I recently concluded a fun and adventure filled trip to Jammu and Kashmir. At first I was hesitant to undertake this trip with family as several people warned me not to go ahead in view of the 'alleged' disturbance in that area. However I am happy that I insisted on going ahead, Kashmir being one of the important places in the list of my must-visit destinations.

Yes, you might get scared initially as you will see army-men all over the place. They are paranoid about security with multiple and thorough checks of your bags and vehicles. However you get used to these soon enough.

We landed at the Srinagar airport and the drive to the hotel (Lalit Grand Palace) through the road besides the famed Dal Lake was enough to mesmerize us. There was a blast at the Dal gate on the previous day and most of the local people were indoors but we faced no problem at all in reaching the hotel. A shikara ride and surf boarding in the evening were clear signals that this will be a trip to remember.

We spent the next day visiting the Nishat Garden and Shalimar garden and lazing around the hotel, conserving energy for the next day's trip to the holy cave of Amarnath. We also took the royal buggy ride in the evening, which has a historic appeal of its own. It is said that the buggy belonged to Maharaja Hari Singh on whose palace property, the hotel is built.

The helicopter ride to Amarnath through Baltal was very exciting as it was the first time we were riding a chopper. We could see thousands of pilgrims going to Amarnath, on horses and on feet.

The helipad at the holy cave is a small flat area built in the middle of a snowy plateaue. A steep climb of about 200 steps and we were at the feet of a large snowy Shivlinga (about 20-25 feet in height). The ground under our feet was freezing and we had to constantly keep walking to avoid frost-bite.

It was a dream come true for us - both religion and adventure wise. On the way back, I got to sit with the pilot in the cockpit. Amazing experience it was, seeing the fantastic landscape from the vantage point.

This is a Web 2.0 world and whoever is going to deal with you is going to check out your reputation on the Internet. They want to know about your background, activities, past history and other things about you. They do it by searching for your name and brand names and checking out the top few results. What do they say about you? Are your sites coming up in the first few results (at least top 10, may be top 20)?

Time for reputation management.

How do you cover your bases and make sure that the first 10 or 20 results are all positive mentions of your name and brand? There may be some negative reviews and that's not good news. How do you get this changed? Most of the times, you will find that you cannot get these reviews changed to favorable notes. The only way out of this is to push these down by bringing up positive reviews. Here are some quick tips to do so:

1. Your main website is a prime candidate for a top 10 ranking on your name and brand. In fact, you can get this at #1 most of the time with simple SEO.
2. Your company blog is another important candidate for a place in the top 10. You can get an indented listing or an independent listing if it is on another domain.
3. You can also get your personal blog in the top 10 list because you will be repeatedly mentioning your brands here.
4. Your Twitter profile can also get in the top 10 ranking if you link to it a bit liberally and set your profile properly.
5. Your page on social sites like Squidoo, Hubpages is also a good candidate. Again you need to set your profile and get a few incoming links.
6. Your profile pages on popular forums can also get in the top rankings. Focus on your profile at the forums where you are active.
7. A testimonial on a vendor's page or the sales page of a product you like and recommend can also take up a place.
8. You can issue a few press releases on popular sites like PRWEB.com and link to these releases from a few places. These pages are very powerful and help you direct some visitors to your sales pages from links in the releases.

You can easily apply these techniques yourself. However you can ask us to help with your reputation management if you are short on time and would rather spend the limited time on hand on other marketing avenues or customer service.

You might remember that June 5 is the World Environment Day. I suggest that you should take a pledge to add your might to the growing concern about the environment and take small steps to improve the environment. Here are some very simple tips:

1. Switch off a light and see if you can still work comfortably. Most of the times we have too many lights on in our offices and home.
2. Take out from the plug, all battery chargers, mobile charges and like when they are not in use.
3. Switch off your car while you wait (at least if it will take a minute or longer) at the red lights.
4. Before throwing a paper, see if you can use the back of the paper to plan, make casual notes or write things to do. You will help save many trees over your lifetime.
5. Most of the times, the air conditioners can be set to a notch warmer setting after it has cooled the room.
6. The computers and other electronic devices can be turned off in the night or when you will not be using them for a long duration.

There can be thousands of cool ideas that will help us avoid global warming and keep the earth green. You are welcome to add your tips below.

Indian general elections 2009 are over and the results are out. UPA, led by Congress has won by a thumping majority and I am hoping that they will take some important steps to take the country forward. I think the most important phenomenon in these elections is the active role played by Rahul Gandhi, who like his father, carries a pleasing and active attitude.

I am seriously hoping that Rahul will focus on motivating the youth of India to play a constructive role in implementing growth strategies by employing technology to further the cause of the general citizen, more so for the middle class. If new policies are announced that will use the immense power of the youth (both quantity and energy), both the individual citizen and the country as a whole has a lot to gain.

Let us deploy the seniors in the government to look after home, finance and external affairs because they have the experience to form those policies and interact with other country heads. The young and dynamic people like Rahul Gandhi can look after new technologies like egovernance, sports, infrastructure building and we will have a fine balance of youthful energy and matured politics.

What do you think? Please put your opinion in the comments section below.

I just ran an interesting experiment - posting on Twitter in Hindi. जी हाँ - अब आप हिन्दी में Twitter का प्रयोग कर सकते हैं|

If people can use Twitter without having to resort to English, I think instant micro-communication will get a big boost among Indians.

I know for sure that English speaking people in India are taking up Twitter in large numbers. Once this picks up in Hindi and other Indian languages like Tamil, Telugu, Bengali and Oriya also, it will revolutionise thw way people in India communicate.

The biggest challenge to using Twitter in Hindi (or other Indian languages) was 'how to type the vernacular message'. This can become very easy if you use a great site - www.quillpad.in. You can type your message there, copy and paste in Twitter and Bingo! Try it - you will love it.

You can follow me on Twitter here.

I had the pleasure of listening to Kalyan Kar of Acclaris at the Calcutta chapter meet of Nasscom yesterday. A nice presentation all in all - loved the stories.

His main focus was on the fact that if we can gain the trust of the client, it is the most important asset for any service company and we can get repeat business plus endless renewals from them. We employ this same attitude at Ebizindia, coupled with passion for our clients' success and consider this as our biggest competitive advantage.

We must not stop at the assignments given to us. We should be constantly thinking about ways to increase the client's business. When they have more business, we can have more business. You can call it post-sale marketing 101.

I recently spoke at a Nasscom event at Calcutta, India. The topic of my presentation was "How to Get More Business From Your Website"! The event went off very well and everyone was on the edge of their seats for the entire duration (a full 2 hours, probably a first for Nasscom Calcutta).

Lucky for me, the audience was highly interactive and responsive.

Here is the presentation if you want to have a peek. This is just the presentation (minus the audio but you will get the idea):

I look forward to your comments below.

What is the most common topic of discussion in the boardrooms as well as the streets? I bet it is 'Recession'. Are you suffering from the recession blues too? Losing business, getting paid less and all those things related to recession and global meltdown? Have a look at these all-time great ideas and apply some of them to your business. I can guarantee you will see the turn-around much before the economy does so.

• Do not stop marketing? You said, you need more business and still you are thinking of curtailing the marketing budget? Just remember that your competitors have chopped off their budget and now your messages will be much more visible.
• Focus more on result-driven marketing. Every business should invest in branding but branding-driving-advertising is out for the time being, at least for the SME segment. You must divert all your marketing funds to result-driven marketing promotions. Check the ROI for each promotion and push the better ones harder while killing the lazy ones. However when calculating the ROI, do not forget to take the lifetime value of the customer in account.
• Maximize business from the current customers. They are much easier to sell to than new prospects. Think of all the other benefits you can provide them. What additional services you can offer to them? Since they have already bought from you and are satisfied with your services, they will be much more apt to order these additional services.
• Excel in customer service. Don't give your customers any reason to even think about dumping you.
• Become an expert. Develop a huge expertise in your area of operation. We don't bargain with the surgeons who are "heart bypass surgeons" - do we?
• Proper pricing can help you maintain a healthy bottomline. I know nobody wants to buy at the old price anymore, but try to add value rather than reduce the price. In the worst case, don't reduce the price - offer a recession discount. That way, you can withdraw the discount when the recession is over.
• Use technology for improving your efficiency. Customer facing portals can provide regular status updates to increase satisfaction levels. Internal portals can improve staff efficiency and communication.

Even applying a few of these tips can start changing things for the better. Remember, don't feed the monster. Talking about the recession all the time can push you to go into a limbo and you can sit there, waiting for goverment help, which itself needs help. Get up and do something to help yourself and you will be proud of yourself. And your employees will thank you for that.

You can also check out more recession busting tips from Abhishek Rungta, a good friend. Please post comments below with your tips and strategies that you are applying at your workplace. We need tips and then, some more tips.

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?