Social Media Week: "We must align big data to top business goals": Karthik Padmanabhan

IBM's Karthik Padmanabhan lists out 14 things to watch out for in the social media world.

Social Media Week 2014 saw speakers touch on the sort of topics that are becoming increasingly important in a connected world. Karthik Padmanabhan's session on '14 Social Media Trends to Watch Out For' turned out to be one of the most popular ones for marketers and content creators alike.

Padmanabhan, country head, Ecosystem Development, IBM drew up the list of changes he could foresee, under three heads - Tools (including dramatic development in Klout, mobile and big data), Talent and Context.

Padmanabhan explained, with examples, how the whole world is getting instrumented and impacted by the use of sensory data. For example, real-time traffic data is now helping traffic management in parts of the world and a soon-to be-used technology lets people buy from physical shops taking into account the real-time popularity of each item they wish to purchase.

He then touched on the topic of analytics and said that this will consist of three stages - mining internal data with business intelligence tools, understanding the customer by analysing unstructured big data and leveraging cognitive capabilities to deliver all this. "All the big data of the world will be of no use, if we cannot align it to the top business goals. We must tie social goals to business goals first," he stressed.

Thirdly, Padmanabhan warned marketers to not ignore the rise of niche social networks. According to him, people tend to network in niche groups and marketers must know where these niche groups reside and then plan on using that data.

His fourth example was the rise in image-centric networks such as Pinterest and Instagram. The average order value of Pinterest is $92.4 and the brand adoption for Instagram has gone up 80 per cent in 2013.

Fifthy, a rise in video consumption cannot be denied. This rise, according to him, is driven mainly by mobile penetration. IDC has predicted that there will be 1.3 billion mobile workers by 2015. This provides a platform for marketers to reach their consumers.

Padmanabhan equated the Klout system with SAT scores - signifying exactly how impactful the system has become. He believes the use of online reputation information will rise in the next five years.

Additionally, there is a need for digital content creators. According to research done by him, marketers are likely to spend close to $135 billion on new digital marketing collaterals. "When we as marketers try to look at doing big things, that is a wrong approach. Social media is about doing small things which become big over time, with people," said Padmanabhan.

According to him, new collaborative economic employment models are the ones that will drive big results. Social media gives marketers the opportunity to understand the consumer's product needs and complaints, among other things. It not only shortens the turnaround time but also dissolves the barriers between researcher, user and manufacturer.

The ninth key trend is that customers will be mobilised as advocates. This is supported by data, which shows that 77 per cent of customers are more likely to purchase a product if they get a recommendation. This also gives brands 4 to 10 times higher conversion rate for offers. This has already been recognized by several industries like television and hotels that rely on bloggers to spread the word.

Padmanabhan explained that the role of chief customer officer will transcend those of the CIO, CMO or COO. But the customer officer must have a strong understanding of customer retention, must believe in the power of the eco-system and not in silos, be active in internal and external networking as well as be an explorer of new tools and ideas.

The 11th point he made was that there is a growing desire for instant and ephemeral content. This can be seen clearly as every five tweets per second contains a Vine link. A short video therefore can be very affective for marketing.

He also said that marketing is the new media. But there is a need for new incentives for user generated content. The final trend to look out for, according to Padmanabhan, would be the trusted old blog, which is now making a comeback. But he suggested that the blog will only serve its purpose when it is interactive.

Social Media Week is a worldwide event exploring the social, cultural and economic impact of social media. The Mumbai edition started yesterday and will end on 26th.