The Role of Social Media in PR

The advent of the Internet has been no less revolutionary for the way people relate with the world around them, than the discovery of the use of fire or the invention of wheel was for early man. Among the most important advancements in communication technology that was spawned by the Internet revolution is the introduction of social media channels of communications.

While on the one hand these have diminished the importance of traditional media to communicate on behalf of brands; they have on the other hand provided communicators with a very powerful medium to reach out one's message in quick time to an extremely focused and targeted social media. What's more the effectiveness of the message can be measured on the basis of real time feedback from the recipients.

This has caused a paradigm shift in the way PR or Public Relations professionals have begun to practice outreach on behalf of their clients. The traditional rigmarole of shooting out press releases, holding press conferences, organising interactions and an occasional Op-Ed will no longer do. In an era where newspapers and TV channels struggle to survive and assorted bloggers, online news portals, and social media messaging redefine the rules of the game all the time, up-skilling is the need of the hour for communication and PR professionals.

The last Indian General Elections saw the now Prime Minister Narendra Modi leverage the power of social media to communicate directly with his target audience-young aspirational India and blow into smithereens the reputation and electoral chances of the more than a century old Congress party which had lorded over the country for more than sixty years. Modi continues to see no use for the cantankerous and noisy traditional media and treats them with the contempt they probably deserve. No more do you hear of expensive overseas junkets to self important journalist who think no end of themselves. Instead he would rather engage with the government owned Doordarshan or wires like PTI and ANI. Above all he continues to rely on social media, which keep him in direct and daily touch with millions of his followers in India and abroad.

There are a number of advantages that accrue to a communications professional, PR consultant or marketer by leveraging the use of social media-
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1. You can publicly address an issue on an immediate basis:
If a car company has noticed that a lot of complaints have been coming in pertaining to issues with the brakes on a certain model of car, they can immediately address the owners of that particular model on social media, advising them to suspend the use of their car, and wait for the company to contact them for carrying out a rectification of the problem.

This could prevent a crisis in the making and forestall the necessity of an expensive recall across several models.

2. Mass sharing of information:
A company or for that matter a politician can show their concern for their constituency by sending them updates that concern them. A mobile phone manufacturer can let its customers know about upgrades that they can download or new models they can purchase online.

A politician can let the people know of the initiatives they have taken, and what else to expect going forward.

3. Direct and interactive access:
I was once informed about the cancellation of my flight a mere three  hours before departure and it took a great deal of effort to somehow get myself a ticket on another airline to make it back home in time. As I wasn't too happy with the way the cancelling airline handled the issue I tweeted about it.
By the time I landed, I had received a response from the airline's customer services department apologising for the inconvenience caused and expressing their desire to speak to me about it and assuage my feelings!

4.Inexpensive:
If you are a self published author who know that you have a masterpiece on your hands, yet don;t have the monetary muscle to publicise your work, get on board the social media marketing and PR express and see how with a relatively small sum of investment you can reach out to hundreds and thousands of prospective buyers.

PR practitioners have to master the art of creating engaging social media posts for their customers, Tools like Hootsuite enable one to post across multiple channels in a manner of minutes, thereby granting the ability to manage the social media campaigns of a large number of clients. What's more one no longer has to pitch to the mighty mandarins of traditional media hoping that the powers that be see merit in the message you want them to carry.

Social Media give you the wherewithal to send out the message that you want without having to worry about journalist oversight. Any tempering that your content might need will come from your intended target audience and not some self appointed arbiters of the kind of messaging that is right for your target audience.

The Changing Contours of PR

The way that people consume news has completely altered since the advent of social media. From being the main source of news and considered opinion, conventional media comprising of newspapers, magazines, television and radio are now referred to after the news has been consumed online in real time mostly from social media websites like Facebook and Twitter. The primacy of traditional media is therefore fading right before our eyes.

In the case of India things are a little different in that the growth of literacy accompanied by the growth of purchasing power has seen an explosive growth in vernacular print media. However in so far as the urban centres are concerned online and social media are beginning to rule the roost like elsewhere in the world.  With a gargantuan telecom subscriber base of 933 million, 117 million of which are smart phone users the reach of online and social media is not to be scoffed at. Internet connectivity as a whole is available to a mammoth 300 million Indians.

However it seems that Indian PR practitioners are yet to wake up and smell the coffee in that they still deploy most of their resources in chasing journalists representing traditional media. With bottom line pressures buffeting much of the traditional media outlets, objectivity and a professional approach to news inputs is quite often not quite visible. How many traditional  journalists care to attend press conferences these days? Besides even in the case of one on ones and interactions there is no guarantee that story will see the light of the day.

Rather than continue doing things the old way, PR practitioners should educate their clients about the advantages of online and social PR. Online news portal journalists and bloggers are generally not only more approachable, but in many cases better able to understand the nuances of the story and are able to render it better. Besides they always reach the right target audience. The ultimate PR vehicles in my opinion are social media with their enormous reach that can be targeted with infinite precision.

There are a whopping 112 million Facebook users in India, 33 million Twitter users, 26 million LinkedIn users, and 5.5 million people on Pinterest. The circulation and readership figures of most newspapers and magazines are almost puny in comparison. The key to leveraging these media lies not in cultivating indifferent and sometimes ignorant journalists, but in the ability to create and post relevant content on behalf of the clients.

This makes the task of the PR practitioners a lot less thankless, and they no longer have to  simultaneously contend with capricious clients and journalists. Social Media PR requires the regular creation of germane content, targeted with precision at the right target audience. There are tools that let you post simultaneously and quickly on multiple sites, while others help you give the posts a boost. The results are quick to come and can be easily tracked and analyzed.

This kind of outreach is far more dynamic and lets the client interact with their target audience in real-time and in a manner that is personal and intimate. In comparison the outreach obtained by traditional media is very vague and dispersed and one has no idea how the target audience perceive the message. Online PR is truly the not so distant future.

Getting Famous Online

The Internet can be used to get famous. Really famous. There are several ways of doing that. Some have been well documented and in the last chapter we discussed the attributes required to get famous. Given below are five unknown, very fun, but highly effective ways of getting famous, leveraging the potential of the Internet.

Videos that go viral

We come across these supposedly accidentally shot videos of someone doing something remarkable without noticing  that they are being filmed. The person may be doing somersaults on the roof of a high rise building practising his flips right next to a sheer 100 foot drop, oblivious to the danger and enjoying his routine. Somebody uploads it and the clip has millions of hits online. Soon the man’s identity is known and he becomes a household name, and the media are at his door with interview requests, and he is even asked to lecture school kids on the benefits of exercise. Sounds far fetched but this is how the phenomenon of viral videos pans out. And mind you these are invariably pre-planned and anything but spontaneous.

Now what is noteworthy here is that a viral video can make you very famous in the proverbial overnight time span, and if you can successfully effect one you have had it made. If one were to learn from the various examples of successful viral videos one will realise that it is not really that difficult to pull it off.One of the ground rules to follow is that the length has to be kept short what with people’s short attention spans and the veritable deluge of viral videos that has descended upon us.

 It has to be remembered that a video is not inherently viral. It has to be worked upon and made that way. A whopping 3 billion videos are viewed on YouTube everyday! How do you make yours viral in such a scenario. The content needs to be reached to the right target audience first for it to receive the right push that will make it viral.

To ensure that the video gets the initial attention, it does of course have to create a

good first impression. Then the description or transcription that accompanies the video is important too and the key words should be chosen with care. Remember that YouTube is also a social medium. So get the conversation flowing back and forth by initiating it and actively participating in it. Get the traffic flowing so that it eventually it reaches viral proportions.

Take the case of the Star Wars kid video which got viewed a 900 million times. And what was it about. A fat kid foolishly waving his stick about again and again proving that there is vast market even for stupidity. See how much better you are then. You probably have something useful to showcase. Justin Bieber apparently had the same idea when his video of the song Baby was put up on YouTube, paving the way for him to become the pop sensation he is today. He started off with 50 million page views. The examples are umpteen actually

Or take the case of Amber Lee Ettinger whose video depicting her love for President Obama was viewed 14 million times. Then there is the case of Ted Willimas, the man with the amazing voice who got a job as an MSNBC anchor thanks  to his viral video on YouTube. So we see that viral video are a proven and extremely effective way of gaining fame, provided one is able to use it the right way

Go Blog

Blogging is one of the simplest and most effective ways of getting famous, and the best part is that you could be anybody-the average Joe or the wiz-kid of the block; both of you have an equal chance to hit it big by blogging. The basic premise is that there have to be numerous people who are more or less like you and would respond positively and appreciatively to what you put up on your blog.

The way to achieve success is by updating your blog on a regular and consistent basis and by focusing on quality. It might take some time for you to build up your audience, but you will get there if you persevere. The trick is to socialise. Comment on other people’s blogs and get them to comment on yours. Let people know about your blog but do not over do it. Use the right vehicles like Facebook and Twitter to reach your message to a vast audience in an unobtrusive way.

It might also be a good idea to enable sharing buttons on your website. That apart you can share links with other websites. When you do that traffic gets diverted from your site to the ones that are linked. Those sites will get to know of this through a ping back and they may in turn get interested in yours. This way you create a virtuous cycle. Putting together a side-bar embellished with link widgets takes you a step further.

While it is all very well to be blogging regularly you should monitor the direction that your efforts are taking. Find out what constitutes the major portion of your traffic, and customise your posts to cater for that section. It also pays to be a bit smart. For instance you can closely study the strategy applied by the most successful bloggers and try and replicate it. It might work wonderfully for you and in double quick time too.

 Another way of getting noticed by the right people is to occasionally blog as a guest on other sites, which have synergy with your blog. This will put you in direct contact with just the target audience you have always drooled over. This will be your chance to win them over.

In essence blogging is something where time is on your side and you can and will willy nilly make a great success of your blog, if that is what you want to do. Really one of the best ways to get famous.

The truth of this is borne out by the many success stories of bloggers who have become celebrities in their own right by the very power of their blog posts. The most famous blog in the world is the Huffington post, which specialises in breaking news pertaining to a wide array of subjects-world news, entertainment, business, politics and fashion. Started by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerra and Jonah Perreti in 2005, the blog was acquired by AOL in 2011 for $315 million. Then there is the Micahel Arrington founded technology blog Tech Crunch with a whopping $4.5 million subscribers, which was again acquired by AOL for $25 million in 2005. You have traffic, the biggies will be waiting in the wings to pay you a huge some for your coveted blog. That is the way the cookie usually crumbles if you can show substantial traffic to your site.

For the gadgets aficionado there is Engadget, the blog started by the former Gizmodos editor Peter Rojas, provides information on everything that there is to know about electronic gadgetry. The popularity of the blog can be gauged by the fact that it operates ten other blogs in English and six other languages. This blog too is one of the famous purchases of AOL.

The point in sharing these examples is to showcase the tremendous power of a blog in terms of how famous it can make you and the kind of revenue you can possibly generate. Now not everyone will possibly be this successful, but one can understand that a fair degree of success is possible for anyone who is able to follow the methodologies discussed above. The degree of success of course depends upon the degree of innovation and capacity to leverage displayed by the individual.

 Nothing like Entertaining

If there is anything that people take to instantly, be it the offline world or online world it has to be entertainment. Music, dance, food, fashion and culture make the world go. And if you can put up stuff online that people find genuinely entertaining you are set to achieve success, fame and wealth.

If you are a comedian or a singer or perhaps a painter there is no better way of acquiring a fan base, than being on the Internet. People have this urge to know the smallest detail about famous entertainers-their hobbies, their food habits, their hang out joints and what it is that they wear. If you can get a sizable group of people genuinely interested in your craft, you will have them eating out of your hand, by leveraging such information on the Internet.

Get across to your target audience by writing blogs about your performances, posting videos. Give them a glimpse into your life- your joint performances with other artists, any new deals you may have signed;the works. 

You have got to remember that your success and livelihood depends upon your fans being happy. So take full advantage of this interactive platform and get to know your fans up close and personally. Respond to their comments and criticism, chat with them online, send them mails, do everything it takes to keep them hooked on to you and see where that gets you.

The thing that is of paramount importance for you should be of identifying the right niche and segment that you want to focus your energies on. If for example you are excellent at rock ballads but can sing hip hop too, rather than diluting your image by catering to both the segments, it would make sense to focus on your core competency. You will naturally attract more and better quality traffic with something you are really good at rather than in dabbling in several things you are only average at. In economics this is referred to as the theory of the comparative cost advantage.

Once you are sure of your genre, you have got to give it your all. Use blogging, social media,  and YouTube for all its worth and try and form associations everywhere. A multi pronged online approach will create opportunities which will sometimes exceed your wildest expectations. A singer might be approached by a multinational record label,  and a cookery blogger might get approached by a TV company for his own show.

The online world has so many examples of people fulfilling dreams of a lifetime simply by being on the Internet. The website College Humor was founded by  Baltimore high school friends Josh Abramson and Ricky Van Veen as a means of keeping in touch. Today it has grown significantly and receives 8 million male visitors between the ages of 18 and 24 every month. And how do they entertain? By popularising a novelty foam hand by parodying the well known ‘We’re no 1’ foam hands sold at sporting events. 

They actually used an inside joke of college students and turned it into something else. Last heard they had signed a deal with Paramount Pictures which has to do with making movies on college humour.Take the unique case of self proclaimed ‘pirate’ George Ouzounian or Mddoz who hails from Salt Lake City, Utah. He created the website, The Best Page in the universe-the name has its origin in the now defunct Yahoo policy of blocking sites which had the word best as part of the title. 

So this started off as a form of protest and took on a life of its own and eventually made one of the most controversial and visited sites because of its often vitriolic content that targets detractors. The point to be noted is that notoriety is the flip side of fame, but as long as you get the traffic and don’t break any laws, you will be attractive to marketers who will want to be a part of the action.

A similar example is that of Rotton a website dedicated to morbid curiosities. Revolting perhaps, but there are people who are drawn to this. It was started in the California Bay Area in 1996 and has grown into this great purveyor of the macabre with a dedicated fan base. Now there are regular entertainers like actors, singers, performing artists, fashion designers and of course regular people like you and me and not just the weird  eccentrics, who use the Internet to entertain, inform and engage.

You think  you have what it takes to become an entertainer make the Internet your friend. It is cheap, easily accessible and can put you in instant touch with your prospective audience. Plus you get real time feedback on your performance which you can effectively use to improve your act and make it more in line with what people want. If you get it right, in time you are bound to grow big.

Be a specialist

The Internet is a world that is teeming with people’s posts, blogs, articles, pictures, videos, e-books, games and some not so savoury content. How do you get noticed in this bewildering maze of content. Going back to the economic theory of the advantages of comparative cost, by specialising in a particular niche. Now what can that niche be? It is something that you are particularly good at. Something that you can call your own. You are so good and adept at providing that product and service there is no one else who can replace you.

The online world is driven by content or information. If you are effectively meeting specific requirements of a set of people better than anyone else be it in the shape of music that your produce or game that you create, then for that particular niche you are irreplaceable. The fact of the matter is that your target audience expects you to be an expert. So you had better be, by doing research and refining your skills. Make it your niche and yours alone and nobody else’s. 

Once you have the above sorted out and have traffic in place you can go ahead and make money from this traffic. This can be done by signing up for an affiliate program that lets advertisers place their advertisements on your site for a consideration. Not only do you make money by marketing the product or service, you also specialise in leveraging the traffic to your site to earn more money-a win-win situation for you.

You can learn from the examples of others  who have done wonderfully well for themselves by focusing on the right niche. You would be surprised that some of the best examples of niche marketing are not small timers but large corporations. Take the case of the remarkable revival in the sales of its computers by Apple. They designed silver boxes as replacement for the old black boxes which were perceived as boring and Steve Job went after designers and  Microsoft geeks and eventually re-established Apple. Or take the case of Groupon which made online coupons fashionable in preference over boring old paper coupons. Their niche? Local businesses whom they wooed with their creative writing style. Or take the case of Etsy which came as a godsend for  crafters and buyers. No longer did crafters have to depend upon summer markets and farmers markets for their income.

A classic example is Hotmail the pioneering email service provider. Sabeer Bhatia the Indian immigrant techie in the United States quickly realised the humongous possibilities by making the email a ubiquitous service that it is know. From being nearly broke to having Microsoft buy his small set up in a multi million dollar deal, Sabeer Bhatia’s is a classic tale of how correctly identifying a niche for you to exploit can one day make you a fortune.

Be special

Following up on the above where one talked about creating or discovering one’s own niche; this cannot and will not happen unless your product or service is unique and in a class of its own. Before you come to as to what makes you or your offering unique, we need to address a more basic question. Who are the people that you plan to serve? For example if you plan to be an author, you cannot be writing about everything under the sun and expect to make any headway. There would be so many like you who wouldn’t have the slightest clue about what the profile of their average reader would be. 

However if you want to be known as an author who writes books whose characters hail from Brisbane, you would be able to identify your target audience-the people of Brisbane. Now you can go all out and woo the people of Brisbane. How many authors would there all of whose characters would be from Brisbane? That would make you unique. You would be able to through you books on the city explore different facets of it. Its history, its people, its culture, its cuisine,  its entertainment hot-spots and so on.  You could literally go to town with snippets from your forthcoming books, information about the real life people and events that inspired you, the part of Brisbane you grew up in and other like trivia. By and by you would create a unique position as the definitive voice on Brisbane.

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f you are looking for examples of uniqueness saving the day for websites, the successful ones are all unique. Take the case of Facebook which propounded a unique model of online social networking. Today there may be many copycat sites. But can they replicate even a tiny fraction of the success that accrued to it? Not a chance!. Because they were clearly not unique.

Well Facebook may be a legendary example, but there are many many more which validate the contention that being unique is the first step taken towards online celebrity and fame. Take the case of Saddleback Leather, the leather bag company par excellence. There is no other lather bag company that manages to have its aura, its personality and its fan base. Log into the website and you will come across bull fights in Mexico, travel in third world countries, the everyday joys of life and heart warming anecdotes about the owner’s pet Labrador Blue. What further touches a sympathetic chord with its core audience: ‘They will fight over it when you are dead!’

If there can be so much passion and uniqueness attributed to handbag The Mast Brothers can be forgiven their obsession with hand crafted chocolate. For that is indeed their USP,  marketing jargon that stands for Unique Selling Proposition. Rick and Michael Mast convey that “we’re from the 18th century, back when craftspeople were revered and took pride in working with their hands.” That line conveys their uniqueness unequivocally.  They drive in the uniqueness of their product by travelling by sailboat to foreign shoes to being home the best cocoa possible for their chocolates. Now wouldn’t their clientele be theirs and theirs alone for life. They naturally have gone to town on the Internet publicising the uniqueness of their products in the most unique way possible.

You may think that this is an over the top and eccentric way to prove that you are unique, but when the stakes are high can it be otherwise? Work out your uniqueness quotient before you even begin to think of making mass contact. That being said, there is nothing in this world that stops you from finding your niche.  The Internet universe is a much fairer and more democratic organism than what has ever evolved over the eons, and everybody has a fair chance at communicating with like minded individuals. This is the Internet’s greatest strength. Make it yours

Young Internet Millionaires Harnessing The Power of the Web: New Age Entrepreneurship

We have all heard stories about obscure teenagers turning into huge celebrities overnight. They are children who, by the time they came into their teens turned their  everyday hobbies and passions into multi-million dollar enterprises; all by reaching out to vast numbers of like-minded individuals on the Internet.

Before we begin to understand what it takes to bring about these tremendous transformations, let us begin by going ahead of us and taking a sneak preview into what sort of lifestyle changes a (formerly) regular person experiences, as a result of becoming an online celebrity.

Somebody like Marck Zuckerberg, the billionaire founder of Facebook cannot step out onto the street without attracting a crowd of photographers, journalists, tourists, autograph hunters and possibly a posse of policemen for their security. Then there are others like dating columnist for Times Out New York, Julia Alison, who even if not in Zuckerberg’s league, has more than 10000 people devouring her blog every day..What’s more, she has been profiled by New York Times and the New Yorker crowned her with the epithet-the most famous young journalist in the city.

You become an internet millionaire at a young age and the world is your oyster. The best cars, snazzy mansions, incredible holidays, and the best people to date-you will get all that and more. If you are really at the top of the heap every newspaper and magazine, worth their salt, would like to feature you, and there will be offers to write books (perhaps your autobiography which can be turned into a book). Large multinational corporations would like to sign business deals with you and you will be a youth icon and role model for the young of the world.

Successful Online

There are a number of people who have made a mark for themselves by skilfully using the internet to promote themselves or their business models. You will find that a great many of them started off fairly young, sometimes in their teens. All of them shared a strong belief in their conviction that they had the right product and service for which there existed a healthy market, and they gave their all in its pursuit.

If one were to look for examples, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of social networking site, Facebook , is easily at the top of the heap. Founder and CEO of his company, Mark has a personal fortune of about $6.9 billion dollars! And to think that he started off in Middle School and boy, has he grown! Today he is one of the most widely known human beings in the world and, recently, there was a Hollywood blockbuster that documented his rise.

This is an example of a rare and unprecedented growth, but there are many many others who may not count among the world’s richest folk, but still have grown exceedingly rich and famous by any standards of the world. The success story of immigrant boy, Gurbaksh Chahalais, who was born in India and raised in California is quire inspiring. Dropping out of school at 16, he set up gWallet, and is today personally worth more than a hundred million dollars.

Quite honestly, the examples are far too numerous, but what is striking is that most of these individuals began with an original idea at a very young age and made their millions while still under 30 years of age. Never in the history of mankind, since the advent of civilisation, have so many young people made such prodigious amounts of money at such a young age.

The influence of young, happening and vivacious people with an attitude, who have the ability to influence vast numbers of their peers is borne out by the success of blogs like Missmalini where irreverence, fun and a devil may care attitude are the defining flavour.

At the same time, a highly creative and competent team that contributes to the blog, disseminates information greatly in demand by hordes of young people across the country-in the shape of real time blogs, photographs, guest write-ups, fashion and Bollywood content etc. And to think that this was started as a lark by radio DJ and gossip columnist, Malini Agarwal, who is, today, feted by film stars and revered by Huffington Post which calls her India’s most famous blogger.

It is the power of the internet which has given wings to the imagination of these new age entrepreneurs and given them the ability to soar. Truly the invention of the internet must rank as highly as the invention of the wheel, the electric bulb and the automobile, in as much that it’s impact has been epochal.

What is in it for me?

What can success on the internet give you? This is a question which has many parts and you may wonder as to what it is that becoming an internet success would hold of special significance for you? Is it about the money, the fame, the adulation, the popularity, the convergence with likeminded people, or is it about notoriety?

Well, the fact of the matter is that the internet and internet millionaires are a recent phenomenon and the judgement is yet to be out as to whether it is all good, or whether it is a mixed blessing, and, no doubt as the years go by and the golden boys of this era add a few grey hairs to their temples, sociologists and psychologists will write their theses and treatises on the subject but right now it suffices to say that the internet provides unprecedented opportunity, but along with it comes the pitfalls, which are really part of the territory if you are looking at a blazing a trail and making a name for yourself.

Consider this. The internet is a vast ocean of information which you can harness and put to use to further your own objectives. Now, your objective may be something as simple as help in your homework assignment, or you may want to run an online pizza delivery business. You may even want to write your autobiography and try to make it reach as many people as possible, across the globe. The internet empowers you to go ahead and accomplish this.

The internet will let you communicate with whoever you want, anywhere in the world. This means that you can work and be entertained with likeminded people, when you want and where you want, without being at a disadvantage because of your age, sex nationality, religion or geography. Now, this can be a tremendously liberating thing. You are free to choose who you want to work with, at what time and on what terms. The same applies to recreation and entertainment.

What this means is that the very paradigm of living life as we know it has changed. For the first time in the history of mankind, one has the truest personal freedom of choosing one’s career, where you choose your own schedule and give full rein to your creative imagination.This does not, of course, mean that there is no flip side. Of course there is, just as it is there in everything in life. There is danger of spamming, identity theft, pornography and vicious virus attacks.

But these are illegal activities and you should take all measures to protect yourself against them. If you indulge in such activities yourself, you do so at your own peril as you are breaking the law. Then there are other pitfalls, not the least among them being Internet addiction. The internet is a tool that you can use to get ahead in life and also indulge in for some harmless entertainment. If you make it the be all and end all of your life, then you will have no life to talk about.

Your online friends can never fill in for real, physical contact and interaction. Neither can online gaming take the place of a game of basketball. You have got to put things in perspective and you will be alright. Take the case of Facebook- a great way to socialise and re-establish contact with long lost friends. But you know what? Don’t be the fool who lives to update his or her status on it. Who wants to know what you had for breakfast today? Try Facebook to launch your business career or for finding employment. It lends itself very nicely to such things thanks to its vast reach.

The internet can empower you like nothing else, but you’ve got to be focussed on your goals and not get side-tracked by its many distractions. It’s like life itself. The choices you make decide where you go. You can use the internet to sell your skills and get rich. If fame is your thing, the internet gives you access to a vast audience, and if you are up to no good and indulge in dirty tricks and sleaze- well, the internet can provide notoriety too. As they say: to each his own.

Famous Online Better Than Famous Offline.

Most people in the Western world and large sections in the rest of the world have a real life persona and an online persona. This is especially true of young people, also known as the Internet generation. All most everybody these days communicates by email, rather than rely on the good old postal services. Texting and video chatting have become mainstream and e-commerce has willy nilly entered all our lives. Don’t we remit money or receive it into our bank accounts online, and haven’t we all used the credit card to make purchases online? We all swear by e-bay for God’s sake!

The point that one is trying to make here is that we have a very active online life that co-exists with our offline life. But  a debate really arises when we have to choose between performing the same function in the traditional or off line fashion or the contemporary online way. Take the case of making payments. You have the option of writing a cheque or making an online transfer. Cheques are relatively safer, but can’t match the speed or convenience of an online money transfer. 

Another example is socialising. Communicating via the net obliterates distance and time differences, but if you want to enjoy a coffee together with your friend or watch the sunset together, you have to do it offline. But the wonderful thing is that as online technology evolves we may be able to even do things that we right now consider impossible. Like smelling coffee. The coming days will see the Online vs Off line debate getting more and more interesting.

What makes online famous a different kettle of fish?

Now you might turn around and say that to me it does not matter that I got famous the old fashioned way, without having to use the Internet, and what ultimately matters is the result. You may be right and you may be wrong. While it is true that one can get famous using traditional media like TV, newspapers and magazines, one cannot claim that these media represent you and what you have comprehensively. Getting famous using the Internet on the other hand lets your target audience know you and what you stand for more intimately. They can personally connect with you on your blog, and you can chat up with them as frequently as you want. You can use analytical tools that will let you know precisely who is interested in your offering and how many of those are establishing contact.

The thing about being spotted on the Internet is that it is a very democratic and a cheap as well as fair process where everybody gets a shot at being successful, whereas in the traditional model you need to knows how to work the levers of the system for things to really work for you. Entertainer PaulaAbdul one time judge of American Idol felt that there weren’t enough avenues for young people to go out there, showcase their talent and get famous. So she launched an online service called Audition Booth which lets budding talents  upload their videos which will then be available to talent scouts. They can also search the site for upcoming gigs and auditions and send across their credentials. This site is free for people to use, though there is a premium service as well which is available for a charge.

Look at this in another manner. In the old days one relied on one’s family, community, society and church to get along in life.At that time one needed that support. As time went along and technology reduced our dependence on people, one’s number of friends and acquaintances dropped dramatically. In the modern era, the time immediately preceding the Internet saw most people having about three people they counted as friends. Which was fine except that you could not use the three to spread the word about say the new book you wrote. You would have to pay professionals to do that.

With the advent of Internet all of that has changed. The average person has more than a hundred friends on the various social networking sites and these are a valuable resource in case you want the word spread about something. Word can spread like a viral infection on the Internet and make a mega celebrity out of nobody in a matter of two or three days. This even has a term-viral marketing. So you see the Internet has changed the rules of the game completely and the goal posts have been moved a lot closer for everyone’s convenience.

Be known online

The online world has assumed a huge amount of significance in today’s times and this is only going to grow and grow. It would therefore stand you in very good stead to mark your presence in it in a very telling way.You simply have to develop your social presence in a manner that you are effectively able to leverage your attributes, skills, likes and dislikes to a vast and appropriate audience. 

Social networking sites led by Facebook and Twitter are fast and ruthlessly efficient enablers of this- far more effective than traditional media like newspapers and television, and best of all cheaply available and accessible to everyone.Today the youth are defining and constantly re-shaping and evolving the digital world by their socialising, entertaining, learning and studying and following the latest trends online. You are not a part of it, you are dead. Period. 

In order to be heard you have to be on top of the form. E-mail and Instant Messaging are baby steps in this world. You have to be part of online communities where you contribute actively and constantly interact while at the same time learning to innovate. Be it blogging, web-casting, trending, on-line trading-your transactions will build up for you an online profile by which people will gauge you. Much like in the world of finance, each country or for that matter each individual has a credit rating, so it is in the world of the Internet. You have to make your presence felt.

The power of the Internet as a harbinger of change was brought home by the highly effective way in which Arab youth were able to harness its power to bring about The Arab Spring. This was something the previous generations could not achieve, as they did not have the tremendous power of the Internet at their disposal. We are in the throes of the mighty digital revolution and the youth are the ones who are driving it and it is in their individual interest to put their individual stamp on it.

Uninterrupted Economic Success

The Internet is a medium that can be effectively used to achieve overnight success. Now whether this success is a flash in the pan or sustainable over a long period of time depends upon how you play the game. Overnight success does not come to many and the lucky few who get it might have worked really hard to achieve it or might have been plain lucky, but what is important is how they manage it, or whether they are able to sustain it or indeed grow it.

The Internet not only empowers the individual but by extension the community, the nation and finally the world. In countries like  India for example with every passing year Internet penetration increases and with it increases the opportunity for the Indian youth who have already gained a formidable reputation for their IT prowess, to make India the crucible of new ideas and innovation. 

This has the potential to pitch folk the Indian nation way ahead of where it is now and quite rapidly, and truly become the world’s economic power house. India with its democracy, rule of law and well established institutions patterned after those of the West is perhaps better equipped to achieve this than an at present richer, but dictatorial China, which denies its citizens the freedom to think freely and therefore innovate, a prerequisite in this bold new world of the Internet with its ever evolving and changing by the minute paradigm.

Truly living the Internet life will be the ultimate game changer for mankind and we are in the throes of a lifestyle metamorphosis which is of no less significance than the momentous occasion millions of years ago when man first learnt to walk upright. Nothing is going to be the same again.

Content Rules and Rules

The time for content has come and how. Press Releases though not yet passé, don’t catch enough attention. High quality cutting edge content is the new mantra to engage one’s traffic audience. Can’t get that to them, you are in big trouble. Period.

But the reality is that content as a means of pitching your products and services is not new or novel concept. Most companies have been using content in the shape of blogs, reports, surveys, news-letters et al for a number of years. Only they didn’t know that what they were doing was creating content.

However it is in the sharply focused leveraging of content as a means to expand one’s product or service footprint by way of holistic brand building and more efficient lead generation that one has moved away from the traditional methods of positioning content as an effective marketing implement. This requires for organizations to get their acts together in the areas of both editorial and marketing. Among other things, it requires a firm handle on the PR, SEO and social media aspects of one’s outreach strategy.

More than anything, including making prolific PR the mainstay of one’s strategy, one needs to focus on quality. With a multiplicity of media channels, including the all pervasive social media the emphasis of this cannot be overstated. This is on account of the fact that the target audience now has the wherewithal to provide feedback that you need to respond to. You put out inane marketing drivel, they will just disconnect.

People are no longer going to lap up anything you dish out. They will respond if you are talking to them about something that addresses their concerns. Lastly you will eventually run out of marketing spiel to hand-out. You really do need to work very hard on the content that you advocate, or it won’t work for you. Just updating your posts or getting out press release after press release amounts to little more than some pompous spamming.

In order for your content to be able to set the social media space on fire, it needs to be useful, entertaining and catchy. If it is not, then you are either not enhancing your online prestige or are busy downgrading it.