Simply Social: How can businesses leverage social media?

On a breezy Saturday morning, Buzzom.com managed to bring together the best brains in the country to discuss social media engagement by brands and businesses. The conference was aptly titled Simply Social. The eclectic bunch included stalwarts like Rajesh Dembla from Just Dial, Archana Vohra from Times Internet, Rajiv Dingra from WATConsult.com, Kiruba Shankar from Business Blogging and many others.

Kiruba kicked off the show in style, enthralling the audience with his insightful take on social media. His argument favouring the need for quantification of social media engagement was widely appreciated.

Buzzom also used the event to launch their proprietary social web engagement and analytics platform called Simplify 360. Shradha Sharma from YourStory.in launched the platform and also conducted a Q & A session with the team. Rohit Gupta, the tech entrepreneur behind Simplify 360, took the audience through the unique features of this social media analytics product and highlighted its usage in the B2B space.

The highlight of the event was the “What’s your social media story?” contest where startups were invited to present case studies on their success in leveraging social media for business. The jury for this contest comprised of Anirudh Singh from Cannan Partners, Ankur Gulati from DFJ and Shradha Sharma from YourStory.in. The winner, Advit from Odigma won a Nokia E72 business phone for his stellar effort.

There were a number of invigorating sessions held throughout the day and it was unanimously agreed that social media engagement throws up peculiar challenges as it requires the brand to not just communicate, but also listen carefully. It also gave rise to a discussion about the double-edged nature of social media and the ways to tackle negative publicity.

With social media becoming increasingly important for brands and businesses, a number of speakers reiterated that maintaining the human touch was imperative and any tool which allowed for better management without impeding the personal nature of the interactions was bound to succeed.

Simply Social 2010 was supported by iTimes, Yourstory.in, aFaqs!, Buzzintown and Meraevents.

(a view from the sidelines by Sriram Mohan)