What's Happening?

Its been a while since we made any noise and people have been wondering if we are alive. We are totally live and kicking. In fact, we have some serious fun coming up in the next 365 days. While it is too early to speak (but we promise to keep you updated), we are quite psyched about it.

Meanwhile:
~ Our founder (Rahul) has taken a sabbatical and joined Innopark to head their Digital Marketing team. He promised to come back soon, improved and improvised.
~ Jyosthna has come in place of him and she is having great fun.
~ Rahul recently shared his latest passion with us. Check out his riffs and rants on CachedIdeas.
~ We've been picking business as usual and have been working hard to keep our clients smiling.

With a promise to do better than 2010, we are all walking happily in to the Christmas and New Year celebrations. Wishing you all Happy Holidays :)

Anonymity Vs Accountability

I was taking my early dose of Seth Godin where he comments about how Internet has created more anonymity as opposed to reducing it. I allowed my mind to ponder on the thought and I realized the Gandhian truth in the statement. Day in and day out, we are being hunted by companies who are waiting to make your information public. Signed up at some website with your id, and boom goes your Inbox with mails that the marketer considers are a result of permission marketing. Unfortunately, they don't realize that it continues to be spam for us. At this stage, if I ask you to divulge more information, would you dare to do it. If you said no, think again.

Incidentally, Seth Godin also mentioned about creating a new Internet where there is no anonymity. Why would you want to do that?

As a marketer, would you market a 10 size shoe to a 5 year old. No, because you are sure that he would not be interested (you know him and his tastes completely). When you do it on the web, its a different ball game. You are not sure who the real person behind the cool-dude-in-my-twenties Facebook profile is. Don't blame the marketers then if you are getting email about hot girls to date (wonder if you would complain though) when you are happily married loyal husband.

I am sure Godin is glad about his vision of a new Internet that is in the process of evolving. There are more and more people joining this Tribe. People who want to voice their thoughts, share experiences and knowledge and be totally transparent and accountable for what they key in everyday. These are the people who realized that it helps to be accountable for the information that they put on the web.

Be more open, be who you are and it helps you as a customer (and the poor marketer who is hunting for his target).

Google Launches Real Time Search...

What does it mean to marketers? Leave your comments!

Web Analytics - A good presentation

Introduction to Web Analytics for Journalists

think with Google Series 1 - Non-Line Marketing

A perfect Sales Closure

If you are unable to get new customers

I am not trying to scare you, but like Seth Godin said if a rift in the time-space continuum changed the universe and it was suddenly impossible to get new customers, new readers, new donors or new viewers, what would you do? What Seth meant here was to take care of your existing ones.

At Raahithi, we want you to think of us when you are in such a situation. Of course, you can take care of your existing customers better than we can. We are looking at addressing the void that can be created and result in no customers or viewers to your website for you.

Welcome to Raahtihi INC, a digital media marketing consultant company that has been offering its sleuth of services across different verticals and the globe. Contact us if you think we can be of assistance.

Power of Social Media

Yesterday, I was looking at options to treat my wife who got a new job. Her choice was obvious - some personal time and a great dinner at a new restaurant. The second part almost got me in to trouble if it wasn't for the different social media vehicles I use. More importantly Buzz and Facebook. I logged in to my network of 500+ friends and replied to the popular 'What's on your mind?' question. In less than 5 minutes I made up my mind.

All through the dinner, I could not stop wondering about the power of social media even in a country like India (infrastructure still cribs for attention and Internet penetration low compared to other developing nations). True that the number of twitter users is increasing by second and active users of Facebook has grown manifold, but this definitely impressed me, even more so because of my own profession (online marketing consultant). I got all psyched up to explore if the restaurant had a presence on social media.

Look at the endless possibilities, they can share real-time information on availability of tables, new additions to the menu, and of course the comments that people are keying in. Interestingly, when I tried to look up on the restaurant on different social media vehicles, I was disappointed to see their presence missing. 

Someone just won a new customer (thankfully the food was good as well) because of social media and a) he is unaware of it and b) he doesn't know the loss that this unawareness is causing. I got up, met the guy and shared my thoughts emphasizing the importance of his presence on some, if not all, social media vehicles. He jumped at the thought and set some time next week to further discuss this.

Thankfully, with all the energy and commotion in my brain, I still managed to put up a good act of being completely involved in all the gossip that my wife shared over a delicious dinner.

Mobile Mania - We are definitely in it

Microsoft is not being heretical here, but rumor of the mill is that it plans to launch its own mobile device. While we are still joking around that it is going to be called Microsoft Messes (considering its excellent record of buggy software) to rhyme with Google Nexus One, we also gave in to an amazing piece of news today.

Apple announced its plan to start mobile advertising under iAd. This definitely had our eyebrows raising and mouth watering. Eyebrows raised because though we expected this to hit us, we were bowled by the way they plan to execute this; mouth watering to see how Google and Microsoft will react to this.

For Raahithi this is great news for all our investments in mobile marketing. So while we get ready to leverage on this news, you have a great time sipping on to the growing excitement in the mobile arena.

Webinar on B2B Conversion Optimization

What is Procastination?

Procrastination from Johnny Kelly on Vimeo.