How important Social Networking is for a Sales Professional?

I'd say it is very important for sales professionals – offline or online - it depends of where and for how many hours a day they do their selling. It does not guarantee their success though; that still depends on their approach and business acumen.

If they work and sell online, it is very important for them finding their clients on social networks. Even if they spend their time in the street and going around the companies, they'll equally engage in social settings where they can network, spot prospects and "work" new sales relationships but it will be offline.

Sales is all about contacts, contacts and contacts. No matter what you are selling, who your target audience is and what's the size of deal, at the end of day, "People Buy, not the organizations". Sales people rely on their ability to connect with other people and leverage that to both parties' advantage. Not only is it basically hard wired into every sales person's personality to do so, but it also is mandatory for growing one's business.

As they rightly say; when any company hires a salesperson it actually captures his/her business contacts and practically hires the sales leads not the person. Therefore, without any risk we can say that a sales person is as successful as strong is his/her network and his/her ability to tap this network.

In this post, we will talk about online social networking using Social Media. Relying on social media means meeting new people and meeting more people via these new people and there is a high chance that someone within this network is surely going to utilize your services or products or refer you to someone who will. Not to mention referrals are as good medium for business as advertising is or may be even better than advertising.

It also depends on the sales cycle of product/service that you are selling. Social media makes more sense for a sales person with shorter sales cycle. They are high-activity salespeople who often have a low detail orientation and a disdain for step-by-step process, and their sales performance can be improved with consistency in social networking. Engaging in a social network is just the first step - a true professional then needs to know how to leverage the network to provide mutually beneficial outcomes. Sales people managing large accounts with a longer sales cycle focused on more targeted and strategic approach of social networking.

For sales and marketing that means "pull" rather than "push" and initiating "conversations" with prospective clients. So the Web is no panacea. It depends on the style and modus operandi of the sales person. Having the gift of the gab and being extroverted is one thing, but if the person tries to "push" themselves or the product on others, that will backfire, even more so in cyberspace than in the real world. Networking is not selling, it is about establishing relationships so that those in your network come to like and trust you and refer you to their contacts and the people they care about.

Seek to meet the movers and shakers and work to build quality relationships with them by helping them expand their business. The old adage, “what goes around, comes around” holds true in networking. These are not overnight strategies for success in networking but then, there are no overnight success strategies for any true profession and selling is no exception to this truth.

LinkedIn to upgrade groups with discussions

I have received the following mail from LinkedIn being the owner of two groups and manager of one group as follows:

a) Virtually Networked
b) Social Media in India
c) Symbiosis Alumni

Dear Shefali,

First, thank you for managing your group on LinkedIn. We sincerely appreciate the time and effort you devote to your members, and we know they value it. Together you have made Groups one of the top features on LinkedIn.

This Friday, we will be adding several much-requested features to your group:

• Discussion forums: Simple discussion spaces for you and your members. (You can turn discussions off in your management control panel if you like.)
• Enhanced roster: Searchable list of group members.
• Digest emails: Daily or weekly digests of new discussion topics which your members may choose to receive. (We will be turning digests on for all current group members soon, and prompting them to set to their own preference.)
• Group home page: A private space for your members on LinkedIn.

We're confident that these new features will spur communication, promote collaboration, and make your group more valuable to you and your members. We hope you can come by LinkedIn on Friday morning to check out the new functionality and get a group discussion going by posting a welcome message.

Sincerely,
The LinkedIn Groups Team

This Friday you can expect new discussion capability to be enabled for Group managers and members. This is a very welcome change as until now there were very limited options available with group owners, it was nothing more than a list of people interested in a common subject. If you need to send any message to your group members, you were supposed to export their email addresses and then sending them mail using any Yahoo! Mail / Gmail. Not the best option I would say. Discussing stuff online will save many of us from unnecessary spam.

Moreover they are also planning to release an enhanced capability for searching members in the Group. This is a very logical upgrade after the release of searchable Groups Directory.

Looking forward to that !!

Amongst top three networkers of Brijj

I was little hesitant to write this post as it might not be a big deal for most of you but I am still rejoicing my little accomplishment. After all I have worked hard for it.

Today I have got myself listed amongst the top three networkers of the Indian leading networking site called Brijj.

What is my Social Media Metrics?

So what the best way to find out the success of your Social Media Marketing Plan or Social Media Optimization Plan - whatever you may want to call it?

Is it the referral traffic you are getting? Is the volume of audience you can target for your marketing message? Is it the no. of registered users on your community site? Is it the time your community is spending on your site? Is the cost of developing/hosting your community site Vs the no. of customers you are acquiring from it? OR Is it a mix of all.

I believe, Social Media Marketing is an entirely new concept and implementing the traditional Marketing Metrics would not be fair. The best way to measure your success is to find out the engagement of your customers with your product/services. Tracking links, sign-ups, downloads, RSS, search engine traffic, online mentions, discussions on your community site would be a good idea to gauge how successful you are. There are no. of tools and techniques, like Google Alerts to high end social media monitoring services, that can be used to track all these. Nos. are one part and the content is another as in social media, your customers are talking not only to you but amongst each other as well. Its important to notice what is being said; who is talking to whom?

The real measure ofcourse would be to know whether your end business objective has been met or not but all these factors would help you to determine how much your social media efforts have contributed to meet your end business objectives.

Loadz of new features to be added to Yahoo! Groups

Yahoo! Groups are constantly improving. Some of the latest releases for the product has been:

• More advanced search and browsing system which makes search updates much faster, and improves the sort order when you browse for groups. For more updates visit Yahoo! Groups Blog.
• Group Labs has launched its first feature or grouplet called "People Map". Groups Labs is nothing but a team of people who have been working on a new way to create features within Groups, features that can be customized by moderators to fit the specific needs of their groups. People Map is a simple application to find out where your group members belong to? For more information visit Yahoo! Groups Blog
• A new technology platform for the site (not quite fully released). We are changing every page of the site but doing so in a way that won't disrupt your existing experience. This new platform will allow us to release features much faster than ever before.

But the exciting news is what is to come in the future. Here is a short list of the features we plan to unveil to you in the coming year:

• New ways for people to share information with each other within your groups: Product Reviews, Services Directory, Wanted Boards, Address Book, Event Planner, and many more.
• Message Boards 2.0: Improving the Message experience within groups in many different ways (e.g. giving members the opportunity to choose which discussions they want to subscribe to, making it easier for moderators to highlight the best content, etc.).
• Ability to charge an optional subscription fee for membership to your groups (we have no plans to get in the middle of the transaction, just make it easy for you to make sure members are paying).
• Photo Album 2.0: An entirely new photo system with massive group storage and stunningly large photos.
• The return of archived attachments: We will process attachments and store them on your group, if you choose this option.
• For our non-English speakers, the ability to select the language you want to view the site in and better handling of all types of character sets.

To read more please visit the Groups blog

Some updates from Yahoo!

Here are couple of updates from Yahoo!

a) You have a simpler URL to remember going forward. yahoo.co.in has become yahoo.in . All the email addresses already @ yahoo.co.in will function as usual without any glitches but all the new email addresses will be registered on yahoo.in. So get your yahoo.in email address now.

b) Second good news is that the Group Labs has launched its first feature or grouplet called "People Map". Groups Labs is nothing but a team of people who have been working on a new way to create features within Groups, features that can be customized by moderators to fit the specific needs of their groups. People Map is a simple application to find out where your group members belong to? For more information visit Yahoo! Groups Blog (http://www.ygroupsb log.com/blog/ 2008/07/08/ try-out-the- new-people- map-beta/) and don't forget to give your feedback.

c) Its time to tickle your funny bone and you must not miss watching the new viral from Yahoo! for its two new domains ymail.com and rocketmail.com. Watch the viral at http://kaunhoonmain.com/

Facebook - More than a Social Networking site

And you thought all we can do from Facebook is to find out old classmates and colleagues. We can do much more than that - its a place to market - be it yourself, your product, your events anything. Facebook is readymade audience - how you tap this audience depends on you. It’s a place to network - personal and professional.

I wanted to write some tips about how to explore it; but realized there is so much written already and there is hardly anything new that I can add so simply giving you some of the links that I found very useful. Hope you will also find them useful:

a) Making Facebook useful - Conglomeration of Facebook best practices on Read Write Web blog written by Richard MacManus

b) A collection of all the useful links about learning Marketing by Facebook from Ronpass. You have flickr photos, youtube videos, related links saved on delicious, ezine articles and much more. Must check out!

c) Top 10 Ways to Use Facebook to Promote your Business for Free from Shama Hyder in her After the Launch blog

d) 12 ways to use Facebook professionally by Judi Sohn on Web Worker Daily blog

e) The Facebook Marketing Toolbox – 100 Tools and Tips to tap the Facebook Customer Base A very useful page to bookmark for marketers who want to add Social Media in their Marketing strategy from Inside CRM

LinkedIn in Plain English

Two of my favorites came together (My favorite networking site Linkedin is being explained by Common Craft - I love their videos) and it was impossible not to blog about it.

Common Craft has a wonderful way of explaining everything in the simplest way and it’s a sheer pleasure to watch their videos.

Linkedin has recently reached the mark of 1 million users in India; still my network has least no. of people from India :(. Check out the Bollywood style party @ Linkedin office to celebrate their achievement.

How Social Media has changed my life

I was using Social Media for a year now but was not very active on that. Lately, I have become addicted to it and have learnt quite a few tools and trends around it and have realized that my non working hours are being utilized differently and like any other change in life, it is influencing me big time.

Professionally:
a) I am able to get in touch with the biggies of the industry with whom it was unimaginable to say even hello otherwise forget about the discussions that I have with them on regular basis.
b) I am able to give a direction to my career by interacting and learning from the veterans of the industry with whom it was impossible to even meet in normal course of life.
c) I am able to compare trends of industry country by country without buying any expensive reports – thanks to my friends having my kind of role in different countries. I am able to talk to them, know about their existence and vice versa – thanks to Social Media
d) The bar for me continuously keep on rising as I am able to see the work of veterans in the industry and precisely know that I have miles and miles to go before I sleep :)

Personally:
a) I have been able to get in touch with those friends back with whom I have lost touch somehow but they were close to me
b) I am in touch with all my cousins on a regular basis and know all that’s happening in family and matters to me without making any effort of phone calls and writing emails.

Financially:
a) I have been able to learn so much about personal finance management and mutual funds from certain Yahoo! Groups that my entire perspective about money has been changed. I have become more aware about money dynamics and have learnt investing money is more difficult than earning it.

WAT Show on Yahoo! Groups Moderators Union

Thanks to WAT Blog for attending Moderators Union in Mumbai and covering it in their blog. Swami is rocking in the WAT Show.

Twitter Twitter All you Stars

Wondering what all others from your industry are doing all the time?

Twitterpacks is the answer. Twitterpack is nothing but a wiki to collect all the like minded twitterers together. Wikis are editable page that you can create, and then all the twitterers in your pack can add information, edit it any time they want and the same will be informed to all other twitterers via email. Every twitterer has the same power on the pack so it’s everyone individual responsibility to police it. The best part is once you join a pack, you can follow all the twitteres in one go via Autopack.

You can categorize the packs by topic, location, company, events or identity.

Thanks to Connie Bensen for creating one for Community Managers. If you want to join the please follow her blog post.

10 super cool ways to increase your network in Linkedin

1)Get all your contacts in the address-book of your Outlook, Yahoo, Google, Rediff, AOL and MSN email accounts.
Download your address book of any of your email account on your machine and upload it on your Linkedin connections and send an invitation to connect to all these contacts

2)Write a comprehensive profile with proper keywords
Write a brief profile so that people are interested in reading it. Very long descriptions are boring and generally people lose interest in the mid-way. Use the key words appropriately to make your profile more search-friendly.

3)Use your interest sections most intelligently
It’s like a tag cloud of your blog. Use all the key words relevant to your interest / industry to increase the searcheability of your profile and also it makes it easy for others to identify your area of expertise.

4)Make getting connected with you as easy as possible for others
Use Quick links on your other sites, your email address in your Linkedin profile, direct people to your blog / site – do any thing to make it easy for others to connect with you

5)Get connected to the top open networkers
Linkedin best part is your 2nd and 3rd degree connections; get connected to open networker (they usually have huge network of their own) to increase your 2nd and 3rd level of connections.

6)Be an open networker yourself
To be an open networker you need to register your profile at http://www.themetanetwork.com/ and write [LION] in your profile which stands for Linkedin Open Networker

7)Join relevant groups
Join the groups relevant to your interest / industry to get connected with like minded people for many fruitful discussions.

8)Ask relevant questions
Asking relevant questions on Linkedin will not only increase your business acumen and understanding of your industry, it will also help you in increasing your network.

9) Answer questions related to your field
As they rightly say “what goes around comes around” - help people with your expertise and they will help you with increasing your network.

10) Answer to all your connection invitations messages
Last but not the least step is little time consuming but its crucial for maintaining fruitful working relationships on Linkedin.

Videos of Moderators Union are live

Watch out the videos of your intorductions at Moderators Union in Mumbai on June 7, 2008 at Sahara Star at the following link:

http://video.yahoo.com/mypage?s=4446725&public=1

No more compromises with your email address with two new Yahoo! domains

Gone are the days when you have to make several attempts to get an email address a bit close to the one that you really wanted for yourself. Yahoo! has brought a whole new ocean of email addresses with its 2 new domains; namely; ymail.com and rocketmail.com.

Email addresses created on these domains will work exactly like any other yahoo email with all the features and most importantly it is FREE of cost :)

Visit http://in.promos.yahoo.com/address/ to get your email address before it is taken away by someone else again.

If you want to create or join Yahoo! group with your new email addresses of these domain i.e. xyz@ymail.com or xyz@rocketmail.com; you will be prompted to create a new public profile with a screen name that will display for your communications on Group. Once you create your new profile, you will be taken back into the normal "join" or "start a group" flow.

For more information; please visit Yahoo! Groups Blog

Pictures of Moderators Union happened in Mumbai on June 7, 2008

We have uploaded the pictures of the event on Flickr. Check out the link
http://www.flickr.com/photos/moderators-union/sets/72157605540321347/

About Shefali Gaur

Shefali Gaur is an MBA and Engineering graduate with about 5 years of experience in the IT services & Products and Internet industry. For past all these years of her career, she has worked in almost all the disciplines of business development like Sales, Sales Support, Presales, Marketing, Knowledge Management, across multiple domains.

Shefali has had her clientele across the globe, she has managed bids for millions of dollars, created loads and loads of Marketing and sales collateral, optimized processes like Bid Management, Major Account Planning, Launched Sales Kits, done market research and competitive analysis, done front-end and back-end sales assignments etc. She has also taught Brand Management and Customer Relationship Management at B-schools and conducted several workshops for Group Discussion and Personal Interview skills.

At Yahoo! India she is working as Community Manager, where facilitate, manage and help her vibrant online communities engaging better with the product by proactively finding solutions for their problems; finding innovative solutions for better collaboration; and implementing ways to increase efficiency of community. She focus on communities for all the Community and Communication products of Yahoo! India (Mail, Messenger, Groups, Mash etc) to receive and analyze feedback/requirements on product experience for existing products and beta programs and synthesizing the same into recommendations for Product and Marketing teams.

At Unisys Global Solutions India (UGSI) she was working in Presales and Marketing team where she built, updated and maintained UGSI centric marketing repository tool that has supported and driven demand for UGSI globally within and outside Unisys along with competition tracking and Market Research. She had also worked on Requests for Information, Requests for Proposal, and Requests for Quotation from clients across the globe. She has also provided pre-sales support to Global Sourcing Demand Executives and Business Units for all business inquiries.

At Capgemini India Pvt Ltd she was working as a Global Knowledge Manager where her job was to develop knowledge management strategies after liaising with the global leaders to serve business needs and to facilitate implementation of activities around it. She used to capture, maintain and promote the internal and external knowledge of the firm for the government sector across Technology, Consulting and Outsourcing services. She has also supported information requirements for client pursuits and delivery projects by managing the communication channels such as the community intranet website and community newsletter. She also used to provide research and analysis based on a variety of primary data sources such as IDC, Gartner etc. to client teams across the globe.

At Zensar Technologies she has worked on different activities like Overall ownership of Major Account Planning Exercises, Customer Satisfaction Surveys, Sales Force Automation, Telemarketing and Bid Management. She has created collateral like Bid Components, Relationship Documents, Capability Papers, Process Documents, Sales Presentations, Case Studies etc. She was accountable for business from prospects through the overall ownership of bid management process. She has created, maintained and managed Sales support repository or proposal factory for enhancing the speed, quality and consistency of bid response.

Moderators Union in Mumbai on June 7, 2008

I skipped a heart beat the moment I landed up with two other team mates on Mumbai Airport at 1:00 am on June 7, 2008. It was raining cats and dogs and the airport has turned into a huge but shallow pond. If it continues who will come to the event for which we were working for the last one month, namely, Moderators Union.

All those late night meetings for defining process of registrations, invitations, devising communication strategy, planning, goodies shopping, everything seems to be floating away with the empty paper cups near the coffee vending machine at the airport.

Thanks to the spirit of Mumbai and Mumbaikars (as they rightly say the city just never stops) we had an amazing turnaround at the event and the event was HOUSEFUL! :)

As usual we started the event with an official welcome from IM Swaminathan, Director Communication and Community Products, Yahoo! India and then came the most interesting part of the event – Moderators Introduction.

I was so touched after listening to each and every moderator, after realizing their enthusiasm for being on stage and speaking publicly for the first time in their life, after witnessing their passion for the cause for which they are running their respective group and above all after feeling their love for Yahoo! and me. Without any hesitation, I can proudly say that I am one of those few lucky ones who got the opportunity to receive an ocean of love in a four hour event. Some of the feedbacks have really touched my heart and soul.

After four rounds of introductions with interesting quiz and cool prizes, Raj Reddy, Product Manager Yahoo! Groups from Sunnyvale, US has given the updates on upcoming features in Yahoo! Group and two brand new Yahoo! India products were showcased to moderators. Yahoo! India Local and new Yahoo! India Search called Glue.

We wrapped up the event with even more goodies and a sumptuous dinner.

Special thanks to Dr. Leo Rebello, who distributed his book on Yoga to every moderator.

Recommendations on Linkedin

For the post of Community Manager at Yahoo! Web Services India Pvt Ltd (5)

1) “It's unimaginable the amount of talent present in some of us, like her . I have not been working with her for long and being a big critic of people as I am, I thought it would take a little longer for me to understand her contributions and tireless efforts in keeping the things and her at top. But here she is. Ladies & Gentleman Shefali Gaur, ingeniously expanding her network of friends and blogging herself to glory. I whole heartedly endorse her brilliant ways.” July 15, 2008
Himanshu Sharma, Vice President, TalentBergwas with another company when working with Shefali at Yahoo! Web Services India Pvt Ltd

2) “I happend to work with Shefali on a project for a short period. It was an excellent expereince to work with an individual and proffesional like Shefali. What always kept us going is her cheerful and fun at work attitude. And at the same time she was diligent, focused and confident in her work. The key thing about her was, her constant endeavor to read up and learn more about emerging business trends. I found her very energetic and self-assured, am sure she'll be an asset wherever she goes.” Keep Rocking Shefali.” May 28, 2008
Sai Venkat Kumar B, Country Marcomm Mgr, TEKTRONIXwas with another company when working with Shefali at Yahoo! Web Services India Pvt Ltd

3) “Shefali is one of those few people who believe in trying new things and mastering it in no time. She has worked in various roles in her career and thats what actually makes her master of all traits. Shefali truly believes in power of networking and continuously works towards developing network of enthusiastic & skillful people. This is basic quality any community manager should have and she has it naturally! Being a pleasant personality and good human being, she is going to do really well in her career and personal life. My all wishes are with her. I would prefer to work with Shefali more and exchange learnings which helps both of us personally and professionally.” May 26, 2008
Archana Pandey, Product Marketing Manager, Yahoo!worked directly with Shefali at Yahoo! Web Services India Pvt Ltd

4) “Have known Shefali during her B School days, an out of box thinker, task oriented team worker. Her zeal to manage the show is very much appreciable. We share a lot of common freinds, even have found people who know her out of the way, no wonder why is she into community management!!. She has already started delivering results for Yahoo Community Product. Great going Shefali!!” March 24, 2008
Aneesh Shrivastava, Manager WAP Products, Yahoo Indiaworked with Shefali at Yahoo! Web Services India Pvt Ltd

5) “Shefali is a multifaceted individual you always cherish working along with. Regards, C.J.” March 20, 2008
CJ Shah, Director Sales, Zensar Technologies, Inc.worked with Shefali at Yahoo! Web Services India Pvt Ltd

For the post of Marketing and Presales at Unisys Global Service India Pvt Ltd (8)

1)“Shefail is a great personality to work with and she is very detail oriented person. she has due respect to others and helps them in need. Am very fond of her working culture and was impressed. I wish her all the best in her future endeavors and would recommend her for any opportunities” August 8, 2008
Arun Kumar S, Business Analyst, Unisys Corporation was with another company when working with Shefali Gaur at Unisys Global Service India Pvt Ltd

2) “A quick learner with an uncanny ability to get things done, Shefali was a good player to have on the Marketing team at Unisys. Approachable, fun-loving and a people person!” June 11, 2008 Jayakishore Satla (jaykishore@gmail.com), Marketing Manager, Global Sourcing PMO and Pre-Sales, Unisysmanaged Shefali at Unisys Global Service India Pvt Ltd

3) “I had the opportunity of working with Shefali when she was part of the pre-sales team. She exhibited high energy levels, has a positive attitude and a contagious smile! Shefali’s communication skills are excellent. Her networking skills - quite evident here isn't it :-) I wish her the very best in her future endeavors! Srikanth” June 9, 2008
Srikanth Raghavan, Director - Software Development, Unisys worked with Shefali at Unisys Global Service India Pvt Ltd

4) “I remember Shefali as a great pre-sales professional at UGSI. She had a clear-cut idea of the right mix of techno-functional information/support that was required by her from my group. She not only explained her requirements extremely well but was also great in rigorously following up. She is a tremendous asset to any organization.” June 3, 2008
Tamal DC, PMP, COP, Practice Manager, Unisysworked with Shefali at Unisys Global Service India Pvt Ltd

5) “Shefali is a vibrant employee with a zeal to innovate and come out with new ideas. Her energy levels are contagious and has very good interpersonal skills. During her stint with Unisys she has effectively contributed to presales team. Her ideas and her expertise in her area of work has been well appreciated. I am happy to recommend Shefali.” June 1, 2008
Bobby Joy, Senior Manager - Learning & Development, Unisysmanaged Shefali indirectly at Unisys Global Service India Pvt Ltd

6) “Shifali was part of the marketing/pre-sales team at UGSI when I worked for the 6sL PMO. I had a chance to interact and work with her on quite a few ocassions. She is an excellent communicator and has very good networking skills, as a result of which she manages to get work done from anyone in the organization. She will add value to in any organization she becomes part of.” March 20, 2008
Tushar Sashittal, Senior Software Engineer, Unisysworked with Shefali at Unisys Global Service India Pvt Ltd

7) “Shefali is an absolute go-getter with focus on the quality of her work and deadlines. She is well-known for her strong networking skills and can quickly connect with people. She is very energetic, amicable and professional person with work with.” February 27, 2008
Venkat Raghavan, Manager - Resourcing, Unisysworked directly with Shefali at Unisys Global Service India Pvt Ltd

8) “I know Shefali as a enthusiastic Marketing person who relentlessly follows up for the good of the organisation.” February 19, 2008
Manivannan Sk, Senior Program Manager, Unisysworked with Shefali at Unisys Global Service India Pvt Ltd

For the post of Global Knowledge Manager at Capgemini Consulting India Pvt Ltd (10)

1) “Shefali is a vivacious person with very high energy level. She has been an exceptional student with impeccable academic career. She is extremely focused and dedicated to her work; a workaholic who also maintains a healthy social life. Shefali is very well connected and is loved and admired by one and all. She has an amazing resilience in her character which helps her in difficult times. I wish her all the very best in her career and life.” July 22, 2008

Prabir Sarkar, Sr Specialist, ABC Consultant was with another company when working with Shefali at Capgemini Consulting India Pvt Ltd

2) “I have had not only the opportunity to work with Shefali but have been her batchmate also at College. She is one of the good people person I have ever seen. She always take her best stride at every thing she works at.Always ready to help and share her knowledge with others.” March 8, 2008
Jyoti Goyal, Senior Consultant/Business Analyst, Capgemini Financial Servicesworked with Shefali at Capgemini Consulting India Pvt Ltd

3) “Shefali has excellent communication skills and she used them to liaise and interact with a wide network of experts and exceutives. She is an accomplished multi-tasker, and delivered timely and high quality services as the Global Knowledge Manager at Capgemini Consulting. I wish her all the best in her future endeavors.” February 28, 2008
Shshank Srivastav, Senior Consultant, Capgemini SAmanaged Shefali indirectly at Capgemini Consulting India Pvt Ltd

4) “I have known shefali as a very sincere and result oriented person. She has a commendable ability to maintain poise and deliver the results even in face of significant personal challanges. She actively seeks feedback and incorporates in to her work very well. She would be an asset to any organisation she works with.” February 23, 2008
Dinesh Jindal, Senior Consultant, CapGemini Consultingmanaged Shefali indirectly at Capgemini Consulting India Pvt Ltd

5) “Shefali was an extremely competent, positive and driven professional. I found her never-say-die enthusiasm and committment towards her work admirable. She is a team player and a value-add to any organization she works in.” February 21, 2008
Sumita Chakrabarty, Manager, Capgemini Consultingmanaged Shefali indirectly at Capgemini Consulting India Pvt Ltd

6) “A very hard working, down to earth person who completes her work and the responsiblities assigned without any follow up. She goes out of the way to help her colleagues in need. She is a good team player and will be an asset to an organisation she joins. Wishing her goodluck.” February 20, 2008
Rohan Srinivasan, Senior Consultant, Capgemini Consulting India Pvt Ltdmanaged Shefali indirectly at Capgemini Consulting India Pvt Ltd

7) “Shefali, a girl with steel nerves has moulded her professional aspirations well.During her tenure at Capgemini, I interacted with her on some of my consulting assignments and her incisive insights and trends were a good help to me. Wishing her all the best in future.” February 18, 2008
Vihar Bhagwat, Senior Research Analyst, Frost & Sullivanwas with another company when working with Shefali at Capgemini Consulting India Pvt Ltd

8) “Shefali has an eye for details. I remember when she joined, her role was undefined (as it was quite new), with absolute zero clarity on what is expected from her. However, she proactively took the initiative to dig deep into the new role and made a positive impace on her leaders. She managed more than one roles quite efficiently, with minimal delays / escalations. I think she is a good people's person, rather than just a robot. Given a chance, I would like to work with her again...” February 18, 2008
Sagar Toshniwal, Knowledge Manager, Capgemini Consulting India Ltd.worked directly with Shefali at Capgemini Consulting India Pvt Ltd

9) “Shefali was a very good Knowledge Manager and paid attention to details. Always tried to give her best in the job she was assigned.” February 18, 2008
Surendra Chauhan, Consultant, Capgemini Consulting India Pvt Ltdworked directly with Shefali at Capgemini Consulting India Pvt Ltd

10) “A very smart and hard working employee and as she will be an asset for any organisation.I recommend Shefali highly. She has a drive to take new challenges and never shirks responsibility.” June 14, 2007
Prashant Chaudhari, Tam Lead / SAP & SIEBEL CRM Consultant, Capgemini worked with Shefali at Capgemini Consulting India Pvt Ltd

For the post of Consultant at Zensar Technologies (10)

1) “Shefali has an eye for details and was methodical in what she was tasked with.” July 6, 2008
Prateek Seth, Sr Executive -Marketing, Zensar TEchnologies Ltd.managed Shefali indirectly at Capgemini Consulting India Pvt Ltd

2) “Shefali is a dedicated professional. She puts in every ounce of effort in understanding things she has little knowledge about, but are important for the growth of business. It is her clear determination and attention to detail that gives her the edge to achieve her self imposed targets. I wish her the best.” June 21, 2008
Proshanto Mitra, CTO, Balasai Net Pvt. Ltd.managed Shefali indirectly at Zensar Technologies

3) “Shefali is one of those professionals who learn each day not just at work but also in spare time, no wonder she has progressed so early in her career. She always has some new perspective to offer in any given situation and is a great team player. Her enthusiasm is contagious and she is not only motivated herself but also instils loads of optimism in the people around. Great going Shefs...” May 29, 2008
Neelam Singh, Consultant, Zensar Technologiesworked directly with Shefali at Zensar Technologies

4) “Shefali is a sincere and dependable professional, keen to expand her horizons and learn new skills.” March 25, 2008
Manjiri Gokhale, Head, Marketing Communication, Zensarmanaged Shefali indirectly at Zensar Technologies

5) “During my interaction with Shefali at Zensar technologies, I found her to be very knowledgeable & responsive in the field she was working for. She also has a positive & cheerful personality, which can be a great asset for any organization she is working with.” March 6, 2008
Ashish Dharap, Manager Systems, Zensar Technologies LTDworked with Shefali at Zensar Technologies

6) “Shefali was highly dedicated at her work and put in the utmost sincerity. She always aimed for near perfection and any task assigned to her could be completely left to her with complete confidence of it getting completed.” February 25, 2008
Aashish Chokhani, Consultant - Marketing & Presales, Zensar Technologiesworked directly with Shefali at Zensar Technologies

7) “Shefali is an exemplary candidate to ensure smooth project roll outs. She continuously pushes the team to think in multiple streams other than the conventional ones which allows the project to happen almost meticulously :)” February 20, 2008
Piyush Upadhyay(piyush.2005@gmail.com), Manager, IPTV Product Management, Bharti Airtel Ltd,Indiawas with another company when working with Shefali at Zensar Technologies

8) “Shefali is one of such rare professionals who always know how to carry out their day to day responsibilities with utmost diligence. Clarity of thoughts and her inimitable attitude make her a refined and mature professional altogether. I have always seen Shefali have a clear growth path and work sincerely but smartly to attain milestones. I am sure of her success and wish her the very best in all her endeavors towards being a finer professional and a wonderful person.” February 19, 2008
Kedar Keskar, Technology Consultant, Zensar Technologiesworked with Shefali at Zensar Technologies

9) “Shefali is a perseverant and diligent marketing professional. During my association with Shefali I found her work exceptional and she showed wonderful acumen in handling all marketing and sales response tasks. I was thoroughly delighted at Shefali's initiatives and proactive activities that elevated sales response in my team to greater heights and set the bar high for other marketing and sales response teams in the organization.” February 18, 2008
Ravi Ramanathan, Head of Marketing & Sales Response, Zensar Technologies Limited managed Shefali at Zensar Technologies

10) “Shefali is a very intelligent and "can-do" person and is a great person to have in a team Dr Ganesh Natarajan” February 18, 2008
Ganesh Natarajan, Global CEO, Zensar Technologiesmanaged Shefali indirectly at Zensar Technologies

Testimonials recieved by Moderators about Moderators Union in Mumbai on June 7, 2008

From Cyrus Malaowala - Moderator of Have-a-Heart
THREE CHEERS..!! and my HEARTY APPRECIATIONS for SHEFALI GAUR,Community Manger, for wonderfully organising, presenting and conducting theYahoo India Moderators’ Union in Mumbai.It was a great event ,informative, interactive and enjoyable.CONGATULATIONS to Yahoo India, and SHEFALI.for making this event so interesting and allowing us group Moderators to express ourselves, and showcase our aims and objectives in forming our groups.Its indeed heartening to see Yahoo India recognising the value and role played by small groups like my Have-A-Heart Group.I will cherish these moments of being together with many larger groups.and wish that Yahoo India and SHEFALI ( she gets BEST MANAGER Award from me ) will remember me and my Have-A-Heart Group for the next event .
Regards, —CYRUS—

From GG Dalal - Moderator of IAEMP
Dear Madam,
It was a very exalting & memorable experience to be with you & the executives of Yahoo on June, 7 ,2008 in Moderator's Union at Mumbai.
Our IAEMP Indian Association of Energy Management Professionals took birth in 2006 with the on-line networking platform provided by Yahoo to IAEMP President Mr. S.K.Sood who pioneered the cause of "conscience keeping to the Nation on energy matters".
You really brought dynamism to the whole gathering in Moderator's Union throughout the meeting.
In order to interact with various groups who participated in the Moderator's Union, I request you to send the list of E-mail addresses for integrating human skill to produce refreshing creations for social welfare.
Best Regards,
G.G.Dalal
Vice-President
IAEMP, Mumbai

From Amar Gutta - Moderator of alumni94
Hi Shefali,
I would want to take a moment of your time and appreciate you and Yahoo team for putting up such a great event in Mumbai. My associate with Yahoo groups has been since I had started the "Alumni94" group and my primary reason for using the group was to keep in touch in with my batch mates but I was amazed to see how people use the Yahoo group for various things like spreading awareness (Whistle Blowers) , answering queries (Accounting & Shares) and also pursuing their hobbies like (Bike Nomads). Infact I am so inspired by the event that I am planning to start a new group for public which can use skills of people like me (into technical background of IT networking). Though the event was delayed due to the incessant rains in Mumbai still you have covered all the moderator introductions and let them speak on stage. I was also fortunate to share the stage time with other moderators and introduce my group to others. I would like to be invited to such events in future and in case you have a mailer group where such announcements are made then please add my email id to that group. Thanks and Congrats once again for hosting such a great event. Regards,Amar Gutta

From Bilquis - Moderator of Dil Maange More
Dear Shefali I am very much thankful of being a part of moderator union which was held on 7th june 2008 in mumbai.I heartily thank the yahoo groups once more for promoting new talents and giving recognition.I thought i was confined to the four walls and be only a homemaker but yesterday event boosted me a lot. Is it possible that you can send pictures taken during the events. Thanking You Bilquis Take Care

From Melvin Dalmeida - Moderator of sharetrading
Hi Shefali and the others at Yahoo team,The moderators union at mumbai was really good and exceeded my expectations. It was nice interacting with moderators and moreso with the yahoo team at least we knew what was the plan of the yahoo team. Most of the groups were quite impressive each one dedicated to their own cause. It was quite nice to know about yahoo locals. Do let your staff who was presenting know that I am trying my best to promote yahoo locals between my friends also I have written about 10-15 different reviews on restuarant and plan to write many more as I come across them. If at all he wants he may feel free to mail me. I have a lot of suggestions and tips to improve the quality at yahoo locals. Do let me know if I could be of any help to you guys in anyway. All the best and keep up the good work!!!Regards,Melvin...

From P. Shrinivasan - Moderator of ANSH2007
Dear Ms. Shefali,Thank you and every team member of YAHOO who has put in a great effort in making the Moderators Meet a grand event. As a moderator if you feel you would need my help at any point of time please do not hesitate to let me know.
I would like to inform that being in Internal Audit field my nature of job is touring almost 15-20 days a month. So whenever you mark any mail to me I shall kindly request you to mark the mail at both my Official mail ID as well as my personal Yahoo ID.
At any point of time if you feel that I can be of any help to you please do not hesitate to contact me.
I can also be contacted at any of the numbers given below.
With Best Regards,P. Shrinivasan

From Vibhu Rishi - Moderator of bikenomads
hi Shefali,
Thanks for giving me the wonderful opportunity of meeting you folks and other moderators whom I do not think I would have met if not for the moderator's union. I have written a short writeup on my blog at :
http://vibhurishi.blogspot.com/2008/06/yahoo-moderators-conference.html
I did not get much time to talk about the Yahoo group features on stage, as time was running out. However, here are a few things I would like to share with the Yahoo Groups team.
1. Please remove alternate yahoo ids if possible. We have had trouble makers whom we had moderated create alternate ids and slip in and again create issues on the group.
2. Can they provide a way of allowing 'n' number of moderated posts (setting depending on the moderators) after which the members posts follows the group rules ? e.g. on BikeNomads, we have the first posts moderated. We use this to check the first few mails of people and see if they are posting proper stuff, after which we have to manually go and change the settings. This is a pain, would be good if Ygroup had a setting for this.
3. Can we lock email threads ? e.g. if mods lock a thread , anyone replying to that gets the mail bounced. ?
4. better threading. its slow and clunky. would be good to have threading on the ygroup page like on slashdot.
i was quite excited about the demos shown.
in.maps.yahoo.com -> we have been using that for finding distances. We got to know about it 2 weeks back by a post on the group.
in.glue.yahoo.com -> looks very neat.
Ygroups 2.0
I was blown away with what you guys are doing, as I was myself wishing for those things. Let me know if you guys want any help from me. I would love to sign up for a pre-alpha if available :D
- I am not sure if there is a provision for adding a blog to it or not. if you check http://www.blogger.com/www.bikenomads.com , we have a blog and a wiki. We would love to have something like that on yahoo group.
Vibhu..

From Jayesh Sampat - Moderator of HRCommunity
Hi Shefali,Thank you for the wonderful evening at the Moderators Meet. I had a great time. It was good to meet you in person.I am looking forward to these interactions with the Yahoo team.Regards,Jayesh Sampat

From Manoj Karam - Moderator of Indian Whistlers
Hi Shefali
At the onset let me thank you and your team for the wonderful event that you organised last evening. This was a first time for me and a great experience. Looking forward to many more similar events from the Yahoo team.
I wish I could have given your team and the audience few more minutes of our unique entertainment programme of whislting. May be next time I should take the liberty of exceeding the time limit that had been set for each speaker :)
Anyways you can always visit our website http://www.blogger.com/www.whistleindia.org for lots of such entertaining events.
As discussed with you I have attached a list of Suggestions, Limitations, Problems which I have come across while moderating our group. I am sure your team may have already noticed most of these and would be alread working on them.
I have made it in a format which should be convenient for all to track the issues and give feedback. Being from the IT industry I can understand how important it is to receive clear problem reports :)
For convenience I have also cc'd this emali to Swami and Prakash.
I am sure your team will do their best to look into these issues.
Regards & Thanks
Manoj Karam

From Kush Singh - Moderator of Bombaynet
Hi Shefali,Thanks for inviting me at the yahoogroups moderators union meet!I LOVED every moment of it and regret not having been able to talk to you adequately enough. There were so many INTERESTING people to meet and network with that day. Wish the momentum is maintained and you continue to play an important role in all this NETWORKING. Its good that Yahoo India is strengthened further in order to make social networking by internet/email a success for the development of the country and the world. I must also congratulate the organising Team once again for a wonderful/splendid/outstanding job that they did. All those who helped organise this event did a SUPERB job.( Don't remember everybody's names so can only mention in no particular order --Diti Shah, Shridhar, Prakash, Swaminathan, Sundeep, Abhishek, Raj and others )I have a few requests/suggestions --1 Would the unedited video of this meet be available somewhere on youtube etc? How can one get a copy of it?2 How could one remain in touch with the moderators who attended this meet? I was able to find only a few moderator groups on yahoogroups and the yahoogroup search is something which needs drastic improvement. Is there any yahoogroup for those who attended these PHYSICAL meetings at Bangalore and Mumbai?3 Who was the videographer/sound specialist contractor for this meeting? Could I have their contact details? Pls keep in touch once in a while.Thanks and regards,Kush

From Bhaskar Jyotish - Moderator of Jyotish Ganga
Dear Shefaliji and Sridharji,
I thank you for inviting me to this great event, which was very well organised, and we really felt special seated with your presence amongst us invitees. You made us feel distinguished and pampered us with your warmth , gifts and the lovely dinner.
We were working silently in our Groups. You brought us from obscurity to the limelight.
Most of all, Yahoo has proved that its not business all the time, but more than that, its about making relations and keeping eternal connections with people, for you have focused on quality within us and not the numbers, as was evident when we went through the programme of the introductions. For this Group who attended the event , Yahoo would always remain their favourites. And so would it be for me. I would always remain grateful to Yahoo and your goodselves for you warmth sharing and and giving us importance.
Yes, one more point, before I leave. All of You speak so well, it was great to hear you talking so effortlessly the flow of words putting us at ease during the function.
best wishes,
Bhaskar.

From Arun Raj - Moderator of Fun_Kingdom
Hey Shefali
It was really a Grand event that took place at sahara star hotel & it was so enchanting than the last event at bangalore, You are doing some great job in Yahoo india & i must also thank you for giving me a chance to share my experience with some older ppls & i was happy to hear from some moderators that they started their group for some noble cause like DR.abhishek having group dealing with blood banks etc & some unique group like the bike normads , illaiyaraja,The_development_cafe, i was lucky to have look at product launch of Yahoo! locals,Really i had nice time there, once Again Thanks for inviting us to such a grand event .With Regards~Arun~

From Arun Vishwanath - Moderator of trainers_forum
Dear Team Yahoo,
Let me at the outset thank you all for organising this wonderful event called the “Moderators Union”.
Yahoogroups while being easy to use and administer is connecting people worldwide!
The introductions from various groups gave us great insights and demonstrated the passion with which the Moderators are working on their pet causes.
Of course, this event personally helped me in benchmarking Trainers Forum. With the planned changes to the Yahoogroups, as presented by Raj Reddy, Yahoogroups would be a great force to reckon with!
We certainly look forward to many more events like this.......
Thanks once again..............
With Warm regards,
Arun Vishwanath
Head - Training

From Dr. Valentine J Gandhi - Moderator of the_development_cafe
Hello and how are you?I just wanted to thank you for organizing a wonderful meet and a great evening. Hats of to you and TEAM YAHOO for organizing the program as well as running a wonderful service as the yahoo groups. Keep up the good work. We are expecting the new features to be introduced soon. I would appreciate if you can show the_development_cafe groups as a featured group. You can use the existing logo. Thank you and regards, Val

PC World names Yahoo! India best Web Portal in the country

It’s official – Yahoo! India is the undoubted no. 1 web portal in the country. PC World announced the 2008 Web Awards recently and picked Yahoo! India as the overall winner of the very coveted title of best Web Portal in India.

Yahoo! India swept this title by a huge margin, leaving several able contenders for the award way behind in therace. Not surprisingly, Yahoo! India picks up this award for the second year in a row! We also picked up the the sub-category win for the portal with the Best Design, under this title.A much deserved win to the outstanding team of Yahoos behind this fantastic web portal.

Here’s what the PC World team had to say:
“Among the many sites in the reckoning, AOL India, MSN, and Yahoo! India raced ahead of the others but the clear winner here was Yahoo! India, which also won last year. It edged out MSN because of its superior design and visual appeal, with the user-friendly interface making it a pleasant experience for the users.”

Read more about the win here - http://www.pcworld.in/india/features/Communications/Web_AwardsPortal/4325504/12

Or simply continue to discover the best Web Portal experience at http://www.yahoo.in/

A whole new Orkut

Like many other young Indians I also jumped on Orkut when it was launched in India and was addicted to it for quite sometime. To give the application its due credit Orkut has helped me very much in overcoming a really bad phase of my life; it was a great stress buster.

Then some horror stories happened in India using Orkut and even some of my friends were also victim and Orkut has lost its charm for many of us until it has introduced some new features like restricted view of your profile to only your friends.

Personally, I find Orkut to be much better for regular interactions than any other SNS; you cant beat the convenience of leaving a scrap. With all the new features Orkut has added (some are little old as well but just to get an overall view in recent times) it is back in favorites:

a) Restricted view of your photos, scraps and practically everything for your friends only
b) Cool Applications
c) Updated Status Message
d) Themes (7 are operational and 5 more to come)
e) Photo Tagging (Tagging of your photo in the entire site)

In a nutshell, Orkut is responding to the competition and innovating the product continuously and so far has been successful in retaining its position of no. 1 social networking site in India.

Social Media in Plain English

Common Craft did it again!

LeeLeFever has come up with Social Media this time. Needless to say that CommonCraft videos are always interesting, attention grabbing and very simple to understand and thats what make them so popular.

This time he has taken an analogoy of a town where the best ice-creams were made. The town grew to have many more ice-cream flavors from the three mundane flavors when every one has started making their own ice-creams rather than depending on one big factory; similarly the market will grow as now with social media every business big or small or even individual has the equal opportunity to connect with their customers. All of them have similar platform to reach out to people who care to listen.

Great Job!

Yahoo! Messenger's latest version 9.0 Beta is launched

Yahoo! has launched the latest version of its Messenger 9.0 Beta on 30th May 2008. Some of the feature enhancements of this version are as follows:

· Pulls user generated content from Buzz and Avatars
· Improved discoverability of status message – choose from 3 states only (thankfully)– Available, Busy, and Invisible; remembers last 5 custom status messages. You can enter the custom messgae in a text field.
· Contact List improvements – contact list can be displayed in either detailed or compact view
· Improved games – Games can be accessed from the Activities button and appear in the same list as plug-ins
· Plug-in selector and skin fixes – new plugin manager and new skins
· Import contacts from other Email, IM and SN sites like facebook , myspace , orkut etc.
· Voice in chat rooms for Vista users

To check the demo of all new features of Yahoo! Messenger 9 go to http://messenger.yahoo.com/promo/demovideo9

To try it yourself download it from http://messenger.yahoo.com/win/

SmartTechie event called StartUp City

I visited the StartUp City event from SmartTechie yesterday May 24, 2008.

The event was worth to attend just to listen to Mr. R.K. Mishra, the Lead India winner (reality show organized by Times of India). The audience was awed by his wit and presence of mind. The way he handled all controversial questions without naming anyone was awesome. Though the event was about enterpreneurship but the audience has asked questions about politics and the state of the nation. The entire session was very enlightening about your own nation.

Regarding the event; it was good exposure to some upcoming start ups and VCs. It was a good visibility for the satrtups I would say but some big brands were also there like Amazon, WebEx, Akamai etc. The turn around was extremely good may be because the registration was free and the event was on a weekend, still it is remarkable to get this kind of crowd. Good job Pradeep!!

The management of the event could be improved like there were no sign boards indicating the Auditorium where the talks were happening and I had to struggle to find that out. The comparing of the event was really sad. Lunch arrangement could have been better; very sad food and only one counter for hundreds of people. Increasing the no. of counters would have really helped to retain people including me for the rest of the event.

Overall I enjoyed my 3 hours of stay there and I really loved listening to Mr. R.K.Mishra. He simply rocks!!!

SNS – New way to make friends or to take revenge

Man's natural tendency of socializing with friends and like minded people online has been given a name “Social Networking” and very soon it has become the buzzword and the greatest online Marketing FAD.

They have provided benefits like everyday people are learning presenting themselves better on online media like Facebook and MySpace; Linkedin is connecting millions of people to get the jobs as per their skills set; Orkut is connecting long lost school mates; Yahoo! Groups is uniting like minded people for a common objective.

On the other hand many teenagers have committed suicide so that they can have a dedicated online memorial website for them; check out the link. MySpace is just saved from a lawsuit by a teenager Austin girl who was sexually assaulted by a 19 year old man who she has met on the site. Read More

Since SNS is all about freedom of expressions and aggression is one of the expressions as well. They have become the easiest place to vent out all your aggression or bad feelings. I have some real life examples from India:

A friend of mine was completely taken aback just few days before his wedding when someone created a fake Orkut profile and started claiming that he is already married to her and he can’t possibly marry again. Because of Orkut she got a quick access to all his friends and within a day all his friends know about it. Imagine the situation of bride and groom at such crucial time.

I know a girl who found a guy from a Matrimonial site and were seeing each other for couple of weeks. Then this girl found out that they are not compatible for a life long relationship. She ended any possibility of marriage on a polite note with genuine reasons. Still the guy created a fake Orkut profile for her and created a mess in her name on Internet.

I have several other examples where people have vented out their anger, frustration publicly while keeping their own identification secret just because they have easy access to all the contacts of victim on internet.

SNS are an amazing medium of interaction and you can do wonders with your professional and personal life through them but all these cases make one thing sure that they should not be used casually. You can make great friends and take your business to new heights by being a little careful about using these networks.

Groups PA button on yahoo.in

Anyone who has joined the world of Internet recently doesn’t have many online friends. They open their inbox everyday and get disappointed to find few or no emails lying there. In such case, the best way to receive emails in your inbox or to know people online is to join online groups.

The next problem is how to find out the best group of their interest category? Which groups to join? How to know which group is interesting? Which group does not have spam messages?

To answer all such questions Yahoo! India has added a PA (Personal Assistant) button for Groups on its home page at http://yahoo.in/.

If you are logged-in on the page; the PA button will show you all the groups that you are member of and if you are not logged-in then it will show you featured groups. Featured groups are groups short-listed by Yahoo! after proper screening to give you a wonderful and spam free groups experience.

So if you want to add some interesting groups in your kitty, just visit the Yahoo! home page and find out the group of your choice and let those interesting emails flowing in.

Big Money in Big Networks

Ever growing social networks are not only attracting millions of people every day but are also reaping big money for their owners.

Many of the top 20 websites on the planet are social networks. Presently 20% of the internet population is present on one or more of these social networks and this number is expected to grow to 50 – 60% says CEO of Friendster; Kent Lindstrom. Refer the article.

And he is not the only one to have this opinion; you can see this happening all around you. Compete announces its list of top 20 social networks and it clearly shows the new players with focused approached are gaining popularity very fast. Notably, Fubar.com had an increment of 3272217% in total visits in last one year.

Very popular business networking site Linkedin has almost doubled its members from last year and reached a mark of 18 million subscribers. More than 1 million people are joining the site each month giving the business networking giant revenue of $75 million to $ 100 million. With its all new look and feel Linkedin co-founder Reid Hoffman is all set to launch an IPO for the company before 2010.

Facebook; another social networking site boasting of $15 billion market value with 60 million users is also not thinking any differently and might come up with its IPO around the same time frame of 2009-10.

IPO is not the only way to make big bucks if you are armed with a very popular social network; buy out is another option. In the past some very popular social networks has opted for the second option and made fortune by finding suitable buyers for them. The best examples are Google buying out YouTube for whopping $1.76 billion and Yahoo! acquiring Flickr for $ 40 million.

Sell it off or make it open for the market; if you are able to make your social networking site popular; loads and loads of moolahs are waiting for you.

Blogging and Promoting your Blog

I don’t claim any expertise on blogging; I have just started blogging myself; but I am reading a lot on blogging these days and have figured out couple of ways to make your blog successful and attracting more readers to your blog.

I am courageous enough to post this as my first post here and have not acquired any readership myself but what the heck, even if one point help someone – my time is worth spent in writing this post.First thing is first; why on earth you want to create a blog? It could be any of the following:

a) For having a huge Internet presence

b) Because it’s a FAD

c) Convey your ideas to the world

d) Discuss various topics with the experts across the globe

e) Share – Link, Pictures, Travel Tips, Poems

f) Building your community on any topic

g) For your passion of a subject

You have one or many such objectives; my question is – do you want to create multiple blogs. According to me; not a great idea – if you are doing full justice to the single blog that you are maintaining well – kudos to you. Keeping a blog active and updated with interesting content is a job in itself. So I would suggest; create one single blog and with the help of various online tools and widgets available free of cost (yippee!!) try to maintain your blog catering to all your objectives.

Not to mention; Posting regularly and keep the interest of users up is of supreme importance; refer the link for some handy tips.

Now, once the blog is created and being maintained as per your requirements; the next big issue is promoting the blog to increase the readership and getting the right kind of audience visiting your blog for the healthy discussion that you are looking at.

I believe (solely my opinion); there are couple of ways by which you can promote your blog:

a) Social Bookmarking sites:

i) Mybloglog

ii) Delicious

b) Microblog about your blog on sites like:

i) Twitter

ii) Utterz

iii) Seesmic

c) Integrate your blog with social networks like:

i) Facebook

ii) MySpace

iii) Technorati

Once you have created your reader community and you get to know couple of interesting people make your own community using Yahoo! Groups or any other community building tool and you are all set.

Get the ball rolling with lots of interesting posts and your blog is a hit!!

Community Management

A Community Manager (CM) is someone who breaths and eat blogs and practically lives on Internet. CM’s internet social presence is much more important than the physical social presence. CM has to drive a vibrant online community by engaging and retaining readers online.

Community is all about people so needless to say CM has to be a people’s person. CM should be able to congregate people for a common cause/objective/interest. CM is the tipping point of any community. CM brings together people and creates a community and grows it until it reaches to a critical point good enough to tip the cause for which community was created.

How do a CM create and grow communities successfully is a very subjective question and there can be thousands of opinions for the same. I am collating certain points that I have figured out from reading and managing communities myself:

Internet presence
CM’s internet presence is critical; your community consists of people who are online at different times; so to have a comprehensive overall view point of the entire community it is very important that the CM is online most of the times.

Motivation
Most of the people are consumers rather than producers. They love to read the messages posted on community forums but rarely do they want to respond due to different apprehensions. CM must act as a catalyst to encourage, facilitate and moderate user generated content on the community forum.

User profile
CM should categorize the community members as high, medium and low users and should incorporate customized marketing strategies for different categories of user profiles.

Interesting Community
All work and no play make Johnny a dull boy. Information is good to have thing but loads of information and only information cant keep people interested for a long time so provide your members with loads and loads of fun quizzes, contests, games and other fun stuffs in addition to critical information about the product.

Dialogue
Community is a platform for communication not only for company but for the users as well. Take the feedback seriously and give them regular updates about their feedback. In other words, don’t just listen to their feedback; get back to them.

Transparency
It is of supreme importance to create the trust for you within the community so for a CM Transparency is the best policy.

Last but not the least
CM should be updated all the time with the latest happening about the subject in the market. Keep reading and participating on all the blogs and events related to your subject and keep on updating your community. That’s the unique value proposition that a CM should provide to his/her community.

That’s my two cents regarding Community Management; you can join some active groups around Community Management as mentioned below to discuss it further:

Yahoo Groups:
a) E-Mint
b) Online Facilitation
c) Successful Website Marketing

Facebook Groups:
a) Community Manager, Advocate, and Evangelist
b) Web Community Forum
c) Online Community Roundtable

Using Social Media for Direct Marketing

Social Media is defined as decentralizing the authority of one individual over content from the World Wide Web. It’s a website that contains everything from posts, videos, photos, links, bookmarks to pod-casts and web-casts via user submission. All these submissions can then further distributed via RSS feeds to the second level of networks.

This content is open for world to comment / rate / vote which essentially means not only you are sharing your knowledge and ideas with the world you are also authorizing them to be judgmental about it and when they do its a happy sign for you as it means that your site is becoming popular.

Social Media brings new opportunities for Direct Marketing as it gives readymade and packaged audience to marketers according to different geographic, demographic and social factors. The social media platforms like Yahoo! Groups, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Linkedin, YouTube, Flickr, Digg, Delicious, Technorati, and blogs are the readymade base of millions of users. It is a platform where in a marketer can advertise and be assured that his message is being heard.
Suddenly it has become the buzzword as the technology has made this concept quite sellable; though the concept is not new. The approach is new as it is better empowered from technology. Earlier also marketers have used tools like Bulletin Board systems and live chats to spread the word across the online communities, but today’s technology have changed the entire ball game all together.

All you need is a wireless network, a laptop and a camera and you are all set. You can market your products / services instantly anytime from anywhere using live streaming over the internet, video/audio blogging etc. All the technology is available to make you mobile and productive 24*7 in doing direct marketing over social media.

Web 2.0 has made the web as advertising paradise for the marketers as they can customize their marketing efforts for different set of customers on the World Wide Web. Web 2.0 has transitioned websites from isolated information silos to sources of content and functionalities. Web 2.0 has enabled machines to understand and extract meaning out of users profile for social networking and delivering information to users in innovative ways creating consolidated information about the users to marketers.

What is critical for a marketer is to understand how to connect with this readymade audience. Now when you have reached the audience; what to do with them sets the rule for further game. The marketer has to be very careful with his message as traditional messaging and too much of exposure can result in offending the audience rather than wooing them. Understanding and implementing proper community engagement protocols is of supreme importance.

So, all needs to be decided now is to what to speak – whom to speak and how to reach them is pretty sorted!!!!! :)