SocialInsight » personal branding

How NOT to make a Social Media Profile

sahai — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 09:04:09 +0000

Recently during the #DVCamp we (Me, Sorav, Ramanan) were discussing about how brands are making a mistake by creating Personal Profiles on Facebook in the name of their companies and then adding people as friends. Well, although that is NOT the way to do it and is a serious branding mistake, people on Facebook can overlook the mistake and continue being friends with the company. Well if that was not enough I was really surprised to see that people committing the same mistake on LinkedIn.

People want to connect to humans. LinkedIn’s tagline itself says “Relationships Matter”. Justdial is a success because it promises a human to answer your query at the very first instance instead of a machine which takes 5 minutes before you can actually talk to a person.

Few days back I came across a LinkedIn PERSONAL PROFILE, which, to say least, was a serious branding disaster!

Check the image below and probably you won’t need to read the rest of the post.

Disclaimer: Before you think/assume anything, I would say that this is not written to disgrace or malign anyone. I have tried my best to maintain the secrecy of this profile, still if you somehow find out who this is or even worse, if you’ve created this profile, please take it positively and try to work around it. No intention to harm anyone’s reputation, apologies if it did.

The profile is a Personal Profile but has the name of an event! And just below the name it says its a FORUM ?!? The profile picture is the logo of the event!

Okay, maybe the person wants to promote the event only – LinkedIn Groups and Events are meant for that purpose (probably the curator hasn’t heard about those features). And if the event promotion was the sole idea then the entire profile should have been maintained with the event’s description, but that’s NOT to be. Read on…

The “Current” column says Sr. Vice President (SVP henceforth) of XYZ Company. So it seems that the SVP has created the profile but doesn’t want to tell his name to the public. Another argument maybe that the SVP feels promoting the event with a SVP tag might add weightage to the event? Not sure which of the two objectives it is.

The profile shows 227 connections and what I can make out is that those connections are real people who the SVP knows personally. Again a confusion whether the objective is to promote the event or to maintain a personal profile?

As you must be knowing, LinkedIn allows 3 websites to be added to the profile. Here, the first link, which says PERSONAL WEBSITE, takes to the event site! Confusion, person or event? The second link, Company Website, is the ONLY thing that sounds correct to me in the profile. The third link takes to another event site ?!? If we are promoting 1 event then why are we diverting people to another one? Confusion again!

Surprisingly, the public profile URL has been customized but alas, again in the name of the event

Last but not the least, the Summary of the profile. Well, it says “is an Annual Business Technology Forum” – How on earth can a personal profile, which also says Sr. VP of a company, be a Technology Forum ??? The person is not at all sure what to do with the profile, make it personal or market an event. All I can say is that it needs some serious thought and rework.

Interpretation: It all boils down to the same thing, people have heard about Social Media and want to get into it, but wait a minute Sir, at least find out how to make use of it. It’s only because of these disasters that statements like the one below have become famous:

Social Media is like Teenage Sex, Everyone wants to get into it, No one knows how

If I were to advice in 1 line I would say: If you don’t know, watch some profiles before you create one, just like you watch some videos

More branding mistakes: Quickgun Murugun’s Disastrous Online Marketing Campaign!

Technorati Tags: Branding, branding-mistakes, linkedin, personal branding, social-media, social-media-mistakes

What is a brand ?

sahai — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:05:39 +0000

Of late I have been asked by quite a few people about branding and what are the steps to become a brand but today I was asked a good question, What is a Brand or better put Define a Brand.

Wikipedia says : A brand is a name or trademark connected with a product or producer. Brands have become increasingly important components of culture and the economy, now being described as “cultural accessories and personal philosophies”.

FreeDictionary.com says :

apart from a 100 other definitions.

Let’s talk practical : Shahrukh Khan is a brand, Farhan Akhtar is not; Harsha Bhogle is a brand, Arun Lal is not; Michael Jackson is a brand (yes, he still is), Rakhi Sawant is NOT. Even though I did write about her sometime back and that too in relation to branding, but she never was and can never be.

In terms of product value, I will say they are brands because the first thing is that THEY SELL. Any Shahrukh film just sells, even though the promos have not been good, even though the film is crap, even though it may have no other superstar in it, what matters is it sells. Same does not hold for Farhan Akhtar.

If Harsha Bhogle is on air, everyone listens to him, his name sells there. The same is not true in the case of an Arun Lal or a Rameez Raja, even though they are seen commentating on all channels and are all over the place, people may listen but do not respect their commentary.

Brand Michael Jackson

An MJ album used to sell without even people listening his songs, they just bought. His shows were a sellout because people knew its M-I-C-H-A-E-L J-A-C-K-S-O-N who’s performing. However old he grew, his shows were always a sellout. He was a household name, even my dad knows his name, even though he never heard a single song of him. On the contrary, even though Rakhi Sawant is a household name, but is her show watched on each and every person ? Though people like me watched a few of her tv appearances, but did we watch it because of Rakhi? No is the answer, and what’s more is that more people switched channels when they saw her on air.

So who is a brand ? Let me tell what does not define it. Any person/product/company which catches the eye of the people simply is NOT termed a brand. It is a necessary condition but not a sufficient one. Something which fades away with time is NOT one. Negative publicity does NOT make one.

A brand is something/someone/product or company which :

May be you can add more points ? I put what I could recall of but I guess you may have much more to add, looking forward to discuss and learn more from you people.

Technorati Tags: bollywood, Branding, farhan-akhtar, harsha-bhogle, michael-jackson, personal branding, rakhi sawant, shahrukh-khan

How to create your Brand-The Rakhi Sawant way

sahai — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 21:03:13 +0000

Update : I have intentionally put this update at the top. I have got a lot of people who have made comments on this article, no don’t look at the comments section, but to me personally on mail and calls, that they were not happy with this article. Let me be clear; I thoughtfully chose a topic which had a clear sarcasm in it. Rakhi Sawant is a gossip material and that’s what this article is meant to. In NO WAY do I promote the methodologies adopted by her to promote herself . The reading should be treated as things NOT TO BE DONE if you are a marketing or a branding person. For others the post is a pure fun to read.

I know I may be hated by the readers by writing about it, but believe it or not we can learn a lot of things from the Drama Queen.

All, ohk probably most, of us want to be a brand and become famous but are not able to do so. We have the skills but seeing this recent talk of the town I guess we have a point or two to learn.

First and the foremost thing is that talent alone is not the sole criteria, its publicity that plays a major role that will make you famous. Skill is a necessary condition but it is definitely not the sufficient condition. In my previous post I wrote about marketing your talent. Yes, that’s a very important point but I want to take your eyes to the tactic that Rakhi has used and used it better than enyone else. Get media publicity the WRONG way. Hardly people knew that the girl who did a couple of music videos and few movie item songs was Rakhi Sawant. But now, she’s a household name. Sometimes we have enough talent but don’t get the right/enough opportunities to show it. She made use of every opportunity. If I am not wrong, she shot into fame with the Mika Kiss Scandal. Got publicity on all those news channels who have more masala than news and eventually got more dance offers from movies and got a few TV reality show appearances as well. Mission Accomplished I would say.

Result : Gets famous in a day all of a sudden, rules news channels for a week or so and in some cases gains public sympathy as well as anyone who cries on screen can easily get some emotional Indians sympathise her.

Second, if you can’t win, cry Cheating ! Everyone admitted that she was a good dancer, but when she was ousted on public voting in a reality show, she cried foul over the organizers claiming that the “votes were tampered”.

Result: Even though people like me who didn’t watch the show came to know about her and her dancing skills as it was again on all the masala-cum-news channels. Dancing skills proven, she starts getting more dancing offers in films, shows and no wonder her bank balance skyrocketed. Ofcourse she was famous by now !

Then comes third step and rather a mindblowing one. As people have a short memory and tend to forget things quickly, she comes with an ulmitate move, setting up a Swayamvar for herself. Marrying a person on a reality show! Who would think of that ? Are you Nuts , was my first reaction when I first heard of the show. Man, can you believe it ? I don’t know whether it was all framed or real but bottomline is that the show managed to even get NRI’s to fight the others to marry her. And guess what, the NRI wins ! Not sure whether the marriage will actually take place or not and the fact is who cares.

Result : Purpose of the show is solved. The show gets high TRP’s, especially because there were no cricket matches around the time of show being aired. Initially I also refrained from the show, but once when I saw it, I just couldn’t stop laughing. It was meant to be serious and emotional but it turned out to be absolutely foolish and idiotically funny and which was why even I watched it. But what surprised me more was that when I got back to work, logged into twitter, there were people who were updating about the show. News results all over the place. Ofcourse the masala-news channels had BREAKING NEWS. HAHA, I guess these news channels would run outta money if they don’t show this stuff. Everyone watched the show for various reasons and talking about her as well. Positive or negative but the point is SHE GOT PUBLICITY. I wonder what will up in those newspapers, but I guess being in Bangalore I can assume they won’t give her more than a small 5th or 6th page column.

Whatever ways she adopts, bottomline is she gets famous each time and does not let people forget her. Quoting a friend who just updated his facebook status which reads :

Rakhi sawant is a real celebrity , Hilton beware rakhi is coming, A real drama queen at it’s best on NDTV imagine ! don’t miss it

Update 1 : Latest news is that she even made it to the twitter trending topics. http://bit.ly/12VWH1

Update 2 : Over 15 million watched ‘faisle ki raat’ http://bit.ly/1YfZ31

Technorati Tags: india, personal branding, rakhi sawant, reality shows, tips