Vineet Rajan, Head - Client Strategy, IndiBlogger.in

If we look at media on the whole, we have paid media like banner ads, SEM; owned media like websites, Facebook channels; and finally, earned media where others talk about a brand based on the positive influence they have, which could be as a result of brand engagement, prizes, giveaways and so on. So IndiBlogger essentially plugs that gap where a brand sees that it needs more earned media, since it surely carries a lot more trust and credibility.

Vineet Rajan is a full time Director with Scissor Paper Stone Web Solutions Pvt Ltd and heads Client Strategy at IndiBlogger.in. He completed his MBA from SIBM, Pune and had worked with Hewlett-Packard before finally taking the entrepreneurial plunge by joining IndiBlogger.in as a core team member. His areas of interest include marketing, branding and advertising with a fanatical drive to do something different every time. In this interaction with exchange4media’s Shanta Saikia, Rajan speaks at length about how blogging has involved and how it is helping brands leverage social media...

Q. How and when has blogging become a part of social media business models? Blogging has always been on the wish list of online marketers. Unfortunately, this is one space that has been hard to crack, mainly because bloggers are in several different networks and it’s hard to reach them on a common platform. While many companies have maintained blogs of their own and even for employees, blogger engagement in itself is relatively a new practice though the idea has been around for a long time. There are models like Pay Per Post in the West, which the marketers have tried to use in India, but have resulted in nothing less than a disaster.

Q. Are there any studies/ industry reports or tools that measure the effectiveness of blogs for brand promotion/ awareness? Does IndiBlogger have such measurement tools? Today, blogs offer a lot of analytical insights into the readers’ profile. While most of the information in the form of analytics is private, one can still use relevant public information aggregated by services like mozRank, to ascertain the effectiveness or influence of a particular blog. We, at IndiBlogger, believe that more than these services, it is also imperative to give due importance to the new and diligent bloggers; which is why we came up with the IndiRank – a scoring methodology for bloggers that takes not just the mozRank, Alexa rank, page rank, etc., into consideration, but also the frequency of blogging. The IndiRank is a good measure of how influential a blogger is, and based on the participation of various bloggers, we can also ascertain how effective a consumer engagement campaign has been in terms of reach in absolute numbers, the conversion ratio in terms of target segment bloggers, by demographics and so on.

Q. How has blogging evolved over the years? Initially, blogs were just a virtual space where people wrote, which they publicised through personal networks and email at best. With the advent of social networks, a lot of things have changed. You could either have a presence in all the social networks just as the tens and hundreds of millions do, or you could choose to aggregate the presence of all these networks on to your blog. So it becomes a hub of your online presence. Bloggers have also realised that blogging is the best way of building a personal brand and establish thought leadership, be it any field.

Q. What does IndiBlogger gain out of these associations with brands? IndiBlogger engagement activities are quite popular and the credit for this goes to the bloggers themselves. Bloggers in a way are the top online socialites because of their various technical skills. They use this medium to express their views, opinions and thoughts on anything that they find important to them or of value to their readers. They also publicise their blog through other social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon and of course, IndiBlogger.

Blogger meets are a great place to network for bloggers as they are able to meet bloggers who they follow and connect with virtually. This translates into a lot of online content, including tweets, blog posts, etc. These meets are like no other since they come with a strong community flavour and have a lot to offer to the bloggers as much as to the brand that is hosting them. Traditionally, blogger meets have been done in the form of press conferences, where bloggers are invited and the brands give them information on the product, which is mainly a one-way communication. IndiBlogger meets, however, are all about brand experience, interaction and of course, a lot of fun.

Bloggers also gain insights into brands and their products when such campaigns go live. So, these are actually win-win for everyone since they all drive the core mission of IndiBlogger, which is to bring the Indian bloggers together as a stronger community.

Q. How exactly does the IndiBlogger platform work for brands? One of the most popular activities is the contests on IndiBlogger. So far we have run more than 50 contests for FMCG brands like Close Up, Surf Excel Matic, Pepsi and Foster’s; travel brands like ClearTrip; and even TV shows like ‘Master Chef India 2’. We have also driven sampling activities for KFC and Dove.

All of these have been extremely successful campaigns. This shows that there are bloggers interested in as diverse areas as these. Moreover, IndiBlogger meets are geared towards getting the bloggers acquainted with the brand and its products. All activities that we do are fully managed by us and do not require an external agency for the creative work, event management and so on.

Q. How do you ensure prominence for IndiBlogger in search engines when even platforms like Facebook and Twitter are not indexed effectively in search engines? IndiBlogger has a high page rank on Google, and bloggers are frequently writing about us and share that knowledge of theirs with others. Although we don’t make placing our link on the blog mandatory for bloggers, many use the widgets and badges we provide, like the IndiMedic, IndiGranny, IndiRocker, etc. The widgets give them a fancy identity that they would like to be known as by others, along with even displaying their IndiRank.

Q. Do you have any mechanism to monitor user comments on brands/ companies? How do you tackle negative comments? Since IndiBlogger works on brand engagement and not user product reviews, the content that is generated is also on those lines which the blogger puts in finer words for the readers. For example, Dove ran a contest in June, where bloggers had to share their perception of real beauty. This went very well with the overall brand philosophy and bloggers quickly lapped it up with interesting and highly creative blog posts. All blog posts link back usually to a property owned by the brand like their website, fan page, etc.

Q. How is IndiBlogger helping brands leverage social media? If we look at media on the whole, we have paid media like banner ads, SEM; owned media like websites, Facebook channels; and finally, earned media where others talk about a brand based on the positive influence they have, which could be as a result of brand engagement, prizes, giveaways and so on. So IndiBlogger essentially plugs that gap where a brand sees that it needs more earned media, since it surely carries a lot more trust and credibility. Research has shown that less than 20 per cent of netizens trust ads when compared to a whopping 70 per cent who trust peers and word of mouth recommendations.

So far, IndiBlogger has conducted 46 blogger meets across the country and over 45 contests with brands across various sectors, including FMCG, travel and aviation, retail, auto and so on. Our meets are one of the biggest events in India when it comes to bringing online influencer in an offline platform. The one hosted in Delhi recently was the biggest ever gathering of bloggers the Capital city has seen with over 150 bloggers coming together.

Q. Please tell us something about the blogger profile on IndiBlogger. Do you screen who joins as a blogger or is it open to anyone? All bloggers who wish to join IndiBlogger must go through a strict manual quality check, where we check for how recent the posts are, frequency, illegal or pornographic content, etc. The community engagement team also checks for plagiarism and those which fall under the bracket are immediately flagged off. Bloggers on IndiBlogger who make it through the moderation process are from all backgrounds and walks of life and from all parts of India. Around 40 per cent of the network is from Tier II and Tier III cities with the rest from urban India. A lot of bloggers write about personal experiences, travel, politics, and poetry and so on.

Q. Please give us some examples of how IndiBlogger has helped out brands, along with the results of the campaign. The recent Dove campaign for the newly-launched Nourishing Oil Care range saw the blogger engagement kick off with ‘Dove Says Hello’, where every IndiBlogger got a hamper delivered right at their doorsteps. More than a thousand of these were sent across to just about every corner of the country. This was then followed up with an all women bloggers meet in Mumbai, which saw over 70 women bloggers meet at one place where they even experienced a Dove Spa, including hand and foot massage. A contest was launched after the meet. The overall campaign had more than 200 product experiences shared in the form of blogs, many more hundred tweets during the meet and later and pictures shared across all social networks by bloggers.

Q. What is the cost to brands/ companies for getting on to the IndiBlogger platform? The costs vary based on the kind of engagement the brand wishes to drive with the blogging community. A deeper engagement means more resources to a project. The costing also factors the use of the IndiBlogger platform since it uses various technologies like IndiRank, the IndiForum, etc.