NetApp rides on social media success

• NetApp thriving on social media
• Reaching customers in Asia
• Tracks ROI on monthly basis

Regional - Despite being in enterprise-IT and a B2B marketing realm, NetApp is riding on the success of its social media initiatives to reach customers in Asia where the company does not have an advertising budget.

According to Krishna Arani, senior director, channels and marketing, NetApp Asia Pacific, tools like NetApp Communities, Twitter, NetApp Blogosphere, Facebook, and YouTube have been able to create dialogue, provide real-time responses, and give customers and partners the content they need to make informed business decisions.

He says that NetApp decided social media made sense for its business because of two main reasons. For starters, the whole social media movement had an almost perfect fit with NetApp's core beliefs - collaboration, innovation and delivering results.

"Social media is all about collaboration and the sharing of ideas and knowledge and opinions, on both sides of every issue, with people who have the same passion or interests. These discussions will cross every border - geographical, political, national or corporate," Arani said.

"We seriously believe that these discussions will spawn the innovative and breakthrough concepts of the future and it is a conversation we just didn't want to miss."

While having said that, Arani points out that NetApps is still a company with shareholders to answer to who expect them to deliver financial value creation.

"In order to continue our growth story, we needed to reach many more potential customers than our existing resource would allow. Social media gives us an opportunity to do just that. We can have conversations with people we have never met face-to-face," Arani said.

"We can share the value of our technologies through blogs, videos and other online communities, and let the believers help us spread the word. There may be negative comments too, but that is the nature of a conversation. It isn't about controlling the message, it is about the opening doors."

Arani also explained it could not be a case of creating accounts in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and every social networking site there is and calling it a day. It had to be relevant to the audience and sustainable over the medium to long term. They also had to be prepared to continue adapting the strategy as they went along to keep up with the latest social networking trends.

"While we are still in the early stages of our social media program in the Asia Pacific region, results have been extremely encouraging. And we continue to encourage our people to participate where it fits with their own interests."

ROI still remains as a big question mark around social media strategy. Arani said that NetApp tracks its efforts on a monthly basis.

"We look at our share of voice compared to other players and whether we are staying relevant to the communities we participate in by tracking views, new subscribers, comments and more.

"Can we quantify the business value to NetApp today? We cannot but we know it has helped us build brand recognition, especially in Asia where branding is so important, and where we do not have an advertising budget."

Arani also has some advice for other companies looking to get involved in social media and are in a hurry to get started.

"Once you are clear about what you are trying to achieve, be open about that in your engagements. State your intentions upfront - even if it is sales - as being transparent will win you more fans then detractors. Just as importantly, always only deal with facts that are true and verifiable and not marketing claims that won't stand up to scrutiny.

"To do a good job it takes time and money. It isn't about arm-twisting your employees to blog. It is about getting the right people on board to develop the strategies and systems, monitor interest and responses, and amend the approach on the fly. How much it will actually cost will depend on what you want to achieve, but it won't be free."

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