Priyanka Writing
VJTI stands for Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute – one of the leading engineering colleges in Mumbai (and India). I have many VJTI-ans as Facebook friends and they keep sharing interesting stuff from Quora. I saw that VJTI as a topic on Quora is very popular.
Followers: 982
Most questions in the topic have 1 or 2 answers but often 30+ votes, thus showing the high level engagement of the student community.
I was wondering about the on-the-ground situation – was VJTI admin part of this? Is the college facilitating this or was this purely student initiative?
Then I came across this QnA…
and I realized that Aditya would be the best person to talk to with regards to this.
Is someone managing it (the topic) or is it a natural consequence of students being avid Quora users?
This is natural. Guess it started with Quora becoming popular within my VJTI friend circle and spreading outward from there – causing a lot of VJTI folks to come to Quora (because Quora is such an enticing+addictive service).
Why is the VJTI topic so active on Quora?
Critical mass. VJTI is a topic that lends itself well to being institutionalized, like several other classical institutions (the older IITs, BITS Pilani, etc). To get a feel of what I mean, here’s a good writeup (we can’t access the link as the Facebook note he refers to is not public but I have produced it in full at the end of this post). When a topic like that hits an audience with critical mass, activity happens.
How did you make Quora popular amongst VJTIans? Any interesting ploys?
No ploys. All natural growth. I’ve barely been active on Quora after my early days there a year or two ago.
Will this Quora popularity sustain on its own or do you (and the first adopters with you) still lead the participation?
If it can’t sustain itself organically, it won’t sustain in the long run even with the involvement of early adopters. I believe it’ll sustain itself.
Also please explain your role in VJTI – I am a little confused – you are a faculty member?
Not a faculty member. Normal ex-student (finished my BTech in 2009).
I usually find natural adoption of social media very interesting to study. I find there is lots to learn for a marketeer.
1. Passionate Community
What Aditya rightly calls Critical Mass. Many brands have a passionate community – online, offline or mobile. Identifying this community and then empowering it to enhance the brand and the community itself can be a very crucial step. In fact Coca Cola in the early years of social had empowered their fans who ran a fan community for the brand. Instead of trying to take over the fan created page they actually empowered them.
2. Employees, Employees
Even earlier I have written about the merits of an employee centric social strategy. While your brand may not have built a significantly large community of users, the employees usually & especially for startups tend to be very loyal proponents of the brand. The challenge usually is that they may not be active social users and even if they are the company rules and regulations need to empower them to be able to participate actively as required.
3. Wolf in Sheep’s clothing (haha)
What I mean is that someone amongst the employee group should spark the passion. If the VJTI college would have started a campaign to get students on Quora etc.. we really can’t guarantee it would work and also the effort required would be a whole lot more. Instead someone who is part of the student community has sparked the passion a lot easily.
I have had similar experiences in startups when I used to work in-house. The boss had been trying to get employees to come onto social media and participate bit it wasn’t working too well, but I was as any other employee (albeit with a cooler job 😉 ) I used to keep telling them various Twitter stories, about the fun trending topics, shared some fun tweets on current topics, in case of Mumbai rains showed real, live pics and all of a sudden they were a lot more interested in Twitter and they adopted Twitter.
What are your thoughts on bringing about a natural adoption of new social platforms in a community? Will be coming up with more dope about interesting stuff on Quora soon… so stay tuned 🙂
Here is the note about VJTI that Aditya was refering to,
The 8th Wonder
June 6, 2009 at 11:15amI remember the first time I heard the name VJTI. It was in the threadbare classroom of my Physics tuition teacher Mrs. Ghurye. I didn’t pay much heed to what she was saying. Most of us were drowned in the stupor of the laziness caused by the midday sun. My mind was more on the bead of sweat trickling down my back since the a/c was out of order, as she conveniently told us. She went on and on about how only a few handpicked chosen ones will ever be able to walk through those gates with pride. “Only the crème de la crème will ever call the illustrious Victoria Jubilee Technological Institute home”, she haughtily proclaimed. “Five of my students got admission there last year!” she had added with a self satisfied smirk.
At that time an image was etched into my subconscious. A magnificent, mammoth building, built of brick and stone. Beyond whose gilded gates laid boundless tomes of knowledge. The reticent walls when coaxed would tell tales of the geniuses and masterminds who studied there. I knew I’d never see that place in all my life. Apparently she made it seem like none of us were really worthy of it. That if we went there, we’d always get this feeling of aloofness and distance, a step-motherly treatment if you will.
I got in here by somewhat of a chance. I never really wanted to do IT or Instrumentation or any of these infantile branches. I felt, somehow, they did not give enough splendour to an engineering degree. I wanted a core branch. My dad at that time insisted that come what may, I must try for this institute at all costs. As distant as it may seem, it was worth a shot. I got my admission in the second round at COEP, Pune.
I remember the first day I walked through those gates (after the admission procedure), there was a stately aura around the campus and paradoxically everything and everyone seemed so humble. Even till this day, when I step into college after an extended period of time, I can still get the tingling sensation that I did on the first day. A Molotov cocktail of apprehension, fear and excitement flushed through my veins. What arcane secrets did she hold? Would this association end for the better or worse? Were the girls here pretty? It’s amazing what goes thru the mind of a 17year old at the threshold of his career.
Coming from the ‘eminent’ Jai Hind College I was shell shocked when I had my initial association with my peers. I thought “These aren’t my people! I belong with the Brand Wagon, mindless, haughty children of socialites with little sense and no aim. Who classify friends by the cars they drive and where they spend their Saturday nights, who scoff at anyone who as much as mumbles the words suburb, allowance or scholarship.” I can’t begin to say how wrong I was. I made friends here that I would have never known otherwise. Now THAT would have been a definite loss. For my suburban bandhaas, with their allowances fuelled by scholarships, are more ‘dope’ than anyone can fathom.
The people here were genuine and sincere. They all had that same quality of frankness and humility. Untainted and untarnished by the stains of ‘high society’. Its not that they came from humble beginnings, no. They were from all strata of society, coalesced into one single institution. They were cool in their own way, each one unpretentious, unique and irreplaceable, always eager to help and never to judge.
These people taught me that sometimes water might just be thicker than blood. I learned the fine art of proxy, experienced the zeal and enthusiasm only an inter-department cup can create, understood the nuances between the nerds of Electronics and Computers and learnt just how much fun ‘CounterStrike’ in the hostel can be.
We often crib about the shortcomings of our college. How the faculty is lacking, the infrastructure is crumbling and the knowledge is more theoretical. But no one really realises the fact that these hallowed walls play a mean trick on you. You learn to despise them for the first year, you turn indifferent towards them for the next to and eventually you realise that you just can’t let go. It’s called being institutionalised. A word I picked up from a movie I saw, which was recommended by, none other than, a hostelite!
I now stand at the middle of my term at VJTI. The friends I’ve made, the experiences I’ve had and the things I have learnt. I find this repertoire of memories forever engraved into my mind more priceless than I can ever put into this article.
Dedicated to: – Those who made double lectures more bearable, the library more conducive to gossip, and practicals as something to look forward to.
Raj Dabholkar
TE Production
Just the other day I met a friend of mine who is not too active on Twitter. She was of the opinion that Twitter is mostly to follow celebrities, which is boring and hence Facebook is much better. Kill.Me.Now. I really miss the early Twitter days when it was not very well known and most conversations were legitimate, I mean they weren’t incentivized by brands.
So while there was a serious increase of clutter on Facebook and Twitter I kept seeing some interesting QnA’s being shared from Quora. Some are really funny while others are serious. Finally quite tired with sponsored Facebook ads & Twitter hashtags I started checking Quora out. I think this is where all the value from social networks has fled! 😉
The quality of answers is so high!
Example Q: What was the right strategy for Abhimanyu to defeat the Padmavyuha formation from the Mahabharata?
We can see people analysing, ideating models, contributing examples… wow!
It is great to see such a fount of value creation from genuine people participation. This is a platform to spend more time on.
I have come across some interesting brand activities going on as well – will cover them here soon! 🙂
I remember often as a child I would be accosted by a strict teacher to explain some study material. Even if I don’t know the stuff I would rather fib whatever I do know. Sometimes I got caught but at other times I managed to fool them. 🙂
It is an art to fake expertise. It is sad to see that brands on social media want to become the expert of their extended domain when they are not. Health drink companies want to tweet like a health expert, garment companies want to tweet like a fashion expert and baby product companies want to tweet like parenting experts. The problem is not just that they are not experts but many of them can’t even do a good job of faking expertise.
Take a look at tweets by one of the leading Soya Milk company,
Apart from the poor grammatical mistakes in some of the tweets, some of them are even highly dubious. 🙂
I am a soya milk drinker, so I was very happy to see this brand on Twitter. I was following it until one such dubious tweet came to my notice. I even raised the matter with them but they did not reply.
I unfollowed them as their was no response to my tweet.
I unfollowed them after that. Not a lot of people know but running down the stairs has to be done carefully because the impact on the knees is a lot higher as compared to when you are climbing the stairs.
What baffles me is that they don’t need to be an expert in healthy lifestyle. They are making soya milk which can be considered as a healthy choice but that does not mean that I as the consumer expect them to be health experts! It is completely ok if they are not health experts as long as their soya milk is good quality. Instead they have gone ahead to be misleading health experts and hence make a mockery of their Twitter presence. The bad grammar, numerous typos and lack of a response to queries make the matter even worse. In fact every time I read their tweet, my time is getting wasted due to the lack of quality and purpose in the tweet.
I know so many companies who are doing this, it is really sad because they are making us fans look like stupids and adding to the clutter on social networks.
There are ways to provide expert knowledge in your domain, a way that provides some value to the end reader.
Establishing Authentic Expertise
1. Invite real experts to give their views
- Host Twitter/Facebook chats
- Compile guest blog articles
- Interview/Quote them
This will actually make your brand popular amongst these experts as well – they would promote it in their circle.
2. Harness internal expertise
This soya milk brand will have in-house experts. They may not be experts in a healthy lifestyle but definitely they know how to make great soya milk. The brand needs to go back to its roots and interview the people at the factory who work with the actual product. They can then establish authentic expertise of soya milk – its qualities, nutritional value, production process etc… The question to ask here is “what are we experts about?”
Some brands which succeed in building genuine thought leadership and expertise via content creation,
Equinox: They have a lot of material on their blog, it is well explained and they often bring in a celebrity to talk about their workouts. They also reply to some of the comments especially if there is opposition from fans, which I think would happen either ways.
The Startup Centre: They throw out a lot of intriguing ideas, questions, comments, thus generating interesting discussions which I feel is a part of establishing expertise. They share Vijayanand’s relevant thoughts which is the most authentic way of going about establishing thought leadership – to get the expert in your company to share their expertise.
Expert views given by a real expert easily trumps fake stuff
I think it is quite evident in the various examples how genuine expertise adds so much to the social content strategy while fake stuff takes away just that much. The above example of soya milk drink, I feel it would be better if they were not on social media considering the damage they are doing to the brand. I was just a happy customer until I saw the mess they are doing on Twitter, now I am mildly irritated with them.
Do you know of any brands which turn you off because of their silly social media tactics?
Annkur is another of my friends I made via Twitter, a hard core entrepreneur. Whenever I am muddled about something related to my startup he is one of the few people I go to for advise. Something unique about him is that he started his own ventures from the very young age of 15.
Business: PriceBaba, a location based search engine
What is the most significant difference you see in yourself as an entrepreneur now after all these years of experience?
Thank you for asking this Priyanka. It makes me think. I would try and put down what I think has changed, but I wish I can go back and ask some of my life coaches who have seen me evolve. Unfortunately there isn’t any one person who has seen the entire journey with me 🙁
After about 11 years of work, the biggest change is within me. I can’t be sure if it is just running my own business, I was 15 when I started working (probably 14), I have had some life altering experiences and setbacks. Any teenager would change in a decade. For me it has been accelerated and intense. There are several changes, some of which are still happening. Here are a few:
– I don’t fear monetary loss anymore. Having been close to bankrupt a few times, the fear of losing money or letting go some money on the table doesn’t bother me as much.
– I take an extremely long term view on things. Be it business or relationships. It scares me when I don’t see things working in the long run. I don’t look to make a quick buck.
– This has been true for a while, but I rely more than ever on my intuition. In absence of enough data (which often is the case in life), I rely very heavily on my gut feel.
– The most important of course is, I part ways amicably. It no longer is necessary for me to have the emotional or moral win when things go wrong.
– I trust. It is way too personal, but I trust people more than before.
Backstory: I am revealing this for the first time, but I was once caught cheating in a school exam (5th grade). I was helping a friend and a girl told the supervisor. I stopped trusting at that point. I never spoke to her again. I closed myself. The only good thing that came out of it was, I stopped caring about exams too. I never copied again (maybe once), wrote several of my university papers within an hour during HSC / TY-BMS (Graduation) and didn’t care about the results. It took me several years to realise the impact of that moment. I promise myself to do better now.
– I also fall in love with this poem every time I read it,
Learn with Every GoodBye
After a while you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul
And you learn that love doesn’t mean security,
And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts
And presents aren’t promises.And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open,
With the grace of an adult, not the grief of a child.
And you learn to build all your roads on today,
Because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain.
And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.After a while you learn that even sunshine
Burns if you get too much.
So you plant your own garden and decorate
Your own soul, instead of waiting
For someone to bring you flowers
And you learn that you really can endure.
That you really are strong,
And you really do have worth
And you learn and learn and learn.
With every goodbye you learn.By, V Shofstall / J Borges / Unknown
There are also things I think I am still learning:
– Leading a team. Every time the team grows, I see a huge gap in my leadership skills
– Anger and Stress management. I have improved, but miles to go
– Working with people I don’t like. Inevitably I need to do that at times, I find it hard to learn
What led you to prefer the idea of starting your own venture as opposed to a job?
I never had the choice. I started right out of school while I was still studying. So there was no job opportunity. Though if I remember correctly, I did do a part time job at a cyber cafe during my summer vacation sometime around 2002-2003. Against the promise made, I never got paid for it, I was heartbroken. Anyway, to answer your question, I am not averse to the idea of a job. I would do what I love, be it my own venture or started by someone else 🙂
Your startup PriceBaba was recently chosen in the 500 startups accelerator. You are most looking forward to?
Looking forward to a lot of things. Learning from the amazing founders at 500 Startups, building a sustainable business and give back what I can in this short duration to the Mecca of Startups.
Also a bit of clarification, while chosen is the right term, many people think of this as a ‘contest’ or ‘lottery’. It isn’t that! 500 Startups like our team / product / business and chose to invest in us. It is a business decision and merit based. Though I do love the way 500Startups does angel investing. Pankaj Jain, Dave McClure, Paul Singh – they understand angel investing and internet businesses. It is hard to find that in India.
What would you like to say to anyone who is considering taking the plunge into starting up?
Think twice. Plan. Plan more. Look back once. Jump. Don’t ever look back.
How important is it and how can a startup create a distinct brand?
Very. I have made consumer brands, but I think this holds true for enterprise businesses as well. You create a brand that has its own aura, it would be distinct by itself.
Success secrets?
Integrity. Do what you say, by the time you say you will do it. This also includes what you promised to yourself 🙂
This blog is part of the Social Content from your Awesome Workplace series
The 5th and final blog in this series, I will be looking at work material that you already generate in your business, which can be put online as part of your social content. Talks, seminars, presentations, reports, research, meetings and a whole lot more. All the time businesses are generating so much information, while some of it is confidential there is still a lot of it which can be used to engage clients and other stakeholders.
This particular content generation approach is especially relevant for B2B companies.
Events
Any events hosted by your company can easily be great source for relevant videos. Zoholics is an annual event hosted by Zoho and we can see a bunch of videos in the event playlist. These also include training session videos thus adding to the usual training videos that most SaaS companies have.
Video Playlist from Zoholics events 2012
Social Community
Social channels are a place where interesting stuff keeps happening – it could be interesting comments, tags, feedback, messages or even photos posted by fans. This material can easily be re-used in your own content strategy. If you can make a catchy infographic even better. The same could be done about customer analysis, product usage trends, traffic stats, service popularity etc..
Zoho made an infographic about customer feedback they got via social channels: http://www.zoho.com/general/blog/infographic-customer-feedback.html
Good Reads
People in your company are probably reading about your industry sector on a daily basis. Good reading material easily becomes part of your social content. You can blog, tweet and/or Facebook it. Don’t forget to add your own perspective to make it more valuable than just a copy paste.
Example: http://www.facebook.com/thestartupcentre/posts/547150815323054
Current Topics / Debates
Taking the above idea further, you can even analyse the topic to provide a lot more detailed information. Deloitte also takes it one step ahead by asking their fans to debate on the topic and then generating a report based on that. A great way to engage a big community. Providing a downloadable report leads right to lead generation.
For a smaller company with small community, they can ask thought leaders/veterans in the field for their views and compile a report based on that. This helps the company network within their own industry which has great benefit and it also becomes part of your social content.
The above are just some of the ways that material generated,
formally – reports, seminars, training, business analysis
informally – good reads, interesting current new, in-house debates, water-cooler conversations
can be integrated into your social content. It requires you to sit back and think about all this information being generated and then building a process to harness it.
Let me know your views on this, do you use such an approach in your company?
