Bollywoodhungama: Facebook's dishum factory

Name of Business: Bollywoodhungama.com

Website URL: www.bollywoodhungama.com/

Industry: Entertainment

Target Audience: Bollywood fans across demographics

Category of Business

The parent company, Hungama Digital Media Entertainment Pvt. Ltd, was incorporated in 1999, as an online promotions agency. In the short span of a little more than ten years the company is today a Digital Entertainment, Mobile Services and Promo Marketing firm. Hungama Digital Media Entertainment is headquartered in Mumbai.

Bollywoodhungama.com caters to fans of all things…well Bollywood. With the objective of ‘Bringing the fans closer to their Stars’, Bollywoodhungama.com has launched several initiatives, including live video and text chats with Bollywood personalities, India’s first ever Bollywood video quiz, exclusive production blogs of latest and upcoming films and movie reviews.

Marketing Efforts and Results

Bollywoodhungama.com launched its Facebook page in May 2010. It held a series of contests, giving away merchandise to the winners. Today, there is a roaring community of more than 232,000 fans, who look forward to information through posts and updates on the latest from Bollywood. The focus here is on interactivity, with fans being encouraged to contribute actively to discussions, posts, contests et al. For instance, the website has a weekly update called ‘Guess Who’ where they post an image of a celebrity with their back to the camera. Members are required to figure out who the celebrity is. This concept is replicated on Facebook and typically more than 500 answers are posted by fans. People not only look forward to these fun postings, but also keep coming back to know the correct answer. While the Facebook page is used as a marketing tool for content on the site, the page also features exclusive content not available on the site.

Bollywoodhungama.com has a strong Twitter presence as well, with more than 11,000 followers. The focus has been on keeping users updated on the latest on the website. Typically, a short description of the story, along with the link to the full story is put up as a tweet. YouTube has proved extremely effective as a social media channel. Users can view exclusive interviews with leading celebrities, video features and behind-the-scenes content, among other things. Since its launch, the YouTube channel has received more than 2,436,973 views.

One of the most powerful things that Bollywoodhungama.com has done is to integrate its social media efforts with its website. For instance, the video quiz - ‘Bollywood Ka Baap’ - has been integrated via applications on Orkut and Facebook.

“Since inception, Hungama has focussed on creating properties that help brands interact with their end consumers. Using internet, then and social media now, brands have the opportunity of interacting with their consumers, connect with them and create an ecosystem where the users and the brand can stay connected. As compared to traditional forms of communication, the social media environment allows us to create continuous brand recall by using user friendly messages. Today, a brand may not necessarily use strategic messaging, but use tactical communication methods to stay top of mind with the consumer,” says Siddhartha Roy, COO, Hungama Digital Media.

“For instance, when Bollywoodhungama.com interacts with its members on Facebook, it doesn’t say ‘Come visit my website for the latest in Bollywood news’. Instead the messaging could vary from ‘Hey guys, who is your favourite actor?’ to ‘Did you hear that XYZ celebrity has signed a new film?’ Reactions generated by communication of this nature create brand recall as the user is involved with your brand. Therefore, with social media, we have been able to create constant interaction with consumers which in turn helps us create evangelists which leads to better brand value,” Mr. Roy adds.

Marketing Investment

No direct investments in social media. However, social media has been integrated into every aspect of content and marketing delivery, so all team members contribute to the social media marketing effort.

Book for every child through social media

Name of Business: Pratham Books

Website URL: www.prathambooks.org

Industry: Education (not-for-profit)

Target Audience: Everybody. Pratham wants to put a book in every child’s hand. So anyone who helps them get there is a target.

Category of Business

Pratham Books is a not-for-profit organization that publishes affordable children's books in multiple Indian languages. Their mission is “to see a book in every child’s hand” and create a “Reading India”. In the last seven years, Pratham Books has published over six million books in up to 11 languages.

Marketing Efforts and Results

Being a non-profit organization, the folks at Pratham Books have made time for people. The same is visible in their social media strategy. Pratham Books realized that it was impossible to accomplish their mission alone. The need of the hour was to collaborate with other publishers, writers, translators, parents, etc to be able to reach the last child. Thus, they began their social media efforts to create a community around reading and their efforts have reaped results.

Pratham Books has methodically tapped on the strengths of multiple social media platforms. “Social media, to us, is not a marketing tool and we have never used it as a marketing tool. Social media has been crucial to us building our social publishing strategy and has allowed us to create a very strong community around our mission of ‘A Book in Every Child's Hand,’ says Maya Hemant, Digital Community Manager, Pratham Books.

The organization maintains a blog - blog.prathambooks.org. This talks about publishing, reading, literacy, kidlit, learning, non-profits, events and more. The posts are a treat for anyone who appreciates creativity. Guest blogs have also been welcomed. Pratham Books sees Twitter as a space where they can engage with the community, share ideas, ask for help, get feedback, listen to complaints, participate and mobilize volunteers, to help their reach their goal. Pratham started using Twitter early in 2009 and has more than 3,000 followers. “Growth has been purely organic and we have built a large, geographically diverse community passionate about reading and always ready and willing to help. Twitter and tweeple have helped us connect with children who run a mobile library for other children in Bengal, bikers who have travelled across states and distributed our books to government schools, housewives who informally teach under privileged children in their locality, parents who coax school administrations to hold book fairs with our books, marketing experts who help better our strategy, organizations that need books and want us to help them in setting up their libraries, authors and illustrators who want to work with us, developers who have developed iPad applications for us and more,” says Hemant.

The organization has uploaded many of its books (available under Creative Commons licenses) on Scribd, so they can reach a wider audience. These books can be remixed/repurposed by the community to suit their purpose. There have been cases when their books have been translated into Lojban (a constructed language), Assamese, French and Spanish.

Pratham Books has more than 1,600 fans on Facebook, where it updates information from the blog as well as about the events organized by them. It uses this platform to communicate with the community. The fan page has a very personal and warm approach. Pratham started using Facebook towards the middle of 2009 and has built a tightly knit community. “One of the things that we do differently is that we do not use Facebook, or any of our other channels, to talk solely about our work or market ourselves. This is very important to us because we want our efforts to be larger than just our organization and to reflect the cause of reading,” says Hemant.

Documentation of the initiatives taken by Pratham Books can be found on Flickr. The organization also uses this platform to upload their Creative Commons licensed illustrations. Again the purpose is to reach more viewers and give the community the flexibility to repackage / reuse the content.

One can find Pratham Books on YouTube as well. Documentation of the work they do and information about some of their initiatives are uploaded here. The organization creates trailers to let people know about their books. Audio books, recorded by Radio Mirchi, are uploaded at Soundcloud.

“A key take away is that patience, authenticity and transparency are fundamental building blocks needed to build a successful social media presence and more importantly, a strong community,” says Hemant. Their social media and publishing efforts were recognized at the IndiaSocial Case Challenge, where they won the first prize.

Social Media Marketing Investment

Pratham Books does not allocate a budget for its social media marketing efforts. There is one person, who anchors the effort, while every member of the team.

8 reasons why Entrepreneurs must blog

4 blogging tips and 3 ways to promote it
"You got to be kidding, on top of EVERYTHING else I have to do myself, you want me to blog. Seriously, do you even know what it takes to be an entrepreneur?" Highly censored conversation with a friend and recent entrepreneur who wanted me to work out a social media marketing strategy. Having tried, and failed, at setting out on my own I do know what it means to head your own start-up and that is why I feel a blog is a critical element for any start-up. Here are my reasons:

Share your passion: Entrepreneurs are some of the most passionate people I have met. They totally believe in their idea and their ability to make it big. It is this passion/conviction that gives them the courage to give up six figure and more salaries and trudge the uncertain path of having their own set up. Unfortunately, their passion is only visible to their family and employees. A blog is an excellent way to share that passion with the world. You never know, who else might catch the infection...a VC, potential customers, potential business partners.

Share your expertise: Many entrepreneurs are domain experts. They have spent years honing their skills and knowledge and now want to use that for themselves. If you fall in that category, you have a lot to share. A blog is a great way to share your expertise and to make your clients comfortable with your company. Your knowledge will help build credibility for your company and go a long way in solving the one question most start-ups have to deal with: "Why should I go with you?"

Blogs are not websites: Blogs are personal, they are not the same as your company website. A website represents the formal online presence of your company. That is where you have details about your business, your products/services, customer interface and even your shopping cart. A blog on the other hand is an outlet for you, your personality and lets your community understand the person behind the show.

Connect and share: Helps you connect with peers in the industry or other start ups. Many of them share the issues, concerns you have or could have the solution you are looking for. A blog helps you get to them, and helps them understand your needs. If you are blogging on your expertise, you will be surprised as to how quickly a community forms around your blog.

Test your ideas: A blog is a great place to test your ideas. The feedback will help you refine and better it before implementation. If it is a bad idea, the community will let you know.

Social Networking Tool: Blogs are at the center of the whole social networking Web2.0 buzz. You can connect your blog to your Facebook page, twitter handle, Youtube channel and improve your chances of getting noticed.

Google loves blogs: Google and other search engines love blogs. Also there are a number of blogging directories that you can list in. A great way to get yourself and your business noticed.


Lorenzo Von Matterhorn effect: Okay, I picked that up from a cheesy dating rom-com. Basically in that particular episode the character has a dating playbook. One of the tricks he uses is the Lorenzo Von Matterhorn. Basically, he sets up a web presence for this fictional character--Lorenzo Von Matterhorn, where Matterhorn is an adventurous European billionaire. He goes to the bar, drops his name and goes away. The girl does a quick search for the name, finds the fake news all over Google and the guy gets his girl. TV dramatics apart, the reality is everyone is checking out potential business partners, investments, employees, employers. Having a strong web presence will go a long way in making the deal happen. A blog is the cornerstone of your online presence.

Yes, I know its takes time and effort (I've already spend three hours on this post and figure I still have a couple of hours to go) so here are four ways to do it really quickly and painlessly:

1) If writing is not your thing, consider a video blog (vlog) or even a podcast. You can actually blog straight into the webcam on your laptop and post. It's that easy.
2) Doesn't have to be long detailed posts full of wit or wisdom. It's personal, so develop a style that works for you. I'm a writer, I like writing so I do it. You can share an idea and that's it. Your community will get used to your style.
3) Don't worry about the writing style. Keep it conversational...but do try and avoid an over casual texting approach...that is irritating to read.
4) Repost. I actually write about one original post a week. Rest I repost other posts, videos, slides that I think are relevant for my community.


Finally, if I've convinced you to start blogging do these to get noticed by your community:

1) Republish: See if your posts can be republished. Mine are republished in Entrepreneur India, biztech2.com and sometimes the big daddy in my space socialmediatoday.com also picks up my posts.
2) Share: On Linkedin, twitter and Facebook. I have set up a fan page for my blog on Facebook and have joined relevant communities on Linkedin. They drive a lot of traffic my way. Twitter too helps as, increasingly people in this community are beginning to follow my tweets.
3) Outsource setting up and marketing of the blog: It has actually taken me more time to set up and market my blog, than post on it. I did it, because I had the time and because I wanted to see what works. But you're probably not going to have the time to write & market your blog and run your business. So consider outsourcing it. There are enough and more firms that will do everything from setting up the blog to marketing it. It is also not every expensive. I have compiled a list of social media marketing companies...take your pick or just google for them. You can then focus on the message, while they take care of selecting the right platform and ensuring maximum audience reach.

Six lessons from five companies that use social media

Between them they have more than a million facebook fans and twitter followers. On an average they have been on social media platforms for less than a year. Barring one, they do not have a budget or staff for social media marketing activities. Yet, they acknowledge that social media marketing is the "backbone of their marketing efforts."  These are the lessons from the five companies that have understood social media and have used it to grow their business.

Listen: "Social Media have a feedback mechanism built-in, which needless to say benefits both the customer and the brand," says Sachin Bansal, CEO and Co-founder of Flipkart.com (an online bookstore). "The key is to listen to what is being said about you and to you. Users will be brutally honest if you give them an opportunity. The onus lies on you and your brand about what you do with the feedback." Flipkart.com has done very well by listening to its customers. The site has close to 700,000 fans on Facebook and has used conversations both as a tool to sell products as well as build features users want on the site.

Integrate: Giveindia.org, a charity portal that lets users donate to their favorite charity, has used an integrated social media marketing campaign to reach out to donors across the world. Their facebook page links back to their site. Their landing page on causes.com links back to their facebook page, twitter handle, blog and also has videos of giveindia events that are posted on youtube. This 360 degree social media integration has helped the organisation reach its message effectively to the widest possible audience. Indiamart too uses an integrated approach that includes blogging, facebook, twitter, youtube and photo sharing sites Photobucket and Flickr. This all round approach has helped the site engage with its audience of SMEs and keep them informed about products and services on the site as well as general developments in the sector. “Social media marketing has become a very strong medium to reach out to a wider audience. Social media platforms in the form of Facebook, Twitter, Youtube have made it possible to broadcast messages and news to a larger base of business persons and the like. Its ability to engage with the stakeholders irrespective of geographical barriers has helped us penetrate SME space to a large extent,” says Dinesh Agarwal, Founder & CEO, IndiaMART.com

Engage: One site that has learned the value of engaging with its audience is pagalguy.com. The site prepares students for MBA entrance exams and has been active on Social Media since 2008. Pagalguy realized early social media is ideal for interacting with its students and prospectives. The company uses its facebook page for contests, polls and surveys. It does not duplicate content between its facebook page and its website. “We recently launched a survey to rank business schools and saw around 9,000 clicks from facebook in 20 days. This was a phenomenal way to reach out to our current and new users,” says CEO Allwin Agnel. Legal website Lawisgreek.com also uses its social media platforms to create a level of interaction with its audience. This, the company believes, has resulted in a loyal customer base and one that actively contributes to the growth of the site and therefore the business. On its twitter account too Law is Greek encourages conversations between its experts and its customers.

Use Discussion boards: For a specialized service like Lawisgreek, discussion boards are a great way to connect with their audiences...in this case lawyers and people in need of legal advice. The site is active on Linkedin and regularly participates in relevant discussion boards. This helps create awareness as well as drive traffic. Palash Das, from the Strategic Alliances division of LawIsGreek.com, said, “Social media marketing is the backbone of our marketing initiative. This is what has helped us reach out to our target audience, engage them and create our brand.”

Inform not just advertise: Indiamart, lawisgreek and pagalguy have learnt to provide a wide spectrum of relevant information on their social media platforms. For example: you will find interesting discussions on news--everything from a UP Khap Panchayat ruling on Jeans to Advani demanding black money from Swiss bank be returned can be found on the lawisgreek facebook page. Indiamart uses its platforms to inform about government policy and overall developments in the SME sector, while pagalguy limits advertising its services to its website.

Social Media Marketing is really free: Barring lawisgreek.com (which has a minuscule budget for social media marketing), the others have used existing resources to set up and run their social media marketing. All those fan pages and followers have come at little extra cost, thereby truly bringing home the advantages of this medium.

Case Study: Indiamart uses social media to connect with SMEs

Name of Business: IndiaMART

Website URL: http://www.indiamart.com/

Industry: B2B Marketplace

Target Audience: Bulk buyers, bulk suppliers, manufacturers, exporters, service providers, SMEs and MSMEs

Category of Business

IndiaMART.com is India's largest online B2B marketplace. The platform is aimed at connecting buyers with suppliers. Through this platform, Indian businesses can hope to gain global exposure and conduct business with companies across the world. There are more than 1,000,000 companies that have profiles on the website. IndiaMART.com aims at providing its members cost-effective solutions for business promotion. The site offers its members options like premium listings, portal sponsorships and banner advertising to enhance their online visibility.

Marketing Efforts

IndiaMART.com has great confidence in the power of social media marketing as a medium of reaching out to the target market. It has a presence on various social networking sites.

The company began using Facebook in 2009. The company sees Facebook as a “consistent medium of brand promotion.” IndiaMART.com uses its Facebook account to provide SMEs specific latest news and information about current trends. It does this through regular updates on its wall. Through this medium, the company is able to share information about various business aspects, such as trade shows, with its members.

IndiaMART.com has a meager presence on Twitter. Its Twitter account has less than 500 followers. A restricting factor could be that most of the tweets are promotional, rather than what social networking is actually about, i.e. being social.

IndiaMART.com also uses Youtube to share videos of their media coverage, including interviews of their CEO, as well as success stories of their clients. The company uses Photbucket and Flickr to share pictures of their products and events. Blogger has been used to educate SMEs (small and medium enterprises) on how to better handle their business operations, share key announcements from IndiaMART.com and related news. IndiaMART.com also has a presence on social bookmarking sites like delicious and Stumbleupon.

“Social media marketing has become a very strong medium to reach out to a wider audience. Social media platforms in the form of Facebook, Twitter, Youtube have made it possible to broadcast messages and news to a larger base of business persons and the like. Its ability to engage with the stakeholders irrespective of geographical barriers has helped us penetrate SME space to a large extent,” says Dinesh Agarwal, Founder & CEO, IndiaMART.com.

Result of Efforts

IndiaMART.com has 58,351 fans on Facebook. Many of their fans are very active and freely exchange their thoughts, suggestions and opinions here. IndiaMART.com and other marketplaces generate more than 40 million page views per month. IndiaMART.com’s three-month Alexa global traffic rank is 1,391. Its Indian traffic rank is 108.

Case Study: Pagalguy.com a hit on Facebook and Twitter

Name of Business: PaGaLGuY.com

Website URL: www.pagalguy.com/

Industry: Education

Target Audience: People who are interested in getting a graduate degree in management

Category of Business

PaGaLGuY.com is an online platform for MBA preparatory resources. The platform was founded in 2002 with an aim to enable MBA applicants make informed decisions. More than 700,000 MBA applicants access the platform every month. The website provides resources to help with preparing for MBA entrance exams (like the CAT, GMAT and TOEFL) as well as admission interviews. PaGaLGuY.com is also a place where MBA applicants help each other by sharing information, suggestions and experiences.

Marketing Efforts and Results

PaGaLGuY.com has a strong social media presence. It has close to 6,000 fans on its Facebook fan page. The fan page was created in 2008 and sustained a good rate of growth in fans. PaGaLGuY.com facilitates interaction as well as promotes contests through this page. It does not believe in duplicating content on its site and its facebook page. So, the interactions are unique and more meaningful.

“Recently we launched our survey for business school rankings and we saw around 9,000 clicks on our application from facebook over a period of 20 days. This was a phenomenal way to reach out to our current and new users,” says CEO Allwin Agnel.

PaGaLGuY.com has a twitter account as well, where it has more than 3,100 followers. It began the endeavor in 2010. The platform is used to announce new stories to its followers. The followers on Twitter and fans on Facebook have grown organically—no marketing monies invloved. PaGaLGuY.com uploads videos of events and news on YouTube.

The website has experienced huge success with its forum, which has more than 2 million discussion posts. MBA applicants can find useful stuff out there on MBA preparation and admissions.

PaGaLGuY.com’s three-month global Alexa traffic rank is 7,569. Its Indian traffic rank is 480.

Marketing Investment

PaGaLGuY.com has not outsourced its initiatives in social networking. People who update the website spend some time in maintaining the facebook and twitter accounts.

Catch that Viral

Viral marketing has been around since, well Eve convinced Adam to take a bite of the forbidden Apple way back when. Since it’s rather diabolical introduction viral marketing has become an integral part of any marketing activity. While the offline version of viral has traditionally been through word-of-mouth, online the credit for inventing viral marketing, though not the term itself, goes to hotmail.com


When Hotmail launched every outgoing message contained an advertisement for Hotmail and a link to its website at the bottom of the e-mail. As more people used the service, they were also advertising it and helping it reach out to a wider audience. This enabled hotmail to quickly scale up its membership. Of course the more people that joined and sent out emails only helped increase its reach.


The early hotmail example led to a virtual explosion of viral campaigns online. Companies have taken the link example to the extreme embedding even heavy video files onto emails…hoping for the viral effect. Websites set up elaborate viral emailing schemes based around free content for example: joke-a-day, story-a-day, newsletters etc. But as with everything else online what this did in fact do was create the overkill effect. Too much of anything is poisonous and viral marketing too seemed destined for a quick eclipse.


If it is back today, it is thanks to two developments. The first was YouTube’s explosive arrival as the video content provider to the world and social networking platforms.  The YouTube phenomenon has been extensively chronicled and so does not need repeating here. Suffice to say that most companies now view a viral video campaign as an essential part of their marketing plans. YouTube also helped smaller companies, cash-strapped groups put out great videos and increasing their reach. For long YouTube remained on the periphery of the Indian web experience due to low availability of bandwidth. However, things are changing fast. While bandwidth is still an issue Indians, like the rest of the world, are increasingly going online to watch videos.


Add social networking on YouTube and you have the foundation for making your viral happen. I have noticed an interesting change take place on my network. Where previously my group of friends would post status reports, links to articles and some videos, sharing of videos is increasingly becoming the most popular activity by my group of online buddies. We share everything from funny “slice of life” videos, to TV clips from reality shows, movie trailers and yes the really really good viral campaigns. One campaign that has caught the fancy of most of us is the Virgin telecom series of ads that were supposedly banned during IPL. It’s a simple ad where a bunch of fans call up and tease each other about their teams. Simple, funny and absolutely contagious, it has far outlived the tournament itself.


This is where you come in. Making a viral video is not expensive. All you need is a good story that you know gets your message across but is good enough for people to enjoy and pass on. Videos that display empathy, passion, patriotism and above all humor are prime candidates to get on the viral bandwagon. These are not expensive to produce.


We costed a video at under Rs. 10,000 that we are in the process of developing for a viral campaign. You can use this route too and reach out to an audience that would normally cost you millions of marketing bucks.


This column appears in the December 2010 issue of Enterpreneur India. It has also been published in biztech2.com. The link is here: http://biztech2.in.com/blogs/editorial-blogs/catch-that-viral/96012/0