Leveraging Digital Marketing May Not Be So Easy

2012 is a momentous year for advertising, as for the first time since the inception of the internet; marketers are projected to spend more on online advertising than on advertising in print magazines and newspapers in the US. More countries will go this way soon. If you are a company in India and wondering if you should leverage the internet for your marketing, this is not just a wakeup call, it’s the alarm bell jangling.

There are numerous reasons why online advertising, be it in the form of social media marketing, SEO or PPC is the way forward for you.

To begin with, traditional advertising in print magazines and newspapers has a limited shelf life, secondly according to Google, when people need to know about a product, 58% of them turn to the internet. 65% of people purchasing retail products and 72% of people purchasing technology related products research online purchase offline (ROPO). Online advertising is far more cost effective, has a longer shelf life and most importantly has measurable return on investment (ROI).

Accordingly to more statistics by Google, there are 120 million internet users in India, which is also the third largest internet market. 48% of these users come from 2 and 3 tier cities which have a population of less than 10 lakhs which indicates that the internet is developing deep roots.

Where are your potential customers?

Interesting of these 120 million internet users, 50 million access the internet via their mobile phones, 43 million use the internet primarily for Facebook and 25 million are on YouTube, this is extremely telling and offers clear direction for marketers on how to structure their marketing strategy and where they need to be seen.

Even though internet penetration in India is growing by a low 9% YoY, the sheer size of the country means the number of users will still grow significantly.

Digital Marketing Companies are Smacking their Lips

The numbers are in favour of digital marketing agencies, as companies in India both B2B and B2C are moving towards capitalizing on free and paid online platforms.

Today, companies no matter their size are open to investing in websites even spending lakhs. According to Google, their India Get Online project which offers free online space to SBMs took off like a rocket, with 60,000 SMBs opening up websites in 6 months. Yes, it’s going to be a golden era for digital and online marketing companies, but are they ready?

My small experience of four years on both sides of the fence indicates not. Here’s why

Since social media and SEO can be done from free platforms, everyone has jumped in to grab a piece of the pie. Everybody claims expertise, from freelancers, novices and agencies, and that’s easy enough because there is no well-known certification other than for PPC from Google. Even then, most agencies are hesitant to certify their staff. High churn means agencies are reluctant to pay for employee training and since the Google algorithm is always in flux, it’s easy for half-baked experts to fool their way around.

Recently, my company needed to engage in SEO and our discussion with 10 odd digital marketing agencies was hilarious at best, sickening at worst. Sales people with fancy designations came in talking through their hat (so it wasn’t black or white), promising the sky when all we wanted was leads. If a sales manager of a digital marketing company does not understand the product he is marketing, it does not inspire confidence in the buyer, and so we chucked all of them and began to learn a bit of SEO ourselves. There are loads of companies like ours, who want to leverage social media with realistic expectations; can somebody help us with it? The answer is uncertain.

Since most digital marketing companies do not train their people, sales and account managers simple copy paste tried and tested methods from one client to the next. When we spoke to SEO vendors, we wanted them to give us intelligence, make a strong case on whether SEO was for us or not, and what we could expect from it. Rather, we got vendors asking us for keywords, (isn’t that silly?) and telling us our web content was great, when in fact we were certain the content per page needed to be urgently increased.

Its time digital marketing companies set their own standards, push for certifications and invest in training. This way they weed out ill trained people, professionalize the industry and avoid turning away potential companies like mine who is now very unsure about working with an agency.

As companies like mine acknowledge the value of an online presence, they are shifting budgets from traditional advertising to online, but this low hanging fruit is ignored as digital marketing firms do not develop the right sales strategy. The need of the hour here is trained sales personnel, who have a deep domain understanding, who can truthfully set client expectations and make an intellectual argument steeped in research on what channel can work for a client, and send in well-educated sales personnel who can make the right pitch, rather than blabber rubbish.

In an Era of Super Specialty, Everyone is an Expert

The internet has made inroads into every little area of our lives. It has seeped in like water and we have soaked it up like sponge. Today, we hardly even recognize where our own thought begins and where it merges with the virtual space; it’s just one big interconnected database. Get into an argument and how do we resolve it? Google!

The advantage of course is that most of us today are well read, knowledgeable on a host of topics and if we feel we need to know more on a particular topic, or that someone is pulling the wool over our eyes, all we need to do is turn to the internet, or Google precisely.

This ‘know-it-all’ attitude which is growing increasingly common can also be annoying. Everybody believes they are experts on everything and because they have downloaded a few PDFs, read a few articles, have at hand a few how-to-manuals for dummies, and own a few half-backed ideas, move forth with the confidence of a veteran.

Take a quick look at Twitter; you will see hordes of ‘social media experts’. Most of these folks are still in school, check out their tweets and they are all copy -paste content, try and find something original they have to say and its full of grammatical and spelling errors, and yet, they are self appointed, self proclaimed ‘experts’.

A while back I had a colleague who was a software developer turned business manager. To upgrade her skills, she was asked to try her hand at writing. So off she went, copy pasted a paragraph each from five different articles and mailed it over to me. “Look, this took me an hour, how can you writers take two days to do this?” was the questioning look. Of course I had to look back in exasperation. Are you kidding me? You think this is what business writing is about?

Another colleague downloaded Google’s how-to-do-it-yourself SEO manual and said, there you go, now we should be on page 1 for all our keywords!

In another incident, a friend of mine was getting a little pain on the right side of the abdominal area. Oh my god, could this be appendicitis. He had worked himself into a frenzy after reading a few article off the net, and noting that his symptoms tallied with the write-ups. Later that evening when the doctor heard the diagnosis he threw his head back and laughed. “Really, you people read too much and believe everything you read on the internet, it’s just some swelling of a nerve and nothing to do with appendicitis” he said and shooed my friend away.

In a strange way, the internet has trivialized professional rigorous learning and made an ‘expert’ of us all. It has taken away the authoritative voice, and made us mistrust anyone who specializes in a field. “oh that, anyone can know that”, “you can read that off the internet”, “oh, isn’t that obvious”, “aren’t you update” are the comments that are thrown back. Its especially sad when these comments come from other professionals and I think, “didn’t you spend years studying to be a programmer, then how can you say anyone can do that after reading off the internet”, “didn’t you spend years doing your MBA, and working hard at perfecting your skills then how can you say, oh that’s child’s play’.

In this world run over by information oozing off the internet, everyone is a guru, because they believe knowledge is theoretical, it does not come from practice, it does not come from intuition, it does not come from the heart or soul.  With the internet loaded over with information as it is, it’s not surprising, but is it time we did a rethink before we claim mastery over areas of which we know but two cents. We need to differentiate between theoretical, untested knowledge, versus some ones experience and years of study. We need to get rid of our ‘know-it-all’ pride and let someone be the expert of and in their own field, while we try to master ours.

This blog post may seem like a rant, but it is the result of my growing dismay when I see people increasingly trivializing someone else’s knowledge and falsely positioning themselves as knowing better.

Holidaying In the Wild South – Nagarhole

A small diversion of the beautiful 8 lane Bangalore – Mysore freeway, down some terrible narrow roads and Bingo, you are smack in the middle of Nagarhole National Park, also known as Rajiv Gandhi National Park. It was a long weekend in early May and we decided, like scores of others to hightail out of simmering Bangalore.

Unknowingly, but with a happy coincidence we had booked a homestay on the periphery of the national park and so boy, did we feast our eyes.

Nagaraj, mom who was down from Goa and myself, all in a battered down sumo vehicle, the bad roads and rattling vehicle notwithstanding, we were all geared for some wild excitement!

A check-post, sign in your car number,  a few kilometers ahead a big board says welcome to Nagarhole National Park

The sights and sounds of modern life recede and we drive down a single lane bumpy road. The signal on our phone vanishes and we drive and drive through dry forest. It’s May, and there are shades of brown starting from just off the road. The only bright colours are the boards that spring up at regular intervals our left and right. Put up by the forest department, the boards are instructional, like “do not stop your vehicle”, “do not get out of your vehicle”, “do not honk”, “do not drive above 30 kms an hour”, “speed kills” animals in this case, common sense stuff really, but when you are a moron from a city I guess this is indeed helpful stuff.

The trees are cleared 3 meters off on each side of the road and then the scrub begins. These clearings with roughly hewn holes have been carefully designed so that wide-eyed folks like us see more wild animals. It had rained the night before and at a little pool by the side of the road we were face to face with an India gaur. You recognize an Indian gaur, not only from its large size and huge hump, but its 4 white socked feet as well. It’s amazing to be before such a magnificently large creature but god help if it’s in a bad mood and decides to charge.

Spotted deer range free and often break the scrub and bushes to nibble off at tender green leaves facing the road. Male deer’s have majestic antlers that stretch out skywards; females with little ones are a bit skittish. As luck could have it we even saw a pair of barking deer. These are tiny deer really compared to their spotted cousins and you need to have a keen eye to see them. Thankfully, Nagaraj who even others has eyes like a hawk kept stopping the driver every few minutes.

Like deer, wild boar was plentiful and small herds could be seen foraging among leaves and swampy grasses. We bumped into a playful pack of wild dogs and saw mongoose scampering by, couldn’t get that one on film. A tree stripped off every leaf but full of wild figs had as many as six Giant Indian Squirrels eating up with gay abandon, we caught pictures of the Racket Tail Drongo, peacock and wild hens.

The mornings were especially beautiful as the mist hung heavy over the forest and the haunting call of the cuckoo rang from tree to tree. Parrots and parakeets broke into periodic cacophony and in this surreal setting, Nagaraj chanced upon a herd of 4 elephants with a calf.

Nagarhole is surrounded by coffee plantations and human habitation is constantly shrinking the forest, when the surroundings are loaded with fruit, especially jackfruit, the strong fragrance draws elephants which rampage through the coffee plantations. But that does not stop plantation owners from growing a few jackfruit trees anyway.

The road through Nagarhole leads to Kerala and though it is a narrow, ill maintained road there is a fair among of traffic roaring by, most drivers are disciplined and the area is clean. One can also stay at government lodging in the heart of the forest and go on jungle safaris. Patrolling the forest are guards who live in small thatched houses with smooth floors and walls. Even as wild animals roam free, so do villages and little children. Schooling looks to be rather rudimentary.

In a couple of places we had boards which meant that tigers are sighted in those areas and even though we went early one morning hoping the gods would favour us with an apparition, our luck did not hold through.

At the very end of the forest was a little post office, which I found most intriguing, but you never know, some people might just be sending out an annual letter to the animals each Christmas

Pics by Nagaraj Papanna and me

A Day Well Spent at Sunday Soul Sante

Sunday Soul Sante? What the hell is that, I thought when I first heard the name. That’s when my colleague who also knows Kannada explained that Sante is the Kannada word for markets that are held in villages. These markets too are usually held on a Sunday. The Sunday Soul Sante however is no village market. It is held in the heart of Bangalore, palace grounds to be precise, is a quarterly event and attracts hoards of people.

What makes Sunday Soul Sante different is that it attracts hundreds of young entrepreneurs. These people are students, housewives, lawyers, teachers, software engineers, newlyweds, mom-in-law etc etc from nine to five, and then go out and pursue their passion, and live their creativity. This may take the form of painting, craftwork, jewelry making, colorful accessories, cooking, stationary, greeting cards, wine making, you name it and it’s probably there.

The event begins by 12.30 p.m and from the word ‘open’, the large layout of 250+ stalls are teaming with visitors. Today was a particularly hot day, with the barometer probably hovering around the mid thirties, but between huge gulps of water, we flitted from stall to stall. With me were my two friends, Sreeja Nair and Kaneez Rai, both of who well hell bent to snap up all the ‘good stuff’ (to quote Sreeja here) before it was ‘all gone’. Of course they left the Sante a few thousands lighter, but they were radiant about the fantastic clothes, jewelry, stationary and other knick-knacks they had purchased.

Notwithstanding the red dust rising with every footstep, Sunday Soul Sante is a feast for the eyes. Bright summery colours are in; the discerning consumer is tired of the super markets and malls, where thousands of people are buying the same stuff as you. Today, folks are looking for the unique, the offbeat, products that can be customized. So at Sunday Soul Sante you meet folks that hand paint a pair of converse shoes, give you beautiful fabric wraps for your bean bag, sell you homemade Coorg pickles, sell you cup cakes and top them with icing containing generous doses of Rum, Tequila, Champaign, Vodka, and so on.

Entrepreneurship is in, gone are the days when folks got bogged down in the drudgery of routine. Today,  young people, those in college and those just out come up with truly great ideas, recognize the commercial value of it and leverage the advantage of the internet to market their stuff, how about gifting your friend a personalized photo frame, or your mom a personalized handbag. Beautiful handcrafted lamps, bottles heat pressed into shapes like ashtrays and traditional handicrafts are hot.

Eco-friendly is in. walk around and you see loads of paper, fabric, thread, wood, glass, leather used in a hundred creative ways.

It was tiring no doubt, my feet still hurt with hours of walking in the baking sun, but the exuberance, positivity, smiles and warmth is infectious. What a wonderful way to spend a Sunday!

A Regular Lousy Thursday

I never thought I would ever be cribbing about the weather in Bangalore. It’s always been cool, moist, pleasant, a hint of cloud, just enough to keep the harsh sun away. The massive green rain trees, embrace the city in their thick foliage and most people like me, who think they have come to Bangalore only to work, end up falling in love with it. We never leave, do we?

But the last few days have been terrible. Dry and hot, scorching if you should venture out in the noon, your skin needs constant moisturizing; your lips constantly dry and crack, leaving you fishing for your lip balm ever so often. You feel thirsty, and for someone pampered by Bangalore’s pleasant climate, it all seems weird and insufferable.

Rain, rain, rain is what we need, but then it will make the place worse, oh I don’t care, it will also cool down this city which seems to be on a simmer. We keep looking skywards ever so often, looking for the faintest hint of rain filled clouds, but none appear.

Has this got to do with global warming, all those cars and two wheelers swarming the city, all those huge rain trees being mercilessly felled and towed away overnight, those wide gaping holes that bring in the hot sunlight. Maybe those neo age dooms day predictors are not ‘rabid, anti development environmentalist’ after all. Maybe there is a hint of truth in what they say, are saying.

On a Thursday, it’s not the weekend yet and you’re kind of worn out by the first three days of the week already. The lousy dry, hot weather, the chapped lips and dry skin, all seem to collude and conspire to make your day hell. Thursday was dragging by ever so slowly, its early evening, I simply could not keep the lethargy at bay and I so wanted to huddle under my desk and snooze off to sleep. That’s when I got a bright idea, how about some coffee.

I keep coffee for special occasions, like when I have a blistering headache, have had a disturbed night and am nodding off at work, or simply to get rid of my lethargy. So I strode up to my office cafeteria on the third floor. “Prakash, half cup coffee” I yell. Prakash finds this request really amusing, as usual. “Half cup mam?” he usually responds, how joking, half pandering to a cantankerous request. To be fair to him, it is a rather stupid request. The coffee cups are actually those tiny white ceramic cups that have been especially designed for the coffee guzzlers of South India. To prevent them from dying of a caffeine overdose, have coffee but at a controlled pace, is the mantra. How the hell does one make half a cup of coffee in that tiny mug? But that’s a feat best left to Prakasha’s measurement skills. “Yes Prakash, half a cup”. Here is when Prakash’s sadist side really shows up, but then, this is just my perspective, all guys are bullies, but they would rather call it charm. So Prakash, drops in a dash of milk after the coffee decoction he keeps in a flask, “is that enough mam?, “a bit more Prakash”, “OK mam?”, “a little more … ok stop, I don’t think I can have all of that”, and Prakash shakes his head in amusement.

I take my cup and head out on to the terrace. “No ways am I planting my rear on any of those chairs”, I say to my colleague, “have been sitting at my desk all day, I need a breath of fresh air.” That’s when the cool breeze of 5.00 p.m , brushes up to me, tussles my hair, caresses my cheeks. The sun is down on the horizon; I look at the neighbor’s mango tree nearby, in full bloom, and packed with tiny mangoes just emerging from the flowers.  I hope we are able to rob some when those mangoes become big. The pomegranate tree is also full of tiny fruit, the green around is soothing, the breeze is calming, the wide open expanse of space that spreads out in front of our third floor terrace. Ah, how it revives my drooping spirit!

Breaking a Leg in 2011

Mom, myself & Nagaraj with our Christmas tree

End of year are exciting times. I was to be heading home after a strenuous eight months in Bangalore. Having changed my job but a few months earlier, adjusting to my new job and workplace had been hectic. Nothing like an holiday in home sweet home Goa, take in all the awesome food and attention before heading back to work for another round on the grind.

Goa has a lot of hoopla and hype around it, especially during Christmas and New Year, especially for all its beaches, drugs, alcohol, nightlife and women. To us Goans, Goa is just home. It’s the cool breeze one can enjoy sitting on ones veranda, greeting familiar faces as they pass by, eating loads of fresh fish, sharing meals with family, catching up with friends, all in a very relaxed and congenial environment.

The excitement of heading home had led me to shop extensively and I could not wait to pack my bags, until a week before I missed a step and what I fervently prayed was a sprain turned out to be a fracture. A Jones fracture to be precise.

A cast, and five weeks of rest is what the orthopedic doled out nonchalantly. “W-H-A-T”, I shouted, “five weeks, you must be joking”. I live a rather hectic life, waking up at 6.00 a.m. cooking my meals, travelling to office, beginning work ahead of time,  travelling back, cleaning, washing… I hate sitting around in one place unless I’m working on my computer. My mind is always abuzz and I’m doing stuff, now I have to sit in one place with my right leg alleviated, oh man that is simply going to kill me, I thought. The first week I went about like a wounded animal. Frustrated, aggressive, irritable, snapping at those around when I wasn’t engaging in self pity…. It was terrible.

Finally, I decided I needed a perspective change and convinced myself to look at the brighter side of things. This was an opportunity to slow down, sit and smell the coffee. I could now jam on the brakes and experience what it means to be dependent on others, how to seek assistance, how to appreciate assistance, relearn the importance of interdependence. I re-acknowledged the tons of love, concern and caring that makes the world go round, from my dear neighbor who brought over steaming bowls of sumptuous food, to another neighbor who accompanied me to the hospital, the auto and cab drivers, my concerned colleagues who kept calling and messaging to ensure I was comfortable, my family who kept my spirits up and positive and then catering to my every request when I reached Goa. Lowering myself a few notches, life came back from fast-forward to its normal pace, a bit leisurely … on the whole, it was nice.

For five weeks I could not travel and thus needed to work from home. For the last six years I had not spent more than a week at a time in Goa, the slow pace of life bored me. Now I spent a month there, and it seems like fun, work from a comfortable, caring home, enviable isn’t it. I had to thank my luck I had the most cooperative office and a family that felt it could be with me every step of my temporary disability.

My restricted movement actually came as a blessing in disguise, I was back to reading, something I love to do, write for my blog, something I had not done in a while. I got to spend loads of time with my nephew and nieces who were springing up but I didn’t have the time to watch them grow. I got time with my mom and sister; my friends and relatives who visited me. I got loads of time by the window, take in sights and sounds I previously had no time for.

My mom Virginia with her grand kids

My nephew David and niece Jamima at the BBQ

For a while now, I have been associated with the disability movement, now I know just a little bit, what it means to have a disability. The hardships that are bestowed upon the person without their asking.  The limitations a person with a disability experiences because their surroundings have been insensitively designed for able bodied people.

I nearly through my five weeks of hindered movement, wont kid you that I can’t wait to get my cast of, but the learning’s have been tremendous, almost worth the initial suffering that has since evaporated into lessons I could not have paid for even if I tried.

Steve Jobs – Black, White and Everything Between

Steve Jobs Biography

The biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson was launched soon after Jobs death. Simply titled Steve Jobs, the book fueled the  abiding fascination the worlds has for the bespectacled man in blue jeans and black turtleneck.

The hefty hardbound basks in the characteristic sheer white of Apple and with over 600 pages, is a  serious read. Folks lined up to buy it just like that have all Apple products and while it does make for an excellent Christmas gift, I hope it remains less a collector’s item and is widely read.

The book is simply named Steve Jobs. On the façade, the answer may seem obvious, Steve Jobs needs no introduction, yet reading through the book it becomes clearer through each passing page that Jobs is a man difficult to describe. One can adopt his love for binaries and label him black, however Isaacson has done a brilliant job of fleshing out a man in all his colourful hues and the reader is constantly oscillating, like the man himself, between appreciating his genius and weights the costs.

Being a biography, the book focuses completely on the man. It peels away the veneer, created by Apple around its CEO and the veneer created by Jobs himself and captures a range of interesting details that are insightful not only to a casual reader, but even one trying to understand the personality man and those attempting to glean nuggets on how he cut an arduous path to grow his businesses again and again. The book is an excellent chronicle of a man and his time and one cannot fail but see where so many smaller companies have picked and stolen ideas from (following in the path of Apple itself).

The book is full of quotes and if one were to make notes, the lovely white would be full of pencil grey. I myself resisted the urge to take up the pencil, convincing myself that this provides me with a reason to read the book a second time.

In a rather old fashioned way the book reiterates a few old principles. Prominent among them in the need to have an eye for detail – to take the time to dot ones I’s and cross ones t’s. To spend time, thought, care and healthy dollops of love, developing a product. ‘Perfection’ becomes a familiar word and for Jobs it was less an imposition and more a choice. One that few companies like or choose to take.

Marketing is a highly overrated aspect of business when the product itself is bad, and yet today, ‘competition’, ‘faster time to market’ etc are become catchwords that psych companies into launching half baked products. Consumers wait expectantly and are disappointed, but instead of focusing on improving the product, companies spend tons of money on marketing and coning consumers, thus eroding their goodwill. Apple chose to be different and its products continue to stand out for premium quality, robustness and ease of use.

Man Behind the Job

While for a long time people have been fascinated with the man, the book paints Jobs in rich and complex hues which range from genius to megalomania. More importantly, it also details out the larger number of people who shared his vision and worked with him tirelessly to bring his visions and theirs to life.

Looking deeper, I think, one of the reasons Jobs was able to do what he did for Apple and then Pixar is because he represented the aspirations of a generation. The sixties were a time of the great counterculture, people thought differently, yearned to be different, do things differently, challenged the old norms. Jobs was able to energize and synergize these earnings  and truly bring out something different. Many of these unsung hero’s working with Jobs, challenged him and did what they though was right so that products turned out the way they did. Much of Jobs credit goes to these heroes who once they had their catharsis, went back to being the many functionaries of the system, with their bruised egos and traumatized hearts.

For those looking for takeaways, Steve Jobs (the book), forces people to make a choice. There is good and bad in each of us, we need to decide what to promote and what to hold back. At his worst, Steve Jobs was a demon who ran roughshod over people who cared for him, manipulative,  arrogant, boastful and controlling. At his best, he gives strong lessons on the need to strive for perfection, display conviction in ones action and the need to be inspired about what we do. Too many people these days, put their own passions behind them to do what is socially desired of them, thus denying and killing a lot of talent. At yet another level Jobs was highly grounded in Buddhist principles of frugality, vegetarianism and minimalism. Even as one reaches the last pages of the book, the reader is left wondering who really is Jobs…. Should I love him or hate him.

India: Goa’s Women Professionals want more, and they want it now

This article is written by Sapna Shahani

Lillian D’Costa, 32, left the idyllic village of Saligao in North Goa where she had spent her childhood years, and moved to Bangalore, in neighbouring Karnataka five years ago. “I had reached a point where I wasn’t growing any more and realised I needed a change,” she recalls. “I’m sure that Goa offers a better quality of life than many other states, but that’s if you’re economically well-placed. If you’re young and need opportunities for growth, Goa does not work.”

Ashwina Souza, 23, left her family in the Southern Goan town of Vasco last year to pursue a Ph.D in Industrial Psychology in Mumbai. “My seniors told me that the faculty here in Goa was not as good as in Mumbai. Besides, in a place like Mumbai, there are so many industries and they need people like us. Among my circle of friends, many have left Goa – perhaps six or eight out of 10.”

Two voices of young women professionals from a state that has recorded the highest per capita income among all Indian states in a 2009-10, according to the central statistical office. However, a study by the Labour Bureau of the Ministry of Labour and Employment also reveals that Goa has the highest unemployment rate in the country. What’s worse, according to another study conducted by Goa’s Ministry of Labour in 2009, only one-fourth of those employed in the state are women.

These figures imply that not only is Goa’s wealth not distributed equally across all sections of society, its working women are clearly marginal players in the state’s economy. Unless efforts are made to reverse this trend, Goa stands to lose young talent, with many youngsters like Lillian and Ashwina being forced to leave home for educational and employment opportunities in other states. Indeed, they are left with little choice, given the rising inflation and high cost of living in Goa.

Perhaps in response to the impending crisis, Goa recently became the first state in India to announce a dole for jobless youth. But such political gestures are merely symbolic. There still isn’t much public discussion about creating jobs for the state’s 80,000 people registered with the Employment Exchange. The Goa Chamber of Commerce carries a telling piece of information on its website: “Roughly about 15,000 graduates come out of Goan colleges every year. The government on its own will not be in a position to provide employment to these youth…”

There is widespread consensus in Goa that higher education in the state does not prepare graduates for real jobs. While the state has focused on primary education – ranking 11th among all Indian states in terms of performance – higher education appears to have stagnated. Public perception is that it is best to earn one’s degree or post-graduate qualification outside the state if one can afford to do so.

Says Aldina Gomes, a lecturer at Carmel College for Women in Nuvem, “As a professor, I’m a little against how academics is handled here. Everyone has to study humanities but they don’t really have a connection to the subject. They won’t pursue humanities as a career but will end up doing something completely different… There is a clear lack of vocational guidance for students as well as career opportunities. There should be many more entrance exams, job-specific courses and certificates that can get you jobs.”

Of course, women students are full of expectations. Take Zaheera Vaz, 20, who is about to start her Master’s degree course in Political Science at Goa University. She is keen to have extra-curricular activities that could help her develop her analytical skills. Nashoma De Jesus, 22, who is currently finishing her Master’s degree in International Studies at Goa University, would like more field experience. “The education system is too theoretical. We need more exposure while we’re studying. Internships should be mandatory,” she argues.

But this would require more investment in higher education, as Sabina Martins, a prominent women’s rights activist and school teacher with a Ph.D in chemistry, points out. “I did my research in carbon, which can be prepared from coconut shells. I thought since Goa has so many coconut shells and carbon is in high demand, being used for water purification and in so many other applications, it should be easy to make carbon this way. I went to see the only plant that does this in Goa and it was run by someone from outside the state. Planning here is devoid of research,” she says.

Those who don’t leave the state and are lucky enough to find jobs after they graduate, get measly salaries, sometimes as low as Rs 4,000 (US41=Rs 44) a month. Aglin Barretto, 23, has a Master’s degree in Counselling Psychology and works in two schools as a counsellor. Her salary? Just Rs 5,000 per month.

Both opportunities and salaries are lower in Goa than elsewhere and that is a source of angst for young women like Skitter Faia, 32, who works in a PR firm in state capital Panaji. “I hear a lot of people talking about job security and I think that means a government job where you can work or not work and still take a salary home,” observes Skitter. Others feel that appreciation and promotions don’t easily come the way of women employees. Clara Rodrigues, 24, a journalist based in Saligao, rues the fact that the glass ceiling obstructs many ambitions women may harbour, “We need opportunities to grow vertically in the organisation.”

But this does not mean that women have stopped dreaming of personal growth and freedom. Interestingly, one of the reasons why many young women here prefer to migrate out of the state is to free themselves from the diktat of conservative families and the norms that mark rural life. D’Costa says, “As a single woman living outside the state, you don’t have to rush home. Or face judgmental people in the village who are always assessing you. Or hear that your phone isn’t accessible. These are constraints I experience every time I return to Goa.”

Despite the stereotypes fostered by the coastal tourist belt, life in Goa’s hinterland is fairly restrictive for young women and the general outlook is narrow. Ashwina shares a personal anecdote, “Once in college, a teacher asked us why we wanted to go to college. Students gave all sorts of answers. Some argued that it was their ticket to leave home; others said it was their certificate for marriage; still others just wanted to ‘pass time’, while a few talked of how it was the best way to make friends. Only three of us – out of a class of 60 – said they were in college to pursue a career.”

She and others like her want the state to be more pro-active about broadening professional vistas. Not only would this bring economic benefits to the state, it would mean more women in the workplace, they argue. For instance, they point out, that Goa – with its educated population – is eminently suited to emerge as an IT hub, yet little is being done to achieve this.

Says D’Costa, “The government wants to invite only ‘clean’ industries to the state. With its good roads, broadband connectively and relatively cheaper land, it could easily attract the IT industry. IT companies are moving out of Bangalore to places like Chennai and Vellore, but why aren’t they coming to Goa? Bangalore was once known as a retiree’s city, but now it has reinvented itself as a world city. Why can’t Goa make the same transition?”

If Goa has to keep pace with the hopes and expectations of women like D’Costa, it would need to do much more to expand employment opportunities for young professionals.

–

Published in Deccan Herald, Bangalore edition, 30^th April 2011

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/157633/looking-growth-go-some-place.html

Tips for New Content Writers

Over the last three years, I have spent time writing all kinds of content, from articles and whitepapers to blog posts; search engine optimized (SEO) content, search engine marketing (SEM) ads, social media marketing content, and even dabbled with copy writing. All of my writing skills are self taught and for those content writers who have just landed themselves a job, here are a few tips.

To begin with, nothing you learnt in your journalism class or mass communication course could have prepared you for this, but then you must be thinking, “Well I know that…. that’s  about the only think I can vouch for infact ”.

On your new job, be prepared for a hard struggle for at least the first four to six months.  Keep your eyes on the goal, your attention on the task, you will be learning and implementing what you learn at a rapid pace. So rapid, you may need to think on your feet; it is here that Google becomes your best friend, comrade, teacher and philosopher.

Through the first few months on the job keep your mind open, become a sponge and soak in all you can.

Write client centric content

When writing, keep your client at the centre. Your client has commissioned content for certain very specific purposes -and not to see your writing talent, so put away the fluff and ego- these are to gain better and more online visibility, get back links for their website and blog, educate prospective clients, customers and partners, brand their product and services, project themselves as thought leaders and on the whole increase their conversion rate. To sell more. No company can survive without sales, and your content will be constantly used by the company’s marketing team to sell their products. You owe it to your client to give nothing but world class content.

If you keep the client and his needs in mind, you will also realize along the way that the client knows best. Listen very carefully to what the client wants, if not ask him very clearly what he hopes to achieve through the content.

Tailor your content and delivery what your client wants

Your client walks the beat. He knows the market, he lives it day in and day out and so, obviously, he knows best. Yes you may have interesting ideas and suggestions, but if the client is not in a mood to experiment, or has passed through that phase and identified a sweet spot, go with it. If you look at it in a positive way, it makes your writing job so much easier, because now you don’t have to think, you have a clear mandate and expectation and all you need to do is write and deliver J.

Read, Read, Read

As a content writer you need to be reading all the time. Hopefully you don’t smoke so when you need to take a break, visit a news site and read. Read as much as you can, stay updated on all things, because often times, delivery dates are close, often hours away, something you had read months before may give you a head start and help you save precious time.

The more you write the better you become

Well everybody knows that, but the stress of those first few months of writing may sometimes actually make you doubt yourself. Much later you will actually be laughing at this self doubt, that’s when you know, content writing is finally under your skin.

Content writing is an evolving skill, you can never be good enough, you need to always be learning with as much humility you can musterJ.

Your audience is changing all the time in the way they consume information, you need to be aware of this and keep modifying your style all the time, experimenting and learning and of course, writing.

Stick to being a writer

As a writer, your job is to write. Don’t waste your time finding out where or when your article will get published. Once you send an article to your client the article is no longer yours. As a content writer you are like a surrogate mother. Once this is clearly understood, you take pleasure in just writing your piece and doing a good job of it.

Keep your audience in mind

You write not for yourself but for your client who pays you, and for your audience, who will favour you by reading your content. Keep your audience in mind and tailor your content accordingly. Keep in mind their experience and expectations, and chose your words accordingly.

Content writers need to know psychology

If you have not studies psychology, it may be a good idea to learn aspects like memory, retention, how the brain works under certain circumstances, how people read on the web and offline in hard copy publications.  Learn how a person’s age, gender, education level and experience influences the way they consume information, the kind of language each age group likes and uses. You need to understand the emotion and feelings that words create and use them accordingly depending upon the product you are selling. You need to be aware of how people in different geographic locations consume information and work this into your content accordingly.

The more you understand human psychology and the way they consume and process information the more you will see yourself not just as a content writer but as a potter, moulding words and sentences, to create shapes, and things, and giving meaning to things.

Learn typing

Content writers need to type fast and while you may become fast using just two fingers to type, knowing typing ensures your fingers keep pace with your train of thought and you don’t need to look at the keyboard while you tap away furiously at the keyboard .

There are lots of online typing tutorials that you can download and learn, so typing is a skill worth acquiring.

Keep working on your grammar and editing skills

Your client pays you or your company good money when they commission content work, poor English and grammar in the content is insulting to them to say the least. Ensure your grammar is good and keep working on it. Plug even those tiny holes; this is especially true for us in India, as English is an acquired language.

Even if your company has an in-house editor, it is best for you to develop your editing skills. Start by reading a few articles on what goes into good editing, edit your own articles; an extra word here or there can completely change the meaning of the sentence. Editing your own content is a great way to sharpen your usage of English and grammar. Another way is to take up a local newspaper and read it critically, scratching out unnecessary words, rearranging sentences to improve flow and noting how you would have written it had you been the writer.

Don’t let a new, unfamiliar word pass you by

Thankfully, we content writer’s not longer need to keep that thick dictionary on our table, knowing fully well that new words are being added to it all the time. Bookmark an online dictionary and check the meaning of new words or meanings of words you are not sure about. This way you increase your vocabulary and learn the exact meaning of words. Don’t ever use a word in an article if you don’t know its meaning or are unsure of it.

Be patient

Be patient with yourself, with your clients and with the topic you are writing on. Some days are good and you will be writing at a fast pace, some days are bad and your mind just won’t cooperate.

After completing an article don’t rush to dispatch it. Complete it; sleep over it, a good time to look at it afresh is to review it early the next morning. If you have others on the team, get them to review your content too and when you are completely satisfied that it is a job well done, dispatch it to the client.

Be passionate about your work

Content writing is a vast field; it is dynamic and ever changing, in subtle yet sophisticated and strangely powerful ways. But if you are not passionate about your profession as a writer, you will not realize these aspects and the joy of writing will be lost. If the desire to write does not burn in you, does not consume you, you might be in the wrong profession, or you may not be feeding yourself with the right information about the profession. Spend time motivating yourself; your recognition may most often come from within you .

Beyond Fear

There are a few times when I feel intimidated. The task is large and complex and I don’t know how to do it, or I have to write this whitepaper that is extremely domain specific and I need to have my content come across with the authority of an expert, or I see a large number of people around me, who are better qualified and write so much better and have so much more knowledgeable, and my confidence cowers, I break into a cold sweat, my heart beats faster and I think, can I do it, can I really, really do, can I stand out, can I achieve anything, can I get to where they are and ahead, what if I fail. Fear is a horrible thing, but I have read some quote which actually says fear a good thing. Fear aids self preservation, it aids survival. Fear is a way to recognise danger, and if fear fails to kick in we would be dead a long time back, killed by our wrong response to a situation.

But then somewhere you need to slowly take control of it, like taming a wild horse, or reeling in a really large fish. You need to be patient, let go a bit, reassess your strengths, let the fear overtake you, let it believe for a few moments that it controls you, that it has won, and use these precious seconds or minutes of lucid thought to develop your counter strategy. Wait for the fear to tire out, manoeuvre it, give in a little, pull back a little, and then drawn it in, before it has realized it’s lost the battle. Draw it in quickly, like one possessed, like one in control.

It is overpowering, intimidating fear like this that brings to mind a dream I had many years ago, when I was a little girl but it still remains fresh in my memory like it were yesterday. In my dream I am standing in the lane that leads from my home to the road. It was a little mud road then, with young coconut trees on one side, and the shadow of a looming house on the other. And as I stand there, as a bus, crowded with people passes by. To the small girl in the lane, this is a huge bus, all metal roaring by. The bus stops a little ahead and people alight, and the girl in the dream thinks to herself, will I ever grow big enough to travel in a bus such as this, travel all by myself. Will I be able to indicate to the conductor or driver that I would like to alight at a particular stop, what if the bus does not stop and takes me elsewhere, and the heart of the little girl begins to pound and fills with dread.

Since, I have grown up, traveled half the country all by myself, have lived numerous years by myself, have stepped into and off many buses, trains and planes, and feel bemused when people much older than the little girl in the lane exhibit similar fear for banal things.

When my mind comes back to the present I think, I will overcome, just like the girl overcame her fear of that bus, I will write that complex whitepaper, I will find a way to do that complex large task, fit it all in even in a crazy tight schedule, prioritize, plan, execute. I will get ahead of all those big time writers, I will try and I will be. If it’s doable, consider it done J