Featuring a Social Media Agency: DigiWhirl

Who are we?

Founded in early 2010, we are a small group of digital savvy youngsters. We work online from wherever we are. It’s a virtual setup where our clients and team members are all spread around the world and we don’t really want it any other way :)

Founder: Priyanka Dalal

What's in the name?

We were looking at interesting names with some keyword in it, “DigiWhirl” struck the right chord with us, when we were short-listing company names. The .com, twitter handle and FB vanity URL were all available which was such a relief!

What we do?

Our services are focused in the social media marketing sector alone. They broadly fall into 3 categories:

1. Strategy + Training – We create a detailed strategy document for the client and train their team to execute it.

2. Hands on Management – We manage clients social media hands on for a limited time frame.

3. Inbound Marketing – conduct surveys, eMR etc.. as part of a long term inbound marketing strategy.

Why we do it?

Social Media being a new field, there is still a lot of unchartered territory to explore - which makes it more exciting than other industries. It also has lot of potential not just in the marketing sector but in human interactions, civil movements and other aspects of society.

Moreover the work itself requires a good mix of creativity and structure. Community management has become a passion with us.

How do we evolve?

1. Read the social media and marketing section in Zite (iPad app).

2. Social media blogs like Social Samosa, Lighthouse Insights, Social Media Today and others.

3. Keep an eye out for what is popping up on our Timelines and why.

4. Most importantly, listening to the client and looking at things from their point of view – what do they want from social media?

5. Always keep asking how can this help the business goals.

Social responsibility in social media

We take copyrights seriously. Always using free stock images or creative commons media with appropriate credit.

We keep our client community content as wholesome as possible.  As Mark Zuckerberg said “communities already exist, instead think about how you can help the community do what it wants to do”.

Also, always tell the clients to never publish sensitive information on social communities even privately.

Need of the hour

A lot of them -

To avoid and deal with copy-right violations, copying status updates (yea that’s happened!) and piracy.

To make kids socially responsible and modify their own conduct so they don’t fall prey to scams or bullying.

To make users more aware about the functioning of a social network - a lot of people don’t realize that Facebook makes money.

To lobby for some strict laws about how social networks can and cannot use the information we put on it.

We learned the hard way

Sharing ideas with the brand can be a bad thing, because they will “try” it out – meaning execute it badly, idea fails and thus they reject our pitch. So better keep the ideas a bit fuzzy.

Don’t run behind that one ‘big client’. They are messy about payment and usually they want to direct most of the activities even though they don’t have any knowledge.

Did we just share that?

A political party connected with us and they wanted us to make Facebook profiles for their MLAs.

A past client called asking the login/pwd to access his Facebook page. Had to tell him there is none, he was already admin.

There are too many examples like these. We feel that it is crucial for the top admin of companies take an interest personally in social media ,otherwise the company social strategy will remain shallow.

They work with us

We have worked with about 20 brands in the last two years. Initially started working with startups like SutraLite, Inkfruit, Radbox.

Our more recent brands include Thwack & RobinAge

More names here 

Industry as we foresee

1. Small local establishments on social media providing customer service and relevant info to local people.

2. Bigger brands establishing a more integrated social process within their various departments. Already seeing such inquiries.

A day without Internet

Errr the mind would be frenzied creating various status updates about everything and then frustrated because they can’t be type it out… AAaaaaa

Lastly, are you hiring?

Well yea, anyone who is keen to work virtually on an entrepreneurial job - as a lifestyle choice, not as a last resort or because you are stuck at home!

Also we have a two-month intern position