Chandigarh, August 7
What is the similarity between US President Barack Obama, Indian super star Amitabh Bachchan and Chinese seasoning and processed food maker Chings Secret? None other than the fact, that all three are using social networking for their brand promotion. While Obama has a fan following of over a million, Bachchan of over three lakh, Chings Secret has built over one lakh followers through social media.

In an era when a celebrity becomes a brand and brand promotions work best through social networking sites, businesses in India are slowly realising the power of brand promotion through social networking sites. Be it LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter, Indian companies are latching on to these sites for sales as well as brand promotion.

The success of Dell Computers in clocking a sale of $2 million by using Twitter to promote its sales is a success story that every corporate house, big or medium, is trying to emulate, especially considering the low cost in using these to advertise and promote themselves.

“India is the world’s youngest country and has a high Internet penetration among the youth. So, use of social networking sites for brand promotion and for engaging their prospective and present customers, is the latest trend. And people are using multiple sites to reach out to a wide array of customers. For example, Microsoft is engaging corporates as well as students through LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, to offer its certification courses,” says Naveen Arora, associate director, Quasar Media, which handles social networking accounts for some of the corporate biggies like Skoda India, General Motors, Kingfisher World and Microsoft India.