Competitor Analysis of Publishing Houses

on Social Media

The Candidates

• Random House India• Rupa Publications• Westland Books• Aleph Book Company

The Parameters

• Look & Feel• Tabs• Customer Engagement• Content

Look & Feel

cheeky, contemporary, eye-grabbing.

“

decent, to-the-point, professional.

“

graphic, promotional, experimental.

“

selling, direct marketing, no funny business.

“

Tabs

Random House India

Except for the twitter handle tab, everything else does not seem to work. Leaves a very bad impression on the user. It’s better not to have the tabs, if you can’t update it.

“

Rupa Publications

Minimal tabs. All are working just fine. But could have been more experimental.

“

Westland

A ‘free-chapter’ feature which works just fine. Apart from the unnecessary ‘Hello’ tab, everything is decent enough.

“

Aleph Book Company

The best of the lot & the most interactive. Two excellent tabs:1. Aleph TV- Interview showcase of published authors.2. Read an extract- Read an extract from the published book titles. Better accessibility & design than the Westland one.

Plus they also have a Pinterest handle tab which is new. Shows how Aleph keeps itself updated.

“

Customer Engagement

* Data collected from 1/1/2012 to 14/4/2012

Random House

India

Rupa Public

ations

Westl

and Books

Aleph Book Compan

y0

1000020000300004000050000600007000080000

Publications

Likes

Total page Likes

Random House

India

Rupa Public

ations

Westl

and Books

Aleph Book Compan

y0

100

200

300

400

500

600

Publications

Posts

Self Posts

Random House

India

Rupa Public

ations

Westl

and Books

Aleph Book Compan

y0

102030405060708090

100

Publications

Posts

Posts by others

Westland is way ahead at gathering ‘likes’. Almost three times the size of their competitors combined!

As we observe, the amount of ‘likes’ is directly proportional to the number of posts updated by the publication. Thus, the companies must make it a point to update posts more frequently to have a better customer engagement.

“

Content

* Data collected from 1/1/2012 to 14/4/2012

Other5%

Contests4%

Title Promotion47%

Event Notifications44%

Random House India

Event Notifications24%

Title Promotion37%

Contests17%

Other22%

Rupa Publications

Event Notifications14%

Title Promotion37%

Contests14%

Other36%

Westland Book Company

Event Notifications12%

Self Promotion24%

Title Promotion47%

Other18%

Aleph Book Company

Combined breakup

Event Notifications26%

Self Promotion2%

Title Promotion38%

Other22%

Contests12%

Title promotions & events notifications is what all companies are focusing on while updating their facebook posts. Other sharing of relevant news and blog-reads also forms a major chunk of their posting activity.

It is important to note that Rupa & Westland are the only ones who use a fair amount of contests to connect with their users.

“

Summary

* Data collected from 1/1/2012 to 14/4/2012

To sum it all up, Westland knows how to manage social media and is doing it just right. It is the leader in customer engagement and has the right mix for content generation. Also, it follows the right ‘page look’ along with Aleph Book Company. Aleph is relatively very new and growing rapidly. I have high hopes on it. Rupa is also doing just fine but needs to buckle up. And it’s a long way for Random House India. It’s time for them to hire a good agency to take care of their social media segment.

“

Deepanshu DialaniBITS Pilani Hyderabaddeepdialani42@gmail.comPh:9603172478