How to BOOST Online Visibility for your Personal Brand [Infographic]

If you are out there doing your DO; Are you Doing your DO online as well??

When someone Googles you, Do you Exist in the Google-God’s Directory?

If you do exist, how kind is the all knowing Google-God about your Personal (Brand) Reputation?

Question! Questions! They bother even more when we are at a loss of an Answer.

But seriously, If you have a NO or an un-satisfactory answer to any of the above, my dear friend, it’s time to hail the mighty sword (your partner in crime-your netbook) and prepare to conquer the Social Media Goliath with your humble presence.

If you are new to the concept of Personal Branding then this is THE article for you, as I will now explain how to Brand Yourself across different Social Media Platforms to boost your Online Visibility; and if you already have been a Socially Savvy Smarty, then it’s time for you to move step up further in the journey of Personal Branding and you may want to work with a Personal Brand Strategist who will empower you to build an ICONIC Personal Brand both online & offline.

I have also curated an Infographic as you see below that highlights the 6 different Social Media Goliaths that you MUST conquer with the Power of your Personal Brand.

So now you know why & where you MUST be Socially Branded!

Now comes the Best part: How TO?

Twitter:

Twitter is the King of Social Media-in my opinion at least.

1. Twitter will empower you with an online stage with a Global Audience to showcase your Thought Leadership. Use the Generous Space of 160 characters to Brand your twitter Profile with a Powerful and Relevant Bio. When I say Relevant, I mean Honest yet Interesting.
2. Brand your Twitter handle with an Identity that best represents YOU: Your Name or your Branded Name – if any different!
3. You may also add links to your Personal Blog/Website to draw traffic for Business
4. Using your Name in the Bio-Space, is a brilliant strategy for DIY SEO.
5. Get a Brandtastic Headshot for your Twitter profile; one that is TOTALLY on-brand

Facebook:

If Twitter is the King; Facebook is the undisputed Queen of the Social Media

1. Claim a Vanity URL for your Own as well as Business Page, which looks like:facebook.com/username. Click here to check out my Branded Facebook Fan Page!
2. For your Personal Profile, give your it a Privacy Makeover by changing who can see what section of your Profile; this helps you project the desired Brand to different groups of audience
3. Do mention your Professional details in the about section, as what you do is equally important as the USP of your Unique Identity
4. Upload a cover picture that accentuates the UNIQUE essence of the Personal Brand’s SOUL; My Tip: Let the SOUL of your Brand come alive on your home page
5. Maintain a strategic healthy balance between the fun-side and professional side of life on Facebook as you don’t want to come across as a Geek all the time!
6. Linking your Pinterest account with your Facebook Account will ensure you keep your network entertained and enriched all the time!
7. Most importantly, do not share pictures of yourself that would compromise your Personal Reputation either now or 10 years down the line. Be Sensible today, rather than being Sorry tomorrow!

LinkedIn:

Well, for me LinkedIn is the Young Prince of Social Media who is soon to be the King!

LinkedIn enables you to present your Best Professional Brand to the corporate world, to those who really matter! This is in fact the first platform where you should BRAND YOURSELF. You can check out my detailed post on How to Brand Yourself on LinkedIn.

Google+

Google Plus is like the Court Minister of the Social Media world, without whom we would probably not have such access to the thriving kingdom of Social Media.

1. Getting your Google Profile is like the first step to SEO Nirvana; so get your Google Quotient perfect by claiming your profile today.
2. Use the Google cover picture wisely, by Branding your Punch-line alongside your headshot for maximum impact and let your true Brand Shine-on!
3. Create a Google Page for your Business under your Profile for a Double SEO treat!
4. Use Google Hangouts to interact with your Brand Community on a regular basis; Video is the FUTURE of building a powerful Personal Brand Reputation.
5. For now, you may also claim your username or vanity URL using http://gplus.to until Google blesses us mortals with an in-house facility to do so

Klout

Klout in my belief is the Court Gossip Monger, who is the indispensible informant to know who is worth what in the Social Media Kingdom!

1. Get yourself on Klout today, either with Facebook or Twitter, to discover how much clout you have in the Online world!
2. Connect all your Social Media activity to Klout for best results

About.Me:

About Me is like your Court Confidant who will share with the world, only your Best!

1. Get your Branded Vanity URL on About.Me before it’s gone!
2. This can serve as your Personal Website in case you do not have one, so design it well
3. Customize the look and feel of your home page with the colors that best represent the Brand YOU.
4. Fill it up with a Brandtastic Bio that makes the reader get in touch with you for reasons best for business!
5. Connect it with your Social Media Presence to provide a one-stop shop for your entire digital footprint

The post How to BOOST Online Visibility for your Personal Brand [Infographic] appeared first on India Business & Technology Hub.

Use of Smartphones and Tablets at Workplaces in India [Assocham Survey]

A recent survey by The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) revealed that more than half of the corporate workforce in India prefers to use smartphones, iPads, tablets and other mobile devices. Mr D.S. Rawat, Sec. General of ASSOCHAM also pointed out that tech savvy employees are using 3G mobile internet to communicate, seek and share information.

Assocham’s study was conducted in Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Kolkata. The respondents included 350 professionals, officers and executives across various industry sectors including manufacturing, real estate, automobile, healthcare, retail, hospitality and BFSI.

54% of the respondents said that they use at least one mobile device, 27% use smartphones while 10% use tablets like iPad at work to complete work-related tasks. More than half of the respondents believe that they did not need to be in the confines of a cubicle or the walls of their offices to be productive.

Majority of the workforce echoed similar ideology that mobile devices including iPads, tablets and smartphones helped them remain accessible to colleagues and clients regardless of their own location. Productivity emerged to be the keyword here as many respondents also used their devices to do office-related work while commuting to their workplaces.

The survey also revealed that the use of smart devices went beyond boosting productivity on-the-go. Employees said that they used these devices in meetings, conferences and other work scenarios to take notes easily.

To get further insight into how companies are adapting to the increased perception and demand of flexibility at work, the Assocham Social Development Foundation also interviewed Admin and HR departments from 50 organizations.

Despite the fact that access to social media was banned at nearly 60% of these organizations, HR managers were looking to tweak their existing policies. The major reason behind this attempt to ‘gradually adapt’ was the concept that social media presents extensive networking and marketing opportunities.

The interviews also revealed that most of the Admin and HR personnel want to incorporate the use of mobile devices and tap into increased levels of efficiency and productivity from their employees.

Enabling young tech-savvy employees to ‘cater to customers outside normal office hours’ was one of the drivers behind this push for adoption of using smart devices at work.

Allowing and empowering employees with smart devices at work is not a new concept, even for India Inc. Heads of various IT services companies like SAP Labs India and Cisco India have already spoken out about a similar concept of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) at work.

"The use of their own devices also leads to a significant increase in productivity , as a device of their choice would allow them to respond to requests faster" said B Raghavendra Rao, VP, SAP Labs India to ET earlier this year. Just last week, Global IT research and advisory firm Gartnerlabeled BYOD as ‘the single most radical shift in the economics of client computing for business since PCs’.

Like with most IT adoption initiatives, smart devices used by employees at work pose certain challenges.

Lack of appropriate software and hardware controls may leave an organization’s corporate data susceptible to malicious attacks. Recognizing this threat, many of the Admin and HR respondents from Assocham’s survey said that they were ‘taking steps to implement mobile-data security measures and designing new software models to prevent loss of crucial data’.

Despite a sluggish economic environment, the Indian PC market reportedly grew 17% in Q2 2012. IT companies will welcome this trend of using mobile devices at work, hoping for an increased percolation of tablets in the hands of tech-savvy Indians.

Dr. Rawat also mentioned the potential snowball effect of employees using smart devices in workplaces on the IT industry. "The growing demand to work from their devices of choice amid young employees is also likely to spurt demand for IT support including software applications, networking technologies for multiple devices and even the 3G mobile internet services in the long run", he said.

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HP Make IT Matter Contest Questions [Week 3]

First 2 weeks of Trak.in–HP Make IT Matter contest have been a bumper success. We have had 14 winners in first 2 weeks (out of over 350 participant) and we have another 14 winners in coming 2 weeks along with Bumper prizes.

So for those who participated in first 2 weeks and were unlucky, you might just get lucky in coming 2 weeks, so make sure you do participate. Also, you can only stake your claim for bumper prizes if you participate in all 4 weeks.

We are into our 3rd week now and here are the set of 5 questions that you need to answer.

Week 3 Questions

Here is a hint for all of you – If you want to get all your questions right, you need to be specific. Answer all the questions for Week 3 given below. Also, all previous participants make sure you use the same name and number as you have done previously.

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If you have any questions, please let us know in comments section.

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E-Books in India: The Present and Future

With the launch of Amazon kindle in India, clearly e-books for the first time are getting attention by publishers as well as readers. There is a lot speculation going on e-book market in India. Someone is saying that it will pick like ecommerce has picked up. I don’t agree.

Present situation of EBooks in India: an Analysis

EBooks phenomenon has been unsuccessful in India, everyone talks of it, but no one buys it. Why? Very simple, nobody told them (readers) to buy.

Are eBooks better than printed books? In US-UK, eBooks sale more than printed books, this clearly shows eBooks are worthy.

So, who pushed / evangelized the eBook concept to readers there ? Amazon, Apple, Google, Nook, kobo, Adobe. Western people do listen to their technology companies, because they have certainly changed their lives.

So again coming back to original question – why eBook has been a flop show in India?Why nobody told the readers here to switch to eBooks?

Here is my analysis:

• Indian Publishers don’t understand technology (in fact they hate technology, I don’t know why). So they were not interested in eBooks.
• Schools/Colleges don’t want their students to use eBooks. It’s very new concept to them. They don’t like their students to use gadgets (tablets) extensively. E-learning companies can throw some light on readiness of school / college principals on use of technology.
• Governments (ministers & secretaries) don’t know that eBook exists at all.
• Parents are more bothered about the marks of their kids. They want their child to remember things, not analyze things. They believe tablets are for entertainment. It’s a diversion for their kids.
• Now what about readers? Why they didn’t ask for eBooks? I found only reason – Readers here like the smell of printed books. I don’t know what kind of spiritual smell is there, which western people don’t get.

So, what is the future of EBooks in India?

My opinion is very clear; it (eBooks consumption in India) will take its own sweet time. Neither publishers/schools/parents/readers are in hurry. By 2016, US publishers will have 50% of their revenue through its eBook sales (currently it is at 20%). By 2016, I expect eBook sales in India; will not be more than 10-20% of total sales. Amazon will play a very important role here.

Game Changers (factors which can trigger eBook consumption)

1. Price of eBooks
2. Push from Government/Schools/Colleges /Corporate

EBooks can’t be priced in the same range of printed books. It has to be at least 40-70% cheaper, than the discounted price of printed books.

Many publishers argue that with the growth of eBook sales, their printed sales will come down, and finally they will make loss. I totally disagree. Till now, publishing industry is totally dependent on distribution. Many good books have not reached to masses because of poor distribution infrastructure in India. EBooks don’t have that issue.

Push from institutions is equally important. Readers want some angel to come and tell them – hey why don’t you buy eBook, it’s cheaper, better and reading is more social. Your experience of reading will be much more than reading dead tree books.

As, publisher of books & eBooks , we have put our bets on eBooks. Let’s hope for the best.

I would like to hear more from readers, what they think of “eBook phenomenon in India” ?

[About the Author: Bhishm is Co-founder of AuthorZilla (Global Publisher for eBooks). His interest lies in reading and writing. He can be reached at bhishm@authorzilla.com]

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Social Media Political Campaigns: India Vs USA

Campaigns from the streets have moved to newspapers, radios, television and now even onto the cyberspace. Campaigns can be of any type, social, NGO, political or marketing. Based on the demographics that you want to reach, particular medium is chosen.

The usage of social media by US politicians has been very aggressive. The websites, twitter & facebook accounts are synced, maintained and updated frequently, sometimes every hour.

Apart from these standard social networking platforms, google hangouts are now used to interact on a more personal basis. Hangout functions as an interactive TV. Now, US’s demographics show that there is a majority of people currently aged 20-35 who are very active internet users but not big on voting.

So to appeal to them, what better platform can the politicians get than Social Media? So US President Barack Obama went online on Reddit, which is a unique social media platform, you can post a news and interact with others using comments and based on number of upvotes or down-votes, your post appears higher on the front page – he generated a cool 2,00,000 visits which was enough bring down the site for a while.

‘likes’, ‘shares’,’Retweets’and ‘upvotes’ may not necessarily transform in to votes during elections but they ensure a reach to an otherwise politically uninterested, demotivated (due to lack of jobs) and hence frustrated section. When Mitt Romney’s wife took to the stage, 2500 tweets were recorded per minute. But most were puns or jokes, taking the spotlight away on the twittersphere.

In India, the story changes altogether.

Hardly any of the politicians are actually active on any of the social media platforms. There is an official facebook page and a twitter account for Dr. Manmohan Singh but it isn’t interactive as compared with US President Obama. Hardly any of the politicians accounts active as of now.

This has two reasons

1) Majority of internet users aren’t eligible to vote

2) Social Media scrutiny

Currently 50% of our population is below 25 years of age, and average age of an Indian is 25. This will change by 2020, as the average age then will be 29. So till I think the politicians don’t find the Internet as a powerful tool yet.

But the use of social networking by Narendra Modi, Chief Minister of Gujarat is comparable to his US counterparts. Today he is slated to go online on Google Hangout at 8 pm.

He has been active on twitter and on Facebook too. The official website also is very interactive and regularly updated as compared to the websites of other Indian politicians.

Other politicians active on twitter are Shashi Tharoor, Dr. Subramanian Swamy, Sushma Swaraj, Baijayant Jay Panda (Odisha) among others.

Social media scrutiny is another thing that keeps the politicians at bay. If someone is wrong on the internet, it becomes the responsibility of each netizen to correct him. And if anything on a social networking site raises a storm it eventually finds its way on to the other mediums. Mr. Shashi Tharoor is an example of this. Occasionally his tweets used to be in the eye of the storm, but one tweet about economy class on airplane was the final nail in the coffin.

He resigned as the Minister of State for the Ministry of External Affairs in less than a year after being sworn in to the office.

If one holds a public office or is a public figure, the responsibility to tweet, share and retweet cautiously becomes more important. Since now many US politicians have been featured on Reddit, and have been successful in keeping it as clean as possible and probably achieved even what they wanted. Here is an example of a PR move gone wrong. Woody Harrelson, an actor / director went on Reddit to promote his latest movie, somehow things escalated and the whole chat became about how he slept with one of his students 10 years ago.

What’s your take on use of Social Media usage for Political campaigning ?

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4.5 Cr Internet Users in Rural India by Dec 2012 [report]

Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IMRB have reported that there will be 45 million, or 4.5 crore internet users in rural India by December 2012.

Dr. Subho Ray, President of IAMAI believes that internet penetration of 4.6% in rural India, up 73% as compared to 2011, is just the beginning of an unprecedented spike in rural internet usage in the near future.

"This is just the tip of the iceberg, in the next two years, a combination of affordable smart phones, optic fibre backbone and local language content is likely to change the beat all projections of internet growth in rural areas", he said.

From the IAMAI report, it also emerged that music, photos and videos turned out to be the major attraction for rural folk who accessed the internet.

Img Src: IAMAI

More than three quarters of rural internet access was driven by entertainment needs while slightly more than half of the users went online to communicate.

There were about 3 crore internet users in rural India in December 2011. The 50% spike leading to the expected 4.5 crore by December 2012 is primarily driven by mobile internet access, community centres and cyber cafes.

Amongst the three, mobile internet was seen as a ‘fast emerging’ access point for the rural population.

Mobile internet in India has triggered many pivotal changes in media consumption in India.

A recent survey revealed that a certain section of urban users have cut their consumption of media and information from traditional sources like TV and newspapers by less than a half; only to access online content from their mobile devices.

In % terms, internet penetration in India is believed to be one of the lowest in the world. It could be because of the fact that penetration of internet into rural India, which is estimated to be more than 60% of India’s billion plus population, is only 4.3% according to IAMAI.

Lack of infrastructure and lower than average speeds have been considered by commentators, as the reasons behind these staggeringly low levels of penetration.

However penetration levels could be on the verge of an unprecedented upward trend. Potentially, many favorable factors play into Dr. Ray’s comment that ‘This is just the tip of the iceberg’. State governments and companies alike, are infusing IT into various areas of rural infrastructure.

ITC’s E-Choupal, Iffco Kisan Sanchar and Reuters Market Light (RML) are some of the mobile and IT based initiatives that Indian farmers are using regularly to access information regarding weather, crops, pricing, etc. S Srinivasan, CEO, Iffco Kisan Sanchar confirmed to ET that more than 12 lakh farmers listen to voice messages on their mobile phones to get monsoon related updates every day.

It is also hard to ignore how smartphones have got cheaper and mobile internet access has become affordable. The mobile phone market is flooded with sub Rs. 10,000, cheap android based smartphones. As telecom operators pump in millions of new entrants every month into India’s mobile subscriber base, 35.2% of which is rural, internet consumption and penetration is undoubtedly expected to rise.

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A quirk in recent smartphones

Smartphones have been here for a long time now. Blackberry is a company that only deals with smartphones. Apple became the world’s largest company launching a single smartphone model a year.

Almost every company have their high end phones having all the necessary smartphone things in them. And since the dawn of iPhone, the whole scenario changed on its heels.

Then came Android phones pushing the sales of smartphones further. An exclusive commodity once, it now can be found readily even in a child’s palm.

As the phones became smarter, the data in them became more sensitive. In fact, right now the situation is that giving someone your laptop might be more secure than your mobile.

Need for security brought in passwords, patterns and of course, security apps like Apps locker, antivirus etc. I can proudly say that my phone is secured of all privy people, in person or online. Even if it gets lost I can track it by GPS or erase all its data so that it does not fall in wrong hands.

Smartphones have been made as secure as computers, probably more. There is just one problem to that. I cannot call someone when the phone is locked.

There is to be honest only one reason for that. What if I have an accident and am being rushed to a hospital? Can my family be informed immediately? No! Anyone opening the phone will not be able to go beyond the lock with an emergency number dialer below that is useless in India.

Our emergency numbers do not work with it. If there was an app that could change the emergency dialer to our contacts or if it was hard-coded in Smartphones itself it would be very useful. It adds the risk of someone getting the number if your phone is stolen but to be honest there are only two types of thieves. One who will sell it in black market and do not care about any contacts and two, who want your data and for them a single number is of barely any importance.

And there is always a case where if I lost my mobile, and the person (who has found it and wants to return) needs to call one of the contacts on my phone, so that he/she can inform about the lost phone. But because the phone is locked, he/she cannot do that.

Here, I will be honest in saying that I have not used ICS and Jellybean (on Android) till now, but as far as I know, these features are not present in them as well. There might be some apps for this maybe, but they are not widely famous and to be honest this should be hard coded in the mobile OS itself.

An OS working in so many countries, they should give the option of customizing at least a few numbers as emergency so that lock code can be bypassed to call or at least message them.

What do you guys think on this? Are there any apps which can do so?

Does Apple or Blackberry provide such service? Share your views.

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