Pramit J Nathan is a New Delhi based Marketing Consultant, Trainer, Author and a B-school visiting faculty. Academically, Pramit is an Electronics graduate and Post Graduate in Management. Author of the book titled “Perception Management”, Pramit has a remarkable teaching experience as a B-School visiting faculty and extensive training experience across the Banking and Financial Services Industry.

Pramit is a top Indian non- celebrity twitter user with more than 100k followers (@pramitjnathan), his responsiveness makes him one of the most reliable  Social Media professionals on twitter. In this exclusive interview Pramit has disclosed social media success secrets, personal branding methods and has revealed how he became one of the most elite twitter users in a very short span of time.

What are your opinions on the present social media scenario? Is it affecting positively/negatively the traditional media and marketing business?

Web 2.0 (Social Media) has tasted great success just like Web 1.0. Even when e-commerce was the buzzword people talked of ‘Disintermediation’ (online businesses eliminating the middleman) but nothing of that sort happened. What we forget is that any business thrives by the number of people behind it. The traditional media still has the maximum people energy. The second and more important factor that sustains any business is profits and that is where Social Media is found wanting. Social Media platforms may have caught the fancy of people but they have to prove their business potential by sustaining themselves over the longer run.

You are not among the early adopters of social media, what attracted you to join the Social Media arena now?

I may have joined the Web 2.0 phenomenon late due to my personal preoccupations but I was an early adopter of the Web 1.0 and am quite aware of the potential of New Media. It is not about when you adopt but how you adopt that makes a difference.  Internet brought computers together; WWW got information (websites) together; Social Media is the third layer of integration and has got people together. I, as a marketer, believe in the power of people and know this for sure that if in the future you want to pursue success you definitely cannot ignore Social Media. Also, if you are people-friendly you are assured of success in social media.

You have been teaching e-business/e-commerce and web technologies & trends for 11 years in a B-School. How was your teaching/training strategy and experience?

I come from a family of Academicians; my parents being PHDs in their respective fields of specialization and I feel teaching / training is in my genes. I had earlier taught subjects related to online business & commerce. But for the last few years I have been teaching Perception Management, Branding and Public Relations. I have also trained extensively across the Banking and Financial Services Industry on diverse functional and behavioral areas. I find teaching / training a highly fulfilling activity and firmly believe that if you want to be known as an expert in any field disseminating knowledge is as important as creating knowledge or applying knowledge.

India is not among the top 10 countries using social media; Japan is the only Asian country which stands 2^nd after USA. Where do India stand or what Indians need to do to come up in this new media age?

Yes if you consider our population, India’s presence on Social Media is very small. Indians are always slightly late to adopt something new and adapt to it, and there are specific cultural reasons for the same:

1. Anything which doesn’t yield immediate tangible benefits is considered a waste of time.
2. We adopt new technologies well but are slow to adapt to global trends that accompany it.
3. We are socially inept with strangers and allow that to become a major weakness.

Indians have to learn fast that in this emerging “global village” people worldwide are meant to communicate, collaborate and cooperate and this getting together has to go beyond just an exchange of words (interaction) to exchange of ideas, knowledge, resources etc. Needless to say this has significant benefits if done right.

Unfortunately, as we had noticed even during the rise of Web 1.0, there are so many Indian consultants and companies positioning themselves as social media experts but none of them have been able to establish themselves as personal or corporate brands globally. Unless India is able to produce mention-worthy global brands in the social media scene we will only be wannabes or also-rans.

There is so much brilliant talent in our country but unfortunately they are happy to engage themselves in providing services to help others succeed rather than find success by creating their own global products (blogs like @Mashable, @Problogger, @ChrisBrogan etc.) or platforms (twitter, facebook etc.) on the social media front.

Please tell us something about your book titled ‘Perception Management’.

My book on Perception Management is an attempt to create a new marketing paradigm. The four P’s of traditional marketing or the 7 P’s of services marketing are not successful in accounting for the critical intangibles that define an entity or determine its fortunes today. These critical intangibles include image, reputation, goodwill, credibility etc. Branding to an extent does touch upon them but more from a top-down approach. My book on Perception management addresses in great detail each of these intangibles predominantly from a bottom-up approach so that the results of any perception management or branding activity can be measured and managed.

In other words the book uses the phrase Perception Management as a successor to Marketing Management in the Knowledge Age and emphasizes how perceptions are the most important asset of any entity and how they need to be managed for sustainable benefits and competitive advantage. It also tries to eliminate the restricted view of the Perception Management today which limits it to either ‘public diplomacy’ or ‘public relations’.

You are the 6^th Indian to get 100,000 followers on Twitter and the first non-celebrity to do so, what are the secrets of this success?

I am happy to have reached this milestone but for all twitter users my advice is that even though the number of followers is an important statistic and also a main reason for Twitter’s success among marketers, it is much more important to have a strong influence. The easiest way to measure that is by the number of clicks you get on your bit.ly links or the re-tweets you get for your tweets. I have seen people with much lesser followers who have a considerable hold over their audience and use twitter successfully to earn revenues for their business.

I would summarize the following as the key factors to be popular socially:

1. Don’t wait for people to be friendly, show them how.
2. Always reciprocate a gesture of friendship.
3. Share stuff of great value with your friends.
4. Make friends with the leaders
5. Engage with your audiences

Would you like to share your top tips to get best out of twitter, tips in terms of getting more followers and getting more resources from twitter?

To translate the secrets mentioned in the point above:

1. Find and follow people
2. Always follow-back
3. Thank for a retweet with a retweet
4. Develop relationships with your fellow tweeps
5. Retweet twelebrities (who have lots of followers or who tweet a lot) often
6. Find great sources for interesting stuff to share
7. Promote what you have to offer but subtly
8. Promise less and deliver more

Would you like to name 10 favorite tweeples (twitter users) you follow and for what reason?

I would rather not do that. To choose 10 out of a 100k is not just a difficult job but also unfair to those I leave out. All I can say is that Twitter lists have made it easy for people to find out who you consider close or worthy. In fact, even before the lists were put up I had my spreadsheet of my favorites. I will soon transfer that information into separate lists of my favorite tweeps in different categories: social media, marketing, humour, wisdom etc.

If not on twitter, which is the next best place we can find you?

Well, one can friend me on twitter or facebook at ‘pramitjnathan’ or email me on the same id at yahoo or gmail. These are the best ways to get in touch with me.

Who is your idol?

Well if you seek a single name then it has to be Mahatma Gandhi. I am deeply influenced by his ideology. He was so above and beyond a normal human being that I completely agree with Einstein who once remarked – “Generations to come will scarcely believe that such a one (Gandhi) walked the earth in flesh & blood.”

The other personalities who I admire for their wisdom and whose quotes I tweet often are Wayne Dyer, Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar, Abraham Lincoln, Rumi, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oscar Wilde, Martin Luther King, Jr, Mark Twain, Benjamin Franklin etc.

What don’t you like of the World Wide Web?

I love it without any exceptions. In fact, I marvel at this man-made creation. I agree there are challenges especially the noise and spam that people complain of in social media today but that is an opportunity for another Google to emerge. We are living in the most fascinating times and I look at each day as it unfolds with bewilderment. I guess that is one of the primary reasons why I love Twitter because it is my window to the web and a fantastic source for information on all the latest developments.

With recession almost over, any future prediction for social media/ online marketing?

With the huge hype surrounding Facebook,Twitter, Linkedin etc., Social Media has definitely become an integral part of every online marketing strategy. Most companies though are using it for very specific and scaled-down tasks such as launches, promotions or focused campaigns. This is obviously because the tracking of results becomes easier and the expenditure justifiable. I am sure as these companies taste success with their initial efforts, they will include social media as a significant component for their broad-based visibility, awareness and brand-building activities too.

Can you please give your best advice to social media and marketing professionals?

I would suggest some general practices:

1. Keep yourself updated through the leading blogs and other media properties
2. Follow and engage with the thought leaders on Twitter, Facebook, blogs etc.
3. Use the social networking platforms more actively and constructively
4. Be more results-focused rather than task-focused in your approach
5. If possible build your own personal brand and start with blogging
6. Integrate various social media  platforms in your strategy for best results
7. Try to develop an “Influence” by contributing “value” to help others

More About Pramit: Started his career as a Management Analyst with National Informatics Centre (then under Planning Commission, Government of India) in 1996. In 1999, during the peak of the dotcom boom, he got an investor and launched Web Pulse Consulting Ltd into web design and development services in addition to developing its own web properties. In 2003, Pramit had launched Idea to Impact, a Branding and Perception Management company and currently he is also a Partner in Creative Inc, a 14 years old full-service advertising agency catering to all communication media (print, broadcast, outdoor, online and electronic). Creative Inc specializes in Print Advertising (creating magazines, newsletters, industry reports, direct mailers etc.) and has recently diversified into Event Management.

Connect with Pramit J Nathan on:

http://Twitter.com/pramitjnathan

http://Facebook.com/pramitjnathan

http://in.linkedin.com/in/pramitjnathan

http://www.Pramitjnathan.com

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