With the growing popularity of social media, it is no wonder that various Indian brands from different industry verticals have joined the bandwagon and have started leveraging (at least) the well known platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
In this post, we will look at 5 Indian brand Facebook pages which, I thought have used the platform quite well and have built a good engaged fan following. These are not necessarily the top 5 brands about which you probably read in every other article. But these are the pages which I have found worthy of note.
#1 Surf Excel Matic
Product/ Service: Washing Powder
Fan Base*: Around 80,000
This page has got a nice mix of posts and status updates such as “Guess the Star” wherein the users are asked to guess the celebrity looking at the distorted picture or by looking at the childhood picture of the celebrity, some nice quotes, interesting questions, useful kitchen tips. Sometimes there are updates on what is good about the product etc. Mostly the updates are not related to ‘Surf Excel Matic’ as a product but are more for engagement and involvement. Because once you get audience involvement on the page, even the promotional updates get better response as those are viewed as ‘knowledge sharing’ updates.
#2 Tata Docomo
Product/ Service: Telecommunication
Fan Base*: Around 4 Million
This is the topmost brand on Facebook in terms of fan following, daily additions and ranking. This page has got a nice mix of some well known quotations, latest news about sports, politics, current affairs, funny videos and sometimes, videos of TV commercials of the brand. For some duration, the brand heavily promoted the tagline “Keep it Simple Silly” by using it in almost all the updates – without making it too obvious but at the same time keeping it interesting.
#3 Goli Vada Pav
Product/ Service: Food/ Beverages
Fan Base*: Around 35,000
The brand sells ‘Vada Pav’ which can be termed as burger of India and is very popular in Maharashtra state, especially in Mumbai city. It therefore appears that the brand wants to connect with fan base which is very region specific. What I liked about the page is the name (Vada Pav +Amchi Mumbai + Cutting Chai = Awesomeness) and the fact that not even once the page promotes the products of the brand. The updates have a nice combination of humor (through jokes, one-liners), philosophical quotations, poetry (with due credit given to the composer) and funny videos.
#4 Tech, Style and Gizmos
Product/ Service: Technology
Fan Base*: Around 61,000
This page promises to offer latest updates about new technology, gadgets and gizmos. The page is fairly live with regular, cutting-edge and latest updates. It talks about new tabs, appealing gadgets, mobile games etc. What I liked about this page is that the language of the updates is very simple and easy to understand even for someone who is non-technical. Probably that’s the reason that the fan base of this page is growing steadily. Along with this, I also see some interesting quizzes, questions, puzzles and sometimes there are also some humorous cartoons. Overall an appealing page.
#5 Jiyo Life
Product/ Service: Travel and Tourism
Fan Base*: Around 350,000
This page is by Club Mahindra, which is one of the well known Holidays & Leisure Services companies with a very wide network of Holiday Resorts in India. This page aims at creating a community of travel enthusiasts and holiday seekers. It nicely integrates some informative articles related to travel, health, food from its blog into the status updates. Along with some useful information about exquisite travel places, the page also shares information about various upcoming festivals worldwide so that people can plan their vacations and visits.
Have you come across any such interesting and nice Facebook pages which you would like to share with fellow readers?
*The numbers mentioned in Fan Base are as of August 2011
Very informative post, Radha. It's really interesting to know that some very traditionally operated businesses are exploring social media to this extent.
ReplyDelete@Vishal: Thank you. Yes, many brands are exploring social media and that too in a very interesting way :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this article. Very informative. One more brand from India, i would like add here is Zoomin - https://www.facebook.com/zoomin
ReplyDeleteI am quite impressed the way they are utilizing power of social media.
@Gaurav: Thanks Gaurav for sharing the link and I am glad to know that you found the article informative :)
ReplyDeleteQuite informative.
ReplyDeleteFlipKart also has close to 800K fans following (https://www.facebook.com/flipkart)
@Sachin: Thank you!
ReplyDelete@Himanshu: Thanks! Yes, Flipkart also is a good page. I chose the pages which not only have good fan following but also offer a good variety in their updates to ensure engagement.
Nice information. Its interesting to note that social media tools like Facebook and Twitter helps in increasing brand penetration. Take the example of Snapdeal.com - They had website and with there Facebook fanpage they are reaching target audience. It also depends on who is the target customer.
ReplyDeleteWhats your view on surfexcelmatic, how are they able to pull such a fan base on FB?
@Tushar: Thank you.
ReplyDeleteThere are various ways which brands are using to increase their fan base. I had written in past about 'Making Facebook Fan Pages a Success' at http://radhagiri.blogspot.com/2011/05/making-your-facebook-fan-page-success.html.
As for Surf Excel Matic, I landed on their page through Facebook ads. So I am sure that is one of the primary ways it is adopting.
This blog is useful for every digital marketing agencyworking for digital advertising purposes.
ReplyDelete@Ricky: Thank you!
ReplyDeleteNice research. Interesting to know the growing importance of social networking in marketing.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I too used Facebook quite effectively to market my fiction short stories book COCKTAIL and I think many more copies were sold online (thanks to Facebook and Flipkart) than in the traditional way through bookstores. Yes, internet marketing is getting inextricably intertwined with social networking. Looking forward to more such interesting articles from you.
@Vikram: Thanks for sharing your success story with social media and I am glad to know that you found this article interesting :)
ReplyDeleteSocial Media is rapidly emerging as the next big frontier for customer engagement and interactions.now social media has become even a tool for socializing.
ReplyDeleteand their is a change in behavior of Consumer shifting towards digital devices,Customers are in a stronger position today as anyone can voice opinion through social media that enables near-real-time responses.
and dere is a great oppturnity for brands to use this tool.
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ReplyDeleteThanks for this post...its really interesting to write article on Internet Marketing India,, i also like your article...
ReplyDelete