Indian Companies On Twitter Usage Study

Indian Companies on Twitter A Usage Study By Iffort– A Web Strategy & Digital Marketing Company http://www.iffort.com | contact@iffort.com

Indian Companies on Twitter A Usage Study Introduction This research, a first of its kind, presents a brief summary about the What seemed like chirps from birds 1 some ‘Indian businesses’ years back has now become an integral part of our daily lives. Such has been the impact of that have established ‘Twitter’ that everybody in our environment, presence on ‘Twitter’ & ranging from the common man to celebrities also underlines the purpose/s for has become an integral user. In India, Twitter which they are using it. The study usage picked up slowly, but today India ranks in the list of top 10 countries 2 in terms of was conducted with a reason to twitter users. demonstrate the value aspect of In India, Twitter usage picked up slowly, but today India ranks in the list of top 10 countries in terms of twitter users. twitter as a micro-blogging tool The growth of Twitter has spurred beyond when used by a brand. To conduct leisure usage and now we are witnessing brands embracing the medium and engaging this study we selected 66 brands in meaningful business-specific conversations from different industry verticals [9 through this channel. Whether it is B2B or in total]. B2C, there are many companies out there which are using twitter for reasons like brand- building, marketing, staying connected with customers, taking their feedback etc. 1 Chirps from birds – The real definition of twitter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter 2 Source – http://www.sysomos.com/insidetwitter/geography/ © Iffort 2010. www.iffort.com

Indian Companies on Twitter A Usage Study Verticals that were profiled Observation Criterion IT/ ITES Telecom FMCG The respective Twitter account profiles and the tweets were observed on the following Health care Internet Finance parameters – Logistics Media Automobile Quantitative • Joining date (date on which account was The tweets were randomly monitored during the created) working week i.e. Monday – Friday between November • Number of tweets (volume) 2009 & February 2010. • Last tweet date • No. of followers / No. of following/ No. of lists (Influence measure) The cut-off criterion • No. of Retweets and reply via @ for selection was (Influence measure) Brands with Qualitative • Minimum 100 followers • Activity period spanning for minimum 1 month • At least 50 tweets • Conversation type (one-way, two-way) • Tweet type (Informational, Retweets, Conversational@) © Iffort 2010. www.iffort.com

Key Findings A blueprint sketch, circa 2006, by Jack Dorsey, envisioning an SMS-based social network

Indian Companies on Twitter A Usage Study Before starting this report, our hypothesis their customers and their profile also shows was that the bulk of brands would be using the employees who are managing the twitter twitter as a broadcasting platform. From the account. nature of the tweets, it becomes evident that several brands are focused towards the Law of Averages (How do they fair together) Average replies – 33.395 % ‘conversational’ aspects with emphasis Average daily tweets – 7.15 towards customer-service. The leader-board is as follows: When put together, the How did they fare? Most active account – MSN India with average reply % for the brands 38,857 tweets was 33.39% which means that Most followed brand– MTV India 56,560 followers on an average, 1/3rd of tweets Most conversational brand – ICICI Bank 98.32 % tweets are replies beginning with ‘@’. Most Re-tweeted brand – Tatadocomo 31% tweets Top Inactive Brands Oldest brand – Bookmyshow.com However, not all the brands have been able to (Present since October 2007) Top Inactive Brands – Acer India (Inactive use the medium in the right way. One classic since November) & Apollo hospitals example of that is Acer India’s twitter account (No tweets since July 2009 onwards) which has been inactive since November 2009. The other prominent profile is that of Apollo Hospitals who haven’t posted a single As expected, the most tweets are made by a tweet since July 2009. news brand, MSN India with almost 40,000 tweets. MSN India’s twitter account is setup Airtel Broadband’s case using twitter-feed which automates the tweets from the news site every time it is Airtel Broadband had marked its presence on published. MTV India is the most followed twitter with its account impatient_ones. brand, showcasing its popularity amongst the However, after some initial tweets the youth and also the fact that India’s twitter account was inactivate, starting from period audience comprises of youngsters. ICICI Bank of June 2009 and at the beginning of this year is the most conversational brand on twitter the account was surprisingly deleted. Despite and is primarily using it for responding to our research, the real reasons for the deletion queries from both current & prospect of the account are not known. customers. Infact, it won’t be surprising to see other banks joining twitter to engage with their customers. One classic example of how banks can use twitter is through Bank of America’s twitter account http://twitter.com/bofa_help. They maintain complete transparency for © Iffort 2010. www.iffort.com

Indian Companies on Twitter A Usage Study ICICI Bank offers support through twitter to their banking customers. There are customers Twitter Application – who are frustrated with the bank’s service and haven’t received support through Customer service A happy customer tells one friend, an unhappy customer tells everybody. Twitter is a fantastic tool conventional methods. For such cases, ICICI for resolution of customer Bank is constantly monitoring tweets to problems, not only is it fast but address concerns with Net Banking, it also provides cost advantages for transaction charges, problems with debit businesses when compared with other card. methods like phone etc. Through Twitter when the company staff, provides replies to The graph below shows the daily conversation customers, it creates a positive image for the tweet trends for ICICIBank_Care (from Jan 19 entire brand. to Feb 18). 4 The peak point was reached when the no. of tweets exceeded 25. Dell India has a twitter account to handle customer queries related to showroom info, personal computer details, computer shipment and payment details info. Dell’s India account is in-line with the computer manufacturer’s global initiatives. Dell has a dedicated section of its website, www.dell.com/twitter that provides details of the name and purpose of its more than 30 different feeds. 3 3 4 Clear goals key for brands using Twitter Graph Source http://www.warc.com/News/TopNews.asp?ID=26 http://twitteranalyzer.com/ms.aspx?userId=iciciba 268 nk_care# © Iffort 2010. www.iffort.com

Indian Companies on Twitter A Usage Study News Broadcast Promotion & Buzz In India, the use of twitter as a news Organizations have started adapting twitter to streaming source was widely realized during showcase their latest offerings, promote the Mumbai terrorist attacks in 2008 5. product launches, discounts & contests etc. There are specific campaigns around twitter Companies like Kotak cards are posting where users win free prizes for using the updates of the company and industry news to company’s name in tweet hashtags. 6 discuss it and with their twitter followers. Nokia Music India uses twitter to promote album & latest mobile phone launches in the Nokia music store. They regularly conduct twitter contests to drive user participation. The twitter account of Colors TV channel is synched with Facebook and their tweets are about promotion of new shows & user- reactions to reality show eliminations. 5 6 First Hand Account of Terrorist Attacks in India Moonfruit Twitter Promotion on Twitter, Flickr http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/917273/Mo http://techcrunch.com/2008/11/26/first-hand- onfruit-Twitter-promotion-proves-massive- accounts-of-terrorist-attacks-in-india-on-twitter/ success/ © Iffort 2010. www.iffort.com

Indian Companies on Twitter A Usage Study Graphical Story Twitter in the IT Sector The reason why we chose the IT sector for further analysis was because the large-scale Indian tech companies are driven by processes and proven methodologies. The observations of how they use open conversation social media platforms like Twitter are certainly very interesting. Conversation Measure Every third tweet that Microsoft India sends is conversational & is marked with ‘@’ reply. A key reason is that their official twitter account isn’t automated and is managed by a team of real people. Microsoft India is followed by HP IPG India & Capgemini respectively. © Iffort 2010. www.iffort.com

Indian Companies on Twitter A Usage Study Retweeting Aspects Retweeting is the phenomenon of copying a tweet from someone and sharing it within your network. Popularly referred to as RT, retweeting contributes to a conversational ecology 7 & is a fantastic viral source for content promotion. While typically the focus is to spread news, engage in conversations, brands often retweet when they are the subject of a conversation e.g. a customer expressing his happiness with a company’s product. That said, there are instances when brands occasionally retweet general messages which are not company specific e.g. HP IPG India’s twitter account HPPrint4life. The figure displays the RT percentage for various brands where the wheel is lead by HP IPG India followed by Cognizant & Zensar. 7 Tweet, Tweet, Retweet: Conversational Aspects of Retweeting on Twitter http://www.danah.org/papers/TweetTweetRetweet.pdf © Iffort 2010. www.iffort.com

Indian Companies on Twitter A Usage Study How to Use Twitter The Road Ahead Illustrations Twitter’s penetration in organizations will Customer Service (Tata Photon) continue to increase on both sides of the spectrum. Conversations between users and brands which are managed by humans with an emotional quotient would continue to thrive. It also implies that the focus would lessen on one-way broadcasts where twitter accounts simply translate into monotonous RSS feeds. More companies will start using twitter for conducting market research, Consumer Recommendations (SuKam) listening to users and keeping a track on the competition. Community Feedback (Cafe Coffee Day) Company/Industry Updates (Infosys) Product Promotion (Samsung Mobiles) © Iffort 2010. www.iffort.com

About Iffort Iffort is an India based web-strategy & social media consulting firm that plans, creates and executes a thorough roadmap to deliver tangible value for its clients. Our range of services include full-spectrum web-strategy, social media marketing, enterprise 2.0 consulting. For further information visit us at www.iffort.com E-Mail: contact@iffort.com Phone: 0120.4221295 Mobile: 91.9891700977 Twitter: twitter.com/iffort Twitter images via www.twitter.com . Image copyrights belong Disclaimer: to Twitter and/or respective individuals. Iffort reserves the right not to be responsible for the topicality, correctness, completeness, or quality of the information provided. Claims regarding damage caused by the use of any information provided, including any kind of information which is incomplete or incorrect, will therefore be rejected. References made in this study to brands do not constitute an endorsement by Iffort of those organizations and their products.

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Indian Companies On Twitter Usage Study

by Iffort on Mar 07, 2010

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Indian Companies On Twitter Usage Study — Document Transcript