OP Kolkata – Saturday, 10 July 2010 : Day 7
Time: 9:30 AM
Venue: ISB&M Auditorium, Kolkata.
The guest lecturer for today’s session was Mr. Rajesh Lalwani, founder and principal of Blogworks, a consulting firm, which provides strategic social media solutions to brands and corporate. He is also the Principal Coordinator of IndiaSocial, a knowledge focused community based around social media.
He was accompanied by one of his colleagues, Miss Rajika Talwar.
Mr. Lalwani started off the session by impressed upon that, the key takeaway for the media trainees, would be more number of people starting off blogging, and the need of developing a better web presence. He added that, a blog, in essence, is considerably serving the purpose of resume for a major number of leading companies, nowadays, and the trend would long continue, and be taken up on a global scale eventually.
He, like most of the earlier speakers, insisted on having an interactive session. To get a better idea of the media trainees’ understanding of what ‘social media’ is, and what it means to them, he put forward a question on the same. And to his delight, he got the answers he was fishing for. “Social media is online content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies”, Mr. Lalwani further added. He then gave a comparative overview of the history of media, starting from earliest forms of mass broadcasting, -newspapers, to radio, television and then, finally, the internet. He talked about the massive paradigm shift brought about by the internet, especially blogs.
Mr. Lalwani said, “Earlier there was no interaction of the audience with the content. Things were said from a pedestal and spoken down. E-mail was interactive, but then, it was still country miles from being holistic. But, then the whole concept of blogging eventually came to be, a method more interactive, instant and transparent.” In course of that, someone popped up with a question, in regards to the ways, or things one can do to optimize their blogs. “Credibility, content, relevance, packaging and presentation” and as he went on to elaborate each of those pointers. He went on to state how blogs are now a part of e-commerce, and how it went hand-in-hand with the social media. “Global reach, accessibility, usability and recency, is what a blog technically offers, and to not use that plethora of avenues it provides, and implementing it for social media, is criminal!”, he said.
From blogs, he then moved to the social networking sites. He explained, “What social media has done is, – democratization of information, transforming people from readers to publishers.” And how, “we no longer search for news, they search for us”. He explained the USP of social media to be immediacy. Further, Miss Rajika shared a video, which, if there was ever any doubt to start with, had enough about it to dismiss any notion of ‘social media being a fad’. Then, Miss Talwar talked about the various social media tools. It was a familiar topic since most of us use these tools on a daily basis and are very well acquainted with them. She talked about the most popular ones. She touched upon the subject of social media enhancements tool, such as apps and widgets. Then explaining the importance of corporate companies, brands or otherwise having their own public forum domains, and how imperative it is to make sure that you’re answerable, and be able to attend to each and every one of your customers, and how accountability, and one-on-one troubleshooting can give a brand an impressive mileage.
Ms. Talwar then shared another video about how to create a brand page on Facebook. Post-lunch, all the trainees were given a demo in the IT lab on the same.
After a short break, we were back at the auditorium, and the session ensued- this time the topic at hand was Social Media Marketing. Mr. Lalwani explained how considerably, and fast the world is becoming more and more exhibitionalist, and how social media marketing is exactly making use of that, and how it makes it so much more relevant and easy. “And therein lies the beauty of it”, Mr. Lalwani said. He explained the ingenious aesthetics of Social media marketing, how word of mouth and peer feedbacks are getting much more accountability these days, and in process the whole concept of “the viral loop”. He stated how the credibility of traditional mediums has taken a hammer-blow, and how “brochure-speak” doesn’t work anymore, because, people are getting that much empowered, and know that much better. He touched upon the ground-realities, that how fast and effectively you approach a customer can make or break your brand.
Ms. Talwar then took over, showing a few presentations of the many places where social media marketing has been a success; she took up the examples of Pritham books and Mitsubishi Cedia and their brilliant marketing strategies. And then a complete and utter faux pas by a Mortin Moms campaign, where the intended message was so badly mis-communicated, that it almost ran the company into bankruptcy.
Mr. Lalwani then rounded up the session with tips to how to improve one’s personal profile, and web-presence. He stated that it’s essential in making a blog about something that one personally feels strongly about, and it’s necessary to first find, and then show off one’s expertise in that particular niché. And then explained the ways of effectively and innovatively marketing one’s own blog.
All in all, it was a brilliant insightful and enlightening session, and very captivating as well, which, I believe, is down to the fact that it was something on which were to some extent vaguely aware of. It was lovely having Mr. Lalwani and Ms. Talwar with us, and here’s hoping to see them again!
Hemen Das 