first why i wanted facebook page, i read this infographic at marketinconfessions , it states by the time we read these lines (average 1 min) , the following happens inside facebook

• 510,404 Comments
• 382,861 Posts liked
• 231,605 Messages sent
• 135,849 Photos added
• 98,604 Friendships approved
• 82,557 Status Updates
• 79,364 Wall posts
• 74,204 Event invites received
• 72,816 Pages liked
• 66,168 Photos tagged

that’s a lot of activity online, and all these activity carried out by engaging audience, all these numbers are already convincing to have a presence in facebook for the brands, but if you still wondering why, let me explain, as a business you need your own audience and connect with the right people and then engage those audience with your brand, that is were we need to create facebook page, a platform to engage customers along with the brand.

As of now i didn’t do much to my facebook page, just the page has been created, added admin details, linked twitter to the page wall, filled info section. Once i am satisfied with all the information i have provided in facebook page, it is time to get many fans/likes, that’s another milestone, as of now i have no idea how to go about it, will share once i find any.

once upon a time Lion and Tiger were near the lake and about to drink water, just before that, Lion uttered a loud Roar, and Tiger asked “why now?! just you and me are here, don’t you think its foolish?!” Lion replied, “well, i am king of the forest and i have to communicate the message every now and then, that’s my Advertisement and sending the message nobody come near”

Rabbit over heard the conversation and thought “if only this noise is required i can make noise and drink my share of water peacefully” so practiced enough to give a roar with its squeaky voice while drinking water, one fine day Fox walking by wanted to see where the noise is coming from and spotted the Rabbit and ate it.

Moral of the story: “when you advertise, be prepared to deliver or handle the situation”

with the power of social media and with proper blending of Inbound Marketing strategies, you will start attracting prospective customers even before you really are something, when you land the customer be ready to deliver else communicate you are not doing it NOW!

why? :-

it is simply over promise and under deliver situation when you don’t deliver what is expected of from you, you are just burning a bridge or future opportunity lead. i am not saying to play it safe, i am saying “deliver” at any cost, if not politely say, NO and direct them in right direction.

when you put your future lead in right direction you make much trusted customer for you, who will turn to you in future as well.

well i am not a management or marketing professional, so i am not sure, i googled and i just found few websites talking exclusively about it, maybe they have different terms for it.

what is benefit selling is?

simply put, you sell the benefit the customers going to enjoy buy owning the product for its unique features etc., instead of detailing out the features.

why this works?

take apple iPod advertisements for example, instead of speaking technical details about the product, they simply say “it loads 12,000 songs, 8 hours of music, sexy chrome finish” that is they are selling the benefit not the product features, this eliminates the customers to put extra effort to relate the features to the benefit they might get.

and in psychology perspective everybody wants to help themselves first, then they are ready to help others.

if a sales person approach a customer and says, “hi buy this mp3 player, it has 8GB space, i will get good commission for each sale”, even if the customer is in need of it, he wouldn’t buy, he wouldn’t buy from that sales person unless he sees some benefit for him.

alternatively, if the sales person approach the customer and says, “do you know listening to music increases concentration power? ”, “it looks really cool to wear a mp3 all the time” and “i am selling mp3 players hand picked myself, want to buy one?”

second approach leaves no option but feeling if he buys the mp3 players he buys only from the second sales person. because he sees the benefit of best hand picked mp3 player, he already know he wants to improve concentration or look fashionable.

that is exactly selling benefits instead of detailed feature information.

Introduction to popular kids game:
As a kid, me and neighbor’s kids would play a game, game would work like this, you need to tell a meaningful and lengthy message to another kid in your team and message is passed on from one kid to another and when it reaches the final kid, you need to compare the initial and last received messages, often time it would loose the core message and end up very hilarious messages.

Normally business would need two key people, the business owner and the technical specialist, the business owner comes in with the vision of getting some work done, and technical specialists will get that vision to product, business owner pay for that service. As business grow, business owner had problem talking to large crowd of technical specialists, then he developed two senior most from pool of technical specialist as his point of contact, to talk to other technical specialists, things are still fine until those new point of contacts started to develop 100 new point of contacts, eg: for a team of 30 member there are 5 managers between the technical specialist and the business owner.

most of the time the business owner is only good to communicate his vision to his team, that just gives the enough jolt of motivation to act in the direction, but the problem now is the kids game described above, we cannot ignore the fact that the news get diluted or worse modified from business owner to the last technical specialist, with so many middle managers, also vice-versa, business owner may not be properly informed about the exact problem that technical specialist sees.

we cannot eliminate managers, they are required when company is growing, but many business owner forget it is a luxury, they need to have them only when it is absolute necessary, we should keep the managers count at the very least possible, else we are nailing our business’s coffin. As a business owner we need to regularly talk and connect with our technical specialists, and cross check (never in presence of your manager) are we communicated properly –  similar to this one

Good:

business owner: i said A

technical specialist: i heard A and said B

business owner: yes, i heard B

Okay:

business owner: i said A

technical specialist: i heard gibberish + A + gibberish

Bad:

business owner: i said A

technical specialist: i heard Z and i said Y

business, no, i heard L

if you think you are not communicated properly, you know what need to be done.

Teacher 1: i think her name is Geetha or Usha, she was my class teacher when i was in my class 2, i had difficulty in reading and writing english, she taught me to do so in non traditional way, which isnt available in text books by then, she taught it in the form of games…she would tell a word to write it down, i would write with so much spelling mistakes, instead correcting me with what is correct spelling, she would ask me to improve it one letter at a time, until i finally arrive at nearly closer spelling for the word, sometimes i would write ‘check’ instead of ‘cheque’, she would defend me saying it is correct as long as it is still conveying the message…maybe its her influence i give a dime about grammar as long as i am conveying what i want to convey.

Teacher 2: i dont know her name, but i still remember this lesson she was teaching, it was about Winston Churchill and the quote is ‘never never never give up’ it would have ended up as another lesson but it isn’t she was very passionately chanting that quote and let us say it loud, then she explained how it isn’t about giving up to others but giving up to ourselves, eg: we want to wake up and do the reading, but we would say i will sleep some more, that is giving up to ourselves, only losers give up to themselves, do you want to be a loser? Damn it struck me so hard!

Teacher 3: my high school principal, his name is Babu, high school isnt smooth ride for me, i always will end up in trouble and end up in principal office, the reason i reported to his office this time is ‘i didnt bring the record book on the day of practical exams’ normally he would beat with a long stick, but he didnt maybe he got so tired of beating me or he wasnt in mood to get up from his chair, he just said this words ‘do whatever you want to do, but never let someone to point their finger at your face and question you’….

Teacher 4: at the start of my career, i had to under go training for contact center job, there i met this awesome teacher ‘Talat Anwar’, among so many teachings from her this one thing settled in my head: ‘sharp tongue never sleeps hungry’ and ‘nobody wants to buy your product, but everybody wants to buy benefit, always sell benefit’

Now tell me about your teachers in your blog and leave me a link in comments.

they have this highly secured access method, if i remember correctly, to login i need to provide two passwords along with very ‘unique’ username, and i have to reset my password every two weeks, and whenever you change password you cannot reuse the same password used in any of that two passwords for last 3 times, also password should contain at least special character, caps alphabet and small letter and a number, i am not a creative person for passwords, and with this much restrictions, i nearly have to act like a password generator myself. With all these pain, i end up writing down my passwords. One fine day i gave the service once for all. I still get emails from religare once in a while to checkout all new improvised platform, i never feel confident with them…

It is good to impose tight security, but in the name of security dont impose something unrealistic, for a user your website is just another service he uses, his life is not dedicated for your service.

i wish these password mechanisms are simple for end users.

If you want to know my personal experience with airtel, click here.

Ok, actual point of this blog post is, will these negative trending tweets impact stock prices?

My answer is YES!

simply put, buying a stock is investing on company’s future and current situation.

what these negative tweet trend can do?
1. stop their potential new customers
2. motivate existing customer give-up service

any business survives only when they have customers (b2b or b2c) to serve

more customer – more success
less customer – less success
declining customer – declining success
increasing customer – increasing success

when a company is loosing customers, their future is very dim without proper counter action to stop it, as we know stock is about investing in companies future and current condition, investor will think twice before investing.

Between as of now 11AM, 23 November 2011, Airtel stock is featured in NSE as top loser.

what leads to success

1. passion

1. do it for love – not for money [its not like work for charity, but it should be last in the list, if you have seen “The Social Network” movie, Mark’s friend will be asking him to start monetizing the website, but Mark stands firm and says we don't know yet what this website is upto and when Sean Parker steps up, he will refer as making million dollar is good, but billion is great, so when you are just beginning or whatever you never know the real value you and your work is upto, so don't do it with the price tag]

2. work

1. work, hard work – have fun at work [i have worked with many people and witnessed this myself, those who succeed in their work are the one’s that work really hard with smile on their face, they do it as if they are playing a game, they work hard and get thrill out of it]

3. good

1. be really good at what you do [nobody likes mediocre or incomplete work, we all love german engineering for its perfect finish and smoothness]

2. practice, practice and practice [improve daily]

4. focus

1. focus doing one thing – only one thing at a time [if you are doing all the above and feel you are loosing somewhere, it would be focus for sure]

5. push

1. push yourself [when everyone else finish doing at what is expected of them, you do one final round of check, that's extra – push!]

6. serve

1. serve something of value [you work should mean something to someone, find that someone and know what your work is doing to them, get motivated]

2. be useful

3. solve a problem

7. ideas

1. be creative [this will make our day to day work interesting and exciting…]

2. out of box thinking

8. persist

1. stay firm with your decisions, goals [sometimes we have to face with troubles, you know if persistence isnt there…”quitter” will be born]

I was asking how he gather knowledge and how he share his knowledge with the world, and how he connect with the similar minds working on same subjects,the answer is pretty plain: i talk to my colleagues, i regularly read the journals and magazines on this topic from the office library, which is kind of shocking for me, then i ended up asking if he blogs about his learning, to my surprise he doesn’t do that, and he is kind of no idea about it, was asking what is it, then finally why the pain? so all his knowledge sharing happens among his peers. He is not alone, my father a electrical engineer with vast of knowledge in his sector, he never communicates about the subject with people outside his work circle. It made me to conclude many of seniors in previous generation, aren’t really sharing knowledge over internet, their medium of sharing knowledge happens only at work. These gentlemen are capable to share and guide the next generation and stop them from re-inventing the wheels instead focus on next big thing. for that these gentlemen should start blogging or get involved in similar activity.

here’s the series of questions i faced with when i ask them to blog:

Why i should blog?

For others:

You have spent more than a decade working so and so topic, you know the pit falls new comers will ought to face, you know what is proven and what is not proven, you know the challenges that needs to be solved, those who starting in your sector will be better informed and be thankful.

For you:

You will become the authority of the subject, almost every starters these days start to gain knowledge on something after searching over internet, there is the very good possibility you will be quoted whenever there is a discussion on that topic, "Mr.xyz said in his blog post that abc is possible…", that is the moment to pride for, after you retire, you will still be asked for the help and guidance, if you are more giving insight on the topic, more you become the de-facto for the topic.

If you are convinced:

How do i blog?

Blogging is easy and free, you have so many options where to blog, prominent one’s are wordpress and blogspot.

Choose your platform and start writing the articles on your topic of interest, just treat it like your extended notebook, where you jot down your ideas and gained knowledge.

Ok, blogging requires lot of effort and time, what i will gain from it?

As i said earlier, you will become the authority of the topic, very good chances are you’re quoted among next generation professionals, if that sounds like a charity, i can show you, how business takes place in your blog…

You write a very content rich blog posts, which contains lots of useful information, which means you will attract almost everyone searching for the specific information to your blog site, say if your blog about electrical engineering involves uninterrupted power supply(UPS) for industries, which means many of your blog visitors are either working on UPS and electrical engineering, and you have product recommendation related for those visitors, eg: cheap UPS, battery, job sites for engineers, etc…(there are thousands of them).

Those are targeted adverts, i can explain them more, i have blogged them in detailed in other blog post.

I hope this is convincing enough to start a blog today! My best wishes and thanks for sharing your knowledge.

what am i selling?

I dont have to mention, you should be knowing everything about your product or service in detail, at least the selling points.

to who am i selling?

Know to whome you are selling and define them, age brackets, geo distribution, there are many categorization out there.

where my buyers hangout?

Know where you customer will hang out, where they spend their time, i hope you get the idea – the advertisement you see during your favorite football match is classic example.

where my buyers are searching for me?

where they gather information, whome they talk to for product/service suggestions, conferences they take part in, journals they read, all these places your customers specifically searching for your product/service.

what is my buyers language?

We call it as keywords, classic example is “where do i get ruby?” For one customer they meant the gem stone Ruby, and another customer meant the ruby programming language and installer for it, so you need to understand all possible keywords,languages customer will use to find your product.

:)