Being A Blogger

It has been long time since we published any interview on BaB. Some one should ask me how it feels posting on Bab after 6 months. I hope this interview with @s4ur4bh will be received by Being A Blogger (BaB) readers as a sweet surprise. Well yeah! we are back.

Hi Saurabh, Would you please tell us something about you and your blog?
Saurabh Garg is a marketer by profession, a computer programmer by education, and a adventurist at heart. He currently works with Creativeland Asia in the Knowledge Management function and is based out of Mumbai. His last educational endeavor happened in 2006 when he (barely managed to) passed out of the MBA program at MDI, Gurgaon.

His blog (The New New Thing) is his personal playground of things that interest him. He primarily talks about Marketing, Social Media and Entrepreneurship. Apart from these three key things, on the fringes, he occasionally rants about Advertising, Businesses, Digital Anthropology, India, Innovation, Internet, Strategic Planning, Technology and the elusive New New Thing.

What motivates you to write? What are the personal goals you want to achieve by blogging?

The entire concept of sharing thoughts with the world and using it as a tool to meet interesting people motivates me to write. The fact that I am now a publisher and that my writings reach all corners of the world is motivating in itself. I might not be the best author but I do get opportunities to bounce these ideas off global audience. And all this is just the by product of my favorite activity – Writing.

There are no goals as such if you ask me. However, what I expect out of my blog is access to people, ideas and companies.

Give us more insight on how you do knowledge management of people, ideas and companies you get access to through your blog?
Knowledge Management essentially comprises of three things. Collection of information and data. Processing it to create meaningful knowledge. And application of this knowledge to businesses. From my blog, I do the first two things. The visitors that come on my blog, I try to pick their brains about their respective areas of expertise. I try to filter information pertinent to my employer and clients. And finally once I collate ideas, I use feedback (comments, emails etc) from these people to refine them further before passing it onto other teams.

Care to share some of your memorable experiences with blogging?
Cant think of an incident as such. May be I will share some when I do this next time around?

Do you care about being read? What are your readers like?
Yes, I do. I check reader stats every hour or so. I take every comment very seriously and I try to reply to every comment. In fact, if some SEO specialist is reading this, may be s/he can help me figure out why doesn’t Google send any visitors my way. And how to optimize my blog for the keywords – Business Ideas, Marketing, India and Starting Up.

Most of my readers come from links that I post on twitter. And since most of my twitter followers are Social Media enthusiasts, aspiring entrepreneurs and bloggers, my typical reader would be say 25, interested in entrepreneurship or starting up and in all probability have blog of his own.

Do you benefit from blogs financially?
No, I dont. I have had offers but so far I have been declining them. Maybe someone here wants to make me an offer that I can’t refuse?

Who are your top five favorite bloggers?
David Armano, Seth Godin, Shekhar Kapoor, Prof. Sanjay Bakshi. These are 4 bloggers I can think of right now. Funny that all four write about different things and they all talk to different niches.

How much do you believe in strength that lies in blogging as media? What is your insight for near future?
The prime objective of Media as an institution is to gather credible and timely information, filter this information and dissipate to the audience. And hence media needs to have contacts, eyes on the ground, resources to be able to conduct this process and finally a business motive to keep it all running.

Blogging, on the other hand, is essentially an individual publishing for certain other individuals. Some people might have profit motive. Others might want to share their ideas. Some might just want to fulfill their innate need of expression. There are hundred other reason why people publish. And thus, blogging as such, by individuals, would remain sporadic efforts.

Blogging, thus, allows everyone to become and expert and deliver opinion and judgements on anything and everything. It can shape opinions and it can influence decisions and it can spread word but I am not sure if blogging can replace traditional media per-se.

Coming onto predictions, I wish I could gaze into the crystal ball and predict things. The only prediction I think I will make right now with assurance is that I will republish this on my blog once you have published this on yours

On serious notes, blogging as a tool is something that established media houses will adopt going forward. Most of the individual bloggers trying to be the “new media” would become part of the traditional media outlets.

I guess thats about it.

What is your observation or column or post that has gotten the most powerful reaction from people?
Will it be too lame if I say that I dont track these things on my blog? I have had all kinds of people coming on to my blog and expressing their reactions. So far, none of the responses have been that extreme to actually raise my interest levels towards a particular post.

Observations, yes I have. Everytime I talk about something that is contrary to popular opinions on established norms, I tend to get more traffic and comments there. And this observation does not only come from my blog but from other blogs that I read and contribute to (mutiny, venturewoods, pluggdin etc).

You have also got a blogging life, how has it directly affected both your personal and professional life?
My blogging life has given me few business contacts, many acquaintances and lots of friends. And the best part is the diversity of experiences and backgrounds that these new contacts bring with them. Conversations and interactions with them are very enriching to say the least. Probably this is one of the reasons that motivates me to write. And write better.

Professionally, I have heard stories that people have found work and business ideas. So far I have not explored any of this. I am very happy with what I do at Creativeland and what Creativeland offers me. And hence cant really see any benefits professionally.

Anything else for readers?
1. Please help me improve on my blog. Feedback would really help.
2. Do send in comments on my posts and please let me know if they add any value to you.
3. Next time you see me blogging something stupid, please point out.