Tag: Get Satisfaction

  • Social @ Myntra – Part 1

    [The intent in writing this is manifold – primarily my obsession for chronicling, and it being my way of expressing gratitude. But since this might be useful to other social practitioners, I have uncharacteristically added text highlighting and such, and also sought to bring some semblance of order as opposed to the regular free flowing text 🙂]

    Almost exactly a couple of years back – Autumn Winter 2011 – the blog had an update on a new assignment. I can only vaguely remember writing the post, but what I have not forgotten is the excitement at the opportunity – to experiment with concepts, ideas and hypotheses. I have been blessed with great bosses, they have wanted to hire me again. So the first hat tip is to S, not just for believing I could chart a social agenda for Myntra, but for using his auctoritas in the organisation to ensure I got a runway good enough to attempt a flight. The second hat tip is to Mukesh, Myntra’s founder-CEO, who nearly stumped me with his first question as I was about to begin my huge social roadmap presentation (towards the end of Oct 2011) – why does Myntra need ‘social’? It was a very fundamental question – it not only underlined what I had in mind, but also served as a subconscious beacon during my stint.

    We began with stating objectives. The idea was not to create a silo out of social, but to tie its objectives and strategy to various existing domains, and therefore business outcomes. This would ensure that social could create a strategic business advantage in the long run, and also meant that we could use domain specific metrics to track the progress of social investments.

    The best advice I got, again from Mukesh after the first presentation, was to prioritise, because there was so much we could do. Thus began the planning – focus areas, time frames, strategy, resources, measurable outcomes. Our focus areas were primarily four – Customer Connect, Brand, Product, and Sales, and everything we did had a link with business metrics in these.

    1. Customer Connect: Before anything else, this domain had to be addressed. The rationale was simple – until we resolved the issues that customers were sharing, there could be no conversation on any other topic. We began with a shared Google doc, taking complaints from Facebook and Twitter, getting them resolved internally, and then communicating back on the relevant channel. The objective of solving customer issues quickly could easily be measured by standard Customer Satisfaction indices around the number of issues resolved and average turn-around-time. By April 2012, the excel sheet process became crazy enough for us to opt for a more robust approach. After evaluating social CRM options at varying levels of complexity, we began using Get Satisfaction in April 2011, one of the first e-commerce companies in India to do so. It allowed us to seamlessly integrate with Facebook, and later Twitter, via Hootsuite. The metrics began looking much better since then!

    2. Brand: In the absence of consistent brand campaigns, social automatically becomes one of the few media platforms available to create a perception about the brand. There are many aspects to this, and among all focus areas, this is the domain which is evolving most rapidly, and in which there’s always something to do.

    Listening: Unlike broadcast media, social platforms have conversations – about the brand, to the brand. The best example in the Myntra context is the reaction to our first Lisa Haydon ad. (details) Before ORM became a buzzword and a zillion tools were spawned, the choice was simple for frugal social folks – Hootsuite vs Tweetdeck. We chose the former, and continue to use it even now. Though we did try out many tools, we couldn’t really reconcile the amount we would have to pay with the value we could derive from them. Finally, Unmetric has been brought on board because they manage to give a view of the brand vis-a-vis competition, and also actionable insights.

    Branded Content: I had been a blogger for 8 years when I joined Myntra, and have always considered it the original social platform. Style Mynt was my first major project at Myntra. (details) Born on December 1st 2011, with no further investments in manpower, (because there were people in various departments who were interested in, and could write well about fashion)  and costs that only included theme and hosting charges. It not only gave Myntra a platform to express fashion thought leadership and style advice with utilitarian value, but also provided content for social networks and served as a good medium to build relationships with partner brands. (eg. with behind-the-scenes brand focus posts) . End-to-end project management was fun, especially content planning and tweaking themes, and I was even de facto editor until April, when we saw that this kind of content creation had tremendous potential, and hired a full time editor. Later, the activities on Style Mynt also resulted in video content. On Twitter, we created lists and constantly curated them – one of the applications is the Myntra #LookGood Daily. The objective in all these efforts is to create a strong association between Myntra and fashion/style. There are many ways to measure this – blog subscriptions and visits generated to Myntra from the blog, questions in the brand track for evolved brands, and for others, the share of voice in relevant keywords which can be tracked using monitoring tools. Though not the primary objective, Style Mynt has been a contributor to revenue as well, and Thinglink needs to be mentioned in this context. (details)

    Social Media: Or rather, social as media. In 2011, Facebook and Twitter were the only platforms that were considered serious enough to be active on. We tracked platform metrics (Likes, PTAT, Followers) because they were surrogates that gave us an idea of the reach of our content and even brand salience to an extent, all the while conscious that they were a means, not an end. The content strategy on both were in a constant state of evolution, until it found its current version which aims to balance infotainment, (with creatives made specially for social) content marketing and selling pitches. Facebook Insights, though by no means perfect, gave us indicators of the efficacy of the content we were sharing. ‘Social as media’ is also where the much vilified hashtags on Twitter can play a part. All our hashtags have had a clear objective – to create some buzz around a tactical or strategic initiative. (examples) Their reach can be measured using free/paid tools. Also to be mentioned in this context – we are connected to over 60 of our partner brands on Twitter.

    We tried out an interesting Foursquare experiment as well, to emphasise the fashion destination positioning – leaving tips at retail outlets of partner brands on seasonal trends. Being a fashion brand, we got active on Pinterest and Instagram early too. We’re probably the first Indian e-com/fashion brand to have season collection videos on Instagram. We were present on Google+ because it had a rub off on SEO as well, but in addition, there is much potential for creating excellent branded content using Hangouts. (and its On Air version) On YouTube, we began with content curation until we got our own videos. But even given that, at this stage, I’d have to say that it is an under exploited channel.

    The value for the original two can now be measured in terms of reach metrics (brand) as well as revenue. The others are in a nascent stage, and will evolve rapidly, I’m sure. Earlier this year, Franchisee India gave us an award for the Best Use of Social Media & Communication Strategy. In terms of ‘vanity metrics’, when I started out, we had 5.8L Likes and 984 followers, and were non existent on the other platforms! Now, we have over 1.5m Likes, 13000+ followers on Twitter, more than a 1000 followers on Pinterest, 500+ on Instagram, 400+ on Foursquare, 600+ subscribers on YouTube and 3000+ on Google+.

    Corporate Brand: Style Mynt had taken off very well, and blogs were in tremendous favour within Myntra. 🙂 I pitched that a corporate blog would allow us to showcase values, culture, and build trust, within the organisation and among consumers. Myntra’s corporate blog is now a year old and continues to do exactly what I wrote it aimed to do in its About page.  The benchmark continues to be the Cleartrip blog, but this one is a labour of love at this point. I’m confident though, that having a place to air the brand’s side of the story can only do good in the long run. I’d also recommend the use of Quora – you cannot be present as the brand, but if you can get 2-3 management team members to be active, it could do a lot for you.

    Blogger Outreach: Fashion is a domain of specialisation for many bloggers, and we began associating with them pretty early. From guest posts to sponsored contest giveaways in the initial days to a more organised and rigorous blogger outreach program for reviews more recently, we have tried a lot of stuff. They’re invited to our events, their posts get promoted via twitter, we have a board exclusively with their posts on Pinterest, and they even get #fridayfollow tweets from us. We have built relationships and there are plans in the pipeline that for more concrete ways to take this further – providing value to both parties. These efforts help in associating Myntra with fashion, catering to the bloggers’ niche audiences, and generating positive buzz about Myntra.

    This has proven to be longer than I expected! Therefore, to be continued..

  • Conversations in social media

    The Facebook redesign and the possible redefining of brands’ interaction with users on the service would perhaps make organisations dwell a little more on their new media strategy. I say this, mostly considering the reach of Facebook, and the importance and influence that conversations there, are acquiring in people’s lives. The growing reach of Twitter cannot be ignored either. So it does seem a good time to reflect on creating a digital footprint, getting to know the platforms – be it Facebook (via Vijay Sankaran), Twitter, (links point to good ‘How to’ resources) or any other service, and how they could benefit the brand, looking at what has/hasn’t worked for other brands, thinking about a long term social media strategy,  and then figuring out the measurement criteria that could be adopted for the strategy that is adopted.

    Amidst all the hoopla surrounding Facebook’s new design, and Twitter’s integrated search, Paul Worthington wrote a very interesting post on Mashable reminding brands not to lose their focus. From the post

    The initial challenge is not to better understand and respond to the customer. The challenge is to start with better understanding who you are, what you truly believe in, and what you can realistically offer to your customer.

    Because if all you focus on are what customers are telling you, you risk losing sight of who you are, what you believe in and what drives you forwards.

    A purpose that is first bought into by their employees, before being presented to the consumer in a way that brings a natural self-confidence to that conversation.

    While crowdsourcing has many advantages, and now has various platforms including Facebook, Twitter and more focused services like Get Satisfaction, and consumers also benefit from having big brands on these platforms, I completely agree with the thoughts shared above. This is what I’d consider as the middle path between adhering strictly to brand manuals only and plunging into social media without a clear objective/strategy and trying to please everyone in the crowd.

    So, perhaps what brands should do first is search themselves (yes, without Google), understand what’s the real value that they offer to their consumers – potential and current, figure out whether the entire organisation is in aligned on this, then consider how new media can play a part in sharing and collaborating with the users as well as communicating to them what the brand stands for and what value it can deliver, ensure that they continue providing this value, keep listening to users to find what more they expect from the brand, figure out the feasibility of these expectations, tweak it further by bringing in the internal factors, and continue this process. For many organisations, internal democracy as well as complete internal transparency would themselves be a significant steps. But these are a must before aiming to engage with consumers, because in social media brand custodians are not the only ‘broadcast’ source, every employee is a potential source.(a wonderful presentation on the micro sociology of networks)

    In essence, its not just a brand strategy shift, its an organisational culture transformation. As a brand, and as an organisation, it is important to be clear about the levels of transparency you can work with. The challenge then becomes that of creating and maintaining a harmonized balance between user needs and brand deliverables.

    until next time, drawing the line and walking it

    PS: A great story on how two fans made Coke the second most popular fanpage on Facebook, and Coke’s reaction.

  • Talking Shop

    My post last week– on the topic of communities that individuals will initiate or will be part of, also made me think of organisations and brands, and what communities they would start/be part of. To begin with, perhaps there would have to be forks in the road, which hopefully would merge again at some point of time. Paths to accommodate employees, potential employees, consumers, suppliers and so on.

    If word of mouth is the primary marketing tool, it is important to get the organisation in order, and employees to believe in themselves and the place they work in, before transparency can be taken to the outside world. According to this RWW article, based on an Accenture report,  a large number of millenials (those born between 1977-97) expect their companies to accommodate their IT preferences, and if they don’t, they turn rogue and use technology that is unsupported and unsanctioned by their corporate IT departments. Social networks are great examples, according to the study, 59% use them inspite of their IT!!

    I’d written on this subject earlier, highlighting a few tools, that could help bring transparency to the employee and potential employee facing part. Recently, I came across a few more things that would help in these efforts. SocialCast (via Startup Meme), which provides ‘simple, smart messaging for team communication’. Meetsee, “Your personal virtual office ..filled with rich ways to communicate, share content, collaborate on documents, and build rapport between remote co-workers”. I also read that LinkedIn has made portions of company profiles public. As of now, they have 160000 profiles. I quite liked the career path feature under ‘Related Companies’. (eg.Take a look at Amazon’s profile.) What I’d like to see is companies taking this as an opportunity to converse more than a one way communication. LinkedIn can actually make a premium service out of this. Companies could also start off with using some existing apps on LinkedIn like Company Buzz, presentation apps, Huddle and Polls, each of which could add dimensions to their LinkedIn presence.

    On another front, brands are still grappling on how to utilise social media to reach out to their consumers. The question of where to have these conversations also still hangs. Both would obviously depend on the intent. Unfortunately, a lot of brands are seeing social media as just another broadcasting platform – a mentality of  ‘ah, the herd is on twitter, lets push the communication there’. Judging from the way the crowd responds to say (the most recent example) Ibibo, #FAIL.

    Like I said, it boils down to intent – making better products, addressing customer issues, using customers for R&D and so on. Chris Brogan has a wonderful post on what he calls ‘cafe shaped conversations‘. It made me consider the perspective that its perhaps not meant for every brand/organisation. That while there are advantages, for these advantages to achieve a scale that makes it worthwhile, might take quite some time for some organisations, because they aren’t built that way (?)

    But its also true that consumers don’t wait for the brand/company to start the conversation. And they like to band together. The communities at Facebook and Ning are great examples. I also came across a new site – Brand Adda, a community that revolves around brands, products and services. I first thought a 2.0 version of something like MouthShut but there new features added, which also allows for interaction initiated by the brand. Explained well in their FAQ. Perhaps they’re closer to GetSatisfaction. From a brand perspective, the conversation tools might be easier to handle than say, a SocialToo, which allows polls on Twitter. I’d like to see how this develops, since there’s definitely potential.

    The tools, irrespective of which stakeholder they address, are becoming increasingly significant. According to a recent study by Forrester, the % of people who trust the company blog as a new source is at a low 16%, right at the bottom of the table. This, I agree, is not a reflection on the concept of blogging, but more on the intent of companies which in turn, is translated into the content they post on the blog. And the path – blogs, twitter, LinkedIn etc are quite inconsequential if the intent is not sorted out first.

    until next time, connecting people…and companies..

    PS. A good resource on social media. Go on, there are free e-books.