Five tips for writing kick ass marketing content

1. Focus on the why: Best thing to start with, is to ask yourself this question and ensure your writing follows the answers you give yourself.
2. Have one central idea: Makes your content more focused, hence almost always more relevant. Added benefits on searchability (if that's even a word) 
3. Moral of the story first: Yup, it's the digital world - bottom line's found a new position.
4. Be genuine: Puhleeeze dont hardsell what you do, write content to share your experiences / best known methods. Respect the reader's need / time - be respected for what you do.
5. Write engaging content: It doesnt get more cliche than this, but simple, crisp writing with appropriate examples is a good way to start. (this topic deserves a dedicated post by itself)

11 tips on working effectively with Marketing Agencies (Advertising, PR, Events and Design Agencies)

Here's my take on how to work effectively with outsourced marketing partners

1. Be clear, yourself - why are you doing what you're doing
2. Vet your partner thoroughly. Once chosen, respect them for the value they bring
3. Involve them in the thinking process - gives a sense of ownership
4. Support them in understanding your business – budget for required time; resources
5. Crystal clear brief - devil's in the details; overview, target audience, key messages, promise, value prop, competitive landscape,
6. Foster an open and mature sharing environment based on reasoning; acknowledge / appreciate the positives;
7. Give them the space to breathe, yet stay on top - walk in their shoes and understand/address issues;
8. Monitor progress - milestone based dashboard is a good starting point
9. Right set expectations - iterations; course corrections; decsion making unit
10. Post-delivery review – present your criticism here; be open to theirs too
11. Ensure satisfactory project delivery is two-sided; Close the loop with the payments as committed

Nitrogen in car tyres

I've been evaluating moving to using Nitrogen my diesel swift's tyres. Even if the benefits of using it are greatly debated, the moral of the story is that does no harm, so i am going ahead!

Excerpts of a couple of threads on sites i found interesting are as below:

Purified nitrogen is more stable and less corrosive than a compressed version of the air we breathe. By its lonesome, nitrogen clumps in large molecules. Even better, it's not oxygen, which is the root of oxidation, which eats rubber just like steel, just not as dramatically or visibly.

About Nitrogen:
•Nitrogen is an almost inert gas. Nitrogen does not react easily with other elements.
•For the same volume, pure N2 will be lighter than air.

About Nitrogen in tyres:
•N2 has been in use of racing cars for quite some time.
•The N2 gas is less resistant to heating and when it heats, it will expand uniformly, unlike air which when heated, its individual constituents expand as per their properties.
•Water Vapour is a killer in tyres of fast cars.
•The N2 filled tyre gives a smoother ride, uniform tread, better grip and better handling, especially at high speeds.
•N2 will not react with rubber whereas Oxygen at high pressure and high temperature becomes very reactive and will degrade rubber.
•Water vapour will also corrode tyre rubber.
•The N2 gas is less permeable and is retained in the tyre for a longer time. This means less visits to the pump.
•Many petrol stations have started offering N2 filling and they claim all of the above plus that your kms per litre will increase.

What is the procedure/cost?
•If you wish to replace air with N2 in your car tyres, you will have to visit one of such filling stations.
•The ideal way is deflate the tyre completely, fill with N2, defalte it again and then refill with N2.
•Note that the N2 reservoir is not 100% N2. It is more like 95%. The above procedure will achieve about 90~93% N2 in the tyre (but many stations do the procedure only once resulting in only 85~88% N2 in the tyre).
•Stations are known to charge Rs. 200/- for the first fill (all tyres)and Rs. 20/- per top-up (all tyres). At least that is what I paid/am paying.

Is it worth it?
•I have been riding on N2 filled tyres in my Santro for the last 7/8 months. The Santro tyres are not tubeless and as you are aware that tubed tyres require pressure check at least every 15 days.
•I have topped up only twice in the last eight months. A top up is due next month.
•Ride quality does seem to be better.
•I cannot honestly claim better fuel average. If at all, it may have increased marginally by 0.5 km/litre and this may be because tyres have optimum pressure most of the times.
•The intial cost is high.
•The cost seems to be high for top up also. But even though air is free at pumps, I usually tip the guy some Rs. 5/- every time. Assuming that I filled air six times in three months, and tipped four times, the cost to me is the same.

•But air is 78% N2 anyway. If you are mostly riding in the city, there is not much advantage.
(Source: http://www.indiabroadband.net/cars-india/19615-debate-nitrogen-really-useful-tyres.html)

Other links that are interesting on the topic of Whether Nitrogen is good for using in the car tyres or not:
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2007/10/the-truth-about-filling-your-tires-with-nitrogen/
http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/how-to/repair-questions/4302788
http://www.tyresave.co.uk/nitrogen.html

Do-it-yourself SEO

About a year ago, I actually got into making our official website. Below is a list of seo tips and tricks that worked for me. This by no means is complete and exhaustive, however, should serve as a great start for anyone looking to make seo work for them without hirirng and external seo consultant.  

1. Domain: If the domain name that you choose has presence of your key word, It helps a lot in contributing to your SEO
2. Review: Review your current standing on search results
3. Register and claim your website on Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics
4. Page Title: Give every page a seperate Page Title and an H1 tag. Include your keyword in the title tag, if possible.
5. Meta Tags:  Wikipedia has this to say about meta tags: "Meta elements are HTML or XHTML elements used to provide structured metadata about a Web page". These links should help get clarity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_tags ; http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_meta.asp
6. Site Navigation: Ensure the navigation across all pages has a logical flow to it. Also ensure the home page links to all or as many as pages as possible and all the pages link back to the home page and as many other pages.
7. Content: Nothing works better than actually having quality / relevant content
8. New Content: Frequently updated sites tend to get a higher results
9. Keywords: Research them well. Compare with others on their usage. Remember, you know your business best, no external agency can know this better than you.
10. Keyword Density: Frequency of your keyword helps.
11. Keyword Presence: Put your keywords into high-value elements (h1-h4, img alt text, ul’s, dl’s)
12. Cross Linking: Cross link content on your website.
13. Link Back: Link back your orignal content to your website.
14. External Links: Get links from other good / established websites.
15. Sitemap: Create and Submit a sitemap. Submission can be done using Google Webmaster Tools 
16. URLs: Try and optimize your URLs to include the intended key words
17. Tweak: Use tools like the webmaster tools / google analytics to constantly monitor and tweak.

Good luck!

Budget homestay at Sakleshpur

As with most of our plans, last week we suddenly decided to take the weekend off. We chose Sakleshpur for reasons like the destination is still not extremely popular hence not crowded with tourists, distance is 235kms hence the drive for a weekend getaway is just right, if we felt like it - there's enough places to visit in close proximity - sravanabelgola, belur, halebid, etc,.

We stayed at this rather simple homestay called Makkithitta, run by a couple who mostly speak Kanada. The property is located within their coffee estate and is situated at almost the the base of the hill. Quite obviously it is sourrounded by small hils on almost all sides. The view you get from the property is mostly of their own paddy fields (which you can take a walk thru at is less than 5 mins away) surrounded by smaller hills that's largely uncultivated Government land.The timing of our visit was perfect as the monsoons have just begun and the rains though present are not overly dominating. From what i hear, Sakleshpur stays lush green throughout the year.

Even though the host, Mr. Tejpal, comes off as the fairly agressive type initially, he's straightforward and very kind. For me, the best part about this place was home cooked vegetarian meals they served us. Malnad style kadbu, neer dosas, variety of akki roti, sambar, rasam, pulao, khichdi, et. al. They by choice are vegetarians but can arrange for non-veg food from outside should you want it. Special apprecaition for their hospitality.

Getting there:

The property is about 20kms from Sakleshpur town towards Mudigere, the closest village is called Hanbal and is about 4kms drive on a mud road from Hanbal. The owners will be happy to help with directions but the highlights of the same are as below:

From Bangalore - just before reaching Hassan, take the bypass to Sakleshpur. Cross thru town till you cross a bridge, jsut after the bridge you'll see the old bus stand. Continue further for a little more than 1km and you'll see the new bus stand on your right. Continue straight on this road for a little under 3km, you'll find a small right hand turning, around here is the Anemal Bus Stop, take the right turn - this road takes you to Hanbal. Upon reaching Hanbal, you'll see a Karnataka Bank on your RHS, take the right turn after and the first left, you'll see small signboards leading to this place.

Budget: Rs. 2000 per person for 2days and 1 night - Meals starting with Lunch and ending with snacks the next evening, Unlimited Tea/Coffee requests entertained. :)

Contact details: Tejpal - 94483 18277 / Saroja - 93794 11741

>>

Other places to stay / homestays that i called in Sakleshpur are listed below:

1. Mugilu - 98454 51055 (This place came highly recommended by a friend)

2. Swarga - Chirag Shambu - 94480 54505 - Rs. 2250 per person per day

3. Imperial - 98806 68316 (This was the only place where they charged as per room rates not per person.

Times of India vs The Hindu

For those of you who dont already know this, The Hindu has been the leading daily newspaper in Chennai for ages! Newspaper habits are amongst the most difficult to break and the ones who read The Hindu in chennai are probably the most difficult to reach in breaking this habit. The Hindu in Chennai is like cricket in India, it is a religion.

Times of India, India's most aggresive daily has been expanding rapidly. They took bangalore by storm when they launched here years ago. Deccan Herald, the leading daily in Bangalore then, didnt know what hit them.

In continuation of their expansion across the country, TOI launched their Chennai edition soemtime back. The only way they could do this successfully is to take Hindu head on. If there's anyone who can actually pull this off, it is TOI. They launched this ad recently to further that objective: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxz4WvGG7uA

Quite appropriate and a nicely made ad, it shows the whole bunch of situations (read - local news items) that actually get covered in The Hindu (ideally, any daily newspaper -but not times. :)  i'm also telling you this out of experience, Times doesnt cover all that unless you're willing to pay for it); these situations are actually shown in a rather dull and boring way, with a typical chennai reader, dressed in his white dhoti and white shirt with the newspaper in his hands, sleeping! They show a school cricket team winning its trophy with this reader in the shot, sleeping of course, a lifeless political rally with hordes of people looking one way and this same reader present there but looking the other way, sleeping, you get the drift right? The printing press with the background music of the typical south indian beat is a nice touch to add flavour to the caption of "Wake up to the Times of India". Overall, job well done.

Act II, Sceme I:
The response from The Hindu has been nothing short of phenomenal! They've launched a full frontal attack on the times of india, starting this set of ads, the first of which i saw on TV a few days ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=4Eb-waHx-00&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmXPBp7DpQw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ckzsh9SpUAQ

These ads are nothing short of brilliant, they hit times of india where it hurts most. All the points taken up in the ad are true, which means toi cannot even sue hindu for defamation (of course, i'm over exaggerating to drive home a point here). The ads show the typical "young" / "cool"  / "smart" times of india reader (read - wannabe). The survey with fairly obvious questions like who is the vice president of the country? Who is ram's father in ramayan, etc couldnt have been chosen better to bring out the ignorance that all of us substitute today against substance. The questions on sensationalism and gossip + the ease with which the answers popped out hit the nail bang on the head. The final leading question of which newspaper do you read couldnt have been made any better by anyone in the world. 10/10 for the concept, messaging and execution! Brilliant ad and a fabulous response to counter times drive!

Act II, Scene II:
I was surprised enough that a fairly laid back The Hindu actually came out with a response campaign and a damn good one at that. What was even more shocking was it didnt stop there. I have heard versions of the ad on radio, i'm seeing versions of the ad in print and of course social media is abuzz with this topic right now! Here's some print ad samples:

The surprises dont stop here. Earlier in this post i called this a full frontal attack and i couldnt have meant it more. This fight that orignally started out for a share of readership in chennai, now is being taken to almost all cities where Hindu and TOI have presence! Not something you'd expect off Hindu, typically. Kudos guys! Dont know about what you think but for me this is a successful campaign. Mission accomplished!

Going by what i know of the times of india, i am so sure there's more to come and quite honestly, i'm actually looking forward to where this goes. 

Blackberry Boys: Saying a lot without saying too much

If you've watched tv in the last few days, chances are that you have seen the 'blackberry boys' advertisement. Full credit to vodafone and their agency on this one. If you havent seen it yet, here goes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPZH4OysGZI

The ad is well made technically and execution is simple yet powerful. For me this ad has a lot more than meets the eye, it re-defines the way in which business phones are currently positioned and marketed. Are the business phones really for the business users? Or is that why they are called 'smart phones'? Clearly today, the youth seem to have taken to the bb, and taken well.

About a year ago, i'd noticed that a whole lot of my friends moved to blackberry and these were the exact mix of people that the ad showed. From 40+ CEOs to 20 something coolios, from geeks and nerds to absolut party animals, men and women, boys and girls, everyone was switching and thankfully for blackberry, almost all of them continue to be the 'blackberry boys'.

I find the ad well made and some of what I can take from it is:

1. One clear message: 'Not just for the office guys'.
2. Absolutely real: Real people, real situations.
3. Breaks myths: Listen to the lyrics of the song
4. Evokes emotions: Music is used very well here, catchy tune.
5. Showcases benefits
6. Testimonial driven: Clearly demonstrates user acceptance

The one big negative for me here was the fact that someone actually had to point to me that the ad also said, "now on pre-paid"! If their objective was to announce the availability of blackberry on pre-paid, i completely missed that.

Do drop me a line and let me know what you think of it.