JOIN US»A new study on how corporate India is using Facebook hints at a growing paradox. Corporate India is embracing social media, especially Facebook, aggressively. The number of ‘fans’ - people who follow a company on Facebook - is exploding. But the number of active fans - those who interact with the companies through comments, shares and other ways - is declining.
The study looked at 10 industries – from apparel and automobiles to telecom and travel. In the six months between January 2012 and August 2012, the period covered by the study, the number of fans in half of these industries grew in double figure. The rate of growth in travel and technology was
15 per cent. Telecom and health grew at just below 10 per cent.
If you look at individual companies, you will get a better idea of how fast they have grown on Facebook.
Tata Docomo fans grew from 5 to 8.7 million. Fastrack fans from 2.3 to 4.2 million; Tata Nano fans from 1.4 lakhs to 1.9 million, a jump of 92 per cent. IDBI and LIC, brands you don’t usually associate with social media, also grew at 77 per cent and 58 per cent respectively to gather 7.1 and 6.1 lakh fans.
The growth will continue to soar as Facebook (53+ million users in India) has touched just half of the internet users (120+ million) in the country. In industries like apparel, jewellery and watches the growth is still slow. Given the youth focus of these industries, you can expect them to pick up speed in the coming days.
Now the bad news. The engagement percentage, an indicator of active fans, has fallen steeply in all industries except health, food and travel. The decline is -67 per cent in banks and finance, - 39 per cent in telecom and -34 in automobiles. Engagement dipped for Acer India from 59 to 7.6, Tata Nano from 14.2 to 6.6 and Shoppers Stop from 4.9 to 2.8. The pattern holds good to many other
companies.
Expanding the fan base has been the easy part; set up a Facebook account, spend on advertising, you get people to ‘Like’ you . But to keep them coming back is a struggle, which will need new thinking and approach. For now, much of the large communities created at some expense by these companies are lying dormant.
The study by Ketchum Sampark mentions other interesting statistics. Indian Facebook users grew by nearly 30% in this six month period. Thirty-three per cent of these users are in big towns; Mumbai has more Facebook users than New York. Sixty-three per cent of users are in places that do not rank among the top 20 cities. The future of internet in India seems to be heading to small towns.