Social Samosa : What is Pinterest?

Pinterest seeks engagement. It’s designed in such a way that every ‘pin’ ( the word for an item on the website) can be added to a classification. The ease of ‘repinning’ and organizing the ‘pin’ in three simple steps is a key factor in keeping viewers on the site. True to it’s form, users who login to Pinterest are known to spend hours on it!

Read the entire article here.

I succumbed to the gorgeousness of Pinterest and realized that it's such a fun platform that it must be written about. It was extremely difficult to write an article on Pinterest, primarily because it is a distracting place to be. But then, the kind of work some brands are doing with Pinterest is brilliant. Look at the way TIME has leveraged the visual nature of the medium! 

I wish some Indian brand takes it up and does not focus on the audience, but the beauty of the medium for a change. 

Social Samosa : That thing called Tumblr

Think about it. The last time you updated something and saw that it was retweeted, repinned or reblogged multiple times, it gave you a high. This adrenaline has been tapped by Tumblr in a unique way. Combine stickyness of a website with great design and content gets shared. What users call ‘easy to setup’ is just great web design with minimum number of hitches in place.

Yes. I wrote about my favourite favourite platform in the world! I was more than happy writing about Tumblr and sharing it's awesomeness. The entire article is here.

Social Samosa : A date with a Food Blogger

‘See, it’s like comparing a Rock On with a Dabangg. There is an audience for both the movies. People are travelling abroad and appreciating International Cuisine, but there is a large audience that still prefers the good old Salman Khan entertainer. So yes, Indians are excited about Parfait and yoghurt-based desserts but they will never let go of their jalebis. Price is also a factor at work here'

I interviewed Kalyan Karmakar of FinelyChopped for my first article for Social Samosa. The entire article can be read here. 

Social Samosa and Writing

So, a couple of months back, Ankita Gaba asked me if I was interested in writing for a Social Media Portal focusing on Indian Social Media Case Studies. Ankita and I go back a long way (we met at a blog camp in 2007 and hit it off instantly) and I deeply admire her knowledge about the Indian Social Media Landscape. She and her partner Aditya Gupta were starting a portal and were looking for some serious content. It was a wonderful proposition and it involved exposure to writing and studying brands and platforms that I previously made notes about ( pending blogposts!). I said yes.

A few months later I am happy that I invested time in this project and got the maximum out of it. It turned out to be a great way to research the online space and build connections.  

If you are interested in how Indian agencies and brands have adopted the social space, you must visit the portal and go through the various sections. My personal favourite is this post by @gautamghosh on social media jobs in India.

Social Samosa : Social Media Essentials for the Banking Industry

If you go through the Twitter streams of Indian Private banks, it reads like a customer service account — which is probably what they want to do with the medium. However, @icicibank_care  could probably explore hiring, mapping customer trends with this particular account. In reality, we would love to know if banks have derived consumer insights using social media. Is  product failure being measured with the number of negative tweets? Are banks taking parody accounts or hate accounts seriously? (Just try googling for ‘I hate ICICI Bank’). Social Media should not be restricted to just Facebook and Twitter. In ICICI’s case, they have a considerable number of negative reviews on Mouthshut.com.

I wrote an article on 'Social Media Essentials for the Banking industry' for Social Samosa. I think there is a lot more  smart engagement that banks can do with the audience that they have on social media. 

The entire article is here

Kissan and 'Call to Action'

Loved this campaign by Kissan in today's Bombay Times. Such a fun way to get customers to act on something.

Thanks to @bombaylives who shared the picture on Facebook.