Samsung Mobiles (India) – Social media engagement lessons
Samsung Mobile (India) was recently voted the top brand in social media for 2011. Following Samsung Mobiles are the likes of Ford, Maruti Suzuki, Nike, Flipkart, Mahindra & Mahindra and a few others. Noteworthy is the fact that Sony Ericsson is at #10 and Nokia is at #13 (the only mobile phone brands to feature in the list). No Blackberry, no iPhone! With over 1.2 million fans on their official facebook page and active engagement Samsung has quite a lead. Probably, Blackberry and iPhone’s India social strategy teams still have ground to cover, and we hope that they get cracking pretty quickly! 
Team GenY Medium attempts to put a structure to what is perhaps working for Samsung, giving examples, snippets & snapshots where necessary to illustrate the salient points. There are 6 main points worth discussing.
1. Daily engagement is key
Its like communicating with your spouse or partner is very important to keep the relationship going strong. How many times have you heard about “long distance” relationships not working out? Continuity in engagement is important. Samsung’s 2-3 posts every day (all meaningful) seems to be the right frequency for its audience. Announcing new models, new apps for mobiles, initiatives etc. .. or just celebrating awards and recognition – Samsung’s doing it all!
2. Announcing all new introductions
Whether it be a new Samsung series, a new model, new games in the Samsung app store – the audience could and should be told. Unlike expensive commercial TV ads, this is cheap and the execution can be done in an office corner and a camera phone. Telling the news when it happens makes a lot of difference – it spreads the buzz immediately and feedback pours in the form of comments. Invaluable data can be collected to measure adoption of the new introduction – it is quick, steady or slow? Below are a few examples of how Samsung has introduced new features:
3. Use Social Media Research through meaningful polls
What do the consumer want? Did they like what we did with the latest model? What new designs could we work on? Social platform based polls can lead to thousands of answers without spending a penny. Samsung seems to have used it well. Here are a few examples:
4. Viral – Short and witty
The latest video on Holi – the festival of colors is one of the examples. There is another one on Samsung’s Window’s phone – one which has literally been made in the office corner with a camera phone it seems!
5. Targetted campaigns for a particular consumer segment
There are specific campaigns on the facebook platforms for specific consumer segments. In Samsung’s case a recent campaign focuses on one of the larger, growing segment: College students. The campaign is aptly named “The Smart Champ College.” Cost of the campaign is just 30 Laptops!
6. Crowd Generated Ideas
How would you like your campaigns to be done by your consumers? Social media allows that and there are many advantages: You learn to speak the language consumers understand – directly from them! Its relevant and its cheap. More importantly, consumers are engaged with the brand in the exercise. Too many birds in one shot, don’t you think? Here’s a recent example of how Samsung went about getting names suggestions for its Windows’ phone!
Samsung does that in style – Apart from changing its mast for Holi and doing a viral (see above), here is how it enjoyed Valentine’s day. Further below is how it announced its winning some prestigious awards.
- Celebrating together with consumers!
8. Corporate Social Responsibility
The last noteworthy point is how Samsung Mobiles have used the social platform to announce its corporate social responsibility program – Every Samsung Galaxy Note sold equals a notebook contributed to poor students in India. See the connect?
