It is a little crazy for me to suggest that the power of Social Media could be nothing in India. Why crazy? It directly affects my value as a researcher in this space. Nonetheless let us adopt a long term approach on this one and move straight on to why I think so.

These views are a result of the iPhone launch. It was the most hyped product this year, and the product targeted the geeks, the social media users. They were certainly to be amongst the early adopters.

Yet Airtel felt the need to advertise to achieve sales in India. It is understandable if they felt the need to advertise the iPhone – Airtel tie up, but they went on to educate consumers about the product itself, and I wonder if that is not questionable. Either they are wasting good money or some research has shown that awareness is still low.

Though social media alone may not have reached the masses, it combined with Press coverage ensured that the iPhone news reached not just the tech geeks, but the rest of India too. So why advertise the product heavily? Or did they think that was the best route to advertise the tie up too.

Probably price is a deterrent, as the iPhone is priced at around double the price in international markets. Either that or the launch has been timed wrong. The hype is now dead. Those who were desperate for the iphone have picked it up in the grey market. The others have heard about the usability issues of basic mobile features on the iphone and are probably waiting for the next version.

But where did they hear about these issues, yet again review sites, blog posts and word of mouth. So has social media played 2 roles here? Building the brand and yet making people wait for the next version?

Well, I have been meaning to write about the Firefox Download Day and their grand record. One brand which used Social Media Marketing and an existing community to generate buzz like never before. Of course the Guinness Record helped too.

Guinness and Buzz Marketing
A Guinness World Record is an established buzz marketing strategy for a brand and it isn't like Firefox is doing a first. Typical record strategies include building the world's "largest" something and examples of these records can be seen here. The problem with these strategies is they involve a few of the company employees and the buzz generated is through a mention in a few news columns. These record attempts do not really involve the consumers of these brands.

Firefox & Its Guinness Record
Firefox could have also attempted a record like the World's fastest browser to generate buzz, but that would have meant the same problem. A few company emplyees are involved and happy with the coverage in a few news columns.

Firefox instead chose a strategy which was inclusive. It hyped the Download Day with its current community and gave them the badges which they can plonk on blogs to in turn spread the word. The guiness record was a function of how well the existing community sells the idea to the rest of the world. It was upto the community to spread word about D Day and this strategy paid off by integrating a viral marketing component to the classical buzz marketing approach.

To read more on the definitions of Buzz Marketing and Viral Marketing, please read this earlier post Want consumers to talk? Viral is in!!

What can Startups learn?
Now Firefox has a huge community of users, but there is also some take away for startups who have just a few 1000 users. What can you do to engage your community and make them spread the message about your product/website. I don't think your startup should be happy just acquiring users, when what you really need is an army of salesmen. How can you actually convert your existing community into salesmen?

Jennifer Leggio has a great post on the steps Firefox undertook to spread the message. The key take away is that Firefox relied on their community, involved them and empowered them to be salesmen.There is no single formula to replicate this but startups have no choice but to keep trying.

Appending relevant portions of Jennifer's post below to make it a convenient read

How did Firefox actually reach Out?
Spread Firefox
The Firefox community portal started out as the original gathering point for community members. Mozilla created a specific Download Day theme for the site where users could get badges to put on blogs as well as “pledge” to download the software on Download Day. Mozilla received 1.7 million pledges and the affiliate button distribution brought 43 million views to the site.

Facebook
The Firefox Facebook fan page has near 115K members. “We seeded the community with links of articles and other information that pointed to the Download Day site,” Kim said. Mozilla took a very similar approach with social networking sites Bebo and Mixi (Japan).

Twitter
Kim says that while Mozilla Firefox’s Twitter page was set up in 2007 it grew tremendously (now with close to 5K followers) and was a great complement to its other efforts. “We’re incredibly happy with the level of activity and response we received from our Twitter followers,” he said.

YouTube
Mozilla produced a series of feature overview videos that were narrated by some of the designers who worked on Firefox 3. From viewing the YouTube comments and ratings it does not appear that the videos gained much traction, however it was a low-cost alternative to doing traditional video advertising.

Mozilla Parties
Mozilla Party Central, a bit of a mashup of Google Maps and Upcoming, is where the company shares news about its launch parties and also gives users the tools to promote and host their own parties. As of last count there have been near 850 parties worldwide, attended by more than 6K people. Mozilla will receive its official Guinness World Record certificate at a party in London this Wednesday.

Mozilla also put energy into traditional public relations efforts, heading on press tour throughout the U.S., Europe, China and Japan. While this was successful as well, Kim says that its Mozilla’s community that truly helped drive Download Day success.

P.S - Firefox could take this bold approach of asking its users to set a record, because there was no record registered in this category before. So irrespective of how many downloads, Firefox and more importantly its community would have always emerged a winner.

Did you catch Firefox on D Day?