1.
Indian Companies on Twitter
A Usage Study
By Iffort– A Web Strategy & Digital Marketing Company
http://www.iffort.com | contact@iffort.com

2.
Indian Companies on Twitter
A Usage Study
Introduction This research, a first of its kind,
presents a brief summary about the
What seemed like chirps from birds 1 some
‘Indian businesses’
years back has now become an integral part
of our daily lives. Such has been the impact of that have established
‘Twitter’ that everybody in our environment, presence on ‘Twitter’ &
ranging from the common man to celebrities also underlines the purpose/s for
has become an integral user. In India, Twitter
which they are using it. The study
usage picked up slowly, but today India ranks
in the list of top 10 countries 2 in terms of was conducted with a reason to
twitter users. demonstrate the value aspect of
In India, Twitter
usage picked up
slowly, but today
India ranks in the list
of top 10 countries
in terms of twitter
users.
twitter as a micro-blogging tool
The growth of Twitter has spurred beyond when used by a brand. To conduct
leisure usage and now we are witnessing
brands embracing the medium and engaging
this study we selected 66 brands
in meaningful business-specific conversations from different industry verticals [9
through this channel. Whether it is B2B or in total].
B2C, there are many companies out there
which are using twitter for reasons like brand-
building, marketing, staying connected with
customers, taking their feedback etc.
1
Chirps from birds – The real definition of twitter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter
2
Source –
http://www.sysomos.com/insidetwitter/geography/
© Iffort 2010. www.iffort.com

3.
Indian Companies on Twitter
A Usage Study
Verticals that were profiled Observation Criterion
IT/ ITES Telecom FMCG The respective Twitter account profiles and
the tweets were observed on the following
Health care Internet Finance parameters –
Logistics Media Automobile Quantitative
• Joining date (date on which account was
The tweets were randomly monitored during the created)
working week i.e. Monday – Friday between November • Number of tweets (volume)
2009 & February 2010. • Last tweet date
• No. of followers / No. of following/ No. of
lists (Influence measure)
The cut-off criterion • No. of Retweets and reply via @
for selection was (Influence measure)
Brands with
Qualitative
• Minimum 100 followers
• Activity period spanning for minimum
1 month
• At least 50 tweets
• Conversation type (one-way, two-way)
• Tweet type (Informational, Retweets,
Conversational@)
© Iffort 2010. www.iffort.com

4.
Key Findings
A blueprint sketch, circa 2006, by Jack Dorsey, envisioning an SMS-based social network

5.
Indian Companies on Twitter
A Usage Study
Before starting this report, our hypothesis their customers and their profile also shows
was that the bulk of brands would be using the employees who are managing the twitter
twitter as a broadcasting platform. From the account.
nature of the tweets, it becomes evident that
several brands are focused towards the Law of Averages (How do they fair together)
Average replies – 33.395 %
‘conversational’ aspects with emphasis
Average daily tweets – 7.15
towards customer-service.
The leader-board is as follows:
When put together, the
How did they fare?
Most active account – MSN India with
average reply % for the brands
38,857 tweets was 33.39% which means that
Most followed brand– MTV India 56,560
followers on an average, 1/3rd of tweets
Most conversational brand – ICICI Bank
98.32 % tweets
are replies beginning with ‘@’.
Most Re-tweeted brand – Tatadocomo
31% tweets
Top Inactive Brands
Oldest brand – Bookmyshow.com
However, not all the brands have been able to
(Present since October 2007)
Top Inactive Brands – Acer India (Inactive use the medium in the right way. One classic
since November) & Apollo hospitals example of that is Acer India’s twitter account
(No tweets since July 2009 onwards) which has been inactive since November
2009. The other prominent profile is that of
Apollo Hospitals who haven’t posted a single
As expected, the most tweets are made by a
tweet since July 2009.
news brand, MSN India with almost 40,000
tweets. MSN India’s twitter account is setup Airtel Broadband’s case
using twitter-feed which automates the
tweets from the news site every time it is Airtel Broadband had marked its presence on
published. MTV India is the most followed twitter with its account impatient_ones.
brand, showcasing its popularity amongst the However, after some initial tweets the
youth and also the fact that India’s twitter account was inactivate, starting from period
audience comprises of youngsters. ICICI Bank of June 2009 and at the beginning of this year
is the most conversational brand on twitter the account was surprisingly deleted. Despite
and is primarily using it for responding to our research, the real reasons for the deletion
queries from both current & prospect of the account are not known.
customers.
Infact, it won’t be surprising to see other
banks joining twitter to engage with their
customers. One classic example of how banks
can use twitter is through Bank of America’s
twitter account http://twitter.com/bofa_help.
They maintain complete transparency for
© Iffort 2010. www.iffort.com

6.
Indian Companies on Twitter
A Usage Study
ICICI Bank offers support through twitter to
their banking customers. There are customers
Twitter Application – who are frustrated with the bank’s service
and haven’t received support through
Customer service
A happy customer tells one friend,
an unhappy customer tells
everybody.
Twitter is a fantastic tool conventional methods. For such cases, ICICI
for resolution of customer Bank is constantly monitoring tweets to
problems, not only is it fast but address concerns with Net Banking,
it also provides cost advantages for transaction charges, problems with debit
businesses when compared with other card.
methods like phone etc. Through Twitter
when the company staff, provides replies to The graph below shows the daily conversation
customers, it creates a positive image for the tweet trends for ICICIBank_Care (from Jan 19
entire brand. to Feb 18). 4 The peak point was reached when
the no. of tweets exceeded 25.
Dell India has a twitter account to handle
customer queries related to showroom info,
personal computer details, computer
shipment and payment details info. Dell’s
India account is in-line with the computer
manufacturer’s global initiatives. Dell has a
dedicated section of its website,
www.dell.com/twitter that provides details of
the name and purpose of its more than 30
different feeds. 3
3 4
Clear goals key for brands using Twitter Graph Source
http://www.warc.com/News/TopNews.asp?ID=26 http://twitteranalyzer.com/ms.aspx?userId=iciciba
268 nk_care#
© Iffort 2010. www.iffort.com

7.
Indian Companies on Twitter
A Usage Study
News Broadcast Promotion & Buzz
In India, the use of twitter as a news Organizations have started adapting twitter to
streaming source was widely realized during showcase their latest offerings, promote
the Mumbai terrorist attacks in 2008 5. product launches, discounts & contests etc.
There are specific campaigns around twitter
Companies like Kotak cards are posting where users win free prizes for using the
updates of the company and industry news to company’s name in tweet hashtags. 6
discuss it and with their twitter followers.
Nokia Music India uses twitter to promote
album & latest mobile phone launches in the
Nokia music store. They regularly conduct
twitter contests to drive user participation.
The twitter account of Colors TV channel is
synched with Facebook and their tweets are
about promotion of new shows & user-
reactions to reality show eliminations.
5 6
First Hand Account of Terrorist Attacks in India Moonfruit Twitter Promotion
on Twitter, Flickr http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/917273/Mo
http://techcrunch.com/2008/11/26/first-hand- onfruit-Twitter-promotion-proves-massive-
accounts-of-terrorist-attacks-in-india-on-twitter/ success/
© Iffort 2010. www.iffort.com

8.
Indian Companies on Twitter
A Usage Study
Graphical Story
Twitter in the IT Sector
The reason why we chose the IT sector for further analysis was because the large-scale Indian tech
companies are driven by processes and proven methodologies. The observations of how they use
open conversation social media platforms like Twitter are certainly very interesting.
Conversation Measure
Every third tweet that Microsoft India sends is conversational & is marked with ‘@’ reply. A key
reason is that their official twitter account isn’t automated and is managed by a team of real people.
Microsoft India is followed by HP IPG India & Capgemini respectively.
© Iffort 2010. www.iffort.com

9.
Indian Companies on Twitter
A Usage Study
Retweeting Aspects
Retweeting is the phenomenon of copying a tweet from someone and sharing it within your
network. Popularly referred to as RT, retweeting contributes to a conversational ecology 7 & is a
fantastic viral source for content promotion.
While typically the focus is to spread news, engage in conversations, brands often retweet when
they are the subject of a conversation e.g. a customer expressing his happiness with a company’s
product. That said, there are instances when brands occasionally retweet general messages which
are not company specific e.g. HP IPG India’s twitter account HPPrint4life.
The figure displays the RT percentage for various
brands where the wheel is lead by HP IPG India
followed by Cognizant & Zensar.
7
Tweet, Tweet, Retweet: Conversational Aspects of Retweeting on Twitter
http://www.danah.org/papers/TweetTweetRetweet.pdf
© Iffort 2010. www.iffort.com

10.
Indian Companies on Twitter
A Usage Study
How to Use Twitter The Road Ahead
Illustrations
Twitter’s penetration in organizations will
Customer Service (Tata Photon) continue to increase on both sides of the
spectrum. Conversations between users and
brands which are managed by humans with
an emotional quotient would continue to
thrive. It also implies that the focus would
lessen on one-way broadcasts where twitter
accounts simply translate into monotonous
RSS feeds. More companies will start using
twitter for conducting market research,
Consumer Recommendations (SuKam) listening to users and keeping a track on the
competition.
Community Feedback (Cafe Coffee Day)
Company/Industry Updates (Infosys)
Product Promotion (Samsung Mobiles)
© Iffort 2010. www.iffort.com

11.
About Iffort
Iffort is an India based web-strategy & social
media consulting firm that plans, creates and
executes a thorough roadmap to deliver
tangible value for its clients. Our range of
services include full-spectrum web-strategy,
social media marketing, enterprise 2.0
consulting. For further information visit us at
www.iffort.com
E-Mail: contact@iffort.com
Phone: 0120.4221295
Mobile: 91.9891700977
Twitter: twitter.com/iffort
Twitter images via www.twitter.com . Image copyrights belong Disclaimer:
to Twitter and/or respective individuals.
Iffort reserves the right not to be responsible for the
topicality, correctness, completeness, or quality of the
information provided. Claims regarding damage caused
by the use of any information provided, including any
kind of information which is incomplete or incorrect, will
therefore be rejected. References made in this study to
brands do not constitute an endorsement by Iffort of
those organizations and their products.