ThoughtBuzz

Munnabhai’s Gandhigiri, Forgotten? “I still believe in the judiciary. My family is with me and...

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 18:46:00 +0800

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.

The Singapore Budget: 2013-2014

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 13:06:05 +0800

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 Budget of India 2013 - 14: Analysis by ThoughtBuzz

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 13:37:18 +0800

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 - ThoughtBuzz's influencer identification framework focuses on measuring Relevance, Reach and Resonance

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 01:24:23 +0800

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.

ThoughtBuzz uses country specific crawlers for intelligent & effective data mining!

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 12:06:00 +0800

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.

Analysis of Indian Celebrities on Twitter – Report

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 16:11:00 +0800

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.

Looking beyond Facebook and Twitter

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 16:31:44 +0800

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.

Part 2: Are most data analytics plain - information overload?

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 18:35:00 +0800

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.

Social Media Command Centre – Mind Map

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 19:34:41 +0800

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

In last few years, the quantum of Consumer Created Content (CCC) has increased manifold. This has given rise to the need for real-time data intelligence.

Organisations are increasingly facing a social communication era that is impacting them across verticals & functions. This has given birth to Social Media Intelligence / Command Centre.

Conceptually what a command centre can do has been outlined in various presentations & posts. In the following mind map, I have outlined the working of the command centre, the role it is expected to perform, the work flow etc.

The mind map highlights the following aspects of a command centre:

Business Objectives of setting up a command centre
Organisational functions that are involved
Role performed by the command centre
Process Flow

Please share your inputs & feedback in the comments below.

You can download the PDF from here.

Twitter Chat: Learning the Evolution of Social Media Analytics

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 13:01:19 +0800

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!

Are most data analytics plain "information overload" ?

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 12:55:33 +0800

This following post was featured on Mediavataar.com. You can view the original interview here.

If only I had a dime for every new analytical tool or platform out there ! A lot has changed since the traditional marketing days of yesteryears but the fundamental thinking of marketers and tech guys hasn’t! There is a serious lack of immersive understanding of the medium and what makes those channels unique. I do have a lot of respect and love for developers who are really whacking their brains to create something that is real, enriching and useful. But there’s room for some serious improvement.

The focus of most analytical platforms has been on figuring out how to collect and report ever more data rather than giving actionable stuff.

Let’s look at twitter and decipher how Klout is useful to a marketer.

Klout is calculated as (True Reach + Amplification Probability + Network Score)/ Standard score x Weights. Now that we have a single number, we also have something thats USELESS ! Compounded metrics are great for comparisons but for a business that wants to understand the dynamics of this medium, a drill down is necessary.

But interestingly Klout also offers some metrics for Twitter grouped into 3 categories:

a. Reach - (followers/total retweets x Friends + Pixie dust). This defines if your tweets are interesting and information enough to build an audience. It also tells you how far your content has been spread on Twitter and if people are adding you to their lists and if that list is further being followed.

b. Engagement - Defines how diverse is the group that @ messages you and if you are simply participating or broadcasting in a conversation.

c. Velocity - Defines how likely you are to be retweeted. It also defines if a lot of people retweet you or if it is the same bunch of people.

Always pick a metric that are important to your twitter strategy

A great metric to go by is - number of retweets per 1000 followers. It helps you understand if your tweets have real value and if people liked it.

This is just tip of the iceberg. What’s really interesting is identifying your loyal followers, measuring churn rates etc. And is it possible to go beyond quantitative to the qualitative, identify emotions ? More on that soon…

Social Media Analytics- Beyond Reputation

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 01:01:01 +0800

This following post was featured on Mediavataar.com. You can view the original interview here.

Marketing research has been around for almost a century now. Over the years the use of market research has evolved and today it is used for various activities today ranging from ad tracking to test marketing to customer satisfaction research. The techniques of market research evolved but they till recent times they focussed only on offline data & observation.

But the recent changes in technology & digital behaviour of users has opened another avenue to capture data and observe user behaviour. That of consumer created content (CCC) . However this CCC across social networks is not being put to great use by the market researchers.

The most prominent use of consumer created content today for marketers in India is to measure the brands online reputation or campaign success. There are multiple variants of these two in form of customer sentiment, buzz analysis, conversation spread etc. But lets look at some other ways in which the consumer created content or social media buzz as it is called in common parlance can be used.

PR Planning: While capturing the brand buzz, the data & insights allows you to break up the data basis the type & source i.e. blogs, forums, micro sites etc. Further you can compare it with the competition brand buzz thus allowing you a good sense of the traction that your brand gets viz-a-viz competition & other category brands. In depth analysis into this data will allow you to do platform specific targeting, maintain consistency in your digital PR initiatives, connect with leading digital journalists etc.

Influencer Identification: It is important to understand that an influencer is not some one who mentions your brand once in a tweet or in a facebook update. An individual who is either a category specialist or has repeatedly had a good experience with your brand is an influencer. Consistent & ongoing monitoring of CCC will help you identify these influencers.

Campaign Planning: Web is becoming social. Earned, Owned, Paid have merged into a single digital frame. This increasingly calls for insights & analysis around social web that can be used while planning a campaign. Analysis of conversations will allow you to identify the key platforms, nature of content that should be generated that gels with the theme of the campaign. And yes it means not just the CTR nos.

Measuring Milestones: There exists a social web outside of facebook & twitter. And at the time of rolling out a social web strategy, it is important to define 360 degree milestones. Tactical measurement & analysis will allow you to measure your brands progress against these objectives & milestones that have been defined.

These are still early days for CCC & using the same for market research. But yet there is enough that if you ignore it, you will do it at your own peril. There is no doubt that with evolving nature of CCC, the use to which this data is put will also evolve.

Leadership Talk - Mediavataar.com

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 02:24:40 +0800

This following interview of Anshul Jain, CTO, Thoughtbuzz that was featured in Mediavataar.com. You can view the original interview here.

“Generating revenue from social media has been a tough nut to crack. Twitter has done a good job with its sponsored stories bit but there is still some distance to go. Facebook is in a bit of a tangle as they are still figuring out mobile. However, I do believe ultimately they will succeed in generating long-term revenue from their users. How they would do it and in what form remains to be seen, but I believe mobile and social commerce would be the choices.” Said Anshul Jain, CTO thoughtbuzz.

Talking about the ongoing realm of Social Media, in this interaction with MediAvataar.com he reveals many issues that still remain significant for various marketers looking to counter the digital world.

1. How according to you Digital Marketing has moved beyond the realms of being a means for Customer Acquisition to being a tool which enables organizations to gain competitive edge?

Digital marketing has entered a new fragmented universe. Multiple channels, information overload and the dawn of real-time data has created amplechallenges for digital marketers. At the same time, it has created huge opportunities — most of which are yet to be fully realized. At the end of the day, it all boils down to data. 15 years ago when companies began web marketing, they devised strategies based on data that was available then. Now, with all the sharing, tweeting and liking, consumers are sharing more than just clicks and that’s where the opportunity lies. If harnessed correctly, digital marketers can use data not only for customer acquisition but for a variety of other brand-building purposes.

2. Content is the most important in building a brand image over the web, what’s ThoughBuzz’s idea of a perfect conversation?

Content and conversation are very different. Content would include blog posts, whitepapers or infographics with the ultimate idea of a getting a sale. This isn’t the same as a conversation. Ofcourse, conversations without content are less likely to go anywhere but the idea of mixing content and conversations is something I would stay away with. The best conversations are almost always about addressing a customer’s problem or helping them. The perfect conversation would be one which is ideal for the medium it’s posted on, and helps in fulfilling a customer’s need.

3. How important you think are the old practices of SEO and SEM, or they have taken a new shape now?

SEO and SEM have been around for a while and hold tremendous importance in today’s social media world. Without SEO and SEM, there would have been no concept of clicks, eyeballs or traffic. What needs to be done now is to incorporate SEO and SEM into social media and call it something like Social Media Optimization (SMO). A lot of the matrices and indexes used in SEO/SEM are applicable in social media as well. At the same time, new KPIs need to be defined as well for social media. SEO and SEM are still part of the customer funnel even when most conversations trigger on social media.

4. Facebook and other social networking sites are now getting on to arrange for some revenue lately, how far will it go you think?

Generating revenue from social media has been a tough nut to crack. Twitter has done a good job with its sponsored stories bit but there is still some distance to go. Facebook is in a bit of a tangle as they are still figuring out mobile. However, I do believe ultimately they will succeed in generating long-term revenue from their users. How they would do it and in what form remains to be seen, but I believe mobile and social commerce would be the choices.

5. Skype is the latest to join the course of calling the advertisers, what is your take on it?

I am surprised that they did not do this earlier. The ads are not annoying as they are devoid of sounds and popups and only appear for non-paying users. As a user, I don’t think I would mind them as long as the ads served are not based on identifiable information about me. For the level of service they provide for free, users won’t mind seeing non-intrusive ads. The only concern here is if the ads can be used as a way to distribute viruses or exploits. Skype needs to be careful about that because if it happens, users may start revolting.

6. How different people from diverse age groups are responding to the DNA change of digital media in India and abroad?

The best thing about social media has been the way people of different age groups are using it. The millennial generation pretty much grew on the internet and use it for almost everything from planning events to booking tickets. The older generation use social media to stay in touch with their loved ones across borders. The fact that apps like Skype, Facebook, etc. are free has been a big bonus. Ultimately I see people of all age groups using digital media one way or the other to accomplish various things.

7. Microsoft recently announced the patent wherein they will target people according to their emotions, good idea according to you?

I am not really thrilled with this idea. This screams privacy issues and I doubt if it could actually be ever put into practice. Users would revolt if Microsoft did so. Such patents are more for building patent portfolios rather than a real-world implementation.

8. Analysis and research is something which is mandatory for measuring the effect of Digital media, what according to you should be the best parameter to judge a digital campaign?

A digital campaign can comprise of different platforms all having a common goal. A user could start on Facebook and end up on a website buying the product. As such, there is no single metric to determine the success of a digital campaign. It really depends on your objectives and platforms being used to determine meaningful metrics to measure

9. Convergence is the way to go for all the marketers. According to eMarketer, in USA TV and Online Video Advertising are Slow to Integrate, do you think the trend goes similar for other countries?

Every marketer dreams of convergence. Seamless integration of different mediums to deliver a consistent and precise message to the consumer is the ideal scenario. However, in reality it’s quite difficult. The myriad of platforms available now, as well as the differences in consumer behaviour on each of these platforms poses a challenge for any marketer. Adoption rates will differ from country to country as each country has its own consumer habits in usage of different channels.

10. What is ThoughtBuzz doing to make marketers gain trust in Digital Media completely?

Looking at the way things have changed in the digital realm over the past couple of years, one would be forgiven to think that not everybody is benefiting from the digital revolution. As an analytics company, we constantly engage with digital practitioners through workshops, talks and conferences to share our experience and learn from theirs.

11. What is your company’s USP and what different does it offers to the clients?

We position ourselves as an insights company rather than just analytics. Our solutions, be it software or human-driven, are geared towards providing meaningful information rather than just data.

The buzz about Lady Gaga’s controversial concert in Manila

Thu, 24 May 2012 15:55:00 +0800

The buzz about Lady Gaga’s controversial concert in Manila

Find out which American Idol finalist has the highest share of...

Wed, 23 May 2012 01:19:56 +0800

Find out which American Idol finalist has the highest share of voice in social media!

Infographic: The Most Famous Avenger in Social Media (Data...

Wed, 02 May 2012 22:24:32 +0800

Infographic: The Most Famous Avenger in Social Media

(Data captured from 25 April to 1 May, country-specific to the Philippines)

Measure your Facebook fan's worth!

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 12:09:19 +0800

E-Commerce sites work hard to drive more traffic to their websites to realize higher sales. But if no one is finding your site/ blog, it’s tough to engage with prospects and begin the process of selling them any products/ service.

Traffic is generated through established norms such as search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing campaigns, Google Adwords or even a social media marketing program on Facebook.

Why Acquire Facebook Likes?

Acquiring Facebook “likes” has become the major goal of many social media marketing efforts so that it opens the communication channel to their network of friends and relatives increasing traffic and brand awareness.

This is good to know but what is that Fan worth in creating an increase in actual traffic to a website?

What is a Facebook Fan Worth?

A recent study by Hitwise in the UK has revealed that a Facebook fan is worth 20 additional visits per year to an on-line stores.

The figure of 1 fan = 20 extra visits to a website uses a unique methodology that combines Hitwise data with data from Techlightenment. They took the top 100 retailers ranked in the Hitwise Shopping and Classifieds category and benchmarked visits to those websites against the number of fans those brands had on their Facebook page. They then also looked at the propensity for people to search for those retail brands after a visit to Facebook.

What is a Facebook Fan Worth In Hard Cash?

All good on-line retailers know their ratios and will know how many sales they will achieve for every 100 or 1,000 visitors to the web site. From there it is easy to calculate the direct cash benefit in cold hard sales.

It will vary from store to store depending on conversion rates, average sale values and industry benchmarks. If your ratio was an average sale of $20 for every 100 visits then each new Facebook fan would be worth $4 in additional revenue per year. That starts to put some perspective on the cold hard cash you may be missing out on by not having a Facebook presence or active marketing campaign to increase your Facebook likes.

Eventbrite (an on-line ticketing company) calculated that for them a Facebook like is worth $1.34

So there you have it. A Facebook fan is actually bankable.

Do you have a Facebook page and are you building your likes?

Real-Estate and Social Media

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 14:39:08 +0800

From SMEs to MNCs to whole industries, businesses of all sizes have begun the great migration into social media. One of the newest members of this great movement is the real-estate industry, having already made noticeable strides in harnessing the power of social media.

This trend began in the US by real estate professionals who saw moving into social media as a gateway to recovery from the housing crisis. The world has caught on since. Singapore too has seen a surge in social media usage by real estate professionals, which compliments, and will probably, soon completely replace the flyers, mailers, billboards and television commercials we are currently used to.

Ascott, CapitaLand’s wholly owned serviced residence unit, has been in the forefront of social media practice among real estate players in Singapore since 2009. Today the group has a healthy following of over 20,000 fans across different social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.

“Fans following our Facebook page as well as our Twitter feed are privy to exclusive deals, promotions and contests that are only available through our social media platforms. Ascott has also received reservation enquires which translated into actual bookings at our serviced residencies,” said Tony Soh, Chief Corporate Officer of The Ascott Limited.

Belysa Executive Condominium recently had great success, having sold out their 315-unit apartment in just two months! Since May of this year, when they first started offering their units to buyers, their Facebook page saw quite a buzz among prospective buyers. A quick glance at the Belysa page will tell you that they’ve shared the right amount of information, carried out timely and quality engagement with their page visitors and drawn in a healthy amount of traffic into their page.

Blossom Residencies at Segar Road and RiverParc Residence at Punggol - City Development’s latest projects - hope to achieve success similar to Belysa. Their brand-new Facebook pages seem to have gotten off to a good start; it will be interesting to see how their progress unfolds.

More real estate professionals now need to go beyond building four walls and a roof and create a virtual ‘go to place’ where potential buyers and sellers can have an interactive engagement avenue.

However, most real estate agents in Singapore still think of social media as an avenue to blast out information, not realizing that maintaining dialogue to engage customers is an important aspect of customer relations, and making conversation one-way is just not good enough to maintain a relationship with your customers.

Singaporean’s trust in consumer opinions posted online is relatively high, according to Nielsen. However, social media usage has not been fully realized in the Singapore real estate market. Individual real estate professionals have not yet discovered the full extent of the power of social media, and unless they do, they will not be exploring the full potential of their marketing efforts.

With HDB announcing 25,000 new flats for 2011 and with 10,000 new private homes expected to enter the market in the second half of 2011, real estate professionals need to reach out to Singapore’s rising housing demand - and they can do so by actively and strategically engaging in social media.

In places like the US where social media has become part and parcel of businesses, it is not surprising that 84% of real estate professionals have turned to social media to actively engage with clients, garnering considerable results with leads, sales and brand building. And with 94% of home buyers who look to the internet before making a purchase decision, real estate agents have been successful in making sure their listings, information, advice etc. reach out to the largest number of prospective buyers and sellers.

Could Singapore’s real estate market soon reach a similar figure? Perhaps they can. Judging from the recent Singapore elections and the realization of the effectiveness and reach of social media, the real estate industry in Singapore could do well by fully embracing the potential of social media.

Companies can build excellent customer relations by engaging their consumers online; they can monitor online chatter about themselves, their competitors or the industry at large. or simply build brand recognition - the possibilities are endless.

Social Media is changing the way we do business. Scott Monty, head of social media at Ford puts it perfectly; “LinkedIn is the business meeting, Facebook is the hallway conversation and Twitter is the cocktail party.”

Facebook + Skype Video Calling: Marketing Opportunity?

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 15:27:39 +0800

Facebook Video Calling was announced today with much fanfare. The new feature allows for one-on-one video chatting within the Facebook environment.

For individual users, it means the chance to connect not just with text, but with actual face-to-face (sort of) conversations where you can hear the tone of the other person’s voice and see their every expression.

Do most users want to have full conversations? Do they want to be seen, no matter what time of day it is or what condition they’re in? Time will tell. Certainly Skype, Facebook’s partner in the feature, has gained plenty of traction. And the new Google+ social network launched with a group video chat feature, Google+ Hangouts, right out of the gate.

Our thoughts turned toward what this means, or could mean, for marketers. Of course, at this point these new features are not available to brand pages but it’s probably not far behind.

What occurred to us first and foremost is a new ability to conduct one-on-one, face-to-face customer service right on Facebook. We’ve heard the consumer cry out into the wilderness again and again, “All I want is to talk to a real person!” Companies who not only offer this kind of real-person interaction to solve customers’ issues but who do it within a social networking environment stand to gain more than a healthy dose of goodwill.

Tony Bates (Skype CEO) & Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook CEO) announcing the partnership

Here’s a golden opportunity to give your Fans a positive customer service experience, something many consumers have all but given up on. Your customer service reps may soon be able to incorporate slides or some other visual to help walk the caller through the steps needed to resolve their issue.

Taking the next logical step, Facebook Video Calling could be used for sales. Your rep could not only answer questions and discuss the features of your product, but demonstrate those features as well. Which brings up the larger question, what role can Facebook Video Calling play in the emerging world of eCommerce? Am I more likely to make a purchase if it requires 4 hours of online research and waiting for answers in my email inbox, or if I can talk to a sales rep on Facebook Video Calling for 10 minutes or less?

Internally, you can bet if it’s the easiest thing to use, Facebook Video Calling will be called upon to handle long-distance business meetings. If it allows for group chat, you’ll be sitting in Facebook Video Call business conferences. Facebook Video Calling could soon be where you give presentations or conduct webinars.

Sometimes new features arrive and marketers are slow to see or execute the potential business applications. But be aware, Facebook Video Calling is another tool for communicating…this time built right into an environment that’s already proven successful at connecting brands to their customers and strengthening those relationships. Why wouldn’t you jump on and take advantage of that? Just be sure to fix your hair first.

Singapore Elections 2011

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 16:10:00 +0800

2011 was witness to probably the most exciting General Elections since Singapore’s founding 45 years ago.

The proliferation of social media was probably instrumental in the amount of chatter that was tracked online. Finally people had a space from which they could speak out, and that’s precisely what they did. Social Media sites were full of comments, debates, videos and passionate opinions about the elections, the parties and their candidates.

It was exciting to see so many differing views and opinions being broadcast without fear or censorship. But it was not just the public who embraced this new medium. The political parties, from the current ruling party to the various opposition parties took advantage of this medium to express their views, share their thoughts and basically engage with the public.

Singapore is not the first country to use Social Media to get reach out to the voters. In the U.S., Barack Obama’s presidential election campaign in 2008, employed social media heavily to win votes.

By combining social networking applications under the banner of a movement, the Obama camp created an unforeseen force to raise money, organize locally, fight smear campaigns and get out the vote that helped them topple all their opposition.

As a result, when he arrived at 1600 Pennsylvania, Mr. Obama had not just a political base, but a database of millions of names of supporters who could be engaged almost instantly.

CONCLUSION:

The power of Social Media lies in the fact that it is free, it has infinite reach and most importantly, it gives people a platform from which they can air their views, express themselves - and converse and engage with other like minded individuals.

This medium, still in its infancy, is still catching on in Singapore. With the current government encouraging businesses to embrace this new platform, we hope that in the near future, we will see Social Media being utilized to its maximum potential, crossing all boundaries and uniting people of similar interests together, irrespective of geographical distances.