A few days back came across a book reading session by an author at a nearby bookstore. The author turns out to be a Facebook friend and fellow blogger Amit Haralalka. Lately this is happening so often.
Another friend of mine Ankesh Kothari co-published Strategy Daddy sometime back. Its really surprising for me, cause for some reason I and probably others along with me tend to allot 'writing books' to other more older folk. Blogging is great... but actually writing a book.. naah!
Sahil Parikh, I have worked with at DeskAway recently published his book The Saas Edge and I have been seeing blogs and book reading sessions for the book all around the place! In fact I actually helped him with some data research for it!
So lately even I have been thinking of writing a book. For us bloggers its actually quite simple cause we can just blog it and then publish it. Saves all the tension of 'writing a book'!
Let me know if anyone can help me publish the book, I already have some ideas for it. ;)
Apart from that this is one more impact of social media where you start seeing so many other achievers that it inspires and actually makes you think 'hey maybe I can do that'! Its the same way I feel when I meet all those teen rockstars who have their companies going while they are yet in junior college!
It had to happen. Once I started a company and got down to recruiting, the first few attempts later I realized that recruitment is a hell of a job. Today 7 months down the lane I had the worst interview ever!
I explained to the potential candidate the work I would require from him and the guy saw no point in the activity. I tried to explain it.. but he really did not see any point. I thought that was fine considering his previous works had been in other domains - content writing and SEO.
I asked for alternative ideas that he might have, since he was clearly not happy with the strategy I had. Some of them were really crappy which could create a serious backlash for the client, others were good ideas but that was a different strategy altogether... and frankly nothing new. However, the interviewee promptly went on to tell me 'why not do something more constructive?' aren't you answerable to your client? Which was a bit too much! Considering that as yet I had not seen any concrete evidence of the person ever having handled a social media project before.
The interview ended by him telling me that he was ust trying to add value to the project. He was concerned about my reputation as a social media professional (yes, he used the exact words) and thats why he wanted my work to be good. After all this he kept insisting he was only trying to provide value to the company and client. He still wanted the job, But he was not a robot who would take instructions from me and not question them.
What I saw is the lack of any humility to take up work from another person. This is something that I have been seeing often even happening when I myself was an employee. Very often there have been colleagues who think they are too great for this mundane works we are doing. "The boss is dumb, I know better and my genius is being stifled" except that often its the case of not being able to be humble enough to first learn the work, and learn it well.
I don't know whether there are always such people or its the times where at a young age people get exposed to lot of information. Where they are thinking about major business workings read on a blog without having an ounce of real life experience. Then when they do get to the point of 'Real Life' work they think they should be on the board of directors rather than intern position.
Was recently checking out some celebrity blogs and found it quite interesting how they were so different from each other almost distinctive to each ones style for eg: Aamir has so many short, quick posts and they are very sporadic while Amitabh has been writing almost a daily diary! Already I can see two more professions popping up in the future,
Blog Analysis
These guys analyse blogs and give you a character read like handwriting analysts. They may even ask you to create a blog in next one hour and based on what you have done they will analyse your personality hehe
Blog Therapy
I am little serious about this... These guys would recommend to a person to start a blog, depending on above analysts they may even suggest which type of blog to start. Sad ones, funny ones, sarcy ones.. etc.. Or the usual psychologists would suggest to people to blog for specific problems.
What other little hatke professions you think people could come up with around blogging and social media?
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If you are just reading this blog post and don't have a blog or Twitter of your own, well sorry to say you are just a VUP then! VUP = Very Unimportant Person!
Many companies are offering some facilities to its customers when they are the "Blog/Twitter VIPs"
VIP
I just have to tweet about some problem with my ICICI, Airtel or Vodafone (and probably some other brands I am not aware of yet) accounts and they will contact me on Twitter. I have personally used this facility of ICICI bank, where I DM them my phone number and a customer rep calls me and solves whatever my queries are. Before I have gone to the bank and spoken to customers reps on the phone and its just not so simple!
My first such experience of VIP treatment happened with a non profit, humanitarian organization. I had a bad time there when I was volunteering and talking about it to the admin did not help at all. It was all a pain. I even spent time and money flying there just to understand what went wrong but to no avail. I come back and blog about my experiences and Voila - I get called by one of the admin. (Read more)
Facility for the Online Junta
On the flip side however, I can see this also as a facility, I mean its damn convenient for me to simply tweet to a company when I am facing some problems. In fact I recently saw that HDFC bank is also on Twitter so will probably open my second account in this bank over an SBI.
Social Media
A lot of social media guys are considering this customer service given via Twitter/Blogs as very good usage of social media. I think that for brands which are hugely offline like all those mentioned above ICICI, Airtel, Vodafone... they need to have an awesome customer service for all the people not just the Online ones.
All of a sudden due to this social media boom, companies are getting really scared of bad publicity and thus trying to fix that. Do they realize that the bad publicity would happen offline too?
What do you think of this customer service being given by major brands across the world??
Social Networking and Gaming, my two passions combined and mixed with Stocks brings Empire Avenue! Anyone can sign up for free and create their own Stock, for themselves or in the name of their company! We can then aggregate our social presence like Twitter, Blog, Facebook to it, so people can see what we are doing online and figure whether to buy our stock and/or follow us.
So it has two way influence one is that our online activities on Twitter, Facebook help us in the game, and vice versa doing well in the game can get us visibility in our real, virtual lives! Cool!
I have 3 free invites to the game so if you are interested let me know in the comments or through the contact me link in the header of this blog!
EAVB_BAUGOOZMOH
Haven't been blogging in the last few days was working on some projects. Today I missed blogging. I am glad this happened cause I started blogging for a reason not because of any professional requirements. As I have mentioned earlier also my profession being social media, sometimes my blog seems to be a great add on to it, but I think its much more. Its me communicating with the world.
Good to get back to basics. Do you sometimes feel that life keeps taking you along with all its requirements of Job, Money, Family, Society, Relationships? I think its most crucial to take time out and be with yourself, to see that all these requirements are just that. A bunch of requirements, they are not Life nor are they Me.
Posterous recently introduced the custom domain feature. It has a blogger like option which lets you register a domain through them and they manage all the redirecting and directing automatically.
Pretty cool!
Previously I would have thought that since they have brought this feature in now, it meant that a custom domain couldn't be used on posterous before. Recently I figured that the domain can be forwarded to the posterous from the domain register service, too.
All this domain directing stuff would probably fall under the SEO work profession. The difference between SEO (Search engine optimization) and SMO (Social media outreach) keeps merging every now and then. Recently I had a client for social media whose main concern was what Google ranking his site was getting. That is not really my job as far as I see it, but then social networks, and outreach does get a lot of Google love.
In fact my efforts including the wikipedia page, did get them some good results for various Google searches.
So I have had reason to ask the question about what is Social Media? I will write another post on that. let me know your thoughts!
Chris Brogan recently wrote a post Redrawing, where he mentions how corresponding and responding to every tweet, blog comment, email and message is too much for him and he will have to cut down. Well he is taking this step late :p cause I stopped doing that some time back. I do give it a lot of time, but there is an order of hierarchy to which I respond. I am going to give it out here, so you can make the best advantage of that :D If you do I might then have to change it though!
Email: I read everything, but replying to all is seriously difficult due to 'Inbox Overload'. This is still I think the best way to get in touch with me, anyone can send me an email from the Contact form (link on the header).
Twitter and Facebook: I respond to almost everything on these. I said 'almost' cause often there are lot of messages which perplex me, I don't know what to reply so I often stay mute.
Responding to Facebook messages has become easier after their new layout, before I did not reply to those promptly either.
Blog Comments: I read all of them, I may not reply sometimes cause I feel often these comments are not direct messages to ME. It is more for the article, so they will be useful for the next readers.
LinkedIN: Low response rate, in fact even now I know there are couple of messages waiting there for about a week. Couple of them are job offers, but sorry guys I barely sign into linkedIN, when I do I check out my Groups and such. I pretty much forget to reply, also I don't like the message replying user interface on LinkedIN.
IM: I remain invisible on Gchat and Facebook chat. Once in a while I open the gates and go visible with Pidgin...
This hierarchy of course, is Moot if the content of the message is very important or striking.
What about you people? Do you prioritize messages according to the medium you receive them from?
I mentioned the new Blogger template designer in my last post, Creating a free Small Company Website with Blog Customization for free. I have used that to create the small company website I wanted to, and it works great actually! Some very good themes are possible with it.
I just came across this Blogger video on how to use, check it out,
From last sometime I have been looking for a free blog theme option for a small company website. I have been checking out lots, cause my work often requires setting up blogs. Here is a summary of what I have found,
Blogger
Blogger Rules as of now due to the new Template Designer option that they just released and the Page feature that they released in January. Read More about this at my Guest Post.
So Blogger is as of now the best option to make a free company blog.
Wordpress
Wordpress has a huge range of themes for a free blog, but the fact is none of them are right for a small company website. Also the customizability is very limited in the free option.
Tumblr
Tumblr is a good option, it has an open completely customizable HTML code and an option to create Pages. I am still planning to look more at this blog platform to figure out what can be done with it.
Posterous
I love this blogging platform but as I have mentioned in this Guest Blog, there is just no good theme option for it, though its HTML code is open and customizable. Pages option is also lacking. Not good for company blog, I would say.
Flavors.me
I found this website via here, its quite ok for a profile. Not so much for a company profile cause we cannot connect a Facebook Fan page there. I feel they need to do a lot more in terms of user interface, include some cool themes or some such.
It integrates the Facebook, Twitter and many other streams with the profile. Check out mine below,
Wix
I found this site, Wix.com pretty good for creating a flash website. They have tons of options including some good free ones. Using the customizing tool is a little cluttersome as it is heavy and difficult to load. I think it could be used to make a simple, yet elegant flash website.
Do you know any other options to create a website (for free without using too much of HTML or CSS)?
Sometime back I had blogged about Posterous as a really good blogging platform, recently I took a look at Tumblr which has been around quite some time and found it to be pretty awesome!
After taking a look at the themes, this platform is something different. A personal blogger can install some really pretty theme, I really don't see why most people go for a Blogger or Wordpress unless if they don't know about other options.
Some features,
Custom HTML
The theme is completely customizable with HTML, though I guess if its a non-techie blogger then they wouldn't want to customize stuff. In which case, Tumblr has about 300+ themes to choose from!
Moreover you can easily change the color scheme of the theme,
Auto post to Social Networks
Auto feature to post new posts on Facebook and Twitter, and configure the RSS with feedburner.
Import RSS feed into blog
I really like this feature! Just by feeding in the url of the feed of a blog, all the new blogs get posted on your Tumblr! So I have subscribed to this blog on my Tumblr.
New bloggers often have the problem of generating content for their blogs, so if there is some blog they read a lot they can link that blog so there is content generation to their Tumblr and your fav blog gets more readers! This way even if your posts are sporadic, there is still content being generated on your blog!
Pages
This is a feature Tumblr introduced recently, its really important cause even Blogger doesn't have a good Page feature.
Labnol has a very interesting way to use this feature.
So check this site out, let me know how you like it!
Currently I am hunting for a Blogger theme for a company blog. Something simple yet striking. I am looking at themes one after another. Most of them are for different purposes. Often there is a tendency to start fitting the company blog into one of the themes in front of me.
If I did that then I would be left with a theme I am not happy with. The reason for this is that I need a theme for my company blog... but instead it became a matter of fitting the company blog into the theme.
I dunno if you get what I am saying.
I find it a good exercise even at other times in life for eg. : when I go shopping, we are given so many options. I envision in my mind what am I looking for. A skirt, pant, baggy pants, some fashionable, or something casual or a homewear pajama.
This is important cause then I simply pass on stuff I definitely am not looking at. It makes the process of making the choice for the dress much simpler.
Same way for the theme I am looking at slowly I create an image in my head of how I want it. Without this I might try to push the company blog in any random theme and not be able to create something I am happy with.
Envision!
Maybe I will get it custom designed now that I have the pic in my mind.
Sorry guys that the blog has become a little sporadic! The fact is that all of a sudden in a span of few days I got three new projects in my lap! I plan to maintain this blog definitely, but was not able to give it time last weekend.
All the projects are social media related so hoping to gain some good insights with them, but requires a serious amount of time management!
I was thinking about my blog name 'Priyanka Writing', I intuitively coined it when I started out into social media and blogging. Lot of leading bloggers however recommend naming your blog/site something that describes what the blog is about.
Recently I came across a blog post which said that mainly what social media consultants do is writing, twitter updates, facebook updates, comments, emails, responses, correspondences, blog posts, articles so on and so forth.
So I guess 'priyanka writing' is a pretty ok sort of name for a social media insights blog! What say?
In fact when I was thinking of my blog name I also thought of Writing, cause thats what I do here on this blog. Thinking is something I anyway do, the way this blog is different is because I am writing my thoughts down.
I should be attending the Blog Camp happening in Mumbai this Saturday. If you are in the city, do drop in, cause if you are reading blogs :) then you might find it interesting.
These blog camps are quite interesting, not too techie as I had first imagined. In fact it was after my previous and first blog camp that I made quite a few friends who searched me out on Twitter and then I actually found some use to the service. Otherwise being on twitter when none of your friends are on it is pretty dull!
There are various session taken by anyone who wants to, they talk about things varying from information access on the internet to how blogging helps to why some people just can't sustain blogging and more...
Here you can check out all the info and sign up for it too. :)
Came across an interesting and comprehensive blog post on Problogger about Authority, (online authority).
My idea about blogging authority,
If a blogger generates some readers then he would have some understanding and knowledge about what he is writing otherwise your readers will tell you so, and/or there should not be any readers returning to the blog. So as he keeps writing and putting it across, that in itself would lead to some authority in the field, add to it the experience of doing it for a long time and you get quite an influential blog!
Of course there might be a case where a blogger keeps misleading a bunch of readers who keep returning... :D couldn't resist a cartoon on that!
You might not find my humor funny, very few do, but do share your thoughts on authority and blogging in the comments!
Sometimes life becomes dull. One of the reasons for this is when we start doing stuff in the same monotonous way and don't innovate! The same happens with social media too, even though it is revolutionary and upcoming we tend to develop ideas about how to use a blog or a facebook fan page. While these How To's are good basic tips to start with, they are big dampers when they get rigid and we stop innovating.
This is something I see in many businesses that jump on the social media band wagon just to make a Facebook page or Twitter profile and then its all humdrum and nothing new! Today I came across a couple of ideas that seem to me a real good usage of simple social media tools.
An Open blogpost
An open discussion about 'How Bloggers come up with Post ideas' at Remarkablogger has become just like a forum discussion in the comments section. I found it really innovative. Remarkablogger is replying to all the comments, which are really good and other readers are also reading and replying to other's comments. There is an option to 'like' particular comments.
Another idea I had was that instead of starting a website page as the default for starting a company, only a Facebook fan page would do! Getting the vanity URL is free so no spending even on getting a domain name and/or hosting! Though the money may not be the prime concern, the Facebook fan page can be a more practical idea.
- It gets good google ranking
- You can easily get the vanity url i.e. www.facebook.com/(yourbizname)
- Can be amazingly customized! Using something known as FBML.
- Almost everyone online would be on Facebook and can not just visit the website, they can become fans, so its much better at keeping your visitor in the loop!
- Now you don't need to have any other social media activities. Its a web address AND your social media presence.
Time for Some Music!
I wanted to blog about social media activism since quite sometime. Came across the below scholarship and thought its about time. This activism is a very strong trait appearing in social media.
International Activist BlogHer Scholarship (for women), 2010
The due date for submissions was 31st January and is gone, but I still want to bring to fore this venture. If you know of somebody who should be nominated for this scholarship you can always do it next year.
One of the most recent examples I have come across is Stripey the Cub,
Its a fac
ebook fan page started on Saturday (2 days back) and right now it has 8000+ members! Couldn't help joining it as Stripey the little cub is so adorable!
It is part of the 'Save Our Tigers' Campaign, which is being aggresively promoted offline as well with celeb adverts on TV and such.
Another example of social media activism are 5 short films by Director Onir
These movies are on social issues like child sex abuse and plight of gay people.
Not only is social media being used to promote the film, they are getting the venture funded online too!
Rs
1,000 to Rs 5,000 - Acknowledgements on the blog/facebook and DVD Booklet(Treated as donation/pledge/feel good gesture)
Rs 5,000 to Rs 25,000 - Acknowledgements in the end credits(Treated as donation/pledge/feel good gesture)
Rs 25,000 to Rs 100,000 - Return of your contribution at the time of the final film release and acknowledgement in the end credits
Rs 100,000 to Rs 15,00,000 – Acknowledgements in the beginning titles of the film and proportionate share in the profits.
Pretty Cool!
For more here is an article in Times of India: Going beyond Idle Twittering. A good read on various eco-friendly projects being started online for a lot of offline change!
Its quite amazing what all is happening on social media!
I have been taking guest blogging (my brainwave that turned out to be a common idea) seriously, A few days back I wrote the Sherlock Holmes Movie Review, let me know what you think of the movie if you have seen it.
My review
I have read a few Sherlock Holmes books, but I did not know what to expect from the movie. Both the actors Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man fame) and Jude Law (Cold Mountain fame) are two that I think can do some real good work. They along with the old London setting full of carriages, hat wearers, women wearing those big skirt gowns and ongoing construction of the tower bridge have created a very vivid and engrossing movie. Read More.
Just got profiled at Web Worker Daily as one of their readers! Its a cool place with tips for web workers (as the name suggests). They review web apps, give tips about remote working and useful stuff about online professions.
Read my profile.
Couple of their recent interesting posts:
The Fine Art of Persuasion via Email
Can Twitter save your Day
I have heard quite a few people go ga-ga over Posterous - a blogging platform for quite some time. Recently, I took a look at it and was pleasantly surprised! What is most evident is that its made for TODAY, a time when social networks, RSS feeds are a must addon and when bloggers want to post a blog on the fly, from their smart phones.
I have noted some of its features here, to give you a better idea about what I am saying.
SignUp and Blogging
Login: What can be so different in a login procedure? Well what if there was none! I am serious you can just email post@posterous.com to start a blog. This will set up a blog with an automatically generated URL like www.priyanka-gmqhp.posterous.com (It probably picked up Priyanka from my email name).
When you do want to customize the blog or URL then you need to signup.
Post via Email: This is the feature that Posterous is really playing up. As shown above, they are totally promoting blogging via email, and the entire feature is very smooth. I have been trying it out on my photoblog (shifted from Wordpress) take a look, all the posts are via email.
Promotion
Auto Notification: This is another reason I said its made for today's social networking people. It has inbuilt pinging feature, where any new post gets posted on various social networks (once you authorize it). Moreover it enables a huge number of social networks for autoposting! No need to hook up and configure a twitterfeed or ping.fm etc...
By default it shows the icons to these authorized sites on your blog page, too! (Awesome).
Tracking Traffic
Google Analytics and Feedburner: The third that a blogger would go for is measuring traffic, namely Google analytics and Feedburner for feeds. It has been simply integrated so that we only need to input the respective codes.
Other
Theme Customizability: Themes can be customized since the templates HTML code is open. Hence blog theme is no bar to choosing Posterous over others.
Changeable web address: The blog web address is changeable. This is really cool, with most other platforms we have to start a new blog or buy a domain if we want to change the blog address.
(Another site which allows web address changeability is Twitter)
It makes the process of configuring auto updates for social networks and RSS subscriptions and statistics so easy that it feels blogging itself is simplified! Moreover these features make it feel tuned to a bloggers needs!
