Manifest–The Founders Summit aimed to nurture a community of Founders.The festival was a gathering of business founders, created to foster new ideas and inspire actionable results. The objective was to stimulate new initiatives and ventures, build new connections and collaborations, and kindle a community of people who have the desire to be inspired to rise above to achieve great things.The two-day event took place on 29th and 30th July at Vivanta by Taj, Dwarka, New Delhi. There was a lot of buzz on social media about Manifest in the days leading up to the event. The speaker list and details about the event were disclosed on twitter and facebook with a live tweet chat also being conducted with two of the speakers, Dhanya Rajendran, Founder and Editor-in-chief of TheNewsMinute and Swati Bhargava, Co-Founder of Cashkaro.com, giving the followers a chance to connect with the speakers and ask questions. The event kicked-started with an opening note by the two founders of the Summit - .... After the opening remarks by the co-founders , the summit began with inspiring keynotes. #Keynote address1: Radhika Aggarwal, Co-Founder - Shopclues.com on “Follow your Heart when Building an Enterprise” followed by a conversation with Josey John, Consulting Editor – Factor Daily Radhika Aggarwal shared the challenges, the learnings, the regrets and the milestones she faced during the shopclues journey. Radhika gave an encouraging keynote on the fundamentals of entrepreneurship and E-commerce.

'To make deep rooted local connections what plays the most crucial role are relevant influencers.' @Radhikaaggarwal #Manifest16

— Honey Singh (@honeytech) July 29, 2016

 

Beefing up with operations to match the marketing, traffic #learning@Radhikaaggarwal#Manifest16pic.twitter.com/XkcnUL3oxH

— Moksh Juneja (@mokshjuneja) July 29, 2016

  #Keynote address2: Ameera Shah, Promoter, Metropolis Healthcare on “Owning the Belief to Innovate.” Ameera discussed the importance of believing in yourself, in your employees, and building a strong culture within the organization, incorporating everyone involved with the organization. She also spoke on the relevance of building a strong employee culture and focus on quality service delivery, which she considers are the two key pillars of a service-based business.Her speech was followed by an enticing conversation with Her speech was followed by an enticing conversation with Syna Dehnugara, Features Editor, CNBC-TV18.

LIVE on #Periscope: @AmeeraShah @MetropolisIndia at @ManifestIndia #Manifest16 @CNBCTV18News @ShereenBhan https://t.co/rl1lfTfwFc

— Megha Vishwanath (@MeghaVishwanath) July 29, 2016

.@synadehnugara in conversation with @AmeeraShah about her pillars in the making of @MetropolisIndia! #Manifest16pic.twitter.com/bvfS6HxgYR — Manifest (@ManifestIndia) July 29, 2016

  Followed by the two keynotes were a panel discussion and the other speaker sessions planned on the agenda. #PowerExchange: Money and Fintech 1 Moderated by Monika Halan, Consulting Editor, Mint; Jimeet Modi, Founder, Indian Trading League; Ajay A Singh, Founder, 5nance.com; Adhil Shetty, Founder, BankBazaar.com; Vinay Mathews, Founder, Faircent.com; Naveen Surya, Founder , ItzCash A Power Exchange, unlike a Panel Discussion, had the moderator asking questions to get the Founders to share their journey, the vision for the sector and aspiration for their enterprise and how their services are making life simpler for the customer through an innovation or disruptive product or service. What is fintech exactly? What is the scope of this upcoming sector? The discussion revolved around these questions and the founders elaborated on the huge potential of fintech and the opportunities it has to offer.

The Money and Fintech Panel discussion is underway! Learnings Learnings Learnings @ManifestIndia#Manifest16pic.twitter.com/2hKixtIE5r

— Kartik Mago (@kartik_mago) July 29, 2016

    #Special Address: Srikant Sastri, Founder – Crayon Data on “How Big Data is Transforming the World”   A serial entrepreneur, Srikant Sastri is the Co-Founder of Crayon Data. He previously co-founded Solutions Integrated which was acquired by the Publicis Groupe. Srikant talked about the growing importance of data and gave his insight on how upcoming startups and established businesses can use data analysis to grow.

"Data is not just numbers anymore" - @srikantsastri #Manifest16

— Manifest (@ManifestIndia) July 29, 2016

It's easier to setup systems to collect data when you're starting up,than when u've built momentum @srikantsastri@abhishekaggy#manifest16 — Hemant Gaule (@hemantgaule) July 29, 2016  

#PowerExchange: Aggregators Power Exchange on Aggregators was moderated by Saurabh Uboweja, Founder, Brands of Desire; with Kanika Tekriwal, Founder, JetSetGo; Aakrit Vaish, Founder, Haptik; Santosh Panda, Founder, Explara; Amit Agarwal, Founder, NoBroker. The panelists shared their experiences on the challenges they faced and how they overcome them in their journey, and gave an insight how their offerings are trying to solve a problem.

4 learnings by @Uboweja Quality of service Innovative marketing Treat startup like a journey Spend time on product Happy players #Manifest16 — Manifest (@ManifestIndia) July 29, 2016

Really impressed by all the women entrepreneurs @manifest16, really crisp communication and business focus #miraihealth#Manifest16

— Aditi Hazra Ganju (@AditiGanju) July 29, 2016

  It is impressive to note that .... #PowerExchange: New Media Moderated by Roopak Saluja, Founder & CEO, The 120 Media Collective & Sooperfly with Ayesha Sood, Founder, Jamun Collective; Ritesh Singh, MD, #ARM Worldwide; Dhanya Rajendran, Founder, The News Minute & Jayadevan PK, Founder, Factor Daily. This Panel discussion was quite an interesting with the panelists sharing their insight on the scope in different aspects of media. One of the key topics of the discussion was how content strategy is more pertinent now than ever.

Example of velocity time growth @ritzingh was talking about, @teameteas #contentmarketing campaign #Manifest16 pic.twitter.com/vWmEhrrf9P

— #ARM Worldwide (@ARMDigital) July 29, 2016

Digital audiences are not binary anymore, content consumers surprise us via @ayeshasood#Manifest16 — aakashganju (@aakashganju) July 29, 2016

  #Keynote address3: Raghav Bahl, Founder, Quintillion Media on “Revolutionary Thinking in Building an Enterprise” in discussion with Abhinandan Sekhri, Co-Founder, Newslaundry Raghav Behl discussed the media ecosystem in India and also talked about cash flow management.

Discovered intellect can be capitalised, a heady feeling but not to be sold cheap @Raghav_Bahl sound advice! #Manifest16#miraihealth — Aditi Hazra Ganju (@AditiGanju) July 29, 2016

  #Power Exchange: Improving Health Care Power Exchange on Improving Health Care by Ravi Virmani, Founder, Credihealth with Aakash Ganju, Founder, Miraihealth ; Pawan Gupta, Founder, Curofy; Gauri Angrish, Founder, Coral Care Book; Subhashini Subramaniam, Founder, BabyBerry & Akanksha Kapoor, Founder, Oyehelp. The discussion revolved around the new and upcoming advancements with the mix of Heath care and technology, and the future scope of HealthCare in India.

So many interesting #Startups out here in the healthcare panel at #Manifest16 moderated by @Rxvirmanipic.twitter.com/Pz5A5LHPNl — Hemant Gaule (@hemantgaule) July 29, 2016

  The highlight of the day was the final speaker session. The encouraging speech by Dr. Arokiaswamy Velumani inspired everyone sitting in the room leaving all with a thought of self-introspection. The audience rose to their feet and gave Dr. Velumani a standing ovation at the end of his speech. #Keynote address4: Arokiaswamy Velumani on “Unleashing the Potential with Focus at the Core” A. Velumani is the promoter and CEO of Thyrocare Technologies. Thyrocare is India's first fully automated diagnostic laboratory with a focus on providing quality at affordable costs to laboratories and hospitals in India and other countries. Arokiaswamy has worked with Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. He is an alumnus of University of Madras and University of Mumbai. Arokiaswamy delivered a splendid speech discussing his personal journey, an expereince through which we can all take out a lot of learnings.

"If can't plan to loose million, you can't make billion" @velumania #Manifest16 @ManifestIndia — Honey Singh (@honeytech) July 29, 2016

And a standing ovation for Mr. @velumania by all the founders! #Manifest16 pic.twitter.com/cDpksa53Rv

— Manifest (@ManifestIndia) July 29, 2016

TAKE BLOODY RISK - @velumania #manifest16 — Abhishek Agarwal (@abhishekaggy) July 29, 2016  

The day ended with a musical performance by the 'Tetseo Sisters' followed by dinner and an open bar.  

'The need of the hour for us is to find a space that allows us to be at our very best' @GulPanag #Manifest16 pic.twitter.com/8LBZrbVp4M

— Manifest (@ManifestIndia) July 30, 2016

Manifest–The Founders Summit aimed to nurture a community of Founders.The festival was a gathering of business founders, created to foster new ideas and inspire actionable results. The objective was to stimulate new initiatives and ventures, build new connections and collaborations, and kindle a community of people who have the desire to be inspired to rise above to achieve great things.The two-day event took place on 29th and 30th July at Vivanta by Taj, Dwarka, New Delhi. There was a lot of buzz on social media about Manifest in the days leading up to the event. The speaker list and details about the event were disclosed on Twitter and Facebook. A live tweet chat was also conducted with two of the speakers, Dhanya Rajendran, Founder and Editor-in-chief of TheNewsMinute and Swati Bhargava, Co-Founder of Cashkaro.com, giving the followers a chance to connect with the speakers and ask questions. Day 2 of the event kickstarted with a special address followed by more inspiring special sessions and power exchange. #Special address1: Yogesh Chabria, Founder, The Happionaire Way on "The Secret Teachings of the Goddess of Wealth and Goddess of Knowledge" Yogesh Chabria is one of the world's most loved and sought-after speakers, bestselling author, successful entrepreneur and founder of The Happionaire Way. He enlightened everyone about the power of knowledge. He ends the session on a happy note asking fellow founders to be happy.

Knowledge and information are different, knowledge is far more valuable invest in it @YChabria #Manifest16 #MiraiHealth

— Aditi Hazra Ganju (@AditiGanju) July 30, 2016

'A entrepreneur is anyone who's enterprising, whether within an organisation or leading it' @YChabria We couldn't agree more. #Manifest16 — #ARM Worldwide (@ARMDigital) July 30, 2016

#Special Session: Amitabh Kant, CEO, Niti Aayog on "Espousing Innovation and the Need to Celebrate Founders" Amitabh Kant delivered an inspiring session in which he talked about what India needs to do to keep growing the business ecosystem in the country. He also spoke how it is not always the fault of the government and citizens need to start acting responsibly in conversation with Anil Padmanabhan, Mint.

You need smart and responsible people to have smart city. #Manifest16 #Gurugram @ManifestIndia @amitabhk87 @capitalcalculus

— Honey Singh (@honeytech) July 30, 2016

Less policy, urbanisation, infrastructure via PPP, Investment & innovation to lead next phase of growth #Manifest16pic.twitter.com/MZMpI9JHX6 — Shruti Malhotra (@Shruti_Malhotra) July 30, 2016

These two sessions were followed by a tea break and then came the first Power Exchange of Day2. A Power Exchange, unlike a Panel Discussion, had the moderator asking questions to get the Founders to share their journey, the vision for the sector and aspiration for their enterprise and how their services are making life simpler for the customer through an innovation or disruptive product or service. Power Exchange: Social Impact Panel Discussion: The Power Exchange moderated by Vikram Sampath, Founder, Archive of Indian Music included the panelists Shankar Srinivasan, Founder, Inclov. Surabhi HR, Founder, Political Quotient. Deepak Goel, Founder, KarmaCircles. Kanika Pal, Founder, SOCHE Foundation and Harsha Mukherjee, Entrepreneur. The panelists discussed how social entrepreneurship is coming up in India, and how it can benefit the society.

.@7shanks

"Make money - sure. But provide value. We need to build aspirational social impact companies."#Manifest16 — Abhishek Agarwal (@abhishekaggy) July 30, 2016

Need to make social entrepreneurship "aspirational and sexy" says @7shanks at #Manifest16 — Rochan Dayal Mathur (@RochanMathur) July 30, 2016

Special address2 : Aparna Jain, Founder,Zebraa Works on “Are new-age Founders braver than corporate India? Aparna spoke about women-related issues in the industry and discussed what steps the upcoming start-ups can take to practice gender equality and develop a healthy culture in their offices.

'Today's data is tomorrow's bias'- inspired by @Aparna 's speech at #Manifest16

— Madhavan Narayanan (@madversity) July 30, 2016

#Power Exchange2: Money and Fintech Panel The Power Exchange with Money & Fintech Panel was moderated by Vivek Law, Founder, Investonomix with Vikas Sekhri, Founder, CashCare; Nidhi Gurnani, Founder, Cardback; Pranav Manpuria, Founder, CocoaPay. The Panel discussion revolved around the scope of FinTech in India, and how this industry is changing how people use their credit/debit cards.

Neither necessary nor preferred to try & change consumer behaviour,#FinTech can make value chain more efficient @pranavmanpuria #Manifest16 — Hemant Gaule (@hemantgaule) July 30, 2016

.@ritzingh having multiple cards, how to decide which one to use and know its benefits? #Manifest16 @manifestindia

— #ARM Worldwide (@ARMDigital) July 30, 2016 #Power Exchange3: Food Moderator- Rajyasree Sen, Founder,Food for Thought with Foodtech panel having Maulik Mistry, Founder, MojoBars; Rajeshree Naik, Founder, India Food Network; Vikram Achanta, Founder, Tulleeho; Pragati Sawhney, Founder, Chockriti; Ashish Kapur, Founder – Moods Hospitality talked about the scalability in foodtech industry.

Learning is not just about scalability its also about bottom lines and cash flows @Yo_Ash at #Manifest16 pic.twitter.com/ldI4JOuS5g — anup sharma b'harry (@TweetsAnup) July 30, 2016

'Any work that is thrilling is a work you can excel in.' @satpathylive starts session on the importance of respecting privacy. #Manifest16

— Manifest (@ManifestIndia) July 30, 2016

Special Session: Tathagata Satpathy, MP & Founder, Orissa Post on “The Importance of Respecting Privacy in a Complex World” in conversation with Divya Spandana, Former MP & Kannada Actor on “Following Your Heart and Standing for a Cause”

Tathagata Satpathy started the session with a speech on "The Importance of Respecting Privacy in a Complex World" in which he discussed how India and the World is facing a threat of privacy in conversation with Divya Spandana and Madhavan Narayanan.

Divya, Spansana, Former MP and Kannada actor, addressing founders at @ManifestIndia #Manifest16 @KarmaCircles pic.twitter.com/H8G47Fw9Ud — KarmaCircles (@KarmaCircles) July 30, 2016

Never thought a session with politicians could be this engaging as it is with @divyaspandana & @SatpathyLive at #Manifest16@manifestindia

— Nidhi Gurnani (@NidhiGurnani) July 30, 2016

Power Exchange: EduTech The Panel was moderated by Syed Sultan Ahmed, Founder, LXL Ideas with Gaurava Yadav, Founder, Eduace; Phalgun Kompalli, Founder, UpGrad; Rajashree Krishnaswamy, Founder, Catalyze; Maruti Konduri, Founder, Cracku as panelist.

To acquire knowledge one must Learn. To implement knowledge one must Unlearn @syedsultan at #Manifest16 pic.twitter.com/fBUO4wp65u — anup sharma b'harry (@TweetsAnup) July 30, 2016

Two parts of education: livelihood education and life education! Future education would be mostly done online. #Manifest16

— Ravi Kamdar (@ravikamdar) July 30, 2016

Special Address: Anshu Gupta, Founder – Goonj on “Building Value Using the Power of Values” Anshu Gupta, Founder, Goonj gave an amazing speech on how we should stay true to our values, and should give back to the society from time to time.

'Minus to zero is not development. Minus to zero is survival!' @anshugoonj is breaking all self righteous notions #Manifest16 — #ARM Worldwide (@ARMDigital) July 30, 2016

People who pay bribe are bigger thieves than the one taking it - as we do it to save more than that guy @anshugoonj#Manifest16

— Ritesh Singh (@ritzingh) July 30, 2016

Special Address: Ramesh Aggarwal sharing his journey on entrepreneurship Ramesh Aggarwal, Entrepreneur and Activist delivered an inspirational special address to the audience at #Manifest16

Turning challenges into opportunity one kilometre at a time... Inspiring speech by @RameshAgarwalJi#Manifest16pic.twitter.com/TQVrPR6yaq — Shruti Malhotra (@Shruti_Malhotra) July 30, 2016

Closing keynote speaker was none other than Gul Panag, the actor, activist and co-founder, Mobiefit. She talked about “Action, Activism and Activity - A Founders Mantra” She is an actor and an entrepreneur who is one of India’s most powerful opinion makers and thought leaders. She talked about how fitness is important and how the focus is important in our day to day life to get a better living! Here are the few takeaways from Gul Panag session.

Our last speaker wears many hats. An actor, politician and a founder! @GulPanag is here at #manifest16

— Rochan Dayal Mathur (@RochanMathur) July 30, 2016

'The quicker you complete OODA (Observe, orient, decide and act), the quicker you will grow' @GulPanag#Manifest16 — #ARM Worldwide (@ARMDigital) July 30, 2016

#TeaforTrump campaign started its journey from India to create required noise across the globe. The core of digital campaign execution strategy was real-time marketing, turning our content into liquid content & discoverable over the Internet.  The intention and endeavors behind this campaign was to spread the word about the power of tea. ARM Worldwide's strength apart from paid media & technology is digital PR & content marketing. For TE-A-Me we focused on reaching out to audiences in India & US, capturing & curating their real-time responses from the global audience and encouraging everyone to join us requesting Donald Trump (@realDonaldTrump) to #drinkthetea. The recipe behind the perfect execution of this campaign lies in an exact and opportune mix of timing, audience targeting, distribution channels, amplification, seeding, and cross-promotion on multiple platforms.  Velocity is what we wanted to achieve = (views + articles + conversations + impressions) / time.  For the first 72 hours, a team of 11 members @armdigital were working day & night to capture & engage into the real-time emotions and reactions activated through #TeaForTrump & #DrinkTheTea across the globe.

If you are still wondering, this is the Tea for Trump video in which a tea company sends 6000 tea bags to Donald Trump to ‘purify mind’.

As a result of relevant and timely content targeting, hundreds of publications easily discovered the content. In less than 24hrs, we received 1M video views & with organic content marketing activities we achieved more than 3M views in less than three days. Later many internet celebrity figures & NRI's organically joined the #TeaForTrump revolution on digital. So far, Tea for Trump campaign delivered 350M impressions from 80+ countries (lead by india & US) having more than 150000+ digital engagements, 42000+ video shares, 3.2M video videos(in first 72 hours), 22,000 tweets (having 60+ twitter verified profiles) & 710+ stories. We also monitored & analyzed more than 200K tweets(all across the word) in our command-center and observed that Share of Voice (SOV) for TE-A-ME in Donald Trump conversations was greater than 7% during first 48hours of RTM which clearly indicate the successful execution of our amplification strategy. Breaking down any Real Time Marketing campaign, we go by the experience and experimentation. Essentially, there are four quadrants to plan, execute and analyze the campaign.  The RTM Framework is more inclined towards the planning stage but also helps for the overall analysis. The first quadrant is when we list down all those things which we can plan proactively. #TeaForTrump had many scenarios under this piece.

• ORM is critical for any digital campaign, you can not predict the response, but you can think of various scenarios and create a tactical plan for that. We did the same, lot of negative and positive scenarios were created,  anticipating negative comments and we were ready for the action plan if any of those were triggered.

• We constructed a flexible and a sound Media Plan backing it up with the proper audience targeting. We were confident enough to spend the budget as per our Media Analysis and was also ready to tweak to get the objective completed. US media played a critical role as we wanted their attention.

• Nothing is more important other than your plan for  Content Distribution.  A detailed Content Seeding Framework was created along with the Integrated Channel Strategy, and we followed the framework throughout the campaign.

Sometimes, a robust planning is not enough for an RTM campaign; we need to monitor and adapt accordingly. All the activities need to be Proactively planned but in real time. That is the second quadrant in the RTM framework.

• Activities like monitoring conversations on @RealDonaldTrump were essential as any reaction or communication on Twitter could have been a game changer for the campaign. It could have lead to a crisis, and we needed a comeback in the shape of Crisis Communication Plan. The bold nature of this campaign made it ORM sensitive, no matter how much planning we did, there were surprising responses, so we tweaked our tactics accordingly.

• Our timeline for executing the campaign was near the time of  Republican National Convention, and we wanted to leeway the campaign in between that.

The third quadrant is more about analyzing the possible reactions by the various stakeholders.

• We brainstormed the potential crisis that can happen, what would Donald Trump say if he has to comment on it (negative of course). The other part of this quadrant is more about content drivers and strategy. There can be a constant change in the content which was planned according to our core communication.

Essentially when we execute this framework, there is an ongoing evaluation on the scalability at regular intervals. The last quadrant is the most complicated and tough thing to execute on a tactical ground.

• Imagine all your planning is wasted as the face of the campaign turns out to be different as you thought of. We were ready to unlearn everything and respond in real-time to the media reaction.

• We made sure we were patient and ready to take anything on #TeaForTrump managing sentiments and responses to the real-time comments.

Time being the most valued factor, with the help of this framework we were able to manage #TeaForTrump on digital and made it a liquid content. Innovation doesn't need a license, it needs a leader and we found one as Sumit Shah, executive director, Madhu Jayanti International, the makers of Te-A-Me. He was working closely with us in building the real-time strategy to turn #TeaForTrump into a breakthrough, widespread and interactive campaign, day & night. Last but not least, #TeaForTrump is not the end of TE-A-ME intervention but the start of #DrinkTheTea initiative for spreading the power of tea. We urge you all to stay tuned.

Close your eyes. Go on, do it. Now imagine driving a car in heavy, slow-moving traffic. Picture a bike rider coming from the opposite direction, losing his balance & bumping into your car. What would you do? Did you imagine yourself flying into a rage & yelling at him? You’re not alone there, my friend. In fact, you are with the majority here. Have patience with all things, But, first of all with yourself. These words by Saint Francis could not have been truer even if they tried. When faced with an enraging or stressful situation, most of us behave instinctively. We react. It is only when we have had time to process the situation & look at it from every perspective possible that we respond. The corporate world is no picnic in the park. Professionals across industries face unfavourable situations everyday & more often than not, end up reacting. The implications of the same can be quite severe. So, how do we know when we are reacting? And how do we learn to respond? Whenever you feel like exploding, take a pause. Picture the ‘Big Picture’: Think about how this incident would affect you in the longer run. Compose away: A pause gives you a little time to frame & compose your reply. This will take the edge of the reaction off instantly & help you make smarter decisions. A little context goes a long way: Consider all perspectives before you say anything. Logical emotions: Logical decisions infused with the knowledge of its emotional implications are your best bet. Swift introspection: Ask yourself the very key question – “Am I reacting?” And just like that, you’ll be in the perfect position to respond. Choice choice, baby: At times, we react not knowing we have another options. A deep calm breath later, you will find that you have all the time you need to assess all available choices. Mission vision: Look into the future. What are the events that will unfold basis the way you retort right now. Get that hindsight in foresight! Rise to the expectations: In the workplace & beyond, your peers, your seniors & your well-wishers expect you to respond, not react. Consider that for a moment before you go ahead. There are times when you don’t have the option of dawdling on your response before delivering it. Most reactions are reflexes, after all. A good example of this is the situations faced by ER doctors. Their reaction could cause serious, sometimes fatal harm to their patient. With years of practise & training, they have modelled their thoughts to always respond – no matter how much time they have on their hands. How do you emulate that? Simple. Preparation & Thought. Being responsive doesn’t mean that you are slow, it means you are sure-footed, thoughtful & sensible. Study the factors that trigger your reactions & pay close attention to ensure that they are not repeated. Get calm, take a brief pause, then opt for an intelligent, abet compassionate response. It may take many tries but in time, you’ll learn to hold in the reaction & evolve it to a well-composed response. Just don’t be afraid to fail at it. Even if you do, you’ll do much better next time. One tiny step for you, a giant leap for your popularity charts!

Understanding, Knowledge, Wisdom - these are a few things humans have aspired for, yearned for and toiled hard for to make things around them better, to be better. Most of us look at successful people and the first thing we usually come up with is “I wish ...”. We fail to realise the amount of hard work, the time and sweat spent by the one who is successful in order to achieve what he has today. Success is a byproduct of knowledge one would say. Knowledge is a byproduct of learning. Learning involves feedback. A lot of feedback. Whenever we’re assigned a task, we work and toil to deliver the best output. However, as a great man once said. Everything can be made better if we all involve others. You need to be open to learn from other’s experience, look forward to it and accept the insights they have to share. Working and including other’s insights would add to your own experience. Feature this, a guy who has been in advertising for more than 10 years sharing his insights to your project may be that “edge” you were looking for. Add these 10 years of polished experience to your 1 year of hard work and learning, Volia! You just may have a masterpiece in your hands. Accepting feedback is hard. Asking someone to critique your work which you spent hours or days completing is bound to make anyone weary. Asking for feedback can be a steep hill to climb and as nerve wrenching as walking up to your crush and revealing your feelings. A few things that we can take into account if you find yourself fidgeting before stepping in for a feedback/ review.

• Be calm and keep a cool head. The one giving you feedback isn’t there to roast you alive. Managers want to watch you learn and succeed. Success begets Success after all.
• Go in with an open mind. Do not pre-plan situations which may or may not be. Step in with a smile and an open mind. Remember, its about adding to your project, your performance and your knowledge.
• Just Listen. The one sharing feedback may be your peer, your supervisor or the one person you just don’t gel with at work. Hear them out, as Linus Pauling said, the best way to get an idea is to have a lot of ideas! And you never know where they come in from.
• Ask questions. Be attentive and take notes so that you can work on the feedback, There may be a few pointers which may not ring a bell. For them, ask questions, take clarifications. A feedback is not your test to prove yourself, it’s an opportunity to improve yourself and your work.
• Mind your P’s and Q’s The golden rule of etiquette doesn’t let you down here either. Before stepping in think of it as a knowledge session, remember to thank the one who is sharing feedback. This will get your mind off the edge a bit as well.

Remember, giving feedback is a tough task as well. Your managers and supervisors are not there to nullify your efforts but to add to it. Managers want their subordinates to learn, grow and succeed and those who invest time and their knowledge to help you improve are seldom found. In the end, it’s ok to make mistakes, as they say, to error is human, circle back and work on the feedback, keep and use what you like and think can improve your work. As George Bernard Shaw rightly said, “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.” Feedback begets learning. Learnings beget Knowledge. Knowledge begets Success!  

Recently, we underwent an Intrapreneur Training Program to groom us all at #ARM to be 'In-house Entrepreneurs' and to grow at a faster pace so as to take a step towards leading the organisation to desired results. The series of activities there helped us understand how leaders and their trust motivates employees and affects performance.

Leaders as trust-builders

It's very important for the leaders to engage with employees in order to build trust through their behaviour. In a personal experience, the leader builds trust by behaving consistently over time and situations to increase parity, communicate the valuable information, engage in decision making with followers and explanations for decisions and openness. A leader shows concern for the team, act in a way that supports employees' interests while not exploit others. Trust grows between a leader and a follower, where the leader makes a decision to trust based on the follower’s behaviours and their perceived level of trustworthiness. The four key pillars of trust are, Ability – Expertise of Leader in doing a job and carrying out their role. Compassion – Show interest in employees’ needs and being approachable whenever required. Integrity – stick to set of principles acceptable to others encircling fairness and honesty. Uniformity – Consistent actions by Leaders helps in building trust amongst followers.

From trustworthy leaders to trustworthy leadership

The sense of independence, trust, relationship, responsibility, engagement, uniqueness leads to trustworthy leadership and at #ARM I experienced this kind of leadership from the top management. The practise of trustworthy leadership can be summed under four themes.

1. Putting relationships at the heart

Leaders encourage their followers to interact with co-employees within the team as well as beyond as making connections with people in other teams helps to understand business as a whole and generates respect for each other’s work. It helps to work more effectively as a whole and not as an individual resource. Putting relationships at heart is important because it let people to look beyond their job and get instead a whole lot visibility into the big picture.

2. Recognising and developing uniqueness

Leader gives followers a belief that they can achieve things and that they can progress from where they are. Followers must feel a willingness of their leaders and intend to develop them further in their work and capabilities.

3. Enabling mutual responsibility

Leader establishes an environment where responsibilities links both leader and follower, as they share accountability for their work and its outcomes. He/She can induce trust in followers by recognising the shortcomings and accepting the responsibility to address them.

4. Engaging with people

Employees need to feel their leaders are ‘real’. This can be achieved by leaders sharing their personal experiences with team. It’s important for the leaders to connect with their followers on personal and develop a sense of trust. Sharing thoughts, aspirations during casual talks allows real person to emerge and sense of trust among their followers.

“Leaders need to bring to the surface what has remained hidden in order to be perceived as human, personal and relational.”

“Sometimes, little things make a big difference...” ― Nino Varsimashvili

It’s not just a great memorable quote from the movie “Little Things” but something that I never thought of until I got an opportunity to attend the #ARMpreneur programme and I am glad I was a part of it. In the training, we looked at the value of Intrapreneurship and explored ways to develop our skills to ease up our lifestyle; professional and personal both. Many times career/professional growth starts right where you are rather than looking for a new job, it starts with “taking ownership at work”– one of the critical lessons I learned. What do you mean by taking ownership? Ownership is all about taking initiative. It means we are accountable for our actions and our performance at work. The first step is “self analysis”, ask yourself questions about your performance whether you are an individual contributor or a team leader. We take ownership when we believe that taking action is not someone else’s responsibility. We, as an individual, are accountable for the quality and timelines of an outcome, even when you’re working with others. Here, I share the secret of taking ownership leading to success.

The six D’s secret:

Desire

We should have the desire to perform at our best. This desire constantly helps us to better our performance, learning, growth and development. Desire to succeed sets a high benchmark for yourself and the team which motivates everyone to achieve it.

Drive

Having a strong drive means being able to get things done. The intent is to be productive and we are ourselves responsible for completion of our work and task. The most successful people in life are the ones who have the drive to do more and better.

Determination

In our professional and personal life, we come across hurdles/obstacles. As much as we try to avoid it, the likelihood is it will still happen. The successful ones are those who overcome anything positively that comes in their way.

Dedication

Dedication comes when we understand our organisation’s mission and identify our role/contribution in it. Every organisation has resources that play different roles which contributes to the overall success of the organisation. To be at top of our performance/work, is to be dedicated to what we are doing and being prepared to do extra ,if required.

Discipline

Self-discipline and focus are vital for individual productivity. Distractions are everywhere. Whether it’s social media or frequent questions from well-meaning colleagues, it can be super-easy to be thrown of course. Sometimes we have to say ‘no’ (and to say ‘no’ in the right way) in order to safeguard our own productivity.

Dreams

Everyone has dreams and we all need dreams to empower us. Its helps us to move forward and achieve what we want to. Dreams backed up with hard work makes any dream worth having a reality. So, dream big and dream often.

We all have gone through various jargons around content marketing but have you ever thought on measuring the effectiveness of a great content? What is a good or bad content? Skip this and go to the end of this post if you are simply interested in a checklist to gauge the content quality, else take this rapid-fire questions. Try answering them honestly in not more than 30 seconds:

1. Value or Volume?
2. Quality or Quantity?
3. Twitter Trends or Organic content driven conversations?

In most of the cases, your answers will be 1) Value 2) Quality 3) Organic content driven conversations. Yes, you are right. Now how you respond to this questions which define the value or quality of any content.

What is the difference between Good Content vs Average Content? or How to measure the quality of the content?

Try to answer this question and think again on what makes us "like" the content on facebook or twitter? Why we bookmark any website? Why The Shawshank Redemption (or these other IMDB movies) has the highest consumer rating?

The answer to measuring the quality of content is "Why one should care." Tweet

Why is the phenomenon by virtue of which we can also define the quality or value of any piece of the content.

Here is the list of few checklist that you may consider while crafting the content & ensure the quality output.

1. Does the "content" pass the “Why Should I Care” test?
2. Does the "content" have any surprising elements?
3. Is it differentiable from the competitor’s content?
4. Does it offer mass appeal?
5. Is it something that hasn’t been seen before?
6. Is it able to be monitored and measured in real time?

If you can answer the above six questions then you can easily answer:

• whether your pitch is right or not
• whether your content will go viral or not (personally I hate the word 'viral')
• whether your consumers will love or ignore your story

Would love if you can share your feedback & can answer this common question to measure the quality of the content in a different way. Feel free to ping me via comments or via twitter (@honeytech). To know more about Definitive Content Writing 2018.

As a community of marketing professionals, all of us are working to create something new, something which can deliver magic for the brand and many of us have been creators, enablers and or spectators of some of most astonishing successes. The conventional wisdom says, everyone isn’t equally smart, doesn’t get equal opportunity, right place right time, etc. – therefore only few are successful and rest are participants or spectators, not creators. Even if the above said is true, core difference lies in the hunger one has over other, hunger to succeed, hunger to achieve something, hunger to be something; not everyone has written a plan for them or have clarity of vision, it’s about the hunger. I as an entrepreneur and #ARM Worldwide as an entity is about to complete 3 years in July and in these 3 years we have done many things to keep the zeal going - zeal of a startup, startup mindset, startup hunger, startup instinct. One of the biggest inspirations for us as well has been Steve Jobs and his meaning for ‘Stay Hungry Stay Foolish’. We did many things differently and our latest one was an Intrapreneurship program, a first batch of 20 out of 52 of us. According to Wikipedia,

Intrapreneurship is the act of behaving like an entrepreneur while working within a large organization. Intrapreneurship is known as the practice of a corporate management style that integrates risk-taking and innovation approaches, as well as the reward and motivational techniques, that are more traditionally thought of as being the province of entrepreneurship.

The definition says it all; we want to increase the risk-taking appetite of people working within the organization, we want them to be hungry, hungry for taking risks, hungry of creating new means, new ways, hungry for creating history! 5 things to start with: a quick guide to our brain: There is no right or wrong way and there are multiple ways of looking at everything, either follow & improvise or else write your own way & improvise.

1. Vision (Occipital Lobe) – Have a vision and own it, to start with, have a vision for the division you are working for and ensure to share it with all related.
2. Trend Mapping (Parietal Lobe) – Entrepreneurs understand and also are also looking out for trends, to be ahead of the curve.
3. Processes (Frontal Lobe) – Following a process, which is designed by someone in the organization vs, working to ensure that is being followed by all and there is a constant effort of helping it improve.
4. Analytics & Creativity (Frontal Lobe) – Lower part of our brain is all about reflexes & response, the middle is all about emotions and the top brain is divided into two half – analytics & creative.
5. People (Temporal Lobe & Brain Stem) – Be human, have fun & ensure that the journey is same for everyone around.
6. Prioritization (Cerebellum) – We all are jugglers, one just needs to get better at juggling while adding more & more pins of different shapes, sizes & weights.

Image Source – upmc.com

2021 saw a lot of conjecture on the value of technical SEO. From being called makeup to dead, it managed to procure a lot of other names too. But then came an SEO checklist 2022, which firmly bade 2021 goodbye! SEO checklist 2022 has brought back SEO to life gracefully and conclusively with exceptional examples of technical SEO tactics resulting in major traffic boosts. This post will focus on some primary steps to the technical SEO checklist 2022. Some of these have been around for a bit and haven’t really lost their relevance, too; others are rather new and owe their advancement to the recent search engine changes. So let’s get started! Technical search engine optimisation concerns frequently keep a website from ranking as high as it should. Here are a few key technological best practices that must be adhered to.

Check indexing

Indexing is the method by which search engines like Google prepare content prior to a search in order to provide super-fast responses to queries. Let's start by determining how many of your site's pages are indexed by search engines. Enter site: domain.com in your target search engine or use an SEO crawler like WebSite Auditor to perform this quickly. Preferably, this number should be essentially proportional to the total number of pages on your site, not considering the ones you don’t want to be indexed. If there’s a larger gap than what you thought there would be, you’ll need to evaluate your disallowed pages. This brings us to the next point.

Make sure important resources are crawlable

To check how crawlable your site actually is, you may be tempted to simply look through robots.txt; but often, it’s just as imprecise as it is convenient. So you may want to use an SEO crawler to get a list of all blocked pages.

Optimize crawl budget

Crawl budget is simply the number of a site’s pages that search engines crawl during a given period of time. You can get an idea of what your crawl budget is in Google Search Console.

Audit internal links

A shallow, logical site structure is what is required from a great UX and crawlability; internal linking also helps spread ranking power (or PageRank) around pages more efficiently.

Review your sitemap

It is no new news how important sitemaps are. They tell search engines about your site structure and let them discover new content faster.

Test and improve page speed

Users care about page speed because faster pages are more effective and offer a better on-page user experience. The goal of Page Experience Signals is to assess the quality of a web page's user experience for real users. Page speed isn’t just one of Google’s top priorities for 2022; it also lends itself to its ranking signal. Google's Page Speed Insights tool can be used to test the load time of your pages.

Get mobile-friendlier

A few weeks ago, there was news that Google’s starting the “mobile-first indexing of the web.” The implication is that the mobile version of your pages will determine how they should rank in both mobile and desktop search results.

Heading Keywords Research Checklist

Keyword research is the core of search engine optimisation. People keep looking for terms; thus, they come straight to Google. Using this method, they can create high-quality key phrases that would optimise your website. The Google Keyword Planner is Google's professional keyword research tool. The checklist for On-page SEO and Off-page SEO -

On-Page SEO Checklist

If you want to have a go at the Killer on-page SEO Checklist, all you need to do is read on. We have mentioned below On-Page SEO as well as Off-Page SEO techniques that will help you rank well on the search engines. Now let’s get going with the On-Page SEO Checklist

Title Tag

One of the most weighted aspects of on-page optimisation, title tags tell humans (and search engine spiders) what the page is about. They should be anything up to approximately 65 characters long. And please do try to make titles as unique as they can get for every page.

Meta Description Tag

Keeping your primary keywords a part of the description, Meta description tags should be no longer than 156 characters. Though Meta descriptions do not impact rankings, they are directly related to your click-through rate. It also does not appear anywhere on the page. Google often supplements content on the page with your Meta description if it either does not find the description tag or finds the keyword on the page and wants to display it to the user.

Heading (H1) Tag

These help in logically laying out your webpage. Heading tags should include the primary keyword at least once (it really does not need to be an exact match). And please do not forget that, like all aspects of SEO, you are not supposed to overdo it!

Body Copy

There’s no minimum number of words required for each page, but common knowledge apart from common sense would recommend at least 100 words (to give the engines enough text to make an assessment of your content). Important keywords should be revealed in the first 50-100 words of the content if possible (but please design for users!). The keyword you’re targeting should be used 2-3 times on the page for short pages, don’t stuff the page with them.

ALT Tags

Search engine spiders are not comparable to humans and can’t see images. We use ALT tags to let search engines know what those images are, as well as the name of the image file. Again: DO NOT over-optimize! Use natural, user-friendly language, and don’t worry about exact match text.

Internal Links

Just like size, the text you use in your links matters! Search engines factor in how you link to all the other content you have as a clue to what that content is all about. The keyword you’re trying to optimise should be used in the text pointing to that page. Links with text like “website” or “click here” are too generic and take neither the search engines nor the user anywhere.

SEO friendly URLs

Though URLs are not a large ranking factor, SEO-friendly URLs affect CTR. Sometimes users assess a URL when deciding whether to click through or not. Underscores are alpha characters and do not separate words, so make sure you use dashes in the URLs.

Heading Content Checklist

Content optimisation

Content should be high-quality, relevant to the website, and utterly fresh for better ranking chances. To go higher, write more! The regular content length for a web page that ranks in the top 10 results for any keyword on Google has at least 2,000 words. The better the ranking on the search listings page, the more content each web page has.

Keyword density

This refers to the percentage of keywords or keyphrases that you have used on a web page in comparison with the total number of words on the webpage. The ideal keyword density should be about 1%-3%.

Grammar checker

With the presence of a chrome add-on, a faultless automated grammar checker can help you enhance your content clarity and can present the perfect meaning of your content to the user.

Do check for duplicate content

Do a search to check if your content exists elsewhere on the Web or not! Check with Copyscape or Plagiarism software.

Heading off Page Checklist

Now, let’s not put off the Off-Page Optimization! The off-page SEO checklist for optimisation is the other critical piece of the ranking equation. Search engines in 2022 will continue to factor in how the rest of the Internet views your site. With the on-page techniques, we can get visibility in search engines. But only off-page 2022 SEO techniques will help improve your website position in SERP. Take a look at the list of top trends.

Social Media Engagement

One of the main Off-page SEO techniques is social media engagement. If you want to popularise and make your business, website, or blog a name to reckon with, engage with people on multiple social media platforms. Your social media presence will aid in nurturing your business and also help you get more backlinks. If you have a blog (and there’s no way you shouldn’t be having one!), then you have a great tool for getting your own content out there to other sites. As your blog is promoted via shares and tweets, this will only enhance your SEO. Researchers now fully agree that social “signals” such as Facebook likes and shares, Twitter follower counts and tweets linking to your site and pages, and Google+ circles and reviews and links are all noticed by the search engine bots and algorithms, and help contribute positive SEO power to your site. And if you’re in a B2B market, LinkedIn promotion of your latest content can drive direct traffic and the occasionally shared link from your networks.

• Have active business Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn accounts and link to them with share buttons from your site.
• Promote your latest news and views in your social media presence and ask/invite others to like and share.

Social Bookmarking Sites

These sites are some of the best platforms to promote your website. As you decide to bookmark your webpage or blog post on popular social bookmarking websites, you decide to attract higher traffic to your webpage or blog.

Forum Submission

Take part and contribute in search forums that are related to your website and business and make a connection with that community. Respond to threads, go ahead and answer people’s questions and give your suggestions and advice.

Blog Directory Submission

Directory submission is incessantly working to build quality backlinks. Select an effective directory and pick a proper category. It does not happen overnight and does take a considerable amount of time to deliver good results, but these outcomes stand out over a longer time period.

Article Submission

Make sure to submit your articles in a high PR article submission directory. You can also add links to your website. Ensure your content is exceptional and of amazing quality. Low-quality content and content that has more keyword stuffing might get rejected. Choose the right category and give a good title to your content.

Questions and Answers

This is undoubtedly one of the best ways to get high traffic to your site. Do not think twice before joining high PR question and answer sites and search for questions related to your business, blog, or website and give well-defined answers to these questions. Add a link to your website, which will help in bringing you more visibility.

Video Submission

Head to popular video submission sites if you want to make your videos trendy and well-liked. Don’t forget to give a proper title, description, tags, and reference links. It is one of the more prevalent ways to get quality backlinks because all video submission websites have high PR.

Image Submission

Share your photos on well-known image submission websites. But before submitting your images, please optimise them with the correct URL and title tag. Also, check if they have a proper title, description, and tags.

Infographics submission

Add to your creative genius by making creative infographics. The last couple of years has made infographics popular on the Internet. Submit your infographics on infographics submission websites and provide reference links to your webpage or blog. The image sizes will be different for different websites.

Document sharing

Attractive documents relating to your business or blog can attract more traffic. The documents should have fresh and original content and should be in either pdf or ppt formats. Submit these documents to the document-sharing websites. So if we had to summarise what SEO is and what SEO is not, we could easily say that:

• The words you use are imperative.
• The titles of your pages are vital.
• The links pointing back to your website are significant.
• The words used in those links are important. (They’re called anchor text)
• Your ability to get pages into search engine indices is important.
• Your reputation and credibility matter.
• Social media matters.
• Freshness matters.

SEO in 2022 is not:

• Using SEO traffic to build a first-party data hub
• Increasing the page's speed
• Concentrating on the user's search intent
• Semantic search optimisation
• Refreshing existing content

Conclusion

By following the aforementioned tips to practice both on-page and off-page SEO checklist optimisation, your site(s) can experience an unprecedented jump in their search engine ranking which can prove to be a huge help when it comes to increasing their overall online visibility. Enlisting the best SEO services and content marketing checklist in India can help immensely when it comes to practising these strategies, and #ARM Worldwide is one of the premier digital marketing agencies whose SEO services you can enlist to considerably improve your search engine ranking.