Social Media – Dutch Uncles

An Overview Of The Creator Economy: Challenges And Opportunities

Abhilash Bapanasha — Thu, 26 Aug 2021 13:00:12 +0000

The Creator Economy is built by influencers, vloggers, bloggers, writers, artists, and anyone else who monetise their knowledge, skills, or creations. The phenomenal rise of the internet over the last decade empowered ordinary individuals to create and publish their own content and hence share a story. In order to elucidate more on the opportunities in the Creator Economy space, we had Mr. Tamseel Hussain as the speaker for Innerview – a weekly live 45-minute motivational and inspirational talk show presented by Dutch Uncles which features interviews of industry experts who bring forth informative and life experiences and techniques.

Mr. Tamseel Hussain, the Founder and CEO of People Like Us Create TV (Pluc TV), has successfully built his bootstrapped startup from scratch and is now being used by more than thirty thousand creators. With over a decade of experience in boosting youth-led virtual narratives, Mr. Hussain is building storytelling and technology solutions for the age of the creator economy.

In brief, the session had the following takeaways:

What is the potential of the creator economy?
How can you become a successful creator?
How can creators produce and monetise their content?
What can be the impact of authentic storytelling?

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A lot of ideas are being funded if you have a high user base. But the most important thing is whether you are able to generate your own first revenue. It makes the fundraising journey easy for you.

Here are some excerpts from the interview:

What will you suggest about getting funding to the aspiring young entrepreneurs?

It is really important to share your idea and build on it before you actually go to fundraise. If you are going for a fundraise, the trend that we are seeing right now especially in the Indian market is that a lot of ideas are being funded if you have a high user base. But the most important thing is whether you are able to generate your own first revenue. It makes the fundraising journey easy for you. Second, you should be able to solve a problem, people need to seek solutions and they need to come to your platform. Third, once you have actually solved the problem it is very important that you consistently solve that problem so that people keep coming back to you and these are three golden rules which really help.

Please suggest some action points which creative entrepreneurs can consider to design a robust social media marketing strategy.

The first thing we did was put everything on social media. Knowing what your product is, who your audiences are, it needs to be consistently directed through social media posts. Every platform works according to an algorithm, for example, right now reels than other types of content is really popular and you can see so many small businesses using it to the fullest of the advantage. At Pluc TV, we believe in organic growth and a paid social media marketing strategy only has limits. If you have a good story to tell and if you are hitting the right algorithm it grows faster. If you take the ad marketing or influencer marketing route, you are just ending up spending a lot of budget where if you notice your conversions are very low. I really think organic needs to be prioritised.

How do you think this creator economy space can be utilised and coordinated with sectors like Edtech, Agritech, Fintech?

You already see it happening – in edtech and agritech platforms, there is a massive demand for content creators. The biggest issue that the farming sector has, for example, is the amount of training they are given by existing methods which are traditional. It is very difficult for them to absorb it. They need training which helps them on the spot which is through the new agritech apps that are coming up. They are able to sell whatever they are producing in the best way possible and this is where content creators are coming up. We are going to see a rising trend of experts especially after the pandemic really controlling the narrative when it comes to important subjects that are related to edtech and agritech platforms.

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We believe in organic growth and a paid social media marketing strategy only has limits. If you have a good story to tell and if you are hitting the right algorithm, it grows faster.

Audience Asks:

As a part of this creator community where should our focus be – competing or collaborating with each other? How to decide one of the approaches considering that we all are trying to increase our followers?

I think this trend is about competition and having a massive follower base. You would be more interested in collaborating because it actually helps you build your followers as well. We have seen tools that have been added by various platforms on collaborative lines and with all these things it really helps you build your follower base. So, I think collaboration is definitely the way to go. But if you are really thinking of competing that means you are again falling into the trap of competition which is being forced by a social media algorithm because they have created a trend. Find your niche, find your authenticity – you can still create a trend but in your own way which helps you grow faster.

What factors to take care of while pitching for funding to investors?

The most important thing is there is a format of a pitch deck which should have an end to end information from what your idea is, what problem your idea is solving, what is the USP of your product, how many users you have, how you are going to make it something which is going to differentiate. There are apps and platforms like DocSend which really help you to track analytics and actually see who is viewing your pitch deck when. Once people are interested in your pitch deck, you as a founder should be able to say that you are the right person to do it and really scale the company into something massive. Do not fill your pitch text with a lot of text, instead make it simple for anyone to understand.

The five-crore independent content creator community

As Mr. Hussain explained that while the interest and passion to be a storyteller is on the rise, it is equally vital to choose platforms which have an existing user base. You need to make sure to create keeping in mind the algorithm of the platforms so that there is an optimal transformation and influence. This class of businesses as seen today, is built by over five crore independent content creators, curators, and community builders including social media influencers, bloggers, and videographers, in addition to the software and finance tools designed to help them with growth and monetisation.

The post An Overview Of The Creator Economy: Challenges And Opportunities appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

Digital Marketing Automation: The Step-by-Step Approach

Abhilash Bapanasha — Tue, 17 Aug 2021 10:33:43 +0000

Digital Marketing Automation promises great outcomes; more leads, conversions and sales, all with less labour. Automation-using companies have seen their leads and sales grow, delivering sales productivity of 14% and market overhead reductions of 12%. Redirect Focus, Reallocate Budget, Support Customer Interactions and Gather Meaningful Analytics are some of the strategies to integrate digital marketing automation effortlessly into your marketing strategy. In order to address these, Mr. Ram Jalan was our speaker for MentorED, a weekly live 45-minute workshop where industry veterans share their knowledge and experience and discuss topics that are apt and relevant to the start-up and small business fraternity.

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I have always experienced that marketing is always considered as a cost centre. I think it is high time we consider marketing as a revenue centre, because your reason to exist is itself a cost.

Mr. Ram Jalan has seventeen years of experience as an entrepreneur, marketer, researcher and internet evangelist. He is Co-founder of DINTW, a Marketing Automation and Consumer Neuroscience Lead Digital Company; Executive Director of a hyper local news outfit Ten News; Angel Investor in a B2B Footwear ERP platform. He has served several brands like Emami, Reliance Industries, IMImobile-UK, AskMe-Malaysia, Batelco (Bahrain) and has successfully implemented Digital Transformation Projects at Askme, Wave Group and Omaxe.

In brief, the session had insights on the following:

Reactive Marketing, Database Marketing, Targeting and Segmentation, Trigger Based Marketing, Email Marketing, Social Media and Content, Lead Management, Sales Enablement and Business Intelligence

It is all about Customer and Consequences

“Fundamentals of any marketing or any customer outreach revolves around consumer and the consequences.” As Mr. Ram Jalan opined, digital marketing automation has gained momentum in the last several years now and the pandemic has further accelerated the process. A high usage of the internet, rather demanded by adversities brought by the pandemic during the last eighteen months has made it climb slots on the ladder. “There are internet first brands who have generated more than 2000 crore revenue.” Also, there is a paradigm shift Internet pure business with zero fixed costs coupled with low ownership and more subscription approach.

With many changes taking place, it is also a time for a transformation at the organisational front. Thereafter, he listed five different forms of customers and it needs to be streamlined in which category one’s target customers are located.

Thereafter, the mentor elucidated a typical marketing model framework. “I have always experienced that marketing is always considered as a cost centre. I think it is high time we consider marketing as a revenue centre, because your reason to exist is itself a cost. From day one, you are incurring a fixed cost. Therefore, marketing should be considered as a revenue investment.” He further talked about the different stages of marketing from the awareness stage where a brand introduces oneself to the prospective customer mainly registering their presence and offering a solution.

Engagement follows awareness wherein the prospect’s information has to be collected. But that appears difficult without selling a unique or emergency product. But again, to convert the prospect into a subscriber, social media outreach is the way. An advantage that social media automation offers is brand listening which is nothing but a means to know what prospects and customers think about.

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I always feel that insource and outsource is a great marriage, you should have the right combination of resources inside who are great managers, who can manage people, who can manage partners and run the campaign.

An integrative and consistent approach – Need of the hour

“You will find a common thing across all your marketing outreach strategies that your customer journey should be mapped, then your marketing to sales to customer service should be dating with each other. They should not be working in silos, they should be interacting and then only your marketing to sales to customer service handoff will be smooth, you must have a pricing strategy. Forget those days when we used to say that one size fits all, it does not happen for any e-commerce brand.” Thus, digital marketing has to be an integrated approach with each of the channels generating revenue in unison and not in isolation.

Consistency is vital too. “If you keep switching off and switching on your car frequently, you burn more fuel. It is better to hold on to a constant campaign or a digital marketing outreach rather than switching it on and off.”

Audience Asks

For me, marketing or promotion leads to better reach, But the number of sales is very insignificant. What should I do?

That is a problem that exists. See, I do not know the category of your business, whether it is B2C or B2B. But one thing is for sure, in B2B business, the sales cycle is long. Rather than assessing immediately what is the sales conversion, I think it is very important to assess how my prospect is engaging with the brand. Are the prospects opening your emails regularly? Are the prospects engaging with you on social media, all-in-one marketing plans help you gather that information about whether the person is visiting your website. So, look at those matrices, look at those data points, before you start, try to convert the prospect and that would also see and define your buying journey, the next set of sales.

Can OTT platforms help in reaching marketing goals? Isn’t it too expensive?

OTT is a great platform. I mean, with forty-five to fifty percent of the internet users active today. Going on an OTT platform, whether it is free or paid content, you definitely have your share of eyeballs coming there. I think it is a very good alternative to get pricing, which is very expensive. For a ten second slot, what you pay on OTT, is one tenth of what you pay on television, forget about the Primetime events like IPL, etc. But it is a great platform to start. It is not expensive at all, if you look at the ROI of language.

The mentor is hopeful of the arena as an effective means of client communication that is emerging with an upward thrust. He suggested, “A low resource or trying to impose all marketing activities on one individual or two individuals does not give you optimum performance. I always feel that insource and outsource is a great marriage, you should have the right combination of resources inside who are great managers, who can manage people, who can manage partners and run the campaign.”

Watch the complete video on YouTube to get the complete idea of how to actualise it in your business.

The post Digital Marketing Automation: The Step-by-Step Approach appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

ShareChat: The Social Solution for a Multilingual Nation

Komal Mor — Sat, 12 Jun 2021 12:35:04 +0000

Facebook and Instagram, among other social media giants, have altered the way we interact. In India, which is largely a non-English speaking country, social media platforms such as Facebook may have a high active participation rate, but they have failed to connect with the significant majority of the people who are unable to communicate in English. ShareChat, a Bengaluru-based firm that was formed in 2015 as an independent social media platform, was one of the first to notice this setback.

ShareChat: Decoding Communication for the Regional India

The three IITians, Farid Ahsan, Bhanu Singh, and Ankush Sachdeva hit the sweet spot the 15th time when Ankush stumbled upon a Facebook post inviting people to drop their phone numbers if they wish to be part of a Sachin Tendulkar fan group on WhatsApp. What intrigued him was the fact that when Facebook was witnessing questions against its privacy policy, people were not hesitant to share their phone numbers. He created 10 WhatsApp groups with 100 participants each. An hour later, the groups were filled with notifications about Sachin Tendulkar, but the content was in their regional language. They concluded that WhatsApp helped them to share regional content, but there was no exclusive platform that organically provided content in their mother-tongue.

After some research, the trio discovered that out of 350 million smartphone users in India, 100-120 millions prefer their content in English; however, the remaining users preferred content in their vernacular language. This data was expected to reach 199 million for English users and 536 million for Indian language users in 2021. This knowledge made them realise the need of creating a platform which exclusively addressed and generated content for the regional audience in India. This regional audience mostly resided in the non-metro cities and the content they preferred was very different from the metro cities residents.

In 2014, they started working on an app, gathered data and conducted a user based research for almost 11 months, and finally ShareChat was launched. Given India’s rich linguistic diversity, ShareChat was the key to fill a void left by English centric social apps, through an app designed specifically to entertain the regional audience.

“Vocal for the local”

The first version of the app was launched in December 2014 under the parent company Mohalla Technologies Pvt Ltd. They wanted to analyse how the audience would respond to the app, so that they could work on the changes further. The trio noticed an unusual activity from the users. Almost 90 per cent of the users chose to operate in English, but their engagement rate was immensely low. On the other hand, the remaining 10 per cent chose to operate in a regional language but their engagement rate was much higher. They concluded that people chose English as a language due their aspirational value and not based on their comfort and hence due to minimal knowledge of this language, the engagement rate was quite low. Therefore, they decided to scrap English as one of their choices and relaunched the app in October 2015.

The app which was built thereafter, immensely focused on just feeding its customers with content in their chosen language since the main reason why the app was introduced was to provide content only. The app was supported in four languages excluding English. The content could range from memes to GIFs to videos and the list goes on. When this content was shared on WhatsApp, it would be delivered with a watermark saying “this content is shared by ShareChat” along with a link to download ShareChat. This algorithm helped the app grow organically and initiated installs when the app was just launched.

In no time, the app had almost one lakh downloads within the next two months as the app leveraged traction through WhatsApp. The average engagement time on the app skyrocketed and the demand for new and better versions of the app were also soaring.

How ShareChat Brought about Much-Needed Customisation

ShareChat, when launched, was a chatbot based app to facilitate content as per users’ request. The app later came in many versions to personalise its content with a motive of increasing the engagement rate and moreover cater to the wider needs of its audience. The app now has 15 different languages, excluding English, and has evolved from a content sharing to a content generating app. The purpose of ShareChat was not just limited to “share and chat” but went far beyond for its users. Due to customers demand, in 2016, the app allowed customers not just to share content but to create it as well, when it launched a User Generated Content (UGC) in its system to boost its reach.

But there was a big hurdle that the company had to overcome – Internet connectivity. The target audience for this app were simply the internet consumers of tier II, III and IV cities. Back in 2015, Internet connections were not as advanced as they are now and the users lacked the range they needed to access content in no time. Therefore, the founders decided to build a similar bi-directional architecture which allowed customers to send messages and built the app in such a way that people even in the low-connectivity areas could use their app.

One of the driving points for ShareChat to become a success within the first few years of its launch, was the fact that Reliance Jio had slashed its prices and offered 4G services at dirt cheap prices as low as $3 a month for 1 GB data every day. This solved the problem of low connectivity in smaller regions in one go, paving the way for ShareChat’s success.

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ShareChat was started with a vision to make users comfortable in the digital space without worrying about English literacy.

Why Does ShareChat Stand out?

For starters, the app builds a platform to close a gap within regional communities. Regional and language diversity has been India’s one of the greatest strengths and weaknesses at the same time. It is a weakness because of a simple fact that language can prove to be a barrier in voicing out opinions. Social Media provides the greatest platforms to do so. However, the most famous social media apps are the US based tech giants who do not cater to the whole of India and neglect the regional languages. ShareChat tapped on this large market and provided a “non-English” social network platform to fill the vacuum created by the English based social networking apps.

As mentioned earlier, the app was first a content sharing and then became a content generating app. It has since evolved overtime to make it easier and user friendly for the first time social media users which reside in the tier II and III cities accounting for 80 per cent of the population of the country. The app keeps introducing new features with a motive of expanding its audience.

Let’s dive into the features which made the app user friendly for the first time users.

Shake- N- Chat

This is a very unique feature in the application which facilitates unknown users to connect on the app simply by shaking their phone. This feature will connect the user to another user who is either interested in similar content or has been creating content in a similar genre. This feature certainly strengthens the social experience of the users and can lead to fruitful conversations among the unknown users

Private Messaging

This is no different from other social media apps but this feature could help ShareChat enlarge its market. Users had to resort to other social platforms to chat with say their friends or family members. Upon conducting surveys in 6 different Indian states in 2017, 88 per cent of the users wished for a private messaging feature in the application. Against this insight, a private messaging feature was introduced in the application. This did not only help ShareChat expand its market but also the engagement time in the app increased.

Create your own stickers

Users may utilize this feature to make their own stickers by pressing the ‘stickers’ button in the top right corner of any ShareChat post. Users may also personalize the sticker by using the app’s distinctive frames. The sticker is then kept in the user’s sticker pack. And it doesn’t end here; these stickers can also be shared on Whatsapp from the ShareChat app.

Post search and Repost

Post search feature intends to make searching for postings on a user’s account easier and faster. Users may do this by typing a term into the ‘search’ icon at the bottom of the home screen, and the postings that match that phrase will follow. As the name implies, the functionality will assist the user in filtering the postings in their account, limiting the search criteria.

The repost feature allows the user to re-share a post on their ShareChat account by pressing the ‘repost’ icon at the bottom of any post. Re-shared posts will appear in the feed alongside other posts, but with the original user’s username and profile photo.

Tech Giants’ Obsession with This Home-Grown Rival to WhatsApp

India Quotient was one of the first companies to invest in ShareChat in 2014 with an amount of 50 lakh rupees ($67000) for a 10 per cent stake in the company. This decision was laughed off by many, questioning if just an idea on a paper could get thousands of dollars. However, India Quotient was confident enough to invest in the company based on its idea. Madhukar Sinha, the Co-founder of India quotient had worked closely with the three founders of ShareChat and knew the potential of the brand. Hence, this decision was a no-brainer and the company kicked off with its first investment funding round.

Till date ShareChat has raised an amount of $824.8 million across 10 funding rounds. Their last Series E funding round alone raised $502 million taking the valuation to $2.1 billion.

What doesn’t come as a surprise is the enthusiasm of tech giants for the Indian market. India has become the second fastest internet growing economy hosting 650 million users online which is predicted to cross 900 million by the year 2023. Hence, they do not leave any opportunity to invest in this growing market.

Twitter has been one of the leading investors in ShareChat. Other investors include Xiaomi, Lightspeed Venture partners, Tiger Global management, SAIF partners, Shunwei Capital and many more.

Since ShareChat helps newcomers to the internet, who have no knowledge of how discovery works, by bringing the content to them, Twitter tapped into this opportunity and utilised this approach to grow its reach in regions that would otherwise be inaccessible to them and monetise new users through advertising. ShareChat is the only Indian start-up which has been invested in by Twitter, that too twice. Infact, Twitter invested more than it planned to after TikTok was banned after a standoff between India and China. Soon after that, ShareChat launched ‘Moj’, another video sharing app which reached 10 million downloads just six days after its launch. Twitter plans to make Moj international and a global rival for TikTok and hence, invested a huge sum in ShareChat to deepen its technology.

What does the future hold for ShareChat?

Google and Snap (parent company of Snapchat) are in talks to invest in ShareChat. Twitter is offering to acquire ShareChat with an aim to build a global rival to TikTok. The results of these talks are yet to be seen.

Given the fact that 9 out of 10 people in India prefer to communicate in their native dialect, the future shines bright for ShareChat. But the challenge remains; there are 22 official languages, 122 major languages and more than 1600 dialects and currently, ShareChat has a long way to go to reach this ever-growing population and widen its accessibility for its vernacular-based users.

For more inspiring stories check out our Inspire section!

The post ShareChat: The Social Solution for a Multilingual Nation appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

10 Success Lessons from Mark Zuckerberg

Bhuvana Rajaram — Sun, 23 May 2021 06:05:05 +0000

Born as Mark Elliot Zuckerberg in May 1984 in New York, Zuckerberg runs one of the most thriving global conglomerates and most valued companies in the world that is synonymous with success, vision, ideation, entrepreneurship, social media, and networking that has a market cap of 324.90 $ (April 30th).

If he has the same 24 hours a day that we all have and the same adult human brain that weighs around 3 pounds, what makes him so outstanding and so outperforming?

These are the questions many of us will well ask ourselves when we see him splashed across magazines, Television channels and discussed threadbare in B-Schools and in several entrepreneurship meets.

Surprisingly, this American computer programmer who dropped out of Harvard University after his sophomore year in 2004 spends only 50 to 60 hours a week at his office. However, the flip side is that he dedicates his full day to dwell and obsess over Facebook which is the mission of his life.

This 37-year-old tech CEO confesses to starting his day at 8:00 am by doom scrolling through Facebook, Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp to catch up with the rest of the world. So, if you were contemplating on a digital detox and telling yourself to meditate first thing in the morning – think again. Because Mark Zuckerberg does exactly this as soon as he wakes up.

This is where it all began…

In February 2004, when Zuckerberg was 19 years old, he launched the facebook.com (renamed Facebook in 2005), which was predominantly a directory in which fellow Harvard students entered their personal information and photos into a template that he had designed. And in no time, much of the student body had signed up. Zuckerberg’s roommates, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes helped him add features and make the site available to other campuses across the country.
Facebook experienced swift success as registered users could create profiles, upload photos and other media, and basically keep in touch with friends. It had a key differentiator which was the feature of building a database of real people and including friends of friends which was a major hit.

In 2005, Facebook received its first venture capital funding of $12.7 million and then one thing led to another and as they say the rest is history. And today Zuckerberg’s net worth is at: $119.4 billion. Over the years Facebook has been mired in controversies and criticisms that even questioned if Mark Zuckerberg was really meant to be a CEO, but with each hurdle the company and the leadership has emerged stronger and rides successful till today.

Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg’s growth story will always be the holy grail for entrepreneurs keen on making it big. So, given below is a roundup of select key themes from Zuckerberg’s personal and professional lives that we can emulate. It is a motley list of management tips, life lessons and conscious behavioural changes for individual development and professional advancement.

Create a clear and compelling vision

Mark Zuckerberg has one of the grandest visions that any entrepreneur could possibly have – Of Connecting the World. With a world population of 7.9 billion people, and with Facebook presently having 2.80 billion monthly active users is striding forward on achieving its mission which is why it can attract and retain some of the best talent. Talent that wants to be a part of this vision. With a clear-cut vision comes the ability to lead the team forward in the right direction. Every entrepreneur must have a complete vision of what he or she wants to accomplish, and this is fundamental to entrepreneurial success.

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Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission - to make the world more open and connected.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Give wings to goals with passion

Get completely immersed in your vision and allow it to consume and engulf you. It is not uncommon for Mark Zuckerberg to stay up late to programme while at Harvard nor for his company to conduct all night hackathons. Some of these nightly sojourns have given birth to the Facebook features that we casually use such as Chat and Friend Suggestions. While it is not about night and day, what is important is the fact that when you passionately obsess over your vision some of the best breakthroughs happen. Entrepreneurial success comes only when you give yourself completely to the vision and obsess over how you can achieve that vision that is burning within you.

“Ideas don’t come out fully formed. They only become clear as you work on them. You just have to get started”. Mark Zuckerberg.

Keep the customer in mind always

When businesses build and create products and services with the customer at the forefront, it is always a win. It is very easy to fall prey to your product and eventually stay in love with it and completely lose sight of what the customer wants. This is one of the most common failures of entrepreneurship when the founders end up spending time on convincing the customer that they need the same. Instead, if entrepreneurs pause and understand the customer mind and get under their skin to know what makes them tick and then marry it to the entrepreneurial vision, the outcome is easily saleable. Facebook works with the overarching theme of what customers want to share about themselves in a social platform which is the driving motto behind the backend of Facebook.

Build simple but effective products

Making a product that is simple, easy to use, and addresses the key concerns of a well-defined target group is key. That is what Facebook excelled at. It never over engineered anything beyond a point and struck at an optimum point. In an overzealous attempt to dazzle the customer, entrepreneurs often make the product so feature rich that becomes counterproductive. As entrepreneurs it would be worthwhile to learn how to build a simple and effective product that fascinates the customer but never overpowers them as that puts them off.

“I think a simple rule of business is, if you do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of progress.” Mark Zuckerberg

Start small but think big always

While it’s admirable to have a grand vision and passionately think about it always. Actions are what will take you closer to the goal. Interestingly Facebook, while having the vision of connecting the world, took it small initially opening Facebook up only for college students, who are reachable and available. Scaling up immediately after founding can be extremely dangerous, however starting small and gradually building as funds and support trickle in will be a wise move. Entrepreneurial success is largely dependent on the first few years of stability which is when the team, customers, and money start to trickle in.

“I’m here to build something for the long-term. Anything else is a distraction.” Mark Zuckerberg

Rejig your teams as you move the needle

One of the sharpest things to do as an entrepreneur would be to know what type of team members you need at each stage of the company’s growth. This was something Mark Zuckerberg did intuitively. He shrugged off some of the founding members to bring in new talent as the company scaled. Facebook’s hire of Sheryl Sandberg as its COO was a prudent one and was instrumental for the company’s phenomenal growth. So, knowing what team should be in place at what stage of the company is required of business leaders. Entrepreneurs must keep the growth of the organization at the epicentre and never be clouded by emotions.

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I think as a company, if you can get those two things right--having a clear direction on what you are trying to do and bringing in great people who can execute on the stuff--then you can do pretty well.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Communicate consciously with your people

There are several reports on how Mark Zuckerberg is always walking around the office communicating with his team and getting to know them at a personal level. This is one of the smartest and simplest things that any entrepreneur can do. When one invests energy in team members you have their wholehearted support without asking for it. Every entrepreneur while spending time in forming the team painstakingly must also invest a similar effort in keeping the channels of communication open with them. This gives them the enormous opportunity to know what excites the team members and cater to it accordingly which also helps the business well.

“Treat your employees right so they won’t use your internet to look for new jobs”. Mark Zuckerberg.

Be the master of your mind

At the centre of it all is the mind and the power that lies within it. During the entrepreneurial journey one must traverse a lot. There are several junctures when you are at crossroads, when you encounter losses, failures, decisions backfiring, trolls and criticism. As an entrepreneur you will have to build the mental stamina to cut the clutter and shut out the naysayers and continue to believe in what you set out to do and never waver from it. This is something that Mark Zuckerberg has cultivated and uses the energy spent otherwise on negative emotions to fan his curiosity, creativity, and agility.

“You don’t let people deter you. That’s how you do it.” Mark Zuckerberg

Strive to have a healthy body

It is not about wearing the same grey T-shirt everyday like Mark Zuckerberg, which he does anyway. Setting yourself up for success means starting to respect your body and keeping it fit, flexible and filled with energy. Mark Zuckerberg runs/works out thrice a week apart from running with his dog. Entrepreneurship begins with having good health and realizing that spending time on yourself is an investment of time and effort in your business as well.

“Health is certainly extremely important, and we’ve done a number of things at Facebook to help improve global health and work in that area, and I am excited to do more there, too. But the reality is that it’s not either-or. People need to be healthy and be able to have the Internet as a backbone to connect them to the whole economy.” Mark Zuckerberg

There are several allegations and scandals associated with Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. But the fact remains that for entrepreneurial success and stardom he continues to be an inspirational figure. And emerging entrepreneurs will benefit largely by looking at the multiple success factors of Facebook and of its famous founder. While the path to achieving business success is different for everyone, Zuckerberg’s journey can certainly act as the right reminder when you tend to question yourself when – overwhelmed by the entrepreneurial insurmountable risks.

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How to Use Social Media to Promote Your Business?

Roopali Kotwal — Thu, 29 Apr 2021 09:35:05 +0000

Far-off, yet so close, that’s what technology has done to us. Smart electronic consumer technology devices/products have contracted the world. Within a few clicks, one is connected to the world virtually. With the increased use of consumer tech products especially smartphones, use of Social Media platforms has also increased to promote businesses online by the entrepreneurs.

Social media binds the world and it is one of the most effective ways to build the customer base for any business if used effectively.

Effective Ways to use Social Media for your Business

Social Media is a boon for businesses – big or small. However, it is important for entrepreneurs to understand that their product/service captures the right market and audience. Here some tips especially, for small businesses to use the social media in the most effective way:

Choose the Right Social Media Platform

With many options available, confusion can prevail. Hence, one must understand the business need and then decide on the right platform.

Follow the Schedule

Consistency is the Key! Create a calendar to share the information of the product/service on a regular basis to create visibility and build trust.

Post High Quality content

Don’t just post but, post quality pictures/videos because ‘quality’ matters.

Don’t Over Promote – Add Value

Excess of everything is bad! Be consistent in sharing product/service posts. But don’t make it a regular advertising platform. Don’t over sell. Instead, add value by sharing relevant and short impactful posts for the audience.

Brand Recall

Frequent advertisement is a way for brand recall but you must use that effectively. Impactful marketing messages can help the customers to visit your website for their next buy.

Build Community

Focus on the audience who shall be loyal to the brand instead of increasing the followers.

Provide Quick Response/Resolution

Nothing can beat a swift response so a good customer service will establish a goodwill.

Social Media: Benefits

With proper social media strategy, one can promote business and can avail many benefits such as:

Expanded Reach

With Social Media, one can expand their business and provide their product/service in the Tier II and Tier III cities which may or may not be accessible otherwise.

Increased Web Traffic

High quality promotional videos/pictures add value and will compel the user to click on the company website and these customers will most likely promote the product to their friends/family.

Networking/Real Time Interaction

Keep the clients up to date on any new launch. The real-time communication builds a strong network between the customer and the business.

Brand Awareness

Increase the reach of the brand to potential and existing clients with frequent insights into any new product/service being offered.

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Social Media binds the World. In today’s age and time, Social Media turns out to be the most effective way to build the customer base for any business if used effectively.

What’s in it for me?

India is a big market with a huge population using smartphone devices. As per February 2021, Statista Research Department Report, the number of smartphone users worldwide are forecasted to exceed 3.8 billion users in 2021 and smartphone users in India are to reach over 820 million in 2022. This explains the potential of reaching the highest possible number of potential customers through top-notch social media promotion.

Social Media is a solid platform and helps to promote small businesses in many ways. For instance, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, IGTV, Dailymotion, Telegram and WhatsApp are among the popular social media platforms. Though, these platforms help to promote business at a large scale in India, the entrepreneurs must understand and put themselves in the customer’s shoes to design the social media campaigns with content that is relevant to the target audience, useful for the users by providing some value and generates interests within them to join the club of your loyal customers.

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If You Are a Direct-to-Consumer Start-up, This is How you Can Enter New Markets

Shalmoli Sarkar — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 00:35:04 +0000

Changing customer preferences and consumption to digital content is paving the path of growth for the D2C startups in India. With new unique needs emerging, D2C startups are successfully catering to the pain points to build loyalty, eliminate middlemen and increase profits. With closure of malls and stores in lockdown, and strict government rules to e-commerce biggies to not sell non-essential items, customers are left with the only option to buy from D2C brands. However, since D2C startups are digital first stores the market dynamics works differently for them. The pandemic acted as a catalyst that significantly increased the online content consumption that led the D2C startups to flourish. A study as per Avendus Capital says, D2C startups soon will be a market worth $100 billion in India by 2025. With the future seeming bright for D2C startups, they have the strength to foray into newer demographics and markets. Here is how they can expand into new markets.

Entering the rural markets

Increasing aspirations to lead a better life, a deluge of affordable smartphones, embracing digital payments and inexpensive 4G data plans is causing people from tier-IV and tier-V cities to opt for online shopping. As per TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India ) the country has 1.15 billion mobile phone users out of which 520 million comes from rural areas. D2C startups being digital -first – brands should have constant consumer interaction on social media platforms and not forgetting that the story behind a brand is necessary for the customer to find it relevant. Hence, to establish a strong foothold in the rural market the brand content, vibe , language should have a touch of localisation. The content of your brand should be solving the pain points of a customer. The engagement rate, acceptance and conversion rate in rural India towards a D2C brand will skyrocket if the content is vernacular.

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As per TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India ) the country has 1.15 billion mobile phone users out of which 520 million comes from rural areas.

Offering a subscription based model

D2C brands such as NUA – a women’s personal wellness brand offers a subscription based model where it has monthly and quarterly plans to offer sanitary pads to women, thus freeing them from buying regularly. With a subscription model companies can build a long-lasting relationship with customers based on convenience, reliability and meeting their unique needs, this creates a recurring revenue and positive word of mouth in the community helping to expand.

Up the game of social media marketing

Paid marketing strategies help a business to collect relevant data points, for example finding audience from which location is interacting, their preferences, which social media are they most active and the sites they visit. After obtaining the data, startups should design the social media campaigns and optimize the every stage of the sales funnel. Starting the campaigns first with Facebook will be beneficial since its algorithms are more advanced and has lower cost per action as compared to google ads.

Leveraging social selling to enter new markets

D2C brands can collaborate with micro influencers on Instagram and Facebook to leverage the already established fanbase. Since customers spend more than twice as much time on social media other than browsing other websites, 62 percent of customers are likely to purchase a product from a brand they follow on social media as per Sprout Social. In social media, D2C startups have the liberty to customize their messaging and run highly targeted ads to target certain demographics.

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New Regulations for Social Media: How will it Change the Way Google, Facebook and Twitter Operate in the country

Aakash Sharma — Sat, 06 Mar 2021 10:35:05 +0000

On February 26, 2021, the Indian government passed a bill to introduce new regulations for social media, digital media (including news outlets) and OTT platforms operating in India. These recent changes come at a time when technological developments in the country are pushing innovation and entire sectors amidst a pandemic exacerbated by the economic crisis.

What transpired in the lead up to the new regulations for social media platforms?

On February 10, 2021, Indian officials held a virtual meeting with the top leaders of Twitter. Government officials outlined that the social media giant is “welcome to do business in India,” but it had to follow the country’s laws “irrespective of Twitter’s own rules and guidelines”.

The meeting was the outcome of tensions between the Bharatiya Janata Party government and Twitter. The Modi government’s passage of new farm laws has ignited protests that are going on for nearly five months now. The government had asked Twitter to remove provocative hashtags and tweets from accounts used by alleged Sikh and Pakistani separatist groups.

Twitter outright pleaded that it would not block the accounts of media companies, journalists, activists and politicians because that would amount to the violation of the fundamental right to free expression under Indian law.

New rules and regulations- bringing everything under the government’s ambit

According to the new government regulations of February 26, 2021, intermediaries such as WhatsApp must identify the first “author” of the content and messages deemed a threat by the government. All such platforms will have to remove illegal content within 36 hours of receiving notification. The government issued these new rules in addition to the Information Technology Act 2000. The government clarified that it is not asking the intermediary to break any encryption by seeking to know the originator of the message.

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The government's motives behind these new rules seem to be that of a monitoring agency rather than an inhibitor of business.

New rules for social media sites- how will they function in the future?

New government regulations governing internet businesses such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter pose new challenges for the US social media giants in a large Indian market critical to their global reach.

Social media companies must revoke and takedown explicit porn-related content within 24 hours of reporting under the new rules. The companies are also expected to appoint agents and work with people living in India to coordinate law enforcement and handle complaints. They also need to help identify the “first real sender” of specific messages that pose some form of threat.

Representatives for Facebook and WhatsApp said Facebook has “always been clear as a company that we welcome regulations that set guidelines for addressing today’s toughest challenges on the Internet.”

How can the new changes impact SMEs running and advertising on social media platforms?

The new regulations majorly bring content assets and targeted content that can potentially harm the civil discourse and violate the Indian law under the purview. There does not seem to be an adversarial impact on the small businesses running via social media. Numerous small businesses have benefited from the campaigns and advertisement services offered by initiatives like Facebook for Business, Google Shops, Instagram Shop, Twitter ad campaigns.

The government’s motives behind these new rules seem to be that of a monitoring agency rather than an inhibitor of business. These mega-corporations bring vast opportunities for Indian people and continue to do so as long as no laws are violated. Nevertheless, what the future holds for businesses and content creators on these platforms cannot be ascertained. What can be said is that there is no immediate threat to any SME running through these platforms.

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New IT Guidelines for Social Media Platforms

Smruthi Krishnan — Wed, 03 Mar 2021 06:30:07 +0000

Post the entire standoff between the government and Twitter, the centre has announced new guidelines for social media platforms which will make it compulsory for apps like WhatsApp to help in identifying seeds of unlawful messages spread across the country. It will be compulsory for all such platforms to provide information and verify identities to authorities within 72 hours of order. The main reason behind such stringent measures is that several citizens are misusing these platforms to spread false narratives and misinformation which often insinuate violence much like the farmer protest on January 26, 2021. To avoid such extreme scenarios, and to protect the spirit of democracy, the Centre has established new guidelines. The controversy remains that such censoring guidelines go against the core principle of democracies; freedom of expression and speech

The Information Technology Guidelines for Digital Media Ethics

The Information Technology Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code Rules, 2021 was formed to tackle issues like sensationalism of fake news, abuse of these platforms to share morphed images of women, revenge porn and other explicit content.
Twitter, Facebook and YouTube must take down defamatory and controversial messages within a specific time-frame, set up grievance redressal mechanisms as well as assist government agencies in the investigation. Whatsapp has earlier refused to comply with the government’s request to trace the origin of a fake message as it undermines the private nature of the platform.
The rules enable the identification of the first originator of the information for prevention, detection, investigation, prosecution or punishment of an offence related to the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign states, or public order, or of incitement to an offence relating to the above or in relation with rape, sexually explicit material or child sexual abuse material, punishable with imprisonment for a term of not less than five years.

On receiving a court order or notice, an intermediary will need to remove or disable access to unlawful information within 36 hours”.
Platforms need to appoint a Grievance Officer to deal with complaints and share the name and contact details of such an officer. Intermediaries shall remove or disable access within 24 hours of receipt of complaints of contents that exposes the private areas of individuals.
Further, they need to appoint a Chief Compliance Officer, a Nodal Contact Person, a Resident Grievance Officer and also publish a monthly compliance report mentioning the details of complaints received and action taken on the complaints.

What is in it for Social Media Businesses?

The very essence of such platforms is to amplify the voices that go unheard and help keep democracy in check. As a social media business, you must be careful about the kind of content that is shared on your platform and be wary of misinformation and fake news being spread via your social media. As a business owner, you cannot get caught in dubious scandals caused by your user base, thus having proper rules and guidelines will help you regulate the content share. However, understand that you cannot over-regulate and invade users’ right to privacy and free speech.

These new rules can lead to privacy challenges and also result in censorship by intermediaries. Not everyone misuses social media, however, exceptions exist. But you cannot control narratives just because of a few exceptions. The guidelines will help ensure the safety of the majority of social media users across India.

It is difficult to conduct a social media business when the guidelines can potentially undermine the principles of open and accessible Internet and violate the right to privacy and free speech of users. But users must follow a proper protocol and have their grievances addressed to avoid abuse and violence via social media.

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Crossing the 60 million user mark: The story behind Snapchat’s growth momentum

Smruthi Krishnan — Wed, 17 Feb 2021 02:35:03 +0000

2020 turned out to be a successful year for Snapchat in India. They crossed the 60 million user mark in the fourth quarter of 2020 in India as their growth momentum touched a new peak with users engaging via Discover content, Lens Studio, etc.

Snapchat was created by former Stanford University students Bobby Murphy, Evan Spiegel and Reggie Brown. Being a new one-of-a-kind mobile friendly social media app, their features have gained traction especially amongst the Gen-Z. Primarily a one-on-one photo sharing app, the pictures and messages disappear after a short time of being sent and become unavailable to receivers. They started with a simple picture sharing platform and later expanded features like chronological 24-hour stories, Brand advertisements via Discover, password-protected space called My-eyes-only to save pictures. As of March 2020, Snapchat had 229 million daily active users sending an average of around 4 billion Snaps 1 each day.

It all started with Reggie Brown’s idea for a disappearing pictures application which he presented to Evan Spiegel who had little business background. The two of them collaborated with Bobby Murphy who undertook coding. After working closely together, they launched Snapchat under the name Picaboo on iOS in July 2011. Focusing on the technical and application aspects, they relaunched the app as Snapchat in September 2011. Spiegel described their mission as communicating with “the full range of human emotion” without having to capture the perfect pretty Kodak moment. They also focused on the issues caused by longevity of personal information on social media which their platform does not support through disappearing messages.

From 25 Snapchat images being sent per second in May 2012, to 20 million snaps being shared per day in November 2012, over one billion photos had been shared via Snapchat – a spectacular growth within 6 months of launch as the app spread like wildfire across countries. By November 2015, users were sending 6 billion videos per day. In 2016, they raised $1.81 billion in equity offering. The company gained popularity especially amongst the younger generations all over the world reaching 166 million daily active users in May 2017. In 2020, they planned a promotion strategy called Snapchat Spotlight where they would pay a total of $1 million to users for posting viral videos, implementation is awaited.

Augmented reality (AR) is transforming the communication and media entertainment landscape. Snapchat Inc’s Managing Director, Nana Murugasen says in India they focused solely on developing culturally relevant products, community engagement, and partnerships. More than 500 million people in India used the Diwali-themed lenses more than eight times the engagement compared to the previous year. The growth momentum has been inspiring to say the least and has gained immense popularity amongst the Indian youth with a 150 percent growth rate in daily active users.

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Creator Economy: A New Breed of Entertainment

Shalmoli Sarkar — Thu, 11 Feb 2021 02:35:02 +0000

It was during the year 2000 when our television sets were largely dominated by Saas-Bahu soaps that kept Indian audiences glued to it. The shows were aired at 8 pm that ran for several years and completed episodes nearing 2000. In those times, a teenager who had just stopped watching Cartoon Network had no other choice but was left to watch the daily soaps with family. The age group of 15-25 years remained largely untapped since the entertainment content catering to them was largely absent. The advent of inexpensive internet plans, affordable smartphones, short-form video apps like TikTok and Dailyhunt’s Josh, and the addition of video features on social media platforms like reel, FB live, YouTube live on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube respectively have changed the course of entertainment that has given birth to independent content creators, even from the rural parts of India as well. The emergence of such platforms has given the millennials and Gen Z to be vocal about experiences, knowledge, and opinion. Right from entertainment, education, DIY tips, gaming to news, the creator economy has personalized content that caters to the audience of various interests and motivations.

This boom in the creator economy has now emerged to be a career option for many Gen Z and millennials since many big brands are collaborating with the creators.

The future of the creator economy seems to be bright in India since it is expected that the number of internet users will touch a user base of 974 million by 2025. An average Indian spends around 17 hours on such platforms each week, which confirms its popularity.

The popularity in the creator economy can be attributed to the below reasons:

Easy creation of visual content using a smartphone
The duration of videos being short: an average of 15 seconds to 3 min which is easier to consume.
Hyper-customized content delivery
Multiple modes of creative expression
The minimalist vertical video feed, since 94% of the viewers hold their phone upright to which vertical videos occupy the entire screen grabbing viewer’s undivided attention

The content from the creator’s economy is based on the following facets:

DIY or tutorial content

This content genre has witnessed immense popularity in the pandemic as out-of-home consumption reached an all-time low. Creators turned to create content that could help people do tasks on their own. For instance, cutting your hair yourself, create masks from your T-shirt, work from home makeup hacks, fashion hacks, etc.

Entertainment

Indian population majorly comprises Gen Z that likes to consume and create short videos. Other than YouTube, short-form video apps like TikTok for their easy-to-use features and localized content were largely successful in developing content creators from tier-II, III, IV, and V cities. Though, the app was banned but, the creator economy being a lucrative one, led Dailyhunt’s Josh a short-form video app, an alternative to TikTok to raise a funding of $100 billion through a series H round from Qatar Investment Authority. Local language support is one of the key highlights of Josh, it currently supports 12 Indian languages. Josh currently has 77 million users per month and has over 1.5 billion video plays per day.

Collaboration with brands

Brands that are big or small are now collaborating with content creators on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook because of their fan following and authentic content creation.

Creating community

Human beings have an affinity to be in groups where there is a sense of belonging. From lifestyle to social commerce, and from health and fitness to mental wellness, users on most of these homegrown platforms are engaging and interacting with content that caters to their specific interests.

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