Social, location, context, mobile: Buzzwords for the future

The 2nd day of Goafest 2010 was set in motion by a ‘Knowledge & Learning” seminar focussing on the burning issue of ‘Social Media’. A varied panel comprising Eric Ashok Ledergerber, founder, hub.in-dia; Kiruba Shankar, CEO, Business Blogging; Vishal Gondal, founder, India Games; Gaurav Mishra, founder 20-20 Social and Patrick Liotard Vogt, chairman, ASW.com held the audience’s attention through plenty of examples and an interactive element.

At the outset they urged the audience to send their thoughts and views through SMS or twitter while the session was on.

Gondal gave three parameters that are defining the social media in current times. He said that reinvention of media is inevitable as it is moving from being a one-way conversation to a participatory medium. “Also, free is the new premium.” Most importantly, he added that social, location, context and mobile are four buzz words that will change the future of communication.

Mishra, in his presentation, said that all marketers, in order to effectively piggyback the social euphoria, need to: Identify a strong passion which addresses lifestyle, interest or cause; ignite the passion; and finally scale the passion by leveraging existing social platforms.

Shankar reiterated the importance of blogs and through an example of his personal experience with Cleartrip.com explained how marketers can effectively harness this medium and even convert negative feedback into engagement tools.

While Gondal enumerated the numerous benefits of connecting and engaging with one’s consumers through online gaming, Vogt illustrated the growing importance of online communities. One of his own online initiatives, Asmallworld.net is a social online community of 600,000 members across countries with a USP of being a very niche and ‘invitation-only’ community. “We have advertisers such as Cartier, HSBC, Tag Heuer and Hermes engaging successfully with the members,” he said.