Some thoughts on Networking, Social Media in Financial Express

It is an addiction, study shows a third of office workers were stressed by the volume of message & that’s only email.

Trust me, Being ‘always on’ does affect productivity & create stress.

With your notebook, multiple phones, that constantly beep, it is very difficult to switch off. And when you switch off the office work, there is Face Book, Twitter that needs your attention or else you are not with the times.

It is funny to see 3-4 friends sitting over coffee or drinks & 2 of them are texting, whilst the others are speaking on the phone; then why meet? You could might as well do that on the phone.

I am constantly asked “How do you manage official work, email, Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Partying & even writing a Blog”.

And I say “EVERYTHING IS FINE IN MODERATION”

Some of the rules that I follow to disengage & recharge myself, at the same time have me time:

1) I check & respond to your emails just 3-4 times a day, this includes laptop & smartphone.
2) As for FB; Linkedin, Twitter I just go cold turkey.
3) I leave my phone behind when I go on the gym floor.
4) I use Tech to the maximum - program email, blog, phone to garner maximum productivity.

Because, I believe - Be the one to control devices & not the other way around.

Last month I of all the people along with @chhavi was asked by Techtree to discuss the popular social media trends they expect to see in 2010. You can watch it here

And then in the same week, CNN IBN featured me amongst a lot others in Virtually yours. You can watch it here.

Do let me have your comments:)

I have been always an experimenter so to speak with basic applied technology (that is to say, I use what I am comfortable with) for the past 10 years and found it pretty effective.

Ryze, Blog, Linkedin, Facebook & finally Twitter used it all. Some good, some bad but it all balances out.

And it was in 2009 that I kept hearing this “Social Media” being used very often. Gentleman from a company that I was consulting about their Online foray kept throwing it to me and soon enough their agency got into the act, giving me the whole nine yards.

Trying to understand the entire social media jungle, I started delving deeper into it - reading about it, meeting people, trying my little experiments that I have chronicled on this blog.

After having joined my current organization, I was bombarded by everyone (except the peon, receptionist & driver) about online strategies, social media (there again) & how PR would help.

In a bid to get away from all these I finally caved in & agreed to meet the shortlisted PR agencies (three in number). And there began my nightmares…

All of them came in with the CEO/VP; Account Director; Account Executive and practically the same Power Point Presentation of 30 plus slides which could be broken up as:

1-10 About their company & our company (straight lift from brouchere)
11-20 About PR snapshots - how it works, value vs straight advertisements etc.
21-30 Social Media - snap shots - print screen of some clients

None of them could answer the following basic questions that should have been internally prepared at their end:

1) Why have you not studied the client? (not even googled it properly)
2) Do you think the client 106 years old has no clue of PR
3) Did the PR brief not tell you client expectations? In which case where are they on any of the 30 slides
4) Social Media - nice meaning from a host of sites etc. But do you think we need it? What should be our strategy? (Answer was FaceBook, Twitter & mind you our Ecommerce site is yet to go up)
5) How would PR work keeping in mind the recommendations? (Sir, worked for our other clients)

Nowhere during the course of the three meetings was the work complete integration, interaction with old, new consumers, commitment used anywhere. Retainer mila, bus kaam ho gaya. And YES they are yet to get back on the questions asked.

I guess this may be one of the reasons that some of my agency friends, acquaintances avoid talking shop with me, which actually may be a good thing.

But that leaves one with a Question - Is PR harnessing the power of social networking sites & blogs to help businesses generate strategic mind share & presence. and If so how many Indian Brands have enjoyed the fruits till now.

I sure would welcome suggestions, criticism, inputs, thoughts on the above….it does not matter whether you understand social media or not; whether you are an agency or client.

Some days before the actual date this year, I was Honored when someone asked my help to tweet the names of people who lost their lives last year.

However, there was a hue & cry by a lot of people who felt it was in bad taste, due to which we decided not to go ahead with, but keep a silence in our own way.

It was actually funny & pathetic to see a lot of the same people get patriotic, crucifying the media, politicians from a distance using all kinds of hashtags on the same day with the thought of making it a trending topic. Read the rest of this entry »

Lately on twitter I have experienced spam follows - who use a variety of apps to follow/unfollow to improve numbers, grade & supposedly climb the social media ladder!

To add this sabzi mandi (confusion) there are those mavens, gurus, experts who discuss Social Media Gyan with links, analysis, articles which are repeatedly RT (re tweeted), most of the times without being read, understood in the Indian context.

Any decision on twitter is fraught with SWOT issues, which one would not really need to think whilst taking a JV (joint venture) or business decision.

I intend making some changes in my following list basically at my convenience. It is nothing personal & hidden. I have learnt it the hard way in the past couple of months that People do not like being unfollowed; there is some unsaid rule on Twitter that says following must work both ways etc.

I believe that Life is serious! Reading about it in news, watching it on TV, hearing it being discussed in office is already an information overload for me. I just need less people just talking about serious, political, news, cricket on twitter.

Some other basics of my personal policy/philosophy:

I may follow you if you talk to me, have interesting updates, participate in conversation, are helpful.

I will not/discontinue follow if, you are tweeting only RSS feed of your blog or just RT & links of foreign gurus who have no clue of Indian Social Media. I shall not follow anyone who does not have DP or has a blank bio. Neither shall I follow those stupid trending #hashtags.

I am not looking for everyone to agree with me, to endorse my ideology, work, thoughts but intelligent dissent is always welcome.

Over the past couple of months, on twitter, I have made good friends, faced hostility, received invitations to play, party etc. which I have least interest in.

One of the most important things, being urged to follow someone, interact on some political, sports, technology feeder that I have no or little interest in.

Having said that, there are still those persistent people who believe that they need to be connected to me on Twitter, Facebook, Linkein besides email!

To put things in the right perspective -

Linkedin - My professional profile that says everything I want the world to know.

Facebook - My personal, family, friend connect where I know everyone & may have lost touch but now reconnected.

Twitter - Great exchange of thoughts, helpline, just being you.

Blog - Sharing of thoughts, gyan, communicating at length.

All of this means etiquette is different everywhere & it is a learning process all over again, one of the main reason for confusion amongst the Grey haired! Internet has thrived on the principle of free information with little censorship, certain ‘Netiquette’ rules that I think relevant:

Profile - If you are following me/want to follow me on Twitter, why do you ask me Questions? And this too from the young <30’s who are technologically savvy.

Invitation - If you do not know me, have not interacted with me, do not send useless invites for Farming, Mafia etc. It is an e-handshake & needs to create a good impression so invest time on it. A standard invite always gets ignored & someone who just wants to grow their network to impress others.

Network - Establish who you want and why you want them, so it becomes easier to network. A lot of us accept invites from people who are real friends or people they have worked/communicated with in the past.

Quality vs Quantity - One of the most irritating aspects of internet networking. Professional networking should never be a race to see how many you can notch up, but connecting with few, concentrating on converting these into relationships.

Unknown People - You need to make sure that you have a good reason to accept requests from complete strangers, as you are always known by the company you keep.

Communication - Do we ask a favor immediately on being introduced to strangers at a seminar/event. No then why should internet be any different.

Keeping business & personal lives separate - Already covered in detail above & sooner people realise, better it is.

FINAL CLOSURE UPDATE October 20,2009 3.30 pm :

Personal Details - (Personal+ Professional+FB+Linkedin etc)

Email    500 x .50

Texts 300 x .50

Blog & Calls 180 x 5.00

Gifts 8 x 100

Total Rs. 2100/- Rupees Two thousand one hundred only.

Tuesday October 20, 2009

Mission Accomplished. #deepwish finally raised Rs55,000 for Goonj. Rupees fifty five thousand only. Say it again. Rs55,000. Wow.

43 people. 36 hours. 64.75 per wish = Rs 30,821. On Twitteristan. Those were the effort of 42 people on per tweet basis.

Then there are some silent do-gooders, who prefer not to reveal their names. They have given a lumpsum of Rs24,179 for #deepwish.

Read the rest of this entry »

Traveling back from Parel today (Visa on arrival) flickering through Twitter, saw a couple of RT (retweet) on what is now being termed The Kiruba incident by ClearTrip itself; The ClearTrip episode: my experience Part I by Kiruba Shankar and as ClearTrip resolution of a neo-influencer complaint is a case-study by Rajesh Lalwani of Blogworks; besides other comments being tweeted so on & forth.

At the outset let me clarify the following:

• I do not know Kiruba Shankar personally, except having exchanged some tweets & mail some time ago
• I do not know Rajesh Lalwani in any capacity - never having met him, hired him or been hired by him.
• I do not know ClearTrip as an Organization, except Matthew Spacie - One of their founders with whom I worked in the distant past.
• I have not bothered to read/book anything on ClearTrip except Domestic Hotels long ago but found my personal direct rates were superior. Read the rest of this entry »
  

I had been on Twitter for a couple of months, attended a minor tweetup organised by Netra before I saw a tweet from @90di that got me thinking.

Trying to find out the methodology got me nowhere, but I decided to run an experiment myself rather to amuse myself and if possible understand what makes Twitter tick here.

From the 5th May 2009 to 13th June 2009 whilst the experiment continued I was No Rank - 90’s - 60’s - 20’s sub 10’s with a final high of sub 03 for nearly 5-6 days.

As @90di commented that “Usual Suspects” contained ShaaqT Gul Panag Keeda Shashi Tharoor amongst others; so was in real august Indian Tweeter company.

Now here is where I presumed the following:

• Some of the names on the list came up, due to followers talking about them
• Some of the names on the list came up because they followed norms laid down by twitter:)
• Some of the names came up the list because they were trend setters/followers like Keeda

Doodle by @keeda on Twitter Trend

My experiment was divided into 3 parts:

1)  Break into the first 100 Indian Twitters

2)  Break into the first 30 Indian Twitters

3)  Finally, break into top 10 for a period of week or more.

1)  Break into the first 100 Indian Twitters

• After analysing my tweets - used some of the applications - but could not make head or tail out of it so finally relied on myself.
• Realized that Twitter advocates being yourself, which is fine but so does Indian Democracy - then why in spite of cribbing et all we elect the same politicians - because in spite of voters changing the politicos remain the same.
• But, how do you be yourself - if the nick is something else & your name is something else - luckily that did not affect me.
• Having been a hoarder of some text; thoughts; jokes or all bundled as gyan decided to share this with the tweeters, of course hoping for a couple of shoutdowns.
• Parallel started following some known names that looked good from their bio - this helped in retweets
• From April 3 to May 25 I jumped from 150 to 400 odd followers that included a whole lot of bots & people based out of India who did not have any kind of interaction with me.
• Slowly I found myself inching up the scale to speak till I finally broke in on the 5th May

2)  Break into the first 30 Indian Twitters

• Then it became tougher to break in with a wide variety of variations floating around.
• Started tweeting seriously - bit of gyan; news with comments; interacting; replying.
• Finally I thought I was ready to conclude the experiment around the 30th May & so the final push began.

3)  Finally, break into top 10 for a period of week or more.

• Had prepared a fair amount of interactive tweets for different days
• Worked on the background that would make people want to RT
• Some completely new thoughts that could be shared with a variety of groups
• Heavy interaction in terms of replies; help; DM everything.

And, hence managed to conclude it successfully. My personal findings:-

• Irrespective of how “be yourself” you are, perceptions matter
• Most of the followers do not read your bio, go thru your blog before deciding to follow you. Only your Tweets matter.
• A great Blogger may not be a great Tweeter & vice versa
• Common searchable knowledge is tweeted by everyone; try something that is personally relevant.
• The pareto principle applies here also.
• Whilst PR; Advertising - online & offline; media; brands talk about Social Media & recently Twitter, fact is how relevant to daily life, work environment are the top 100 twitters that is crucial
• If a chunk keep talking about just technology, crib about government & civic the feeling is ‘Hey we read & listen to this all the time’ Tell us how Twitter can help us.
• Irrespective of whether you may live it, love it, hate it fact remains that it is MLM, with of course no transactions involved.
• Everyone eventually manages to create a pyramid or a banyan tree which helps them & all their connections, mostly always in a positive manner.
• Embrace it as another channel, medium - it shall deliver results. Remember as somebody said “The use of electronic networks and associated technologies is to enable, improve, enhance, transform or invent a business process or business system to create superior value for current or potential customers.”
• AND Finally remember with the right approach, attitude & bit of hardwork you can overcome the System i.e. Twitter:)

Approximate data has been taken from Twitterholic & 90di I hereby acknowledge that I have not been guided by any Social Media Agencies, Gurus; but am thankful to the everyday tweeters who made this possible.