• Talking Shop

    My post last week– on the topic of communities that individuals will initiate or will be part of, also made me think of organisations and brands, and what communities they would start/be part of. To begin with, perhaps there would have to be forks in the road, which hopefully would merge again at some point of time. Paths to accommodate employees, potential employees, consumers, suppliers and so on.

    If word of mouth is the primary marketing tool, it is important to get the organisation in order, and employees to believe in themselves and the place they work in, before transparency can be taken to the outside world. According to this RWW article, based on an Accenture report,  a large number of millenials (those born between 1977-97) expect their companies to accommodate their IT preferences, and if they don’t, they turn rogue and use technology that is unsupported and unsanctioned by their corporate IT departments. Social networks are great examples, according to the study, 59% use them inspite of their IT!!

    I’d written on this subject earlier, highlighting a few tools, that could help bring transparency to the employee and potential employee facing part. Recently, I came across a few more things that would help in these efforts. SocialCast (via Startup Meme), which provides ‘simple, smart messaging for team communication’. Meetsee, “Your personal virtual office ..filled with rich ways to communicate, share content, collaborate on documents, and build rapport between remote co-workers”. I also read that LinkedIn has made portions of company profiles public. As of now, they have 160000 profiles. I quite liked the career path feature under ‘Related Companies’. (eg.Take a look at Amazon’s profile.) What I’d like to see is companies taking this as an opportunity to converse more than a one way communication. LinkedIn can actually make a premium service out of this. Companies could also start off with using some existing apps on LinkedIn like Company Buzz, presentation apps, Huddle and Polls, each of which could add dimensions to their LinkedIn presence.

    On another front, brands are still grappling on how to utilise social media to reach out to their consumers. The question of where to have these conversations also still hangs. Both would obviously depend on the intent. Unfortunately, a lot of brands are seeing social media as just another broadcasting platform – a mentality of  ‘ah, the herd is on twitter, lets push the communication there’. Judging from the way the crowd responds to say (the most recent example) Ibibo, #FAIL.

    Like I said, it boils down to intent – making better products, addressing customer issues, using customers for R&D and so on. Chris Brogan has a wonderful post on what he calls ‘cafe shaped conversations‘. It made me consider the perspective that its perhaps not meant for every brand/organisation. That while there are advantages, for these advantages to achieve a scale that makes it worthwhile, might take quite some time for some organisations, because they aren’t built that way (?)

    But its also true that consumers don’t wait for the brand/company to start the conversation. And they like to band together. The communities at Facebook and Ning are great examples. I also came across a new site – Brand Adda, a community that revolves around brands, products and services. I first thought a 2.0 version of something like MouthShut but there new features added, which also allows for interaction initiated by the brand. Explained well in their FAQ. Perhaps they’re closer to GetSatisfaction. From a brand perspective, the conversation tools might be easier to handle than say, a SocialToo, which allows polls on Twitter. I’d like to see how this develops, since there’s definitely potential.

    The tools, irrespective of which stakeholder they address, are becoming increasingly significant. According to a recent study by Forrester, the % of people who trust the company blog as a new source is at a low 16%, right at the bottom of the table. This, I agree, is not a reflection on the concept of blogging, but more on the intent of companies which in turn, is translated into the content they post on the blog. And the path – blogs, twitter, LinkedIn etc are quite inconsequential if the intent is not sorted out first.

    until next time, connecting people…and companies..

    PS. A good resource on social media. Go on, there are free e-books.

  • Samarkand

    For those into history, Samarkand, in Uzbekistan, is the birthplace of Babur, the founder of the Mughal dynasty in India. For those into immediate concerns, like ‘where do we go for dinner tonight’, its also a restaurant on Infantry Road, part of the BJN Group. Infantry Road is a one-way, so don’t try to get in from the Safina Plaza direction.

    We called on Friday to reserve a table (the day you get a table without reservation, you might as well make life changing decisions too, you’re in luck) We were told that both the two seaters were already reserved, so we asked for a 4 seater, and then our 2 friends who were supposed to join us, failed to turn up. 😀

    Samarkand specialises in the cuisine of the place its named after. The menu card is a nice curio, and is in the form of a newspaper, and gives a small peek into the culture and cooking habits of the area.

    We’d decided to try out a kabab this time, so from the choices available, we selected a Murgh Gilafee Seekh, which is ‘made from chicken mince flavored with cardamom, and wrapped with finely chopped pepper’. Not a bad choice, and tasted good, especially with some of the sauces they provide. A bit of ‘anti snobbery’ desreves mention, as we were asked to eat the dish without the aid of cutlery. 🙂

    That, and the bread sticks, made us go for a single gravy for the main course. So, we ordered the Murgh Peshawari, which is ‘chicken in a rich and invigorating blend of spices, brown gravy, roasted garlic and fresh red chillies’. To go with it, an onion kulcha and a paneer kulcha. Boneless chicken, and a very tasty gravy, goes well with the kulchas too. The red chillies weren’t spicy though. The quantity is sufficient for two people.

    We were stuffed, so we skipped desserts, but there are a few good options, for about Rs.150. The service was very good, though unlike the last time we were here, there was no advice given on the menu.

    All of the above, including a bottle of mineral water (Rs.70 again)!! :O, and a service charge of 10%, came upto just over Rs.1000. In terms of wallet friendliness, its less affectionate than say, a Sahib Sind. So, a good place to go, if you plan to splurge.

    Samarkand, #66, Gem Plaza, Infantry Road, Bangalore. Ph: 41113366

    Menu and Photos at Zomato

  • @ the friends within followers

    Sometime back, I’d written about micro ambassadors, where I’d also touched upon the long tail of twitter influence that is made up by individual users, and marketing opportunities therein. I read a few posts recently that made me think on the subject a bit more.

    Some of the posts referred to a research paper on Twitter, by HP, which reveals that

    the driver of usage is a sparse and hidden network of connections underlying the “declared” set of friends and followers.

    A few numbers on the respondents (from the study) – 309740 users (this sample is 6% of the twitter universe, info courtesy Jeremiah’s post, the comments on the post are also very interesting), who on an average posted 255 posts, had 85 followers, and followed 80 other users. Among the 309740 users, only 211024 posted at least twice. The average @ replies ( conversations between 2 or more users, specifically mentioned in the tweets) were 25.4% .

    A few findings I thought were interesting. The number of posts increases with the number of followers but saturates after a certain point. However, this saturation does not occur if we consider the number of ‘friends’ (followers with whom a user has had 2 or more @ conversations). The study also shows that on a number of ‘friends’ vs number of followers chart, the number of friends saturate after a certain number of followers is crossed. Understandable, since in a day, one can only have so many conversations with so many friends. My twitter statistics (though not the same as the average user in the study) corroborate these friends and usage findings more or less. It is thus debatable whether there’s any sense in just increasing the follower count. A certain Guy definitely wouldn’t agree, and it does finally depend on the intent. 🙂

    It also questions the follower-influence- WOM marketing model, and its scalability. I’m actually quite happy with this since I have never been comfortable with this line of marketing strategy on a trust based network. While its not scalable generally, there are exceptions – Guy’s Alltop is one easy example.  The relationship he has with his ‘followers’ obviously doesn’t fit into the followers-friends definition discussed earlier.

    The echoing powers of RT (re tweeting) is another thing to be kept in mind. If I follow someone, and i find some content interesting/informative, there is a good chance I’ll RT that, even if I do not have regular conversations with that person.

    Lastly, this equation might change if Twitter implements groups. Even though its limited to Japan now, there is a good chance that the rest of the world could get it soon. Meanwhile, you can always use Twittgroups. Groups would allow consolidation of crowds interested in certain things. Marketing would definitely be easier then.

    And finally, to wrap up, the favourite twitter pastime- revenue models. If such marketing is not a scalable option, and will not excite brands to use twitter a lot, what will? I read two very good posts on the subject of revenues. RWW has a post on the search of Twitter being used as a revenue tool, since it gives live results from all of Twitter, and doesn’t wait for any indexing like Google does. In fact, the idea of companies using Twitter as an early alarm signal is something I have come across before. Nick Bilton has an interesting idea on Twitter throwing up the kind of immediately relevant ads we would like to see with “some really intelligent data mining and cross pollination”. I quite like that idea too. 🙂

    until next time, tweet and ye shall find 🙂

  • What’s age got to do with it?

    Their eyes bore into each other’s. They both realised they could no longer hide their feelings for each other. But they hesitated, there was a huge age difference between them. Finally, the younger one let his emotions show. He made monkey faces. The 30 year old who reciprocated in kind, didn’t make a pretty picture.

    until next time, planet of the…..

  • Patna Roughcut

    Siddharth Chowdhury

    Patna Roughcut is a delightful little book, the kind of book you hate for being only 180 odd pages long. It revolves around the life of Patna’s own Ritwik Ray (i think there’s a lot of Siddharth Chowdhury in him), his life around Kadam Kuan, in patna,and Delhi University, the characters that influence his life- friends, mentors, and lovers.
    It is a tale of growing up, growing old and the loss of innocence. On many occasions, it reminded me of The Wonder Years. The interesting thing about the book is that its non linear, not just in terms of narrative, but also in terms of narrators, and though the protagonist remains Ritwik most of the time, you also get to read others’ perspectives.
    I think I connected with the book (also) because of its small town setting, middle class values, and ambitions that never go beyond a certain limit. It has a lot of “you know you were a kid in india in the 80’s ” moments that are very endearing.
    When you know that a wave of nostalgia tinged with melancholy is upon you, this is the book to pick up and laze through