The update status ‘XYZ just checked-in @ABC’ is becoming a bit of an eyesore, especially when it comes out on Twitter and Facebook repeatedly. Why not be creative? So recently I checked in inside a flight IC 213……..

How about checking in on foursquare itself. I just checked in @foursquare.com

I added a place called ‘The most wonderful place in the world’ recently. I am the proud mayor of that place now.

My colleagues suggested why places only, why not people? So we thought we should check  in @Tina @Surangana. How many girls in office have you as the mayor now? Cheeky.

One of my colleagues has become a super mayor for becoming the mayor of 10 places. I’m at 4 – one is an imaginary place, one of MG Road sucks, and two of my clients’ offices.  I don’t travel so much nowadays, except for obvious places where I could go with my 9 months old . Like one of my friends on Twitter said, ‘Fathers of toddlers can become mayors of doctor’s clinics; Hard Rock Cafe, difficult.’ :-)

By the way, let’s connect if you are on foursquare. My profile is here. Let’s see how many more interesting places we can discover and thus get many more fancy badges.

I tried Makemy trip.com, Yatra.com, Cleartrip.com, and Flykingfisher.com. These are the top travel sites according to Vizisense. The total fares shown by these sites on the airlines with the lowest fares available with them were interesting and all different.

Makemytrip -Rs. 14,405

Yatra – Rs. 13,682

Cleartrip -Rs. 15,921

FlyKingfisher – Rs. 14,274

Curious, I tried another search, Yatra gave the cheapest fares again. Seems like I found my banshee.

1. The Bharatiyas: 67% of the Indian youth who lives in the rural areas with least influence of globalisation, least economically priviledged and high on traditional values and highly Bollywood influenced.

2. The Indians: 31.% of the youth who have moderate global influence but still rooted to Indian family values.

3. The In’glo’dians: Minimal in number but globally inclined, exposed and affluent. Always try to be different.

So thus when it comes to social networking, the report reinforces what many of us intuitively know. The site is filled with the aam junta or the Bharatiyas. The In’glo’dians are rapidly moving to Facebook, and distancing themselves from the masses.  This, coupled with all the recent controversies surrounding the site, ‘Orkut is no more cool’.

I remember recently creating Orkut and Facebook groups for two of our clients. Both the Facebook groups have been growing and the conversations are happening. The Orkut groups just refuse to get active. I now tell my colleagues to think extra hard before including Orkut on any client campaigns.

What is also interesting is that the top layer of the In’glo’dians are moving to Twitter, and soon after some years Facebook might just end up getting the same fate of Orkut. And witnessing how Orkut had peaked in India and fall, it won’t be long for another wave of change to happen.

We have heard of rock bands giving away music for download. Now what I think is really interesting is that the new movie 3 Idiots is going to be available for download on YouTube, though not likely to be free. I would like to wait for the price, and if it is high, I don’t think it will change anything on the illegal downloads front that they are hoping to change.

What is also interesting is that this can set a trend for other movies from Bollywood to be available for download. And while Youtube is the perfect platform, I wonder what will the guys at movie rentals like Seventymm and pocket friendly movie DVD makers like Moser Baer say about this.

a. The immense influence media blogs have today – Yes, we  have big bloggers and we have media bloggers, the latter that have come out recently but yielding the reach of its already established brand platforms

b. Crisis can broke out online and it’s not something we read about a brand in the US, it’s happening here – We saw this during the Mumbai attacks last year when the news was first reported on Twitter. Now we have a blog covering the story, irrespective of it from a media house.

c. The potential danger of giving out a diplomatically worded media statement in a crisis instead of being genuine. The media statement of yesteryears need to change.

Once for an internal newsletter, I was asked, how is the internet changing issues and crisis management. I was thinking about what I wrote apply so aptly on this particular situation.

Critics, customers, activists, and other influencers today have the opportunity and the tools online to easily voice their opinions across to many people. They can rally supporters online who in turn can help an issue turn viral across networks and communities. Seemingly unharmful online discussions can spiral into crisis situations for organizations in no time and participants can quickly take sides to an issue.

Another important emerging trend is real time reportage. When Mumbai was under terrorist attacks in November last year, it was the consumer generated online media like Twitter and Flickr that broke the news. Digital communicators today need to think quickly, be an active listener, and understand the culture of the online communities where influencers are active at. Organisations on their part need to provide their digital communicators the authority to engage with online influencers, especially during crisis situations, without having to go through lengthy approval processes.

But judging by the number of current members in that community, which stands at 95,000 plus, I think the purpose of that live chat was to just promote his new movie, 3 Idiots. So from Twitter, now Facebook fans…celebrities are on a  high to leverage social media to the fullest. Good going.

Update Dec 22, 2009:

A tweet from Ravi Kapoor mentioning the number of people on the chat.

So while Delhi shops majorly for loose Gemstones-Diamond, USB Drives, British Indian Coins, Indian Stamps, and wrist watches; my home town Manipur shops for laptops, Puja Accessories-Rudraksha, Desktop PC – Motherboards, loose Gemstones-Diamond, and digital cameras.

Thanks Alootechie for the hat tip.

In comes the social media comments aggregators. The basic version of this was started perhaps by two companies, Co.mments (now gone) and CoComments, which allows you to create a profile page that will aggregate all the comments you have made on different blogs. These were limited and confined to just blogs. They wouldn’t bring your comments from Twitter or Facebook.

Today, there are tools that can do those.

Backtype: Backtype offers a Wordpress plugin that does the aggregation for you. It gets comments from Twitter, Friendfeed, Digg, Reddit, Hacker News, and backlinks.

ChatCatcher: This is another like Backtype bringing Twitter posts around your posts linking back to your comments section on your blog.

Chirrup: This is another tool that you can use to aggregate Twitter posts and display it on your site.

Disqus: Comment management system Disqus also does the same thing with a host of other features to manage your blog comments.

However after checking out these tools, I realised that the conversations captured from other platforms are through one factor only – the inclusion of your post url. Suppose someone just tweets ‘ Palin has a nice post on social media aggregation’ on his blog today’, it might not get captured because the url of this post hasn’t been included. What we need next is now aggregators that can index social media conversations with intelligence and bring them back to your blog. Anybody listening?

However, when it comes to creating a blog that you want to host on your own space, or promoting your blogs during the initial few months, most people tend to get confused. Worry not. It happens to most of us.

At least that’s what I mentioned to a good colleague of mine, who wanted to start blogging, when I wrote her a detailed mail recently. Soon there were other colleagues who were asking me the same thing, and I forwarded that mail to them. Then I though why not just post the mail online and maybe it might help someone else as well. So here it is – though a bit modified.

Before you go ahead, remember there are many blog CMS, web hosting companies, blog designs, and a number of blog promotion advice you can get easily searching on the web. What I am writing is based on what I have used and learnt. Nothing more.

Booking a domain, webspace, and creating your blog

1. Check for a free domain name (like Bella.com) – Type the domain name you want in the search box in this site – Domainsbot and wait. It will tell you which domains are free and which are not. You have to use other domain checking tools in case you want check for the country specific domains like the .in and .co.in variety. Or you can go for unconventional domain names.

2. Once you found your desired and free domain name, you need to register it and buy some space on the web for your domain. There are many domain registrars available. I used 1and1 for this site and others because I find it better and cheaper. On 1and1, go to the Linux hosting from the left hand side and choose the Beginner package. (Or choose any other package or web host if you prefer.)

3. Once you have done the payment and you are ready to roll, and the 1and1 site or your web host admin dashboard is showing your domain name and how to edit details and stuff, set up your MySQL database, this is how you can do it in 1and1. Copy the MySQL set up details on a notepad and keep it safe.

4. After this, you need to copy your ftp username and password from your webhost and also copy it in a notepad and keep it safe. On 1and1, this is how you can get your ftp details.

3. Download the Wordpress CMS on your system (remember this is from Wordpress.org, not Wordpress.com) (dare I say Wordpress is the most advanced of the lot, has one of the largest communities and is the most popular blogging software today.)

4. Extract the Wordpress files from the zipped folder and follow the instructions. For those who used 1and1 as their web host, here is the FAQ. Don’t get scared if it gets too technical. Read it slowly and you will come out fine. Remember the only thing that needs to be done is to open the file called ‘wp-config-sample.php’ using a notepad and fill in your database details that you have saved earlier. Then, save and rename the file as ‘wp-config.php’. You are done editing it. Simple.

5. Download a ftp client like Filezilla and install it on your system. Once done, open it and fill in your your host (like bella.com), username and password (the ftp details you copied earlier) in the QuickConnect bar on top and click the QuickConnect button.  Filezilla will then connect to your webspace. The left hand window of the client shows the files on your system and once connected, the right hand window will show the files on your webspace.  Navigate to your Wordpress folder in your system in the left-hand window (lower one), select all the files in the Wordpress folder, right-click, and use the upload link. That’s all. It will take a while to upload all the files to your webspace depending on your connection speed. You might as well have a cup of tea in the meantime.

6. Once all the files are uploaded, type ‘http://example.com/wp-admin/install.php’ in your browser address bar and follow the installation instructions that follow. (Remember to replace example.com with your domain name) The installation should go smooth and you can now log in to your dashboard.

There is also a video tutorial on installing Wordpress on 1and1 written way back in 2007 at Solostream. Also, before going further, you might want to read up the Wordpress Lessons.

Designing your blog

1. Now that your blog is up, you might need to design it better and choose a different look than the default theme. For this, you need to either look for some good free themes or buy one.

You can start looking at the links below. Choose one according to what you are going to post in your blog. For example, if you are going to post pictures most of the time, you might want a theme with a wide post area. If you are going to write business stuff, you might do better choosing a theme with less colors and jazz.

- Mashable: Top 12 Stunning Wordpress Themes
- Mashable: Unusual Wordpress Themes
- Mashable: Wordpress 2 Column Themes
- Mashable: Wordpress 1 Column Themes
- Mashable: Wordpress 3 Column Themes
- Mashable: 4 Column Wordpress Themes
- Performancing Wordpress Themes
- Smashing Magazine: 100 Excellent Free and High Quality Wordpress Themes
- Smashing Magazine: 83 Beautiful Wordpress Themes You Probably Haven’t Seen
- The Official Wordpress Themes Directory

2. The next important thing is adding some useful plugins (third party tools that give you extra features). You can go to the Wordpress plugins directory or even check out my collection of Wordpress plugins you can’t just miss. Here is a huge list of 300 Wordpress tools you can check out as well.

3. Of course, you can already start posting.

Promoting your blog

1. Add a way for your readers to subscribe to your blog. But you might want to add a email subscription box as well.
a. Feedblitz (for email updates)
b. Feedburner (for RSS)

2. A little bit of search engine optimization so that you blog starts appearing in search engines and eventually rank well is necessary. There is no shortcut here nor it is easy but not impossible to do it alone.

Some ebooks on SEO I have read are SEO Made Easy and Google SEO Starter Guide.

In short, there are two type of optimization you can do:

a. Onsite optimization: Make sure you have the meta tags in your site html proper, put good alt tags for images, include relevant keywords in your post without overdoing it. Try the website grader to check how your site scores. Check if the theme you are using is designed properly. Is it W3C compliant? Even if it is not, can you fix some major errors? Here is a basic starter to learn html.

b. Offsite optimization: Google will rank your blog primarily on how many and what type of sites are linking to it. Try to get as many as quality sites and blog as you can to link to your blog. Some people buy links, some request and beg, some exchange links, you decide what you need to do. How you can start is by submitting your sites to directories, bookmarking on (do follow) bookmarking sites, commenting on do follow blogs, and most importantly connecting with other bloggers and writing good content. You will see the phrase ‘content is king’ many times over as you start researching more online.

Submit your site to search engine and directories. Refer the main ones below to start with:

a. Google
b. Yahoo
c. Live

You can use Submit Express’s Free Submission as well to submit it other smaller search engines.

Also, use these tools to analyze your site better:
a. Google Sitemaps: It helps Google index your site better, tells you which page is being indexed by Google, and where are the problem areas.
b. Google Analytics: It tells you details about the site traffic.
c. Yahoo Site Explorer: Webmasters traffic analytics tool by Yahoo.

Then there are site directories:
a. DMOZ
b. Yahoo Site Directory

What about blog directories:

a. Technorati
b. Blogcatalog
c. Mybloglog

Here is a giant list of blog directories.

3. Network with other bloggers: The blogosphere is a huge network and it’s fun to be connected and it’s beneficial as well. The usual (and correct) advice is read other blogs, comment on their posts, reply to comments on your blog, and send emails once in a while to established bloggers in your niche sharing an interesting post you have written. In short, let other people know you and that your blog exists. Everything doesn’t happen automatically on the blogosphere, even though we would love to think of it like that. The underground blogosphere, which is described as a complex network of bloggers communicating and networking among one another through emails, phones, IMs, etc. to promote and help one another out, is much prevalent.

Some of the best blogging tips are at Problogger, Copyblogger, and Daily Blog Tips. There are more good ones. Check out this directory of bloggers writing on blogging here. There are other directories at Alltop categorized by subject. Choose your niche.

4. Create social networking profiles and promote your blog there. Yes, the social networking sites, where you already so familiar/ or tired of.

Facebook: The biggest social networking site can give you ways to publish your blog’s RSS feed on your profile page, exposing your posts to your friends. You can join groups where you can occasionally share your best posts.

Flickr: Do you plan to use pictures on your posts? You can try creating a Flickr account and uploading your picture there and embedding it to your blog posts. It will save you web space and create an opportunity to network with people there.

YouTube: Similarly, you can post your videos on YouTube and embed them on your blog. It can give good exposure to your blog through your videos and friends there.

Twitter: Nowadays, a lot of traffic to my blogs come from Twitter. Twitter is today the cool thing everyone is talking about and the sooner you try it out, the better. You can feed you blog RSS to Twitter using Twitterfeed. There are a number of Twitter Wordpress plugins to do the job as well. My Twitter profiles are here (@palinn and @indiaprblog) and hey I post interesting links often.

Linkedin: You can showcase your blog posts, and share it to groups. I put my other blog, India PR Blog, as a company I am engaged with. So I come out like Founder and Writer, India PR Blog as one of the current job description.

Remember all these sites have their own communities and different ways of engaging within those communities. Learn and adhere to those. If you are not spamming your blog url and are nice to most people, it should be fine.

5. Other methods: You can put your blog url on your email signatures, talk about it to friends, clients, colleagues, pitch to the traditional media, etc. Run a contest on your blog. The possibilities are endless.

Happy blogging.

This post is intended for those who are new to blogging. Experienced bloggers are also requested to leave their advice and tips in the comments.

Image credit: How to Make a Badass WordPress Logo