What do Amir Khan and Raghu Ram Have in Common?

Social TV is a term that refers to the trend of engaging with the audience of a tv show either directly or indirectly on a social media platform. Be it through comments, discussions, polls or sharing of content, the conversation generated serves a measure of the shows’ reach and success.

The entertainment industry today uses a well thought multi-pronged approach to promote and pull audiences to their tv sets. Right from celebrity appearances, Facebook pages, Youtube trailers, SMS contests, ratings and what not, various social media induced attractions are effectively used to lure the viewer. Online discussions about the show or movie is tracked, mapped and encouraged. All-in-all it’s a global social tv phenomenon.

In India, shows such as Satyameva Jayate and the yet to be aired season of Indian Idol have managed to actively engage viewers through social tv.  Before the launch of the former, Facebook and Twitter pages were abuzz with various promotion videos including the title song. Ever since the first episode of the program went on air, Twitter hasn’t witnessed a pause in the number of mentions about the show.

Indian Idol too has advertised about auditioning via Youtube. And how can we forget MTV Roadies, an early adopter of the social tv trend. Winner of the Most Social TV Show in the World in the Fifth Annual Mashable Awards, Roadies Battleground bridged the gap between television and online interaction quite effortlessly.

Not only networking sites but there are quite a few smartphone apps available for tv addicts too. GetGlue is a social networking site dedicated to television lovers. It lets you write reviews, like your favourite shows and actors, and do other fun stuff like exchange digital stickers for hardcopy ones.

Clearly, it’s no longer about just watching a tv show- it’s about the viewer being actively involved in the business of entertainment. Having that kind of access to your favourite shows’ Facebook page or being able to voice your thoughts on the show’s website (as Amir Khan urged viewers to do in the last segment of the program) makes the illusion onscreen seem more ‘real’. Instant likeability and credibility is attached with accessibility through social media.

Particularly active in the sports and reality TV entertainment segment, social tv seems to be gaining a strong foothold in the Indian entertainment circuit, and going by the popularity of such shows, perhaps with good reason too.

What do you think about this phenomenon? Is it simply a trend or here to stay and strengthen the relationship between the viewer and the entertainment provider?

LinkedIn & Slideshare: Hit or Miss?

A fortnight ago I’d written about why LinkedIn should proactively acquire Branchout and now here’s news about it acquiring an Indian based presentation content sharing apps company – Slideshare. Now I’m not really certain whether this is a good acquisition or a bad, that’s something only time will tell. And since business dynamics can get pretty volatile and unpredictable, I reserve my biased opinion on the topic too, but when I heard of the news, I couldn’t help being just a little skeptical.

It left me scratching my head wondering why LinkedIn was willing to shell out all that money on an app that is already actively used on their platform and contributes to about 40% percent of the app subscriber base.

It was only after thorough research and retrospection that I managed to get a hold on some very interesting insights to this whole deal. I feel it  very necessary to share it with my fellow B2B marketers:

• Combined together, LinkedIn and Slideshare, estimated 136 million monthly unique visitors now aligning 9 million content uploads with 161 million members; this incredibly exciting news opens up a whole new world of possibilities for B2B marketers.
• This acquisition gets to the heart of the impact social media can bring into a business. And shows how the interaction of people and content makes professionals more productive and successful. As social media marketers often say, ‘content is king’.
• Slideshare’s acquisition of Zipcast in February 2011 made it a good bid for LinkedIn to further enhance their social network with powerful collaborative and interactive features like web conferencing (Note that Web Conferencing is a fast emerging online media and is expected to grow into a US $4 billion industry by 2014 according to a report by Frost & Sullivan).
• With new powerful collaborative features on LinkedIn like web conference and presentations, I can’t help but wonder if is also working towards video conferencing. This to me is a logical collaborative feature required by LinkedIn. It can add a whole new dimension to professional networking- just think about private online interviews and mini-conferences.
• Slideshare puts LinkedIn into a Lead Management process. What makes Slideshare a hit amongst Marketers is its ability to allow a user to embed a form for collecting a prospective lead’s data. By acquiring Slideshare LinkedIn now has the ability to manage leads this way which otherwise was a complicated task for any social network to do.
• It is only natural that LinkedIn covets SlideShare’s influence on the C-level. According to a recent DemandGen Report article, SlideShare gets 40% more traffic from C-level executives than LinkedIn. That kind of organic prestige is hard to buy – but LinkedIn just did.

Overall, I think this supernova acquisition in the social media universe- of a giant star pulling in a smaller power star into its gravitational pull- seems to be a natural fit that only time can tell has been a wise choice or not. But both SlideShare and LinkedIn share a common insight that has driven the growth of remarkable businesses, namely that people want to interact with each other through online content and discover new and professionally useful content by online networking.

Hit or flop, what do you think of this move? Do leave your comments here.

- By Viral Thaker, Founder & Director | TheSocialPeople
A seasoned HR & Marketing professional, Viral was one of the early adopters of social media. With over a decade of industry experience under his belt, his skills span corporate strategy, delivery management, customer relationship management, business development and operations management. Viral is a voracious reader, a travel enthusiast and enjoys adventure sports. Follow Viral on Twitter @vrlthaker 

Founder Speak is our weekly column by the founders of TheSocialPeople- Viral Thaker & Dr.Vikram Venkateswaran.

Weekend Watch: Social Media Loves Satyameva Jayate

This weekend, star power and social cause came together to create a mega wave in the Indian television industry. 

Amir Khan's Satyameva Jayate turned out to be a refreshing break from regular shows and an eye opener too. Most of the country was eagerly waiting to watch the issue based chat show on Sunday morning. And within no time, appreciation poured in from all quarters on social networking sites everywhere. People were busy sharing photographs of the statistics aired on the show and of course the heartfelt song that was the only Bollywood touch at the end of the episode. 

While most celebrities tend to trend on social networking sites for their scandalizing comments and  eye popping pics, Amir Khan seems to have reversed the order in his own way. 

By the end of the day, the show's Facebook page received a whopping 42,000 likes, a number which has now touched more than six lakhs. There were nearly 3800 tweets about the show by the end of Sunday. And the website too reportedly crashed twice due to excess traffic. Not to mention the entire episode has been viewed more than two lakh times on Youtube and is being aggressively shared on Facebook and Twitter. Even before the episode went on air, the title song had been trending on networking sites adding to curiosity about the show.

While the success of the program was expected, a look into the social media stats, reveals just how popular it has turned out to be. What do you have to say about this?

Getting to Know Our Fan of the Week

Greetings fellow followers! And say hello to Anil Jangra our loyal fan of the week with the highest points so far!

Uncomplicated, intelligent and fun-loving, Anil admittedly spends a good part of his day on Facebook.

“I use LinkdIn only to maintain a professional network, since you’re often recommended by people over this site. And since Twitter is great for viral networking, I use it to post interesting topics I come across. But Facebook is what I use to stay in touch with my friends,” says Anil, cleverly categorizing his use of the social media as per his needs.

 A regular non-fussy bloke, Anil is a big fan of the popular Angry Birds app and finds Google Latitude quite useful.  Fun cartoons, pictures, one-liners, our fan quite enjoys his daily dose of chuckle over Facebook.

And what does he think about TheSocialPeople? "TheSocialPeople is a place where you find plenty of amazing little bits of information. The posts are useful and it’s a great place to pick up pointers to fully enjoy the social media sphere," he says. 

Thanks Anil and do stay tuned for more!

Founder Speak

Why Customer Service Needs A Social Makeover

The service industry relies heavily on customer service and how customers value that service.

Recently when a friend organizing an event was feeling shortchanged by a hospitality group, she tried to speak to them about their commitment and agree to the earlier terms. After some time though she realized that they weren't interested in keeping their side of the deal. Irate at the the turn of events, she took to Twitter. Within minutes someone from the hospitality group monitoring the tweets responded and by next day her problem was solved.

Actress Ayesha Takia too tweeted about her discontent with Kingfisher airlines, which not only got the founder's attention but had him personally responding and ironing out the issues as well.

Welcome to the world of social makeover, thanks to the proliferation of social media.

Facebook with 800 million accounts has become the third largest nation in the world after China and India. Most brands and brand managers are present on social networks. As the number of users on social media grows, customer feedback both good and bad travels thick and fast. 

A small example: a classmate of mine started an online business and I happened to buy one of his products and recommend it on Facebook. Soon inquiries from my networks came pouring in asking me about my experience with the product and the service. Perhaps, my positive recommendation led others to try the it as well.

The bottom line is that in the over-marketed world that we live in, personal recommendations whether good or bad really do count. Thanks to social media the makeover of customer care is on the way.

 By Dr.Vikram Venkateswaran, Founder & Director | TheSocialPeople

Dr. Vikram Venkateswaran is a marketing professional with almost 10 years of experience. He is passionate about public health, blogging, writing, public speaking and lawn tennis. He can be followed on his twitter handle @drvikram. Visit his blog at Docter Soccer.

Founder Speak is our weekly column by the founders of TheSocialPeople- Viral Thaker & Dr.Vikram Venkateswaran.