Social media has changed the way people operated business. Brands use social media to achieve multiple business objectives from brand awareness to customer acquisition. From interacting with the target market and raising awareness to business growth and customer service, the role of social media is profound.

However, the way Indian businesses use social media is still in its nascent stage. While big businesses are still adopting, startups somehow have grabbed the opportunity well to connect with their audience. A recent report by XOR Labs on 100 Indian startups tracking their social media performance for three months give some insights into how Indian startups are using doing social marketing.

Which platform is favourite among Indian startups?

Twitter was the most preferred platform for startups. 53.5% of total social media posts shared by them were on Twitter. This is probably because of the micro-blogging nature of the platform.

Twitter was followed by Facebook, Google+, and YouTube with each platform seeing 36.3%, 8.26%, and 1.96% of total posts shared.

Where to post video: Facebook or YouTube?

Even though it may sound counterintuitive, Indian startups prefer Facebook over YouTube for sharing video content. Of all the videos shared, 52.2% were shared on Facebook while 47.8% on YouTube.

Moreover, almost 4 out of 5 Indian startups use Facebook for sharing video content. And surprisingly, around 2 out of 5 Indian startups are active on YouTube for posting video content.

How startup segment is using social media?

How you operate social media not only depends on your objectives, but also in the segment you operate.

That’s why the report focused on each startup segment separately. A total of 13 segments were tracked: Horizontal ecommerce, hyperlocal, healthcare & fitness, food delivery, home furniture, real estate, classified, edutech & education, travel & hotel marketplace, sexual wellness, fashion lifestyle, finance & fintech, and miscellaneous.

While some segments are extremely active on social media, there are segments who have still not deployed social media.

For instance, in sexual wellness industry the average social media activity was less than 1 post per day! In fact, there were 27 days in stretch where not a single post was shared.

Some of the most active startups were Simplilearn and Travel Triangle sharing 19 posts and 15 posts per day respectively.

In horizontal ecommerce, Snapdeal turned out to be the most active brand on social media followed by TataCliQ averaging equally almost 10 post/day. Among healthcare and fitness startups, Fitternity was the most active one averaging almost 3 post a day!

Twitter Keyword analysis of Indian Startups

The report tracked certain keywords on Twitter to analyse and understand the areas startups are focusing on. To do this, a list of keywords was created and categorized in three parts:

1. Discount and offer related keywords

2. Contest related keywords

3. Brand recall keywords

Fashion and lifestyle startups are focusing on brand recall with 15.6% of the keywords related to their brand.

With Indian startups determined to expand (and burn cash) it was interesting to see how they are using discount, sale, off, deal, and offers related keywords.

In fashion and lifestyle category, 10 percent of keywords were related to discounts and offers. In its 230 tweets, Koovs used discount and offer related keywords 202 times. That’s 87 percent!

Ecommerce players are also spending considerable time promoting their offers. 12.5 percent of total tweets were discount oriented. PayTM’s 23 percent of the posts were related to discount and offers.

How Indian startups are conversing with users on Twitter?

The whole point of being on social media is to connect with your audience. And conversing with them is one of the crucial aspect. And Twitter is probably the best medium to do so given its fast paced micro-blogging model.

Shopclues was the most active startup in horizontal ecommerce segment in replying to users. They used Twitter as a customer help desk and replied to users 2.6 times more than all the other six startups combined.

Similarly, in hyperlocal ecommerce, Big Basket dedicated itself to answering user queries on Twitter averaging 85 replies a day. Grofers followed Big Basket with 19 replies a day.

Evidently, all startup segments understand Twitter’s power to connect with customer and were quite active in doing so.

However, there are some companies who’re still ignoring these areas. For instance, Common Floor, Card Dekho, BYJU’s, First Cry, and many more have not taken their social media efforts to next level in terms of deploying Twitter for customer conversation platform.

Conclusion

These are just the glimpses of the report. Complete data and other information, seee it below.  You can download the report too.

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