S t r a t e g y M a r k e t i n g A n a l y s i s R e s o u r c e s T e c h n o l o g y

sep-oct 12 vol 11 issue 5India’s first world-class management magazine

www.thesmartmanager.com uK £2.50 usA $9.50 iNDiA R100

stop being a victim in 5 easy steps

marshall goldsmithmarshall goldsmith

Sudipto GhoSh, ExEcutivE dirEctor – SErvicE & Support, LEnovo india Honing customer service commitment. [ paGE-16 ]

ankur Warikoo, cEo, crazEaL.com Capturing the $10bn Indian ecommerce market. [ paGE-38 ]

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alkelly m

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alsteve m

illeranil sainani

iblog Ghosh

The Smart Manager Sep-Oct 2012 www.thesmartmanager.com 21

Gautam Ghosh iS an authOrity On buSineSS blOgging

ranked by hr examiner. he writeS at

http://gautamblOgS.cOm

t was at my first job after my MBA, when I was working in the Knowledge Management group at an Indian IT services firm, that my boss asked

me how we could get more visibility in the industry about our initiatives. For some reason, I thought of starting an email group (on egroups.com, which was later acquired by Yahoo!) of practitioners in the Knowledge Management and HR space. In 2000, I thus began my journey in the world of online communities and conversations. I explored the medium further by setting up a website on geocities.com and a Wikipage, too.

In 2002, after hanging out in some other egroups, I heard about something called blogging—people said it was a great personal knowledge management tool. So I opened a blog account and started posting the emails I was sending to the various egroups on it. Soon, I discovered that I was getting comments on my blog posts—some recruiters in Canada who were also blogging discovered my blog, and started reading and commenting on my thoughts. That is when I discovered the conversational nature of blogging. I was then reading Howard Rheingold’s book The Virtual Community, and The Cluetrain Manifesto by Christopher Locke, David Weinberger, Rick Levine and David Searls, and gaining an understanding as to how this new participatory medium was going to redefine everything.

In 2004, my blog was voted as the third most popular blog in India in the Indibloggies awards, and my readership in India soared. I read blogs about what people could do with the

medium and tried to incorporate some of these features into my blog. I started to offer an email newsletter version of my blog, and also signed up on Feedburner to showcase the number of readers. In 2006, I left my full-time corporate role in Hyderabad and turned a full-time ‘blogging consultant,’ helping small businesses get international visibility using blogging as a tool to showcase expertise. Globally my blog started to get recognition, getting ranked in the top 25 list of HR blogs, and other lists.

With the rise of social networks and expertise networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, my blog became the anchor of my network’s growth. In fact, I was an early user of LinkedIn, being one of the first 20,000 users to open an account there. In 2007, I started using Facebook, and 2008 was when I signed up for Twitter. Currently my Facebook page (different from a personal account) has about 1500 followers, and I have 9500 followers on Twitter.

Blogging and social media for me is all about putting my thoughts before a community of like-minded people, and then seeing them improve it. It has helped me discover new career paths for myself and have conversations with people across the world. For an introvert like me, social media is a great bridge to connect with people in a much easier way, focusing on ideas and thoughts. Meeting them later offline is much easier then.

With the rise of social networks and expertise networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, my blog became the anchor of my network’s growth.

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iBlog will bring you face to face with thought leaders and practitioners active in the virtual world.

“For an introvert like me, social media is a great bridge to connect with people.”