Social Media Strategy Review: Bindass

This review is a part of our ‘Social Media Strategy Review’ series where we do a 360 degree analysis of a brand’s entire social media activity. You can read the reviews of more brands here.

Launched in 2007, Bindass (also known as UTV Bindass) is a Hindi youth entertainment channel in India targeted at the Indian youth. The channel became popular with ‘reality shows’ such as Emotional Atyachar.

Audience Analysis

Among Bindass's fan base, 84.86% are males while only 15.14% are female. A lot of youngsters follow the channel, and the age demographic is divided between 42.53% belonging to the 13-20 year age bracket, and 29.89% falling within the 21-30 year bracket. Though there is a gender imbalance in the social profiles, the age is perfectly matched with the target audience.

Source: Simplify360 – A Social Media Analytics Tool

Source: Simplify360 – A Social Media Analytics Tool

Facebook

The channel has 3.3 million fans on Facebook and more than 7 lakh people talking about it, with a consistent engagement score over a great period of time.

Source: Simplify360 – A Social Media Analytics Tool

The Facebook strategy of Bindass is disappointing with only fun, lol-worthy and troll posts going up on the page. The amount of content that is supposed to sell the content being broadcast on the television channel is extremely low. How this is supposed to make Bindass different from any random Indian Trolls and meme sharing page, is something I fail to understand.

The frequency of posts is decent and the number of likes/shares each post receives is impressive. But in the end, it is not original content and with almost 95% content being taken from external sources, it is surely not great strategy for any social media platform. The kind of posts are also repetitive in nature, which would put off the follower as well.

The one place where Bindass gave prominence to the shows being aired on the channel are through their cover photos on the Facebook page. The channel mainly publicises Emotional Atyachaar, Band Baaja Barbaad, and Beg, Borrow and Steal, with very clear dates and timings. However, there is no description accompanying these cover photos and that should be worked on.

Though the social media strategy of the channel is not that great, the graphics in one of the cover photos was done very well. Now this is a brilliant way of using a simple visual in your favour. The channel with the highest viewership according to TAM, summarised the results of the latest TAM report and used it as a slick graphic for the cover. The intelligent work here deserves to be lauded.

Twitter

With a fan following of over 5,000 on Twitter, the channel is growing at a rate of 16.5%.

Source: Simplify360 – A Social Media Analytics Tool

Apart from the randomness, what Bindass does not do on Facebook, it surely does on Twitter. The brand pays a good amount of attention to the shows being aired and uses hashtags for the same. Also, there is commentary on Twitter about whatever is happening when a show is on air.

But clearly not a lot of ‘user interaction’ is happening on the handle. Bindass would ask people to tweet, and if it so happened that they received a response, they would retweet one of the tweets and then forget all about it. The Retweet is the end of all communication between a viewer and the brand, and there are no ‘replies’ to be seen.

Adding to these, the random shares that we see on Facebook find space on Twitter as well with hashtags such as #bindassLOLster, #bindassCricketgiri. Again, we fail to see the logic behind the same.

Since Emotional Atyachaar is one of the most popular shows on the channel, the hashtag #EA4 is used for tweets summarising all that happens in an episode.

While such tweeting is good strategy, the use of a better and more prominent hashtag would be advisable. Something like #EA4 could mean a multitude of other things on the web as well.

It must be noted though, that the brand starts by tweeting when the show is about to start and then almost gives the entire plot away in following tweets.

Though this is subjective, the whole idea of having a social media platform is to ‘watch’ your show, since you are primarily a channel. This kind of summarising might discourage viewers from actually watching the show.

Youtube

Similar to most youth channels in India, the channel is extremely active on YouTube with a decent set of uploads during the period of this analysis.

Interestingly, the maximum number of views during the period of this analysis as well as those all time happen to be for a 2009 video titled “Uncensored footage from Emotional Atyachaar”.

Otherwise, the channel uploads full episodes as well as promos for the same. However, none of these uploads are shared on any other communication channel.

One look at the description of each video and it talks more about the channel and less about the video. Instead of having a list of 10 other shows that you air in the description of a video, it would be a better option to mention all that in the channel description. The video description could be a brief of the ‘video’ – something that it is actually supposed to be.

Comparison with Channel V

Channel V is a close competitor of Bindass. Unlike most youth channels in India, Channel ’s Facebook strategy is focused on the shows that the channel produces. The posts evoke discussion around the characters and the story plot. Apart from these posts, there are also a number of generic posts about love and friendship. However, despite having an extremely active YouTube channel, not a lot of content is shared from the same on the Facebook page.

On Facebook, Bindass has more fans and engagement than Channel .

Source: Simplify360 – A Social Media Analytics Tool

Source: Simplify360 – A Social Media Analytics Tool

Conclusion

Overall, Bindass does not even have a decent content strategy in place. There are random posts that do not elevate the brand image in any way. Since the channel is youth centric, it can do a lot with its social media strategy.

Expert View:

Bindass' social media presence gives the impression that it's either handled by an intern or a single individual on a part time basis. What Bindass has done well is the TV social integration with shows like Facebook Juke Box, but its content strategy seems to be stuck in 2010 when content was all about sharing unique pictures with quirky quotes. Content today has evolved into integrating brand messages in an interesting manner and still getting consumers to engage with it. Bindass the channel has a brand attitude and this attitude is marginalized by the random content it uses across social media.

I think it needs to review its strategy and be make a concentrated effort in building a brand persona through content.

Expert View by Rajiv Dingra Founder & CEO of WATConsult – An Award Winning Social Media Agency.

Analytics support courtesy: Simplify360