June 2009 Archives

I've just concluded an amazing business trip to New Dehli, Bangalore, and Mumbai. Though my expectations for the trip were high--India is an exciting place to do business--I was completely unprepared for the reception I received.

Beginning with New Dehli, working with india's 2020 Media we presented a series of 8-hour workshops on social media. In New Dehli there were in excess of 100 participants, filling the ballroom of the Hyatt. In Bangalore and Mumbai, the overflow audience actually resulted in turning away those desiring to purchase tickets once the venues had sold out. Filling a venue is always the goal: seeing actual demand beyond that capacity really drove home how energized the India market is in terms of its readiness and interest in social media based marketing.

In working with participants across a range of industries--the hands-on nature of the workshops provided people with the opportunity to join me on the stage and present various components of the plans they were building--I was struck by this new leadership class. What I felt I was observing was quite profound: You could literally see the next class of business leaders and professionals sensing the importance of the Social Web--the place where conversations that impact their businesses will occur--and committing themselves to doing something constructive now rather than waiting. This is a contrast to the US, where many businesses and agencies are still hesitating in their recognition of consumers' impact via social media.

The net result is likely to be a rapid movement into social media across businesses in India, to the benefit of those business. Given the process acceleration that often accompanies technology induced advancement this will occur faster than it has in other locations. For example, as the 3G spectrum auctions begin this fall, the outcome is likely to be a very rapid expansion of social networking and related content services that proliferate on the mobile platform, introducing a wider audience to social media more quickly than would happen if say, broadband to the home or widespread purchase of laptop-based computing platforms were required.

In summary, I am excited about what I experienced and look forward to continuing to work with the people I met on this trip. It was an incredible awareness opportunity for me, and I am appreciative of the efforts of everyone who attended, and to the people of 2020 Media who worked so hard to make these sessions successful.

I am heading to India--sitting in Newark in the Continental President's Club right now--to lead a series of workshops on the business use of social media. This has been arranged by 2020Media, a leading PR firm in India and grew out of the presentation I did around my book at SXSW in March. It is really exciting to be developing relationships in an emerging market, and one that is surely important on the world stage.

What's happening now? I've been following Kingfisher Airlines on Twitter (@FlyKingfisher) and installed Aircel's "voice messaging" application in Facebook. The Tata Nano is getting a lot of social press as well--@calebkramer posted "Tata Nano = the netbook of cars." I am looking forward to what I know I will learn over the next week.

OK, so I just got called out by Surekha Pillai (@surekhapillai) about my bad blogging habits. She pointed out --correctly -- that as I head out to lead social media workshops my own track record on this blog is pretty poor. February. April. And now this post in June.

I could cite my schedule: 3 cites in the past three weeks, and two continents in the next two. Not good enough. The fact is, being a participant, one of the key elements of interaction on the Social Web, requires more work than consuming a TV spot. I need to be a better participant.

So, what's a reasonable posting scheduling? For most business people, it's probably more like once a week: Keep this in mind when you set up your company blog. Enlist a few people to blog so that content is updated regularly. Otherwise, two things happen:

First, even though the RSS mechanism by which updates are spread about doesn't care, your readers will: They'll lose interest if they don't here from you. Second, and as is the case with me, readers will actually take note of the fact that you aren't participatiing enough. Left unchecked (and please note that I am immediately responding to Surekha) this can turn negative. Obviously, you don't want that!

Surekha, thanks for pointing this out: The truth is that no doubt others have seen my blog and thought the same thing. It's that old saying, "For every one customer who says something, ten are thinking it.." I'll get my act together.

I am really excited about my upcoming trip to India: i am visiting Dehli, Bangalore, and Mumbai with 2020Media on the 22nd, 24th, and 26th of June respectively. You can find full details at SocialMediaWorkshop.net.

In the meantime, look for just a bit more activity here. ;-)