AMEX India marketing needs to re-look at SEO strategy

AMEX India marketing might need a couple of SEO Lessons for it's credit cards business.

Just at the time when American Express (AMEX) is spending so much of advertising dollars on their AMEX credit cards like Platinum, Gold, and Kingfisher First and Lamborghini is on stake…strangely their website is not optimized for some crucial keywords i.e. Kingfisher and Lamborghini Gallardo.

One of the key hype factors used by AMEX is Kingfisher First tie up as well as Lamborghini Gallardo. When I was searching for “kingfisher AMEX card” my blog entry came up higher than the AMEX website.

The keywords used are: "keywords" content="Apply, Online, Business, Travel, Service, Management, Cards, Commercial, Expenses, Corporate, Corporations, Events, Entertainment, Financial, small, medium, mid-sized, SME, company, business, Learn, Market, Purchasing, control, American Express, Credit, Amex, India"

However, 2 key keywords missing are kingfisher and Lamborghini. Just because of not using this keyword, AMEX might be loosing a large number of website visits. It should be part of the online marketing plan where they should optimize the website for certain buzzwords for a limited time period.

Another Goof-up is the unoptimized landing page by omniture which is being used for the Google ad-words SEM campaign.

Sponsored Link
Amex Platinum Credit Card

www.americanexpress.com/india/ Get a chance to Win A Lamborghini Hurry & Apply Today!

Again the page is not optimized for keywords though it does have the design element to attract the audience. Just like this instance, there are many organizations which have delved into the online space but it becomes apparent that the online strategy needs to be re-looked and given more attenion than being given now.

This can be because of the reasons that Indian market may not be that lucrative for AMEX as long as the online sales is considered. However, having a robust and integrated marketing strategy is mandatory these days and we should ignore the Indian market which is surely catching up with the fast growing number of subscribers in India.

Stop abusing the term “PR and Brand Awareness”

Stop abusing the term “PR and Brand Awareness”

This morning I was conducting an Interview of a young lady for the marketing position in my company. I explained various activities we do to market our products and the prime channel of marketing for us is Online and Email/Database marketing.

I explained to her in depth about the role and why we are doing what we are doing. All things went fine till she asked; “Would I be sending emails only? What about Direct Mailers, PR and event?”

Well it’s not just her. In India, for long, marketers have abused the term “brand awareness and PR”, in the pretext of in-ability to link it back to the expenditure done on marketing to sales conversion. Every time they had to do a brand awareness campaign, they want to spend marketing dollars on things which are least likely to give you the Brand Awareness and the worst ROIs.

I mean, even in today’s world if you say it’s a brand building activity and are not talking about the ROI, trust me you are bitten by something called as “Brand building pretension bug” and you are in a mythical world of Greek creatures waiting for some miracle.

I asked her, what are the things she wishes to do apart from email and online marketing? She said Direct mailers, Press Conference and Print ads.

I said “alright let’s start from the beginning”.

Direct Mailers: How much would one spend on creation of a direct mailer? Include the cost of designer, printing, envelope, couriering. We did some in-air calculations and arrived at approx INR 60/- per mailer. Now let’s assume we have to reach a database size of 10,000 people. So we spend approx INR 600K. Now let’s say the average cost of sales per product in the case in point is INR 15K. Therefore considering a very generous response rate of 2% you have 200 responses (though I don’t know if we can track the call to action back to the mailer). Let us assume we could. Now you have 200 people to whom you can start pitching, and with my experience I see the final leads to quotes to sales percentage would never go beyond 5%. So we are talking about 10 people who finally bought the product.

But it does raise some questions:

Did your DM reach the right person?
Do you know your Direct mailer was opened by someone?
Do you know your direct mailer was read by someone?
What happened? Did the person take the desired action on the mailer?
Lead creation time?

Let’s get down to business:

Interesting revenue generated: 15K (cost of product) * 10 (leads converted) = 150K. ROI = (150-600)/600= Loss of 75% on Marketing Investment
Ok let’s be generous: 20 people bought: 15K* 20 = 300K = ROI = (300-600)/600 = Loss of 50% on the marketing investment.
Let’s be more generous: 50 people bought: 15K * 50 = 750K
ROI = (750 – 600) / 600 = 25% profit. Oh I forgot to add the salary component of the marketing person. The cost just went up and this 25% loss became 0%.

No gain no loss. Do you need marketing?

Email Campaigns: Now let’s take another scenario:
We created an Email (design cost + email sending cost) per email = INR 5
We sent 10K emails = 10K * 5 = INR 50K

Now you can track if someone opened the mail, clicked on it, replied to it and more.
Within one day you have 200 leads.
Let’s assume the same leads getting converted: 10, 20, 50
ROI for 10 = (150K – 50K)/50 = 200% profit.

I don’t need to delve into simple maths any more

PR/Press Conference/Print-Ads

A small situational analysis here:

“Let’s assume that you went for a sales visit and are talking to the client. Do you ever say,” sir can you please open the newspaper of a particular date 2 months old?” Or “open that magazine page so and so, from 3 months ago?” Obviously not!

So if someone is an avid reader, they would have read your company’s press coverage or they would have read that magazine advertorial. However, you took an assumption here and if the assumption of an avid reader is taken away, it’s a rare chance that your coverage reached the right people at the right time.

However, the question is, how do you leverage the PR to work for you every time, non stop? How to make every single dollar spent on PR, Press Conference or print ads work for you?

Simple way of arriving at the answer:

Ask anyone around you at your work place or home or your sports game or a shopping mall, “what do you do when you need some information?”
Most common answer would be: “I google it.”
If people are searching the information online, then isn’t it obvious that your company’s PR related information should be available online?
Having said that, many companies are already doing it consciously or unconsciously, but is it the part of your planned strategy?
Are you making a conscious effort towards your web presence strategy?
It’s easy to make your online strategy and PR strategy work for you.

Strategy 1: Conversational Email Hyper-Linking: - While you are having an email communication with your client, subtly give a small link for the online press release which came just at the right time. This online press release link works immediately where your client will see it. Not just newspaper, but even the online media is talking about your company. While you were pitching to the client, this press release immediately added to your credibility. Also, you can use this online presence any time.

Additionally, while people will search for certain information online your “Search Engine Optimized” press release will come-up as a search result in google. And your customer might just land at the right page on your website and gets excited about what the press is talking about you.

Oh! And do not forget to use these links in a conversational way. Which means, while you are writing a message, create a conversational dialogue and hyperlink with a couple of words and link it to the press link.

Strategy 2: Email Signatures Hyper-Linking: -This is a simple one. Use your email signatures in text with a link to your press coverage. People have been using their email signatures as banners etc. However, these get blocked these days but the text links do not. So you might want to try this one.

Strategy 3: Newsletter: - Create a monthly/weekly/quarterly newsletter about educating the customers and prospects about what’s new in the industry. Put couple of observations in industry which are affecting the customers as well as propose a solution to same. Talk about any new citing or customer testimonial on how the new product feature is helping people using your product or service. Give links to the online press releases and showcase to customers how the press has talked about your company/product/service. Share some whitepapers/research reports that your company might have published.
Use this newsletter to talk about what others are talking about you instead of boasting about how good your product/service/company is.

Marketing 2.0 - eMarketing, Digital marketing, Interactive Marketing, Online marketing, Internet Marketing, Web marketing...

While I have been writing about Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, Professional and social networking, here is the new paradigm or future of marketing or the Marketing 2.0. I was browsing through LinkedIn Answers and saw this question by a gentleman who wanted to know which term you would prefer out of E-Marketing, Web Marketing, Digital Marketing, Online Marketing, Internet Marketing or Interactive Marketing. Well I succinctly answered Marketing 2.0, as that is something which has changed the new rules of marketing and probably would make Kotler re-write his book.

In this entry I am touching upon various elements of Marketing 2.0 and how it can benefit your organization. When I say your organization in this post, I mean both B2B as well as B2C businesses.

These would be some of the basic elements of Marketing 2.0:

Online communities, Blogs, User-generated content, Email Marketing, Viral Videos, Online PR, Flash Ads, Torrents, Porn Sites, Software Downloads, Banners, Link Exchanges, Micro Sites, Landing page optimizations, triggered ads, behavioral ads, web analytics, SEO SMO and SEM.

Online communities, Blogs, Social / Professional Networking and User Generated Content: -

Earlier I wrote about push marketing being dead and how 4Rs of marketing namely Reveal, Reward, Respect and Retain has changed the approach of marketing to customer centric marketing.

This can be simple achieved today through online communities or Blogs where users generate content and the content becomes the king. So instead of pushing the message out, you are able to pull the customers towards you and with Content being the king, people get motivated to come back. There are numerous examples of this technique: like LinkedIn, Xing, and many more.

How they sell?

Online communities and blogs market and sell the products through subtle hints which might be relevant to the audience. Considering the context and relevancy approach is more suited to the audience, they tend to look at what is on offer and if that is something which is of importance to them at that time, they make a buying decision.

Email marketing: Many online community and blog owners use an additional tactic of Email marketing. Additionally many product and services companies also leverage email marketing media. It has shown highest ROIs for a long time now and the effectiveness has been good. However, now the point to be noted is that instead of pushing the message, people have now moved to opt-in based database communication.

There are many ways how people are generating lists, through Whitepapers / Research Reports / Surveys / Email list building newsletters and Micro sites and landing pages etc.

Many solution providers provide email marketing system which are on demand and web based like: http://www.responsys.com/ , http://www.e-dialog.com/ , http://www.constantcontact.com/ , http://www.verticalresponse.com/ , http://www.exacttarget.com/ , http://www.listrak.com/ , http://www.returnpath.com/ , http://www.vtrenz.com/ , http://www.bronto.com/ , http://www.lyrishq.com/ , http://www.epsilon.com/ , http://www.yesmail.com/ , Experian – Cheetah Mail, Acxiom, Harte-Hanks and Datran

Porn Sites, Torrents, Software Downloads:

Yes, sex, videos, hot are amongst the world’s most searched terms, if you were searching for “hot trends in videos”, with high probability it land you on to a porn site intentionally or unintentionally. And a lot of them do catch your attention. It’s a quick source of gratification and you would see these websites as target for heavy advertising from many B2C websites. Even though you may not buy in to the philosophy of your company’s remote association with these sites, but practically, these websites generate traffic to your websites.

People of all ages and genders and all geographies visit these websites, and they become a potential target to promote that viral video of your which is part of your marketing campaign.

Similar to these are the Torrents and Software Download websites: In recent campaigns done by http://www.ibibo.com/ they leveraged the torrents and software download websites very effectively. They actually created and posted torrents worldwide of most searched items like e-books, softwares, movies, videos, cracks and keygens etc and when someone will actually download and run those files, they were asked to enter their email address and were automatically directed towards the website.

Viral Videos and Interactive Marketing

These days many organizations are leveraging the Viral Videos to promote their products and services worldwide. The success of the Viral Video campaigns has actually given rise to companies like http://www.webchutney.com/ , http://www.interactiveavenues.com/ , http://www.goviral.com/ , http://www.quasar.co.in/ and more...

* this post is not yet completed. I will be adding more content soon on Behavioural Marketing, Triggered Ads, Landing pages and microsites and related content.

Ode to Prof Ranjan Das - IIM C | The Strategy Academy

Ode to Prof Ranjan Das The Strategy Academy

I just finished my last blog entry and saw this Google Adsense ad of The Strategy Academy on my blog. And the first thing I remembered was Prof. Ranjan Das.

Anybody who would have studied at IIM Calcutta couldn’t have missed one personality on campus: Prof. Ranjan Das.

The One man who is passionate about education and strategy, and who with his charismatic leadership has helped so many leaders worldwide to excel in there careers. He has finally fulfilled his dream of entrepreneurship and started his own college, The Strategy Academy at this age.

I remember the time when he last spoke to me addressing the class and mentioning about his new venture of the Strategy Academy where he wanted to show the world a new path of why Strategy is important and how it is relevant in today’s business. He categorically said, you need to identify and challenge the status quo and finally move ahead to the desired state.

This is a perfect example of how leaders stand by there words and how Prof. Das has converted his vision into reality.

Hats off to you sir!

Buyer Types - Intuitive, Thinkers, Feelers, Sensors

If psychologists were to define the purchasing behavior and the “kind” of people who buy, it would be something like this:

Intuitive: This group uses intuition to concentrate on possibilities, avoiding details in favor of a “Big Picture” view, they are susceptible to a “next generation” strategy of differentiation. For eg, when Advil positioned ibuprofen tablets as “advanced medicine for pain, they perfectly differentiated themselves as the “Big Picture” crowd.

Thinkers: This group is analytics, precise and logical. They possess a lot of information, often ignoring the emotional or feeling aspect of situation and frequently act in response to the facts about the product. BMW’s differentiating strategy of “ultimate driving machine” and discussion of ergonomic design and maneuverability plays well with “thinkers”.

Feelers: This group dispenses with intellectual analysis in favor of following there own preferences, an ideal group for third party endorsements for experts who look and sound real. Miracle-grows “choice of experts” campaign (nice people surrounded by flowers) is the perfect “feeler” strategy.

Sensors: This group sees things as they are and has a great respect for facts, an enormous capacity for detail and a knack for putting things into context. Hertz’s differentiating strategy for leadership (“there’s Hertz and there’s not exactly”) is a great program for sensors, who accept it as common sense that the company is the best.

Top 5 Viral-Video Ads of 2007

Top 5 Viral-Video Ads of 2007 - A true Viral Marketing strategy well executed
Cadbury’s gorilla drummer ad, with more than 5 million views for the original video on YouTube, was the top viral-video ad, followed by Smirnoff’s Green Tea Partay, with 3.4m views, according to agency GoViral, reports the Financial Times.
The top 5 viral-video ads:
Cadbury - Gorilla Drummer, launched online in August; agency: Fallon.
Smirnoff - Green Tea Partay, launched online in August; agency: JWT, New York.
Ray-Ban - Catch Sunglasses, launched online in May; agency, Cutwater.
Blendtec - Will it Blend? launched online in July.
Lynx/Axe – Bom chicka wah wah, launched online in May; agency BBH, Copenhagen.

Marketing 2.0 - eMarketing, Digital marketing, Interactive Marketing, Online marketing, Internet Marketing, Web marketing...

While I have been writing about Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, Professional and social networking, here is the new paradigm or future of marketing or the Marketing 2.0. I was browsing through LinkedIn Answers and saw this question by a gentleman who wanted to know which term you would prefer out of E-Marketing, Web Marketing, Digital Marketing, Online Marketing, Internet Marketing or Interactive Marketing. Well I succinctly answered Marketing 2.0, as that is something which has changed the new rules of marketing and probably would make Kotler re-write his book.

In this entry I am touching upon various elements of Marketing 2.0 and how it can benefit your organization. When I say your organization in this post, I mean both B2B as well as B2C businesses.

These would be some of the basic elements of Marketing 2.0:

Online communities, Blogs, User-generated content, Email Marketing, Viral Videos, Online PR, Flash Ads, Torrents, Porn Sites, Software Downloads, Banners, Link Exchanges, Micro Sites, Landing page optimizations, triggered ads, behavioral ads, web analytics, SEO SMO and SEM.

Online communities, Blogs, Social / Professional Networking and User Generated Content: -

Earlier I wrote about push marketing being dead and how 4Rs of marketing namely Reveal, Reward, Respect and Retain has changed the approach of marketing to customer centric marketing.

This can be simple achieved today through online communities or Blogs where users generate content and the content becomes the king. So instead of pushing the message out, you are able to pull the customers towards you and with Content being the king, people get motivated to come back. There are numerous examples of this technique: like LinkedIn, Xing, and many more.

How they sell?

Online communities and blogs market and sell the products through subtle hints which might be relevant to the audience. Considering the context and relevancy approach is more suited to the audience, they tend to look at what is on offer and if that is something which is of importance to them at that time, they make a buying decision.

Email marketing: Many online community and blog owners use an additional tactic of Email marketing. Additionally many product and services companies also leverage email marketing media. It has shown highest ROIs for a long time now and the effectiveness has been good. However, now the point to be noted is that instead of pushing the message, people have now moved to opt-in based database communication.

There are many ways how people are generating lists, through Whitepapers / Research Reports / Surveys / Email list building newsletters and Micro sites and landing pages etc.

Many solution providers provide email marketing system which are on demand and web based like: http://www.responsys.com/ , http://www.e-dialog.com/ , http://www.constantcontact.com/ , http://www.verticalresponse.com/ , http://www.exacttarget.com/ , http://www.listrak.com/ , http://www.returnpath.com/ , http://www.vtrenz.com/ , http://www.bronto.com/ , http://www.lyrishq.com/ , http://www.epsilon.com/ , http://www.yesmail.com/ , Experian – Cheetah Mail, Acxiom, Harte-Hanks and Datran

Porn Sites, Torrents, Software Downloads:

Yes, sex, videos, hot are amongst the world’s most searched terms, if you were searching for “hot trends in videos”, with high probability it land you on to a porn site intentionally or unintentionally. And a lot of them do catch your attention. It’s a quick source of gratification and you would see these websites as target for heavy advertising from many B2C websites. Even though you may not buy in to the philosophy of your company’s remote association with these sites, but practically, these websites generate traffic to your websites.

People of all ages and genders and all geographies visit these websites, and they become a potential target to promote that viral video of your which is part of your marketing campaign.

Similar to these are the Torrents and Software Download websites: In recent campaigns done by http://www.ibibo.com/ they leveraged the torrents and software download websites very effectively. They actually created and posted torrents worldwide of most searched items like e-books, softwares, movies, videos, cracks and keygens etc and when someone will actually download and run those files, they were asked to enter their email address and were automatically directed towards the website.

Viral Videos and Interactive Marketing

These days many organizations are leveraging the Viral Videos to promote their products and services worldwide. The success of the Viral Video campaigns has actually given rise to companies like http://www.webchutney.com/ , http://www.interactiveavenues.com/ , http://www.goviral.com/ , http://www.quasar.co.in/ and more...

* this post is not yet completed. I will be adding more content soon on Behavioural Marketing, Triggered Ads, Landing pages and microsites and related content.

Mass Customization – How Software as a Service (SaaS) enables customer centric behavior

Mass Customization – How Software as a Service (SaaS) enables customer centric behavior
One Sunday afternoon while I was reading a book on manufacturing, I read this interesting term called Mass Customization and I was wondering what exactly it meant. Though I couldn’t understand it fully at that time in terms of how practically feasible it is going to be, when I later started learning more about marketing, I realized the power of mass customization.

Facebook: A perfect example of mass customization. Here I choose what I want and customize my software (applications / front-page) according to my needs.
Salesforce.com: Another brilliant example of web based database crunching and CRM system.
Google Docs: Another example of a web based product delivery as a service.

So why Mass Customization is important?
Well the people in sales would agree with me on the point that, whenever you visit a prospect and present your product / service to them, one question which you always want to avoid but seems unavoidable: Can we customize this?
“Now, after spending so much money on research and development my company came-up with a product and still this customer wants to customize this”, would be an obvious thought in anyone’s mind. However, you do know that the customer is asking for customized feature/s as their organizational needs are different. This is mostly true for every organization.

So what to do?
Well you can do 2 things: Keep making that installable software which sits and runs on someone’s systems, fixing bugs in it and charge customers for every new feature or customization they want.
Or
Choose a model which is delivered through web or is On-Demand. Provide software as a service.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Though in certain cases it might not be possible to do mass customization, however, in the cases where you can deliver Software as a Service with customization options, this is what you can expect:
The Good: Long term loyalty, more flexibility and easy scalability, continuous management revenue, better service, better products, low cost products, open platforms, mass customizable by worldwide contributors, continuous partnership revenues.
The Bad: High initial investment like high porting costs, integration cost etc, initial implementation barriers, however, in long term the product delivery costs come down considerably and you outperform in the fierce competition of today’s world
The Ugly: I am yet to think what worst can happen, may be customers become more and more demanding and may just ask for something over the board…

Things to look for in the coming time: Mashups and Customizable Business Applications, like longjump

Why Suddenly this?
Well think of this: Your organization spends thousands and millions of dollars in managing the IT infrastructure, quality and security. And then repeat costs of up gradation, licensing and more…
So if you get a safe, secure, on-demand system which can save your time, effort and money, obviously you would want to do that. And in this web 2.0 world this exactly has been done and is now possible for you.
As the desktops are being converted to virtual desktops or web tops this was the most obvious change for you.
What’s next?
As always, the product lifecycle will take its own time, even after certain known failures this time in the software scenario and web 2.0 world this should work!

Maharashtra Violence - Rape of Democracy

When people in parts of India struggle to earn their meal, once a day, they struggle to get a clean glass of water and a shelter to sleep, there are some people, Raj Sena, who believe in promoting communal hatred and instigating violence and create unrest in country. The recent attacks against Biharis is a shameful act, these people are working hard away from their native homes just to live a simple life and make a living...but it seems its not getting down someone's throat.

The recent Maharashtra communal violence is another shameful act against democracy and shows how weak are the fundamentals in Indian politics. For ages we have faced the brunt of dirty politicians and today again we are seeing the open rape of democracy. When people were dying in parts of Maharashtra, was the government trying to contemplate whether they should take an action against the person who instigated this communal hatred?

It took them almost 1 week to arrive at a conclusion that the person behind this should be put behind bars and that too within hours of arrest; the person was released on bail. It’s not that this doesn’t happen in other parts of the world, but its unfortunate and I feel ashamed of the fact that I am part of this system. These individuals who have been trying to overshadow constitution and law should be brought to justice. What is the government waiting for, some more deaths?

1st Linkedin F2F(face to Face) Kicks off

LinkedIn is a business-oriented networking site founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, mainly used for professional networking. As of December 2007, its site traffic was 3.2 million visitors per month, growing at an annual growth rate of about 485%. As of January 2008, it had more than 17 million registered users, spanning 150 industries.

LinkedIn's CEO is Dan Nye. As of February, 2008 founder and former CEO Reid Hoffman, previously an executive vice president of PayPal, remains President of Product and Chairman of the Board. LinkedIn is located in Mountain View, California, and funded by Greylock, Sequoia Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, and the European Founders Fund. LinkedIn reached profitability in March 2006.

LinkedIn members in India, the biggest market for LinkedIn in the APAC region, are all set to meet face to face in cities across the country.

Hundreds of users have already expressed interest in putting faces to names, and the first such event is expected to take place in New Delhi in February 2008.

Those interested in being informed may join the Yahoo group set up for the purpose as follows:
Group home page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linkedinf2f To join group, send a blank mail to linkedinf2f-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Send mails to group at: linkedinf2f@yahoogroups.com

The 1st linkedin F2F in New Delhi will be followed by more similar F2F meetings in cities like Bangalore, Mumbai and more...

People who are interested in expanding their networks, meeting more professionals from their industry with similar interests, discussing about issues and solutions, new ideas, etc can join in.

For bangalore F2F you can contact me here.

HR 2.0 Strategies - Niche Professional Networking - The Young Brigade of Knowledge Professionals

HR 2.0 Strategies - Niche Professional Networking - The Young Brigade of Knowledge Professionals

In my previous post on Enterprise 2.0, where I explained how Web 2.0 can be leveraged for Business Transformation in today’s world and wrote about HR 2.0 as the new emerging trend in organizations, here is another HR 2.0 Strategy for your organization.

Niche Professional Networking (NPN). This trend is catching-up and quickly this is taking over the traditional methods of knowledge enhancement, community building, internal communication and recruitment in organizations. Attached to this is another trend of Young Brigade of Knowledge workers – In there early 20s, they have emerged as the dynamic lot who understand business and action around it at a very young age.

Ok, So What is NPN?

It’s like a playground where the kids are allowed to do what they like doing best i.e. play. So you let the people enjoy by allowing them to play in their home ground, in other words, it’s a knowledge workers’ forte and you help the knowledge worker by providing a platform to exchange ideas, share knowledge and let them give comments on the topics of their interest.

Essentially, you allowed the individual to live their lifestyle in the way they want it. And the innate human need of communication gets satisfied. Just by watching the individual living his lifestyle in front of you while you invisibly watch them doing various activities, you can pin point the correct candidate for your needs.

What can NPN offer?

In NPN, the individuals connect with people of their choice, caliber, interest types and more…They not only share their knowledge, obviously they learn a lot, while commenting on a certain issue, their thought process gets more organized, their personal network expands and what more, they are all doing it voluntarily.

Just by sitting in front of their PCs they are able to gauge the worldwide best practices and keep themselves abreast with the latest trends in their field of work.

How is it different from Intranets?

A lot of organizations are doing it through Intranet networks like Wipro, IBM, Infosys, SAP etc. However, the issue is that people use these intranet for a unwind experience and the content takes a hit.

People from various departments with varied interest log on to Intranet and they talk about things as varied as movies, books and favorite actors. So this goes on to killing their productive time.
With knowledge networks or NPNs this time killing techniques are avoided and instead people learn more about their profession, knowledge expansion and networking is what they are able to get as compared to the Intranet.

NPN advantage – This niche professional networking will allow individuals around the world to network, learn, share, collaborate and above all grow as a individual and as a professional!

How can Social Networking be mixed with Professional Networking?

One of my favourite professional networking sites is www.linkedin.com .

I like the new features that LinkedIn keeps providing and the way they have been able to differentiate themselves from the rest. Here is one suggestion from my side on how Social Networking be mixed with Professional Networking in this Web 2.0 world?
Earlier I wrote about Enterprise 2.0 and this post can be one marketing strategy which can help these websites or Enterprise 2.0s.

I do not have the percentages with me, however, a good number of people write blogs and who would be part of LinkedIn professional network. Now if LinkedIn provides a functionality of pulling the individual's blogs into LinkedIn and there is one option given to people (some kind of a widget or linklist) where we can follow blogs of individuals we have subscribed to and whenever anyone writes a new entry, the status shows, new content.

What's in for Linked In?


1) With user generated content, LinkedIn's search volume will increase.
2) More search More Traffic More Ads More Revenue
3) Provides more loyalty and more individuals to be pulled in (more accounts)
4) More time spent by individuals on LinkedIn.
5) Enhances social interaction and still keeps the professional touch.

Disclaimer can be given that any offensive content on blogs or any content violating LinkedIN policies will be terminated.

What's in for users?
1) I get to promote my blog and ride on LinkedIn's popularity.
2) I get a feeling of statisfaction that my opinion is being Read / Heard to my worldwide network.
3) Gives me more resaons to go back to the website and spend more time in reading what others are writing. etc.

Eg: http://www.marcomprofessional.com/ has done a brilliant job in doing this and it has definitely boosted their website traffic, it can be a similar approach. Even Wordpress.com allows you to pull in your blog from other blogs.


Even other professional networking websites like http://www.xing.com/ , http://www.irishprofessionalnetwork.org/ , or may be new HR 2.0 based websites like http://www.toostep.com/ , http://www.notchup.com/ or similar kinds can do that.

It's an instant way of boosting your website and positioning as the perfect platform for professionals and executives to network and share knowledge worldwide.

Any thoughts on this?

Sachin Uppal's New Blog at Wordpress.com on Technology | Marketing | Communication

I started a new Blog at wordpress.com it’s a mirror copy of my present blog. You can visit the new blog here.

About me:
Sachin Uppal, can be called an apt sailor between technology and marketing mindset, I am helping organizations to grow revenues through marketing channels. Extremely passionate about Technology, Marketing and Communication. Want to be known as a Techno-Marketing Guru before departing from this world!

I already have a blog called Sachin Uppal with blogger.com. I write about Marketing, Communication, HR and small / big things in life. I have a keen interest in New Technology, IT, Telecom, Wireless, Healthcare, Travel and Tourism, Finance and Consulting (quite a lot, I know, but I like reading about these and enjoy the same). I changed the theme of my present blog: Marketing Communication Technology.

Now the question: Why Am I writing another blog?
Answer: Well, I was browsing through LinkedIn and saw a question asked by some gentleman, which blogging platform is good and why? And looking at the answers a majority pointed at Wordpress, because of its flexibility, open source etc. so I thought why not try this one out may be I might learn something new and as I said, I am a technology enthusiast, what more reason can I find to try out new piece of technology!

Drop in your comments and critcism here.

IT product and services marketing 2.0 - Transforming Business with Web 2.0

In continuation to my Entrprise 2.0 entry earlier, here is the IT product and services marketing 2.0.

So what's happening?

“Our CRM software is the best. Our CRM software is the Cheapest. Our CRM software is easiest to integrate and gives you peace of mind”.

“We are leaders in managed IT services with over 120 clients. We cater to end-to-end demands of our clients. We have thousands of man-hours of experience”.

“Our product can do X and Y and Z and even a.1.1, b.2.alpha and so on. Our product was rated best by gamma magazine in zeta year as the best”.

If your company is also doing something similar and telling the customers “One New Terminology Every year" because the head of so and so department in your company had to meet his or her KRAs and developed a new term to be promoted for the next year then trust me your company is headed “no where”. And I am not kidding you here, it’s a simple test: just search for some articles online for the past 4 years and you would see the industry big weights all going for the same “New Word”, whether its services companies like HCL, Wipro, Infosys, TCS, Satyam, Accenture or product companies like IBM, HP, Cisco, Microsoft.

So, every year you see a new term like: Business Excellence, Execution Excellence, Business Transformation, Customer Orientation, Agile Business, Customer Centric, Scalable and Uptime so on and so forth. Trust me your organization is suffering from the favorite term taught in B-Schools: “Cognitive Inertia”. Anyways am not going to get into the details of the same, this is better left untold. (Consultants might give a smirk at it :) )

So obviously, you see, your company was growing at X%age, given the economic conditions and the certain investments in projected and confirmed in certain areas, you expanded your business and investment portfolios, what’s the big deal? You would have anyways reached that %age increase in business. DO NOT, for reality’s sake, attribute it to the management decision making or vision or marketing or whatever. If there was a term called “luck” put into the dictionary, someone rightly thought about the word or may be he also got lucky!

Anyways, coming back to the topic, in Today’s world the customer is intelligent enough to judge you and your organization in minutes. So do not try to Fake. Sooner or later it’s going to hit back on you. Do not try to be something or someone that your company is not.

So how to you market your IT product or Service in today’s Web 2.0 world? IT Service or product marketing Strategies:-

-Focus on existing customer’s satisfaction
-Re-visit your customer’s list and see your CSAT ratings (are you serious, do they mean anything?)
-Actually if you are, really serious about more business, refocus on existing customers, and provide them with that extra hand that you have been shirking away because you want that hand for new business.
-Most businesses grow based on the previous successes.
-Did you know WOMM (word of mouth marketing) is much stronger than a $10000 TV commercial?

-Let someone speak for you.
-Get satisfied customers to talk instead of parroting that you are best.
-If you are, someone will say that and if no one is ready to say that, then re-consider your stance.
-Let someone appreciate your work.
-Do not show the best quality , best practices and other related “Brags”
-If your work is good someone will tell you that.

-Encourage your customers to interact amongst themselves.
-Do not shy away in providing common interaction platforms to your customers.
-Let them communicate amongst themselves.
-You might see some feedback construing out of it.
-Or you might just see the best practices getting shared.

-Open your ears, nose, throats all possible holes to get feedback! They are doing a favor to you!
-Well you are helping yourself if you let the customers speak.
-Keep all possible channels of communication open for customers.
-DO NOT EVER IGNORE customer’s feedback.
-It’s one favor which will not get repeated if ignored.
-Do not miss a chance to appreciate the feedback and re-assure the customers.
-Thank the customer, appreciate and do whatever to make your customers happy about the feedback that they gave.
-Re-assure that you will take an action.
-Inform about the same.
-Respond with possible solutions.

If I was a sales guy reading this, I might just laugh on this entry. However, I myself being from sales background and having worked in multiple geographies in the world, the WOMM tactics work everywhere. Companies like Wipro, IBM, Accenture and Infosys have lost clients just because someone wanted to focus on the quarterly targets.

Customer centric approach just works brilliantly. In this Web 2.0 world, here are some Services and Products marketing strategies or IT 2.0 for Enterprise 2.0: -

Web, Email, Databse, Virtual Commnities
-Just provide a simple online interaction community to your existing customers. Let them self populate the content with best practices.
-See if you can include a blog in the online community, some regularly updated whitepapers, case studies, research reports, surveys etc. Or may be some expert articles or interviews etc.
-Run small contests, give out some creative branded merchandise, any football or cricket match LIVE tickets would be exciting!
-Learn about the customer’s online behavior by web analytics. See what the interest areas are and generate relevant content.
-Optimize your websites (it’s the first and most important impression). SEO and SEM for your website should work.
-Participate in online discussions. Stop being a mute spectator…Speak Up!
-Run a newsletter with content rich of information for the target audience based on their online behavior. Create optimized landing pages to compliment the content.
-Email marketing campaigns provide he highest ROI. Look forward to creating such mediums.
-Above all these things need databases and CRM systems to integrate and provide actual ROI. -So stop being that cheap old family business miser. Hire the right people and get your IT 2.0 marketing department up and running.

Online and Offline PR
Gone are the days when you could run a press release once in a quarter and be happy about your media coverage. Today it’s about Online PR presence.
How many times do you go looking for that 1 year old newspaper where you might have read about that company and blah…well in most probable circumstances, might just google that so an so company. Alas, your PR manager has been in company for 8 years and she didn’t study Online PR so unfortunately you do not have any online media presence. Well this is a WAKE up call.

Look into your annual marketing plan for god’s sake and see what your team is upto? Take some interest and start becoming active online and promote this in your entire company (or at least your department).

Strategic PR and Events is something you should look at very keenly. Do not blindly keep participating in random tradeshows and seminars. Look at the details on who, what and why and how much and what better can be done.

Ad-Agencies-Give a re-look
Your Ad-Agency will definitely promote Direct Mailers with the utmost creativity. Shut them up and think how many times in a day do you open your email and how many times do you read creative letters that come to you? You are not running your business to pay the creative guy’s salary working in that jazzy AD-agency, you are paying the agency to provide you with the cheapest and best channel to reach the largest audience with highest ROI.

It’s not rocket science, it’s just that the world has changed and the customers are empowered today with multiple sources of knowledge where you can’t fool them. So it’s better to tell the truth and let the customers be the final decision makers. Enable them with the right to information through various channels and hear from them. This conversational communication can do wonders for your business transformation in the web 2.0 world and this is what can be called as the IT Services and Products marketing 2.0.

Microsoft bids for Yahoo at $44.6 Billion

Techworld has reported that Microsoft has offered to buy the search engine company Yahoo for $44.6 billion (£22.4 bn) in cash and shares.

Here is the excerpt:

The offer is 62 percent above Yahoo's closing share price on Thursday.

"We have great respect for Yahoo!, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market," said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft.

"Our lives, our businesses, and even our society have been progressively transformed by the web, and Yahoo! has played a pioneering role by building compelling, high-scale services and infrastructure," said Ray Ozzie, chief software architect at Microsoft.

The bid comes hours after Yahoo announced that Terry Semel was stepping down as non-executive chairman, six months after handing over his CEO title to Jerry Yang. Semel is leaving the board effective immediately, Yahoo announced yesterday. He will be replaced as non-executive chairman by another board member, Roy Bostock, the company said.

Semel was chairman and CEO of Yahoo for six years until he was replaced in a management shuffle last June. Yang, one of Yahoo's co-founders, was made CEO, and Semel was demoted to non-executive chairman.

As CEO, Semel helped to build Yahoo's audience from 170 million to more than 500 million users. But he was also blamed for missteps that allowed Google to build a commanding lead in online search and advertising, prompting last year's reorganisation.

"With the Company moving forward under new leadership, I believe this is an appropriate time for me to step down from the board," Semel said in the statement.
He approached the board several months ago about leaving once a replacement could be found, Yahoo said.

Bostock has a long history in the advertising industry, "an area that is more important than ever to Yahoo's business and our long term success," the company said.

Travel and Tourism 2.0 - Leveraging Web 2.0 for your Business Transformation

Travel and Tourism 2.0

This is in continuation to my previous post on Enterprise 2.o.

MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions) have always been a large and rapidly growing industry. So what is happening on this front?

So what happened?

Well a large portion of work being done by local travel agents and DMCs has been taken over by online portals like www.makemytrip.com . www.yatra.com, www.cleartrip.com and the alike. Initially they started off with just travel bookings; however, soon they realized the importance of Hotel bookings etc. and launched more services through their online portals.

Why this happened?

Well ever increasing pressures on reducing the costs and enhancing customer service put pressures on agencies and consultants to find more efficient ways to reach customers and come up with innovative methods for end to end services and better customer satisfaction. As well as ROI calculations on meetings, conferences and exhibitions are showing a clear picture that they are a costlier way of reaching audience. Simultaneously, Incentives industry is seeing more boom because of increasing pressures of employee attrition. HR managers are coming up with more innovative Incentive programs for travel bonuses etc.

What can be done for your organization?

Many SME and large organizations have realized the ROI from exhibitions is way too less as compared to other channels. Organizations are now focusing on companies which provide very focused meetings and congresses like www.naseba.com where the environment is B2B and the focus is business than branding. The advantage for people is interaction on a one-to-one basis which drives the event and delivers much better results than any other event.

So let’s say today if www.cleartrip.com wants to differentiate itself from www.makemytrip.com they can probably look at creating blogs integrated with websites for recommendations on which places to travel, how their website was cheaper in providing travel tickets plus what additional services they were able to get from cleartrip.com. What are the featured destinations and testimonials from people who enjoyed visiting such places using the services from this specific website? Enable interaction through recommendations, testimonials, videos, widgets etc. Direct tie-ups with corporates for special Incentive packages, driven by recommendations from previous users and more. Special prices for let say all employees from Wipro or Infosys if they book from www.yaatra.com .

Enterprise 2.0 – Leveraging Web 2.0 for your Business Transformation

Enterprise 2.0 – Leveraging Web 2.0 for your Business Transformation

As per my previous post on Web 2.0 I tried explaining the various components of Web 2.0. This article talks about how Web 2.0 can be leveraged in the real-time scenarios for transformation of businesses from the regular way to a completely new way.

I have taken some examples of various industries and the marketing strategies which can be implemented to transform the regular way of doing business using Web 2.0 techniques.

Topics that I would be covering:

HR 2.0 – New recruitment methods, HR consultancies and agencies, Job Portals, Online Hiring, Peer hiring, Referral hiring, Professional networking
Travel and Tourism 2.0 – Online travel portals, online tourism portals, importance of blogs and reference communities, New MICE strategies.
IT Services and Products 2.0 – New marketing strategies for IT services using Web 2.0.
Finance 2.0 – Financial consultancies, Credit rating agencies, Credit Card companies, BFSI and Financial Services marketing

Definition Web 2.0:
“Web 2.0 is the advancement in Internet technology. It's like a group of financially viable, socially active, and technologically collaborative changes in behavior, attitudes, tools and applications that are allowing the Web to become the next platform for communication, collaboration, community, and cumulative learning. And off-course drive sales and generating revenues”

HR 2.0

Many online Job portals came into existence few years back. This was more or less a copy of what people did in US and the ideas were replicated well in India and we saw the emergence of online job portals like www.naukri.com , www.monster.com , www.timesjobs.com and many more…

Things are going very fine for these job portals but suddenly the disruptive technology of Web 2.0 is going to change the idea of focused Job portals soon.

So what has happened?
Emergence of Professional Networking websites like: www.linkedin.com, www.xing.com, www.spoke.com, www.ryze.com and many more similar ones.

Suddenly, people started finding the correct people on these websites than on job portals. If you survey the leading HR consultancies today you would realize that they are using multiple approaches in finding the right candidates. Off-course the Top choice will be still Job portals as the database sizes are humongous. However, are consultancies able to find the correct candidates from the job portals? May be you might but not always. With ever increasing demands from the clients to find a specific candidate with a very niche skill set etc it gets very difficult for them so what do they do?
More and more consultancies and specially the start-ups are moving on the newer techniques like searching in professional networking websites. Not only this, with the emergence of niche professional communities like www.toostep.com , www.tribe.com, www.notchup.com , www.theladders.com , www.babajaobs.com, www.whereismyboss.com and many more like this. They are referring to niche groups of premium colleges, yahoo groups and google groups for the same.

In short if you need to hire the right person and meet the demand of your internal audience you need to understand the profile and see what that person likes and where on earth would you find that person hanging out? {if not earth at least on net} Gel in with his / her behavior and offer that person the correct fit that he would want to have.

Why did this happen?

This specific behavior has many reasons, primarily:

-Proliferation of internet.
-People getting socially active.
-Innate need for communication with peers.
-Insatiable desire to learn more.
-Personal feelings to share knowledge.

In today’s world the customer is much more informed than he/ she was 20 years back when the kinship used to provide information on what to do with one’s career. In today’s world people are talking there own decisions based on the knowledge available on line. Today if I want to become a Pilot I can login to some online community and get in touch with some pilot and try to understand what does his job needs him to do on a day to day basis and this will help me take a decision.

Or can we call it “Socially Active” and “Collaborative” attitude using the Web 2.0 tools for the new age “HR 2.0”?

How can your business benefit?

So what should www.naukri.com be looking at in the coming times? They have already attempted a Blog. They run news-letters to distribute the relevant content to the audience, so what next? Well, just imagine, today anyone who is looking for a job, logs on to www.naukri.com and sees a personalized page where he can customize his job needs, manage his resume etc. What if, the candidate sees a small section where he sees some recommended jobs and some other people who are already working in that company can be available to share some more details? More like a social network inside a job portal?

Though people can argue that it might loose anonymity and privacy can be issue, however, constructing something which is just correct for a job portal can immediately boost the relevance of the content on naukri.com and people would love to come back. Not just a social network, if the people of the same caliber want to share the best practices etc? So now it’s not just about finding a job, it’s about learning and networking. “Enhancing Interaction” is the key and giving people a platform for being more “Socially Active” and collaborative. Does it make more sense?



Will be talking about Travel and Tourism 2.0, IT Services and Product marketing 2.0, Finance Marketing 2.0

Will Google Go Mobile? What if, it does…

Will Google Go Mobile? What if, it does…then in future you can talk to anyone on Gtalk running on a Google Phone running on a Google Android having a Google Prepaid or Postpaid connection and browsing Google.com to search for any product on Google’s retail website and buy it through Google Checkout.

Amidst the speculations from the media on whether Google will go the Mobile route or not, this is what you can expect if Google Actually goes mobile.

If google gets the Bandwidth, they will pose a big threat to the Telecom Companies, because Google already have the software ready for the hardware and there have been successful trials and prototyping done.

So if tomorrow Google gets the spectrum it won’t be surprising that they run a parallel program to the open handset alliance and come up with their own revolutionary device the much rumored Google Phone.

So what does it mean for the other Telecom providers? More competition, shifting customer loyalties above all focus on better services and best prices for customers.

If it does happen, the question would be: “Can Google fight the giants in terms of services?” and will a product company completely translate itself into a services company?

The TITANs come together (A little late) – AMEX, Kingfisher, Airtel

The TITANs come together (A little late) – AMEX, Kingfisher, Airtel

So what’s this thing about owning an American Express card? Whenever you flash your AMEX card, there are few heads which surely turn. I was one of the people who used to frantically gaze at the AMEX cards being swiped and I wonder why only the crème-de-la-crème have these cards, just to later realize that AMEX charges you annual fee (INR 5K) for owning a AMEX card when everyone else gives it to you free.

Why am I writing about Credit cards anyway when we get so many annoying calls for the same during the week? So the reason is because I recently got an AMEX card. Now why would I want to do that? Well, its not very difficult to explain. AMEX has maintained its class by not going the “Free, Free” way. They have a class and they stick to it. You are a privileged person if you possess an AMEX card. (or this is what they make you believe). And it ties with your lifestyle. Oh by the way we Indians want things free, so we would not take a credit card until you give us something. So Kingfisher and Airtel joined the bandwagon. On getting this AMEX-Kingfisher First Card you get 1 Kingfisher return ticket in any Indian sector free (off course you have to pay the taxes to govt), and you get the convenience of paying your Airtel bills automatically from this special card. Also, you get a free upgrade voucher for Kingfisher First flight. (Though this is not the first tie-up Kingfisher has tied up with other credit cards too {I think ICICI} for similar offerings.)

So, let me get the Maths correctly: If I buy a kingfisher return ticket, I generally pay INR 8K. 4K Tax + 4K fare. Now AMEX is saying we waive the fare for you; you only pay the Tax, and we give you upgrade vouchers to travel in Kingfisher First. Effectively if you like to travel by Kingfisher and you get this ticket without fare with an upgrade too, you are able to reimburse your 5K annual charge. Well seems like this deal was pushed more from Mallya's team than AMEX. But sounds a win-win situation both for AMEX and Kingfisher. (What’s Bharti Airtel riding on? – I guess their bill payment will get regularized, though, the target audience would anyway be paying on time. And the perfect target audience for their MobileVAS services promotion)

I would want to personally congratulate the AMEX marketing team (though they are late in doing this) for the well thought out and brilliantly executed marketing strategy. This marketing strategy can only be a brainchild of a veteran. Though I would want to find out who devised it, but having said that, let me explain what could have gone behind it.

There was a time when AMEX was under pressure to expand the credit cards subscriber base and simultaneously there was this rat race among all other banks to offer free credit cards. There would have been a meeting where people who thought for years in advance and suggested, that we do not target masses. Our target audience is set of people who are HNIs (high net-worth Individuals). So giving Free…blah blah wouldn’t affect them. What would perhaps affect them would be the premier club that they join and the advantages that they can take.

What they wanted a sales channel which was low cost, a feel of premium brands being associated with, and the feeling amongst customers, that they are joining a premium club with facilities which only a privileged lot gets. And they wanted to still charge people for the credit card.

Strategy Components:

A Paid Credit Card – Amongst dozens of Free credit cards, AMEX positioned itself as the first paid credit card that too in a country like India where people just run to grab anything free. It was able to maintain its premium position and offered its strategic alliances the value for their investments with AMEX.

Sales Channel and Funnel –
->They chose Email Marketing as the channel. Low cost, quick and direct response and effective tracking.
->The email campaigns across India generated leads which were passed on to a 25 odd team in Gurgaon call centre to qualify at level 1 of interest and net worth.
->The qualified leads were passed on to the sales reps / relationship executives on field for final closure.

Brand Association -
->They chose Kingfisher as a brand to get associated with, again a premium brand with high equity.
->And finally they tied up with Airtel (oh by the way, Airtel offered Mobile VAS card free of charge, perfectly thought out target audience).

Service –
->The brand distinction will continue with their high class service.
->They have tie ups with most of the major banks to make online payments for their credit card bills.

Sell More –
->Obviously you won’t stop here; if you take a life time membership for 25K you then get a whole lot of benefits. So let’s say this year you enjoyed the services, you are bound to see more customers lining up though references as well as more renewals. But this is yet to be seen based on how the service promised actually turns out to be in practice.

Probably the next step would be promoting the offerings more over internet, mobile and some more email marketing.

Popularity – How much is enough?

Popularity – How much is enough?

Whenever I think of how technology has impacted life of people I just feel amazed and the way things have changed so much in the past few years. In today’s world we can’t imagine a research done without help of google. We search almost everything sometimes even our own names on google. And wow, google shows you instance of your name or your footprints on web as search results to you. Sometime people debate on privacy and how people are exposed to the world now. I consider it as a free popularity that you get and you can market yourself as a Brand. But How Much Popularity is Enough?

Just look at the hype everyone creates around new launches like Apple did for iPod, like Hillary Clinton or Obama are doing for elections. How Videos these days talk about the real ground situation as well as present to you a very interactive way of communicating.

How blogging and personal blogs have changed the procedure for buying for a lot of people. We look out for users and opinions from other users and mold our decisions based on recommendations. The negative side of over publicity can be something like when a mediocre singer with some good music in songs like Britney spears gets free popularity. How a website selling Steroids which might be good for health in some cases gets spammed because of some spammers who are selling some harmful drugs.

What would any baseball or cricket team player expect as his popularity? 10000 people knowing him in his state or 1 Million people knowing him in the country…but where does he stop his popularity and says yes, know I am popular?

How much is enough when you want to be popular? And how do you manage your popularity? Good, Bad and the Ugly?

Online Media is part of me now

A strange thing happened this morning. The bell rang at 7 AM and I went and opened the door to see a man standing in front, holding a pile of newspapers and saying something in Kannada. I could barely understand what he said, but I got the gist, he was trying to sell me “The Hindu” newspaper. He was telling me, to try out “The Hindu” newspaper, it’s good and today we are giving you this free of charge. I refused to do that because I told him I read Times of India and anyways I read online. Did I say online?

Wow, this is very interesting. I never thought I would give reading online as a reason to the newspaper boy. But yes, I said that automatically.

Almost 3 months back, I was conducting an interview for the position of marketing and this journalist who used to write for CEO and CIO articles for a premium media group was not enthused enough hearing about our plans. As I was telling her that we do only online marketing in our company. She couldn’t believe that and said what about offline? At that moment I made some bold statements like soon you would see the offline media taking a hit because of popularity of online media and people will start migrating to online media, even to read newspapers.

That girl went away and later called me to say that she couldn’t join us as she wants to stay in offline media only. She couldn’t see the future and couldn’t analyze how the world has rapidly moved over a short period of time.

Am I jumping the gun? Probably not, after looking at how Times group, India Today Group and others have moved to online channels by launching their online portals and how people have started reading and spending time online much more than offline. Looking at how finding a word meaning in a dictionary format has moved to searching in a PC dictionary or even better for searching anything now we just Google it, its rampant and its obvious the traditional media has taken a definitive hit.

Will the offline media die? I do not know, may be not, however, the future is online and mobile and if the companies do not see this yet, they are doomed. I would have spent this money to promote my online channel than sending a messenger boy to my door step asking me to buy the Hindu newspaper.

Online media has become part of me now and I haven't even conciously realised it till these small incident make me realise this. Why suddenly this change has come, probably bacause of Web 2.0 proliferation. This is going to be my next topic.

What's the Future Series - Web 2.0 Strategies for organizations

Even though I am late in writing this, still I wanted to write about this topic and wanted to share my point of view on how companies can leverage Web 2.0 to their advantage.

Part 1 - History and Definitions

Web 2.0 is an industry term that has received a great deal of attention. There has been a lot of debate around how to define it because it encapsulates a host of new (and some not so new) technologies.

The term was coined by O’Reilly Media to describe second-generation internet-based services. Wikipedia goes on to say that Web 2.0 is about using the web as a “platform” to provide an enhanced user experience via Rich Internet Applications (RIA), and extending the reach of your web content through syndication technologies such as Really Simple Syndication (RSS).

As appealing as these technologies may sound, simply adopting them doesn’t guarantee an improved visitor experience or more effective channels for reaching your customers.

In this entry I will try to capture the methodology on how you could use these technology advancements for revenue generation in your company. In my understanding:-

Definition Web 2.0:
“Web 2.0 is the advancement in Internet technology. It's like a group of financially viable, socially active, and technologically collaborative changes in behavior, attitudes, tools and applications that are allowing the Web to become the next platform for communication, collaboration, community, and cumulative learning. And off-course drive sales and generating revenues”

The following themes appear commonly in the various definitions of Web 2.0:

- Collaboration: the first theme is about people working together, collaborating, to create software, content, communities, art, music, literature, and a multitude of other things. Web 2.0 tools and applications support this type of interaction at their core.

- Conversation: There is a conversation happening and it’s not just happening in your corporate website forum. It is happening on blogs. It is a public conversation about politics, business, social issues, and anything else you can imagine, including your company.

- Community: We have had online communities now for at least fifteen years or more. But the tools for building online communities are now becoming more widespread and communities are forming around every imaginable (and unimaginable) subject, product, and industry. If you are looking for your “tribe”, they are probably out there somewhere.

- Connection: we are building messaging systems that now connect people to people, people to machines, and machines to machines. The names of these systems are not important but their function is.

- Content Creation: It turns out that if you give people the tools to create “stuff”, they do just that. In fact, they create so much stuff that it quite frankly upsets our assumptions about who in our society are the creators and who are the consumers.

- Cumulative Learning: think of cumulative learning as peer reviewed journals for every person on the planet with internet access. People can now build on the knowledge of others (through the miracles of search and wikis) faster than at any time in history.

- Collective Intelligence: In certain conditions, it turns out that groups of people are smarter than individuals. This is counter-intuitive and odd but apparently true.

- Change of scale: Web 2.0 companies can scale up fast. Because of the spread of broadband internet and the sheer number of people on the internet, we are seeing key measures (number of users, time to market, time to exit) that are quite extraordinary.

- Core values: Openness, transparency, and a respect for users are three core values that seem to permeate Web 2.0 definitions and discussions.

- Cheap and Fast: A key quality of Web 2.0 is that developers and entrepreneurs can build, deploy and profit from applications for less money and in less time than ever before.

Is it REA L or is it all just HYPE?

Let’s take a quick tour of the landscape to see what has been happening in the past few years and then you can decide for yourself if this set ofchanges warrants the attention that it’s getting.
We now have more than a BILLION people on the Internet, a few hundred million of whom are online at any given moment.

-->Bloggers are now doing fact-checks on the media…and winning. Some bloggers now have MORE TRAFFIC and HIGHER SEARCH ENGINE RATINGS than media companies that have been around for years.

-->People said they would never buy a car over the Internet. In 2005, eBay sold $11 billion worth of automobiles.

-->Wikipedia, a web-based encyclopedia, became the world’s largest reference work in four years, surpassing the venerable Encyclopedia Britannica.

-->A startup in Europe built a little application called Skype, which lets people call each other across the Internet for free. 27 months later, eBay snapped up this company for $4.1 billion. The application is now disrupting the 100 year old telecom industry.

-->A Vancouver-based gaming company invented a neat little photo-sharing program and sold the company to Yahoo less than two years later for approximately $35 million. They had about 10 people on that team. Flickr currently hosts over 70 million photos and has over 2.5 million users.

-->In October 2005, Microsoft issued a company-wide email telling the troops to embrace “the services wave” [Web 2.0]. Then, in May 2006, CEO Steve Ballmer stated that Microsoft is focusing over $6 billion of R&D towards ‘software as a service’ in 2006. Software as a service is one of the patterns of Web 2.0.

-->A small team of programmers started a website in 2003 that would help them build their social network. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. bought MySpace in August 2005 for $580 million, less than 2½ years after it was formed. He bought it because social websites like this are massive revenue generation engines.

-->Half a million people MAKE A LIVING on eBay.

-->Nineteen people run a small site called Craigslist which is now the seventh largest website in the world. This little operation is DECIMATING the North American classified advertising industry which can’t compete against FREE listings.

-->Content is exploding. Technorati, a service that tracks the number of blogs on the internet, listed effectively zero in March 2003 and reached 20 million blogs in October 2005. This means that the number of blogs doubled every five months for 36 months in a row.k Between October 2005 and the time this Manifesto was July 2006 when this Manifesto went to ‘print’, that number went from 20 million blogs to 49.8 million blogs.

I will be covering the details on how to leverage this for your organization in the next entry...

Now Just Swipe Your Mobile - atom "the" new way to pay

Future is mobile and Atom has just made it easier.

Mumbai, India, based technology company Atom technologies has come up with a new Mobile Payment option which is just similar to paying by your credit card, however, it doesn't involve a plastic card. So next time instead of swiping a credit card you might just hear "swipe your mobile". With atom "the" new way of payment, you are set to see the rise in M-Commerce and electronic transactions getting boosted and its bound to bring more secured, convinient transactions to its customers.

So how does this work?

There are two ways how this thing works.

Method 1 - Optical reading -You get something called Atom Card, which with the help of software will store the Credit Card information in a 2D barcode format and can be read by a simple webcam. This is a convinient method and something very similar to swiping your credit card. This would work more in cases of retail outlets, where there is an optical reader and you can show your mobile to the reader and authorize a payment. However, there is another method where you dont even need to show your mobile.

Method 2 - Wireless Transfer - In this you would need a JAVA MIDP 2.0 based mobile phone. You need a GPRS connection and a small software which will run on your mobile. So the next time you are in a shopping mall buying a favourite suit or dining in your favourite restaurant with your family you would have to just provide your mobile number and you would recieve a sales payment request on your mobile which you can authorize from any of your bank account which is confiured on your mobile and enter your PIN and authorize the payment.

How Secure is it?

Usage of PIN number makes the entire process secure, in case of loss of mobile phone, no body can use your mobile to make any purchases as its PIN protected.
Though, one question which any average user would ask is how secure is this transaction going to be. In case, someone infects the fone via some trojan/virus which captures the PIN number and sends it to someone else, you are exposed to the world. So the step of introducing mobile payments etc. should also be coupled with Mobile Phone security options. Also, I would reccommend ATOM to tie up with Mobile Antivirus providers or may be come up with some protection suite themselves to secure the mobile phones.

In 3 simple steps the process is going to be like this:

1. Merchant sends payment request
   o So lets say I am enjoying my dinner at Punjabi By Nature, restaurant, after finishing my lavish dinner, I ask for the bill and the attendant brings a paper to me and I write my mobile number on it. Then the person managing this enters his customer ID and amount and enters ATOM PIN and sends this payment request to me.
2. Customer confirms the payment
   o While I am sitting and talking to my friends and I get a message on my mobile to authorize a payment request. I choose which bank or credit / debit account I want to pay from and then I enter my PIN number and make the payment. Yes, that’s it, it’s Done.
3. Payment receipts
   o Now both the merchant and the customer get a confirmation message saying that payment is authorized and transaction is complete.

Interesting applications of this technology in various industry sectors...I will be discussing these in details in my next post.

Everyday, when I see Google Alerts on what's new in Mobile Technology, I see my belief in Mobile technology and advancement getting much stronger, day after day. And with this tiny little thing that people hold in there hands everyday and take along with them almost everywhere they go (oh I heard people take their mobiles even to rest rooms) you can pretty much think of marketing them even in those moments.

Even though the Telecom Operators like Bharti, RCom, Vodafone would be interested in providing such mobile commerce solutions, however, RBI hasn't yet approved the same. So you might see certain delay in this to become reality for you.