Posts Tagged ‘Windchimes Comm’

Newer Entries »

There is no Audience in Social Media Marketing

Monday, November 17th, 2008

This blog post has stemmed from the interesting discussion that my earlier post generated ‘Is advertising on Facebook called Social Media Marketing?” Mostly all agreed that while advertising on Facebook helped the marketer focus to the right target audience, it was still advertising.

Social Media Marketing on the other hand implicitly calls for user participation and building dialogue. Both of which remain absent with Facebook advertising form of communication. To me if there is one thing that segregates social media from others is the use of word ‘Audience’.

There is no audience in Social Media Marketing. Period.

Audience is to whom you announce any activity

Audience is to whom you talk to

Audience is to whom you have a monologue with

Audience is to whom you deliver your message to

Audience is to whom you drive your point across

It is not about semantics. It is about psychology of a marketer. Most traditional media have allowed marketer to control the message that is going out on his brand. The brand manager decides on the communication creative, the medium it will be transmitted it and in a lot of many ways anticipate how it’s audience will react to it.

In social media, he or she will only be able to manage their communication. They will have to evolve it with the consumers of that group. There will be two way communication right from the beginning allowing a sense of co-creation which will ultimately lead to higher sales and profits. There will be no messages to deliver or announce but points to discuss with users.

Social Media Marketing in a lot of ways will redefine some of the conventional marketing wisdom. The consumer insighting process will play a far more critical role in developing brand communication. Just as you need content in your blog, to generate hits to it, there will be lot of substance required to hold conversation with people and attract them towards the brand.

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Social Media, Target Audience, Traditional Media | 6 Comments »

Mr. President 2.0: Barack (Social Media) Obama – Part 1

Sunday, November 9th, 2008

(This is two part series article)

I just had to use social media as his middle name. It is important to analyze how Barack Obama could leverage his views and personality to reach out to voters using social media tools. American elections created history of sorts – one and the most obvious one being elected as the first African American as President. Second and not so obvious one being use of social media for his presidential campaign by his campaign managers.

Let’s break it down into steps.

1. Voter Generated Content:

First thing that stood out of the campaign was his website. It allowed the voters and fans to not just learn more about him but also organize meetings and fan clubs on his behalf. Voters could download tools and use them in a manner they felt best to help them organize meetings. There was a ‘download’ section where voters could use donation widget, get campaign materials and Obama badges.

People customized content from his website

People customized content from his website

The campaign managers had hosted the blog on the website which was more personal in nature and allowed the president elect to share his views and thoughts at frequent intervals. Users could upload their photos and videos, of the meeting they had organized, on his blog for others to see.

Allowing people to create their own content is the golden rule of social media. Barack Obama got more people to participate in his campaign because of this.

2. Generate more funding:

It was clearly evident at the primaries stage itself that Barack Obama was generating a high level of funding. There were times when Hillary Clinton was reported appealing to her supporters “I hope you’ll go to my Web site. Share your thoughts with me, and help in any way you can.” Obama on the other hand had used his immense fan following to generate online donations. He created donation widgets and placed them on all of his profiles in various social media platforms. I am sure people wouldn’t have felt an easier way to contribute towards their leader’s campaign. As a matter of fact, majority of his donations were in lots of ‘sub $200‘

Donation Widgets on across all social media platforms

Donation Widgetson across all social media platforms

This worked right through even while contesting with Senator John Mc Cain. The ‘Obama-everywhere’ strategy raised more than $105 million in the first six months of the year, compared with Senator John McCain’s $76 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Obama’s campaign said that as much as 88% of donations stemmed from online sources.

3. Voter Segmentation:

By Age: It was hard to believe that presidential candidate actually had a profile on Facebook and then on MySpace. His profile on Facebook and MySpace was interactive giving his fans of 18-25 age group an opportunity to interact with him – much different from just placing banners ads that are barely effective and not personal.

On the other hand, he created his profile on eons – a social networking site targeted to the ‘boomers’ where he talks about his growing up days as that was more relatable to them.

By communities: Besides having his presence on Facebook and MySpace, Obama also created his profiles on Black Planet, on MiGente and on GLEE (Gays, Lesbians and Everyone Else)  targeting the African Americans, Latinos and Gays and Lesbians. The campaign managers also created a separate section for AAPIS (Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders) on his website My.Barackobama.com

Reached out to professionals: It was even more surprising to find his profile on Linked In where I am sure he would have discussed his view points on business, income tax and finance. There are separate group created on linked too where his followers could download badges and give their suggestion to him.

Hope you are with us till this stage. We continue the analysis of Barack Obama social media campaign in the second segment

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Case Study, Social Media | 17 Comments »

Diwali Dhamaka

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008

Diwali, the festival of lights, always brings with itself a mood of festivity and celebrations. No amount of sub prime crisis or Investments banks falling like nine pins can make the scene gloomy. We enjoyed Diwali in a grand way at office along with our friend Werner (and his team) who runs his firm Pink and White consulting. Some glimpses of the same.

It ain't no matter if you are Black or White!!!

It’s ain’t no matter if you are Black or White!!!

Ask her the relationship between her sari and Indian monsoon

Beautiful ‘Flower Rangoli’ at the office entrance

Phatakas, Phuljaris, Chakris… you name it and it was there

Shades of black and white in between colour

All coming together for this wonderful festival

See the entire album of Diwali Bhamaka on my  facebook profile

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Diwali, Windchimes Comm | 2 Comments »

Social Media Terms

Saturday, October 25th, 2008

We got several ‘thank you’ mails post our blog post on explaining blog terms. We feel humbled on that and would like to continue with one more such explanatory mail on social media. As the term catches on, it becomes important to clarify all the related jargon that will flow along with it.

Here goes few of them:

Community – It is a group or forum of people with some similarity between them (could be same city, school, interest, hobbies etc) come together on social networking site or any other platform and share their ideas and views. Join our Windchimes communities on Linked In and Facebook

Keyword – The word that a user enters into a search engine to gather information on.

Link – An element on a web page or blog that can be clicked on to move on to another page or another section of the same page.

Micro site – It is a supplementary web page that is a part of the parent web site. It is typically used to highlight specific information or purpose as compared to the parent web site that would be more generic in nature.

Page Rank – A value between 0 to 10 assigned by the Google algorithm that quantifies a particular link’s popularity and trust.

Podcasting – It is a contraction of ‘iPod’ and ‘broadcasting’. However it is not restricted to iPod only. Unlike a broadcast, podcast can be downloaded to any MP3 player and then viewed at any time later without Internet connection.

Portal – A site or service which offers a wide array of features to users in an attempt to make that portal their ‘home page’ on the web. There are two kinds of portals – Vertical and Horizontal. The former has more in depth information and links related to a particular sector while the latter covers topics that are more generic and broad in nature. Rediff, Yahoo, and MSN are examples of portals.

PPC (Pay Per Click) – It is a contextual advertisement package wherein the advertiser pays the channel (such as Google, Yahoo) only when an user clicks on their advertisement link that appears on relevant sites. ‘Adwords’ is the most common example of PPC advertising.

Search Engine – It is a program that helps a user search for a document by using specific key words or key phrases.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – It is a form of paid Internet marketing that promotes and increases visibility of a particular website when people use in specific related key words. It is usually on the right side of google search page is marked in different colour.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – It is the process of increasing the volume of traffic to a web site from search engines for targeted keywords. In our searches, the higher a site lists, the more searchers will visit that site.

Site map – It is a page on a website that links to every other page on that site. It helps user by clarifying the data structure of the site. See Windchimes Site map

Social bookmarking – It is similar to ‘favourite’ in Internet explorer just that here your bookmarks are stored on Internet with you.  That way you can access them from any computer. Also you can share them with specified group or with all. The allowed people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags, or via a search engine. Here is an example of social bookmark

Social Media Optimizing (SMO)– It helps the user increase his own blog visibility and presence on web space. This can be done by adding links / back links with other blogs, using user voting services such as Digg, Reddit and social book marking sites like Del.icio.us so that their pages can be easily searched for

Social Media Release (SMR) – It is designed to get the conversation going by providing readers with the ability to disseminate information and multimedia, bookmark and share the content, and in turn, spark threads. It also serves a purpose of providing information to new media influencers in one package

Social Networking Site (SNS) – It is place where people can register and upload and share their personal information including photos, audio and videos with friends. Best examples of SN sites are facebook, orkut, big adda etc

Viral Marketing – The goal of marketers interested in creating successful viral marketing programs is to create messages that appeal to a particular segment of the population and have a high probability of being passed along. Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive games, ebooks, images, or even text messages

Web 2.0 – This term has been coined for websites that encourage user interaction, participation and collaboration.

Widget – It is also known as plug in. Widgets are codes that can be embedded within a web page or blog. These are usually made by third party.

Wikipedia – (Definition taken from wikipedia itself) It is a free, multilingual, open content encyclopedia project operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. The name is a contraction of the words wiki and encyclopedia. It attempts to collect and summarize all human knowledge in every major language

Word of Mouth – Information that is passed on between individuals, especially recommendations, in an informal, person-to-person manner is called as word of mouth. WOM is typically a face-to-face spoken communication, although phone conversations, text messages, blog posts, message board threads, instant messages and emails are now included are part of it

Do write in your comments about the same in case you would like us to continue with this series or junk it. We would love to hear from you. Having got the terms in place, it would be good idea to read Essentials of a Blog and Essentials of a Website series of posts.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Social Media | 22 Comments »

The Backpacking Ninja a.k.a. our photographer!

Thursday, October 16th, 2008

There are many people who have played the role of guardian angels in our journey towards turning entrepreneurs and starting Windchimes. One person especially stands out – Aparna!

A self confessed coffeholic, travel addict and cinema lover, Aparna was our colleague, best buddy and coffee mate from our previous organization. We all quit at the same time, Nimesh and I to pursue our startup dreams, Aparna to pursue her travel dreams and travel to Latin America for six months.

Aparna, though she might not admit it, is as entrepreuneurial as they come. How else does  a woman use all her marketing guile and get her sleeping bag, her backpack, her shoes and her laptop? Oh there is a bunch of other stuff but you can read more about that on her blog. And would recommend following her blog to know about her fascinating journey through Latin America.

Btw.. did we mention that Aparna is also a ace photographer and all those lovely shots of us on our website our courtesy her?

Tags:, ,
Posted in Website 1.0 & 2.0 | 2 Comments »

Essentials of a startup

Friday, September 26th, 2008

Windchimes is as startup as it gets. So we decided to chronicle our journey and give budding entrepreneurs a little flavor of what entails starting off on your own. So pick and choose what works for you and enjoy the rest. We are always on hand for a quick chat if you need any help. You can contact us here.

Today’s post is about Office Space. If you are two people starting out, like in our case, it is always better to have an office of your own. Working out of individual homes just does not work. You need to spend the initial phase getting attuned to each other’s working styles, swapping ideas and thriving off each other’s energy.

When we started looking for office space, between us we looked at least 40 offices! We struck paydirt when we finally found a lovely little office at Bandra Kurla Complex (incidentally one of the poshest business addresses to flaunt in Mumbai!).

So what should you look for in a office?

  • Accessibility to public transport – close to a railway station if in Mumbai
  • Proximity to your clients – so you don’t end up wasting half a day just travelling to your client’s office
  • Flexible timings – there are times you might want to do all nighters
  • Low Deposits – you are a startup, you can’t be blocking your capital in deposit.
  • Basic furniture – since you don’t want to be spending too much money doing up your office
  • Not too big, not too small – you want to factor in future expansion
  • A place you instinctively feel good about – you are going to be spending long hours here

Some other pointers:

  • Make sure you thoroughly check the place and give the owner a list of repairs/changes to be done before you move in
  • Make sure you have good chairs since you are going to be spending an awful lot of time in them

Coming back to our office, we have a lovely little garden that you can sit in and work out of. More often than not there is a lovely breeze. And the best part – we feel good coming in here everyday. So here are some pics of our office. Do drop in if you are in this part of town by getting in touch with us here.

Tags:, ,
Posted in Blogs, Essential Series, Windchimes Comm | 10 Comments »

Blog Terminologies

Sunday, September 14th, 2008

We have received mails from people who would like us to explain the basic terminologies about blogging. Apparently, these are terms that are widely used without correct interpretation available.

To a lot of you who have already started blogging, you might run through it and let us know if we have missed out any terms that can be included in this list

We have categorized all the terms into different sections for better understanding. With these terms, you will definitely be in a position to start your very own blog.

Blogs and Blog sites:

Blog – It has been derived from the term ‘Web log’. It is usually maintained by an individual, with regular posts containing text matter, pictures or videos. The key feature of blogs is that readers can leave behind their comments thereby making it interactive and participative.

Blog Post – An entry written and published on a blog is called as blog post.

Blogroll – It is an individual’s favourite list of blogs that are mentioned on the sidebar of each blog.

Blogsite – It is the location of a blog on the web. Blog can have either a dedicated domain or be embedded within a web site. The latter are usually more used for corporate blogging and are part of corporate website. The most typical address of a blog will http://(yourname).wordpress.com or http://(yourname).blogspot.com

Category: – It is possible to categorize the various topics the blogger writes on. The categories if displayed on the blog help the reader select his or her favourite section

Hits – Number of users visiting a blog is referred as hits for that blog.

Permalink – It is unique URL of a single post and is used when you want to link to a post somewhere. For eg the permalink of this post is http://windchimesindia.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/blogterms/ The first part is the address of your blog. Followed by the date of the post and then the name of that particular post. You can then cut and paste it to link it with some other post or comment. Once this link is pasted in the browser window only this blog post appears from the entire blog.

Template – These are the background of your blog and present information on the blog. Any blog hosting site will offer a host of readymade templates to select from to customize as per the user’s style.

Feeds & Subscription:

Feeds – Feeds are XML-based files that keep the audiences constantly updated about new posts on the blogs. They allow people to see the blog’s content without having to go to that blog every time it is updated. Feedburner is one of the common site to get your feeds. For eg. You can subscribe to Windchimes Feeds

Subscribe – It allows readers to receive notification when there are new posts in a blog. Subscription can be through feeds or even through emails. You can try out email subscription of our blog.

Aggregator – It is also called as feed reader or news reader. An aggregator makes a collection of web feeds accessible in one spot. They can be scheduled to check for new content periodically. For eg. Google Reader helps in getting all your feeds onto a single page that makes it easier for you to view your updates.

Types of Blogs

Audio blog – A blog where the posts maily consist of audio recordings is called as Audio blog

Collaborative blog – It is also known as group blog or multiple user blog. As name suggests, multiple users can write posts on one blog.

Flog – It is contraction of two words ‘fake’ and ‘blog’. A blog that has been ghost writing by someone else is called as Flog. Some of the Bollywood celebrities have been accused of flogging.

Micro-blogging – It is a form of blogging that allows users to write brief text updates (usually 140 characters) and publish them. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means like text messaging or from that site itself. People ‘add’ other people and companies as friends when they want to learn or stay up to date with their activities. Follow our Windchimes Micro blog or tweets if you have blogging from Twitter

MoBlog – It is a contraction of two words ‘mobile’ and ‘blog’. A blog featuring posts sent mainly by mobile phone, using SMS or MMS messages is called MoBlog.

Photoblog –  As the name suggests, this is a blog where a users posts his photos and images most in a chronological order. Here is one example of picture blog post

Vlog – A blog that has mostly only videos on it

Exchanging Links:

Ping – The alert in the TrackBack system that notifies the original poster of a blog post when someone else writes an entry concerning the original post.

Tags – Tags help user in defining what they have saved so that they are easy to search later. Most social bookmark services encourage users to organize their bookmarks with informal tags.

TrackBack – A system that allows a blogger to see who has seen the original post and has written another entry concerning it. The system works by sending a ‘ping’ between the blogs, and therefore providing the alert.

Once you have familiarized yourself with these terms, you can move to our series on Essentials of a Blog. We have mentioned the basic tools and features that your blog must have before you start promoting it

Tags:, , , , , , , ,
Posted in Blog Content, Blogs | 9 Comments »

Newer Entries »