A very warm Diwali greeting to all my friends, clients and followers!

You might know, Diwali is a popular Indian festival, also called festival of lights, celebrated with bright lights in every home and bursting of fire-crackers. People meet and greet each other with wishes for a prosperous time in the year ahead. Not to forget that this is the time to share sweets with the near and dear ones.

I wish you a very rewarding time in whatever you do - have fun and do well. And remember, the joys of life are not complete without a family. So go, spend some time with your family.

Have you been wanting to update your clients,  blog readers or even all your staff about various news, blog posts or just plain offers with SMS? Isn't that much faster and convenient for the users? Google India has launched a Google SMS Channels service just for you

You can setup multiple SMS channels and these can be public (available for viewing and subscribing to anyone) or private (no one can access unless invited). The users need to have a Google account and have to provide consent once by entering a verification code sent to them. No points for guessing that the verification code is sent by SMS.

Once verified and registered, the users can subscribe to any number of channels that they like. Whenever a new update appears on these channels, they will be sent a SMS message.

If you are meaning to start your own channel, the process is quite easy. Just select the "new channel" option and choose one of various ways to update. You can choose to send an update whenever you make a new post to your Blogger blog or with a RSS feed. You an also manually update a channel through the web or directly from your phone. The message will be (almost) instantly broadcast to all the subscribers.

So what can you use it for? I have created a channel for all my company executives and can update them about some matter just by posting an update on his channel. We have also created an offers channel for our clients and prospects where we will be posting special offers with short validity periods. There will be some awesome offers that have to be availed within a few hours. What's your cool idea about using the SMS channels?

I received an interesting question from Sankar N. on LinkedIn - "Are Indian IT Companies leveraging Online Video to help grow their Business?"

I think they are not. Here is what I wrote back to him and thought I should share with you -

• You have put forth a very interesting question. Having been associated with the online marketing industry, I have noticed the phenomenal growth in use of video to promote the web sites, products and brands.

  However I have seen a much lower level of awareness and inclination in Indian companies, even medium to large level ones, in using the social media landscape, blogs and videos to promote themselves and their brands.

  My personal take is - they need to be convinced more about the direct benefits of using these media. I have seen some early adopters start to use blogging and social media but that is a pretty shy 'yes'. I am yet to see much adoption of the video technology yet, specially by the Indian companies.

  The main reasons for this, in my humble opinion, are:

  * Availability of the talent to create such videos

  * Reliable bandwidth (you would certainly know how fast those 2 Mbps connections actually are) and

  * An urge to try out new avenues for brand promotion.

  I think this field is wide open and we need some service providers to come up and demonstrate how beneficial use of video, audio and similar rich media can be, in conveying the marketing message more effectively.

  In my opinion, video can be used in several areas. I have given some that come to mind readily:

  * Video testimonial - these can be quite effective in building trust.

  * Product-in-use demonstration - nothing can beat seeing the real product in use.

  * A short welcome video by the CEO - people buy from people, not companies. Seeing the head of the company talk about the quality commitment of the company can be a big confidence booster.

  * Usage guides: Short videos showing how to use certain features of the products can increase the consumption factor increasing the sales multi-fold.

  I will be happy to take this dialog further and help the interested parties utilise the social media landscape for getting more business and increasing the overall customer satisfaction.

What do you say? Are you using online video for promoting yourself or your brand? If yes, what has your experience been? If not, what has been your biggest constraint? Share with our readers - let's tackle this together.

Today I came across a very interesting new site that let's you make blog posts by email. Are you thinking - "that's nothing new"? Wait till you learn about all it can do…

You can attach a large number of file types to your blog post and it will automatically convert them to the appropriate way to be consumed easily. So your URLs will be automatically hyperlinked and Youtube links (and links from several other video distribution sites) will show up as embedded video. Attach a few photos and they will be shown in an image gallery format after auto-resizing.

They do clever things to several types of attachments and I think you should rather experience it yourself rather than let me rattle on.

Tip: After you have emailed them your first post, you will receive an email confirmation. Click on the link that says "Click here to edit or remove" and change your URL. It might look like arun_dewqr.posterous.com but you can change it to something like ebizindia.posterous.com.

Enjoy!

This Sunday, 21st September 2008, we are going to see the first official Kolkata Bloggers meet AFAIK. I have signed in and will be glad to see you there too. I think the first session is going to be simple fun and get-to-know type but who knows, we may discover some gems and get to share some good ideas.

Please register at the bloggers meet signup page and do come over.

Did you ask for the venue? It is near Assemby of God Church school near Park Street and you can see the full details on the sign-up page.

Dr. Mani Sivasubramanian, a child heart specialist does a blogathon (blogs for 24 hours at a stretch) on September 15th every year. He won't be doing the blogathon this year. Why?

Because this year, he is doing a Tweetathon In view of the popularity of the Twitter platform, he will be tweeting for 24 hours at a stretch, on September 12th. The primary purpose of this exercise is to raise awareness about the Congenital Heart Disease. While surgery for the CHD costs much more in USA and other advanced countries, a tiny sum of about $2,500 can cure one child of the dreaded disease.

While I have been cheering Dr. Mani from the sidelines for the last few years, this year I will be joining him more seriously. I will be a doing a mini Tweet-a-thon for 6 hours, along with Dr. Mani. Yes, I sincerely believe in his cause and strongly feel that we Internet marketers should contribute as much as we feel comfortable with (even $5 is ok, drops can fill an ocean) for such a noble cause. If nothing else, this spreads good Karma.

I intend to give out some nice reports only to my Twitter audience, so feel free to follow me at Twitter and cheer us up. Thanks for your support.

Update: A few people have asked me how they can contribute to the CHD foundation. You can visit this site and read more about the work that Dr. Mani is doing.

I recently watched a video by Frank Kern that shows how a subject line that says "bad news…" got a whopping 39% open rate. And that triggered a flood of emails from copycat marketers. Can you guess the subject lines of these emails?

You guessed it right! All of these emails had the subject "Bad news". Come off it friends. You missed the whole point. What Frank has done is used the "negative news is read more often than the positive news" psychological trigger to boost his open rate. We were all worried that something bad happened to Frank or his business.  

But this has to be used in moderation. You cannot keep sending the 'bad news' every time and still enjoy the same open rate. People will get pissed off when they will realise that they are being taken for a ride and you will lose their confidence - bad thing to do for a long term perspective.

What do you say? Please share your most responsive subject lines with other fellow readers. Did you get similar response rates the next time you used this type of line?

Congratulations to Abhinav! He is the first Indian to win an individual gold for India at the Olympics. Several Indians like Milkha Singh, P.T. Usha, Anju Bobby George, Rajyavardhan Rathore have qualified for the finals but this is the first time an Indian won the Gold. India has won hockey gold medals earlier but even that is his history now.

I really hope Abhinav and others can do it again. I really wish this great talent will not be lost to the lure of modelling and other commercial attractions that will make him lose focus.

p.s. Abhinav is MBA, a blogger and runs his company, Abhinav Futuristics. Congrats Abhinav! Keep it up!!

I recently got frustrated by the really bad service provided by my ISP… I had been patiently complaining and bearing up with all the lame excuses for too long… and sent them a letter requesting cancellation of my account. I was curtly told that I have to fill up a form that required all sorts of attachments including the original receipt (given to me when the account was started).

"But I cannot locate that now - can't you check your records?", I requested them.

 I was again curtly told - "Sorry but we cannot cancel your account in that case."

Ok, so I located the original receipt and the allotment letter and all that and then I noticed a note on the form, a clause  that says - Please get a confirmation from the bank manager or a court officer that he personally knows you." How the hell does this relate to me cancelling my account?

I have no idea - do you have any? 

Recently I found a smart, modern bank demonstrate prompt customer service totally lacking in imagination and they lost good business because of that. Here is what happened and what they could have done:

I had a decent sized fixed deposit with Yes Bank which matured recently. The bank promptly issued a cheque for the maturity amount and sent to my registered address. I was happy to receive the cheque without having to remember the maturity date, fill up forms and then follow up on the payment. However this lacked basic marketing. If only they would have called me once to ask me if I wanted to reinvest my money with them, I would have gladly agreed as that meant no loss of interest and zero work on my part.

Are you spending all your time hunting for new prospects without bothering to do anything to retain your existing clients? Think about it. You can get more business from your existing customers much more easily.