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My friend Rajesh Lalwani who runs social media agency Blogworks has tied up with Exchange4Media to run a survey on the use of social media by Indian brands.

I just filled in the survey, in my marketer avatar (I’m on sabbatical as the Brand Head of Indica) and it does take only 15 minutes, as Rajesh promises. 

Rajesh is also giving away a free summary of his earlier report titled “Overview of Blog & Social Media Environment in India” as an incentive to participate in the survey. 

The survey is open till December 24th. Do share your thoughts with Rajesh.

Tim O’ Reilly recently noted a “linking in” trend at websites like TechCrunch, BuinessWeek and New York Times, and wondered if linking to yourself is the future of the web –

When this trend spreads (and I say “when”, not “if”), this will be a tax on the utility of the web that must be counterbalanced by the utility of the intervening pages. If they are really good, with lots of useful, curated data that you wouldn’t easily find elsewhere, this may be an acceptable tax. In fact, they may even be beneficial, and a real way to increase the value of the site to its readers. If they are purely designed to capture additional clicks, they will be a degradation of the web’s fundamental currency, much like the black hat search engine pages that construct link farms out of search engine results.

I’d like to put out two guidelines for anyone adopting this “link to myself” strategy:

1. Ensure that no more than 50% of the links on any page are to yourself. (Even this number may be too high.)
2. Ensure that the pages you create at those destinations are truly more valuable to your readers than any other external link you might provide.

My friend Rajesh Lalwani — who runs social media and brand consulting outfit Blogworks — has released a report on the social media scene in India.

‘An Overview of Internet, Blog & Social Media Environment in India’ is based on primary research with social media thought leaders (including yours truly), apart from secondary research. It covers internet, mobile web and social media usage trends in India, apart from analysis of the social networking sites and blogging platforms popular in India.

I have great respect for the team that has worked on the report and, at $1200 plus tax, it’s a useful introduction to the social media space in India. You can order the report by e-mail at studyreport@blogworks.in.

My social media consultant friends Rajesh Lalwani, Dina Mehta and Rajiv Dingra were recently interviewed for a very well-researched story in Live Mint about how corporates in India are engaging with social media.

Here is a quick snapshot of social media usage by Indian corporates based on the article and my own understanding –

- Financial services, travel, telecom and consumer product brands are the most active users of social media in India, apart from online brands.

- Most Indian brands skip the first two steps in the “Listen -> Understand -> Engage” model and start with engagement itself. This is perhaps a result of the costliness and clumsiness of the online monitoring tools that were available in India so far.

- Most Indian brands engage with social media in a limited way, using it as a broadcast tool instead of a participation tool. So, the use of branded social networks, social network apps, user created ads and viral videos is much higher than blogs, forums and wikis.

Quick Summary: Check out the fourth edition of ‘The Best of Indian Business Blogs’, a weekly digest by business bloggers you trust.

The Idea

The basic idea is simple: we form a network of five to ten influential Indian business bloggers to promote link-worthy posts from other Indian business bloggers in the form of a weekly digest published on our respective blogs.

The People

The present members in our network are (in alphabetical order):-

- Gaurav Mishra, that is, yours truly, is a marketer and a social media enthusiast (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Gautam Ghosh is an HR professional and a veteran business blogger (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Kiruba Shankar is India’s original A-list blogger and podcaster and a regular speaker at technology conferences (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Palin Ningthoujam is a public relations professional and the founder of India PR Blog (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Rajesh Lalwani is the founder of social media agency Blogworks (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Ranjan Varma is the writer of personal finance online weekly Personal Finance 2.01 (e-Book, Blog, Facebook and Twitter).