Blogging

Advani, Congress "heir-apparent" Rahul Gandhi and the entire GenNext brigade of younger politicians have all launched their websites to make friends and influence people.

Younger MPs who have launched their own websites include Priya Dutt, Omar Abdullah, Milind Deora, Mehbooba Mufti, Deepender Hooda, M.K.

Stalin and Madhu Goud Yakshi from Andhra Pradesh.

Even a politician who has largely steered clear of the media, finance minister P. Chidambaram, has decided to step into this world of virtual reality and launch his own website.

Taking a leaf out of the diary of popular filmstars, including Amitabh Bachchan and Aamir Khan, all of whom have become regular bloggers and who do not hesitate to divulge details about themselves, many of the younger leaders are also providing insights about how they operate.

National Conference president Omar Abdullah's opening introductory remarks about himself reflected a certain amount of queasiness.

It is true that blogs have earned a bad name and we are constantly bombarded with shocking `people-fired-for-blogging' stories. But compared to the colossal number of people blogging, the damaging instances are few and far between.

The lesser-known fact is that more people are actually getting jobs thanks to their blogs!

Come to think of it, a text resume provides just a brief outline of a candidate's qualifications, skills, accomplishments and experience, nothing more. The vague bulleted list of flat, static information does not shed light on the person's personality, perspective or even actual contributions.

Comparatively, your blog conveys your voice to the world - to people who do not know anything about you. It represents who you really are and helps you get noticed, get hired, get promoted!

In fact, Adam Darowski, an ardent blogger goes as far as to suggest that, "The blog is the new resume".

After all, both employers and recruiters are actively `googling' candidates for background and discovery. They read blog posts to get an insight into what work a person has really done - how he used his skills to accomplish a certain task, what role he played in a project or how he transitioned in his career history.

All that anyone needs to know is out there. Employers can judge what a person is like - how he thinks, communicates and even handles disagreements (by the nature of his responses to negative blog comments). The choice of blogging topics also reflects on his opinions, passions and values.

Presented with a candidate's true essence, they can judge everything from his thought processes, judgement and achievements to even his team spirit, ability to innovate or whether he can actually fit into the organisational culture.

As one recruiter says, "We have hired two people, fresh out of college in the past four months that we found through their blogs - one didn't even have a formal resume.

Frankly, he didn't need one. A blog trumps a resume every single time!"

Blogging is serious business

Once he realised that his internet-driven past-time could bring in money, Venkitesh got smarter and regular with his blog. "I started blogging daily and made the blog look attractive, informative, entertaining.'' This attracted more advertisers, and more money came in.

"I earned over $200 this month and I'm confident my total earnings in a year will soon go up to Rs 1 lakh.'' Venkitesh is not the only youngster making money by blogging.

"Many are original content blogs while many others are not so, but they give credit to the source of the content. So it does not give room for plagiarism,'' says Ashok Manohar, who earned Rs 5,000 this month from three different advertisers on his blog, which is focused on current affairs and India-related cultural news and trends that has big readership amongst overseas Indians. Manohar too now spends at least 30 minutes a day on his blog to increase his earning. His tech savvy wife Shonima is helping him update the blog daily.

Kiruba Shankar, a professional blogger and CEO of Kiruba.com, says a person blogging on specific and niche topics might make anywhere from Rs 10,000 to 20,000 a month. But it all depends, he says, on the topics you write on and your professional background. "Statistics suggest that only 2% will add professional value by blogging and generate interest,'' Shankar says.

Rajan Pawa is another Bangalore-based blogger who has been making good money. A cookie (a tracking software) found that Pawa's blog attracted 1,000 users on the third day of its opening. "I posted all crazy and funny things, which people across the globe found interesting, informative and entertaining. It took only a few more weeks for advertisers like Google ads and Adbrite to take note and start advertising on my blog," he says.

Pawa's sister Lalita, an MCA student, helps him update his blog. "My brother gave me Rs 10,000 a few weeks ago on my birthday, as a reward for helping him with content writing in the last two months,'' says Lalita.

A blogger who writes on niche topics such as Java development and coding can even be asked for his consultancy services. Nowadays, facing stiff competition from Yahoo and MSN advertising, Google has started offering more money to regular and professional bloggers.

Another concept picking up is of developers looking to make money with applications created on social networking sites.

In what may herald a whole new democratic culture, India Inc. has begun to believe that such "social media" are vital office communication tools.

Mustafa Syed, a marketing analyst and project manager with interactive agency Webchutney, follows 40-odd colleagues on Twitter, a microblogging service accessible from cellphones and PCs, some of whom he has never met. "Everyone in the company is on G-chat as a rule, so there is no initial awkwardness communicating with people you have never met." Employees chat online with the CEO as well, taking up problems and discussing ideas. And when Webehutney CEO Sidharth Rao recently went to Bangalore to make a customer pitch, he was micro-blogging about the presentation live to employees in Mumbai and Delhi.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is trying to leverage online social networking for knowledge creation in its 110,000 employee-strong organisation "Socia1networking is popular with a very significant employee base," says vice president and Chief Technology Officer, K. Ananth Krishnan.

Part of the "highly connected and open culture" at TCS is 'My Site' - a website for every employee, embedded with social networking tools. Then there's Idea Storm - a site on which everybody is invited to comment on a theme. "We got 20,000 ideas out of a dialogue in 5 days," says Krishnan.

At Cognizant, newsletters and other types of internal communication have already migrated to the blogging platform. Employee blogging is central to Sun Microsystems' marketing communications strategy Top boss Jonathan Schwartz believes that employee blogs have "authenticated the Sun brand as much as or more than a buion dollar ad campaign could have done."

Schwartz's posts neither hype-up Sun products, nor over-slay competitors. Employees write about mundane problems like product delays, and invite readers to submit bug reports and suggestions. Says Ananth Shrinivas, 24, a Sun engineer whose posts are among the most widely read ones on technology, "Blogging is a way for employees who aren't related to a particular product or policy, to write about their valid concerns." Santhosh D'Souza, the Sun chief technologist, uses his blog as an extension of himself to write about whafs new in Sun technologies for potential customers.

Some bloggers, like Gaurav Mishra, Indica's brand head, are using their personal brand - created over years of blogging - to promote the brand they work for Mishra recently promoted an ad campaign for his brand on his blog and Facebook account.

A serious concern for employers could be what their employees say publicly on such sites. Says Mishra, "I ensure that my entire web presence is squeaky clean." TCS's Krishnan says if there is criticism of the company online, "we take it constructively". Microsoft doesn't review, edit, censor or endorse individual posts, says Joji GE, director HR, Microsoft India. "It's such freedom that inspires employees to blog responsibly and tap into unstructured knowledge networks online," says Abhishek Kant, a Microsoft community programme manager, one of the founders of Delhi Bloggers Association.

Cyberlaw expert Pavan Duggal says, "Employees should neither disclose anything confidential nor post defamatory content," he says.

"I aim to arouse the pride of young Sikhs through my writings," says Singh, who started blogging on his phone last May "Many of my S e voted for Ludhiana's Ishmeet Singh in Star Plus's Voice of India - and con- tributed to his victory," he adds. Singh has hired two people to get him cell numbers of 200,000 Sikhs, be- cause he wants to reach "one in 10 Sikhs soon".

In Delhi, Lalchung Siem, a 33-year-old Food Corporation of India employee, whips out his phone several times a day to blog in Hmar, a language spoken by a small group of people in India. His posts are sent free to 6,106 readers in the Northeast by SMSGup- Shup, a microblogging platform. "Recently, I got an SOS call after two boys fell in a river in Saidan village, Manipur I flashed the SMS on my blog, and within minutes, a hundred people reached the spot and managed to rescue one of the boys," he says.
Micro blogging, that is, blogging on cellphones by SMSes has become a sellout among compulsive cellphone users and enthusiastic communicators.

During a hearing on a petition challenging Rule 36 of the BCI that prohibits advocates from advertising their services, BCI counsel Sanjeev Sachdeva said the BCI and Sate Bar Councils have passed a resolution agreeing to amend the Rules of Professional Conduct and Ethics to enable lawyers to provide information regarding their address, standing, qualification and specializa- tion through websites.

Such information will have to be provided in the form prescribed by the BCI and respective State Bar Councils, Sachdeva told a bench headed by Justice B.N. Agrawal.

The court asked the BCI to amend rules with regard to websites and place it before it within 10 weeks.

Earlier, the BCI and the Centre had opposed the petition, saying the legal profession is not a trade.

Petitioner V B. Joshi has challenged Rule 36 terming it as archaic. Half-a-million odd lawyers, arbitrators and legal experts in India can offer their services to the world with the help of advertising, he contended.

TO its true believers at small businesses, it is a low-cost, high-return tool that can handle marketing and public relations, raise the company profile and build the brand. That tool is blogging, though small businesses with blogs are still a distinct minority. A recent American Express survey found that only 5 percent of businesses with fewer than 100 employees have blogs. Other experts put the number slightly higher.

But while blogs may be useful to many more small businesses, even blogging experts do not recommend it for the majority. Guy Kawasaki, a serial entrepreneur, managing partner of Garage Technology Ventures and a prolific blogger, put it this way: ?If you?re a clothing manufacturer or a restaurant, blogging is probably not as high on your list as making good food or good clothes.

Blogging requires a large time commitment and some writing skills, which not every small business has on hand.

But some companies are suited to blogging. The most obvious candidates, said Aliza Sherman Risdahl, author of ?The Everything Blogging Book? (Adams Media 2006), are consultants. ?They are experts in their fields and are in the business of telling people what to do.

For other companies, Ms. Risdahl said, it can be challenging to find a legitimate reason for blogging unless the sector served has a steep learning curve (like wine), a lifestyle associated with certain products or service (like camping gear or pet products) or a social mission (like improving the environment or donating a portion of revenues to charity).

Even in those niches, Ms. Risdahl said that companies need to focus on a strategy for their blogging and figure out if they have enough to say.

?As a consultant, blogging clearly helps you get hired,? she said. ?If you are selling a product, you have to be much more creative because people don?t want to read a commercial.?

Sarah E. Endline, chief executive of sweetriot, which makes organic chocolate snacks, said she started blogging a few months before starting her company in 2005 to give people a behind-the-scenes look at the business.

The kind of transparency is a popular reason for blogging, particularly for companies that want to be identified as mission-oriented or socially responsible.