Weblogs Stats in Indian Context – I munch the findings!

Author: Business Beyond Reality

In a recent survey to determine blogging trends in India, MSN polled 1000 visitors on its portal and came up with some statistics. Here I am, munching, biting, swallowing some and vomiting the other findings!

 

• In India, the most popular blogs are authored by Business Leaders. A good news for marketing divisions of organizations! Social Media is going to go places!

• Blogging in India continues to be dominated by men. Men constitute 75% of the blogosphere. A possible reason for fewer female bloggers is that in India, a majority of females still avoid expressing themselves through public channels. Features like password protection of the post may motivate females to beat their counterparts. Long way to go girls!

• Blogs are as much a source of reliable information as Media Outlets and TV Channels are. I agree completely. While buying anything expensive, I trust the reviews on blogs.

• 14% of internet users actively blog. That’s still a small share.

• 39% are aware of weblogs. The awareness amongst people is quite low. The companies offering blogging accounts should market it better. Long way to go!

• 85% of the bloggers are less than 35 years of age. Well that’s a little wierd. As the first point mentions that the majority prefers the blogs authored by business leaders, are most of the business leaders below 35 years of age??? Strange isn’t it???

• 49% read blogs for the reason that they find them interesting. I don’t have much to comment on this point.

• 58% blog to express themselves while 40% blog to entertain others. Okay… Interesting…

• 50% blogs recieve around 40 visitors a month. Well… That’s not too high a number. If 58% of the bloggers blog to express themselves, don’t they have a social circle who’ll be interested to know what’s happening in their friend’s life??? I mean much more people would read the status updates on facebook profile. Probably there’s some flaw in the model of blogs which people use to share their expressions. I still need to figure out what!!!

• 90% of all bloggers spend up to 5 hours a week on blogosphere. I think that’s a decent figure!

The conclusion is that Social Media has a long way to go in India…

PagalGuy.Com Marketing Strategy – Missing Links

Author: Business Beyond Reality

 

If I had a free hand in the Marketing Department of PagalGuy.Com, following would be my unique contribution to the way Pagalguy.com markets itself:

1.      Ability to import the calendar available in Pagalguy.com in Google/Yahoo/MSN Calendar. This kind of personalization should have a good penetration. Along with the calendar entries, there would be a line advertisement of Pagalguy.com.

 2.      SMS Alerts of important notices and dates and regular reminders (80 Characters) followed by a single line advertisement (80 Characters).

 3.      A downloadable J2ME application for the JAVA/Symbian Mobile Handsets. The user should be able to read content of Pagalguy.com through a GPRS enabled mobile handset through that application. The application can also contain features like-a new word a day, a quant question a day etc. Every time a user opens the application, a relevant advertisement would be presented to the user.  

 4.      Seminars for MBA Aspirants. Free for last year high performers in CAT and a marginal entrée fee for the others. Having a free seminar would attract the high performers, and if advertised well, the presence of high performers would attract the weak students and newbies to spend money and add up to Pagalguy’s revenue.

 5.      Invited Video Seminar of last year’s MBA top performers, web-casted on Pagalguy.com website.

 6.      Representatives outside banks like Axis Bank or UTI Bank during the period they sell the coveted institute admission forms. These representatives would advertise Pagalguy.com to people coming to buy forms.

 7.      Start a 24 hours pre-recorded internet radio channel.

 8.      Advertising through SIFYs chain of cyber cafes. They advertise websites at the time of users logging in for a nominal charge.

Advantages of Internet Marketing over Conventional Media

Author: Business Beyond Reality

 

I would here like to highlight some of the benefits of Internet Marketing over Marketing through Conventional Media.

1. Online Marketing is more customizable to suit the interests of the targeted users. Example: When creating an email address, one is asked to select newsletters of interest. Or the customized advertisements in Gmail, which are related by semantics or a defined ontology with the content of the email. Online marketing if done with meticulous planning is likely to attract more attention from the targeted users . Permission Marketing has even more impact.

2. Online Marketing targets all those people who spend significant time on the internet. The internet has become a part of our life in different dimensions. Emails and Search Engines for professionals, Social Networking Websites for College goers, Matrimonial Websites for the older people, Internet today has a huge penetration.

3. Marketing through a website based on the Web 2.0 technology (And the Web 3.0 which according to Gartner would have a presence amongst 80% of the internet users worldwide by 2011), web is not anymore a means to broadcast information but also a platform for the content providers and the readers to interact.

4. Online Marketing has a global penetration. It is not restricted to a local zone or a country. An advertisement on Radio Mirchi or Times of India Newspaper (Hardcopy) would not be able to reach the audience in the US. This is a downside because through conventional media, we lose audience like the Non Residents who have a high probability to be interested in the products/services being offered in their home country. Banks in India have now the facility for NRIs to send money through moneyorders to their people in India, the request of which is taken from e-banking. This is supporting example showing the involvement of Non Residents with their home country.

5. RSS proves to be a good technique to pass information to the target audience.

6. Listing costs are extremely cheap and it is a great way to reach thousands of people in a short amount of time.