Facebook’s growth & amazing new Stats on Facebook

Facebook, the numero uno social networking site in the world, has recorded tremendous growth in the past year. Facebook has released some impressive stats about the site. Facebook is making rapid moves into the mobile space. It recently launched Facebook home as well. It has been listed on the stock exchange & at present has no competitors nearing it in numbers. Google launched Google+ which is still lagging in members count compared to Facebook. & Some of the stats include

* 4.5 billion likes generated daily as of May 2013. This is up by 67% compared to likes in Aug 2012.
* 4.75 Billion content items shared daily in May’13 up by 94% in Aug’12
* 1.11 billion active users as of march’13
* 665 Million daily active users up by 26% from Mar’12
* 751 Million monthly mobile active users
* Facebook made a bold move of acquiring Instagram. It has got 100 million active users
* $1.46 billion revenue in Q1 of 2013 up by 38% YTY
* 4900 employees at Facebook

Top Twitter Brands in India – NDTV, Times of India, MTV, IPL, CNN-IBN & others

Microblogging in India is emerging as a favorite medium for breaking news, sharing opinion/thoughts & for brand building activities. Twitter is the top microblogging platform in India & has become the favorite of the corporate world for their marketing activities. Pepsi is promoting the IPL hashtag in this season’s IPL, VW India also used Twitter for their #anything4Jetta campaign. Hashtags seems to have taken over the marketing campaigns & they are also commonly seen in Advts.

US, Brazil, Japan, UK & India are some of the top countries for Twitter. Some of the top Indian twitter brands are NDTV, Times of India, MTV, IPL, CNN-IBN, Vodafone India, Tata DoCoMo & many IPL cricket teams. IPL cricket teams are engaging with the audience with interesting tweets & also some of the top facebook brands are active on Twitter as well. Among the sectors, Entertainment, media, sports, telecom & Newspapers are topping the charts. Many advanced analytic programs provide deep dive analysis in to the audience share & engagement helping brands to better connect with the users.

Chris Hadfield’s Video of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” in Space

Here is a music video from Chris Hadfield who is returning back to earth after 5 months aboard the ISS. He plays the guitar solo for David Bowie’s classic song “Space Oddity”. With the emergence of social media, it has become easier for astronauts to interact. He has a twitter profile as well with regular updates on the life in ISS.

Intel and Its Social Media Strategy

Intel well known for its processors is also known for its social media presence. They use the social media to engage, inform & build the brand. They have set up a Intel Social Media guidelines which helps the employees on how to engage with the social media. Disclose, protect & use common sense are the 3 rules of engagement. They have blogs which is updated regularly, Facebook with millions of likes, Youtube Channel & twitter with millions of followers. At Intel Free Press, one can follow all the tech news related to Intel and also download a mobile app.

A digital magazine, iQ by Intel, where one can vote on items and also share on social media platforms. Ekaterina Walter is a social media innovator at Intel. Under her leadership, Intel’s Social Media platforms have been growing rapidly & has helped the brand build visibility. Intel’s social media strategies include posting the original content on Facebook, interactive videos on YouTube & engaging with the community.

Many global companies are also using Visual based marketing strategies using Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest & flickr to engage with the audience. Here one can like the pics & also repost or pin it to their boards.

YouTube Trends Map – Real Time Most Popular Videos

YouTube Trends Map provides a real time information on what videos are popular across the US by city/region & also can be filtered by shares, views, gender & age range. Videos uploaded within 48 hours may not appear in age and gender breakdowns. Hovering over the map, one can watch the thumbnail of the popular video in that region. There is also a bar graph at the bottom of the page showing number of regions where each video is #1. Right now, this is available for US. The Trends Map is based on user response to YouTube Trends Dashboard.

Coca-Cola’s “The AHH Effect” – A New Digital Campaign

Coca-Cola’s new digital campaign called “the ahh effect” is targeting teens with 61 different URL’s. The 61 different URL’s with different ahhh’s includes games, gif’s & films. The home page of the campaign is www.ahh.com & each different URL contains one more “h” reaching the maximum of 61 URL’s. Each URL corresponds to different experiences of having coke. This is a unique type of campaign with Coke launching so many URL’s. Teens looking for creativity & delight. The game I played was the Bubble game, where users have to navigate a bubble away from falling ice cubes and straws in a glass filled with Coke. One can also submit what ahh means to them & will be utilized in the website.

Coca-Cola has worked with Wieden+Kennedy in Portland, Ore., to create the campaign. With the rapid growth of social media & smartphones, these campaigns provide a perfect opportunity for the teens to engage with the games & films. For the brand, this would help optimize which different experiences are performing well & eliminate the non performing experiences. Facebook app is also available for the campaign. Coke which is at the forefront of launching unique campaigns, had earlier launched open happiness campaign.

Google’s “x-default hreflang” for International Landing Pages

Websites which target globally many countries have usually a dropdown in the home page to select language & country. Sometimes they are configured to point visitors to localized pages by redirects or through changing the content to the user’s language. rel-alternate-hreflang annotation is a new way supported by Both Google & Yandex to specify homepages. This would look like

<link rel=”alternate” href=”http://website.com/&#8221;   hreflang=”x-default” />

<link rel=”alternate” href=”http://website.com/en-us&#8221;    hreflang=”en-us” />      Targetted for US

The new x-default hreflang attribute value tells the Google algorithm that website.com is the default page & doesn’t target any country or language. This helps webmasters set x-default hreflang attribute value to suit particular requirements of the country based websites. This can be done through sitemaps or through HTML coding. More info about the same can be had at official Google Webmaster Central blog

Dell India #ICanDoKuchBhi Twitter Contest

Dell India has launched a new campaign for the Inspiron series of notebooks. With the growing influence of digital marketing & social media, the campaign includes a twitter based promo called I Can Do Kuch Bhi. In this contest, one has to tweet about their passion with the use of technology including #icandokuchbhi. With the youths being the major users of social networks, this promo helps them create a great visibility for the brands.There is no limit to the number of tweets that one submits. Ten people with the most interesting tweets will be getting a Dell branded t-shirt along with their tweets printed on it. The contest was between Apr 27th to Apr 29th.

Related articles

• 18 Of The Coolest Indian Social Media Campaigns Of Quarter 1 2013 (lighthouseinsights.in)
• The Best Digital Marketing Tips For Video Games Ever (supercoolcreative.com)

 

Role of Digital Marketing in Medical Tourism in India

Digital marketing plays an important role in the medical tourism. Affordable healthcare in India has attracted many foreign nationals to seek for operation & treatment in India. Those desirous of getting treatment in India can have information on the available treatment through the internet. On the net, information is available through reviews, hospital websites & social networking profiles.

Hospitals should have a proper strategy in place to check & check the info on review websites. Any negative reviews would discourage those planning to seek treatment. The testimonials on the website offer crucial links & help develop a positive perception about the hospital. They should have a presence on all the major social networking sites like Facebook, twitter, google+, instagram & others. There should be regular blogging by leading consultants which would help drive away any fear related to getting treated in a foreign country. SEO on the websites can be done to optimize for top keywords which drives traffic. With mobile & tablet browsing on the rise, the sites should be optimized for them as well. Instagram, Pinterest & other visual based marketing sites provide a great platform by posting pics of the facilities & equipment available. Users can be involved by asking questions, reviewing the feedback given by them & others. Apps can also be developed for Android, iphone & other platforms. Cutting edge medical care helps in increasing the life span.

Top hospitals in India like Apollo, Manipal Hospitals, Fortis Hospitals, Narayana hrudayala  & others have a presence on Facebook & other social media sites. This would help them establish visibility, drive traffic to their sites & also help in medical tourism.

Related articles

• Medical tourism: A global stampede for affordable care (madrastourist.wordpress.com)
• Medical Tourism Now Includes Things Like ‘Dialysis Cruises’ (jaunted.com)
• Cohen on Medical Tourism (lsolum.typepad.com)

SRK’s Frooti Vs Katrina’s Slice Vs Imran Khan & Parineeti Chopra’s Maaza

SRK quenches his thirst with the soccer team watching him. The soccer team grows up watching him drink Frooti. A perfect combination of SRK, soccer team & the background music gives a great visibility for Mango frooti. Katrina kaif is the brand ambassador for Slice. Slice advt has Katrina kaif, a young man and another woman with a background music. The man chooses between Slice & another mango drink. Imran Khan and Parineeti Chopra are the brand ambassadors for Maaza. They would be featured for the first time for this ad. This mango drink is from Coco Cola.

So this summer, there is a fight among Parle’s Frooti, Coke’s Maaza & Pepsi’s Slice. With the summer reaching its peak & to quench the thirst, companies are roping in brand ambassadors to build visibility & reach customers easily. Brands are roping Bollywood & Cricket stars as ambassadors to their products.