Social Media Week In Mumbai

Social Media Week was held in Mumbai on 22nd-26th September. I was invited by Blogadda to attend the events on day two. With almost 1000 events taking place in 11 cities and 9 countries and with around 3000 speakers confirmed, Social Media 2014 was the world’s most culturally diverse and geographically distributed conference of its kind.

I was able to attend only three sessions on the day two of the social Media week and the most interesting of them all were the sessions on Food blogging and Pinterest.

Pinterest is the photo-sharing medium widely used to create engagement with the reader by the impressions you make. Pinterest does not link boards to other social platforms unless it is mentioned with targeted key words, phrases. To improve the traffic to the business, a great variety of boards can be created using tags/titles. Linking the business account with the impression makes a huge difference.

Pinterest is most popular social networking website because it is used more by women.

A small film was shown during this session in which women were shown pursuing their interest in painting and handicraft. The hobby projects are very inspiring to women and it helps connect people with the retailers through attractive images. Women get inspired to share their activity on social media, interact and improve their performance.

Everybody wants to know the stories behind the trends, Pinterest allows you to show your interest in images, you could benefit better if the proper research is done to understand the market and use it to your best advantage. Use hash tags that make sense. It could work best by promoting photo contest and maintaining interaction. You could solve problems for people by offering consultation.

It is better to use your own images to present your own idea instead of picking others images. You can pin the images you like to broaden your theme of interest.

Personally speaking, Social media has played a very important role in helping me sell my book. I created a board on Pinterest with the hash tag and it has reached a wider audience.

The other day, I met a face Book friend at Durgamata pandal, and she congratulated me on my recent published cookbook on Sindhi Cuisine.

My #SindhiCuisine was published two months ago. Neither did I have a formal book launch with popular food chefs as chief guest, nor any live cooking demonstration in front of audience. I just used social media to promote my book and it was an instant success.

U-tube is the personal visual channel and this plays an important role in spreading your idea. One must learn to use it productively.

Not just images, the content is also important to convey your idea. The session on food blogging was focused on how to be a good blogger. “Food blogging gives a thrill of instant connect with readers when you get feedback” said Rushina Munshaw, who conducted the session on food blogging.

Bloggers are becoming powerful because they are the media who promote brand with honesty and sincerity. The key to writing a blog is to create interaction. Blogging can also lead to some issues in negative manner. Handling of sensitive issues is important because people forget and move on to trending issues. Lots of things will change in future, people will pay for performance and if you are not able to be sincere and honest, you could lose your audience.

Rushina Munshaw’s session was more focused on how to be a successful blogger. Food blogging should be original and true to the heart, she said. People come to your blog to read your story and your thoughts. Your blog should reflect your originality and personality. It does not serve the purpose if you plagiarize other people’s content. Blogging is the conversation you have with your readers; you can add anecdotes, summary and surprising statements to keep the readers interested.

Another session on ’14 Social Trends’ discussed the rich informative journalism. It falls under 3T: Tools, Talent and Context. Content is the king and context is definitively the queen. TV and print media is still going strong in spite of twitter, Face Book and other social media but there will be revenue generation on line too. It is important to stay connected with social hanger that is based on real time insight driven by cognitive computing which is basically talking to web. All social media are interconnected through social data and sensors from roads, cars and other transport that give real time graphic data. 

Social trends are all about delivering right content at right time.

 We are the media. We have a voice. We can learn to use it to our best advantage.  

Go Away! I am Busy!!!!!!

Darn! This doorbell…why must this ring? I hate answering doorbells, especially if it is vegetable seller, fruit seller, sweeper, Phone Company or some stupid courier service. I think I prefer snail mails (although they are extinct now-a-days), What I liked about sanil mail was that they would just drop the letters in my letterbox and I would pick it up whenever I feel like it, but with these couriers that are frequent, I have to get up forcibly, wean myself from this huge screen and attend to this courier fellow, take the post, sign a form and take my unimportant mail that is announcing some silly sale, somewhere in the town. (I must remember not to give my address to these boutiques henceforth) why do I need new clothes? I hardly ever go out. Most of my friends are there on the FB. And they don’t care what I wear, I could be wearing just underclothes for that matter…..…who cares!...arrgh… I get very angry when I am on computer playing word twirl or lexulous, trying so hard to think up of a seven letter word and this stupid door bell rings. Or sometimes I am chatting with my friend on Face book, the conversation that I have on face book (with the person whom I have never met) seems to be more important than the phone call that I receive from a family member. I so badly want to end the conversation on the phone to continue talking with my fingers with a friend on other other end of this cable contact. And today, when I was chatting with one of my FB friend, the doorbell rang again…now I am having very interesting conversation, my friend finds me very friendly and jovial and here the door bell is wacking my brain, and I run to my door to answer before her next chat continues, there is this fisherwoman at the door. She sells the best fish in my building and saves me the trip of going to that stinking fish market, but I am afraid that my FB friend will go offline if I take too long in answering her, so even though I so badly need the fish, I tell her bluntly that I don’t eat fish anymore…and run back to my computer. That conversation with the fisherwoman must have taken me only two minutes (just nodding and repeating “no, no, I really don’t want” just five times) but my friend is already offline! I go back to my door to see if I can buy the fish intead, and she has gone too….darn! I will have to go to fish market or skip the fish meal… This internet illness is really eating off my brains. My pots and pans are getting blacker by day, because I remember to keep tea/veggies on the gas for cooking but forget to take it off when it ready and am reminded only when I can feel the disaster through my nose (my maid suggests that I use pressure cooker, now how do I make tea in pressure cooker?) Everyday I promise myself that I will chop off my habit on the net, but hardly an hour goes by with that promise and I am itching to see the red blinker on FB, and like a zombie I am back on this compu chair, Suddenly this red dot (on the FB) has started haunting me, (some times even in my dreams) I so badly want to see those compliments on my FB walls which I secretly hope that my 200+ friends are also reading and forming a good impression about me… i have lately started feeling very proud of myself, posting notes, tagging people and sending virtual gifts with tight squeaky hugs. I m getting to be popular, but I think I am cut off from my real world. I have not seen nor met my neighbor for more that 15 days, I am thinking of inviting my next door neighbor to the face book, that way I will be able to communicate with her, specially when I m short of one onion or potato and I need to borrow in emergency. my virtual friends will not help me there… See what I mean?????

If our kids are on net, we, as parents, have right to know the details….

Adnan Patrawala, a richie, rich kid, was first kidnapped and was promised his return on the ransom of 2 crores but then he was murdered by his friends when things went mushy. The murderers, first befriended him on Orkut , a social network, and then used Fake ID (AnGEL) to lure him. Adnan was a junior college student at the Children’s Welfare Centre at Yari Road. The dead boy’s profile on a social networking site lists “driving all the way’’ and cricket as his passions. A photograph uploaded on the site by him shows his car’s speedometer touching 180 kmph. This is a wake up call for the parents and teens to avoid flashing the riches and stay within limits. Given his rich background and owning a personal Skoda and spending a lot of time in the pool parlor/game zone made him an easy pray. But what about a 16 year old, who is meeting strangers from the internet in the middle of the night? Weren’t his parents aware? This turns out to be an idea gone very wrong. It pains me to see how kids behave so irresponsibly without giving a thought as to what repercussions it could have on their families. What about parents? I meet many parents who are in 50-60 age-group and are not compu-savvy. They just refuse to learn. They openly declare it is beyond them and they will never understand. If parent block themselves off saying that computer is not their field and they can never understand or learn then how they will ever know what experiences and dangers their child is exposed to? How can they then advise? It is very important for the parents to regularly check the sites that their teenagers visit and that is possible if parents have communication with their kids. They have to win their trust. You are not expected to check the computer to see what sites he has visited, but you can talk to the child and talk about what is amusing him on the net and look for danger signs. Advice him on the pitfalls of the cyber net and that is possible only if parent are aware of the problems that arise on the net. Things go wrong when children don’t have parents for consultation. They, then, go to wrong sources for their problems and sometimes they will go even to strangers.