The buzz word these days is Social Media. From Marketing gurus to the aam admi (in our case the AAM Entrepreneur) can’t stop speaking about this phenomenon, which most feel is here to stay. So in line with this Startup Saturday Pune organized an event on ‘Social Media’. It was a well attended event with around 35-40 participants.

The event was organized at I2IT, located at its sprawling campus at Hinjewadi. ‘Slippery Floor Be Careful’ was the board that greeted most of us a few of us slipped too), but the I2IT campus was a breath of fresh air on a hot Saturday ‘Puneri’ afternoon.

With all the pleasantries exchanged & the ritual of ‘Welcomes’ & ‘Good to have you here’ done, the first to take centre stage was Mahesh Murthy ( Pinstorm/Seedfund). Mahesh started with his presentation ‘40 minutes, 20 Rules’. He guided us in breaking the myths created by people that Social Media was just a passing FAD & backed it up beautifully with recent data & numbers. The thing that caught attention was the advice given by Mahesh, that when the Mainstream media (shouldn’t be using that word, as he had already displayed to us that now SM was mainstream), the papers & the electronic is moving towards Advtorials , we should be using the social media to engage with our consumers, using our own Editorials. He also informed us about the tools to measure the Metrics & derive quantitative & qualitative data for further action from the same.

Next to address the gathering was Aditya Rao ( Next Leap). His topic ‘Why How When – to make your product more social’, gave an insight into the Sociology behind SM. Though prepared to be the 5th speaker, Aditya rose to the occasion & his passion for social media came across in his voice. He ended by speaking about his three favourite SM picks that will according to him rule the roost in coming days, namely – Social Gaming, Social Commerce & Social Search.

Mig33 & Mohit Gundecha came next, with the speaker apprising the participants about a survey, ‘Mobile –First Survey’, that their company had undertaken across a few Tier I, II & III cities in India & shared that data & its interpretation. A very important inference coming out of this survey was that Orkut was still popular in Tier II & III cities. For a city lad like me this ain’t important, but if you cater to these markets you better go to www.orkut.com ( I haven’t logged in to mine since I came on FB, a few years back).

Team ShopSocially came in next (they occupied a complete row & had a very smart 14 year old in tow), with Samir Palnitkar sharing his views & experiences at ShopSocially with the gathering. Between changing computers (as some slides were not visible), he guided the audience to arrive at the major reasons as to why Social Media worked & backed it up with some data. He also informed as to the impact that social media had on the Topline of a few of their clients, with impacts ranging from 2% – 6.5%. This may not sound exciting, but imagine 2% to 6.5% for a $ 100 million business. Amazing, right?

Coming next was Radha Giri (Midas Touch). She started by helping the participants understand the need of a Social Media Strategy, based on which the tools & approach is decided. This is followed by execution of this strategy. According to her this is the single biggest mistake that companies do, that is start with execution, when they should be starting with Strategy. She also gave many examples like Dell, Sothwest Airlines, Marriot that have near-perfected their Social Media impact using innovative & untried methods.

Last, but in no ways the least, came Siddhesh Kabe, who is an independent Social Media consultant. He shattered all the myths in a very humourous manner & had the audience at the end of their chairs, with his sheer wit & delivery.

All the speakers were well received which was apparent from not just the number of questions asked after each session by the audience, but also by the quality & depth of these questions. In the end we would like to thank all you for making this Startup Saturday Pune event a great success & wish that all of you had your takeaways from this event. We would also like to hear from you about the kind of events you would like to organize in the next SSP on 14th May 2011.
Contributed by Abhishek Bhatara – Volunteer ,SS Pune