How to Connect with Indian Audience

More than a blogger, I am an avid blog reader. In fact, I not only read blogs, but scraps, updates and tweets of my contacts and my contact’s contacts. I have around 300 plus friends in my Facebook contact list, more than 750 plus in LinkedIn and more than 100 plus in Orkut, which is not an impressive friend list by any count, but it definitely makes my network very big. I always keep pondering that in this very big network, how can I make my point get noticed, how can I increase my fan base, how can I get more relevant contacts. I have read various how-to guides, but my all experiment has not yielded much of result. In fact, I requested one of my software developed friend to develop an application which will help me to assess what my network want, what they are talking about and what will interest them after all.

But later I realised that I don’t need to have software for that. Reading all these blogs, scraps, updates and tweets have given me some insight of how to connect with the Indian social media participants, which are as follows:

1)      Make your message crisp and creative: Like any other advertising message, your update has to be creative enough to hold your reader’s attention. A bland message will almost be like text book, which nobody will be interested to read.

2)      Make it humorous-make everyone smile: India is the country, where, irrespective to its status on happiness index, “good” has to compulsorily win over “bad”. Everything has to be good and bring smile on everybody’s face. You may call it being optimistic and positive or may call it escapist behaviour, but this is what Indians are. But I would like to give one advice here; your humour should not be satirical, because not many people love that. India is a country with diverse culture and sensibilities. Humour for one may turn out to be insult for another.  

3)      Keep your message Simple and Stupid: Creativity bug should not bite you so hard that your message bounces over the head of many. It has to be simple to understand; otherwise the meaning will be lost completely.

4)      Make it relevant- CMMPR: In India, nothing is more relevant than Cricket, Movie, Music, Politics and Religion, though order may vary. So, majority or if possible, all your messages, updates and blogs should be connected to above five points. These five points has the capacity to drive Indians crazy, get them united or break them into pieces. So, any message woven around them will guarantee success. But this is very difficult path to tread also. You may win some and lose many.

5)      Ask question, but not too many: One of the way to engage your network is to ask questions. In Indian scenario also this theory holds true, but only glitch is that they won’t answer too many. If you want to use this tool frequently, then have the gifts ready to dole out.

6)      While using photo or video, see that if any movie or music one may carry your message: This is something Indian audience understands the best. If it is not possible to use any movie or music related video or picture, then try to make your video a reflection of that. It will connect your audience to your message instantaneously. Even devotional songs are getting sung on filmy music tunes out here to catch the instant attention.