Smaller Brands growing Big Online

We are heading towards an age, where the gap between space and time is losing relevance. It takes seconds for news to travel and spreads at an amazing speed across the globe. To this end, the World Wide Web and Internet have played a crucial role and the journey of the internet has been most interesting. 25 years ago, a tech company called Symbolics registered the first .COM, marking the first time that a private company had a presence on the Internet. It took more than a decade from the launch of the .COM, till the year 1997, well into the internet boom, for the one millionth .COM to be registered. Since then though the growth has been exponential and phenomenal. Today there are over 200 million domain names in the world.

The Internet has truly changed the face of communication, and that impacts the very way business is conducted and news is shared. Today, it appears that freedom of speech and sharing information is best explored online. The mass revolutions in Egypt, Libya and other Middle- East nations have led to the Arab uprising and dissolving the power structures therein. Earlier campaigns like 'Pink Chhadi' and 'Meter Jam' effectively utilized the power of the online medium. A common thread that runs across all these recent developments is the use of the social media as strong medium of communication that has brought the masses together. Closer home, the Anna Hazare movement against corruption saw many Indians take centre stage and instilled a hope that days of corruption will soon be numbered in India. There were innumerous websites containing the words 'anna' which were booked between 15th and 20th August. These ranged from websites which offer games on Anna Hazare such as 'www.angryanna.com' to websites which gave out information about the Jan Lokpal Bill such as 'www.whatannathinks.com' and 'mainannahoon.in.'

The official Facebook page of 'India against Corruption' with 2.8 lakh fans on August 15, reached 5.01 lakh on August 28 (Source: Facebook page analytics tool, Buzzref.com).The level of interaction also increased significantly on the official IAC Facebook page. In April, the IAC page observed 385 messages, 0.9 lakh 'likes' and 28,000 comments. The month of August, on the other hand, gauged 314 messages, 1.9 lakh 'likes' and 37,000 comments, as per Buzzref.com data. More than 1.7 lakh tweets mentioned 'Anna Hazare', 1.5 lakh tweets mentioned 'Jan Lokpal' and 32,000 tweets referred 'Ramlila Maidan' during August 16-27. The kind of attention and recall that his campaign stirred is what brands would take a lifetime to achieve and die for!

If such is the power of the internet medium, how can brands, big or small be far behind? While big brands are exploring, learning and have begun leveraging web-presensce and social media, small businesses can also take a leaf and apply the power of the online medium to build and grow their businesses. As budgets are a constraint for small businesses, using social and online media in a structured format can help small enterprises to develop new relationships with their customers, increase sales and the level of customer satisfaction, and amplify customer satisfaction. To get started, small businesses could look forward to answer the most basic questions that would enable them strike the right chord with their target audiences and achieve business imperatives. For e.g.

• Specific Business objectives a small business would want to achieve the social media route
• Social media channels most suited to your line of business
• Understanding your target audiences and the kind of conversations that take place
• Understanding how to integrate social media activities with business functions such as sales, marketing, service, business processes? If yes, how would this help you?
• Measuring ROI

While these pointers could help assess and outline the feasibility of a social media strategy that small businesses could look, here are some other benefits that small businesses could derive:

A real time and cost effective medium

It's time SME's grasp the online space and make their presence felt, as the medium is cost —effective, and enduring. It's a virtual market waiting to be tapped. While it might be relatively cost-effective vis a vis other advertising mediums, it requires time, energy, and effort. It's a never-ending commitment to create interesting content, listen to conversations, and respond. A strong web-presence also instills the brand as a trust-worthy and credible partner in the minds of their customers and stake-holders.

The 3C philosophy

There is a 3C philosophy which outlines the online world- 'Content-Community-Commerce'. The main reason to access the internet is content (read offerings), it's the strong content that attracts people, be it on a company website, a blog, or a social networking platform. If the content one puts up is not sticky, it fails in capturing visitors. For stickiness of the content, one must take into consideration the factor of relevance; it should be relevant to the target group and the time it's written in. Now this rich content leads to the formation of communities, but how? The logic stands that strong content leads to opening up of conversations, which attracts people of similar interests. For example, for a bakery brand, it's important to have as much information, like various recipes, health updates, on their website and social platform, and further must enable information sharing, which in turn start conversations, forming online groups of people with similar interests at one place, hence forming a community. This very community drives commerce. Since all the likeminded people can be found on a platform, you have your new set of already interested target group which can be easily looked upon as prospective customers.

Online consumer behavior patterns

The Online and Social media have the potential to increase brand recall and visibility for SMEs in real time. The reach and educational facets provided by the medium can prove to be key business drivers. If one analyses media consumption patterns on the basis of social networks and online conversations, it could lead to fruitful business leads.

Engagement and collaboration

A successful and effective social media campaign is high on engagement, collaboration and rechanneling the feedback to build a healthy product/ service. Increasingly potential customers and users vent out their feelings via such channels. It is imperative to be exceptionally alert on these platforms as it not only reflects your business ethos but can provide some nuggets of wisdom and true opinions on what they really think of your product and brand. This could pave the way for close collaboration leading to happy customers and improving brand image.

It's all about relationships

One must always keep in mind that in the online world, relationships are important. Once a visitor finds relevant information on your web page, they will be forced to return back to your website/social media page for more information, and this creates a connect with them. So, it's the responsibility of the brand to keep on providing newer data to them, to garner the relationship, because they help in referring your brand to others. The online relation building leads to offline commerce. And since the trend of e-commerce is burgeoning, a brand cannot take the chance of turning their faces away from the online world.

Having said so, everyone in the current world order (from a 6 year old to a 60 year old) is increasingly beginning to have an online presence. They don't visit a website merely to gain information, but share their views as well, making it a two way communication and the fact that all this can be done in real time has changed the dynamics of communication.

It is important to invest time in developing an online and social media presence and keep in mind that you will not see results overnight, it is a long term strategy to engage with customers in the hope of being remembered when they want to purchase a product you offer. At the end of the day, it will definitely result in more authentic interactions.