Potential for Social Media Marketing in India

India holds amazing potential for social media marketers. With a population of over 1.1 billion people, India is the second largest country in the world. India also has a very young population. Over half of all Indian citizens are under 25 years old.

Although there are over 250 languages spoken throughout India, almost everyone speaks English as a second language. In fact, there are more English speakers in India than in the UK.

Currently, only 7.4 percent of Indians use the internet, but this is increasing as communications infrastructure improves. Even at the current level of internet penetration, India ranks fourth in the world in internet users. Only China, the United States, and Japan have more.

The most popular social media site in India is currently a Google product called Orkut. However, many people are switching to Facebook because Orkut has security problems. Facebook is aggressively pursuing an Indian audience by supporting the six largest Indian languages: Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam.