Building a Social Culture in Organization

Building a Social Culture in Organization

We all are social beings. We all want to be recognized personally and professionally. In today’s time, it’s important to build our personal brand to be recognized well not just within the organization but also, in the outside world.

Question: What is that the organizations like Facebook, Forrester, McKinsey, Google, Linkedin, Twitter etc. do differently to build their company culture and how is it beneficial for the individuals and the organizations?

Answer: They help their teams to grow personally and professionally by building personal brands. The organizations help individuals to identify their strengths, weaknesses and set goals and help them achieve those goals.

What’s in it for the Individuals?

·         It helps the individuals to receive personal and professional growth.

·         It pushes individuals to keep themselves updated and active on the latest in the industry relevant to their work.

·         It helps them identify their short term and long term goals and keeps them focused on achieving those goals.

·         It builds a culture of being socially humble: “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”.

·         It helps them align with the business goals and bring in collaborative growth.

What’s in it for the Company?

·         Social culture helps organizations to attract and retain brilliant talent in the organization.

·         It helps the organization to see the contributions of the individuals who go beyond the call of duty and identify star performers and reward them.

·         It helps the organization to be seen in a positive light in the market / relevant industry.

·         Helps in identifying the common growth areas and how to help individuals in achieving those goals.

·         Helps in aligning human resources with business goals.

·         It fosters an environment of multi-cultural growth, collaboration and razor sharp work force.

·         It helps the stakeholders of the company (including customers, shareholders, investors etc) to see that the company has the right talent to grow as well as

How to achieve this?

Simple: Let’s start by getting social!

But how to be social?

• Connect with your community.
• Learn from your community.
• Innovate and share with your community.

What else?

Startup Tip - Take care of those 21% of your customers.

Experimental data driven learning teaches you a lot about how to run a business. One small tip that I wanted to share...


Divide your customers in 3 buckets-
1) Majority revenue generators (generally 20%)
2) Majority influencers (generally 1%)
3) The rest majority.


The first 20% bucket will help you generate bread and butter for the founding team. They are also, the ones who will be your BIG WOM revenue generators, so, please provide them the tools to share it with their circle.


The 1% bucket is extremely important. These are your BETA enthusiasts. They are active on Social Media. They like to Blog, Tweet, Share on Facebook and create innovative marketing recommendation for your product. They drive Word of Mouth for you. The challenge is not only to keep them happy, however, to first identify them correctly and then think of innovative ways tot keep them occupied.


Take care of this 21% of customers and rest 79% shall follow suite.

2010 - "Emailing is the primary use of Internet" - John Dooner, "Ex" Chairman of McCann WorldGroup

Jay Hind - The Future of Indian TV is here.

I have been away from writing on my blog for few months now. Work kept me so busy that I didn’t get time or maybe I didn’t jump up in excitement to write about something. Though, after this long break, I found something really interesting. Jay Hind produced by Undercover productions (was not sure if it existed J) in association with Buzzintown.com is the 1^st late night standup comedy show on Internet (youtube channel) in India and this indeed made me jump in excitement and here I am writing about it.

I see the future of Indian TV in this stand-up comedy show. This series is path breaking for Indian TV and the power of Internet in India. If this series becomes a hit and starts making revenues to become profitable, then this will be the 1^st gen TV series online and can give birth to more talented players to come online to provide content and be profitable while running the shows.

I am a firm believer that solid content will find it’s FAN following… and evidently I have seen over 1250 Fans of this show already on Facebook FAN page of Jay Hind growing rapidly by word of mouth in just a month or so.

Jay Hind team has done a wonderful job in creating the same magic of Movers and Shakers as Abhigyan Jha brings in his expertise and creativity to tickle the funny bone with the sarcasm, pun, entertaining and funny conversations, hilarious disclaimers and very well executed gags by Sumeet Raghavan and off-course the Divya aka Savita Bhabhi!

After having not watched TV in a long time, this show re-affirms that it was worth NOT watching the idiot box. The same old boring Saas Bahu $#%) and those cameras panning to every joker’s face gives me total grief. Jay Hind comes as a refreshing change and cuts across the clutter and provides solid entertainment. Interestingly, I am trying to see when I will start seeing ads in the breaks on this show. Presently they are building the momentum for getting the eye balls and with few million people on Internet these eye balls are coming very soon for this show.

Jay hind is leveraging the Social media well for it’s promotion. After the 1^st month of it’s launch in August it has crossed over 1 million views. You can:

Follow Jay Hind on Twitter
Become a Jay Hind Fan on Facebook
Subscribe to Youtube channel of JayhindTV
Check it out on Buzzintown.com

Community Strategy - Infoedge's Brijj.com Incentivizes Networking

Strategy Critique - Incentivising Professional Networking - Are we killing the Goose?

Info Edge India Limited of the fame of Naukri.com, Jeevansaathi.com, 99acres.com had launched Brijj.com in 2007 which is a professional networking site built on the lines of Linkedin.com. Though the site was aimed at promoting professional networking and social job hunting (HR 2.0) concept, the initial response was not what they expected.

People jumped in to directly post stupid things like: get me a job. However, the site traffic kept growing (thanks to big daddy Naukri.com). However, recently to enhance the concept of professional networking in India, the portal has taken a strategy to incentivize networking.

I was suddenly surprised when some random people started sending me connection requests and I was thinking probably someone has really gone through the pain of knowing me and wants to connect with me. However, I get this mailer yesterday afternoon from Brijj.com saying:

“A trip to London could be yours”. 

Wow, I don’t mind getting a free trip to London. So what is that I am supposed to do? Well not much, just do professional networking. Sounds like a dream. I build my network and you send me to London. Ahmm…well as apparent this strategy is to promote the user interaction on the community and to get more people coming to website, however, it’s going to loose the purpose of Professional Networking. I build my professional network based on trust and previous or present working relationship shared with an individual.

However, by incentivising the networking it’s like killing the goose. My network might grow, however, is it going to be meaningful? Nah, I would end up networking with jimpys whom I wouldn’t have added otherwise. I had to reject few requests already and then I started thinking if this is the right strategy at all??

What’s your thought?

A Big Thanks to Google! - Google Adds Search Volume Data to Adwords

A long awaited but a welcome step from Google when it added the search volume data for keywords and Ad placement flexibility to the Adwords platform.

Some time back I wrote about Google's Hogwash on how auctions set prices, and my key argument was that there was no campaign data available. However, with the below mentioned new tools and features added by Google, it proved again that they are the Best and the most pioneering and innovative Search company who really listens to customer's demands and deliver on the same. Hats off to you guys!

Also, it added Keywords and placements -- together!

Now, both keywords and placements can be targeted in all AdWords campaigns. We can now use both to get better control and pricing power on the content network. (this was a big disadvantage earlier)

What can you do with keywords plus placements?

• Bid more or less for specific placements. Let contextual targeting with keywords place your ads across the content network, while you set placement bids for sites that have a special value for you.

  Selling soccer shoes? You might bid $1.00 for clicks from any content network pages that match your keywords, but $2.00 when those clicks come from a soccer fan site that's converted well for you in the past.

• Show your ad only when both keywords and placements match. You'll get the benefits of keyword targeting while also limiting the places where your ad can appear.

  For instance, set your campaign to appear only on your favorite soccer fan site, and only when the site content matches the keyword soccer shoes. You may see less traffic, but AdWords contextual matching will help make sure your placement pages are highly targeted.

Instead of creating separate campaigns for keywords and placements, you can now include both in any campaign. All ad groups now have tabs for both keywords and placements, and the two can work together to target your ads on the content network.

Keyword-Targeted Placement-Targeted Online

Here's an example: You might target the keyword roses and the placement *www.example.com*. You can let the keyword roses display your ad across the content network, and use placements to raise your bid whenever roses triggers your ad on www.example.com. Or you can choose to have your ad appear only on www.example.com, and only when its content is a match for roses.

Pick Keywords

Pick Placements Google finds pages that meet both criteria

Well, what pleases me most is the way Technology and Marketing have got married these days. It's the nupital knot which any Techno-Marketing professional would want to get into. And additionally what makes me feel elated is the way companies are learning from there customers and prospects through social media and using that feedback to come up with better product features and solutions for the customers.

A big thanks to google again!

Which blogs do Journalists read?

Found an interesting article on BNET regarding which blogs do Journalists read...

Wondering which blogs journalists themselves find most valuable? Brodeur Strategies and Marketwire did an online survey. “We did the study because we wanted to help clients better understand the interplay between online news activity and journalism. We know who the traditional reporters are that cover our clients’ industries and beats but we need to better understand where they’re getting their information online.” (Jerry Johnson, executive vice president, Brodeur Strategies)
Here are the results:
Lifestyle journalists:
TMZ
Perez Hilton
MSN Lifestyle
AOL Living
Political journalists:
Huffington Post
Real Clear Politics
Talking Points Memo
Daily Kos
Tech journalists:
Engadget
Gizmodo
Boing Boing
Arstechnica
GigaOm
Travel journalists:
Tripadvisor
Frommers
Forbes Traveler
Travel Channel
Yahoo! Travel
Healthcare journalists:
NIH
WebMD
Mayo Clinic
MSN Health