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Windchimes- a social media agency
India 1.0 is dead. Long Live India 2.0
Believe me when I proclaim that social media has impregnated every bit of our lives. No.Well, answer this - Where do you go if you want to:
•
Learn more about an individual or company?
•
Watch funny videos, advertisements?
•
Research to buy your laptop or cell phone
•
Plan your next vacation?
•
Ask specific questions about a productIf your answers have been Wikipedia, YouTube, CNet, Trip Advisor and Yahoo Answersrespectively or similar to these, then social media is already a part of your life!!
So what is social media really?
Simply put, social media is creation of information by the ‘wisdom of crowds’ in acollaborative manner. It is about democratization of media as no single individual owns orcontrols it. It is about engaging with users; seeking their participation through discussionsin online communities.Social media content can take different forms; including text, images, audio, and video. Thevarious social media platforms that are currently available are blogs, wikis, discussionforums, social networking sites, video/photo sharing sites, Q&A sites, social bookmarkingsites, micro blogs etc.
What are the principles of Social media?
I am of a firm belief that social media is governed by four fundamental principles which Iclassify as
VULP
:1.Building
Value
for the community2.Allowing
Users
to generate content3.
Listening
(Feedback) to everybody’s point of view4.Seeking user
Participation
The above principles become eligibility criteria for a media to be qualified as social media.They set the tone of the medium. For a brand to use social media to its advantage it mustparticipate with users in their communities, listen to what they have to say and value add totheir discussions thereby raising the knowledge level of that community. Only then will it betruly qualified as having understood the medium and draw leverage for itself.
How different is it from other media?
The most important difference being that there is no audience in social media. Because
•
Audience is to whom you
announce
any activity
•
Audience is to whom you
talk to
•
Audience is to whom you have a
monologue
with
 
Windchimes- a social media agency
•
Audience is to whom you
deliver 
your message to
•
Audience is to whom you
drive your point 
across Mind you, this is not about semantics. It is much deeper – psychology of a person. For allthese years traditional media has allowed the individual to
control the message
.Everything is governed, conformed to a norm, a process, a defined technique. However, insocial media, there is no control - forcing the individual to be true in its approach.
Social Media and India:
Social media has definitely found its way to the Indian shores. I will give two instances toelaborate the same. One where traditional media has adopted social media’s principles andother is use of social media in a disturbing social event.
1.Citizen journalism:
CNN-IBN, a leading English news channel has dedicated a half hour slot to show called ‘Citizen Journalism’. In this show, the channel airs series of news stories or events thathave been shot by ordinary citizens. In current times, the only way to retain eye ballsfor a news channel is to either
break the story first 
or have
exclusivity rights
over it. Let’s assume that a newsworthy event occurs at a place far away from where thechannel’s reporters are based. However, the people residing there can capture the eventas it unfolds. It would be worthwhile for the channel to start airing the footage shot bythe citizen as first channel to break the story!! The citizen, on the other hand, will definitely watch that particular news channel.Chances are that his family and friends also would switch on that channel to watch it.This arrangement works wonderfully for the news channel and the viewer as the channelgets the news first, wins more viewers and definitely builds loyalty with that set of people.
2.Mumbai terror attacks:
10 terrorists carried out a cowardly attack on Mumbai. They had come from Pakistan byship and landed in southern section of Mumbai which incidentally is also the primebusiness area. They then hid in two of the most coveted hotels there and were killed /arrested over the next 3 days.For those three days, people were glued on to their TV sets as much as they were toInternet. Several individuals started giving out information about the hospitals and whatwas required for the patients on their blogs. Others focused on giving out informationabout the victims. There came a time when there were
‘80 tweets every 5 seconds’
on Mumbai terror attacks. With this incident, the whole world shrank as tweets andmessages on Facebook started appearing from across the world.
First ever Social Media research undertaken in India:
As we saw social media becoming an important part of our lives, we decided to carry out thefirst ever social media survey in India. The research was carried out in three cities; Mumbai,Delhi and Bangalore with the age group of 19-35 yrs old. 105 respondents participated inthis online survey.
 
Windchimes- a social media agency
The objectives of the research were:1.
 
To understand the significance and role of Social Media in current scenario2.
 
To map out the current usage pattern of social media of Indians3.
 
To study the impact it has in our purchase behaviorOur first question to respondents was that if they had 30 minutes of free time, whichactivity would they be most likely to do? This data clearly interprets the importance of Internet (We had defined Internet asculmination of websites + social media sites) as it scores higher than reading newspaper oreven listening to MP3 player!!Our next three questions probed the respondents on which medium would they be mostlikely to use if they wanted to get news, information about new products or find out aboutlatest trends? Internet has scored in the first place when it came to new products andtrends and in second place when it came to news.Our next section probed on how much time do you spend every day on these social sites?More than 1/3
rd
of the respondents spend more than 30 minutes of time every day, out of which 11% spend more than an hour.We then wanted to understand what they did when they were online.
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