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SEMPO (India) kicks off - ‘Can Search Offer You A Promising Career?’
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Vivek Bhargava (Chairman, SEMPO India) definitely thinks so.
SEMPO (India) Search Wednesday Mixers kicked off yesterday at Mumbai. Unfortunately I reached a little late and missed the initial discussion – but problems faced by the Search industry were brought forward and also ideas to increase Search Enginge Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) awareness.
So what exactly is SEMPO all about?
The purpose of SEMPO is to grow Search – both Paid Search and SEO. India is one of the largest search markets of the world and faces lots of unique challenges.
Vivek Bhargava was pretty bullish and went on to say – ‘Bring me 80 trained Search Engine Marketing individuals and I’ll sign you a cheque and recruit all of them right away!’
Most of the discussions revolved around how to get students aware of Search as a career – and ideas which poured in included, tie-ups with Education Times, Quizzes / Contests at Google, making more SEM success case studies available etc.
There were talks of a course coming up – where CEO’s of all SEM (Pinstorm, Communicate2 etc) companies in India would come and lecture.
But what kind of people are you really looking at hiring for this industry?
Number crunchers? Who can calculate if there is ROI in a campaign in which you are charging a client Rs 100 per lead and are paying Rs 10/click to Google and getting a 10% lead convert per click through?
15 year olds powered with a calculator will be able to do this as well as MBA graduates.
One needs to target the Creative people. Guys who can use words intelligently enough to craft regular as well as guerilla campaigns.
How can you get an Online Toy Shop to use SEM?
Target the business traveling junta and remind them that the next time they are on a trip – the online toy shop will ensure that you don’t forget to get a toy for your kid.
I was having an animated discussion with a friend who works at an NGO and she said how could an NGO which works for ‘Well being of homeless children’ reach out to the business executive?
Well lets target the same business traveling junta: Book words on all airline queries and…
Can creativity actually be taught via lectures? SEM companies need to find Net Addicts. Chaps who spend 5-8 hours online on a daily basis.
A course can perhaps get you Business Development Execs who can pitch to prospective clients.
What was really disappointing yesterday was that no one seemed to be buoyant about Social Media Optimization. Perhaps not many were aware of SMO.
My take?
I would say India is still 2-3 years behind the rapidly evolving Internet scene in the US and certain European countries.
The reason why blogging, citizen journalism and social media became incredibly popular abroad was because the traditional media wasn’t really prepared for this. Newspapers still believed in Content Delivery and didn’t really care much about interactivity and engagement.
What’s happened in India is that, Social Media hasn’t fully kicked off yet – and most of the traditional companies have already readied themselves for the new-media onslaught. Online Versions of newspapers encourage interaction via message & comment boards. Newspapers are following Blogs regularly etc.
On a parallel line – YouTube, Orkut etc are powering Social Media here to great heights. Students are beginning to use Wikipedia and del.icio.us for their project work, because of the greater relevancy on offer. Young bloggers are making a decent amount of money.
So what is Social Media Optimization?
Rohit Bhargava says, “The concept behind SMO is simple: implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and video blogs.”
Use Social Networks to increase engagement and gain long-term users of your products.
How?
Well let’s take an example…
Zapak.com has a community on Orkut, which has 1300+ members.
All of them are definitely not Zapak employees – so I’m assuming there are at least some fans of Zapak out there. If you have a look at what’s going on in the community there…it’s disappointing:
A lot of thrash – but if you notice that the single relevant thread has got an appreciable amount of response.
Now if the Zapak crew had taken the pains to create a real community here – it would have worked wonders. Zapak launches a new game daily – this could have been posted here. Excellent platform to get to know your brand-fans, hold contests etc…
This is also ultimately feeding content to bloggers and they are sure to write about such stuff.
The problem is - not many in the industry in India have realized the potential of Social Media yet. If you take a look at the immense rise in popularity of Facebook after they opened up their platform and invited companies to use it to popularize their brands – you’d be very surprised.
But at the end of the day when a Google Account Manager gives you ‘I-don’t-know-what-you-are-talking-about’ stares at the mention of digg and del.icio.us…you can pretty much assume the state of Web 2.0 in India.
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Ekalavya,
"I would say India is still 2-3 years behind the rapidly evolving Internet scene in the US and certain European countries."
You are some what wrong here :). India is Still 5 to 8 years behind the US and UK.
Indian People are less aware of Web 2.0 or Web technology which is changing @ an explosive rate[already Web 3.0 and Web 4.0 is on the board now].
Engineering graduates are more obsessed with campus placement they don't learn new things, instead they hook with C,C++, Aptitude and PD to get placement.
In US [silicon valley], Big company does not underestimate the startups to tie up just like with FACEBOOK happened. To happen same in india it will take time.
I started distributing CDs containing Startup resources[Web 2.0 tools, About VCs, Business Strategy PDfs, etc] as a free of charge in Bangalore so that people will learn more about new technology.
Its not sufficient to discuss about changing the face of Tech in India on the Internet. It should be exposed in News Paper, Magzines, TV Show [ just like Dewang Mehta who refuged to give IT SHow on paid channel instead he gave IT SHOW on DD1 because it is free and will be reachable to all].
Thats how we should think.
I have one Suggestion for WATBloggers, why dont you open WATShow on any Television Channel or Open your own TV Channel as WAT-tv.
Hi Mahesh,
Completely agree with you. 5-8 years…lol…hopefully not! It seems that everyone in India is out there just to get numbers and make some money.
Engineering colleges have no courses in PHP…guys still think LAMP is something you use to get some light. Colleges train you in Java and C so that you are easy to place and companies like Infy, Wipro, TCS can pick them up!
Techies want money and don't care for stakes in start-ups. They'll soon realise that playing a central role in a start-up is much better than playing the role of a small cog in a huge co.
Wat tv is a nice idea and we might actually look at video casting in the future.
"But at the end of the day when a Google Account Manager gives you ‘I-don’t-know-what-you-are-talking-about’ stares at the mention of digg and del.icio.us…you can pretty much assume the state of Web 2.0 in India."
Well said, it's amazing how little individuals working in the e-Age are aware of terms like this which are almost 'utility' verbs. Words that are becoming extensions of "I'll google it for you!!!"
:$ Sigh… and has anyone encountered the lack of common sense around when tackling this medium?
Good discussion and commentary … thanks for continuing the conversation about SMO and new thinking in the field of search. It's always nice to see how far these ideas travel and that smart people are thinking about the next evolution of search marketing around the world. I'll be adding your blog to my reading list.
I really feel pained when you people draw analogies between silicon valley and india. India has her own set of problems and different culture. With just two million broadband users and fragmented market and very little money available for early stage startups, it would be foolish to think of web2.0 in india. I am sure minglebox will have tough time in justifying ROI on VC capital.
Here we fight for survival not for value creation that's difference between india and valley.
@ poseidon: Total funding in internet start-ups in the last 2 years has been more than the amount put in UK and almost similar to France (Which is definitely the European Web 2.0 hub). Perhaps being in Singapore you might not really have talked to the the funded indian guys. VC's are not stupid to be investing in definite loss making ventures. I'm sure Guruji would be able to justify it's funding in the near future - Local Search will definitely pick up soon. The mobile marketing space is sure to explode….
India has nearly the largest number of English speaking individuals in the world….internet penetration is increasing by the day. I would still expect a Google professional who is attending a SEMPO meet to know what's Digg and Delicious! Do share insights about the Singapore state with us.
@ Rohit: Am a regular follower of your blog and am sure Social Media Optimization will soon strike a cord with the Indian junta.
@ The Web Browser: It's quite frustrating when prospective clients don't see your vision. I might have missed the sarcasm in your comment (if there was any intended at us).
C and JAVA are important.More so, C. I don’t know if I can put this correctly, Eklavya. A good programmer is usually just that - a good programmer. The language is immaterial. And every computer engineer worth its salt has to know C.PHP, Python, and whatever you say, can later be thrown off at such an engineer, while you watch him making wonderful pieces of code out of them.Ya, but I agree, they must be made aware of the new practices in SEM, SMO etc.