By Jeta Pillai

WANT to hasten your climb up the career ladder? Put up a blog. You’ll get feedback from surfers and other bloggers. Write to other bloggers. Soon you will be friends with a lot of people around the world – some of whom may be influential. They will recommend you to other employers and businessmen and your climb will be a lot smoother, if one has to consider the example of Arun Rajagopal.

A blogger from Muscat, Rajagopal has become friends with over a hundred marketing professionals from over 10 countries and is now the co-author of a new book, The Age of Conversation.

The book is written mostly by marketing people who are friends but have never met each other. Rajagopal is a content strategist with a media organisation and writes for websites of major brands.

The book sprung from a process that began in May after Drew McLellan, an advertising executive based in Iowa, US, and Gavin Heaton, Interactive Director at Creata, Australia, entered into a casual exchange of views. McLellan and Heaton’s blogs on marketing are among the top 25 in the world, according to Rajagopal.

McLellan suggested to Heaton that they collaborate on a book on ‘conversation’. Heaton liked the idea, “but felt that more people could be brought into the project,” says Rajagopal.

McLellan then put out an invitation on his blog for a collaborative book on the subject of ‘conversation’. Each author was asked to write one page and less than 400 words. In a week, 103 signed up.

“We must do something that engages the consumer – that was the general view. Traditionally, the marketer talks and the consumer listens. Now, in smart marketing, the marketer does something that creates an engaging experience and the consumer talks about him,” says Rajagopal.

The volunteers were then given 30 days to come back with a write-up. One hundred out of those were selected. McLellan and Heaton also wrote some chapters and the “Age of Conversation was published on July 16,” says Rajagopal.

Not all the writers are marketers; some of them are managers of software companies like Microsoft and others are motivational speakers. “The book is targeted at marketers, but the beauty of it is that everybody can take something out of it,” says Rajagopal.

His chapter on ‘The Rules of the Garage. For Digital Media Conversationalists’ is about creating digital media conversations using Hewlett Packard’s ‘Rules of the Garage’ management philosophy. “Anyone can take something out of it. I have interpreted it for digital media conversationalists. I have adopted ‘Rules of the Garage’ to my field as far as possible. In any work environment it can be used to encourage innovation, team spirit and creativity.”

About social media, Rajagopal says: “You learn a lot. You meet a lot of people and they recommend you to others. It helps you in your career. You do not have to go through all the regular stages of progress. You can jump from the present into the future.”

Not all the contributors in the book communicate by writing. Jessica Haggy, in her chapter, ‘Sharing’, communicates with Venn diagrams. If you have ideas, talk about them, never keep them in the dark, she says.

Toby Bloomberg writes in his chapter, ‘Technology Is Recreating Business Intimacies’: “When we get to know people, more than product information is usually exchanged. That’s exactly what happened online. Stories about personal interest … were ‘blogged’. Photos were shared. Relationships that were as intimate and important as those created by neighbourhood green grocers were being formed. Through social media marketing initiatives – blogs, podcasts, vlogs, mash-up communities, social book marking and photo sharing organisations were rediscovering that the corner grocery store relation was attainable in an online environment and more important than ever before to foster and maintain.”

Becky Carroll writes in ‘In Conversations and the Customer Experience’:

“A key part of managing each conversation is to understand the customer lifecycle. We need to look at ourselves through the eyes of the customer. Do they need to buy something? Are they already a customer? Are they referring others to us? Are they considering leaving us? The conversation should change depending on the customer’s perspective and combined experiences.”

In a chapter, ‘It Is Not Enough to Simply Listen,’ Ryan Rasmussen writes: “An approach to understanding the customer’s perspective by immersing oneself within the said community, using the same tools for communication and collaboration, results in nothing less than a new form of business intelligence.”

The book is available in e-book, paperback and hardback forms and profits will go to Variety, the Children’s Charity, which works for needy children around the world.

Oman Tribune