Internet Abuse :Effect on Body & Mind

Internet has brought sea change in  human life style recently. The judgment, choice, resourcefulness, entertainment everything depends on internet connection and their intensity/accuracy depends on bandwidth.

Internet now saves a lot of time, which we earlier got wasted in information gathering. As a result   decisions have become quick & informed one. Institutions such as IITK and corporates like ITC ,have earlier tried to use the power of internet for rural India through their program like “Info Thela” and “e-Chaupal”. Even government recognized the power of internet and tried to digitalize their legacy systems through project  like e-Dhara etc.

I will consider e-chaupal as a real social networking platform ,where internet was involved in a different format and provided a place where residents  came together PHYSICALLY.

The social media in its present format has give birth to an oxymoronic phrase which may be called “Socially Connected Unsocial”. People have become addictive to Face Book status .They refresh their browser (by hitting F5) before logging off, so that they don’t miss a status message. Need not to say ,some of us never log out from Face Book or Twitter.

As the TV, Radio, Gaming, Video Watching, Blogging, Email, IM and social networking all comes together on your laptop/desktop, people are going to become more immovable. I guess, people will spend 12-16 hrs with their laptop daily, while rest 8-12 hrs being traffic jam and daily routine activities.

The sedative life style will result in weight gain, obesity and other life style disease. Obesity is often cited as one of the top negative health effects of sedative life style. Hours spent sitting in front of desktop/laptop/palmtop instead of exercising take an obvious and noticeable toll on addicts. Even your life style can affect your brain along with making you obese.

Effect on Brain:

1. Life with internet has become very easy. Once the brain learns to respond to this method of getting information, it becomes unfamiliar with other way to learn as a result learning ability impaired.
2. An excess of passive brain activity from watching videos, Social Media participation can also affect sleeping patterns. In adults, memory loss and poor sleep can be attributed to internet addiction.
3. Internet replace the time with interactive and creative activities, such as games, hobbies  and prevents your holistic development 

Effect on Body:

1. Hours spent on internet reduce the time you can spend on physical activities. Physical activity is vital for health, blood circulation, muscle development and metabolism.
2. Sitting passively instead of engaging in physical activity leads to lower metabolism and could lead to unhealthy weight gain. This may result in life threatening disease like diabetes.
3. Using excess of internet can affect your eye sight and can cause severe headache for those who have photo phobia.

Career Chit Chat for Digital Marketers

1. Be a Marketer:Gone are the days when digital initiatives was considered to be a part of IT team. Once the spend increases you would be required to link it with business objectives. I would suggest you to learn basics of marketing,a B-School degree or certification from an institute of repute would certainly going to help you in your career.

2. Know the Jargons:I have seen many digital marketer's career stagnating because of scarcity of right words and right sentences to explain their work. It becomes more important when you are in a leadership position or running your own business. Keep yourself abreast with industry jargons like CTR,Server Laod etc.

3. Online Presence Management:Participate in right forum .Be present in right forum and create buzz at right time.

4. Jack of All but Master of Some:If you are eying digital consulting as a career you should project yourself as solution provider. B logging on complex and technical issue in Digital marketing is a good idea. For more information check my blog: www.vinaytosh.com

5. Attend Industry Meet ups and Conferences:You get real contact and business after meeting real& like minded people.

6. Keep a Pulse on the News:Keep your self update with industry and marketing news. It will help you in managing different products and campaigns.

7. Get Technical:You have to handle technical guys like designer and back end developers. In order to understand their language and problem ,you should have at least superficial knowledge of web 2.0 technologies.

8. Perfect Your Resume: Perfect your professional presence at Linked In and other important forums.

9. Let Curiosity and Passion Drive You:Always be receptive and early adopter of changes coming towards you. It will help you in differentiating yourself in crowd. I will name it as "Creating Blue Ocean" for your career.

10. Living with Internet:More time you spend on INTERNET, more you will be aware of trends and patterns. Reports can never replace observations,MIND IT.

Online Shopping :Are We Ready ?

I still remember my childhood days when we used to stand in queue for hours to get a railway reservation. Now people hardly visit station to book a railway ticket. Online shopping is an easy and comfortable way of shopping for a large range of products.

There is a survey conducted by The Nielsen Company, which suggests that around 85% has already used to make a purchase online which shows an improvement in the online shopping trends. Another claim is that around 50% of the people using Internet around the world, are active online shoppers. 


A survey conducted about two years ago, about number of online shoppers, suggested the number to be around 627 million which has risen to about 875 million as of now. People from countries like Korea, Germany, United Kingdom, Japan and United States of America, are very fond of online shopping. Many manufacturing companies are aggressively marketing their products considering the change in the online shopping trends using E-commerce web hosting to attract more and more customers.

Facts in favor of online shopping:

1.      You save a lot of time & Transportation cost. You need not personally go to the retail shop for shopping.

2.      With advent of new technologies information assimilation has become easier and catalogs are making personal visit irrelevant.

3.      With penetration of Internet /Mobile, online shopping is in reach of millions of Indians. There is lot of opportunity untapped.

Strategy for Indian Consumer:

1.      Indians are adopter of technologies, when it becomes affordable and reliable.  

2.      The association with government provides Indian a sense of security and It was reason behind success of IRCTC online ticketing system.But the things are changing fast with transparency and proper guidelines.

3.      Indians go for deal! There should be incentive for using online channels.

4.      The benefits for online shopping should be immediate and if possible “reduced price”.

Greatest Friend is Biggest Enemy

Sometime a friend do a lot of favor to you, whenever you ask for anything he always gets it done for you .You considered him best friend of yours and he was happy for importance he was getting. One given morning you came to know about a genie which was open to offer you all those services at very nominal price .You thought: why unnecessary bug my friend? Let it outsource and concentrate on end result only. You were able to concentrate more on your work and your results improved. Then you witnessed sudden change in your friend's behavior, he started complaining about your attitude and quality of outsourced services. In this story, read your tech team as your best friend and “outsourced service/open source” as genie.   

During last eight years ,I have interacted with many tech teams of all size & might and some of them being top notch companies in their domain. I was representing business in almost every case and my objective was to make sure that technology does not eclipse end user’s comfort and experience. To become advocate of end user you need to think like him/her and accept the hard truth that technology is only enabler and business of business is to keep client happy and hence business profitable.

During my interaction with tech teams, I am always adamant that “for end user web 2.0 technologies is not about    knowing PHP, .Net, Ruby on Rail or Pearl” it is about “effective use of applications and platforms developed with use of that technology”. Following table lists some Web2.0 technologies and categories it.

Image Source: Mckinsey Report on Web2.0 Technologies

I know that I am inviting ire of technology experts .But I want to make one thing clear ,I am grateful to you for creating such platforms(read wiki,Blog,RSS  etc) using which we can achieve our business objectives. Let's these tools remain technologies for us and make them as simple as possible.

I would highly recommend a Digital Marketing Team, which can effectively utilize technology to make web2.0 experience as pleasant as possible and is not engrossed with technology.

Technologies Do Not Make Communities

Importance of communities is increasing in life of common man as well as marketers. Popularity of communities has created a virtual worlds were people are more frank in sharing their opinion about product, services, need and solutions.

Every marketer wants to harness the power of online community for client acquisition as well as product development. There are so many free and paid solutions available in market and a marketer can easily make a community around her product and service offerings. But apart from technologies and features there are some other dimension for community and those are participation and feasibility. Following are some of important points must be considered to make successful communities.

1.       Set and manage clear business objectives for your community. Whether you want to collect customer response or you want to run a promotional campaign etc.

2.       Implement a strategy a strategy in sync with your business objective.

3.       Any initiative need sustained effort hence we should try to instill collaboration and feedback into the culture.

4.       There is difference between data and information .We should make a mechanism for information management.

5.       Integrate "social" throughout existing channels like CRM, Email Marketing, Recruitment and Sales etc and there should be metrics to measure the ROI as well.