Yesterday, I met Pradeep Chopra of the PS Group at the TiE Kolkata Story Session. He is an established real estate guy with a fantastic vision and entrepreneurial temperament. The talk was thoroughly enjoyed by all the attendees. Here are some interesting tid-bits from his talk:
1. What kind of entrepreneur is one who cannot take risk?
2. Opportunities are everywhere. You have to be able to see an opportunity in everything.
3. Selling is the biggest skill an entrepreneur should have. Rest follows.
4. If you can sell something even if you don’t have it ready, go ahead. You will get thousands of people who will be happy to provide or build it for you. Selling is the most difficult part and you have cracked that.
5. An office can earn the money for a new house – a new house cannot earn money for a new office. Buy that office first, if you can only afford one.
Today we have had a lovely interactive session with about 150 bloggers from Kolkata and exchanged lots of interesting ideas. I am the Rentablogger guy but quite frankly, I did not even know there are so many active bloggers in Kolkata 
I made a small presentation about how bloggers can monitor, manage and protect their online reputation and I am happy to share it with you too. It is very important that we follow certain precautions when posting online because “What we post once, stays on the Internet forever!”. You don’t want to jeopardise that job, friendship or marriage because of what you posted when on a high.
Feel free to post your comments whether you like it or disagree with some point made.
We are having a Kolkata Bloggers’ meet at the Cafe Coffee Day in RDB Adlabs building, Sector V, Salt Lake on August 8 at 5 pm. About 151 attendees have already confirmed participation and I can assure you it will be good fun. Don’t miss out! Mark your calendar, PIM, Ipod, mobile whatever and land up. Did I tell you about the entry fee – it is zero, zilch, nada – thanks to the sponsor.
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?
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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:
- 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.
- 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.
- You can also get your personal blog in the top 10 list because you will be repeatedly mentioning your brands here.
- Your Twitter profile can also get in the top 10 ranking if you link to it a bit liberally and set your profile properly.
- 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.
- Your profile pages on popular forums can also get in the top rankings. Focus on your profile at the forums where you are active.
- A testimonial on a vendor’s page or the sales page of a product you like and recommend can also take up a place.
- 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.
