Tag: Social

Responsibility and Liberty in Advertisements

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

Airtel recently (March 2016) launched a series of Television Commercials (TVCs) bringing out the benefits of it’s 4G network.

This followed by a slew of Ads featuring the Airtel 4G Girl (if you don’t know who, then Google this). So now, apart from claiming a lifetime of free telephone bills (I don’t know how many people did attempt the Airtel 4G Challenge), the new set of advertisements talk about how broad and wide the reach is of the Airtel 4G network.

Continue reading “Responsibility and Liberty in Advertisements” →

On Being Trolled and 66A

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment
Trolls from the movie The Hobbit

Everybody who is on the internet has probably heard of this term. Trolls or being trolled is fairly common. In fact there are sites such as 4chan where the sole purpose of the community is to troll on different activities.

Reddit is also one such community, where a lot of users are actively trolling and are being trolled. Being a long time lurker on Reddit, I used to read through multiple posts where fellow redditors would make hilarious comments (often to diffuse a situation). Funny, but at whose expense?

Continue reading “On Being Trolled and 66A” →

Food for Thought: Series II

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

I had shared some noteworthy articles last month and decided that it’s a good habit to keep up.

Search: Not Provided: What Remains, Keyword Data Options, the Future

What happens to SEO efforts and Digital marketing when one of your major chunks (organic keyword level data) is not available. Avinash Kaushik gives advice on how to go about working with keyword data and why Google started encrypting organic traffic.

This is a far better approach than simply bitching about Google and hatching conspiracy theories of Adwords trying to maximize their revenues!!

Google+ Guide for Small Businesses

A detailed and step by step guide for Small Businesses to develop their presence on G+. Not only is it very thoughtful, but also it provides links and answers to all the quetsions that you might get stuck. And an awesome UI to boot as well!!

Disillusioned with Facebook? Here’s a way forward

It’s easy to dismiss Facebook as a time sink and a negative ROI generator. I did that. However as time went by, I realized that maintaining a presence on social networks is almost a health factor these days. Darren Rowse of ProBlogger walks us through some of the more important things to keep in mind as you go about trying to rustle up a community on Facebook. All the Social Media Managers out there, you HAVE TO read this.

How to track online RoI of offline marketing

This post is quite close to my heart. It is about measuring the Return on Investment (RoI) of Offline advertising. Traditionally to calculate the RoI, brands would use agencies which specialized in marketing surveys. However, with the boom of Indian e-commerce and the influx of venture capital, most of the online mediums have started offline advertising as well. How does the digital marketing manager of such a firm tackle the RoI calculation? Here is a basic explaination of how you go about Trackign RoI of Offline advertising.

What is Life?

What is Life? is based on a series of lectures delivered at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies by Erwin Schrodinger. This was first published more than 50 years back, and it has found its way in the blue nothing. The PDF file is a lengthy dialogue which meanders through the physical composition of a cell to the destruction of the identity of life using means such as hypnosis. I have to warn you that if you do not take lightly to abstract concepts and discussing them for the sake of discussion itself, then do not read this document. Having said that, this is Food for thought after all!

The political Ganesha festival

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

My home is on the intersection of a very busy main road (N. S. Phadke Marg). The lane which connects our society to the main road is often desolate and most of the year it lies in neglect. However, whenever you have a social festival such as Ganesha, Dahi Handi, Holi, etc, then this lane gets decorated and pandals are setup to give a different and lively look to the road.

Every year for Ganesh Chaturthi, we would have a pandal setup near the intersection and this would lead to a throng of visitors … good for the community, but irritating for the drivers trying to turn into the lane from the busy traffic signal. This year, there were two pandals instead of one. I decided to enquire about this, why would a community divide their resources for two different celebrations?

The Two Parties

Congress-BJP-Ganesha

Turns out that the local MLA of this area is a Shiv Sainik and was putting that over all the available hoardings during the festival. To match this the local Congress representative had his cronies setup another pandal with the Congress banners. Boom, you now have two pandals in a narrow lane.

I have not seen any of their decorations, however I am sure that there would be strong competition within both of them to outshine the other.

Interestingly, this has helped the local community instead of cause friction between the two parties. More people are involved in the local festivals, there is a constant presence of Police these days which reduces the traffic jams (although many would disagree on this point!).

So, what?

I see a lot of government resources being put to use. But atleast its not filling the pockets of corrupt people. The co-operation and co-ordination shown during this event is quite good to see … why cant this be done across the nation? At least that way we can stop this Congress, Anti-Congress … Modi, Anti-Modi … BJP, Anti-BJP.

What makes the Perfect Post on Social Platforms?

Prasad Ajinkya2 Comments
Perfect Posts On Social Platforms

Perfect Posts On Social Platforms

 

When it comes to maintaining your presence on different Social Media networks, the key to this is timing, consistency and knowing what your audience appreciates. As your channel matures, your audience will start realizing that your updates are according to a schedule, which means your interested audience can know exactly when to check your channel for news they can use.

The time in these platforms and the platforms themselves should also give you a cue as to which social update to put where and when.

UK Government and its forced IE6 use

Prasad Ajinkya4 Comments

As a developing country, we often take a look at how are some of the infrastructure problems handled by the developed nations. In fact in most of these cases, we end up emulating them … the western culture, the accents, the products … we are more than happy to borrow from our western brothers … since they are more developed.

Or so, that is what they would have us believe.

Imagine a governance system wherein you could simply go to a website, fill out the relevant form and be done with it … instead of going to the local municipal center, finding the relevant department, waiting in line, trying to fill the form and get the proper official’s blessing so that the problem could be addressed. Seems futuristic and too good to be true, eh?

Well, I was lucky to have participated in one such e-governance implementation drive back in 2002. This was for Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC), and we were somehow involved in the implementation of this system. So yes, these things are in India as well. But according to this article in the Inquirer, the UK has already been using this system.

So what’s the catch?

The system which the UK government has so meticulously built supports on IE6 and Windows XP!

Alright, lets take a minute for that to sink in.

  • Microsoft does not support Windows XP anymore
  • Ergo, Microsoft does not support IE6 anymore as well
  • IE6 used to come bundled with Windows XP
  • These days you get IE8 or IE9 … in fact we should be starting to see IE10 any time soon

That means in the real world … in the developed countries, IE6 is dead. Yes, we have asked for it and celebrated its death as well.

A platform created for the people in the UK which can only currently be used by the people of China (at least according to the map in the above link). I wonder, if they have a mobility middleware in place so that the site renders on mobiles.