“Piggyback on a bigger brand & own the space”

One of the success mantras to be a successful blogger, according to Kiruba Shankar, CEO, Business Blogging, is to piggy ride on a bigger brand. Shankar was speaking on the topic: ‘Thought Leadership Branding: How to smartly use blogs and social networks to sculpt your brand image?’, at the Pitch CMO Summit 2012 – South, held in Chennai on Friday.

Elaborating, Shankar said that a blogger could request bigger brands, for example, livemint to allow you to write for them.

He said that to be a successful blogger, one has to be niche and own the space. For example, a lady in North Carolina, just writes on cup cakes and different types of cup cakes. She, according to Shankar, receives two million views a month.

His next mantra was to write consistently. “Be a producer and not a consumer,” he said. Every day, we consume news and information updated by friends on Facebook, which is a waste. Instead one should become the producer and write himself on blogs,” he said.

He said that in the world of social networking, blogging still ruled.

According to him, the second largest search engine in the world is YouTube, and one should use it effectively, and podcast. Mobiles with camera are great tool and we should use its features to record and shoot and use the internet to post it on blogs.

However, he cautioned that while writing, one should be clear that what was there in for the readers. There should be some usefulness in whatever one writes. “Ask yourself what is that the most valuable knowledge you have and start sharing it with the people,” he said.

His next advice was to “be opinionated”, and that's what attracts people.

He also was in favour of copying. “By encouraging copying, the ideas get shared among others and that’s how you reach out to the masses,” he said.

His next advice was to own a website by your name. Also, he suggested that there was no harm in self-searching on search engines to know what people are saying about you. Besides, he said that it was a good idea to have a custom email id like yourname@yourname.com. “Kick out Hotmail, Gmail, MSN, etc. out of your life. You can have Gmail as an engine,” he said.

Also high on his agenda was to write a book. One doesn't need a publisher today to publish one's books. Amazon, with its Kindle Direct Publishing feature, allows to upload a document and just takes three days to publish the book online.

Last, but not the least, he said, that to be a successful blogger, it was necessary to “involve the crowd”. Collaborate with friends to write a book and allow comments and reply to comments. “When the work is started as a team, it will be fun and lots of ideas will take the work to a great success,” he said.
The Economic Times was the title sponsor of the Summit. TV9 was the associate sponsor. The Summit was supported by Ad Club Chennai and Ad Club Hyderabad.