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During the break we had an interesting conversation with Bill on emerging media and how social media is changing the landscape of marketing and communication. Bill mentioned that although these new tools and models are changing the way in which we communicate, the fundamentals of marketing doesn’t change and as web strategy & social media agency you need to focus on that. Point taken Bill !

From the presentation point of view, couple of small things which Bill did to keep us engaged throughout the workshop :

1. Connecting with the audience:  During the breaks, Bill made it a point to speak to the delegates and then come back share those things to us. This I think was a very interesting and effective technique for getting the attention of the audience.

2. Stories : He kept us all engaged with some interesting  stories from his own personal life .

Some of the key leanings we had from the workshop :

1. Throw a lot of  “You” into your pitch – “People buy People”

2. Art of persuasion – “Ethos” – You,  “Pathos”- emotion, “logos” – logic

3. Preparation is Everything

4. Use everyday Language , Not fancy words

5. If you dont understand yourself, how would you market yourself – For this Bill suggested the OAAR Analysis (Objective, Analysis, Action, Result)  model where you pick up instances from your personal or professional life – Write down the “Objectives”, “Analyze” how you had planned to reach the objective, the “Actions” you had taken and then the “Result” of the actions. Bill did an OAAR analysis of a near death experience from his own life when he went for diving in Australia and how he came close to becoming shark food !

Hope you enjoyed the post. You can find more pictures from the event on our Facebook page .

Branding yourself is so essential in today’s world where everybody is closely connected. I realized the importance of this in the tough way, after loosing couple of clients just because I did not make the right first impression. This has been one of my most important learning’s as an entrepreneur.

Key to mastering self-marketing is to perfect an eloquent and descriptive introduction of yourself and your position. This strategic tool, commonly known as the “Elevator Speech,” can be your best approach in professional networking situations and those rare moments when opportunities arise to create strategic new allies.

I recently got to know about the event “Pitch yourself” which basically helps entrepreneurs brand themselves in a way that we make right impressions the first time. We are all very excited and looking forward for this event.

Being a startup we are always at shoestring budget and going for a paid event like this always needs a second thought. Thanks to  “Meraevents” we got the tickets at a good 30 % discount. Now that’s a good deal.

If any of these #hashtags apply to you #hyderabad, #startup, #entrepreneur, #bd, #social media, this is one event you should not miss. We are going to be tweeting throughout the event with a #pitchyourself.

Here are the event details.

About the event  : “Pitch Yourself ” – Spend 8 hours to know the value of 30 seconds

When is it Happening : 19th Feb @ Taj Banjara, Hyderabad

Who is talking  : Bill Faust

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPurMDzZCy4

He also authored a bestseller “Pitch Yourself”

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Books/s?ie=UTF8&rh=n%3A266239%2Cp_27%3ABill%20Faust&field-author=Bill%20Faust&page=1

Promotions

Meraevent gave us this promotional code to all our readers which you can use it during registrations to avail 30% discount.

Promotional Code : hWk9fa

How to attend :

You guys can register yourself to the event here and don’t forget to use the promotional code.

http://www.meraevents.com/Events/KRD_Vision/14

Do you have anyone in your company who’s a guru on twitter, facebook, youtube or blogging? Don’t ignore it- analyze whether you can harness their expertize to help you achieve your business goals.

Check out an interesting presentation from Social Fresh.

Find out more on TEDxHitechCity Website – http://tedxhitechcity.com

New to TED ? Here is a brief background about TED and TEDx

TED is an annual event where some of the world’s leading thinkers and doers are invited to share what they are most passionate about.

“TED” stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design — three broad subject areas that are, collectively, shaping our future. And in fact, the event is broader still, showcasing ideas that matter in any discipline. Attendees have called it “the ultimate brain spa” and “a four-day journey into the future.”
TEDGlobal 2009, “The Substance of Things Not Seen,” was held July 21-24, 2009, in Oxford, UK and TEDIndia was held in November 2009.

TEDx is a local event that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. This event is called TEDxHitechCity, where x = independently organized TED event.

To buy passes for the event please visit: http://tedxhitechcity.com/registration

Follow TEDxHitechCity on Facebook and Twitter

Ok there is also a Twitter Contest going on where you can win FREE passes for the event! – find out more about the contest here – http://tedxhitechcity.com/free-pass

For a business/product to be successful online it has to successfully talk to all the aspects of the web ecosystem. It has to answer ‘who’, ‘what’,'when ’s ‘ of the market.

The business has to align itself to a set of guiding principles that would make it successful online.These web guiding principles will describe how the business will use the web effectively to establish conversations with the target customers.They are not a set of rules which can be applied to any business domain,but is a framework which will align the organizations objectives with the web principles

There are two prominent business models that have been successfully implemented in the US.

• The Custom made t-shirts(Customized by user) Eg : Zazzle, cafepress (They sell other merchandise as well : mugs, stickers, caps etc)
• Community based T-shirt company (Winners of a design competition) Eg : Threadless

Both these models are replicated in the Indian market.

Myntra, Pringoo are at the top of the league now.They have a model similar to Zazzle

Inkfruit has a different business model more on the lines of threadless.

When we are talking about a emerging market like India where the size of the market is huge and adaptability of a new product is slow, we realized a few important aspects which have to be done right to be successful in this business. we spoke to some sample set of users and we asked them what would influence their decision to buy t-shirts online and this is what we found out in the order of priority.

1. Brand suggested by peers
2. Visual appeal of the site
3. Customer experience on the site
4. Availability of designs
5. Selection of T-shirt types
6. Customer service
7. Name of the web site
8. Search engine ranking
9. Price

One might be surprised to see price at the bottom of the list, but if we consider the fact that we are still in the nascent stages of this market, price after all is not a major competitive advantage.

Many new businesses are emerging in this field and these aspects have to carefully addressed by them to make an impact on the market.

Certain minimum things need to be done before you head into the development phase -

1. Clearly identify your target audience - the cliche – but then this is seldom done properly ( some amount of Pshychographic analysis helps a lot in designing and conceptualizing the features )

2. Talk to your target audience – call/email/scrap a minimum of 5 people you know and get an honest feedback.( you will realize that a lot of things you have assumed about your audience is way off the mark )

3. Identify the core values of your brand- helps you in coming up with the features or rather removing unwanted features.

4. HAVE A PLAN! ( identify clearly the features for phase I, phase 2 etc , the marketing plan and put in place mechanisms to communicate with your customers – can be email news letters, launch page, blog etc )

5. Do mockups/wireframes – come up with detailed mockups of key pages in your site. ( these can be done on a piece of paper or on a ppt . This gives you a feel of your site and the workflows)

6. Get the visual design done – you may have to get a designer to do this, acts as an input to your development team.

7. Communicate clearly your vision your product/website with the development team. It helps them to identify a suitable technology framework. Most of the times the decision would be whether to develop the site ground up using a framwork or just go for a CMS.

Doing these minimum things will help you save a lot of money and time . Also this would give you that extra space for the change of mind.