There are lots of interesting discussions scheduled including a talk by your truly on “Online Reputation Management for bloggers“. I doubt that we can complete all the discussions scheduled but if any are left, we can always follow them up at the next meet

If you are coming, say Hi to me (make a mental note of my photo above) and I will be pleased to exchange notes with you. See you there!

Oh – by the way, why don’t you just post a comment below if you are coming over?

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.

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.

• 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.

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 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.

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!

He is studying in Class XII at present and aspires to become a computer engineer. Please join me in wishing him all success in his life. I hope he develops some great tools that help in the upliftment of the society.

You can also call me on +91-98310-27107 if you don’t get me on the above number.

I have been setting up blogs for friends and clients for a long time. Even post to a few blogs of mine. But I never got around to posting to this personal blog of mine. Hope to be able to post regularly from now on and that is why this welcome.

Feel free to drop by and check out a glimpse into my personal and business life. And my take on some inteesting issues bothering young and old entrepreneurs. We will have a great time together.