How many of you would take a look at profile that is trying to say “CEO of Miniscule Technologies” – Well, I am sure ‘Not Many’ as that restricts the boundary of your ‘Personal Brand’. The best way to go about a ‘Professional Headline’ on LinkedIn is to describe your personal brand in those limited characters assigned to you. Believe me, it is not a difficult task.

Professional Headlines are nothing but shortened version of your profile. A headline helps you sum up your professional identity in a short phrase. Usually when you register your profile on LinkedIn with a little of information, LinkedIn creates a professional headline for you automatically. But, as LinkedIn says and as I believe creating your own headline would be much more effective than the one we select.

Tips to Write a Professional Headline:

1. Ensure you first list down all your personal branding commandments on a paper or a notepad.

2. Choose the top 5 and ensure you summarize them in words, crisp them into 120 characters.

3. Keywords are essential. Incorporating keywords related to services your offer will help you get traced fast on the LinkedIn search option.

4. Do not miss out on your designation as that is essential keyword for many to search and generate a contact behavior (perception) for the person trying to reach you.

Example: (Social Media, PPC, SEO and Email Marketing Expert | 10 years Industry Experience in India| CEO @ Miniscule Tech) – This defines the depth of the experience, services and the position the person holds.

Below are few examples of impressive Professional Headlines on LinkedIn:

1. The person has only one "Personal Branding" statement that could evoke action for contact:

2. The individuals below have neatly crushed their strong personal branding statements in 120 characters involving keywords:




3. Professional Headline that has got no 'Personal Branding' sentence but involves keywords and statement that could raise curiosity resulting in action for contact:
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When: 30th June, 6. 30 PM Onwards

Where: Unwind Centre (Gandhi Nagar, Adyar)

Crowd Introduction: Nearly 70 people gathered for the Social Media Day celebrations in Chennai. To surprise, it wasn’t just the city youth part of this fascinating day but there were house wives, CEOs, students, professionals and other individuals who added a lot of value to the conversational session.

About the Setup: Unwind Centre was the place chose for the celebrations. Unwind centre mark the remark of band culture that swings in adrenaline of positivity in an individual. The setup showcased projector, banner, balcony (seating arrangement) and yellowish atmosphere (that you will notice in the picture below).

Session: The show started with my introduction to the Social Media Day concept and how the growth of Social Networking sites is augmenting in India on daily basis. It continued with a note on how the pure social networking is taking shapes of social business and digital activism. The introduction also explained in detail the concept of ‘Social Media Day the Social Way’.

Social Media Day the Social Way: It is a concept to create a social atmosphere by supporting a cause. In today’s meetup we had three causes registered:

- PETA ( People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals)
- PUNYA (Helping the deprived ones)
- Sharemycake.org

All the three were introduced. PETA and PUNYA were supported monetarily. Sharemycake.org wanted to create awareness and the concept was introduced to the audience. Rs. 4,000/- was collected from the participants of this event that would be divided between two registered causes (PUNYA and PETA).

Educational Factor: We started with 140 character tweeduction of participants, followed by a platform to discuss ‘How Social Media has influenced lives’. Few participants had amazing stories to share relevant to Social Media and Success. The session went on to shape up as panel discussion amongst the strong Social Media users from Chennai. Few questions that were answered in the discussion;

- How Social Media is professionally used on a low budget for marketing.
- How Social Media life and personal life is balanced.
- How can Social Media be used to better influence the life.

Fun Factor: We had Housie / Lotto game running for the crowd. Random numbers were picked and announced by show stealers Mr. Ram Subramaniam, Ms. Aarti krishnakumar and Ms. Nadhiya Mali (The active Social Media users based out of Chennai). There were 3 prizes / gift for different lines of housie.

Special thanks to

Echovme team – Ponsakthi, Karthik and Niranjan.
Photographers: Shantapa, Shankar (Budding photographer)
Sponsors: Basics Life, Chennai Plywoods
Participants

Photos of the Event:



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It’s called the Attention Age that we are living in right now; with the advent of the Web 2.0 the common man is his own brand. A person and his career together can be defined as a personal brand, you sell yourself over the net and it’s not without good reason that this trend is on the upward swing. Social Media has taken made the role of the consumer dynamic. Now people actually want their brands to be marketed to them in a specific way, and what better way to do it than do it yourself? With user generated contents you can effectively diversify your audience on your Personal Brand. Now that you have established yourself as a brand, how do you go about marketing it? Let’s break it down to six easy pointers.

- Availability
- Visibility & Credibility
- Approachability
- Passports
- Regularity
- Outsourcing

WHAT: Availability

WHY: A personal brand by itself cannot bring about any hits or comments; the personal brand is but a poster to your profile therefore unless there you are available to your target group, the brand can lose out on its steam very soon. Your presence creates a platform upon which your visibility can be built upon.

HOW: Make yourself available online to be able to respond to feedbacks and comments, a timely replied criticism can gain consumer confidence and help change people’s outlooks.

WAYS: On the first instance be a part of the most important social networking tool that is making a huge growth and impact; Blog, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

WHAT: Visibility & Credibility

WHY: When you are being seen around the cyber space people tend to take notice, it is by simple curiosity that people will pause to take a closer look at your brand profile. And it creates an arc of interest on your domain or profile, and this in turn can bring in more people for inspection.

HOW: By storing your ego searches and registering yourself on search engines. It helps to create an easy access point to people who might come across your profile.

WAYS: Make your LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter profile visible in your signatures and regular activities. Get a blog submitted on search engines, directories and blogger communities. Do not forget to miss out on details, make your profile complete with all your personal branding statements that you think can be rewarded or appreciated by general audience.

WHAT: Approachability

WHY: Once you are being noticed, interested people tend to try and get in touch, reciprocating to a feedback helps build your brand better. A strong PR goes a long way in maintaining the image that you are planning on portraying to the target user.


HOW: Having a comments section would help make this possible and make sure you constantly respond to comments and criticism. Conduct discussions within a certain criteria so that it helps interaction between people avoiding post inflammation.

WAYS: Listen to what people are talking, engage with them, and offer the ecosystem a value by providing contents and creating engagement opportunity.

WHAT: Passports

WHY: Having accounts with various other social networking sites helps spread the word around about your personal brands. Linking your site on other social networking sites and blogs through outposts and RSS feeds can help amalgamate your Personal Brand and diversify to a larger audience.

HOW: Create a link on various sites to your domain (Can be done by writing interesting contents on blog and obtaining an authority), and create flogs and RSS feeds to constantly notify users on your prerogatives. This helps for an easier reach to the users.

WAYS: Apart from the above mentioned backlink methodology, have an email subscription option made available. Link Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn together to disseminate your thoughts everywhere equally. Participate in groups and forums. Join new tools such as Slideshare, YouTube, Scribd as value added tool to your social media activities.

WHAT: Regularity

WHY: A constantly updated site keeps existing users to keep coming back, and also to bring in newer people to the site. Confirm the site is in update to the latest trends and news; make sure to keep the layouts fresh without totally overhauling the basic core of your domain.

HOW: fresh blog posts can be added at constant intervals, news pertaining to latest trends can be used to help ascertain to the users that your site is under constant evaluation.

WAYS: Constantly update status messages. Networking with people online and taking it offline. Announce your daily professional activity with a little bit of personal value to it.

WHAT: Outsourcing

WHY: There are people who are good at a certain thing, and getting them to help you out with that certain aspect of your branding will make it that much more detailed. And with a subsidized workload, you can concentrate better in the promotion. Outsourcing is basically most helpful when you are expanding your Personal Brand to a wider horizon in terms of scale and output.

HOW: If you are able to afford it, having a creative consultant helping you with the aesthetics of your blog or brand helps attract people to look into your domain. People are in general very visual, meaning pictures are faster in reception and understanding than words.

WAYS: Team at Echovme does take care of the Personal Branding via Social Media, we engage with entrepreneurs and celebrities and maintain their personal branding accounts. We also allocate trainers to consult them on Social Media branding and help them leverage it. Share

GetResponse an email marketing provider recently released a report titled "Email Marketing and Social Media Integration Report" integrating social media buttons to your email marketing template can increase the click through rate of email marketing by up to 55%. Other fascinating facts from the report were:

1. Adding social media sharing buttons created a click through rate 30% higher than email without social media sharing options.

2. Emails with a Twitter sharing option alone were among the most effective, with a 40% increase in click through rate for a Twitter button itself.

3. Integration has become key prime of the customers these days. Integrating Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Digg with email is increasing on a daily basis.

4. The button that worked most were Twitter and Facebook with highest Click Through Rate, LinkedIn and Digg recorded the lowest CTR.

5. The total number of social sharing links in each email message 60% of social emails linked to 1 network 26% of social emails linked to 2 networks, 8% linked to 3 networks and 6% linked to 4 or 5 networks

Reason being: Credibility of the emails get easily evaluated with the direct links to the company’s Social Media accounts that shows the human value of the email and makes them stand unique from usual bulks. Sharing email template on Social Media is not an easy task, integrating buttons allowing readers to share the information on Social Media spreads the word and increases the CTR of the email campaign.

Download Free Report Here Share

To celebrate the First social Media Day team at Echovme has taken the responsibility to help the Social Media Information Giant MASHABLE organize a Mashable Meetup in Chennai on 30th June. What better way to celebrate social media than connecting with other enthusiasts in your area? The theme of this meetup is to Celebrate “Social Media Your Way”. Till now, for this Mega Meetup Worldwide more than 75 countries have confirmed their participation with 414 Meetups and beyond 5000 people officially confirming their presence for the meetup.

Event Description

• Time: 7:00 PM
• Date: 30th June Wednesday
• Venue: Echovme consulting Pvt Ltd, Gemini Parsn Manere, Nungambakkam (Above Hotel Veg Nation)
• Agenda:
- Quick Networking and Introduction (No Card Exchanging Please, that’s scheduled post event ;D)
- Answering Question in Minute on "Why & How Do You use Social Media"
- The Social Media Game and Fun!
- Contribute to a Cause (The way you want)*

*We call for the NGOs based out of Chennai to raise an issue that needs financial, social or awareness assistance. The NGO that gets majority supporters takes away the contribution.

• RSVP here: Mashable / Facebook


EAVB_KPIZTEFNVD Share

April 2010 showcased 24% Increase in the Social Media or Blog visitors when compared with April 2009 says the research giant AC Nielsen. There has been 66% shift in the time spent on Social Media. The increase in visitors and time spent on Social Media indicates Marketers to involve Social Media in their marketing plan before their competitor’s take away the social media fame.

The report also revealed the following:

1. Globally, 75% of the internet users made a visit on social media (networking sites and blog) in April 2010, spending 22 percent of their online time that calculates to be more than 110 billion minutes on the whole.

2. In year 2009 (April), users spent 3 hours 31 minutes on Social Media that increased to 5 hours, 51 minutes in year 2010.

3. Facebook has hit the revolution by showcasing a massive increase in the number of subscriptions. It increased from 200 million to 500 million approximately in the span of a year and resulting in the 3rd most popular online brand with more than 50% internet users visiting the site. Google stood ahead with entertaining 82% of the internet users, Yahoo was fourth at 53 percent.

4. Facebook rocked the virtual world in April 2010 by making users spend at least 6 hours on average, where people spent only 1 hour 21 minutes on Google. It’s a good signal to advertisers on their banner ad network decision making.

5. Among the users (by country); social network users in Brazil were way more beyond expectations comprising of 82% share of the total internet users. On an average more than 7 hours was spent on Social Media by Australians, thus making it the leading country leaving America behind on third position with 6 hours, 43 minutes average time spent on Facebook. Share

Just after the event is over, I thought of upgrading this blog post to give you more insights about One Day Social Media and Business Workshop. Our first workshop in India was in Mumbai on 21st May 2010 with over 20 marketing enthusiasts (managers, CEOs and executives) taking part from different industry. The session in Chennai was conducted today 11th June 2010 at Hotel Breeze.

As a part of SocialME workshop blogging session we do a collaborative blogging, we picked a random topic on Top 5 reasons to attend Social Media workshop today and asked participants to contribute. Contribution mentioned below:

1. Knowledge up gradation
2. Compulsion (Registered on behalf)
3. Awareness of best practices in Social Media
4. Understand the business potential of Social Media
5. Turning marketing campaigns to be more efficient using Social Media. Share

On the first Saturday of every month, few Social Media enthusiasts from Chennai unite together to bring exclusive session on Social Media to the Chennai city. On the 3rd session we had ex Google employees who rocked the show with their search and social media talents. Mrs. Priya Ramakrishnan (Content Head and Technical Writer at CMO Axis) was also the part of successful show, she took the opportunity to contribute as guest blogger on the take aways from the session.

From Mrs. Priya Ramakrishnan:

I was drawn to the Social Media Club Chennai when I read a presentation made by Mr.Sukumar Rajagopalan, Senior Vice President, Cognizant Technologies. A new entrant to Social Media, the web taught me enough and with browsing , sharing and applying some of the principles of Social Media, I considered myself an “SM specialist” – until I heard Jayshree Ramasubramian (Web Marketing Manager, Intuit) and Bharath Moro (ex-Googler and Visiting Faculty at Symbiosis Pune). I came back realizing how little I knew and what companies jumping into the Social Media bandwagon should be wary of. The speakers being ex-googlers have a head start in this field – they are able to analyze data and draw conclusions with much greater authority and clarity than any of us would ever be able to.

I have tried to capture some of the things that were said. Some of the pointers from Jayshree were from Intuit's Social Media Marketing perspective which I think are simple yet very important:

• Companies should give their employees “External Communication Training” which would include “what to say about your brand in Social Media” & “what not to say about your brand”– How very crucial for companies foraying into Social Media.

• What not to say would probably include
Company Strategy
“New to market”
Revenue of the company
Details of New Business Acquisition

Do not try to hard sell on Social Media – Social Media Marketing should focus on retaining the old and acquiring new customers.

Jayashree said Live Communities are very important and they provide for organic growth and the inner circle involvement. Jayshree also mentioned that Aspirational Value would bring in more involvement and also that emotional relevance played a key role as well. She also insisted on keeping the 'humanization' aspect as top priority of your Social Media activities is crucial as Social Media is not about selling products but about engaging with people and creating relationship.

Bharath Moro pointed out that the Number, Adjective and Trend is one way to write content to attract people to read. He also gave us an insight into the work culture at Google, which was also reflected in the speaker’s depth of knowledge, attitude and above all the humility that comes with knowledge. Thank you Sorav and the Social Media Club Chennai team for organizing these unique events.

Thank You Priya for your kind words and the blog post - Sorav

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A research conducted by ComScore, Inc. a leader in measuring the digital world, released a report on 2nd June on the top Travel sites in India. The report found that traffic to the Travel category grew to more than 14 million visitors in April, an augment of 50 percent from the last year, as a growing number of Indians turned to the expediency of the Web in search of travel deals and accommodations.



Quick report: Increase in Travel Portal Usage

1. Around 14 million people age 15 and older visited Travel sites in India in April, representing 37 percent of the total online population and an increase of 50% from the previous year.

2. As railways is most preferred travel choice by average Indian population people spend more time on railways ticket booking site (IRCTC) or information site (IndiaRailInfo) with 7.7 million visitors in April 2010, up 46 percent versus year ago.

3. Travel (hotel / flight) booking has been the popular most reason of engagement with Makemytrip.com followed by yatra.com (major travel portal rivals in online world).

4. Many sites such as Travelocity, IndiaRailinfo etc showed triple growth than last year.

5. Railways also rocked the show with the increase in amount of time spent on the railways portals ex: Indian Railways (average: 33 minutes, consumed 50 pages and visited nearly 4 times), IndiaRailInfo.com (34 minutes, 66 pages, 2 visits) and eRail.in (28 minutes, 38 pages and nearly 4 visits).

6. India is ranked second among all countries, behind only the United Kingdom, in terms of the average time spent per visitor in the category.

Reasons why travel related activities are on rise or the most popular in India:

1. Explore: More consumers are turning to the Web to fulfill their travel planning and booking needs. In fact, rural India to some extent now understands the value of online booking. Thanks to the online booking service started by Indian Railways.

2. Comparison: In the current economic climate, consumers are being more cost-conscious when making travel arrangements. With half of all visitors to the category frequenting two or more travel sites during the month, it’s clear that consumers are taking the time to diligently compare prices prior to completing their transaction.

3. Perception: General perception of people regards to the high charges levied by agents, make them move to the travel portals to confirm the present costs.

4. Information: Not all book tickets online, many prefer online travel portals as source of information related to flight / train / hotels details. Thus saving the phone call costs or avoiding the hassles of long queue on phone and exhaustive poor answers from the customer service executives.

5. Curiosity: Surfing the travel deals or the misleading banner advertisements by travel portals such as: “Flight Ticket at Rs. 1” lets curious individuals surf these travel sites more to hit the 1 Rs deal though they might know 1 Rs deal is not possible.

6. Necessity: Booking a railway ticket online is an easy option especially when it comes to ‘Tatkal’ booking. Tatkal booking is made easy via online ticketing as standing in the queue early in the morning before 8 AM is trouble for many. Share

Myself and Niran (Account Manager at ECHOVME) were talking about the recent Gyaneshwari Express blast in India, he introduced me to the ‘MillatFacebook’. Puzzled me did a speedy web surfing and found MillatFacebook is for Pakistanis who are not able to access Facebook any more, or for Muslims who have abandoned the site as protest, an replica of Facebook called ‘MillatFacebook has been set up’.

I had this question running in my mind, MillatFacebook is just another ordinary Muslim community then why so much of fuss? There is a reason behind this: Access to Facebook was banned in Pakistan earlier this month due to a group promoting the portrayal of the Prophet Mohammad. Which is considered the ultimate profanity in Islam. Six young IT professionals from Pakistan’s capital Lahore, decided to launch their own version of the social networking site. Millat Facebook is envisaged as a site run for Muslims, by Muslims, but “sweet people from other religions” are also welcome to join in (not too sure of what does Sweet people mean, is there any eligibility criteria to be termed as sweet individual?). Below mentioned are my views on pros and cons of MillatFacebook:

Pros of MillatFacebook

1. Religious community, as it grows makes the perceptions and actions towards religion stronger.

2. Connects likeminded individuals.

3. No fear of getting banned as it is the parent body.

4. Penetration of Social Media might also go to rural parts of countries to the small Muslim communities as the part of supporting community or protest against bodies that have banned Facebook for Pakistanis.

5. Can be a reason to foster and implement computer education & internet usage in Muslim nations.

Cons of MillatFacebook

1. Though I do not support this fact there is a strong belief by many that origin of terrorism is from Muslim communities. This online community especially designed for Muslims and by Muslims may be keenly watched worldwide to track terrorists or conversations related to terrorism.

2. Such communities dilute Facebook population and gives thought to other religions to create one for them, thus loosing the essence of Social Media. As Social Media is people centric and not religion centric.

3. This community might be the reason to create many ‘Hate Groups’ and promote terrorism as the privacy policies, restrictions and governance of the community will not be as strong as in case of Facebook.

For ex: The fuck India community created by Pakistanis on Facebook can be reported under racist section by Indians or other people world-wide. Similar action of reporting might not be possible in the closed communities as ‘Millat Facebook’.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are my thoughts as possibilities, it wasn't intended to hurt any individuals’ feelings or religious communities.

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