How AIB Nailed It – A Case Study on AIB’s Digital Media Strategies

Updated on: Jun 21, 2017
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My name is Aditya Shastri and I have written this case study with the help of my students from IIDE's online digital marketing courses in India.

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All India Bakchod – the three words every young person in India can swear by for funny, relatable and politically incorrect humour on Indian situations. But what made AIB one of the top 10 YouTube channels in India? Let’s take a look:
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The Unique Content

AIB has its own unique content formula:

AIB = funny + intelligent + making a point

AIB Digital Media Strategies Knockout

This formula gives a certain quality of entertainment that appeals to a huge demographic – from fairly young people to people who are sick and tired of watching television.

AIB Digital Media Strategies Unique Content

AIB makes use of parodies, spoofs, satires and edgy content using the Indian culture, hypothetical situations and even important social topics as their subject matter making their content go viral and remain evergreen at the same time.

The Social Media Strategy

AIB uses YouTube (obviously), Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to reach their target audience and engage with them. Youtube is a vital part of their Social Media Strategy

– YouTube:

2.2 million subscribers, 11 million video views/month

On an average, AIB uploads 3-4 videos every month. The video mix usually consists of:

  • At least 1 comedy video (from a series, Bollywood related, hypothetical situations, BTS, etc)
  • 1-2 videos of their signature content (On Air with AIB, AIB Podcast, etc)
  • 1 satirical video (demonetization, political issues, depression, etc)

The content mix not only helps them churn out fresh content but ensures a wider reach as it satisfies the preferential needs of different people.

AIB Digital Media Strategies YouTube Strategy

They make use of attractive video thumbnails but steer clear from clickbaits. This gives enough control to people to decide whether they want to watch a particular video or not, increasing the reliability on their content quality.

Following are AIB’s most viewed videos:

AIB Digital Media Strategies YouTube Videos
  • Genius Of The Year (16M views)
  • Every Bollywood Party Song (10M views)
  • Honest Flights (10M views)

Notably, AIB gains 2K subscribers/day on average and about 150K-200K video views in 1 week.

AIB doesn’t make much use of the community tab on their profile thanks to their thriving online presence on other sites as you will see below.

– Twitter:

5.2 million followers

AIB Digital Media Strategies Twitter Strategy

On Twitter, AIB tweets are mostly a humorous (and sometimes risky) take on politics, cricket, engineering and trending topics. They are unafraid of showing their true selves – tweeting in Hindi, making bad puns and inappropriate jokes, roasting each other and posting BTS, all of which portray exactly the kind of audience that follows them on Twitter.

AIB Digital Media Strategies Tweet

This is also the platform where AIB has maximum engagement with its audience. From big brands to big fans – AIB is often replying to and retweeting others.

AIB Digital Media Strategies Retweet

Tweeting other brands helps them increase the reach on their own tweets. For example, here they have Retweeted @InsideEdgeAMZN and tagged @AmazonVideoIN getting the attention of both interdependent accounts and increasing their reach as well as their chances of a retweet by @AmazonVideoIN. There is a 50-50 split with respect to self-promotion and posting engaging content on Twitter. It also speaks up on important socio-cultural issues in its own unique way. AIB does not run any contests and seldom uses hashtags; and frankly, it doesn’t need to. Twitter is a most important part of there Digital Media Strategies.

– Facebook:

3.2 million likes

The first thing you will see when you land on the AIB Facebook page, is the ‘Featured For You’ tab. The Facebook tool is wonderfully used to increase awareness on their latest projects and oncoming events. They make about 6-7 posts every day on Facebook. However, it has a weaker response rate and response time as compared to Twitter. Their post captions are also mellowed down to a more family-friendly audience.

AIB Digital Media Strategies Facebook Strategy

AIB’s Facebook posts rely on Bollywood celebs and issues such as the current cricket scenario to increase likes and shares.

AIB Digital Media Strategies Facebook Post

Such question oriented posts get a lot of followers to comment. When the follower’s comment, Facebook’s algorithm reads it as ‘This person is very interested in AIB Content. The next time AIB posts something, it should definitely reach this users news feed’

Hence, they not only engage their followers with quirky engaging content but also unknowingly or knowingly break through FB’s content delivery algorithms.
All of these strategies make their posts more ‘shareable’ compared to Twitter. This, in turn, increases their organic reach even further as Facebook understands how ‘interested’ the people are in the content thus displaying their posts more often on people’s News Feed.

– Instagram:

935K followers

Most of the posts on Facebook are also posted on Instagram at the same time. There is only a mere handful that is exclusive to the platforms.

AIB Digital Media Strategies Instagram Strategy
AIB Digital Media Strategies Instagram Post

Although Instagram sometimes gets more than double or triple the number of likes on the same post compared to Facebook, Facebook bags the number of comments thereby increasing the value of the post there. Direct engagement by the brand is lowest on Instagram.

The Cross Promotion
AIB Digital Media Strategies Cross Promotion

Thanks to the impressive online personalities of the founders, AIB often cross promotes the founder’s tweets or posts while the founders do the same, thus increasing the overall reach.

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All of these strategies and more caused the phenomenal growth of AIB in India and overseas.

Inspired by this case study? Now try to implement these tested strategies of succeeding online with your own social media accounts!

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Aditya Shastri

Lead Trainer & Head of Learning & Development at IIDE

Leads the Learning & Development segment at IIDE. He is a Content Marketing Expert and has trained 6000+ students and working professionals on various topics of Digital Marketing. He has been a guest speaker at prominent colleges in India including IIMs......[Read full bio]

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