Does Corporate India understand social media? – Part 2

(Image Courtesy: http://www.themarketingpill.com/how-to-spot-a-social-media-fake)

My last blog post talked about this headline by contrasting the fundamental nature of business with that of social media. It attempted to explain why corporate India seemed to have several “misunderstandings” while dealing with people on social media. At the time, it seemed fair to assume that corporates did not completely understand these differences (given the maturity of social media networks in India) and plunged into this medium simply because it was touted at the next big thing or the competition was on it. However, a recent report by Gartner, could suggest otherwise.

Titled “The Consequences of Fake Fans, ‘Likes’, and Reviews on Social Networks”, the report predicts that by 2014, upto 15 percent of all reviews on social media will be fake and paid for by corporates. This could mean one of two things. That corporates fully understand the challenges in harnessing social media to their advantage and want to take shortcuts to meet their goals by seeking paid/ fake reviews. Or, that corporates continue to be ignorant of how this platform works and are trying to foist business models that have worked while dealing with mainstream media. (Paid placement of articles (infomercials) in mainstream media publications is common practice and is used by companies to launch high-involvement products as well to communicate crisis management and brand revitalization activities. Paid news recently created a controversy when it was discovered that journalists/ managements adopted unethical practices to pass of infomercials as news).

Either way, this could be harmful for brands.

At the core of this issue is the need to “get more” - of followers, space, mind share, downloads, conversations and everything else that is possibly quantifiable. But what does 10 million ‘likes’ on a corporate Facebook page indicate? Do people like the way the page looks? Do they like one or all the services/ products the company provides? Do they like other fans of the company page? One can never say because we are impulsive in our like or dislike of many things. To make matters worse social networking platforms are engineered to thrive on breadth and not depth of content. This means, the more ‘likes’ you have the more active you are perceived to be.

I am a vegetarian but like watching Masterchef Australia, (where most dishes are non-vegetarian) because of the show’s presentation. I may therefore ‘like’ the social media pages created by Masterchef Australia. Can Masterchef Australia sell me anything from their show? Except for aprons, maybe not. Can they engage with me by sharing some recipes? Unlikely, because their vegetarian recipes are bland to my taste buds. What kind of a fan does that make me? A pretty useless one.

Companies that genuinely want to engage on social media don’t like to be saddled with fans paying them lip service. They would rather have fewer fans engaging deeply and willing to collaborate with them on various aspects of their product/ service. Indian corporates must understand this. India has the world’s largest population and getting numbers (of people) to like/ dislike something has never been an issue. Whether it is world peace, municipality woes or Rajnikanth, Indians always have an opinion on everything under the sun. The tougher job for corporates is to figure out whose opinion is transient and whose isn’t. If companies stop chasing numbers and embrace engagement, customer advocacy will oust paid / fake reviews.