SRI SRINGERI SHARADA INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT

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CHAPTER-1

INTRODUCTIONOVERVIEW OF THE INDUSTRY AS A WHOLEInformation technology (IT) is the application of computers and telecommunications equipment to store, retrieve, transmit and manipulate data, often in the context of a business or other enterprise. The term is commonly used as a synonym for computers and computer networks, but it also encompasses other information distribution technologies such as television and telephones. Several industries are associated with information technology, including computer hardware, software, electronics, semiconductors, internet, telecom equipment, e-commerce and computer services.Humans have been storing, retrieving, manipulating and communicating information since the Sumerians in Mesopotamia developed writing in about 3000 BC, but the term information technology in its modern sense first appeared in a 1958 article published in the Harvard Business Review; authors Harold J. Leavitt and Thomas L. Whisler commented that "the new technology does not yet have a single established name. We shall call it information technology (IT)." Their definition consists of three categories: techniques for processing, the application of statistical and mathematical methods to decision-making and the simulation of higher-order thinking through computer programs.Based on the storage and processing technologies employed, it is possible to distinguish four distinct phases of IT development: pre-mechanical (3000 BC 1450 AD), mechanical (14501840), electromechanical (18401940) and electronic (1940present). This article focuses on the most recent period (electronic), which began in about 1940Social media is the interaction among people in which they create, share, or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content." Furthermore, social media depend on mobile and web-based technologies to create highly interactive platforms through which individuals and communities share, co-create, discuss, and modify user-generated content. They introduce substantial and pervasive changes to communication between organizations, communities, and individuals. Social media differ from traditional or industrial media in many ways, including quality, reach, frequency, usability, immediacy, and permanence. There are many effects that stem from internet usage. According to Nielsen, internet users continue to spend more time with social media sites than any other type of site. At the same time, the total time spent on social media in the U.S. across PC and mobile devices increased by 37 per cent to 121 billion minutes in July 2012 compared to 88 billion minutes in July 2011. For content contributors, the benefits of participating in social media have gone beyond simply social sharing to building reputation and bringing in career opportunities and monetary income, as discussed in Tang, Gu, and Whinstone (2012). Geocities, created in 1994, was one of the first social media sites. The concept was for users to create their own websites, characterized by one of six "cities" that were known for certain characteristics. The first aim of any business is to be known amongst their target audience. This is no different for online businesses that strive to shine out amidst billions of sites. Online business aim to market their site in several different manners to gain more customers and business. One such marketing technique is social media marketing .Social media marketing is a term that defines marketing that is done via social networks, such as online communities, networks, blogs and many other marketing tools to raise awareness amongst their potential clients. These sites are used to publicize, make sales, create connections between the business and target market, and to handle customer service. Some common tools used to perform social media marketing are Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, Orkut and YouTube. The three main aspects of social media marketing are firstly, it creates a buzz and attracts readers with catchy and impressive messages. This buzz spreads through the Internet through contact between users who in turn pass it on to their own contacts. Within moments, these messages spread like wild fire. Another aspect is that it gathers all fans of a brand or company together and allows them to interact with one another, create an identity and communicate their interest for this brand or set of products. It is also based on online conversations that cater around the business, and brings together current and potential customers. Their loyalty would also in turn promote ones brand and raise awareness amongst other possible clients. Through either simple networking, or marketing, these social media outlets help websites gain an online presence rapidly. They allow one to reach their target audience regardless of which part of the world they reside in. Another great advantage of social media marketing is, when done well, it could help enhance the search engine friendliness of ones website. Effective social media marketing would help generate a good number of quality backlinks to ones site. These tools help the members of social networks to resend links to ones websites to other interested viewers, hence adding more backlinks and increasing the popularity of ones website. This way, their social media marketing campaign achieves two purposes-increasing search engine ranking and online visibility. In conclusion, social media marketing is effective and natural. It is a great source of web traffic, and achieves great results at a low cost. This form of marketing would work well with any other advertising campaign.CHAPTER-2LITERARTURE REVIEWPROFILE OF THE COMPANYFACEBOOKFacebook is an online social networking service. Its name comes from a colloquialism for the directory given to students at some American universities. Facebook was founded on February 4, 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. The founders had initially limited the website's membership to Harvard students, but later expanded it to colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for students at various other universities before it opened to high-school students, and eventually to anyone aged 13 and over. Facebook now allows anyone who claims to be at least 13 years old to become a registered user of the website. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as friends, exchange messages, and receive automatic notifications when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups, organized by workplace, school or college, or other characteristics, and categorize their friends into lists such as "People from Work" or "Close Friends". As of September 2012, Facebook has over one billion active users, of which approximately 9% are fake. Facebook (as of 2012) has about 180 petabytes of data per year and grows by over half a petabyte every 24 hours. In May 2005, Accel partners invested $12.7 million in Facebook, and Jim Breyeradded $1 million of his own money. A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook the most used social networking service by worldwide monthly active users. Entertainment Weekly included the site on its end-of-the-decade "best-of" list, saying, "How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers' birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game ofScrabulous before Facebook?" Facebook eventually filed for an initial public offering on February 1, 2012; it is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Facebook Inc. began selling stock to the public and trading on the NASDAQ on May 18, 2012. Based on its 2012 income of US$5 billion, Facebook joined the Fortune 500 list for the first time on the list published in May 2013, being placed at position 462. In 2012, Facebook was valued at $104 billion, and by January 2014 its market capitalization had risen to over $134 billion. At the end of January 2014, 1.23 billion users were active on the website every month, while on December 31, 2013, 945 million of this total was identified by the company as mobile users. The company celebrates its tenth anniversary in the week beginning February 3, 2014. On January 2014, during the week previous to the company's tenth anniversary, chief operating officer of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg, clarified: "Mark always said Facebook was started not just to be a company, but to fulfill a vision of connecting the world.TWITTERTwitter is an online social networking and micro blogging service that enables users to send and read "tweets", which are text messages limited to 140 characters. Registered users can read and post tweets, but unregistered users can only read them. Users access Twitter through the website interface, SMS, or mobile device app. Twitter Inc. is based in San Francisco and has offices in New York City, Boston, San Antonio and Detroit. Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass and by July 2006, the site was launched. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with 500 million registered users in 2012, who posted 340 million tweets per day. The service also handled 1.6 billion search queries per day. Twitter is now one of the ten most-visited websites, and has been described as "the SMS of the Internet."

LinkedInLinkedIn is a business-oriented Social networking service. Founded in December 2002 and launched on May 5, 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. In 2006, LinkedIn increased to 20 million viewers. As of June 2013, LinkedIn reports more than 259 million acquired users in more than 200 countries and territories. The site is available in 20 languages, including English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Romanian, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, Czech, Polish, Korean, Indonesian, Malay, and Tagalog. As of 2 July 2013, Quant cast reports LinkedIn has 65.6 million monthly unique U.S. visitors and 178.4 million globally, a number that as of 29 October 2013 has increased to 184 million. In June 2011, LinkedIn had 33.9 million unique visitors, up 63 percent from a year earlier and surpassing MySpace. LinkedIn filed for an initial public offering in January 2011 and traded its first shares on May 19, 2011, under the NYSE symbol "LNKD".GMAILGmail is a free (gratis), advertising-supported email service provided by Google. Users may access Gmail as secure webmail, as well as via POP3 or IMAP4 protocols. Gmail initially started as an invitation-only beta release on April 1, 2004 and it became available to the general public on February 7, 2007, though still in beta status at that time. The service was upgraded from beta status on July 7, 2009, along with the rest of the Google Apps suite.With an initial storage capacity offer of 1 GB per user, Gmail significantly increased the webmail standard for free storage from the 2 to 4 MB its competitors such as Hotmail offered at that time. Individual Gmail messages, including attachments, may be up to 25 MB. Gmail has a search-oriented interface and a "conversation view" similar to an Internet forum. Gmail is noted by web developers for its pioneering use of Ajax. Gmail runs on Google GFE/2.0 on Linux. As of June 2012, it is the most widely used web-based email provider with over 425 million active users worldwide.

History of the organizationsFacebookIn January 2004, Mark Zuckerberg began writing the code for a new website, known as 'theFacebook'. He said in an article in The Harvard Crimson that he was inspired to make Facebook from the incident of Facemash: "It is clear that the technology needed to create a centralized Website is readily available ... the benefits are many." On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched "Thefacebook", originally located at thefacebook.com. He told The Crimson, "Everyones been talking a lot about a universal face book within Harvard. I think its kind of silly that it would take the University a couple of years to get around to it as I can do it better than they can, and I can do it in a week."Zuckerberg also stated his intention to create a universal website that can contact people around the university. According to his roommate, Dustin Moskovitz, "When Mark finished the site, he told a couple of friends ... then one of them suggested putting it on the Kirkland House online mailing list, which was ... three hundred people." Moskovitz continued to say that, By the end of the night, we were ... actively watching the registration process. Within twenty-four hours, we had somewhere between twelve hundred and fifteen hundred registrants." Just six days after the launch of the site, three Harvard University seniors, Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and DivyaNarendra, accused Zuckerberg of intentionally misleading them into believing that he would help them build a social network called HarvardConnection.com, but instead using their idea to build a competing product. The three complained to the Crimson, and the newspaper began an investigation. Zuckerberg knew about the investigation so he used The Facebook to find members in the site who identified themselves as members of the Crimson. He examined a history of failed logins to see if any of the Crimson members have ever entered an incorrect password into TheFacebook.com. In the cases in which they had failed to login, Mark tried to use them to access the Crimson members' Harvard email accounts, and he was successful in accessing two of them. In the end, three Crimson members filed a lawsuit against Zuckerbergwhich was later settled. Membership was initially restricted to students of Harvard University. Within the first month, more than half the undergraduate population at Harvard was registered on the service.Zuckerberg was soon joined in the promotion of the site by Eduardo Saverin (business aspects), Dustin Moskovitz (programmer), Andrew McCollum (graphic artist), and Chris Hughes. In March 2004, Facebook expanded to Stanford, Columbia, and Yale. This expansion continued when it opened to all Ivy League and Boston-area schools. It gradually reached most universities in Canada and the United States. Facebook was incorporated in the summer of 2004, and the entrepreneur Sean Parker, who had been informally advising Zuckerberg, became the company's president. In June 2004, Facebook moved its base of operations to Palo Alto, California. The company dropped The from its name after purchasing the domain name facebook.com in 2005 for $200,000. On October 1, 2005, Facebook expanded to twenty-one universities in the United Kingdom, the InstitutoTecnologico y de EstudiosSuperiores de Monterrey (ITESM) system in Mexico (around thirty campuses throughout the country at the time), the University of Puerto Rico and Interamerican University of Puerto Rico network in Puerto Rico, and the University of the Virgin Islands network in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Facebook launched a high school version in September 2005, which Zuckerberg called the next logical step. At that time, high school networks required an invitation to join. Facebook later expanded membership eligibility to employees of several companies, including Apple Inc. and Microsoft. On December 11, 2005, universities in Australia and New Zealand were added to the Facebook network, bringing its size to 2,000+ colleges and 25,000 + high schools throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland. Facebook was then opened on September 26, 2006 to everyone ages 13 and older with a valid e-mail address. Late in 2007, Facebook had 100,000 business pages, allowing companies to attract potential customers and tell about themselves. These started as group pages, but a new concept called company pages was planned.

TwitterTwitter's origins lie in a "daylong brainstorming session" held by board members of the podcasting company Odeo. Dorsey, then an undergraduate student at New York University, introduced the idea of an individual using an SMS service to communicate with a small group. The original project code name for the service was twitter, an idea that Williams later ascribed to Noah Glass, inspired by Flickr and the five-character length of American SMS short codes. The developers initially considered "10958" as a short code, but later changed it to "40404" for "ease of use and memorability. Work on the project started on March 21, 2006, when Dorsey published the first Twitter message at 9:50 PM Pacific Standard Time (PST): "just setting up my twitter". Dorsey has explained the origin of the "Twitter" title: We came across the word 'twitter', and it was just perfect. The definition was 'a short burst of inconsequential information,' and 'chirps from birds'. And that's exactly what the product was. The first Twitter prototype, developed by Dorsey and contractor Florian Weber, was used as an internal service for Odeo employees and the full version was introduced publicly on July 15, 2006. In October 2006, Biz Stone, Evan Williams, Dorsey, and other members of Odeo, formed Obvious Corporation and acquired Odeo, together with its assetsincluding Odeo.com and Twitter.comfrom the investors and shareholders. Williams fired Glass, who was silent about his part in Twitter's startup until 2011. Twitter spun off into its own company in April 2007. Williams provided insight into the ambiguity that defined this early period in a 2013 interview:With Twitter, it wasn't clear what it was. They called it a social network, they called it microblogging, but it was hard to define, because it didn't replace anything. There was this path of discovery with something like that, where over time you figure out what it is. Twitter actually changed from what we thought it was in the beginning, which we described as status updates and a social utility. It is that, in part, but the insight we eventually came to was Twitter was really more of an information network than it is a social network. The tipping point for Twitter's popularity was the 2007 South by Southwest Interactive conference. During the event, Twitter usage increased from 20,000 tweets per day to 60,000. "The Twitter people cleverly placed two 60-inch plasma screens in the conference hallways, exclusively streaming Twitter messages," remarked Newsweek's Steven Levy. "Hundreds of conference-goers kept tabs on each other via constant twitters. Panelists and speakers mentioned the service, and the bloggers in attendance touted it."Reaction at the conference was highly positive. Blogger Scott Beale said that Twitter "absolutely ruled". Social software researcher danahboyd said Twitter "own" the conference. Twitter staff received the festival's Web Award prize with the remark "we'd like to thank you in 140 characters or less. And we just did!" The first unassisted off-Earth Twitter message was posted from the International Space Station by NASA astronaut T. J. Creamer on January 22, 2010. By late November 2010, an average of a dozen updates per day was posted on the astronauts' communal account, @NASA_Astronauts. NASA has also hosted over 25 "tweetups", events that provide guests with VIP access to NASA facilities and speakers with the goal of leveraging participants' social networks to further the outreach goals of NASA. In August 2010, the company appointed Adam Bain from News Corp.'s Fox Audience Network as president of revenue.

LinkedInLinkedIn's CEO is Jeff Weiner, previously a Yahoo! Inc. executive. The company was founded by Reid Hoffman and founding team members from PayPal and Socialnet.com (Allen Blue, Eric Ly, Jean-Luc Vaillant, Lee Hower, Konstantin Guericke, Stephen Beitzel, David Eves, Ian McNish, Yan Pujante, and Chris Saccheri). Founder Reid Hoffman, previously CEO of LinkedIn, is now Chairman of the Board. LinkedIn is headquartered in Mountain View, California, with offices in Omaha, Chicago, New York, London, and Dublin. It is funded by Sequoia Capital, Greylock, Bain Capital Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners and the European Founders Fund. LinkedIn reached profitability in March 2006. Through January 2011, the company had received a total of $103 million of investment. In late 2003, Sequoia Capital led the Series A investment in the company. In June 2008, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, and other venture capital firms purchased a 5% stake in the company for $53 million, giving the company a post-money valuation of approximately $1 billion. In 2010, LinkedIn opened an International Headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, received a $20 million investment from Tiger Global Management LLC at a valuation of approximately $2 billion, and announced its first acquisition, Mspoke, and improved its 1% premium subscription ratio. In October of that year Silicon Valley Insider ranked the company No. 10 on its Top 100 List of most valuable start-ups. By December, the company was valued at $1.575 billion in private markets.

GmailThe idea for Gmail was pitched by RajenSheth during an interview with Google, and went on to be developed by Paul Buchheit several years before it was announced to the public. Initially the email client was available for use only by Google employees internally. Google announced Gmail to the public on April 1, 2004. IMAP support was added on October 24, 2007.SWOT ANALYSIS

Strength

Large market reach or penetration Very useful if we are setting up a digital engagement strategy (to new people, young people) Active community members who are willing to become institute representatives. Build a conversation and converse with others and build close networking bonds. Direct contact with audience (almost like face-to-face) Follow and connect with people/groups that interest you but are not necessarily your friends (as with Facebook). Cost-effective in the sense most of the platforms are free. They just demand time Twitter is in a strong market position in micro-messaging. Facebook is the only real competitor here and they attract users for different reasons. Build strong, long term relationships through online social networking, at a faster pace than just relying on traditional face-to-face networking.WEAKNESS

Tough to train or convince management team/group members on social media principles. Lack of tools or resources to track and monitor social media campaign results. It leads to information leakage, liability, security, and management. Even if it is more measurable than other channels, it is difficult (especially for small business operations) to balance the effort put on social media against the results obtained. Engaging with your audience at a direct level means more efforts in terms of keeping a consistent message/ corporate image. The time-frame to correct errors that affect your audience is less. Because you are heavily exposed, your company has to take action more promptly than if you werent (especially if people are having conversations about your brand, you will have to engage and clarify). Blocked at many work sites as management sees it drops productivity.OPPORTUNITIES

Great opportunity for individuals and organizations to connect and exchange information. Promotions, news, events that can be offered through social media platforms. Penetration into a new geographical market quickly. Allows you to build short and long term relationships with prospects. Integration into real-time games, media, and apps. Weve barely scratched the surface so far on whats possible. Twitter as real time infrastructure. It is becoming the biggest social media marketing tool. It may become the dominant way for businesses to communicate with their customers. Quick delivery, branding opportunities, and enhanced marketing opportunities. Twitter feeds that provide everything from alerts to new blog posts to breaking news and political messages. One example of a popular Twitter feed is @cnnbrk.THREATS

Competitor is going after the same space or same audience with similar campaign.

Attitudes on privacy: while lately it seems everyone is willing to share the most intimate as well as mundane details of their life there could easily be a backlash against this trend. It got too much publicity in a short time. May get burned out. Has no solid revenue model. Paid twitter streams may hurt the brand image. Facebook may get even more effective and compete face-to-face with Twitter in micro blogging sphere.Meaning of Social networking websitesSocial networkingA social networking service is a platform to build social networks or social relations among people who, for example, share interests, activities, backgrounds or real-life connections. A social network service consists of a representation of each user , his social links, and a variety of additional services. Social networking is web-based services that allow individuals to create a public profile, to create a list of users with whom to share connection, and view and cross the connections within the system.Most social network services are web-based and provide means for users to interact over the Internet, such as e-mail and instant messaging. Social network sites are varied and they incorporate new information and communication tools such as, mobile connectivity, photo/video/sharing and blogging. Online community services are sometimes considered as a social network service, though in a broader sense, social network service usually means an individual-centered service whereas online community services are group-centered. Social networking sites allow users to share ideas, pictures, posts, activities, events, and interests with people in their network.

The main types of social networking services are those that contain category places (such as former school year or classmates), means to connect with friends and a recommendation system linked to trust. Popular methods now combine many of these, with American-based services such as Facebook, Google+, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr and Twitter widely used worldwide. There have been attempts to standardize these services to avoid the need to duplicate entries of friends and interests (see the FOAF standard and the Open Source Initiative. According to experts, the largest social networking usersare Asian-Pacific regions with 615, 9 million peoples 2013 survey found that 73% U.S adults use social networking sites.WebsitesA website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a set of related web pages served from a single web domain. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet address known as a Uniform resource locator. All publicly accessible websites collectively constitute the World Wide Web.A webpage is a document, typically written in plain text interspersed with formatting instructions of Hypertext Markup Language. A webpage may incorporate elements from other websites with suitable markup anchors.WebPages are accessed and transported with the Hypertext Transfer Protocol , which may optionally employ encryption to provide security and privacy for the user of the webpage content. The user's application, often a web browser, renders the page content according to its HTML markup instructions onto a display terminal.The pages of a website can usually be accessed from a simple Uniform Resource Locator (URL) called the web address. The URLs of the pages organize them into a hierarchy, although hyper linking between them conveys the reader's perceived site structure and guides the reader's navigation of the site which generally includes a home page with most of the links to the site's web content, and a supplementary about, contact and link page.Some websites require a subscription to access some or all of their content. Examples of subscription websites include many business sites, parts of news websites, academic journal websites, gaming websites, file-sharing websites, message boards, web-based email, social networking websites, websites providing real-time stock market data, and websites providing various other services (e.g., websites offering storing and/or sharing of images, files and so forth).

Social mediaSocial media advertising is paid form of brand, service, or business promotion requires a proper and planned communicative message and budget. Advertising is customer centric in nature. Customers play an important role in any major or minor communication because they are the one who are going to decide the fate of the advertising communication.

Some of the benefits of social networking websites are:

Popularizing brands, idea or service to the target group.

Informing target audience about brand or services presence in the market.

Encouraging healthy completion in the market.

Providing social benefits for the brand. Making the audience to interact and keep them intact with the brand.

Social media platforms:

Social networking websites:Social networking websites allow individuals to interact with one another and build relationships. When companies join the social channels, consumers can interact with them and they can communicate with consumers directly. That interaction feels more personal to users than traditional methods of strictly outbound marketing & advertising.Social networking sites and blogs allow individual followers to retweet or repost comments made by the product being promoted. By repeating the message, all of the users connections are able to see the message, therefore reaching more people. Social networking sites act as word of mouth. Because the information about the product is being put out there and is getting repeated, more traffic is brought to the product/company.Through social networking sites, companies can interact with individual followers. This personal interaction can instill a feeling of loyalty into followers and potential customers. Also, by choosing whom to follow on these sites, products can reach a very narrow target audience.Social networking sites also include a vast amount of information about what products and services prospective clients might be interested in. Through the use of new Semantic Analysis technologies, marketers can detect buying signals, such as content shared by people and questions posted online. Understanding of buying signals can help sales people target relevant prospects and marketers run micro-targeted campaigns. Mobile phones:

Mobile phone usage has also become beneficial for social media marketing. Today, many cell phones have social networking capabilities: individuals are notified of any happenings on social networking sites through their cell phones, in real-time. This constant connection to social networking sites means products and companies can constantly remind and update followers about their capabilities, uses, importance, etc. Because cell phones are connected to social networking sites, advertisements are always in sight. Also many companies are now putting QR codes along with products for individuals to access the company website or online services with their smart-phones.

Engagement

In the context of the social web, engagement means that customers and stakeholders are participants rather than viewers. Social media in business allows anyone and everyone to express and share an opinion or an idea somewhere along the businesss path to market. Each participating customer becomes part of the marketing department, as other customers read their comments or reviews. The engagement process is then fundamental to successful social media marketing.

Local businesses

Small businesses also use social networking sites as a promotional technique. Businesses can follow individuals social networking site uses in the local area and advertise specials and deals. These can be exclusive and in the form of get a free drink with a copy of this tweet. This type of message encourages other locals to follow the business on the sites in order to obtain the promotional deal. In the process, the business is getting seen and promoting itself (brand visibility).

Twitter

Twitter allows companies to promote their products on an individual level. The use of a product can be explained in short messages that followers are more likely to read. These messages appear on followers home pages. Messages can link to the products website, Facebook profile, photos, videos, etc. This link provides followers the opportunity to spend more time interacting with the product online. This interaction can create a loyal connection between product and individual and can also lead to larger advertising opportunities. Twitter promotes a product in real-time and brings customers in.

Facebook

Facebook pages are far more detailed than Twitter accounts. They allow a product to provide videos, photos, and longer descriptions. Videos can show when a product can be used as well as how to use it. These also can include testimonials as other followers can comment on the product pages for others to see. Facebook can link back to the products Twitter page as well as send out event reminders. Facebook promotes a product in real-time and brings customers in.As marketers see more value in social media marketing, advertisers continue to increase sequential ad spend in social by 25%. Strategies to extend the reach with Sponsored Stories and acquire new fans with Facebook ads contribute to an uptick in spending across the site. The study attributes 84% of "engagement" or clicks to Likes that link back to Facebook advertising. Today, brands increase fan counts on average of 9% monthly, increasing their fan base by two-times the amount annually. Google+

Google+, in addition to providing pages and some features of Facebook, is also able to integrate with the Google search engine. Other Google products are also integrated, such as Google Ad words and Google Maps. With the development of Google Personalized Search and other location-based search services, Google+ allows for targeted advertising methods, navigation services, and other forms of location-based marketing and promotion.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn, a professional business-related networking site, allows companies to create professional profiles for themselves as well as their business to network and meet others.Through the use of widgets, members can promote their various social networking activities, such as Twitter stream or blog entries of their product pages, onto their LinkedIn profile page. LinkedIn provides its members the opportunity to generate sales leads and business partners. Members can use Company Pages similar to Facebook pages to create an area that will allow business owners to promote their products or services and be able to interact with their customers. Due to spread of spam mail sent to job seeker, leading companies prefer to use LinkedIn for employee's recruitment instead using different job portals. Additionally, companies have voiced a preference for the amount of information that can be gleaned from LinkedIn profile, versus a limited email. Foursquare

Foursquare is a location based social networking website, where users can check into locations via their smartphones. Foursquare allows businesses to create a page or create a new/claim an existing venue. A good marketing strategy for businesses to increase footfall or retain loyal customers includes offering incentives such as discounts or free food/beverages for people checking into their location or special privileges for the mayor of that location. Instagram

Instagram is a free photo and video-sharing program and social network that was launched in October 2010. The service enables users to take a photo or video, apply a digital filter to it, and then share it with other Instagram users they are connected to on the social network as well as on a variety of social networking services. Instagram debuted as a photo sharing network but implemented support for video on June 2013. As of September 2013, Instagram had 150 million monthly active users. YouTube

YouTube is another popular avenue; advertisements are done in a way to suit the target audience. The type of language used in the commercials and the ideas used to promote the product reflect the audience's style and taste. Also, the ads on this platform are usually in sync with the content of the video requested, this is another advantage YouTube brings for advertisers. Certain ads are presented with certain videos since the content is relevant. Promotional opportunities such as sponsoring a video is also possible on YouTube, for example, a user who searches for a YouTube video on dog training may be presented with a sponsored video from a dog toy company in results along with other videos. Youtube also enable publishers to earn money through Youtube Partner Program. Blogs

Platforms like LinkedIn create an environment for companies and clients to connect online. Companies that recognize the need for information, originality, and accessibility employ blogs to make their products popular and unique, and ultimately reach out to consumers who are privy to social media. Blogs allow a product or company to provide longer descriptions of products or services can include testimonials and can link to and from other social network and blog pages. Blogs can be updated frequently and are promotional techniques for keeping customers and also for acquiring followers and subscribers who can then be directed to social network pages. Online communities can enable a business to reach the clients of other businesses using the platform. To allow firms to measure their standing in the corporate world, sites like Glassdoor enable employees to place evaluations of their companies. Some businesses opt out of integrating social media platforms into their traditional marketing regimen. There are also specific corporate standards that apply when interacting online. To maintain an advantage in a business-consumer relationship, businesses have to be aware of four key assets that consumers maintain: information, involvement, community, and controlSocial media marketing tools Social media measurement

Social media measurement or social media monitoring is an active monitoring of social media channels for information about a company or organization, usually tracking of various social media content such as blogs, wikis, news sites, micro-blogs such as Twitter, social networking sites, video/photo sharing websites, forums, message boards, blogs and user-generated content in general as a way to determine the volume and sentiment of online conversation about a brand or topic. Social media monitoring allow users to find insights into a brands' overall visibility on social media, measure the impact of campaigns, identify opportunities for engagement, assess competitor activity and share of voice, and be alerted to impending crises. It can also provide valuable information about emerging trends and what consumers and clients think about specific topics, brands or products. This is the work of cross section of people including market researchers, PR staff, marketing teams, social engagement and community staff, agencies and sales teams. Several different providers have created tools to facilitate the monitoring of a variety of social media channels from blogging to internet video to internet forums. This allows companies to track what consumers are saying about their brands and actions. Companies can then react to these conversations and interact with consumers through social media platforms Social network aggregation

Social network aggregation is the process of collecting content from multiple social network services, such as MySpace or Facebook, into one unified presentation. The task is often performed by a social network aggregator, which pulls together information into a single location, or helps a user consolidate multiple social networking profiles into one profile. Various aggregation services provide tools or widgets to allow users to consolidate messages, track friends, combine bookmarks, search across multiple social networking sites, read RSS feeds for multiple social networks, see when their name is mentioned on various sites, access their profiles from a single interface, provide "lifestreams", etc. Social network aggregation services attempt to organize or simplify a user's social networking experience, although the idea has been satirized by the concept of a "social network aggregator. Social bookmarking:

A social bookmarking service is a centralized online service which enables users to add, annotate, edit, and share bookmarks of web documents. Many online bookmark management services have launched since 1996; Delicious, founded in 2003, popularized the terms "social bookmarking" and "tagging". Tagging is a significant feature of social bookmarking systems, enabling users to organize their bookmarks in flexible ways.

Social analytics

Social analytics is a philosophical perspective developed since the early 1980s by the Danish idea historian and philosopher Lars-Henrik Schmidt. The theoretical object of the perspective is socius, a kind of "commonness" that is neither a universal account nor a communality shared by every member of a body. Thus, Social Analytics differs from traditional philosophy as well as sociology. It might be said that the perspective attempts to articulate the contentions between philosophy and sociology. The practice of Social Analytics is to report on tendencies of the times. It does not aim to make a diagnosis of the times that can be agreed upon by everyone or anybody but a report that no one wants to protest about.

Social media:

Social media has been around since humans began to talk. One of the first signs of human social media was cave wall paintings. Some of the earliest forms of social media were not digital. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word social is "of or relating to human society, the interaction of the individual and the group, or the welfare of human beings as members of society. The word media means a medium of cultivation, conveyance, or expression. Media is also a plural form of medium and a medium is a particular form or system of communication." Some of the earliest forms of social media were primitive and did not involve a computer, but did involve some type of technology to convey the message. Cave paintings were created using pigments, "Ancient peoples decorated walls of protected caves with paint made from dirt or charcoal mixed with spit or animal fat. In cave paintings, the pigments stuck to the wall partially because the pigment became trapped in the porous wall, and partially because the binding media (the spit or fat) dried and adhered the pigment to the wall (Ages)." All living things communicate to each other in some way or another, but humans leave lasting impressions intentionally. A fossil leaves an impression, but it doesn't do it on purpose or do it by using technology. Communication and networking (network in the sense of the word to purposefully interact with others) are vital to our survival and our history. The cave paintings of Lascaux are estimated to be up to 20,000 years old. As mentioned on the MET website, "most of the paintings are located at a distance from the cave's entrance, and many of the chambers are not easily accessible. This placement, together with the enormous size and compelling grandeur of the paintings, suggests that the remote chambers may have served as sacred or ceremonial meeting places (Tedesco)."

Brand ambassador:

Brand ambassador is a marketing term for a person employed by an organization or company to promote its products or services within the activity known as branding. The brand ambassador is meant to embody the corporate identity in appearance, demeanor, values and ethics. The key element of brand ambassadors lies in their ability to use promotional strategies that will strengthen the customer-product/service relationship and influence a large audience to buy and consume more. Predominantly, a brand ambassador is known as a positive spokesperson appointed as an internal or external agent to boost product/service sales and create brand awareness. Today, brand ambassador as a term has expanded beyond celebrity branding to self branding or personal brand management. Professional figures such as good-will and non-profit ambassadors, promotional models, testimonials and brand advocates have formed as an extension of the same concept, taking into account the requirements of every company.

Social customer relationship managementSocial CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is use of social media services, techniques and technology to enable organizations to engage with their customers. As an emerging discipline, interpretations of Social CRM vary, but the most frequently quoted definition is from Paul Greenberg.Social CRM is a philosophy and a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, workflow, processes and social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted and transparent business environment. It's the company's response to the customer's ownership of the conversation.Social CRM is often used as a synonym for Social Media Monitoring, where organizations watch services like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for relevant mentions of their product and brand and react accordingly. However, this is too narrow an interpretation, as Social CRM also includes customer communities managed by the organization themselves.Applications of Social CRMSocial CRM has applications in marketing, customer service and sales, including peer-to-peer Management, Real Story Group andGartner have published research identifying common use cases for Social CRM. Paul Greenberg publishes an annual evaluation of the top companies in the CRM space.Social Engagement with customers and prospects: SocialCRM tools let businesses better engage with their customers - can listen to their sentiments about the products or services, reviews, comments etc. It will also enable a two way communication between the business and the consumer.

Social analyticsSocial analytics is a philosophical perspective developed since the early 1980s by the Danish idea historian and philosopher Lars-Henrik Schmidt. The theoretical object of the perspective is social, a kind of "commonness" that is neither a universal account nor a communality shared by every member of a body .Thus, Social Analytics differs from traditional philosophy as well as sociology. It might be said that the perspective attempts to articulate the contentions between philosophy and sociology. The practice of Social Analytics is to report on tendencies of the times. It does not aim to make a diagnosis of the times that can be agreed upon by everyone or anybody but a report that no one wants to protest aboutSocial media analytics:

Measuring, Analyzing, Interpreting interactions and associations between people, topics and ideas. Social media analytics is a powerful tool for uncovering customer sentiment dispersed across countless online sources. The analytics allow marketers to identify sentiment and identify trends in order to accommodate the customer better. There have been significant examples where companies, such as Whirlpool, Royal Bank of Canada and JetBlue, have used such analytics tools to engage customers in response to their feedback.Facebook as a marketing toolFacebook marketing has improved, according to Jeff Selig, CMO of social media marketing firm BostonMediaDomain, but the like button in particular is almost useless. Marketing on Facebook is now about curating a following as opposed to just building numbers."We gave up on ages ago," Selig said. "If you take likes out of the equation and you are actually selling something, I think you're better off. I think the days of the popularity contest are over."Facebook recently admitted in a regulatory filing that as much as 11.2% of its accounts are fake, but did not publish any numbers about how many likes may be fraudulent. Muller noted that while Facebook has cracked down on fake profiles at times, there seemed to be a permissive attitude toward so-called "click farm" pages. He pointed to "Paid-to-Like" as a company that operated with a page on Facebook and posted photos of receipts paid out to people for likes.Post by Paid-To-Like.Muller did see a slight bump in total engagement, but said he now feels the need to pay for visibility to offset the dead likes that hurt his engagement numbers. His YouTube site went from 40,000 subscribers to 1.1 million, with his views rising along the way.

On Facebook, his rise in fans and likes after advertising diluted his fan base, Muller said, producing what he saw as negative returns. This model is in contrast to YouTube where he has found creators work with the site to generate revenue.

"YouTube is paid every time a creator's video is viewed. That means it's in YouTube's interest that each of us reaches as many of our subscribers as possible because it's financially beneficial to both of us," he said. "Facebook has the opposite business model, where it's not beneficial to them for us to reach our audience. They want to restrict our organic reach to make us pay for it."A Facebook spokesperson said that the company has worked to improve the results of its advertising with some success."Fake likes dont help us. For the last two years, we have focused on proving that our ads drive business results, and we have even updated our ads to focus more on driving business objectives," a Facebook spokesperson wrote in an email. "Those kinds of real-world results would not be possible with fake likes. In addition, we are continually improving the systems we have to monitor and remove fake likes from the system."Muller admits that the idea of Facebook being complicit with click farms may sound farfetched, but that the results he experienced led him to no other conclusion."I hate conspiracy theories... I'm about the scientific method," he said. "What I got was not genuine. What I paid to them was real money and what I got back was useless."Social Data Changing Marketing StrategiesThe emergence of social media and the steady decline of mass media arethe two biggest marketing stories of the decade. Both print circulation and TV viewership have been falling consistently since the turn of the century; TV viewership, for instance, is down almost 50% since 2002.In contrast, social media has reported massive gains since the early days of MySpace, with social media usage among U.S. adults increasing by 800% over the past eight years. For marketers, this is the opportunity of a lifetime. The rapid transition from mass to social media presents the opportunity to create impactful, relevant marketing messages. This data-powered personalized marketing approach is not only much more effective, but also more cost-efficient and scalable.

Conventional Marketing vs. Personalized Marketing:

Conventional marketing is like trying to hit a thousand bull's-eyes with one arrow. For too long, marketers have accepted absurdly low conversion rates for the deployment of an an email or banner ad, with a singular message for a massive audience. This typically requires significant upfront investment and large-scale deployment, without a guarantee that those marketers are even reaching the most appropriate customers.

Personalized marketing using social data-triggered programmatic techniques, on the other hand, can be scaled from an extremely narrow, niche audience ("18-22 year old males in Portland who like Daft Punk") to an audience numbering in the hundreds of thousands ("18-22 year olds who like electronic music"). By looking at a group of users' behavior data and social profile, marketers can create tailor messages for higher relevancy and, ultimately, effectiveness.

The Three-Step Personalized Marketing ProcessEvery personalized marketing campaign is a three-step process:

Data Collection: The first step to collecting user data is to implement social login. Social Login provides a permission-based way for users to register and sign-in to your web properties via their existing social profiles, so your business can collect and analyze the relevant data points you need to better understand your customers.

Data Segmentation: Raw data itself is quite meaningless for marketing purposes. Crunching this data and deriving meaning from it is the crucial second step in the personalized marketing process. This includes analyzing the data to identify customer identity and behavior and using it to create powerful personalized marketing campaigns.

Data Conversion: After data is collected and segmented, it needs to be converted into actionable insight. This means tying the data you've collected and analyzed into the marketing platforms you currently use, such as CRM software, advertising networks, email marketing platforms and more.

For far too long, marketers have relied on old technologies and tactics to attract customers and boost conversions. We've accepted abysmal conversion rates as the norm, but now we possess the technology and the insight to transform our marketing efforts.By leveraging deep identity data through technologies like social login, marketers can finally make marketing relevant again and regain control in the age of the connected consumer.

Online advertisingOnline advertising, also called Internet advertising, uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers. It includes email marketing, search engine marketing, social media marketing, many types of display advertising (including web banner advertising), and mobile advertising. Like other advertising media, online advertising frequently involves both a publisher, who integrates advertisements into its online content, and an advertiser, who provides the advertisements to be displayed on the publisher's content. Other potential participants include advertising agencies that help generate and place the ad copy, an ad server who technologically delivers the ad and tracks statistics, and advertising affiliates who do independent promotional work for the advertiser. Online advertising is a large business and is growing rapidly. In 2011, Internet advertising revenues in the United States surpassed those of cable television and nearly exceeded those of broadcast television. In2012, Internet advertising revenues in the United States totaled $36.57 billion, a 15.2% increase over the $31.74 billion in revenues in 2011. U.S. internet ad revenue hit a historic high of $20.1 billion for the first half of 2013, up 18% over the same period in 2012. Online advertising is widely used across virtually all industry sectors.Despite its popularity, many common online advertising practices are controversial and increasingly subject to regulation. Furthermore, online ad revenues may not adequately replace other publishers' revenue streams. Declining ad revenue has led some publishers to hide their content behind pay walls.Methods of online advertising: Display advertising

Display advertising conveys its advertising message visually using text, logos, animations, videos, photographs, or other graphics. Display advertisers frequently target users with particular traits to increase the ads' effect. Online advertisers (typically through their ad servers) often use cookies, which are unique identifiers of specific computers, to decide which ads to serve to a particular consumer. Cookies can track whether a user left a page without buying anything, so the advertiser can later retarget the user with ads from the site the user visited. As advertisers collect data across multiple external websites about a user's online activity, they can create a detailed picture of the user's interests to deliver even more targeted advertising. This aggregation of data is called behavioral targeting. Advertisers can also target their audience by using contextual and semantic advertising to deliver display ads related to the content of the web page where the ads appear. Retargeting, behavioral targeting, and contextual advertising all are designed to increase an advertiser's return on investment, or ROI, over untargeted ads. Advertisers may also deliver ads based on a user's suspected geography through geotargeting. A user's IP address communicates some geographic information (at minimum, the user's country or general region). The geographic information from an IP can be supplemented and refined with other proxies or information to narrow the range of possible locations.For example, with mobile devices, advertisers can sometimes use a phone's GPS receiver or the location of nearby mobile towers. Cookies and other persistent data on a user's machine may provide help narrowing a user's location further. Web banner advertising:

Web banners or banner ads typically are graphical ads displayed within a web page. Many banner ads are delivered by a central ad server. Banner ads can use rich media to incorporate video, audio, animations, buttons, forms, or other interactive elements using Java applets, HTML5, Adobe Flash, and other programs.

Frame ad (traditional banner):

Frame ads were the first form of web banners. The colloquial usage of "banner ads" often refers to traditional frame ads. Website publishers incorporate frame ads by setting aside a particular space on the web page. The Interactive Advertising Bureau's Ad Unit Guidelines proposes standardized pixel dimensions for ad units. Pop-ups/pop-under:

A pop-up ad is displayed in a new web browser window that opens above a website visitor's initial browser window. A pop-under ad opens a new browser window under a website visitor's initial browser window. Floating ad:

A floating ad, or overlay ad, is a type of rich media advertisement that appears superimposed over the requested website's content. Floating ads may disappear or become less obtrusive after a preset time period. Expanding ad:

An expanding ad is a rich media frame ad that changes dimensions upon a predefined condition, such as a preset amount of time a visitor spends on a webpage, the user's click on the ad, or the user's mouse movement over the ad Expanding ads allow advertisers to fit more information into a restricted ad space.

Trick banners:

A trick banner is a banner ad where the ad copy imitates some screen element users commonly encounter, such as an operating system message or popular application message, to induce ad clicks. Trick banners typically do not mention the advertiser in the initial ad, and thus they are a form of bait-and-switch. Trick banners commonly attract a higher-than-average click-through rate, but tricked users may resent the advertiser for deceiving them. Interstitial ads:

An interstitial ad displays before a user can access requested content, sometimes while the user is waiting for the content to load. Interstitial ads are a form of interruption marketing. Text ads:

A text ad displays text-based hyperlinks. Text-based ads may display separately from a web page's primary content, or they can be embedded by hyper linking individual words or phrases to advertiser's websites. Text ads may also be delivered through email marketing or text message marketing. Text-based ads often render faster than graphical ads and can be harder for ad-blocking software to block.

Social media marketingPersonnel behind the site often dropping adverts on the traffic surfing around the sites. Social media marketing is commercial promotion conducted through social media websites. Many companies promote their products by posting frequent updates and providing special offers through their social media profiles.Types of advertising:

Mobile Advertising:

Mobile advertising is ad copy delivered through wireless mobile devices such as smartphones, feature phones, or tablet computers. Mobile advertising may take the form of static or rich media display ads, SMS (Short Message Service) or MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) ads, mobile search ads, advertising within mobile websites, or ads within mobile applications or games (such as interstitial ads, advergaming, or application sponsorship). Industry groups such as the Mobile Marketing Association have attempted to standardize mobile ad unit specifications, similar to the IAB's efforts for general online advertising.Mobile advertising is growing rapidly for several reasons. There are more mobile devices in the field, connectivity speeds have improved (which, among other things, allows for richer media ads to be served quickly), screen resolutions have advanced, mobile publishers are becoming more sophisticated about incorporating ads, and consumers are using mobile devices more extensively. The Interactive Advertising Bureau predicts continued growth in mobile advertising with the adoption of location-based targeting and other technological features not available or relevant on personal computers. Email Advertising:

Email advertising is ad copy comprising an entire email or a portion of an email message. Email marketing may be unsolicited, in which case the sender may give the recipient an option to opt-out of future emails, or it may be sent with the recipient's prior consent (opt-in).

Chat advertising

As opposed to static messaging, chat advertising refers to real time messages dropped to users on certain sites. This is done by the usage of live chat software or tracking applications installed within certain websites with the operating. In reality this is a subset of the email advertising but different because of its time window.Email marketingElectronic marketing is directly marketing a commercial message to a group of people using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It usually involves using email to send ads, request business, or solicit sales or donations, and is meant to build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness. Email marketing can be done to either sold lists or current customer database. Broadly, the term is usually used to refer to:

Sending email messages with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or previous customers, to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business.

Sending email messages with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately.

Adding advertisements to email messages sent by other companies to their customers.

Types of email marketing:

Email marketing can be carried out through different types of emails: Transactional emails:

Transactional emails are usually triggered based on a customers action with a company. To be qualified as transactional or relationship messages, these communications' primary purpose must be "to facilitate, complete, or confirm a commercial transactions that the recipient has previously agreed to enter into with the sender", along with a few other narrow definitions of transactional messaging. Triggered transactional messages include dropped basket messages, password reset emails, purchase or order confirmation emails and email receipts.

The primary purpose of a transactional email is to convey information regarding the action that triggered it. But, due to its high open rates (51.3% compared to 36.6% for email newsletters) transactional emails are a golden opportunity to engage customers; to introduce or extend the email relationship with customers or subscribers, to anticipate and answer questions or to cross-sell or up-sell products or services.Many email newsletter software vendors offer transactional email support, which gives companies the ability to include promotional messages within the body of transactional emails. There are also software vendors that offer specialized transactional email marketing services, which include providing targeted and personalized transactional email messages and running specific marketing campaigns (such as customer referral programs).

Direct emails:

Direct email involves sending an email solely to communicate a promotional message (for example, an announcement of a special offer or a catalog of products). Companies usually collect a list of customer or prospect email addresses to send direct promotional messages to, or they can also rent a list of email addresses from service companies.CHAPTER-3METHODOLOGYINTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEMTITLE OF THE PROJECTA STUDY ON ROLE OF SOCIAL NETWORKING WEBSITES AS A MARKETING TOOL.OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

To analyse the effective communication strategy through social networking sites. To study the effectiveness of brand communication through social networking sites from its users and communicators. To find the impact of interaction through these communication among Indian users (with reference to facebook twitter LinkedIn). To find the impact of different types of ads online on social networking sites.SCOPE THE STUDY

1) The study would help in gathering the opinion of people for social networking sites, how do they use it, what are the things that they do on social and professional networking sites and how these sites help them in socializing with their personal and professional contacts.

2) The study helps in analysing the benefits of promoting through social media, identifying the benefits of branding and promotion.

3) The study will help to formulate and implement marketing strategies for branding, promoting and communicating the information to the customers through social networking site.4) Social media has become a platform that is easily accessible to anyone with internet access. Increased communication for organizations fosters brand awareness and often, improved customer service. Additionally, social media serves as a relatively inexpensive platform for organizations to implement marketing campaigns.5) Social networking websites allow individuals to interact with one another and build relationships.6) Social media marketing programs usually centre on efforts to create content that attracts attention and encourages readers to share it with their social networks.7) The study is conducted on 50 respondents from different age groups; mainly the age group considered is 15-40.8) The area of study is restricted to New Delhi, thus the respondents belongs to this region.LIMITATIONSThe limitations of study are as follows:1) While doing the study, I tried my best to get information and to make the report good but certain limitations are bound to incur like information constraint.

2) Time was a constraint.

3) Some of the respondents were not cooperative.

4) The findings were based on the information given by the users & can be biased.

5) Market research is conducted to various respondents so biases such as mood, feelings, act on research settings.RESEARCH DESIGN The research design is the conceptual structure within which research is conducted. It constitutes the blueprint for the collection, measurement and analysis of data.DESCRIPTIVE RESEARCH

This study is descriptive in nature where the data is collected through well-structured questionnaire and from the information taken from the customers.DETERMINATION THE SAMPLE PLAN AND SAMPLE SIZESAMPLING PLANSampling is the process of selecting a sufficient number of elements from the population, so that a study of the sample and an understanding of its properties or characteristics would make it possible for us to generalize such properties or characteristics to the population elements.

Sampling design is to clearly define set of objects, technically called the universe to be studied. The sampling design used in this study is probability sampling. Sampling technique used is Simple Random sampling.DATA COLLECTION METHODS

INTRODUCTIONMethodology is a way to systematically solve the research problem. It may be understood as a science of studying how research is done scientifically. Research Methodology is a step by step study of a problem. Physical activities involved in the study are:

Developing the questionnaire regarding the customer satisfaction of the product

Optimum respondents as a sample size are chosen for the activity to resemble the entire population.

Get the questionnaire filled by the customers in the place through interview or personal interaction.

Analysis of data on computer with special market research statistical package called SPSS.

In this research questionnaire is framed in such a way management wants to know how the customers are taking things that they had done to them and to find out the expectation of the customers thus it will impact in policy making of the firm in the current fiscal year.

The questionnaire designed had closed question to find the respondents actual feeling as well as their opinion rating about the satisfaction regarding the product.

The methodology followed for conducting the study includes the specification of research design, sample design, questionnaire design, data collection and statistical tools used for analysing the collected data.

DATA COLLECTION SOURCES Primary Data

Secondary data

Primary Data:Primary data is the first hand data, which are selected a fresh and thus happen to be original in character. Questionnaire is used as a primary source in this project.

Questionnaire: is the most commonly used method in survey. Questionnaires are a list of questions either open-ended or close-ended for which the respondents give answers. Questionnaire can be conducted via telephone, mail, live in a public area, or in an institute, through electronic mail or through fax and other methods. Secondary DataInformation that already exists somewhere, having been collected for another purpose. Sources include census reports, trade publications, and subscription services. The following secondary data sources are used in this project:Books: Books are available today on any topic that you want to research. The use of books starts before even you have selected the topic. After selection of topics books provide insight on how much work has already been done on the same topic and you can prepare your literature review. Books are secondary source but most authentic one in secondary sources.

General Websites: Generally websites do not contain very reliable information so their content should be checked for the reliability before quoting from them.SAMPLE SIZE:The research was conducted in Delhi with 50 respondents.CHAPTER-4DATA ANALYSIS & INTERPRETATIONIn this chapter analysis carried out on the research is reportedTotal No. of Respondents= 50Gender Group

GenderNo. of RespondentsPercentage

Male2550%

Female2550%

Table No.1: Respondents Gender

Figure 1: Respondents GenderInterpretation: From the above information it can be concluded that there is equal ratio of both male and female i.e. 50% males and 50% females access social Networking websites. Thus social networking websites can be considered as the effective platform for marketing.Age GroupAge Group(In Years)No. of Respondents Percentage

15-201122%

21-252346%

26-30714%

31-35612%

36-4036%

Table No.2: Respondents Age Group

Figure No.2: Respondents Age Group

Interpretation:From the above data it is concluded that 22% users of social networking websites in the age group of 15-20years, 46% users in the age group of 21-25years, 14% users in the age group of 26-30years, 12% users in the age group of 31-35 and 6% in the age group of 36-40.

Occupation:

OccupationNo. of RespondentsPercentage

Businessmen612%

Housewife48%

Salaried person1326%

Student2754%

Table No.3:Respondents Occupation

Figure No.3: Respondents Occupation

Interpretation: From the above data we can conclude that 54% users of social networking websites are students, 26% are salaried person, 12% are businessmen and 8% are housewives. Q1. Method of accessing to social networking website you use?ParticularsNo. of RespondentsPercentage

Mobile2754

PCs at home1326

Others1020

Table no.4:Mode of access

Figure No.4: Mode of access

Interpretation: From the above data itis presented that 54% users of social networking websites access them from their mobile phones, 26% users access them from their PCs at home and 20% users access it from other modes. Thus it can be concluded that mostly people access social networking websites from their mobile phones.

Q2. How active you are on networking site?

ParticularsNo. of RespondentsPercentage

Highly active1582

Moderately active3210

Occasionally active25

Rare user13

Table no.5:Activeness on websites

Figure No.5: Activeness on websitesInterpretation: From the above data it is concluded that 10% users are highly active on social networking websites, 82% users are moderately active, 5% users are occasionally active and 3% are the rare users of the social networking websites. Thus the end result is the users use social networking websites on daily basis.Q3. On what social networking websites you have an active profile?

ParticularsNo. of RespondentsPercentage

Facebook2251%

Twitter201%

LinkedIn12%

Others746%

Table no.6: Websites used by respondents

Figure No.6: Websites used by respondentsInterpretation: From the above data it is concluded that 51% of users use facebook, 46% users use twitter, 2% use LinkedIn and 1% are the users of other social networking websites. Thus mostly users are active on facebook and after that on twitter.

Q4. Do you get relevant/correct/timely information through social networking websites?

ParticularsNo. of RespondentsPercentage

Yes1836%

No3264%

Table no.7:Relevance of websites

Figure No.7: Relevance of websitesInterpretation: From the above data it is concluded that 64% users feels that they do not get the relevant, correct and timely information on social networking websites while 36% users feels that they get relevant, correct and timely information on social networking websites. Thus social networking websites does not create a very large impact on users.Q5. Have you ever accessed these ads coming your way?

ParticularsNo. of RespondentsPercentage

Often 1326%

Sometimes

3060%

Never 48%

Depending upon ads36%

Table no.8:Frequency of ads on websites

Figure No.8: Frequency of ads on websitesInterpretation:From the above data it is concluded that 63% users of social networking websites sometimes came across the ads coming their way, 27% users often access these ads , 9% users never access the ads coming their way and 1% users access depending upon the type of ad. Q6. On which social networking site do you find ads communicated well?

ParticularsNo. of RespondentsPercentage

Facebook

3162%

Twitter 816%

LinkedIn714%

Others 48%

Table no.9:Websites offering well communicate ads

Figure No.9: Websites offering well communicate adsInterpretation: From the above datait is concluded that the 71% users finds that facebook is the most effective social networking website on which the ads are communicated well, 18% finds that ads on twitter are communicated well, 2% on LinkedIn and 9% on other social networking website. Thus facebook is most effective platform for the communication of ads on social networking websites.Q7. What kind of ads have you came across?

ParticularsNo. of RespondentsPercentage

Web banners1938%

Pop ups1122%

Flash ads1122%

Video ads36%

Others 612%

Table no.10: Nature of ads on the websites

Figure No.10: Nature of ads on the websitesInterpretation: From the above data it is concluded 38% users came across the web banners, 22% came across pop ups, 22% came across flash ads, 6% came across video ads and 12% came across other types of ads. Thus mostly web banners are the ads which the users came across.Q8. Do you agree that the ads should appear on social networking websites?

ParticularsNo. of RespondentsPercentage

Agree 1122%

Disagree 1734%

Neutral2244%

Table no.11: Acceptance towards ads on websites

Figure No.11: Acceptance towards ads on websitesInterpretation: From the above data it is concluded that 51% users are neutral regarding the appearance of ads on social networking websites while 39% disagree with the appearance of ads while 10% agree that the ads should appear on the social networking websites.Q9. What kind of brand communication attracts you the most on social networking websites?

ParticularsNo. of RespondentsPercentage

Banner ads2244%

Games quiz1938%

Video ads816%

Interactive flash ads12%

Table no.12: Brand communication attracting the customers most

Figure No.12:Brand communication attracting the customers most

Interpretation:From the above data it is concluded that 44% are attracted towards the banner ads, 38% users are attracted towards the games and quiz, 16% are attracted towards video ads and 2% are attracted towards interactive flash ads. Thus banner ads are most attractive towards the users of social networking websites.

Q10. Do these ads are successful in creating an impact on you?

ParticularsNo. of RespondentsPercentage

Agree 2244%

Strongly agree1632%

Disagree 816%

Strongly disagree48%

Table no.13: Perception of respondents towards customers

Figure No.13: Perception of respondents towards customersInterpretation: From the above data it is concluded that35% users strongly agree that ads on social networking websites are successful in creating impact on the users , 47% users agree that these ads creates the impact on them, 17% users disagree that these ads does not create any impact on users and only 1% users strongly disagree that these ads creates the impact on the users.

Q11. Is social networking sites are effective in connecting with all the age groups?

ParticularsNo. of Respondents Percentage

Agree 1734%

Strongly agree1938%

Disagree 816%

Strongly disagree612%

Table no.14: Respondents perception

Figure No.14: Respondents perceptionInterpretation: From the above data we conclude that 38% users agree that social networking websites are effective in connecting with all age groups, 34% users agree that social networking websites are effective in connecting with all age groups, 16% disagree and does not find social networking websites connected to all the age groups. Thus 12% users strongly disagree and do not find social networking websites effective in connecting with all the age groups.

Q12. Are social networking sites an effective platform for marketing?ParticularsNo. of RespondentsPercentage

Yes3978

No1122

Table no.15:Perception towards effectiveness of websites for marketing

Figure No.15: Perception towards effectiveness of websites for marketingInterpretation: From the above data tit is concluded that 78% users finds social networking websites an effective platform for marketing while 22% do not finds social networking websites as the effective tool for marketing.CHAPTER-5FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS Key Findings:

It has been observed that the primary users of social networking websites are 50% males and 50% females. The majority of users belong to the age group of 21-25years. The students between the age group of 15-20 and 21-25 are the frequent users of social networking websites. The majority of users use their mobile phones to access the social networking websites. Most people know of the brands through advertisements. Next come magazines. And then the newspapers. 82% users are moderately active on these websites. Facebook is the most frequently used social networking website. The 64% user does not find the relevant information on these websites. Mostly users sometimes access the ads coming their way. Majority of users find facebook as most effective platform for marketing. Majority of users are neutral with the appearance of ads on social networking websites. The users of websites agree with the fact that ads on these websites are successful in creating an impact on them. Most of the users belong to the age group of 40years. Thus, these websites are effective tool for the marketing of the products.Conclusion

After completion of this project the conclusion is social networking websites are effective on connecting with different age groups. Thus it creates a great impact on the users of social networking websites and provides an effective platform for advertising the product and connecting with the masses.CHAPTER-6 RECOMMENDATIONS Social media overwhelm is one of the biggest challenges for small businesses. They think they need to have a presence on every social platform including the latest shiny object that comes along. This spreads them too thin and causes wasted time and effort. The solution is rather simple: if social media makes sense for your business, be where your customers are. Find out where your customers are hanging out online, choose 1 or 2 of those platforms that you enjoy and that align with your business objectives and then focus deeply on those platforms. The typical advertiser promotes a post or creates an ad and accepts Facebooks automated optimization. Influence is the secret to social media success. Its the sugar in the cake. Its the foundation for building an authentic following online that can ultimately lead to new clients or customers. The audience has a million options for content. Effective marketing means that you have to rise above the noise and differentiate yourself from everything.CHAPTER-7APPENDIX A) BIBLIOGRAPHY Philip Kotler, Marketing Management,Millenium edition.(Prentice hall of India) Kothari C.R. (2004) Research Methodology and Techniques. Wishwa Prakashan

Google search engineB) QUESTIONNAIRE

I would request you to kindly assist us in this Research by sparing a little time to give us your valuable feedback and suggestions through the Questionnaire below. Please do not hesitate to inform us of any observation that you think may be relevant.Name: ______________________ Gender: ______________________Age: ______________________

Occupation: ______________________Q.1 Method of accessing to social networking website you use?

MobilePCs at home

Others

Q.2 How active you are on networking site?

Highly activeModerately activeOccasionally activeRare userQ.3 On what social networking websites you have an active profile?

Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Other Q.4 Do you get relevant/correct/timely information through social networking websites?

Yes NoQ.5 Have you ever accessed these ads coming your way?

Often

SometimesNeverDepending upon adsQ.6 On which social networking site do you find ads communicated well?

Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Others

Q.7 What kind of ads have you came across?

Web banners

Pop ups Flash ads Video ads OthersQ.8 Do you agree that the ads should appear on social networking websites?

Agree

Disagree Neutral Q.9 What kind of brand communication attracts you the most on social networking websites?

Banner ads Games quiz Video ads Interactive flash ads Q.10 Do these ads are successful in creating an impact on you?

Agree Strongly

agree DisagreeStrongly disagreeQ.11 Are social networking sites effective in connecting with all the age groups?

Agree

Strongly agree

Disagree

Strongly disagreeQ.12 Are social networking sites an effective platform for marketing?

Yes

No

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highly active30

modertely active64

occasionally active4

rare user2

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mobiles54

PC's26

others20

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facebook44

twitter40

linkedin2

others14

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34

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22%

34%

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agree22

disagree34

neutral44

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facebook62

twitter16

linkedin14

others8

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26%

60%

8%

6%

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often26

sometimes60

never8

depending upon ads6

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22

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web banner's38

pop up's22

flash ad's22

video ad's6

others12

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Age Group

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15-2011

21-2523

26-307

31-356

36-403

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44%

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agree44

strongly agree32

disagree16

stongly disagree8

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banner ad's44

games, quiz38

video ad's16

interactive flash ad's2

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Sales

yes78

no22

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agree34

strongly agree38

disagree16

strongly disagree12

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Respondent's Gender

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Respondent's Gender

Male25

Female25

3rd Qtr1.4

4th Qtr1.2

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Occupation

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Occupation

Businessmen6

Housewife4

Salaried person13

Student27

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