Here’s a nice study conducted by Digiwhirl about payscales of Social Media professionals

Here’s a recording of Kiruba Shankar’s talk at IIMB, referring to Club Mahindra case study on Shrinidhi Hande’s blog post on Club Mahindra

Kiruba Shankar, CEO of Business Blogging and famous Blogger from Chennai, kick started the post lunch session

Kiruba’s un- conference, started with some exercise, as the session was right after the lunch break

No, there were not playing the train, this was Kiruba’s un-conference session

Once the participants were charged up, he asked everyone to share one app that they want when 3G is introduced

Participants came up suggestions of some really strange apps they need. This session was a highly interactive one.

Kiruba has also published a book on unconferences

If you live dream and sleep Social Media, BusinessBlogging is the place you should be working at.

At Business Blogging, we’ve openings for Content Writers, Social Media Evangelists and SEO Analysts. You’ll have an opportunity of working with a team of passionate individuals and some of the best clients.

More details will be out soon.

We also welcome students who’d like to intern with us.

If you have it in you, drop a mail at jobs@businessblogging.org or get in touch with our CEO Kiruba Shankar directly (you know where to find him.. don’t you?)

Domino’s India is coming up with a unique contest for bloggers. Stay tuned to http://www.dominos-blogizza.com/ for details

Lots of Indian brands are crossing 1 lakh fan base on Facebook. After Mahindra Scorpio logging 2 lakh fans, its cousin XYLO is fast catching up with 1 lakh fans…

XYLO is a value for money MPV (Multi purpose Vehicle) by Mahindra & Mahindra and has been fairly successful in the market. Priced affordably, XYLo has the looks and feel of an SUV, though it doesn’t come with 4 wheel drive.

Photo by Shrinidhi. Read Xylo review here

http://www.facebook.com/#!/MahindraXylo

Domino’s Pizza India crossed 2 lakh fans recently….

Shrinidhi lists some of the advantages why an event should be live blogged….

• # Traditional media may not be able to cover an event live and delivers event news to public after a delay of few hours to a day. Live blogging, on the other hand can bring in instant updates and happenings of the event, both for the people attending the event as well as to those who are not able to. Conventional media (print & TV) only gives a high level reporting of the event (due to time and space constraints) while bloggers can report each activity in detail and let readers chose what they want to read
• # Live blogging ensures extended reach for an event, reaching out to those who may not be physically present but are keen to follow the developments (like what did a particular speaker say etc) Live blogging lets them follow the updates from the comfort of their office/homes.
  # Live blogging effectively documents the keynotes shared by the speaker. A journalist composing his report at the end of the day will have much less to recall vis-à-vis a blogger who blogs soon after the speaker finishes speaking
• # At most of the conferences, end of the day all discussions are forgotten and people get busy with their day to day work. Live blogging can well document the day’s proceedings and facilitate further discussion on the topic among interested individuals, even after the event.

Read the complete post

You thought only big brands can use social media? Well you needn’t be born with silver spoon in mouth to utilize social media. Social media is something like poor man’s apple. Anyone and everyone can partake in its beauty. Here is an interesting case of a taxi driver Devesh Mishra using social media. Devesh is from Banaras and he utilizes the power of you tube to leverage his business. While his fellow  taxi drivers stand in front of airports, railway stations to lure customers, Devesh uploaded his elevator pitch on Youtube for foreign and Indian users to see. So when customers, who usually are internet savvy geeks, land up they first look for Devesh or sometimes they already would have pre booked with him.  This helps Devesh to manage his time schedule appropriately and ensure that business is met everyday.

There is yet another interesting story coming from our very own ‘Namma Chennai’. Samson is an auto driver who owns his own personal website. You can find him outside Taj Coromandel Hotel. His website is tuktastic.com. Samson again makes his elevator pitch talking about the places where he can show, his safety measures, testimonials etc. He also provides additional details such as exciting shopping places in the city, places to eat and drink. He also engages the users by posting exciting photos of customers and friends online. Now what is your excuse for shunning social media??

After telling us how giving away our information can benefit us, Kiruba now talks about use of social media by Coca Cola has been one of the perfect examples of ‘how to’ in the social media landscape. Coca Cola was faced with the concern to promote the brand as the household name, engage users and win loyal followers. It worked on the strategy of fans first and created simple content that interested people in the core values of coca cola. It started a campaign requesting users to post innovative photos of the places where they had the coke. They received wacky photos such as a picture of coke at Mexico’s third highest mountain top, 5230 m above sea level. It also engaged users by asking questions such as ‘what time do you like to have coke’. These questions not only help the brand to understand consumer behavior at no extra cost of market research, but also help the customers feel involved with the brand.

It next launched Expedition 206, that takes selected coca cola ambassadors to 206 countries in a period of 365 days. The ambassador’s mission is to find happiness in these countries. Next it launched a lab to involve users to create a flavor for its upcoming energy drink. The virtual lab enabled users to concoct different flavors according to their tastes. Global voting and ranking helped in selecting the favorite taste. Coca Cola then created the flavor to be stocked across the world. The label design of the bottle was also crowdsourced according to user’s tastes. This helped the users to be involved in the creation of their favorite drink right from the initial stages. Coca Cola constantly monitored and updated their social pages by engaging and involving their users and updating them with relevant information. The results are stunning. 500,000+ “likes”, 90,000+ comments, 5000 mentions a day, 174%increase in fans, 73,391 interactions of fans with each other and with brand.

There are a lot of lessons other brands can learn from Coca Cola. The main ones being: optimizing functionality, creating new ones if necessary, insure clear principles. Other lessons are keep it simple and intuitive, viral should not be the main strategy, and the importance of moderating.