The other side of Social Networking

Social networking is making a deep(er) penetration in our lives,(our? we the urban citizens, we the internet junkies, we the grown-up adults). Consultants are enjoying the social-media revolution.

However, a couple of bitter events, connected with Facebook and Orkut, the biggest community sites question the growth of social n/w.

• Facebook has hampered productivity of employees in Australia.

• Young Indian teenager has lost his life and social n/w site Orkut played a big role in his death.

So-called experts are quick to point out that misuse of a tool or medium happens only in “India”. Typically, this is issue has gone beyond the boundaries of a nation. How would you counter these global issues? Issues crossing ethics and responsibility…

Image Source : businessweek

Guy Kawasaki on Internet, Investment and Investors

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Software marketer’s tale

Boss– Sales of 1 million dollar for product X that’s your target for the next two months.
Marketer– Wooh sir, I had to sweat it out to achieve the previous target of .6 million dollar.
Boss– Good job, you’ve been doing well to push the product for the sales for the last year.
Marketer– But sir, 1 million dollars would take some beating.
Boss– Really? its upto you dear marketer, a test of your skill.

Marketer tried out quite a few things last time. Marketer prays to god to pour some money for product marketing budget or else do some magic to revamp the product to bring it at par with existing softwares in the category.We seriously need to do something with our product, it just doesn’t fire any more. It’s because it’s not been re-packaged as time has passed by.Otherwise around it is a decent application. Everybody else has moved ahead – more fast, flexible and feature-rich.

What next ?

My friend called me up last night to inform me that his small software company had hired a new marketing consultant, an “out of the outter box” marketing thinker.

First meeting results
After taking a quick look at the product and the website the consultant came up with a suggestion:

“Blog, blog & blog” – The first idea floated by the creative consultant. In response to common questions the consultant said blogging is the latest trend, blogging is growing, companies are engaging with customers, with potential employees and this gives them ability to maintain strong relationships with their stakeholders. Blogs allow people to participate in a conversation and make it more interesting.

“Inshort, consultant gave his best shot to educate the client about the benefits of blogging”

One brain questioned the consultant – Let’s assume we start blogging and so does every-body else who belongs to our category. Let’s also assume we embrace other social media concepts. Let’s say these blogs start getting good response from the community (2-3 comments per post), many page views, google pagerank, technoratis, diggs and everything else you can possibly think of.

We’ve have joined the Web2.0 bandwagon like everyone else and now we understand what exactly our customer thinks but so do others. So what next?

What next after this?

I am sorry for the inconvenience Sir !!

“Hye, could you just help me out?”, I asked the busy shopkeeper.

“Yes sure , tell me what is it that you want?”, he asked.

“Um.. I want to buy a sim card for my college going cousin sister.”

“Yes, you can go for the post-paid connection of Hutch. It provides good connectivity and best-of-all offers real value for money to students.”

“But, I heard otherwise.”

“Ahaan.. what did you hear and from whom?”

“Well, I heard from some opinion leaders and their feedback was negative. They told me that they’ve faced a couple of problems on few occassions.”

“Forget those guys! trust me sir, this is good.”

“I thought for a second and eventually settled for the deal as I was tired and not really keen to do much of research.”

Interesting Facts : Helpful for Online Marketers

Last week I was lucky enough (my 128kbps Sify broadband connection is at the mercy of rain gods) to attend a couple of webinar presentations at Marketing Profs B-to-B Marketing Conference.

The presentation was given by Benjamin Chung & Mark Martel , Marketing Managers at Google Inc.

The information session was an overview of media and advertising trends. Benjamin used case studies of effective b-to-b marketers to discuss Google’s role in information ecosystem and its implications on b to b marketing.