2 Sides of the Social Media Coin

For everyone who comes online anywhere in the world even for as less as 5 minutes a day would be aware of Social Media Marketing as a phenomenon. The buzz world today is Social Media Marketing. From Big brand like Ebay to aspiring start ups like Adgully all are today trying to engage users through Social platforms primarily Facebook. In fact what started as a complex combination, of optimizing efforts on a number of sites like stumble, Digg, Twitter etc, has become focused on optimizing efforts on one platform named Facebook.

Facebook has become the Web in itself. In fact Facebook is even better and people are trying various means to make the most of it. Working on a Facebook campaign is seemingly simple. You create a Fan page, get people to like the page, integrate the Facebook activity to your website and vise-verse, maybe also create some interesting App and there you go, you are a hit on Facebook. Simple? Not quite!

I have been watching (and writing too) a lot of brands trying to make an impact on Facebook with the Indian audience, and have noticed both sides of Social Media Marketing, the Real and the Fake, being practiced. Let us have a look at two examples:

An E-tailing company selling high end fashion garments and Grohe Shower. Both have websites to sell products. Both are into selling high end lifestyle products. Both have Facebook Fan page too. Both have good number of Fans on Facebook. But for someone who is following both these Fan pages, it is not difficult to spot the difference between the approaches and identify the 'Real' and the 'Fake'.

On one page you see products being shown as posts and people seemingly liking and commenting about goodness of the same, and on the other page you see people being encouraged to become volunteers to experience the product, first hand. On one page you can see post after post having exactly the same number of 'Comments' and 'Likes' and on the other page you can see the variety in consumer expression. On one page there is a well thought out Social Media Campaign and on the other there is complete lack of creativity.

Creating a successful Facebook campaign requires a lot of involvement, patience, and creativity. It requires truthfulness towards the idea of engaging with the consumers. From the moment I landed on the Grohe Facebook fan page to the time I received my gift (Hand-shower), the Grohe campaign has impressed me. The ideation, the communication and moderation on the page, the frequency and language of emails and finally the actual delivery of the promised gift, have all been flawless. Hats off to the team that is managing this campaign.

Since the beginning, for the common man, Internet has made a mark as a Free, Fair and Transparent medium. Even today it works best that way !!