editorial

This fortnight...
arketers take note. In January this year, Pope Benedict XVI referred to social media as the starting point of communication for many people who seek advice, ideas, information and answers. As he expanded on the theme, which was part of the annual message for World Communications Day, he became more specific. In an obvious reference to Twitter, he said, In concise phrases, often no longer than a verse from the Bible, profound thoughts can be communicated, as long as those taking part in the conversation do not neglect to cultivate their own inner lives. The papal thumbs up would have gladdened the hearts of many online players, whether they were interested in religion or not. Although brands and marketers have acknowledged the importance of social media for quite some time, they have learnt to use it effectively only recently. A mere presence on social media doesnt matter anymore. I know of a local kabab centre which accepts orders on Twitter and is doing good business. In this issues cover story, we havent looked at how offline brands use social media. The story is more about the relevance of social media for mass destinations such and news and content sites as well as ecommerce destinations. How are they using social media to drive traffic and generate business. Volume 3, Issue 7
Sreekant Khandekar Prasanna Singh
ExEcUTIVE EDITOR PUBLISHER EDITOR

Prajjal Saha

SENIOR LAYOUT ARTIST

Vinay Dominic Rajesh Kanwal

LOGISTIcS

April 1-15, 2012

Volume 3, Issue 7 ` 100

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ADVERTISING ENQUIRIES

ONLINe

Are news, content and e-commerce sites doing enough on social media platforms to attract traffic - and business?

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34 PLUS
kevin keller

Brand Imperatives
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New Superhero
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The Tata Teleservices man on How sex does not his journey so far. necessarily sell.

Abdul Khan

All Hype?

Daily Thanthis CEO loves to experiment.

Narendra Alambara

For instance, a recently launched sports website soon learnt that people wouldnt visit its social media page or like to be a fan, simply because they didnt know about the brand. It then made a smart move. It created separate pages for different sports - football, cricket and basketball, for example.
No Kidding
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Points of View

The social media users readily became fans of these dedicated pages, depending on their interests. It became so popular that the individual pages had five to 10 times more fans than the websites main pages. The other surprise is that, in many cases, traffic from social media websites to such sites was far higher than that from popular search engines.

Prajjal Saha prajjal.saha@afaqs.com

contents 46
slice

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Out-of-the-bottle
A number under the crown that could connect you to Katrina Kaif.

PLUS
tmi survey

Handset Hotlist Healthy Growth

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interview

Arvind Rajan
POv

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Parle vOdafOne-blackberry

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Social Media Marketing 31 Exploring India Life in a Metro More to Come

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Linkedins managing director on what it is planning.

26 Monitoring Agencies

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What does the formation of the Big Happy Family National Consumer Protection Whats happiness? Eating a cookie? Agency actually mean?

Return of the Boys

Introducing the prepaid BB messenger.

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