India: With the countrywide lockdown and people practicing social distancing, digital media is the only platform left for the brands and businesses to keep up the conversation with their stakeholders and consumers. From small scale entrepreneurs to reputed brands, today everyone has started taking digital media as the most powerful marketing tool to stay competitive in their respective sectors. Germin8, a leading social media intelligence company has come out with two reports on the ‘Brand activities during Covid-19 outbreak’ and ‘Twitter Influencers on Corona’.
The report on ‘Brand activities during Covid-19 outbreak’ highlights how brands all over the world have consciously stepped away from their traditional marketing and advertising efforts and now is focusing on digital mediums and there has been a significant rise in the use of video-conferencing apps and content streaming apps. Whereas social media platforms like Facebook and Snapchat took serious steps to curb and content sharing platforms (eBooks, audiobooks, music, podcast) have allowed free access to their content to help people cope with social distancing. The finding also states how most reputable organizations have shared informational content on hygiene, social distancing, addressing misinformation, and also using the platform for reaching out to the consumers during the times of pandemic and how brands globally and in India have been using their social media handles to make people aware.
The report on ‘Twitter Influencers on Corona’ highlights how Twitter has become and is playing a major source of Covid-19 news. It states that Twitter Influencers majorly shared their views on measures taken by various countries and their governments, and also statistics related to coronavirus spread and influencers from the USA and India were the ones that majorly posted during the specified period. While media houses like CNN Indonesia and Detikcom tweeted the most on the pandemic, whereas the study also found out that political leaders and news anchors were the drivers of the conversation in India. Twitter users in India also tweeted about the economic impact due to Corona Virus, how political propaganda is being spread and people also tweeted about their personal experience.
Speaking on the reports, Dr. Ranjit Nair (Ph.D. AI), CEO and Founder of Germin8 Solutions said, “Our study shows how brands are creating awareness about highlighting
preventive measures, building and retaining trust with their audience by their digital media activities during these challenging times. Today, digital media is the only channel of communication that is not experience a slowdown.”