Learn the new money mantra

Two IITians attempt to get the idea across to captains of industries

It can be fun, and profitable as well. Two IIT graduates from Delhi are trying to propagate this fact about social networking.

Chemical engineer Kapil Nakra and textile engineer Pradeep Chopra are now teaching corporate houses, how
to channel the social networking addiction of their employees as an effective marketing tool.

"Everybody does social networking, but most of us are not aware of the impact of seemingly insignificant activities like status update, uploading photographs and making a group. What we are doing is telling the traditional marketing and sales professionals to look at Facebook, Twitter or Orkut differently," said Kapil Nakra, co-founder of Digital Vidya, an online marketing learning space.

Digital Vidya has also created a community on Facebook regarding the Commonwealth Games, which has already attracted more than 22,000 fans, a symbol of how the social networking platform can be exploited.
"There is a growing rate of authorship in the range of 100 folds per year in the digital medium.

To the extent that most of the readers are also becoming publishers. We have become an over-communicated society. But actually, only a fraction of messages are reaching the desired destinations. Start from the business objective and before creating a position, think about what you want from the social media and what you can offer your target audience," said IITian Pradeep Chopra.

"I used to think of myself as a very strong marketing person till now. When I saw my children sitting on their PCs and working on their Facebook and Twitter profiles, I felt that social media is fun and is meant for youngsters. But today's generation is growing up on the digital medium and therefore a vast difference can be seen compared to the earlier times. The traditional way of marketing is in the transition phase to digital marketing," said a senior official of a consulting firm.