Indian Social Media Landscape

Not long ago, blogging was considered as an online diary or journal where the writer documented his/her day to day activity. It was a space for people with creative bend to showcase their talent. It was personal and it was only shared with a select few. Circa 2011 and blogs have evolved into a vital communication tool that every brand is looking to incorporate in their marketing plan.

Keeping this in mind, it is important that this social media tool be well understood and its potential be highlighted. Here we look at key ways of making a corporate blogs work for your brand. To start with, a corporate blog need not be serious and perched on an ivory tower. Like any other social media tool, blogs too can help you build a friendly relationship with your consumer. Splash some creativity and humor in the content, especially, if your brand personality is such. Be vibrant, colorful and vivacious. It can go a long way in making your blog reach out to your target audience.

A colorful blog title can personify your brand image

Being a blog should not restrict you to just putting up articles. Break the monotony by posting, video blogs and/or photo blog posts. Not only will this make your blog more interesting, it will also present you with the opportunity to showcase your product features without suggesting that you are advertising your product. Also, it can help you in letting the world know about your organization, its culture and ethos of the place. It also helps in building a strong employee-employer relation.

Add photos to your blog

Another way of building employee-employer relationship is by allowing employees to post on your corporate blog. Empower them to promote the company’s products through informative tutorials, advice, and reviews that not only sell the products, but also offer some valuable tips. Not only will this help in content generation, it will also help in giving face and name to the organization.

Blogs need not always be about the products. It could well become a research platform for your company. Inviting the readers to suggest the kind of product they would want to use can help in getting valuable consumer insight at a very low cost. Adding comments and a rating system can make the blog highly interactive. The aim is to experiment with ideas, something that you can’t do with your website.

Make your blog user friendly and sharable

An important point to bear in mind is to be unique in your style. Stand out and be seen. Change your blog theme to reflect colorful seasonal themes. Add animation to bring alive your blog. The more effort you put in, the more appreciation you shall get. It is not about being different for the sake of being different, but because you truly are.

If changing your style is something you cannot suggest as a brand, then choose a very simplistic, neat and corporate look. Have a professional and simple blog design. A clutter free approach helps in easy navigation and a more pleasing experience for the reader. A decent mix of pictures and words will be enough for you to get your point across. Be simple in your language as well. Always remember, the idea is to let people know what you are talking about, not to send them on a wild hunt through online dictionary sites.

Neat and clean look for a corporate blog

Another sure shot way of getting people to your blog and keep them hooked is by inviting guest bloggers. Everyone is keen to know what a celebrity has to say or what a famous person thinks. Having such a person write an article on your post will help you achieve huge readership. Also, sharing of these posts will make your blog achieve virility like never before.

If you don’t have access to celebrities, then turn the table and give access to your readers about inside news and pre launch stories. Share all behind the scene action, through videos, photos, descriptive blog posts, and interview with people who have been part of the development process of the product.

Share exclusive details on your blog

These are just a few ideas on how a corporate blog can help you and your brand connect with your audience and potential customers. Like any other communication tool, there is no set pattern but being clear of the idea and your personality would be a perfect way of defining your blog personality.

Read more about blogging, here.

When you work as a communications specialist for the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, you are bound to be cramped for time for your daily activities, let alone blogging. But that is exactly what Anu Vakkalanka, lady who is of Indian descent, has Dutch roots and is advising the United States very own epicenter does.

While studying for a master’s degree in International Relations at George Washington University, Anu turned her hobby into a profession with her blog Indian Makeup Diva. Today she has become one of the most celebrated makeup advisors on the social media circuit. And, Anu has also been selected amongst 10 most beautiful people in, yes, the Capitol Hill.

Anu is a mixture of professionalism, ardent sports regimen and … girlishness. Her two loves, or true love if you want to say, are nail polish and climbing! In her own words, she loves make-up because it makes the world “a better place, because it’s pretty, and it makes you look pretty in a moment”.

Staying in the western world has not made her grow unaware of what’s happening in her native country, India. A lot of her posts are about the makeup that the leading Indian actresses wear. Also, she has done quite a few round ups of new beauty products that hit the market every now and then.

What is really interesting about her blog post is that quite frequently, she comes up with video posts of her showing people how to get a particular look. One such video blog is a three part series on how to achieve the look that Mallika Arora Khan wore in song for the movie Dabangg.

Quoting her “I’m Indian; I came out of the womb wearing eyeliner,” says Anu. And it is this confidence and her enigmatic charm that makes Anu Vakkalanka, our “Blogger of the Fortnight.”

Click here to read more of our Blogger of the Fortnight series.

This is a repost from Microreviews.

Success keeps us motivated. We are elated to have received a huge response to our first two posts in this series( Facebook Presence and Twitter Presence of Indian telecom majors) . So we move on in our journey to check the website/blog presence of Indian telecom majors. Websites and Blogs, as you would all agree, are an extremely important as a part of a company’s social media portfoilo.

So, Here we go.

I find most corporate communicators are wary of social media when it comes to Internal Communications. While they are more than happy to embrace social media otherwise; when it comes to marketing to the internal consumer, a very important constituency in any good communicator’s plan, they will not touch social media with a ten-foot barge pole.

Today, I will try to help you understand what stops most internal communicators from using social media to increase and strengthen relationships with their consumers – the employees.

In the old way of doing things, companies make use of intranets or websites as static tools. Employees can search and find, but have limited ability to participate and contribute. In the new way of doing things, things are interactive and collaborative and use social media tools such as social networking sites, blogs, collaborative research, discussion forums and wikis.

The title is borrowed from the traditional proclamation – ‘The King is dead. Long Live the King’. What is basically meant (and I am taking this from Wikipedia) is that in certain monarchies of France and England, the transfer of sovereignty occurred instantaneously upon the moment of death of the previous monarch. In this blog post, I am using it to highlight that how a stand alone non interactive website (basically 1.0) is dead and without fail, its time for websites powered by social media (Websites 2.0) to take over!!

It is very common to see companies scrambling to get their website up. In few cases, some basic essentials of website are missing, but in most the marketers have no clear agenda on why they are building one. It’s not too surprising to see websites being made because it is a standard launch activity to do. It is more like a job in the task list at the time of product launch. The brand manager gets it executed because it was expected out of him or her.