Key takeaways from Social Media Day Pune

Pune’s Digital Marketing community celebrates #SMDayPune, an evening of discussions, networking, trends, insights and foresights with industry stalwarts.

On 30th June, Pune celebrated its third Social Media Day along with hundreds of cities across the world. A concept conceived and mobilized by Mashable in 2010, Social Media Day commemorates the worldwide communication revolution ushered in by social media.

#SMDayPune was organized by SocialChamps in association with Setu Digital. From niche to traditional, the event was attended by eminent speakers from the marketing and communication industry. Pooja Kumar, Co-founder, and CEO of SME Joinup, focused on how digital agencies can get better visibility and generate leads. The key here lies in experimenting with channels like pop-ups, live-chats and interactive features.

Citing her company’s website as an example she elaborated on how the smart integration of a simple pop-up raised lead generations by about 300%. She highly recommends on having a blog so as to publish stories, milestones and case studies relevant to your brand.

The pioneer of personal branding in India, Tanvi Bhatt, articulated the intricacies of building Brand YOU. Bhatt’s comprehensive presentation showcased key elements involved in the process, right from having a personal brand statement to honing the art of thought leadership.

She illustrated on how it can be leveraged using social media and highlighted video blogs or vlogs in particular as an emerging multi-functional tool. Considering the tremendous amounts of data that we share and publish, she stressed on the monitoring, maintenance and management of our digital real estate with tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, Social Mentions and Google Alerts.

Kiruba Shankar, the CEO of Business Blogging, a social media strategist and Founder/Director of F5iveTechnologies projected the use of podcast as the next big tool for digital marketing.

According to Shankar, a podcast is on demand 24/7. Audiences can tune-in to podcasts virtually at any place and time, be it while driving or when working out at the gym. And with the advent of 4G, it is bound to be one of the most sought-after tools in the next couple of years.

Gautam Ghosh, who specializes in Employer Branding and using Social HR, spoke about leveraging social media for attracting and engaging talent. He emphasized on organizational culture as a foundation for a Social HR strategy.
Prahlad Kakkar’s session on how storytelling enhances the message was packed with interesting and insightful one-liners such as “Advertising is all about hope” and “A brand is a human being living inside a product.”

He emphasized on creating value that no-one can compare with. Speaking about digital marketing, he alerted the audiences of the tendency to underestimate and underutilize the power and extent of digital, which he termed as Digital Myopia.

With the world at your fingertips, he observes that there’s real-time engagement between brands and consumers. And in such a dynamic setting, he suggests, open-ended stories would emerge as more relevant and engaging.
With the participation of 500+ communicators comprising of experts, professionals, aspirants and enthusiasts, SMDayPune seems to be getting bigger, better and stronger with each passing year.

The article is written by Nijanand Deshpande.