Modi's cash in hand: Only Rs 4,700

Narendra Modi is one of the least affluent ministers in the Union Cabinet, reveals Nivedita Mookerji.

IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pinstripe monogrammed bandhgala that he wore during US President Barack Obama's visit was auctioned last year for Rs 4.31 crore (Rs 43.1 million). Photograph: PTI photo

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's declared assets have gone up by around Rs 15 lakh (Rs 1.5 million) in the financial year 2014-2015 to Rs 1.41 crore (Rs 14.1 million), from Rs 1.26 crore (Rs 12.6 million) in the previous year. This includes a Gandhinagar property currently valued at Rs 1 crore (Rs 10 million).

The slight increase in Modi's assets is primarily from the bank deposits, according to information made available by the Prime Minister's Office.

The PM perhaps has the minimum amount of cash in hand among all his Cabinet colleagues for whom data can be accessed at this point. Modi had only Rs 4,700 cash in hand as of March 31, 2015. In the corresponding period last year, he had Rs 38,700.

The PM continues to not own any car, aircraft or yacht. The value of his four gold rings weighing 45 grams is down by a notch to Rs 1.18 lakh (Rs 118,000), from Rs 1.20 lakh (Rs 120,000) in FY 2014. Financial details of the PM's wife Jashodaben are listed as 'not known.'

The PM's bank deposits including fixed deposits are worth over Rs 31 lakh (Rs 3.1 million). In addition, he has an LIC policy and a National Savings Certificate, totalling about Rs 7.5 lakh (Rs 750,000). Neither has he given out any loan or advance to anybody, nor has he taken any.

Among the prominent members of his Cabinet, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj's declared financial assets have risen to around Rs 4.54 crore (Rs 45.4 million) in 2014-2015, up from Rs 2.73 crore (Rs 27.3 million) in the previous year. Swaraj has Rs 1.05 lakh (Rs 105,000) in cash.

The total financial assets of her husband Swaraj Kaushal are shown much higher at around Rs 15.95 crore (Rs 159.5 million).

Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, who was the fourth highest in the list of ministers' assets in 2014 at Rs 14.91 crore (Rs 149.1 million), has declared assets over Rs 20 crore (Rs 200 million) in FY15. Prasad's cash in hand was Rs 60,468.

Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu, who was listed one of the five non-crore-patiministers in FY14, is yet to reach the Rs 1 crore (Rs 10 million) mark. His total declared assets came to around Rs 29.23 lakh (Rs 2.923 million), marginally up from Rs 20.45 lakh (Rs 2.45 million)in the previous year. His cash in hand was Rs 38,000. However, declarations for Naidu's wife show that she owns assets worth more than Rs 10 crore (Rs 100 million).

Law Minister Sadanand Gowda's assets have dipped from Rs 4.34 crore (Rs 43.4 million) in FY14 to a little over Rs 2 crore (Rs 20 million) in FY15 if the liabilities and loans are taken into account. Besides other things, Gowda has listed a gun worth Rs 8,500 and a revolver worth Rs 55,000 in his declarations.

HRD minister Smriti Irani has declared total personal assets of Rs 4.27 crore (Rs 42.7 million) including a flat valued at Rs 2.78 crore (Rs 27.8 million). She owns a Honda Brio and a Maruti Ertigo. Her previous year's declarations could not be compared immediately. She has cash of around Rs 10.5 lakh (Rs 1.05 million).

Information related to the richest minister Arun Jaitley, whose financial assets were valued at Rs 72.10 crore (Rs 721 million) in FY14, have not been shared yet for FY15. Others such as Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Power Minister Piyush Goyal, road and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari are also among those for whom FY15 assets declaration could not be accessed.

NARENDRA MODI'S ASSETS
TOTAL ASSETS Rs 14,114,893
Rs 1 crore: Property in Gandhinagar
Rs 3,196,457: Bank deposits (including FDs)
Rs 550,815: National Savings Certificate
Rs 118,890: Four gold rings (45 grams)
Rs 199,031: LIC policy
Rs 25,000: Election deposit in Vadodara
Rs 20,000: Bonds
Rs 4,700: Cash in hand
Car: No
Assets of Jashodaben: 'Not known'
The prime minister has neither given out any loan or advance to anybody, nor taken any.

Why no one reads your blog

You are taking efforts to write meaningful, unique blog posts and have been doing so for a while, but you notice that not many seem be reading your blog. Why is this happening? Does this mean there is no one out there willing to read what you are writing about?

Image credit “ShutterStock“

That is unlikely. The internet is massive. Even if you write on weird stuff, or niche topics like how to play a ukulele, there are probably millions of netizens searching, reading and writing on that topic. If you are not getting a slice of that action, that is probably not because no one is interested. Even if you write about things related to just your village, you should be engaging a substantial number of people.

When I started http://blog.ipleaders.in, there were hardly any visitors. We assumed no one wants to read our blog posts as we write on legal issues that may not interest the masses. However, things changed soon. Now we realise that people have a great curiosity and need for information when it comes to law. As we cater to that need, and follow good blogging practices, with little effort, the traffic has been seeing double digit growth every month! Most visitors have come from organic Google traffic.

However, new bloggers get some things wrong. Here are a few:

They don’t keep an audience in mind

How does your audience think? What keywords do they use when they run a search on Google? What are their aspirations? What are they curious, or excited or angry about? If you don’t know the answer to these questions, chances are your targeted audience will never discover your articles. For instance, if I write posts on company incorporation, I need to have my audience in mind – whether I am writing for lawyers or entrepreneurs. While the information may (or may not) be the same, the approach may be quite different. I recently wrote an article on how the Indian education system can use cutting edge technology, targeting an audience of bureaucrats. If I wrote the article for technology enthusiasts, my approach may have had to be substantially different, so that I can connect with that audience.

If what you write doesn’t connect with a certain kind of audience, your blog will understandably be dead in terms of traffic. It is not that each post connects with exactly the same audience: different posts hold differing levels of interest for different crowds. Tim Ferriss is a master of this art. His blog has some of the best resources on things like speed reading, accelerated learning, low budget travelling, various life hacks – all of them tied into one single theme of ‘lifestyle design’. However, you can see that in each post he is talking to one kind of people; those who want to drastically improve their lives and want to get big wins by hacking various aspects of their life.

You are not mixing personality into your writing

You know the easiest way to make your writing interesting? Add your personality into your writing. Be interesting. Be yourself; don’t try to sound erudite and uptight and don’t make it all business. Be original and creative with the language and writing style. Enjoy the process of writing and don’t make it all mechanical. This is crucial, because if you don’t enjoy writing a post, no one will enjoy reading it. This is why it is easier to write about things you genuinely care about. If I write about watches, it may be a poor read,  as I think watches are boring and I don’t much care for them. If you tell my friend Abhyudaya to speak about watches, he can talk nonstop for hours on end, because he is passionate about fancy watches. He goes to watch-related events, and spends money on costly wrist watches. He spent his first salary buying an expensive one. He is constantly on the lookout for watches that are on sale on the internet. So then, guess which one of us should start a blog on watches?

You are not making it easy to read

You have to think of the reader when you write on the internet. If he is bored, or if he doesn’t get it on first glance, or if the font or background is difficult to read, you will lose your reader. If he finds the text obtuse or peppered with words he doesn’t know, you will lose him. He will probably never come back.

This is why picture of cats and headlines that give away the story are so popular on the internet. If you want the readers to stick around, make everything very easy and very entertaining. Don’t write long paragraphs; break them down into short ones. Make your headlines and sub-heads bold. Intersperse the text with some pleasant and interesting photos/videos or other media.

Never have light coloured fonts on a dark background no matter how beautiful the blog looks. That makes your posts almost impossible to read.

Because you are not guest posting         

Your blog cannot exist in silos. Other people need to know you exist; they need to discover your blog from a link somewhere else on the internet. They may even find you while they look for things on a search engine like Google.

It is very important to think of search engine optimisation. From length of an article to the phrases used in headlines and subheads, there are many ways search engines can tell what keywords your blogposts should rank for. If you don’t help the search engines realise what your post is all about, it may be difficult for people to find you.

Guest posting is a great way to build links to your blog and to get people to know you. This will also rapidly improve the search engine ranking of your blog. If you are not getting traffic, make sure that at least a third of your writing efforts go towards guest posting. This should take care of your traffic concerns if you are writing well.

Maybe there is no wow factor in your content

Write interesting stories, share real incidents, insights, information, and statistics. Appeal to your readers’ emotions – ranging from shock, desire and aversion to greed. However, the value of the content should be prima facie.

It is possible that you are not a good writer. In 2015, this hardly matters. You may still be able to create great videos or picture based content. You may even create GIFs and break the internet. Do what it takes, just make something that we will all want to talk about it and share with our friends.

All the best!

How to make money blogging: Top 5 techniques for monetizing your blog

Blogging is an excellent way of sharing your views and passion about any topic. Incidentally, it is also a wonderful means of making money online. A common misconception is that bloggers in India cannot make substantial income via blogging alone. However this is not the case. There are many leading Indian bloggers who are making lakhs of rupees from blogging. So if you have a blog and have not monetized it yet, now is the time to act!

Image credit “ShutterStock“

Here’s a list of five evergreen tactics that you can use on your blog to monetize it.

1. Advertising Networks

This is the simplest method of monetization; making it a good stepping stone for those looking to monetize their blog for the first time. Therefore, it also is most commonly used blog monetization method. It is extensively used across the world and is quite popular in India, too.

How this works: You display ads on your blog – when your viewers click on these ads, you earn a commission from the advertiser.

How to implement this on your Blog:

1. Choose the Ad network you want to work with. AdSense (owned by Google) is by far the favorite network amongst bloggers as well as advertisers. There are other options like BidVertiser, Infolinks,
2. Apply to become a publisher on the Ad network of your choice. Application will require your payment details (details of the account where you would like to receive the commission payout) amongst other things, so keep this information handy.
3. Once your application is accepted, the Ad network will send you a confirmatory mail regarding the same.
4. Once confirmed you will be provided with Ad codes that you need to place on your blog – at the locations where you want to display the E.g. you may want to display ads between text sections or in the sidebar, etc.
5. Once you have placed the codes correctly, you are good to go. Your Ad network will start displaying ads at your specified location within a couple of hours.
6. Your job now is complete. Now it is up to your readers to view/click on the ads and earn you some moolah through your blog.

How much can you earn: The earning per click ranges from $0.01 to $50. How much the ads on your blog will pay depends on your blog topic, since ads displayed are related to that topic. Also, the amount you earn will depend on the number of viewers who click on your ads.

Tip to earn more: Optimize your ad placement – by checking which location and type of ad gets the most clicks. Image ads work best for some blogs, while others earn more from text ads. So keep adjusting things until you achieve maximum returns.

2. Affiliate marketing

This method can earn you a sizable income from your blog. Here you are looking to earn by pitching related products or services to your readers. You need to be smart in choosing the product or service you want to promote. It requires researching and analyzing your niche to understand what your readers are looking to buy. When implementing this method on your blog make sure not to overdo the promotion. Your readers come to your blog to read the post and share your blogging journey. Do not alienate them by promoting stuff all the time.

How this works: You place ads or links of your chosen affiliate product/service on your blog. When a reader clicks on these links and makes a purchase, you get paid a commission from the product/service provider.

How to implement this on your Blog:

1. Choose the product/service you would like to become anaffiliate Clickbank, OMG India, Trootrac media are some popular affiliate networks. You can also choose to directly join an affiliate program offered by websites like Flipkart, Amazon, etc.
2. Apply for becoming an affiliate on your chosen website. Here amongst other details, you might be asked about the marketing/promotion strategies you use for your blog.
3. Most websites will review your application and approve or disapprove it within 24-72 hou
4. Once your application is approved, you will be able to log into your affiliate account and access different links/ads which you can place on your blog.
5. Add the relevant link/ad in your blog and check if it is working right.
6. You are all set to earn money from affiliate Now when a reader clicks on the link/ad and buys the product/service you will earn a commission.

How much can you earn: The commission earned per sale varies greatly. It depends on the website, as well as the product. You can earn commissions ranging anywhere from 2.5 per cent to 50 per cent of the sale value. Also, the earning will depend on the product bought by the buyer. E.g. you place affiliate ads of Flipkart on your blog – if a reader purchases clothes you earn a higher commission percentage as opposed to a reader who purchases a mobile phone.

Tip to earn more: Promote products/services that are closely related to your niche and your readers, so that you can have a higher conversion rate and be assured of making sales. While popular products are easy to sell they offer less commission, so always keep a lookout for a relatively lesser known but a potentially good product which can earn you higher commission.

3. Selling your own product

There is no better way to have supreme control over your blog monetization than selling your product. This is by far the most stable method of earning from your blog, since you have full control over the method. Right from designing the product, to pricing and marketing it, you are the boss of it all – hence the more effort you put in the more money you can make.

How this works: You create a product/service based on your expertise and sell it to readers through your blog.

How to implement this on your Blog:

1. Create a product/service with your own hands or you can get someone to create it for you. You can create physical products like books, cookies, DIY kits, Or, you can create digital products like eBooks, video courses, etc.
2. Establish a selling price for your creation. Determine the method of delivering your product/service. Will you send it via courier/mail or does it need to be collected personally? Also, decide on the method of payment -via PayPal or bank transfer, in cash or by cheque – you need to decide on a method that is convenient for both you and your buyers.
3. Create a special landing page on your blog explaining all about this creation of yours. Point out its salient points, its benefits and utility, and include a buy button on this page.
4. Promote your product/service to your readers and beyond. You can do this via email marketing, social media promotion, ‘AdWords’, and the like.
5. Make sales and earn money from your creation.

How much can you earn: Sky is the limit. Since everything from pricing to costing is in your hands, your earning potential is up to you. The better your product the more it will sell, and the more you can earn.

Tip to earn more: Research to understand what product your readers would like to buy and only then begin designing of your product/service. If you make something that the readers want, it will sell itself, like hot cakes.

4. Freelance via your blog

If you have been blogging about a topic for a while, you sure do have certain level of knowledge, skills and expertise on it. Freelancing is a way of earning money through your skills and expertise. If you have specific marketable skills like designing or baking then you can earn money by advertising these skills on your blog, and taking up jobs that utilize these skills. Even if you do not have specific skills you can always guide other newbie bloggers in your niche and charge them for the guidance. You will be amazed at the number of people willing to pay you money for your advice – which you might have been giving out for free until now!

How this works: You provide your skills/expertise as a consultant to those who require it and pay for it. Alternatively you might choose to take up projects which require execution and get paid for the same.

How to implement this on your Blog:

1. Create a brief of what services you want to offer as a Freelancer.
2. Create a dedicated landing page on your blog, listing your services. Also include on this page, a statement on why somebody should hire you, what benefits do you offer over others, and most importantly, your pricing Include information about how to contact/hire you.
3. Inform your readers about the services you are offering and encourage them to avail of these, and also request them to mention it to their family and Your readers will be more receptive to ask for your services as they are aware of your expertise through the regular reading of your blog posts.
4. Promote your services via other channels, too, like advertising, social media, The more you promote, the more people will become aware of your services; and more offers will come your way.
5. Once you receive a project ensure that you complete it in a professional manner. Get paid and earn money from your blog.

How much can you earn: Your earning will depend on your knowledge level and also on how popular your service offering is. You decide on the price – so the earning potential is unlimited. If you are an expert in your niche then your earnings can skyrocket easily; since you can take on more complex projects that pay more.

Tip to earn more: Do not short sell yourself. If you cannot decide on a pricing structure, conduct a survey amongst readers about how much they would be willing to pay for a particular service. Most bloggers are guilty of short selling themselves, and thus not able to sufficiently augment their own income.

5. Placing direct ads on your blog

This is another excellent blog monetization method which is used by many bloggers. However this method works better for some niches as opposed to others. On the surface this method is similar to the Ad networks one, i.e. you place ads on your blog and earn money from it. However, there is a huge difference, in its implementation. While with Ad networks you have no control over the ad displayed and the earnings you receive, here you have full control. You get to choose which ad will be displayed on your blog and you also set the price for the ads. In this method advertisers get in touch with you directly to place ads on your blog, thus eliminating the middleman (Ad network) and increasing your earning potential.

How this works: You place ads on your blog – when readers click on these you get paid a commission or you can choose to charge a flat fee to the advertisers on a monthly/weekly basis.

How to implement this on your Blog:

1. Determine the locations on your blog where you would like to place the ads (ad spots). You can place ads in the footer, header, sidebar, within the content,

• Create an ‘Advertise with us’ page on your blog. On this page provide information that will help potential advertisers decide if your blog is a right fit for them. Include a brief about your blog audience, what topics you write on, and most importantly, include pricing information about your ad spots. It’s your blog, so you set the prices. Remember you can set different prices for different ad spots. You might choose to charge more for aheader banner and less for an in-context text Also, add information about how to contact you for placing an

1. Apply to join a monetization network where you can add your blog, your ad spot and pricing details. This will expose your blog to more advertisers via the network. BuySell Ads is one of the most popular monetization networks.
2. Place boxes in your blog on the ad spots with ‘advertise here’This will attract attention of potential advertisers who visit your blog.
3. Some advertisers might want to negotiate prices with you – be open to such deal Once you have agreed on a price with the advertiser, make their ads live and see the money roll in.

How much can you earn: Since you decide the rate for your ad spots, your earning potential is in your hands. However, in general, the larger the audience you have the more you can earn, since advertisers are willing to pay higher prices for exposure to more potential buyers.

Tip to earn more: Do not put ‘Advertise Here’ text for all your ad spots. Place dummy ads in some of the prominent ad spots. This creates a psychological advantage for you when a potential advertiser views your blog. On seeing the dummy ad, advertisers feel that you already have clients, and so your blog is worth investing in. Additionally, it creates a feeling of scarcity – that your ad spots might soon fill up and they might miss out on advertising with you. Both of these tactics motivate potential advertisers to do business with you.

This sums up the top 5 most popular methods of monetizing your blog. Making money from your blog is neither rocket science nor is it child’s play. You need to be smart about the products you choose to promote, or design. You need to put in some real hard work to create loyal readers of your blog, who will eventually help you earn money from your blog. And, most of all, you need to work hard on promoting and exposing your blog to the maximum number of potential readers.

Most bloggers write excellent articles but forget to promote it. A blog without promotion is like a secret diary. Only the blogger knows about it. Promotion helps the blog reach out to potential readers and make it popular amongst the masses. So promote your blog, apply any one or all of these monetization methods, and earn money from your blog.

The secret weapons of online and social media marketing

Marketing channels have evolved a lot – from print, TV, radio, websites, emails, online to now, social media. Today, online marketing and social media have become the most preferred channels for most of the businesses. But as anyone would agree, these are still evolving and many businesses are trying to figure out what works and what does not work for them. Having said that, while it is natural to stick to the commonly used marketing activities such as SEO, email campaigns, paid ads and social media, I always suggest that businesses should be open to explore the newer and powerful avenues too.

In this post, I am going to talk about few such online marketing activities which, when used right, can deliver great results – but unfortunately these are not talked about a lot.

# Webinars

I am a big fan of webinars. Webinars offer a great opportunity to learn from experts – without worrying about geographical boundaries and right from your work station. All you need is good Internet connection and a headset. Hundreds of experts are happy (and many a times, for free) share their expertise and experiences through webinars.

Now let’s talk about it from the business perspective. How can businesses leverage webinars? Well, in many ways –

1. Customer Webinar – You know your customers love you and are raving fans. They really appreciate your work and you have made a significant difference to their business. Why not invite them to speak about their experiences, their business and theirexpertise through a webinar? Don’t you think others in the industry will value it? If you host one such webinar, you can reach out to many more prospects from the same industry and invite them to attend it. Since it is a purely educational exercise, you won’t appear salesy but at the same time, you will get an opportunity to reach out to a larger set of audience with something really credible.
2. Industry Leader Webinar – People always love to hear the views and opinions of the industry leaders/ gurus. They offer industry insights and their opinions are unbiased. You can organize a webinar with an industry leader on a latest topic from your industry (which aligns with your offering) and invite people to attend that. Being associated with an industry leader will go a long way in positioning your business. Remember, I am not talking about being a mere sponsor for such webinar. The webinar should be organized and hosted by you and it should show that you have invited the speaker to speak.
3. Product Webinar – If you are a company selling software products, then chances are that your sales teams give multiple product demos to the prospects. Why not cut it short by organizing product webinars every week? You can have multiple webinars covering different time zones and different industries. If you organize an industry-specific webinar, it gives you an opportunity to customize the webinar content for that specific industry. Such webinars can be pre-scripted and well thought out. You can build a good scalability in this model by training multiple people for the webinar. Having a fixed schedule displayed on your website will create a good impression in the minds of the prospects. You can also choose to make these webinars interactive by allowing the attendees to ask questions so that you get an opportunity to handle objections.

# Podcasts

Podcasts are small audio bytes popular amongst people who prefer audio over text/ images. There has been a trend of people using their commute time in listening to podcasts.  So what can the podcast be about? Like the webinars, podcasts can be with customers, industry leaders or even with your internal expert team. Pick a theme and record podcasts around it. While I have heard podcasts of 30-40 minutes also, I prefer the shorter podcasts– say around 12-15 minutes at most. What are the advantages from business perspective? Well, many advantages –

• You get an opportunity to connect with influencers from your industry and be in their eyeline and establish connection with them
• You get valuable content to share with your target audience. This content be then reused in many ways – through your website, blog, newsletters, email campaigns, and so on and that too on a continuous basis.
• You get to take a position in the industry as someone who is interested in the latest topics and taking efforts to assist the community through knowledge sharing

# Influencer Marketing

With social media, it has become easy to connect with anyone. But there is a difference between connection and conversation. If done rightly, you can meaningfully connect with influencers from your industry, engage with them and then take the conversation to next level. Influencer marketing is often misinterpreted as celebrities endorsing your brand. That’s a very superficial way of looking at it. Influencer marketing really means – identify a list of influencers from your industry, map their social presence and interact with them on the platform oftheir choice. Interaction does not mean asking them to RT your link  Let’s think – Who can be the influencers for you? These are the people who are decision makers in your industry or the people whom you care to connect with. For example: For an organic food store, chefs could be the influencers and for a solar power energy company, possibly the environmentalists could be influencers. You got to identify these and map their social presence – some might be active on Twitter, others might have strong LinkedIn presence. You need to first study that and then engage with them on those platforms. Once you establish a relationship with them, you can take the conversation ahead by requesting them to write a guest blog, invite them for a webinar or record their podcast.

# LinkedIn Groups

Having a profile on LinkedIn does not mean that you are active on LinkedIn. There are many more ways in which you can leverage this powerful platform. LinkedIn groups are very powerful to connect with like-minded people and establish your thought leadership in front of a targeted group of individuals. As a company, you can start your own LinkedIn group around a theme or a topic – note that starting a group in your company name is not useful. The group needs to connect people with similar interests. They should derive value from being part of your group. As an administrator of the group, it is your responsibility to keep the group activity relevant and ongoing. While it is an effort intensive and long term activity, if done well, it can be a brilliant way of creating a community of people with similar interests. In case you are interested to understand this in more detail, here is a great presentation on dynamics of starting and maintaining your own LinkedIn group.

Don’t get  so swamped in doing regular activities that you forget to take advantage of such secret weapons. Always keep  room for growth in your digital marketing plan.

7 deadly sins of startup social media marketing

“Yeah, I made mistakes but…life doesn’t come with instructions.”

Sure, it does not. But that’s not the case with social media – there’s certainly some good advice out there to help you avoid blunders on social media. After all, mistakes are meant for learning and not repeating, right?

So what are some of the common mistakes that companies, especially startups, make while defining and executing their social media strategy? Here is what I’ve found:

1. Incorrect platforms

Agreed– Facebook has 1.44 billion monthly active users (as of Mar 31, 2015). But you can’t have the whole universe as your target audience. In today’s time and age, when everyone is spoilt for choice, the most important marketing decision you need to make is defining the target audience. Targeted marketing is the key of the game, and targeted marketing is, by definition, exclusionary. You need to clearly define your target audience.Once that is done, you need to identify the platforms on which your target audience is active. Remember – nobody searches for a job on Facebook or looks for a hotel review on LinkedIn. Being present on the most popular platform does not make sense if your target audience is not active there. Here’s some quick help when it comes to popular platforms:

Facebook – It’s a good platform when:

• You have highly visual content
• You want to leverage the community effect
• You want to build trust in the minds of the users by leveraging their friends’ network’s
• You are ready to spend on ads asrecent changes in Facebook’s algorithm have made it very difficult to organically reach out to fans

Twitter – It is a good platform to:

• Broadcast your message
• Join the on-going conversations
• Connect with thought leaders and people that matter to you
• Build a position for yourself

LinkedIn – Consider using it when:

• You are a B2B company
• You want to connect with a professional audience and establish your thought leadership within a group of homogeneously targeted audience

Google+ – Good platform to:

• Help you with your SEO efforts
• Participate in Google communities to connect with like-minded people

Pinterest – You can use it when:

• Your primary target audience include women
• You have highly visual content to share

These of course are just guidelines. You need to do a more thorough research and brainstorming to finalise the social platforms for your brand.

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Related read: 13 ways you can make digital marketing work for you

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2. Doing Too Much or Too Little

Once you choose a social platform, you need to commit to it. Having an inactive presence on any of the platforms creates a bad impression. Having the last tweet date as two years back is worse than not having a Twitter handle. You need to show activity on the social platforms, and need to have consistency. The opposite is also true – you just can’t do too much. Don’t bombard your LinkedIn company page followers with 10 updates a day just because that will give you more number of impressions!

3. Ignoring Content Marketing

Content marketing is the gasoline of your social media efforts. You need to have good blog articles to showcase your expertise. You need interesting infographics to share with your audience. eBooks are good to share as a free giveaway. Whitepapers arean excellent way to establish your thought leadership. You need content. Period. Just don’t ignore it from your social media strategy. Not having enough bandwidth to create content cannot be an excuse today.

4. Inappropriate Content or Self Promotion

Each platform has different content needs. Don’t make the mistake of pushing the same content on all the platforms just because there are tools available that allow you to do so. Each platform requires different tone of messaging and different type of content. More importantly, you also need to mind the timing of your updates. Your audience is not going to be present on all the platforms at the same time. Social media does require some serious time and attention commitment Don’t get away with easy options of automatingyour schedule without giving it a serious thought, or having a proper plan in place. Another thing to keep an eye on is the type of content you share. Too much of self-promotion is a big turn-off. Just because you are excited about your product or services does not mean you can talk about it all day long. Have a good balance of education, industry insights, engagement and self-promotion in your content sharing.

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You’ll also like to read: How to make influencer marketing work for your startup

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5. No Personal Branding

People relate to other people – and this is especially true for startups, where people are buyingservices fromfounders more than from the company. So it is important that startups include the personal branding of their founders in their social media planning and strategy. You need a face for your company.

6. Canned Responses to Negative Comments

Lot of companies shy away from social media because of the fear of negative comments. But note that negative comments are, infact, good opportunities for you to build trust in the minds of your readers. (Read more about it here.) One of the foremost thing you need to remember while handling negative comments on the social platform is that you should NEVER give a canned response to any negative comment. Be personal and show genuine interest in solving the problem. Acknowledge the issue, and take genuine actions to resolve it. If the there is a mistake, accept it and take all efforts to resolve it. Check this example here from Zappos – simply brilliant. Isn’t it?

7. Not aligning with the target audience in terms of tone and messaging

Try and align as much as you can with your target audience – if you are targeting the youth, introduce some quirkiness in your overall messaging. If you are targeting CXOs, maintain a professional tone. Just make sure that your marketing tone matches your company culture. After all, today, marketing is no more the job of marketing department only. It is the job of each and every person representing the company. Here’s a brilliant example of this –

Do share your experience on what worked and what did not work for you. It’s all about sharing knowledge, isn’t it?