers to rebates on road tax for commercial vehicles were a high virality content online. Tweets like ‘30% rebate subject to a cap of $1,500 for those below 60. 50% rebate for those older #SGBUDGET’ were found getting Re-Tweeted several times.

4.      Real Estate (6%)

With the Finance Minister Tharman increasing the Property tax for high-end residential properties and striking at the elite class, the Real Estate succumbing to heavy taxes created a buzz through several Re-tweets to the facts and figures of the allocation. Tweets such as “RT @TODAYonline: Revised progressive property tax rates; higher rates for high-end of owner-occupied residential properties #sgbudget” were found to gaining quite a traction.

5.      Overall (5%)

There were a very high number of comments and reactions recorded for the budget as a whole. Mostly positive in nature, people without getting into the intricate details of each sector were commenting positive. Now whether these people understand the essence of the details or not are something questionable.

The Union Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, announced the Union Budget FY ‘14 on the 28^th Feb 2013 in the Parliament in New Delhi.  At a time when the Indian economy is facing various challenges posed by domestic and global issues, the budget was something every man was looking forward to. One of the many tweets going viral on twitter read “Chidu set to leave us with a ticking time bomb..” Everyone was eager to know what the new financial year would do to their finances and the opposition parties were waiting to find yet another way of bringing the government down. Narendra Modi’s tweets categorically emphasized on disconnect of the budget from the masses. In a twitter feed pushed by NaMo he shared a link to his blog post titled ‘Budget 2013-14: An Example of Disconnect, Desperation and Disappointment!’ Everyone kept track of the news to see how they would be affected. The common man was focused on news regarding rising costs, the entrepreneurs hoped for policies benefitting those starting up, while the consumers wanted to know if they would be paying less or more for products. And, as always, pleasing everyone was never going to be an easy task

Amidst the massive hue and cry around the budget, we at ThoughtBuzz tracked the online data from 27^th Feb 2013 to 4^th March 2013 to understand what was going in the ‘social media’ around the budget.

1.       With SM being looked up to as the next big thing for all the political parties, we analysed data from the few SM properties of the parties and the politicians to understand their reaction, take on the announced budget.

2.       Also with the budget trending on twitter we analysed the overall online data to figure out what was the buzz all about.

Overall Reaction to the Budget

The reactions constituted about a quarter of our data, out of which 47% of the mentions were Negative and 37% Positive. The budget overall can be summarized as having received mixed reactions. While the opposition parties were found to disapproving of it at all times, there were mixed reaction from the corporates. The common did feel left out and was found disturbed with the constant fuel prices hike.

Negative Reaction Mapping

The Negative Reaction which was a massive 47% out of the total reaction largely covers the negative opinion of the common man, the aam aadmi on the budget followed by discontent in various industries on the grounds of being neglected by the FM in the financial budget. A large number of negative comments filled with sarcasm were found to be going viral on social media.

 The budget was quoted as having ‘no relevance to the common man of India’ and being a ‘budget for the foreigners’. The farmers found themselves being neglected and the common man was succumbed under the pressure of inflation in fuel, oil and gas prices along with a burning hole being created in his pocket for a ‘dine-out’. Sarcastic comments such as ‘ViToLogy: We’d lyk 2 c if d Indian Budget 2013 was predicted by ‘Mayans’ as ‘Doomsday 2012’ by mistake.. :p :D #ViToLogy #ConcernedCitizen’ were found to be making rounds regularly.

The opposition parties’ reaction was on the similar lines with Narendra Modi quoting budget as an ‘Example of Disconnect, Desperation’. Jayalalitha, CM of Tamil of Nadu and General Secretary of All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) called the budget ‘A day dream cosmetic budget’. Goa CM, Manohar parik, another BJP man called the budget ‘unrealistic’.

The various industries such as Health Sector, Manufacturing industries, Telecom sector, Real Estate Industry Automotive sector amongst others found themselves to be neglected in the budget. Inflated excise duty on mobile phones, burnt pockets for dinner, hike in prices of an SUV car left the business’s gasping. “The market was depressed. There was a drop in enquiries with lower rate of conversions to purchase. The increase in fuel prices negatively impacted the already low market sentiments. We expect the challenge to continue in the next quarter following these moves in the Budget,” Rakesh Srivastava, Hyundai vice-president (sales and marketing), said. While mobile phones which cost less than Rs.2,000/- will maintain the same concession of 1% excise duty, those with a higher price tag are not so lucky. The standard excise duty on this latter lot has been increased from the existing 1% to a whopping 6%. SUVs were already facing a high excise duty of 27%. Now that goes up by 3% to 30%. Buying a luxury home just became more expensive. Any flat or house which is above 2,000sq.ft. in area or which costs 1 crore and above has been hit by the budget. This is because the rate of abatement on such luxury units has been reduced from 75% to 70%. This causes an increase in service tax outflow & hence the more expensive they have become. All this has led to discontentment amongst the industries on the budget.

Positive Reaction Mapping

The budget was found to be well accepted by the corporate giants like Godrej, Essar Oil, JSPL Group, the Tata Communications Group to name a few. Venugopal Dhoot, the leading Indian business man was quoted saying ‘Budget is balanced prescription for financial sector’. MD & CEO ICICI Prudential AMC Ltd, Nimesh Shah said that it was ‘A good balance- Union Budget 2013’. Also the reaction from the steel companies and the Jute sector was found to be positive and in favour of the announced budget.

Along with satisfying the corporates in specific sectors, the budget also received positive mentions for the various reformatory steps taken towards the Empowerment of Women through opening of All Women Banks and starting of the Nirbhaya Fund. What is also a point to be noted is the positive ratings given to the budget by the Moddy’s Global rating firm and the Indian rating firms. ‘India’s fiscal plans realistic, positive for ratings: Moodys’.

The Budget presented by the Union Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram received full support of his party with PM and other peers coming out in full support of the budget. PM, Manmohan Singh came all out to support his colleague and said that ‘Given the challenges facing our economy, the Finance Minister has done a commendable job.’ The Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma supporting the FM also said that ‘Budget proposals to boost investments’. Andhra Pradesh CM, yet another Congressman called the Union Budget ‘balanced’. Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia was also of the same opinion as AP CM and called the budget ‘a well-balanced’ one.

 Shashi Tharoor – Missing from the Action?

It was indeed surprising that the Twitter man of Congress, Indian Minister of State for Human Resource Development Shashi Tharoor was missing from all the online action happening around budget. Mr. Tharoor who was one of the initial politicians who adapted to twitter and gained popularity soon, did not react to the budget in support or withdrawal of the announced budget on his twitter handle. With just a couple of tweets around Rail Budget and no tweets on the budget for the period between 27^th Feb 2013 – 4^th March 2013. We wonder if that was a cautious move.

The Google Hangout with Finance Minister P.Chidambaram

Clearly, Congress’s Social Media strategy was not just all talks. The Google Hangout conducted with the Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram turned out to be quite an attention seeker. With feeds being pushed by the PMO’s Facebook page and twitter handle, the hangout received a respectable traction online which covered 4% of our data. Being one of the first of its kind initiatives, it grabbed the necessary eyeballs amongst people.

Did you know that ThoughtBuzz’s influencer identification framework focuses on measuring Relevance, Reach, Resonance.

At ThoughtBuzz we believe that influence has multiple parameters. It is not only about fans & followers, but also about the ability to connect with the audience via relevant content & on an ongoing basis.

The importance of location based data has grown tremendously over the last few years. Mobile apps, search engines are all clamoring to provide hyper local data to consumers. ThoughtBuzz had made a decision very early in the company’s days to provide customers with region specific data. Services such as Twitter make it easy to provide geo coded data but blogs, forums news websites etc are very difficult to identify on an automated basis. Imagine for eg., that you are running a campaign in Indonesia for a car manufacturer. Apart from the top blogs or forums you would definitely want to know where else has the campaign been discussed. At this stage getting location based data becomes very important.

All the major search engines provide this data to a certain extent but its limited. Identifying region specific blogs, forums etc. is both a manual and automated process. ThoughtBuzz has been providing country specific indexes for more than 3 years and continuously builds on this capability. Through automated crawlers and analysts we are able to pinpoint the exact location of a website even when there is no identifiable information provided. The result of all this region specific relevant and high quality data for our users.

The dynamic digital space has magnified the level of influence further. Celebrities have the choice to share their lives up, close and personal with their fans on Facebook and Twitter. The media has opened a new dimension to the way celebrities can connect with the fans. Yet there is much that is missing in their digital persona.

This study by ThoughtBuzz analyses the nature of tweets that are published by leading celebrities in the Indian entertainment space.

The tweets are not part of brand endorsements:

Most of the celebrities monitored have a mix of tweets. They do share many personal moments and interact with fans by replying to them. However, none of the celebrities talk about the brands that they endorse actively.

Exercising Influence:

Each of the celebrities tracked has a minimum of a million followers (approx.) on Twitter. However, none of the celebrities and the tweets that were tracked as a part of the study spoke much about current affairs or shared their opinions on such matters.

Interaction with fans:

Though the statistics mention that the celebrities interact with fans, the nature of interaction is usually a tweet (and not a reply) that acknowledges that followers. At best, there are sporadic cases of replies to a fans tweet. However, the celebrities do not reply to tweets by other celebrities.

Study details:

Shahrukh Khan

• Shahrukh Khan uses his twitter handle to establish an emotional connect with his fans asking fans to share questions, responding to few though and exuding a lot of love and affection through his 140 character tweets.
• Also, as is inevitable in his process of connecting with his fans, Shahrukh Khan shares a lot of experience from his personal life including his family and friends moment in his tweets.

Amitabh Bachchan

• He is by far the most prolific in his engagement with his followers, with tweets deemed “interacting with followers” and “sharing of personal moments” accounting for over 80% of his total posts.
• Amitabh in his tweets from his professional arena mentioned only KBC – the experience with contestants, the aura of the set.

Priyanka Chopra

• Priyanka Chopra used almost half of her tweets to promote her work, which could be attributed to the release of her debut music single and the movie Barfi of whose cast she was part of.
• Priyanka also frequently posts photos using Instagram. This is interesting as she officially endorses the Nokia Lumia series of phones, and an instagram app is not available for them. This means that she is probably using an iPhone or an Android device.

For a detailed description you can  going through the following case study analysis.

Whenever I talk about social media monitoring to clients, colleagues, I always feel that it starts and ends at Facebook and Twitter. There is a treasure trove of data on blogs, forums which remains unused. Bloggers are confined to writing about events, launches and the occasional rant. I have hardly seen any company taking an active interest in tracking forums and using that platform to achieve any business objective.

It’s understandable considering the press coverage given to Facebook and Twitter and their massive user bases. But that still doesn’t mean you can forget the traditional social media (even if that’s a word). One of the reasons Facebook and Twitter have been so successful in attracting businesses is due to fixed policies. One may not agree with all their policies but it sure gives businesses some level of comfort. In contrast, blogs and forums don’t have any such standards or policies and given that there are a myriad of blog platforms such as blogspot, wordpress it gets even more difficult. A business trying to advertise on a blog has to come up with different ways for each platform. Same goes for forums as well. This limits their attractiveness to any company. In contrast, Facebook and Twitter provide a standard way to reach their entire user base. This is a big plus for companies looking at advertising on social media.

However not all is lost. Blogs and forums can provide immense insights if tracked and analysed the right way. Forums are even tougher than blogs to crack. There hasn’t been much innovation in forum software and as such it’s a challenge to extract data from them. But forums are the right platform to have deep discussions. Any person or company monitoring social media would do good to include atleast some forums in their tracking.

The recent Bodyform saga (read more here http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-feminine-hygiene-bodyform-facebook-20121017,0,6383251.story) has taught us that companies can use multiple platforms to respond to their customers. Don’t be afraid to respond on forums or blogs. Most companies respond only on Facebook and Twitter. You can connect blogs and forums to your Facebook Fan pages and respond directly from Facebook on these platforms. Starting a community could be even better. It lets your most die-hard fans to discuss on a deeper level than Facebook or Twitter allow. And it can help you in understanding consumer psyche and behavior.

Social Media monitoring is not just about Facebook and Twitter. Other platforms can provide as many if not more insights and lead to happier customers. 

The following post was featured on Mediavataar. you can view the full post here. 

In this series, let’s focus on Twitter strategy.

Do you really care about Follower/ Follow Ratio these days ? The strategy doesn’t hold good these days to just follow for the sake of it if you have no intention of reading what they say. Don’t fake it !

But what really would matter is the total number of retweets. A great way to measure efficiency and value provided and people voting with their clicks - an all in one metric is # of Retweets per Thousand Followers

Follower Retweet% is also a great metric to identify if you are appealing to a larger community than your own.

A myth that this series aims to break for all those aiming to move ahead is that Twitter is not a broadcast channel. It’s not like TV/ Radio/ Magazine Ads or Press Releases. It’s a conversation channel where an audience relevant to your brand engage in a conversation with you. You may want to re-read the next line.

Twitter is not for pitching. Twitter is not for pitching. Yes, that’s written twice because it cannot be emphasized enough. Many people make the blatant mistake of promoting and pitching on Twitter. That’s the first step to signing off your twitter death. Twitter is for enriching the value of the ecosystem by participating, the key here is PARTICIPATING!

In our last series, we spoke about various Klout metrics. We can choose the metric reflecting the twitter strategy and monitor progress using that to ensure the strategy is a success. Every individual/ brand’s strategy is different and there is no one shoes fit all!

Have you taken the time to look at the analysis table with trend indicators that Klout provides ? That’s an interesting metric to go by as it shows where you are headed.

With Facebook and other platforms now realizing that platforms are getting bloated with fake and spammy users, its a wake up call for marketers as well. Twitter isn’t an exception to this rule either. If your followers are following more than 2,000 people, the chances are they are non legitimate and not really monitoring your feed!

There are 4 important metrics that can aid as a guidelines to a great strategy -

1. Reach

2. Churn Rate

3. Loyalty

4. Sentiment/ Intention

If you were reading this to pick up some shortcuts, you are going to be disappointed. But the good part is with hard work, the structured approach, tools and metrics you have a formula for success here.

The following post was featured on Social Samosa. You can view the original interview here.

This following post was featured on Social Samosa. You can view the original interview here.

With brands delving deeper into the interactions and their increasing needs to monitor conversations, it is imperative that you have a way to anaylze this treasure trove of data and use it to understand the needs of your consumers and plan future promotional campaigns.

To help you understand how analytics can boost the effectiveness of your social media efforts, Social Samosa brings you an expert to ‘Learn the Evolution of Social Media Analytics’

A twitter chat which aims to help you get up to speed with all the intricacies of social media data analysis so that you can tap into these invaluable insights insights and refine or redefine your strategy accordingly.

From influencer interaction to market research to campaign planning, these insights are what will drive your business on social media platforms.

So join our Twitter chat this Wednesday, 10th of October, between 3PM – 4PM and ask away all questions that you have about social media analytics.

Our Panelist

Shameer Thaha – Vice President, Strategic Alliances at ThoughtBuzz.

How to Join the Twitter Chat?

In order to participate in this chat, you need to follow the hashtag #SamosaChats. If you want to ask a question or want to share your views, you can post using this hashtag.

The moderator (@Social_Samosa) will go through all the tweets and will present questions to the panelist for discussion. The panelist will answer the question and you are most welcome to discuss the answer with the panelist.

Through these invaluable discussions, we hope to help our participants explore and understand Social Graph in a better way.

This hashtag is what will hold the discussion together, so you are requested to use #SamosaChats every time you tweet your queries or views.

How to Track the Hashtag?

Join our Social Samosa LiveStream to track all the tweets regarding the Twitter Chat.

Oh… and did we mention that the best question will also receive free samosas from us?

We look forward to your participation and if you have queries about the chat, feel free to ask in the comments below.

Again, don’t forget to use #SamosaChats while tweeting!