Analogy between Human Body & Business

The picture above says it all; about management, marketing, sales, design, all new social media or SEO etc. By & large, every facet of modern day business can be explained with this model.

Drawing inspiration from the human anatomy, it is interesting to watch that every part works in tandem to bring coherence to our development & continued survival.

So is business different from the above model? One part is organizations talk about multi-million dollar budgets for their marketing & advertising campaigns whereas overlooking nicher yet multi-faceted dimensions of involving customers through measures of Social Media or Web Development etc. Hence coherence is necessary among different divisions and dimensions of business like all the small parts combine together to form a perfect human body.

Image courtesy: Ryan Karpeles

*This has got to stop* - Where is Social Media heading?

This week has been quite hectic and the week is not over yet. Yikes..!! So "less blogging is the outcome". So won't be able to post that much. Meanwhile I stumbled-upon this Facebook group which is named "This has got to stop".

The group description says:

"I DON'T WANT TO BE A VAMPIRE
I DON'T WANT TO BE A PIRATE
LEAVE ME ALONE

POINTLESS FACEBOOK APPLICATIONS ARE RUINING FACEBOOK"

This group was created by 16 year old guy, Evan Poteet of Hamilton Southeastern High School, class of '09. Infact the group has more than half a million members (503,005 members on 30th January, 08). This proves that "pointless mini-apps are ruining Facebook, if not Social Media".

By the way, I am a proud member of this group and as they say "The rest is History".

Marketing & Culture effects on Search Engines

The ComScore results are out for top-10 global search engines. Interesting results for Chinese search engine major "Baidu". The figure below tells the story.

But interestingly local search engines are doing very well w.r.t. their western counterparts, considering the fact that they don't use Roman alphabet.

Now the question is, shouldn’t the best search technology win no matter what the language? Yes it should, in a world where people are logical and not exposed to any sort of media. But humans are influenced by all sorts of media and their thinking & rationality is somewhat bounded around its contours.

So these figures tell a different story about human "online search" behavior. Marketing and to some extent culture is playing a big role in selecting an online search medium (unless it's Google).

Some of major reasons are:

• Better content: Search engine fragmentation and that too localised search engines are providing better and relevant content than others.
• The long tail becoming fatter: The long tail of search engines have started to grow longer & fatter. Think how many search engines we were exposed to a year back and how many now. More to that, better marketing of these niche yet mostly relevant sites is providing traction for them too.
• The old population thing: Asian counterparts are generating increase in online users; e.g. China can boast highest online users as their base population is huge. So marketing along with whole culture is working for these sites.

Related Posts:

• Blekko: David versus Goliath in SearchLand
• Google's "Don't be Evil" mantra - Holy shit
• Google knows about you
• A "Tag" a day keeps the Google™ away

Bollywood going digital through mobile phones

The elephant is rising from the slumber. India is innovating ways to deliver content through mobile phones. This month, one of Bollywood’s biggest film names is releasing the first ever serial for the mobile phone in India.

Infact, reports say that Indian digital technology has grown to an extent of Rs 44,000-crore ($11 billion) entertainment industry. Catching with this growing trend entrepreneur Rajat Barjatya, the scion of one of Bollywood's biggest film banners, is read to tap the opportunity in a big way.

The delivery format has shifted from the traditional norms to more contemporary ways with the likes of handheld devices and also releasing movies online and movie theaters simultaneously. In this case, they are releasing “90-episode series, with three minutes per episode in the humour genre.”

Some of the reasons for this growing trend has been three major factors:

• Mobile phone users are currently estimated at close to 234 million and still growing.
  
• Secondly, internet penetration is estimated at 46 million and has an active base of over 32 million in India.
• Thirdly, India is world's largest movie making industry.

So summing up these pieces provides a very congenial opportunity for digital content production and distribution.

Related stories:

• India: Thinking Digital, Going Conventional
• How can watching Movies in theaters be more interactive
• India’s first movie-based video game for PCs.

Blog, Blog & more Blogs; So where are we heading?

The trend has been quite clear for us. 2005 was for blogs, 2006 was for Youtube, 2007 was for Facebook (if I may say so) and 2008...keep guessing. Though I have my money on it. The point here I want to talk about is what blogging has been doing in the business circle. Yeah, it has been making headlines, starting from India to US but is it adding value to the traditional business models. Nowadays, newspaper journalists are observing this space for getting relevant insider information or more importantly a different perspective but what about business.

The word is advice. Bloggers give a lot of ideas to businesses. But that's where traditional organizations miss the whole point. People have talked a lot about engagement, conversations blah blah but big organizations are too awry to embrace it since they have too many rules, too many guidelines. Forget about being nimble or flexible. Basically a set of rigid rules they have been following all these years while their own customers have started ignoring them to an extent where they don't care at all.

It's so amazing that still companies see that they need to have 30 seconds limelight through advertisements; have a boss who knows it all...blah blah. Rigidity has been the mantra whereas modern successful companies are playing a whole different ball game by passing the ball into customer's court and playing the game in their terms.

Now the sorry state is that most prolific bloggers are sitting on those top notch positions of companies who make the very decisions. Most of them are either from marketing or PR field and still they keep writing about new and novel ideas which at the end of the day are being followed. It's sad.

This statement of Copyblogger perfectly exemplifies it:

"...It depends on your audience, your goals, your resources, and what works… right? And if we listen to these time warp pundits, how would we ever create anything remarkable when we’re all cookie-cutter blogging?"

So continuing with Brian Clark, where do you think blogging is going?

Seth Godin's video on "Curiosity"

The video is about "Curiosity". Now that's a very cool word, not only because it gives you a shot at new stuff around but modern day marketers have realized the fact that whom they want to target i.e. early adopters & innovators who are in the fringes and they do the idea-spreading thing. It's curiosity which attracts them to try out new things and if they like it, they tell their friends. And then the word-of-mouth cycle starts.

The short video was shot by Nic Askew.

By the way, if you are in good mood, then you should read some of the comments in Seth's post. My fav one is this one called "Insatiable Curiosity" by Hjörtur Smárason (Thank god he won't ask me to pronounce it).

Now you know why I posted this video. Yes, I fall into that curious category :) and that's why I like Marketing because it gives me the space to think beyond (If I may say so).

What Cricket Umpires teach Marketers

Nowadays, India-Australia cricket test match series is going on. Barring from the fact that the test series has been surrounded by many controversies, still we can't deny the fact that role of umpires on the field is of utmost importance.

But why the hell am I writing it in a marketing blog, u may ask?

It's the silent nature of umpires and then delivering the judgment which fascinates me so much. The whole game surrounds around their call. They just keep quiet and observe the game like an avid onlooker. Now that's where a marketer comes into play. Few days back CK wrote a nice little post on how "Shutting up is such a great strategy for marketers".

I too agree that for any marketer, be it offline or online; B2B or B2C or whatever, listening is one skill which marketers need to develop. Why?

"Your customers can teach you a lot if you give heed to those subtle messages from them". Coke forgot with New Coke, Ford with Edsel and many more like that.

One point which may work in favor of marketers is the advent of "Intelligent Internet" i.e. Social Media which can be used not only to see how their target customers are behaving but also it can be used listen carefully the next trend that can or may follow.

Social Media may save our lives

Our world is changing. Now that's very cliched, you may say. But if you look around a bit, then our way of information gathering to idea spreading has changed over time. Much due to the advent of internet. Internet is shaping our culture in way which we wanted to. Web 1.0 era is over as we have seen much discussion about it and the new world order of Web 2.0 is here. And with the introduction of Web 2.0, came the concept of Social Media. And this very revolution has changed a lot of things: For us and the business models of the world. You can frame it largely as we are in "SPECS Economy" i.e. Sharing, Peering, Engaging, Collaborating and Socializing culture.

In the world where we are using tools like Twitter, Facebook etc to connect people across the boundaries, so why can't we use these mass collaboration tools to help each other prevent some of the worst feared catastrophes which have more often than not paralyzed the entire human race. On this regard, Google has taken a new initiative to save the world via the internet. They (Google.Org) are funding a non-profit group called "InSTEDD". The idea is to alert citizens of the world against disease outbreaks & natural disasters and coordinate relief efforts in the event of disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina and Tsunami etc.

According to InSTEDD:

"We want everyone to benefit from tools & technologies to save our lives. We want those technologies to work anywhere, anytime, and under the harshest conditions. We can collaborate with technology developers, researchers and experts to develop better methods to improve early disease protection & disaster response."

But there is higher concern than just the idea of mass collaboration to warn people of such catastrophe. The concern is about how few bad apples can mess-up the whole bunch of good apples. So till the technologies can come up with solutions to such problems, the system will be looked upon with some amount of skepticism. So till then, Trust is the only thing among us which will move this system for the betterment of human race.

Slidepost: MacWorld 2008 - Steve Jobs Keynote

These slides (Link) are the step by step coverage of Apple in "Macworld 2008: Steve Jobs Keynote". I have tried to put the event in a slide in form of pictures of the key developments in "Macworld 2008".

As stated in one of my earlier posts about Tata Nano and its similarity with Apple's iPhone, now it will be more than clear that the amount of enthusiasm and euphoria surrounding this event is immense. Modern day marketing is going through a phase of metamorphosis where PR is acting as a catalyst to modern marketing.

So before even talking about Apple's latest "MacBook Air" being successful or not, it has raised the aspiration of customers to an exalted state. So Well done again Mr Jobs. Good show!

Check out the photos in Flickr Slideshow.

Indian companies' response to Blogosphere

I have been blogging from last year. One of my many observations is the increasing number of hits to my blog from different companies like Google, Cisco, Microsoft, BP, Shell, Bell Labs, O&M etc through searches (E.g. Vodafone, Portugal in the inset picture). Interestingly, many bloggers gave the same feedback that there is a dramatic shift in the number of viewers from different companies of the world.

Interestingly, Mark Collier raises an important question regarding companies being vigilant on blogosphere i.e. How many companies monitoring blogosphere take further action when something good/bad is being talked about?

Staying with that topic, I'm quite unsure I have seen too many Indian companies coming to my site. Apart from me, talking to many bloggers have revealed the same state i.e. not too many Indian companies are watching their audience talking or writing about them. Some of the many reasons Indian companies are still lagging behind Blogosphere or indolent about taking any action are:

#1. Unsure to respond: I'm quite sure that most of the viewers are average employees who just want to check what's been talked about their company in the blogosphere (Agreed to Mark).

#2. Complacent Boss not taking any action: If they find anything positive being talked about, then they simply ignore, thinking nothing much to do there whereas they should foster that kind of PR conversation.

#3. Ignoring negative vibes: This is simply done to excuse themselves from taking any sort of further responsibility. Whereas it can hurt them more by not taking any further action for such negative publicity. Dell knows it.

The point is few unsatisfied customers can do more damage because of technology and information proliferation than many satisfied ones. So now you choose...!!!

How to increase traffic for your blog

Once in a while, people ask me this question i.e. How to build traffic to my blog? The other day a friend of mine popped this question to me. I was far from surprised since I'm not a SEO guru or a internet traffic wizard. But yeah, I have been pulling some decent (trying to be humble) amount of traffic to my blog. So here are my 50 small tidbits for those who are interested or in a mood to have some fun:

1. Write which people will be interested in.
2. Don't write about your ex-girlfriend or how your mom keeps pestering you.
3. Make love to Search Engines. Remember that Google is your new best friend.
4. Learn to be an expert in your field; At least try to be..
5. Be the first to break or announce news.
6. Long post sucks; believe in KISS (Keep it short & simple) philosophy.
7. Write timeless posts which can be read after one year even.
8. Bait inbound links by writing definite posts.
9. Being controversial helps.
10. Write about your sexy hot girlfriend. Give pictures if needed :-)
11. Include bright and shiny widgets to grab attention.
12. Encourage comments by conversational posts i.e keep it open ended.
13. Give a free brownie to your commenter's.
14. Tag your posts in Del.icio.us, Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Furl etc.
15. Have some influential bloggers talk about you. Period
16. Use images in your posts. Helps in assuming the idea of your article.
17. Work on the visual appeal. Yours is fine but more on the blog.
18. Include Categories, Most popular posts & Recent Posts.
19. Write about topics which are easy linkbaits for other bloggers like about gadgets, Google, Web 2.0 etc.
20. Have some influential friends who can help you spread your blog. Being Social is most important.
21. Use Twitter to perfection. Try to have followers/following ratio greater than 1.
22. Post on weekdays since there are more readers.
23. Post on weekends since there are less blog posts.
24. Use RSS and "Subscribe to Email" tab in your blog.
25. Keep a check on Technorati on top searches. Set Ping automatically or take help from someone smarter.
26. Don't write about something which you will hate to read.
27. Learn SEO or buy "SEO for Dummies" for long term advantage.
28. Write in English or better write in Japanese.
29. Use third party way of driving traffic by posting in SlideShare.
30. Email friends about your new posts. Remember friends not foes.
31. Comments on other bloggers site, even though their posts suck sometimes.
32. Think I'm your pal..you know what to do!
33. Get back to your comments and give feedback.
34. Remember your blog's url is your new name. So use it wherever possible. Try using it in your resume.
35. Sometimes not listening to other bloggers giving suggestion helps.
36. Create your own USP about your blog like Marketing, Social Media, Web 2.0, Technology blah blah.
37. Use Facebook to promote if you like Zuckerberg or use any SNS to let people know about your blog.
38. Increase your social circle..If not refer back to No 20.
39. Take ideas or get inspired by other people's writing.
40. Stop being boring.
41. Surprise your readers. Write about Osama Bin Laden.
42. Create a niche for your blog through posts. Remember there is always someone interested.
43. Add some videos of Paris Hilton or some podcasts with J. Lo.
44. Create a buzz by publishing something newsworthy like Einstein's Theory of Relativity was wrong or something like that. But it should be true and not a rumor.
45. Don't over promote yourself at the expense of your reader's attention.
46. Love blogging and have passion for it.
47. Look for new topics to write on from other people's twitter conversations.
48. Don't be vague in your posts.
49. Make a lot of online friends in different SNS & Bookmarking sites. Again refer to No 20.
50. Last but not least, be patient.

So here are my 50 advices to get traffic to your blog. So feel free to give your ideas (satirical, humor or relevant).

Google Trends, Revisited..Goof Up

Wallah!

This is the first result you get in Google for "Google Future Trends". Now this is amazing. Infact GigaOM, SearchEngineGuide and even Google itself features after my post.

I am far more sure that someone else must have done a better job than me in predicting Google Trends. The point here is that the GoogleBot (Google's page indexing mechanism) has to go a long way than this.

What Tata's Nano & Apple's iPhone have in common

Today is one of the glorious day in the history of Indian business. The much talked about Tata's 1-lakh ($2700) car was launched today in the Auto Expo Show at New Delhi.

I won't go much into the details of the car or the euphoria surrounding the launch, since it will be all over the media tomorrow. But I want to share some thoughts about the launch. Actually I came to know about the launch details from Twitter (thanks to Gaurav Mishra). He actually twittered the news while Mr. Tata was announcing it.

Few things happened while this development was taking place. First, Tata's Nano featured among the top most search in Technorati on 10th Jan, 2008 i.e. the world was searching for more information about Tata's Nano and secondly, the blogosphere was buzzing about Tata Nano.

It's very rare to see such euphoria among people across the world for a product launch like this and that too Indian product. But here the product has the capability to be a standard by itself, both for customers as well as industry players across the world. Tata's have made it possible to break the myth that cheap products are inferior in quality.

The launch of this small "Big" car (as much the hype) can be traced back to the corridors of Apple's Steve Jobs launching iPhone. So when Steve Jobs comes with his keynote speech about iPhone's launch and people across 130 odd countries watch it, then much of the PR, Branding and Marketing is being done there itself. So now Indians have something to boast about. So when Mr. Ratan Tata comes out with Nano's launch speech, people around the world want to listen to what he has to say (Citation from technorati).


So from a marketer's point of view, the job has been well done and an incredible story of hope & dream has been passed to the people. Now the "Idea-virus" has to spread. So Tata's main task would be to do some good PR activities (not much in marketing) to keep it hot unless it faces some crucial issues relating to customer services due to the initial hype.

Still I'm happy that an Indian brand has nudged the expectations of world-wide public and Tata's Nano will definitely put India in the limelight for much needed innovation in the Indian context.

Links for 2008-01-10

• CBS News│Starbucks replaces CEO with Chairman - Coffee Giant replaces CEO, Jim Donald with Chairman, Howard Schultz. Read the inside story here (Tags: Business, Starbucks, Howard Schultz)
• IBN Live│Tata unveils Rs-1 lakh People's Car 'Nano' - After a long wait, TATA launched the 1lakh ($2700) car at the Auto Expo show in New Delhi. Click here for exclusive pictures of "Nano" (Tags: TATA, Nano, 1-Lakh Car, India)
• Greg Verdino│A framework for measuring blog success - Captures all of the key metrics for gauging blog success and put those metrics in context (Tags: Blogs, Social Media, Web 2.0, Community)
• CNet│Best of Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2008 - Covers "The Best in Show"; "People's Voice"; "Best of CES Winners in each category" (Tags: CES 2008, Electronics Show, Gadget)

What Businesses can learn from Seth's Books

If you have read last few books by Seth Godin, 3 things are the basic take-aways:

• You somehow know about the content before you have read the book.
• You know, how important is an "Authentic story".
  
• Unique content worth talking about.

If you talk about business in that measure, it's not different. The above 3 points can be summed up in two words. "Idea spreading" or "Idea diffusion". Basically, we all are living in the "Century of Idea diffusion". The business which was able to spread their idea, won the customers and which didn't kept producing "Average products for Average customers" i.e Mass Market. So no wonder, chances of failure for mass market products increases since these customers most of the time IGNORE you as they have more choices and less time.

So how to spread the "IdeaVirus" to succeed:

• Let them Talk about you: Your communication should raise questions in the mind of the customer. This fosters engagement which never leaves them indifferent. So how well the communication is crafted will ensure your success.


• Usage of different Mediums: With the advent of technology, customer touch-points has increased. So different media platforms like Social Media etc should be used to touch your customers. Here the catch is that it should be very subtle, not like "On the Face Ad" like in movies.


• Humans are more emotional & less rational beings: Your customers are basically human beings with more emotions and less logic. So touching your customers on more emotional front forms a long term bondage than tickling its rational part.
  

Links for 2008-01-08

• Steve Rubel│The Lazysphere and the Decline of Deep Blogging - He talks about how Bloggers in general have become so lazy to post original work pieces and value addition in real time has decreased (Tags: Weblogs)
• TechCrunch│Google Enabled Televisions Coming Soon - Japanese manufacturer Matsushita (Panasonic) has signed a deal with Google that will see the company launch flat panel television sets that allow users to access YouTube and other Google services such as Picasa Web Albums (Tags: Google, Panasonic, Matsushita, Television)
• GoogleBlog│The flow of Information at the Googleplex - Using prediction markets to show how organizations process information and respond to external events ::Download the article:: (Tags: Google)
• Gaurav Agarwal│How Techmeme homepage changes over time (video) - This Techmeme video clip captures 50 hours of Techmeme activity and replays it in 50 seconds. So you get a good idea how the Techmeme home changes over a period of time (Tags: Feature, Screencasts, Techmeme)
• Anna Farmery│10 reasons business should be embracing Social Media - Thoughts after an interview with Eileen Brown of Microsoft of why businesses should embrace social Media (Tags: Business, Social Media, Social Networking, Web 2.0)

Mozilla launches Viral Campaign against IE

Mozilla launched a viral campaign secretly supporting Firefox with the name "Fight Against Boredom" targetting Internet Explorer (IE) (According to TC). Apparently, the message is "Don't use IE, instead use Firefox". The message is in the form of a song with statistics which I can't help but its damn funny. I hope Microsoft takes it in the best spirits. Even there is a fake blog supporting the viral campaign.



Even I'm posting this on my firefox app, so my thumbs-up for them!!

Slidepost: Branding 2.0 & Social Media

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These are the slides which I presented in the 5th AIMS International Conference on Management & Technology @ Hyderabad on 29th Dec, 2007.

The slides broadly talks about how in the modern era, Branding has shifted to more engagement orientated due to the advent of Web 2.0 and Social Media. The presentation aims at how, where and when aspects of it...

Comments are invited!!

The thing called "Marketing"

Yes, the thing called "Marketing". So many words can be used to define it and redefine it. It's not that we don't have good marketers in the country but still company's balance sheets are bleeding due to crappy advertisements, PR activities, promotions and all that crap. Hell with all those.

So what is exactly "Marketing" that we all make so much fuss about?

It's about commitments. My personal belief in life has always been "Commit & Deliver, if not F**k it!". And here with the thing called "Marketing" your customers will say those last two words since for them, choices has increased and time has decreased. So they better ignore your false promises.

So as the old maxim goes, Commitment is the base of every relationship. That isn't different from keeping your customers happy, I guess. But we forget. The present state of marketing is overpromise and underdeliver which should be the other way round. Still, we forget...!!! (Agree Mr. Godin?)

Blekko: David versus Goliath in SearchLand

Got this piece of information from TechCrunch. Rick Skrenta (a very media savvy guy) who is known more for first computer virus and stuff like that is coming with a bang by starting up something which intends to take on Google...Yeah, on Search.

This is what he said in this blog post:

...But I get asked - why do search?

Simple - the idea that the current state-of-the-art in search is what we'll all be using, essentially unchanged, in 5 or 10 years, is absurd to me.

The web is big. Really, really big. It's literally billions and billions of pages. It's Carl Sagan big. And it's doubling in size every year or two.

So the idea that what you can see in positions 1-3 above the fold on Google are the sum of what the web has to say about every possible query is crazy...

The guys are still working like a usual start ups i.e. no big shot flashy offices or something like that. Even their site is fancying the above picture as of now. But soon the site will be active to compete against big shots like Google, Yahoo or MSFT's Live.

Skrenta was the same guy who had written earlier about "PageRank (Google's bread & butter) wrecked the Web, and Google is going down with it".

So till 2009 when the very site will start functioning, we will be watching the space definitely along with other start-ups like Mahalo, Powerset etc. But going by his repute, it will be interesting to watch the "Search Space". So the million (oops Billion) dollar question is that "Will Google be challenged/outbeaten/unsettled by these new developing start-ups or not"?

Blogs : The Flip side of Narcissism

I have always liked Seth Godin starting from his books to his blog about anything under the sun. He has this immense talent to take minutest thing on this earth and making it easier to comprehend in his own way. So when Seth comes up with latest post about "Blogs & Self Promotion", one thing becomes crystal: People talking about you is far more effective than talking about yourself in world wide web (Thanks Seth).

So two things are to be done after reading this post. First, get a copy of "Meatball Sundae" (Seth's latest book) and secondly if you have a business then put these proactive thinking (not reactive) in your marketing messages and avoid the plight of getting vanquished.

Also, the thing about "New Age Marketing" is word of mouth. You are in or out is very much proportional to the word-of-mouth your idea generates. So selling books is no different from business. So going by the same paradigm, word of mouth is the new phrase that should be written as a new commandment for every marketer.

But blogs add a different dimension to your business. The real term is "Credibility". It may be in the form of other bloggers talking about it or general mass spreading it which is in term adding to that credibility factor. So narcissism which most often than not, we bloggers generally attach ourselves to won't be that good (not for this blog or for your business). So using this tool to sheer perfection will definitely lead to better sales (I'm sure I'm doing good for Seth) not only for books but in a broader sense to your dipping business.

Google hinting future trends

On 31st December,2007 GoogleBlog posted "This year of Google blogging" which gives a lot of hints about where actually we are heading, not only in tech space but also about general human psyche. The article contains a small piece on the posts which captured maximum attention as well as linkbacks from other bloggers in general. So here what's written in the article...

The posts that elicited the most reaction in terms of views and linkbacks include (courtesy GoogleBlog):

• The much-discussed "Gphone" news
• Our thinking about the upcoming FCC spectrum auction
• What the OpenSocial APIs could mean
• How a black screen might not save energy
• Announcing the Knol test project
• Building your own Google homepage

It's very simple to come up with trends for the future. Actually the past always have some clues for the future. So it becomes kind of easy to build upon it. So, looking at the maximum viewed posts, it kind of gave me the key towards the future. The ubiquitous question for every marketer ::What do customers/users want?::

My conclusions from these snippets are based on the point that giving much attention to such posts mean they want to know more about it. So when users want to know more, it becomes apparent for marketers to align their thinking in that direction. So my conclusion would be that "Users need more power, more control & all in all something which is more about THEM i.e. users" which can be in the form of Knol, OpenSocial API's etc.

So lets hope 2008 brings optimum coherence between customers/users & marketers. So, "User Federated Space (UFS)" era is now!!