After reading case study I need a review of the case and then make recommendations on what the company should have done differently.

H 9B12A007 O PY SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT STRATEGY AT AYOJAK Anandan Pillai wrote this case under the supervision of Professor Arvind Sahay solely to provide material for class discussion. The authors do not intend to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of a managerial situation. The authors may have disguised certain names and other identifying information to protect confidentiality. Richard Ivey School of Business Foundation prohibits any form of reproduction, storage or transmission without its written permission. Reproduction of this material is not covered under authorization by any reproduction rights organization. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, contact Ivey Publishing, Richard Ivey School of Business Foundation, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, N6A 3K7; phone (519) 661-3208; fax (519) 661-3882; e-mail cases@ivey.uwo.ca. Version: 2012-03-28 C Copyright 2012, Richard Ivey School of Business Foundation INTRODUCTION O T Ayojak1 was the flagship, online event management product solution offered by Signure Technologies Limited (Signure), which was established in 2007, in India and the United Kingdom. As of May 2011, Ayojak had two operational products (Ayojak Ticketing and Ayojak Social Meets) and two more products in the development stage (Ayojak Conference and Ayojak Event Promote). Ayojak provided an end-toend solution to any event organizer, offering such activities as the creation of an event web page, ticket sales, collation of attendee information, event promotion on social media and customer support for booking tickets online. D O N Ayojak made extensive use of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs to promote its clients' events. Because young people were the target audience for most events, and this audience was active on digital media, Ayojak's offerings were cost-effective for the organizers while also helpful for attendees, who could easily locate relevant events and thus avoid travelling to locations in person to learn event details and to buy tickets. Ayojak engaged in few offline marketing activities and hence depended solely on word of mouth through its social media presence Santosh Panda, chief executive officer (CEO) of Signure Technologies, realized that Ayojak's content strategy on social media to date had focused solely on promoting its clients' events. Now, with two more products soon to be launched, Panda needed to rethink Ayojak's current content strategy of using social media solely as a promotion platform for its clients' events and to, instead, use social media to build Ayojak's brand among its stakeholders. The lack of sufficient customer engagement on Ayojak's Facebook page and Twitter handle concerned Panda, as he clearly knew that without adequate customer engagement, it would be difficult to fuel word-of-mouth promotion of Ayojak. Because Ayojak engaged itself in few offline marketing efforts, Panda recognized an urgent need to review Ayojak's content strategy to build customer engagement. 1 It is a Hindi term, which means \"organizer\" Page 2 9B12A007 EVENT MANAGEMENT INDUSTRY O PY The event management industry in India was approximately INR8 billion2 in size and catered to four major categories: leisure, cultural, personal and organizational.3 Organizing an event involved a wide range of activities, including venue selection, targeting of prospective attendees, awareness-creation regarding the event, in addition to appropriate messaging, facilitation of ticket sales, arrangement for payment alternatives, customer support activities, identification of relevant speakers, arrangement of content deliverables and logistics arrangements. The primary activities included relevant and appropriate content delivery, as attendees had paid for the event (even when the event was free, event attendees incurred an opportunity cost), and thus had certain expectations. Because it was crucial for the event organizers to focus on the content, it was feasible for them to outsource the comparatively less important activities to specialized event management solutions providers, whose experience and resources enabled them to handle those activities with both ease and reasonable efficiency. C The unorganized event management industry in India was gradually evolving into a more organized space, as evidence by the industry's annual growth rate of 25 per cent. The annual industry revenue was expected to reach INR23 billion by 2012.4 Since the beginning of 2001, entrepreneurs had sensed the business potential of creating such online event-organizing solutions and, with the passage of time, many small ventures had entered into competition with each other. Some major players in this industry (both offline and online) in India and abroad are listed below. EventAvenue D O MeraEvents N O T Headquartered in Mumbai, EventAvenue was incorporated in 2001 and had its subsidiary offices in the United States and in Singapore.5 EventAvenue offered online event registration and payment gateway services for event organizers, corporations, conferences, trade shows, sporting events, associations, universities and others who hosted large events. EventAvenue offered distinct services of conference management, online ticketing, donation collection, education fee collection, webinar registration and exhibitor management.6 The pricing strategy included both fixed set-up fees and variable fees.7 EventAvenue did not have any presence on social media platforms; however, the company provided some informative content on its website in the form of case studies8 and white papers9 that illustrated the company's prominence in this industry. Headquartered in Hyderabad, MeraEvents10 offered event solution services for conferences, exhibitions and trade fairs. MeraEvents offered a complete solution package of creating an event page, promoting events on social media, and facilitating the ticketing and payment process. The company followed a 2 US$1 = approximately INR45. \"KIT: The Indian Event Management Industry,\" August 18, 2009, www.business-standard.com/indiaews/kitindian-eventmanagement-industry/367221/, accessed May 10, 2011. 4 \"Rising Corporate and Entertainment Events is Boosting the Event Management Market,\" www.onlineprnews.comews/40720-1276320799-rising-corporate-and-entertainment-events-is-boosting-the-eventmanagement-market.html, June 12, 2010, accessed April 4, 2011). 5 \"Corporate Profile,\" www.eventavenue.com/content/aboutus/corporate_profile.php, accessed April 11, 2011. 6 \"Our Clients,\" www.eventavenue.com/content/aboutus/client_list.php, accessed April 11, 2011. 7 \"Pricing,\" www.eventavenue.com/content/pricing/pricing_india.php, accessed April 11, 2011. 8 \"Case studies,\" www.eventavenue.com/content/aboutus/casestudies.php, accessed April 11, 2011. 9 \"Whitepapers,\" www.eventavenue.com/content/aboutus/whitepapers.php, accessed April 11, 2011. 10 The brand name is a Hindi word, which translates as \"My Events.\" 3 Page 3 9B12A007 pricing strategy with a mix of fixed and variable components.11 MeraEvents had social media presence on Twitter12 with 168 followers,13 Facebook14 with 208,566 fans15 and its corporate blog,16 where it promoted its clients' events and built customer engagement. DoAttend C O PY Headquartered in Chennai, DoAttend was an online event registration product from Tenmiles Corporation.17 DoAttend offered a free-event creation service for events that did not need paid tickets, but imposed service charges for events whose tickets were to be sold through DoAttend. Event organizers could create, publish and share their event page; create visually attractive event pages with the help of templates available from DoAttend; customize the look and feel of the event page to their requirements; optimize the event page for iPad and iPhone accessibility and manage multiple events simultaneously.18 DoAttend followed a mixed pricing strategy, wherein the event organizers paid some fixed transaction fees and additional variable costs.19 DoAttend had its social media presence on Facebook20 with 117 community members,21 Twitter22 with 348 followers23 and its corporate blog.24 DoAttend, with the help of social media, promoted its clients' events, interacted with community members, provided customer support for transactions and educated users of its application about new features. Bookmyshow 11 N O T Headquartered in Mumbai, Bookmyshow was the entertainment ticketing website from the stable of Bigtree Entertainment, which was established in 1999.25 Bookmyshow, with 90 per cent market share26 and 40 per cent CAGR (compounded annual growth rate),27 was the prominent player in the online entertainment ticketing space for such events as movies, plays, sports, music concerts and comic arts. Bookmyshow had its social media presence on Facebook,28 where it had 266,884 community members,29 on Twitter,30 where it had 5,600 followers31 and on its corporate blog.32 Because Bookmyshow was significantly involved in selling movie tickets, it used its Facebook page to promote upcoming new releases and shared related content on its Twitter handle to spur customer engagement. \"Pricing,\" www.meraevents.com/PricingInfo, accessed April 11, 2011. Twitter handle of MeraEvents, http://twitter.com/#!/meraevents_com, accessed April 11, 2011. 13 Figures as of April 27, 2011. 14 Facebook page of MeraEvents, www.facebook.com/meraevents?sk=wall, accessed April 11, 2011. 15 Figures as of April 27, 2011. 16 Corporate blog of MeraEvents, www.meraevents.com/blog/, accessed April 11, 2011. 17 Products range of Tenmiles http://tenmiles.com/products.php, accessed April 11, 2011. 18 Features of DoAttend, http://doattend.com/features, accessed April 11, 2011. 19 Pricing of DoAttend, http://doattend.com/pricing (last accessed April 11, 2011) 20 Facebook page of DoAttend, www.facebook.com/doattend, accessed April 11, 2011. 21 Figures are as of April 27, 2011. 22 Twitter handle of DoAttend, http://twitter.com/#!/doattend, accessed April 11, 2011. 23 Figures are as of April 27, 2011. 24 Corporate blog of DoAttend, http://blog.doattend.com,/ accessed April 11, 2011. 25 \"About Bigtree,\" http://in.bookmyshow.com/static/aboutus.bms, accessed April 11, 2011. 26 \"About Bookmyshow,\" http://in.bookmyshow.com/static/aboutus.bms. accessed April 11, 2011. 27 \"Bookmyshow to Rescue from Long Queues with Just a Click,\" www.moneycontrol.comews/business/bookmyshow-torescuelong-queuesjustclick_584890.html, accessed on October 28, 2011. 28 Facebook page of Bookmyshow, www.facebook.com/BookMyShowIN, accessed April 11, 2011. 29 Figures as of May 10, 2011. 30 Twitter handle of Bookmyshow, http://twitter.com/#!/bookmyshow, accessed April 11, 2011. 31 Figures as of May 10, 2011. 32 Corporate blog of Bookmyshow, http://blog.bookmyshow.com/, accessed April 11, 2011. D O 12 Page 4 9B12A007 Eventnu O PY Headquartered in Redmond, in the United States, Eventnu had its development centre in Pune, India. Small and medium event organizers could use Eventnu to create event pages, sell tickets, promote through social media platforms and measure the success rate of their campaigns. Eventnu had clients from the business arena, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the education sector and the technology sector. Eventnu followed a variable pricing model, wherein a certain percentage of the ticket price was charged to the event organizers.33 Eventnu had its social media presence in the form of a Facebook page,34 where it had 887 community members,35 a Twitter handle,36 where it had 718 followers37 and its corporate blog.38 Eventnu used its social media presence to promote its clients' events, share details about the organization and build customer engagement with the customers. Unrelated Competition T C Social networking websites, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, included an event feature, wherein event organizers could add information describing their event to promote it among their network members. This feature was generally used by event organizers to promote events through the viral nature of networks: when any individual expressed his or her interest in the RSVP39 section of the event, this information was sent to all of that individual's network contacts. Thus, using social networking sites became a convenient way to promote the event among relevant prospective attendees. However, neither of these social networking websites had a payment facility attached to its event feature. If these websites were able to include the payment facility, then they, too, would be able compete with the online event management solution providers. O AYOJAK D O N Ayojak was the flagship, online event management product solution offered by its parent company, Signure Technologies Limited, which had its product development centre in Pune (India), its remote business development centre in Bengaluru and outsourced some activities to some partners in Delhi. Panda, the CEO and co-founder, initially started the company in 2008, in India and in the United Kingdom as an event listing site, which meant that event organizers could visit the website and list their events. Venue providers could also list their venues with details for event organizers who were seeking suitable venues for their events. The event organizers could list their event free of cost; however, listing an event in a more visible position on the website required a fee. The revenues of Ayojak were driven by these paid listings of events, which were minuscule. This initial step of Ayojak was intended for test marketing; however, due to competitive reasons, Ayojak pulled back. With the help of learning gained during the initial version of Ayojak, the team subsequently came up with a complete event solution proposition. While event organizers were able to list their events on the site at very low cost, what mattered to them was not visibility but attracting more business. Ayojak therefore identified the key requirements of event 33 \"Pricing,\" http://eventnu.com/pages/pricing, accessed May 10, 2011. Facebook page of EventNu, www.facebook.com/eventNu, accessed April 11, 2011. 35 Figures as of May 10, 2011. 36 Twitter handle of EventNu, http://twitter.com/#!/eventnu, accessed April 11, 2011. 37 Figures as of May 20, 2011. 38 Corporate blog of EventNu, http://eventnu.com/blog/, accessed April 11, 2011. 39 RSVP represents a French term, rpondez s'il vous plat, meaning \"Please respond.\" It is generally used in the context of social invitations. 34 Page 5 9B12A007 organizers and re-entered the market in the summer of 200940 with comprehensive event solutions. It provided payment processing solutions; marketed the event in the digital space, which was a popular feature with young target audiences; and collected customized demographical data regarding prospective event attendees. O PY Signure employed 12 people; however, it also drew on a large number of freelancers who worked on various profiles. Panda directly supervised information technology (IT), business development and customer care (which was handled by an external agency). Though he was remotely located, all reporting activities were done on a daily basis. using email and Skype. Panda reflected on his satisfaction with the employee complement of Signure: We would like to grow in a stable and incremental manner, rather than just increasing the team to 30 to 100 while the business is unable to support it. So, as we go on, if the firm grows, employee size is definitely going to grow 5 or 10 times as we tend to grow. At this point of time, we are happy with whatever we need and how we are in the market.41 Products C Ayojak was designed as a suite of applications to be used for various events. Ayojak addressed diverse needs of event organizers with the help of two products, Ticketing and Social Meets, while it had two more products in the development stage, Conference and Event Promote.42 O T Ayojak Ticketing helped event organizers to sell tickets both online and offline. It catered mainly to such events as seminars, entertainment events, workshops, conferences and technology events, wherever customers needed tickets to attend an event. Through this product, Ayojak offered a safe online payment solution, promoted the event on social media, offered real-time reporting and analytics on ticket sales and attendee data, and provided a secure IT infrastructure for managing the event. The pricing for Ayojak Ticketing varied depending on the services selected by the event organizer (see Exhibit 1). N Ayojak Social Meets was a free product that helped people to organize professional social events such as a tweetup or a coffee meeting. The event organizers could offer their attendees an RSVP feature through social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. This product enabled organizers to compile, manage and communicate with attendees. D O In addition to the above two existing products, Ayojak's product development team was busy developing two products that could further address the event management niche needs of prospective target audiences: Ayojak Event Promote and Ayojak Conference. Ayojak Event Promote would help event organizers to create interactive campaigns, such as quizzes and contests, with the help of social media platforms. It also offered a comprehensive digital promotion solution that included email marketing, content creation, blogging and forum marketing. The pricing for this product had both fixed and variable components, depending on the features selected (see Exhibit 2). Ayojak Conference was an upcoming product from Ayojak, which was targeted to organizers of large events, conferences and exhibitions who sought a product to manage end-to-end services, such as registration, logistics, merchandising and accommodation. 40 Personal interview with Santosh Panda, January 3, 2011. Personal interview with Santosh Panda, January 3, 2011. 42 Ayojak website, www.ayojak.com, accessed April 11, 2011. 41 Page 6 9B12A007 Innovative Features O PY In addition to the well-designed applications' suites, Ayojak also offered a few innovative features, such as e-tickets, which differentiated Ayojak from its competitors. The e-ticket generated a unique order identification number and a unique ticket identification number for each individual ticket booked as part of a transaction. The event attendees could carry these unique order and ticket identification numbers instead of printed tickets.43 Ayojak supported the movement to save trees by taking these small steps, and it encouraged attendees to make use of e-tickets. However, Ayojak also knew that the bulk of events in India were booked through offline modes, and consumers were hesitant to make online payments. Hence, it entered into partnership with Suvidhaa,44 which had approximately 30,000 outlets across the country.45 Ayojak helped event organizers have the event sub-domain that included their event name46, which would facilitate search engine optimization (SEO). Clients Ayojak's clients came from various sectors, such as entertainment, technology, sports and business. The clients of Ayojak ranged from start-ups to mid-size firms. Panda emphasized: C The market is operating in two specific levels. At the bottom of the pyramid are individual event organizers who are not having technology, or who do not want to invest in technology to do it and hence Ayojak is suitable for them. About 60 to 70 per cent of our clients are from the bottom of the pyramid segment.47 N O T Such small-sized companies were very focused on their survival, and events were an opportunity for such small companies to establish their image and credibility among the stakeholders in the industry. The other segment consisted of larger companies who had an established brand image, had sufficient prior experience in managing events of their own and had sufficient resources to handle all activities. Such larger companies typically had adequate budgets to hire expensive event management organizers and to fund extensive marketing of events, which was more difficult for small-size companies, due to their more limited resources. Ayojak had a successful track record of helping clients to sell, on average, 75 to 80 per cent of tickets.48 Panda believed that the percentage of ticket sales depended on the quality of the event and the profile of the event's speakers (especially for ticket sales of entertainment and technology events). However, he took pride in instances wherein Ayojak had made special efforts to ensure adequate tickets were purchased: D O Ayojak doesn't take the credit away from the clients because they are the people who are organizing the event. We only help them in the solutions part and help them organize the event properly. Yes, we do take credit, if we promote the event well on the social media. We create awareness campaigns, from time to time.49 43 \"Go Green, Go for E-Tickets,\" http://ayojak.com/blog/2011/01/, January 6, 2011, accessed on April 4, 2011. www.mysuvidhaa.com/, accessed April 11, 2011. 45 \"Suvidhaa Partnership for Offline Ticket Sale in India,\" http://ayojak.com/blog/2010/12/, December 10, 2010, accessed on April 4, 2011. 46 For example, if the event organizer was setting up an event titled ABC, Ayojak would provide an event page with the subdomain www.ABC.ayojak.com. 47 Personal interview with Mr. Santosh Panda, January 3, 2011 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 44 Page 7 9B12A007 Business Model O PY Once an event organizer agreed to use Ayojak offerings (which could include ticket sales, collection of attendee information and provision of payment gateway), the developer team at Ayojak created an event page50 with relevant information, including event details, venue details, registration fees and payment modes. The event organizer could then provide a link to this event page on its corporate website for the convenience of the attendees. Ayojak arranged for the printing of tickets (if they were required in a physical form), the courier partner to deliver tickets and a support team to assist attendees in registration process. The support provided to attendees at any stage of their booking a ticket was one of Ayojak's important activities with attendees. C Ayojak facilitated attendees by providing complete information about the event and a convenient platform to register for events. Also, when attendees visited Ayojak's website to register for a particular event, they could browse through other events hosted on Ayojak. Thus, attendees could become aware of events they might not have known about. In the case of free events, such as casual meetings (that did not need a ticket), individual users could use the Ayojak Social Meet product to simplify the event-organizing process. Hence, Ayojak acted as an intermediary to event organizers and event attendees, adding value at both ends of the value chain (see Exhibit 3). MARKETING Direct Marketing D O N O T Prashant Patil, business development manager at Ayojak, was responsible for generating leads, identifying prospects and closing the deals. Patil had been associated with Ayojak since its inception and was very passionate about the company's unique business model. A couple of Ayojak's freelancers helped Patil in generating leads. These freelancers sometimes identified prospects and tried to close deals on their own initiative; when required, Patil would offer his help. The leads were typically generated through three routes: aggressive searching through event-listing websites and other sources, unsolicited leads from event organizers and existing clients (i.e., repeat customers) who approached Ayojak. Ayojak did not use any traditional media to promote itself. The event organizers, who were clients of Ayojak, promoted Ayojak on their event displays (i.e., on banners, hoardings and websites), effectively providing Ayojak with publicity free of cost. Since Ayojak's inception, its brand awareness had increased predominantly through word of mouth.51 Ayojak made use of Google ads; however, according to Panda, \"I think social media has had a much better value-creation than Google ads.\"52 Social Media Marketing The primary objective of Ayojak's social media presence was to increase word of mouth about its products and to build its brand in the online event management industry. Initially, the social media activities of Ayojak were handled by the company's internal team. After some time, Panda realized that outsourcing was a better option: Because ours is a small start-up and we don't want to do too many things on our own, we wanted the best people to focus on what they are good at. We wanted them to be value-driven and show 50 In case of free events any event organizer could log on to the website and create the event page without much of support required from Ayojak. Also, no initial setup costs were charged from the event organizers. 51 Personal interview with Prashant Patil, April 7, 2011. 52 Personal interview with Santosh Panda, January 3, 2011. Page 8 9B12A007 what they could do. That is why we decided to outsource the social media activities. We thought we were getting more value from outsourcing because they are going to be continuously updated on what they should do and how they should do it better. That is the motivation to outsource it.53 O PY Ayojak chose to outsource its social media activities to a Noida54-based social media agency, which was given clear objectives to be met, and the deliverables for each of the objectives were charted out. The deliverables expected from the social media agency were word of mouth, the number of customers who responded through social media channels versus those who responded through direct marketing channels and other lead-generation mechanisms, instant reaction to queries on social media and the time required to respond to support queries. The agency was provided a list of key areas to focus on: updating and building engagement with community members through Twitter, Facebook and the corporate blog; generating feedback from Ayojak's business-to-business (B2B) clients; collating feedback from end customers (i.e., event attendees); providing a list of changes to be incorporated in the event application suites based on feedback from B2B clients and end customers; and providing support to both B2B clients (while they create their event page) and end customers (while they book tickets for events). Panda expressed his satisfaction with the company's social media journey: O SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE T C It has been very good. The way our organization culture is, we think it fits quite well with social media because social media demands honesty and transparency. Wherever we have done a good job, customers have appreciated it; wherever we haven't done good job, we have gone ahead and said, hey, sorry, we missed it out, but there are few things that we could do for you to make up. So, we have been honest and open about it. So far, fortunately and favorably, we have never had any major setbacks on the social media.55 N When Ayojak was introduced in 2008, Internet users in India had been using Orkut for some time and were being introduced to Facebook and Twitter. Ayojak quickly realized the potential of social media as an ideal route to connect with both B2B customers and business-to-consumer (B2C) customers. Ayojak had a presence on Facebook,56 Twitter,57 LinkedIn58 and its corporate blog.59 Building an Initial Set of Community Members D O The initial set of community members on Ayojak's Facebook page was built by using the \"Suggest to friends\" feature. The community manager and a couple of people from the social media agency used this feature to build the initial set of fans on Ayojak's Facebook page. Ayojak's Twitter handle was initially following about 1,500 to 1,600 Twitter users. This resulted in large number of tweets in the Ayojak's timeline and it became nearly impossible to comprehend each tweet. The community manager scrutinized each of the followers and identified a few influencers with whom engagement was built. The rest of the followers, who rarely tweeted or tweeted on unrelated topics, were unfollowed. As of April 2011, Ayojak 53 Personal interview with Santosh Panda, January 3, 2011. Noida is a city in the state Uttar Pradesh, India. 55 Personal interview with Santosh Panda, January 3, 2011. 56 Facebook page of Ayojak, www.facebook.com/ayojak, accessed April 11, 2011. 57 Twitter handle of Ayojak, http://twitter.com/ayojak, accessed on April 11, 2011. 58 LinkedIn Group of Ayojak, www.linkedin.com/groups/Ayojakcom-2437727?mostPopular=&gid=2437727, accessed on April 11, 2011. 59 Corporate blog of Ayojak, http://ayojak.com/blog/, accessed on April 11, 2011. 54 Page 9 9B12A007 had approximately 680 community members following its Facebook page and about 610 community members following its Twitter handle.60 CONTENT STRATEGY O PY In academic literature, content strategy is defined as \"the practice of planning for the creation, delivery and governance of useful, usable content.\"61 As explained in this definition, content strategy consists of an ongoing process of three crucial steps: (1) creating content relevant to attaining a predetermined objective, (2) evaluating and selecting an appropriate social media platform to deliver the content and (3) governing the discussions surrounding the delivered content. Content strategy is a crucial aspect of any social media presence because it helps brands to build engagement with their community members on a particular social media platform. C Panda realized that content was the key aspect of any social media activity and hence it had a wellstructured content management strategy to engage with its B2B and B2C target audience Panda was satisfied with the present content management strategy, which had helped it in identifying a few business leads and had helped its B2B clients enormously in reaching its end customers. Ayojak's Facebook page was mainly used to promote events of Ayojak's B2B clients (see Exhibit 4). A few Facebook wall posts had created awareness about Ayojak's various products. These wall posts had included links to blogposts from Ayojak's corporate blog so that community members could quickly access further information. The wall posts also included news, quotes and contests that had been prepared around an event. O T Ayojak's Twitter handle was used for promoting events and for interacting with community members on various topics (see Exhibit 5). The interaction with community members seemed to be more convenient on Twitter than on Facebook. The Twitter handle was also used to share general news, quotes and eventrelated contests. Compared with Ayojak's Facebook page and Twitter handle, the content on its corporate blog had a greater emphasis on Ayojak and its products (see Exhibit 6). Also, some posts were related to events, and a few blogposts were generic in nature. N CO-ORDINATION WITH AGENCY D O The key members of Ayojak's team were located in distant places: Panda was located in London, Patil was in Pune and the social media agency was in Noida.62 They made use of tools such as Skype to converse with each other and to co-ordinate the social media activities. According to Panda, \"Whatever we did was maintained, analysed, and contributed, no matter whether they were remotely located.\"63 Despite being remotely located, the response to any query raised through social media was addressed within a decent amount of time: In practice we have seen that we have been able to solve an issue in hardly two to three hours. We have analysis on how many support queries were answered in a month, how many phone supports we did, how many hours we spent on Twitter, how many hours we spent on an email campaign. We maintain that analysis so that we can improve.64 60 Figures as of April 27, 2011. Kristina Halvorson, Kristina, Content Strategy for the Web, New Riders, Berkeley, CA, 2010, p. 21. 62 The distance between Pune and Noida was approximately 1,500 kilometres. 63 Personal interview with Santosh Panda, January 3, 2011. 64 Personal interview with Santosh Panda, January 3, 2011. 61 Page 10 9B12A007 Responsibilities of the Community Manager O PY The community manager of Ayojak was given the primary objective to build a substantial follower base on Twitter and a substantial fan base on Facebook. He was also tasked to build engagement among the Ayojak community members on both platforms to ensure they spread word of mouth about Ayojak. In addition to these two primary activities, the community manager was also entrusted with maintaining Ayojak's corporate blog65 to promote Ayojak's new features on event application suites, to post blog entries about events for which Ayojak was the ticketing partner and to help event organizers create the event page. The community manager proudly shared that he also contributed to the thoughts on the visual effects of an event page: We improved the visual effect of an event page by incorporating the header image similar to that of the event organizer's website / logo. This helped attendees identify and trust the event page. It was a mechanism to emotionally connect with attendees in a better manner.66 THE ROAD AHEAD O T C Although Panda seemed to be satisfied with its growth since inception, it had aggressive plans for the future Panda wanted to slowly start focusing on clients of larger size too. With two products (i.e., Ayojak Conference and Ayojak Event Promote) to be added in the future, Panda returned to the drawing board with all past learning to frame the future roadmap of Ayojak's content strategy. In May 2011, when Panda reviewed the content strategy for the past four months, he noticed a pattern in how the social media platforms had been used. Facebook was primarily used to promote Ayojak and the service it offered (see Exhibit 4); Twitter was used to promote clients' events and, to some extent, to provide customer support to end-customers (see Exhibit 5); the corporate blog was chiefly used to share content about Ayojak. Panda wondered how this content strategy differed from sharing content on traditional media. He realized the content was pushed at community members and rarely gave them the opportunity to interact, such as by sharing their thoughts. Moreover, the content needed to be informative and helpful for clients in terms of making a purchase decision, evaluating alternatives and being comfortable with a new kind of service. N Panda realized that he needed to relook at Ayojak's content strategy to attract larger clients and he observed that, D O Just by having a social media presence it is not going to help you in any way. If you are going to be involved, if you are going to make social media involved in what you do and how you love it and what you hear, how you reach out to them, that is when social media is going to exponentially grow you. Panda wondered how Ayojak should improve its content strategy to make its social media presence more engaging and to help Ayojak brand itself. More importantly, he realized that building effective content strategy was a key step in building Ayojak's brand through social media. Hence, with the objective of building Ayojak's brand as a comprehensive and secure event management solution, Panda needed to strategize a relevant content strategy. 65 Corporate blog of Ayojak, http://ayojak.com/blog/, accessed April 11, 2011. Personal interview with Ayojak's community manager, April 24, 2011. 66 Page 11 9B12A007 Exhibit 1 AYOJAK TICKETING'S PRICING DETAILS x x x x x x Elite 10 per cent per attendee Premium x INR40 per attendee convenience fee x 5 per cent payment processing fee Full Ticketing Solution Email Marketing* SMS Marketing* Affiliate Marketing Social Media Promotion Offline Retail Store Ticket Selling x x x x x Standard INR15 per attendee convenience fee x 5 per cent payment processing fee x Full Ticketing Solution x Full Ticketing Solution Email Marketing* SMS Marketing* Affiliate Marketing Social Media Promotion *Customized pricing packages applicable Source: www.ayojak.com/pricing, accessed April 11, 2011. Free No fees x Full Ticketing Solution O PY x C Exhibit 2 AYOJAK EVENT PROMOTE'S PRICING DETAILS Premium INR25,000 150,000 emails Yes Yes INR3,000 worth of Online Ad 3 week Standard INR9,999 50,000 emails No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes No No Yes Yes No Yes Extra Cost as per your need Yes Yes Extra Cost as per your need Yes No No Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No T Elite INR45,000 500,000 emails Yes Yes INR6,000 worth of Online Ad 6 week D O N O Activity Promotion Setup Cost Email Marketing x Content Preparation x Email Creative Online Advertisements (Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoo) Social Media Solution across Facebook, Twitter Slidesha, LinkedIn, etc. management x Corporate Blogging x Forum/Internet Marketing x Virtual PR/Blogger Outreach x Collateral development x Social media monitoring x Quiz Competition Digital Billboard /Audio-Visual Advertisements Create & Distribute Event Content x Event Related Content sites x Article Writing x Press Release Writing x Submission to popular pressrelease sites Source: www.ayojak.com/pricing, accessed April 11, 2011. 1 week No Page 12 9B12A007 Exhibit 3 AYOJAK'S BUSINESS MODEL Channel Event Organizer Channel Ayojak Value Addition: Tickets sale Information about attendees Payment gateways Promotion on social media Cost effectiveness Attendees O PY Value Addition: Convenience Awareness Source: Created by authors. C Exhibit 4 AYOJAK'S CONTENT STRATEGY ON FACEBOOK: JANUARY TO APRIL, 2011 February April Quizzes / Contests 37 0 2 6 28 21 0 0 7 36 24 2 7 3 16 125 12 94 2 4 2 11 0 16 75.2 3.2 8.8 12.8 45 N March Current affairs / News T January About brand/ product No. of posts O Month Total posts Percentage D O Overall Likes received for the four months: 19 Overall Comments received for the four months: 12 Source: Compiled by authors from Ayojak's Facebook page. Entertainment Page 13 9B12A007 Exhibit 5 AYOJAK'S CONTENT STRATEGY ON TWITTER: JANUARY TO APRIL, 2011 Month No. of tweets About Ayojak About events Message to community member News Quotes Contests / Quiz Informative content 72 8 45 13 0 5 1 0 February 58 7 29 20 0 2 0 0 March 66 2 25 29 1 3 5 1 24 220 4 21 10 109 8 70 2 3 0 10 0 6 0 1 9.55 49.55 31.82 2.73 0.45 April Total tweets Percentage Source: Compiled by authors from Ayojak's Twitter handle. O PY January 1.36 4.55 C Exhibit 6 AYOJAK CONTENT STRATEGY ON ITS CORPORATE BLOG, OCTOBER 2009 TO MARCH 2011 N D O About Ayojak 1 0 1 1 1 1 2 1 0 3 0 2 2 1 16 T \u0002o. of Blogposts 3 2 1 1 1 1 6 1 1 4 1 4 2 1 29 O Month Oct-09 Nov-09 Dec-09 Jan-10 Mar-10 Apr-10 Jun-10 Jul-10 Aug-10 Sep-10 Nov-10 Dec-10 Jan-11 Mar-11 Total Source: Compiled by the authors from Ayojak's Blog About Event 1 2 0 0 0 0 3 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 10 Generic 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 3