Quick Summary: I have set myself three blogging goals for 2008 — write 100 posts with original content, reach 1000 subscribers, and enter Technorati top 1000.
While most bloggers participating in the project have set themselves goals on as many as ten metrics related to blog redesign, post frequency, promotion techniques, comments, traffic, link-backs and revenue, I have decided to focus on three simple goals — write 100 posts with original content, reach 1000 subscribers, and enter Technorati top 1000.
Goals only work if they are linked to a long-term objective and blogging goals are no different.
I decided some time back that I’m not interested in using my blog to earn money. Instead, my objective is to use my blog to establish myself as an authority in the marketing, strategy and social media niche. In fact, as I have built a library of quality original content on my blog over the last few months, I have even started putting my blog URL on my resume.
As advertising permeates into more parts of our lives, people learn how to block out advertising, develop blind spots, which prompts advertisers to find yet more ways of cutting through the clutter, leading to a self-propagating cycle of more advertising and less ad-free non-commercial space.
Italian agency MTN Company recently used zebra crossing advertising to promote an architecture and design event called “Settimane dell’Architettura e del Design” (via I Believe in Advertising).
See the pictures on Flickr (they are not shared under a Creative Commons license, so do think twice before you put them up at your blogs) —
– or watched the making of the zebra crossing ads on YouTube –
The ads are done really tastefully and add to, rather than take away from, the public space they use as a platform. The Sentieri Urbani project, for instance, uses a similar street art approach to to beautify public space. My experience, however, is that it doesn’t take long for an innovative new medium like this to devolve into lowest common denominator space. It’s one thing to have black and white flowers and hearts on the zebra crossing, it’s another to have loud multi-colored “Buy Now!” price and promotion ads.
Quick Summary: In Mumbai? On Twitter? Register for the first Mumbai Twitter Meetup. Not on Twitter? Find seven reasons why you should sign up for Twitter today.
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If You Are in Mumbai & on Twitter, Attend the Mumbai Twitter Meetup
Yesterday, when I tweeted about wanting to do a Mumbai Twitter Meetup —
Blog meets are so passe. I want to do a Mumbai Twitter meet. Anyone interested? (Twitter)
– I received half a dozen responses within seconds.
Quick Summary: Read about how marketers should use different social media tools to serve different objectives depending on the level they are at in the Marketing Chain of Being.
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Social media is such an elusive idea that most social media/ marketing/ public relations bloggers are still struggling to answer several basic questions about social media –
- What exactly is social media?
- How is social media related to marketing, advertising, customer service and PR?
- When should marketers use social media?
- How should marketers measure the effectiveness of social media?
However, when I thought a little more about it, I realized that social media has a (different) role to play at almost every level in the Marketing Chain of Being.
Read about how a soft-hard-soft leadership style works best in an environment that is constantly changing.
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Management literature is littered with debates on what is the rightleadership style. Most of these models recognize that there is no right leadership style, that different leadership styles work in different environments.
Based on my own experience over the last few years, I have found that a soft-hard-soft leadership style works best in an environment that is constantly changing.
Simply put, a soft leadership style is focused on people and a hard leadership style is focused on targets and processes.
According to my Soft-Hard-Soft Leadership Style Model, managers need to adopt their leadership styles to how easy or difficult their environment is.
There are three stages in the Soft-Hard-Soft Leadership Style Model model –
Stage 1 - Soft-Soft
When the environment is soft and targets/ processes are not under pressure, managers should adopt a soft leadership style to maintain the feel-good factor in the team.
Quick Summary: Read about the five levels in the Marketing Chain of Being, and the three laws that govern how brands move between them.
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In an earlier post, I had written that, like the Renaissance Chain of Being, there is also a Marketing Chain of Being.
In this post, I’ll explain the five levels in the Marketing Chain of Being, and the three laws that govern how brands move between them.
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The Five Levels in the Marketing Chain of Being
There are five levels in the Marketing Chain of Being –
1. Commodity Hell, in which brands basically focus on price and channel promotions to sell more (think groceries).
2. Differentiation, in which brands highlight product features and benefits to command a price premium (think automobiles).
3. Engagement, in which brands use service (in both its customer service and conversation meaning) to develop relationships with customers (think Dell).
4. Cultural Currency, in which brands become shared social objects and help customers define their individual and group identities (think Nike+iPod).
5. Meaning, in which brands become the tools that customers use for self-realization or restoration (think Google).
I was quoted today in a Hyderabad Times story on lifestyle entrepreneurship — entrepreneurship in the pursuit of leading a lifestyle that is a perfect balance of health, wealth and relationships –
While Gaurav Mishra, a marketer and a prominent blogger partly agrees, “I think entrepreneurship itself is nebulous in India, given our ‘good boys get a good job’ mindset, ‘lifestyle entrepreneurship’ will be even more rare. At the same time, profit is only part of the reason people become entrepreneurs. This is just taking it a bit further and deciding to be the master of one’s own destiny and one’s own time.”
I still have to figure out why I’m an expert on entrepreneurship, but all buzz is welcome. A link to my blog would have been even more welcome.
On second thoughts, I’ll probably look back at this story a few years later as a sign that helped me answer the question I have been asking myself endlessly — ‘What Should I Do With My Life?’.
Quick Summary: Read about how engagement is only the middle level in the ‘Marketing Chain of Being’ and how social media and customer service are only tools to create engagement.
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The topic of the week in the marketing and public relations blogosphere is whether customer service is the new marketing, so much so that there’s even an upcoming event on the topic.
Most of the posts on the topic have focused on how social media is causing customer service and public relations to merge into each other to form the fabric of a new marketing paradigm.
I’m a brand manager, not a PR practitioner, and I can’t but feel that the above statement is rather simplistic. Yes, customer service is important. Yes, word of mouth is important, and, by association, public relations is important. Yes, good (or bad) customer service is an important factor in creating favorable (or unfavorable) word of mouth. Yes, social media gives customers the tools to amplify word of mouth. Yes, yes, yes and yes. But that’s only part of the story. Let me tell you the real story by going back to my post on the Marketing Chain of Being.
Quick Summary: Read about how the long tail doesn’t only apply to culture and commerce, but also to relationships.
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In my earlier post about the Long Tail of Pain, I just drew a diagram of how social media allows us to experience pain anytime, anyplace, in any form, but didn’t elaborate on the idea adequately.
In this post, I’ll explain what a long tail is and how digital media has changed it. I’ll also explain how the long tail doesn’t only apply to culture and commerce, but also to relationships, specifically pain, via the Three Laws of the Long Tail of Pain.
Let me first explain what a long tail is.
A long tail curve is a statistical distribution in which a small number of data points have disproportionately high values compared to a large number of other data points that have progressively low values. If you rank these data points and plot them in the decreasing order of their values, you get a curve that first falls very sharply (forming the almost vertical head) and then falls more slowly (forming the almost horizontal tail). The Pareto Principle (the top 20% contribute 80% of the total) is an example of a long tail curve.
