My Diary Entry - Workshop on Social Media Usage

Saturday, 5^th April 2014: I happened to attend the “Social media training” by Mr Raghunath Ramaswamy – a veteran in the staffing and recruitment industry (www.spectrumconsultingindia.com, http://in.linkedin.com/pub/raghunath-ramaswamy/2/216/341). It was a power-packed one day workshop on the usage of social media tools with emphasis on Linked In and Blogging.

Although I was skeptical in the beginning, I was persuaded by Raghu to attend this workshop. Of course, I have used Linked In quite some time back; but I am not an avid enthusiast of these tools (surprising that I work in a technology company!), my fear being the amount of time we get hooked on to the net.

It was a bit of lazy start with a motley crowd of Recruiters from staffing companies, manufacturing and consulting. Before long, we were completely hooked into the power of such tools at one’s hand. With his vast knowledge, network and experience, we were privy to some of the techniques to be used.

We got to watch a few interesting videos.

#1. The power of media in marketing – E.g. Wheel washing powder’s remarkable success in rural Bihar and UP where internet penetration is low. The company effectively used “missed call” technique to increase its sales. Enjoy the humour and campaign at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlGcd_5fyzI

#2. Mr Gary Vaynerchuck – He has consciously cultivated 1M followers in Twitter and has made a killing using online social media. He started a video podcast - Wine Library TV featuring wine reviews and advice on wine appreciation. This became very popular and had appx. 100,000 followers.  In March 2009, Vaynerchuk signed a 10-book deal with HarperStudio for over $1 Million. His first book was “Crush It! Why Now is the Time to Cash in on your Passion” in Oct 2009. The deal is groundbreaking in the publishing world as one of the first attempts to successfully use a low-advance/high royalty business model. What is unique about this book ? The book encourages people to determine what truly makes them happy and pursue monetizing around it on the internet. It argues that because of recent social and technological trends the cost of producing content has been driven low enough that passion, knowledge, and effort, which the book calls "sweat equity", are now all one needs to build a brand and business.Crush It was also among the first books released on the Vook platform. He has been commissioned to write many books. I watched his interview to CNN where he emphasized the “we care” attitude that must manifest during your online interactions in social media and the ability to “listen” makes a significant difference. You can watch his interview with CNN at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNM9kA1bSHk  An amazing person indeed!

#3. In this video, I was introduced to the “power” of online giants to filter out the information around us and decide on what they think we need! An eye-opener to me was the fact that two different people end up getting totally different search results on the same search topic. Watch the video on “Filter Bubble” at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ofWFx525s

Also, the quality of interaction with the trainer and other participants like Mr Shekar Rangarajan (http://in.linkedin.com/in/thoughtcatalyst) - a former IT professional and a “Transformational Change Consultant”  proved to be the icing on the cake.

Thanks Raghu and Shekar Sir

What's the Good Word - Ponzi Scheme ?

 I came across a new word “Ponzi Scheme”.  I decided to find out. Here is what it I found..…

 A Ponzi scheme is an investment scam that pays existing investors out of money invested by new investors, giving the appearance of earnings and profits where there are none.  After some time, the fraudster disappears leaving the investors high and dry. Not all such schemes are easy to detect.

This is named after Carlo Ponzi in the US in 1920s. He was an Italian immigrant to the Unites States. At that time there was a practice that whenever someone sent a mail overseas, they would also buy international reply coupons that facilitated reply from the recipient. Ponzi would buy reply coupons in a different country where they tended to be cheap and then sell them in the US. The difference in the price was the profit made. He started off saying the investors would get 50% return in 90 days.  It didn’t turn out as easy as he thought. There were far more costs involved in conducting business overseas and dispatch of the coupons. The costs soared high and Ponzi kept the bad news to himself. More and more investors poured in handing him all their life’s savings. He paid off the initial investors with the new money that kept pouring in and pocketed some for him.  As the early investors could get real returns, there was no suspicion. In fact, it only generated a chain of investors flocking to him. No one complained.

Ponzi started living lavishly. He was not clever enough. People began to wonder how he bought and sold. Eventually, he was busted. But he was not the first (nor going to be the last) to carry out such a scam. Possibly, he stood out because of the money (millions) he made and the vast number of people swindled.

Here’s  Charles Ponzi  (in)famous quote !

"Even if they never got anything for it, it was cheap at that price. Without malice aforethought I had given them the best show that was ever staged in their territory since the landing of the Pilgrims! It was easily worth fifteen million bucks to watch me put the thing over."