Pranav Bhasin

Continued from the previous article here.

The second meetup was a panel on “Building social platforms for social activists” involving Jasmine Shah (@jasmine441) and Parul Gupta (@NGOPost) moderated by Gaurav Mishra ( @gauravonomics ). After a quick introduction by Keerthikiran (@keerthikiran), there was a passionate discussion between the panelists with references to how they use social media for their respective causes.

Here are some bullet points from the discussion:

• NGOPost membership jumped from 1k to 25k when they got a Google Grant for free Adwords ads
• Jasmine explained Janaagraha’s REED framework for improving urban quality of life
• Social activism platforms like NGOPost and Janaagraha can bring about much needed change wthn our country
• Why create a social platform when you can use Facebook or Twitter? Because each community has a unique soul
• How important is local language for a social platform built for social change? It’s important but not easy
• Janaagraha will build the critical mass of people who any cause can leverage
• We see google translate is a great way to localize content
• The internet is global. Why limit a platform to a country (like ngopost) or even a city (like janaagraha)? Web platforms need to build offline volunteer networks & real instituions to really bring about real change
• How important is it for corporates to support social causes? How can social platforms be designed to encourage this?
• How can social organizations shift the discussion from problems to solutions?
• How can social organizations use the internet to engage older citizens & not only the youth?
• Do overlapping web-based social initiatives dilute activism, instead of promoting it?
• Overlapping mediums if coupled well, will actually generate more buzz. at the same time, one should have a hub
• How do you use social platforms to bridge the gap b/w talk & action?

Here are a few photos from this meetup ( all pics here ):

Its been some time since I reported an event on my blog, so I thought why not start with this weekend’s Social Media Club Bangalore meetup.

The Social Media Club Bangalore was started around 2 weeks back when Vijay ( @amnigos ), Hrish ( @dhempe ), Freeman ( @freemanindia ), myself ( @amnigos ) and a few others met up at Jaaga and shared our coordinates and learnt more about each other. This week, Gaurav Mishra ( @gauravonomics ) was in town, so SMC Bangalore got a double boost and hosted two back to back social meetups.

The first meetup was a panel on “Indian web 2.0 startups targeting the global market” involving myself ( @pranavbhasin ) and Vijay ( @amnigos ), morderated by Kaushal ( @ksarda ). There was a good crowd turnout with the discussion and queries delving into very practical areas of using social media to promote a startup. Some of the bullet points from the discussion are ( in no particular order ):

• Social media is about conversations, not conversions
• Have tangible and measurable goals for your social media campaign, but do not link them directly to user acquisition
• It is possible to get trial enterprise users via email marketing, but difficult to convert them
• Indian audience behave differently than global counterparts online in giving feedback – Indians only give feedback when there is a problem whereas global audience will give feedback when they like something too
• Indian startups targeting the global market well: Zoho, Deskaway, FusionChart, Dimdim
• Indian users will pay for a physical product but will not pay for a subscription
• If you plan to start up, focus on revenues from day 1 – not every company can scale to the size of a facebook
• Tips for startups: launch quickly, test multiple designs, ask users for feedback, iterate endlessly, build in virality
• Brands should use the social media effectively. They should not spam users based on certain keywords
• Agencies need success stories from multiple markets before they recommend a new social platform to clients
• The only way for a social platform to grow cost effectively is through invites from present users
• Non-users always give positive feedback
• Figuring out a revenue model is more important than acquiring users
• Mentions on big tech blogs only result in temporary traffic peaks, not long-term users

Here are a few photos from this meetup ( all pics here ):