Featuring a Social Media Agency: Windchimes Communications

Who are we?

A consortium of status-updating, chronic-tweeting, impulsive-Instagramming, midnight-Youtubing individuals who live and breathe  social media. We are the first specialist social media marketing agency in the country, and have four locations in India. We have vast experience of working across verticals (from deodorants to energy, from schools to airports – we’ve done it all!) and with some of the biggest names in corporate India.

What's in the name?

We’d love to write reams about how the name symbolizes social media and what we do (such as ball in the middle stoking the chimes and creating mellifluous music, just like we hope to do for brands by creating music blah blah), but sadly there is no such story, neither are we going to try and force fit one!

What we do have is, however, a very simple explanation. We just fell in love with the name.

It was happy, positive and joyful. Everything we wanted our company to be. The name ‘Windchimes’ just popped into our heads, out of nowhere one fine day - and just stuck!

What we do?

We really didn’t want to take the usual route of going on and on about our services (hey, we have a credentials presentation for that!) so we thought we’d write a little ditty about it:

Social media marketing is something we do,
Getting those likes and comments too!
So if you wanna get the word out, we know you do,
Fill up our brand brief and let us help you!
If you’re concerned about what people say,
Do they think you’re douche, do they think you’re cool?
Leave it to us to do some ORM for you,
‘Coz we have WORM™ - a patented tool!
If, on the other hand, the s**t has hit the roof,
Something’s broken out and there’s panic in the streets!
Fear not, for we are online firefighters
We’ll tackle the crisis – through comments and tweets.
So if you want awareness, or a few more CVs,
Or building thought leadership in your industry, even…
Give us a buzz and let’s see what we can do!
You’ll find nothing’s beyond a Windchimes maven!

Why we do it?

Back in 2008, we sniffed out the fact  that social media was going to become big. Very big.
‘Digital marketing’ was already a buzzword and there were loads of guys already doing it. But we saw social media by itself would need special skills. And we saw the potential to be niche players. And earn lots of money.

Actually, it’s a cool excuse to be able to be on Facebook the whole day.

How we evolve?

For starters, our Google Reader feeds are full of things from Mashable, Engadget and TechCrunch every day!

Social media evolves at a crazy pace. Darwin would have thrown his hands up in despair!

We share a lot internally at Windchimes, and place a lot of emphasis on innovation. We love to look at how new platforms and technologies can be used for clients, way before they become mainstream.

Social responsibility in social media

Respect. The. Medium. Period.

What do we mean? No fake profiles. No buying fake ‘bulk’ fans just to boost numbers and show a good-looking graph. No deleting negative posts / reviews.

Why? Our logic is simple – platforms like Facebook and Twitter are our bread and butter. It is imperative for us to respect the platform and abide by their rules!

Need of the hour

Hello, companies.

Control is now ours.

Yours sincerely,
Consumers.

The sooner companies learnt to accept this, the better. Let go! And let your brand fly!

Also, Social media also needs to be looked at as ‘social first, media second’. Marketeers run the risk of seeing this as just another platform and are in a rush to build numbers up – this kills the essence of the platform and what it can really deliver. Like we’d say on Twitter, “100000 fans or true engagement #youprefer”

We learned the hard way

Keep it simple: Social media is quite simple, really. So there’s no need to complicate things. With clients OR audiences.

It ain’t all about numbers: This is not a contest to see ‘whose is bigger’.

Business, business, business: At the end of the day, you don’t have a Facebook page to run a quiz on petroleum or a Twitter profile because it looks good. Everything we do on social media needs to tie back with those oh-so-important business objectives.

Did we just share that?

We have tons of hilarious experiences! Once, someone took us on board after thinking our quoted monthly retainer was an annual fee! We have been at many times asked to do social media for free (perhaps the ‘social’ was a misnomer?). Our WORM™ software name threw one client into fits of giggles (tough pitch, that one).

They work with us

Infosys, HDFC Bank, GMR, ITC Hotels, Cairn Energy, Lakmé Salon, YES BANK, Future Generali, Delhi Airport, Classmate Stationery, Aegon Religare and Yardley.

Industry as we foresee

More people are getting online: More broadband, more smartphones.

Platforms might come and go but social media will still exist.

Being a country of counties, regional platforms might pick up over the next few years.

And one thing we’re definitely looking forward to – increased spends on the digital medium!

A day without Internet

Probably a day off as far as work is concerned.