[CTQ Smartcast] How to build Social Capital - Brand 'You' online, with Karthik Srinivasan
Creating your own clout, being known for who you are and what you are capable of, is an essential need for the working professional — a task which can become both challenging and simplified when the world moves online.
Karthik Srinivasan is an expert in personal branding, corporate communication and author of the book, 'Be Social, Building Brand YOU Online'. In this CTQ Smartcast with BV Harish Kumar, Karthik demystifies the idea of building Social Capital - and how it's all about showcasing how you think.
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How can you navigate the norms of social media to use the tools to work for you? What should you post about? How often? What should you do to make your posts better? Why do some people become internet sensations — in a good way? Find out all that and more.
You can check out Karthik Srinivasan’s site The Beast of Traal for the latest and best commentary on social media, PR, marketing, advertising and branding.
Some of the things we spoke about
What if you don't have varied interests - how do you build your personal brand
Why do people hesitate to showcase their selves
Creating the prompt to express yourself
The Struggle for Visibility within companies
Why aren't more professionals creating their brand
Building the habit of posting
Recommended routines to know better in order to post better
Tools and Apps to help you
Advice for those with narrow interests
Overcoming your mind's internal censors
Posting in Indian languages for corporate professionals
How to express dislike online
Which platform for what kind of content
PLUS two Quiz questions that Karthik took on
Some tips Karthik shares
Whether you have less interests or more, showcase whatever your interest is, again and again, consistently over time.
Personal branding doesn't mean you talk about your work, but about your work industry
Personal branding is about showcasing how you think, not what you do.
Three layers of personal branding: 1. Family & Close Friends, 2. Work Layer - peers, 3. Rest of the world - people you don't know directly. Your personal Branding effort is for half of Layer 2 and entire Layer 3.
Social media is not for social networking. Social media is for broadcasting - you ask the questions yourself and talk about it.
90% of your work is away from people: reading, researching, assimilation
Read these things to expand your knowledge: Newspapers, RSS feed, Google keyword alert, Twitter lists, Email newsletters
LINKS TO IDEAS, BOOKS, and SITES MENTIONED IN THE SMARTCAST
Douglas Adams & Hitchhikers’ Guide To The Galaxy
Scott Adams’ book How To Fail At Almost Everything And Still Win Big
Karthik’s Site on inspired Indian film songs - itwofs.com
Personal Information Management
Do you find social media posting a challenge? Join the Social Capital Compound by CTQ to get into the habit of posting three times a week.
READ THE TRANSCRIPT OF THIS EPISODE
[Start of Transcript]
[00:00:00]
Karthik Srinivasan is a personal branding expert, author, and conducts workshops on personal branding for corporate leaders. In this Smartcast, we talk about how everyone should think about building their own social capital, making an impressive and impactful presence online.
Harish Kumar: Hi, welcome Karthik Srinivasan to this CTQ Smartcast. I asked Karthik to send me an introduction before this and he sent me a single line. He said: Karthik is a communication strategy consultant, author of a book on personal branding, Be Social: Building Brand YOU Online. I think it definitely doesn't do justice to all the varied interests that you have Karthik.
Some of you who are listening to this, watching this, who are not aware, he is a man of many interests. A LinkedIn influencer for many years and the LinkedIn Top Voice of 2020. Some of the ‘digital assets’ if you want to use the branding terminology are things like the arrmp3 website, built on Geocities, the itwofs website, which keeps popping up on multiple WhatsApp groups that I'm part of, and this is something that I need to add as an entry for your No Word Yet asset as well. Welcome, Karthik. Really happy to have you here.
Karthik Srinivasan: Thank you so much, Harish. Thank you for the welcome.
Harish Kumar: My first question is going to be a very hard one. You talk about personal branding, so what can people who don't have as varied interests as you [00:02:00] do to build their own social capital and personal branding?
Karthik Srinivasan: Personal branding has got nothing to do with the number of interests that you have. Even if you have just one interest, that is perfectly fine if you just showcase that interest consistently over a period of time. People would assess. Personal branding is nothing but word of mouth when say, 'Oh, he? I know him as that.' Right now, if you ask about anybody who is not active online, or doesn't think about personal branding, people wouldn't say 'Oh, he? I know him as... what? I don't know.' So they will probably need to Google him, Google her, name search her. Then they would come to where they are working on LinkedIn. That's about it, that's where it stops. Their full-time occupation to earn a salary becomes their primary identity, which is perfectly fine. That can also be their identity, that's their most important identity. But it doesn't define who they are as individuals at all.
At least, if people remember seeing, ‘Oh, she? She works in Accenture and she's very interested in Indian classical music.’ Now we are heading somewhere. There is a sense of a person or an individual that comes, not just an employee of a company, but an employee of that company and who is interested in something. There is only one interest, classical music is the ‘interest’, ‘employee’ is just a way to earn a salary, that's about it. So, it's not about the number of interests that you have. Even if you have just one interest, even if it's a very boring interest, you just need to make it interesting, again and again, consistently over a period of time so that people start associating you with that interest, that's what matters.
Harish Kumar: Karthik, you would have seen, at least I have heard people talk about this, that there is some hesitation about projecting their personal interests and hobbies. It seems like you need to have these two different personas, two different identities. Why does that really happen? Has that been [00:04:00] discouraged? Do you think employers have discouraged people from doing that? Why does that even happen, to start with?
Karthik Srinivasan: It's not just employees, it's actually the society because we have been told right in the Bhagavad Gita, do your duty and don't expect results. Which is true, it's perfectly fine. But not expecting results doesn't mean that you actually try to build your brand, and the biggest problem there is, most people conflate brand building or personal brand building, to talking about oneself. Then they go, ‘How much can I talk about myself? It's very embarrassing. I'm not going to, it seems so vain, and pointless. What would people think of me when I talk about myself?’ That's the biggest misnomer there because people assume that personal branding equals talking about yourself. But that's just a failure of imagination.
For instance, you're working in the financial sector, you work with tax planning and whatever it is, I'm not good at all those things at all, so that's why I'm using it as an example. If you are that, and if you build your brand consistently not on the work that you're doing, which needs to be important for your clients, for your partners and vendors, but not for the outside world, because they don't do business with you directly. But if you have an opinion, if you share perspectives on what's happening in the tax planning industry overall, in India and the world, if you share a perspective, you're not talking about yourself. You're talking about your thinking process, which is very different from the actual work that you're doing. I worked with this client and saved him so much money, that is the actual work that you're doing. You're not talking about that. You're talking about, I believe this new law about tax planning is very good, or very bad, or not very interesting, or very disappointing, because of so and so reason. Not about your work at all, but about your work industry, about the category that you operate in.
That is where you need to elevate the kind of conversations and perspectives that you're sharing online, [00:06:00] moving away from yourself and your own work. You also need to talk about your own work and yourself but that's just probably once or twice occasionally. The larger component is about the area that you're interested in. So, it’s not personal branding for your specific work, it's personal branding for your thinking style and thinking process that takes you away from ‘I’, ‘this is what I do’, ‘this is me, this is me.’ And then, you don't need to feel embarrassed at all. You're still doing personal branding, but you're just showcasing how you think. That's what matters, not how you do specific individual pieces of work. That's where the problem is. Most people conflate this with that and say, ‘No, seems so vain, I'm not going to do that at all.’ Just get out of that rut, it will become much better.
Harish Kumar: When you were saying this, one thing struck me, Karthik. You've done this excellent comparison in your book about the ‘offline’ and the ‘online’, the real world and the online world. So when you were saying this, I was imagining somebody from the financial sector and accountant or someone. Now, the CA that I work with, doesn't go around talking about his work. But when asked the question, he has very great insights on how accounting laws should be framed, and what else, right? So is that also contributing to this lack of putting out your thoughts as a, if not a subject matter expert, somebody who's thinking, because those prompts are not there. I'm not asking my CA, what do you think about this? So he's not opening up himself? Is that true? Do you think that's the case?
Karthik Srinivasan: It is true. Since there is no prompt, you need to create your own prompts in your mind and then do it. Here, I probably need to explain the three layers of why personal branding. The first layer of your connections in your life are people that are immediate to [00:08:00] you. Your family, your close friends away from work, that is layer number one. Layer number two is your work layer, your colleagues, your peers in the industry that you occasionally meet in events, etc. That's the second layer. Third layer is the rest of the world. This includes everybody that you don't know directly, they probably know you, or they have no clue who you are at all, the entire world, media, people in the media space like journalists, editors, etc. And then you have random people, that's the third world. Now your personal branding effort is not for layer one, or even layer two. It's half of layer two, but not fully layer two, that's your work layer. There are even peers in other companies that may not know you, so it's half of layer two. Your personal branding effort is towards the second half of layer two and fully layer three. That's where the effort is. Not for this. This they already know and we have a reasonably frequent communication with them very well. We all do.
You in fact use social networking for these two layers, not three. This first and half of the second layer, you use social networking. And social networking is very different from social media. Social networking is, you connect with people you already know, they know you, you know them. WhatsApp is social networking, even though people say, 'Go out of WhatsApp and go to Signal', these days. That's a very debatable thing. We are all on WhatsApp. We are not going anywhere at all. We believe that unless you drop off the internet, there is no privacy. So it's perfectly fine. We will be on WhatsApp. Even things like Facebook Messenger or Twitter dm (direct message), they are social networking. You network with people you know.
But for this, half of second, and third one, you need social media, which is a broadcast medium. It's like Mann ki Baat. You can only talk one way. The other side, you can't hear if you want to. But whether you want to engage or not is your choice. You literally stand on the top of your building with a megaphone and talk to the world. That's where there [00:10:00] is no prompt. Nobody is asking you, 'Hey, what do you think about this new tax law?' You need to ask that question yourself. Out of millions of people in this world, at least 10 people would be interested in what I'm saying. Talk about it. That's about it. So you need to create your own prompts, answer them.
The problem happens when most people try to do it once or twice. They don't see a major reaction to that, one person likes and one of my friends’ likes, and my wife likes that post, that's about it, and they say, 'Yeah, who bothers? Nobody does.' The trick is to do it consistently, again and again, only then it will build over a period of time. It's not about the number that gathers. It's about the kind of people. There is an interesting quip in my favourite book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where the author says, how do you fly? The trick in flying is to jump and not fall off. You just keep on jumping, and just jump, jump, jump, that's called flight basically. He phrases it differently. But that's the thing. The trick is to continue doing it and not worry about it. I've got a million followers. Now the whole world knows me. Don't worry about that at all. Just be at it consistently, it will work at the end of it. But you need to be consistent. That's the point.
Harish Kumar: I think the hummingbird must have definitely read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Karthik Srinivasan: Keep this, there's nothing else. Just continue doing it. That's it. Stay on air.
Harish Kumar: Defying laws of physics.
Karthik Srinivasan: Exactly. Correct.
Harish Kumar: Another interesting thing that has been coming up these days is people are being expected to have something of a brand, even within companies. Especially with, say, the corporate headquarters in the tech industry; headquarters are in San Francisco, that's where all the decisions are taken in terms of promotions and stuff like that. Here, you have a great architect, but [00:12:00] no one outside his or her close group actually knows how great this person is. Then this person is passed on when it comes to their promotions, because nobody knows about how good this person is. That's where there's this demand that, 'Oh, you need to be more visible', and then they are really struggling. We've seen this across roles, across companies, across levels. So, do you see this becoming more of an obvious problem and people trying to do something about it?
Karthik Srinivasan: Absolutely yes. That's actually called employee advocacy in some ways. I mean, from the HR point of view, it's called employee advocacy, even though the objective of employee advocacy is slightly different. There, the objective is how can we use employees as brand ambassadors, and then use the employee's personal voice on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, as the brand's communication channel also. So that's employee advocacy. But as you've said, there is also a need from senior roles in various places to be more visible, at least on LinkedIn. Most people have realized saying LinkedIn is a good enough place to build your 'professional' personal brand, not necessarily 'personal' personal brand, and reasonably be active on LinkedIn. The question then comes in, what does 'be reasonably active' mean? What kind of content am I supposed to share? What kind of content would actually accentuate both my own brand and my company's brand, without making me sound like a brand brochure? I need to be independent, and also the brand should gain, I should also gain. So that's where it comes.
A third layer, which is interesting, because I do a lot of corporate workshops for senior professionals. Quite a few of those workshops actually kick-started by the HR team. Some of the HR teams very honestly tell me, these people are 45+ in terms of age groups, and they will let go at some point. So we want them to [00:14:00] actually create a kind of pipeline for them, they can actually think about their brand more consciously, because they are 45+, 50+. Chances are that they won't get the same kind of package wherever they go next time. They have to become their independent selves; they have to do something. So we are actually creating these kinds of workshops for them to start thinking about it, which is sad to hear in one way. But which is also good that at least they're not being dropped off the sky one day and they are actually eased into that. I mean, it's just a harsh reality that there is ageism in the industry. You can't do anything about it at all and that's what's happening. That's the third reason why there is demand for building personal brands at least at the senior level.
Harish Kumar: And should people be seeing it differently, this internal branding within a company from how you would treat external branding?
Karthik Srinivasan: Not necessarily at all because in my workshops also when I try to explain how to define your own personal brand, it is always a combination of your personal and professional self. It's not just one over the other, or just pick one. For instance, if you're interested in coin collection... Who collects coins these days? That's a different point. But if you're still interested in coin collection, that should not be the only kind of thing that you're actually projecting online. That's just one facet of you as an individual. It needs to be more well-rounded in terms of a definition saying, I'm interested in this, my work interest is this, and my casual interest is this. At least there are three elements that are coming. So, you have three areas to play around with content more frequently.
If you just keep coins, then you have only one, you will probably be only active on Instagram and no other place at all. You can't talk about coin collection in any professional sense on LinkedIn. So it doesn't even make sense. Unless you are a professional coin collector, which doesn't make any sense. They’re probably very far and few. So it's always a combination of things. If you just focus only on one thing and go deep into that, [00:16:00] which is perfectly fine, which is good, but it won't help from a professional point of view.
Harish Kumar: One more thing that struck me Karthik was that the process of creation of the so called branding assets, whether you call it a podcast or a blog, or a newsletter has been democratized a lot. It was earlier as well. But even now, it has been democratized. So ideally, you should see a glut of content, in fact, a lot of bad content as well. But if you just do a dipstick style survey among corporate professionals, I don't know of too many people or it is their shying away from talking about something that they're doing. So what explains this paradox, then? I mean, there is a lot of content out there. But when you talk to these corporate professionals, they aren't creating that content. Why is this paradox?
Karthik Srinivasan: The paradox is possibly because people don't start in the right space. The starting is a brand definition. You need to define what you want people to think you have, or what people should take away about who this person is? Who is Harish? They need to have one line, it's almost like an elevator pitch. That is a starting point. Then you build that elevator pitch into a brand definition saying, Harish is this, he needs to be known for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. That's the brand definition. Once you set the brand definition, you need to use that as a guideline to work towards a specific set of content. The problem is that people know that they need to have a brand. They sit in front of a new post on LinkedIn saying, aaj kya post karna hai. That's a problem. And they just think, write, write, whatever comes to their mind. It is not like that at all.
The process is you need to have the post ready in your mind at least one week before you post it. Because every single post advertises who you are. If you don't worry about what it is advertising about you, then you will just impulsively write something, it doesn't add up to something. [00:18:00] Maybe chances are, if you just think about it for five minutes, and you've got a great post, it goes viral. But you can't replicate it again and again, it's just a fluke. You can't do it again and again. So it will be like one big thing and people remember you and then they forget all of it. Consistency is what matters. Not just one big blip. Consistency is what matters.
Harish Kumar: At this point, Karthik, I'm going to take a small pause, because we're going to ask you a quiz question. At Choose to Thinq, we love our quizzing. Just to make sure that there's something at stake, you will actually win a prize for every question that you get right. I have two questions for today's session. Both are somewhere very closely related to you as well. And the prize is you get a slot in one of our CTQ Compound batches. So, that's what is at stake. This is the first question, should probably be easy for you: Who is supposed to be the first person to have bought a Macintosh in Europe?
Karthik Srinivasan: Wow. Mac in Europe. Is it Douglas Adams?
Harish Kumar: It is Douglas Adams.
Karthik Srinivasan: If you're asking me that question, that should be the answer! He was a pioneer. I really miss him on Twitter. He would have been a superstar on Twitter, poor guy died long before Twitter, unfortunately.
Harish Kumar: Great answer there Karthik. So you got one discount code for the CTQ Compound. Let's move to the next section. We talked about building a personal brand and also getting down to the actual nuts and bolts of posting and stuff. How much do you think [00:20:00] is it a problem for people with building a habit or routine? It's like, a lot of people sign up for these online courses, but very few actually complete them. Like you said, you see a lot of people starting a blog, or a newsletter, they expect it to go viral. I don't know what's the definition of that virality. But they expect that, want that, they don't get it and they probably stop it. And we know that the brand is going to be built when you are consistent about it. So is it more of a mind-set problem of inability to stick to habits. This is what, January 13th, a lot of new year's resolutions would have been broken by now. So is that a bigger challenge than even thinking about the brand identity?
Karthik Srinivasan: Absolutely, yes. But brand identity is first. People don't think about it. And the fact that all these channels are freely available. LinkedIn is free, Facebook is free, Twitter is free, everything is free. It's right at their disposal. So they can easily dip into it occasionally when they get time. But then they think, what do I post? I have no clue. That's there. The fact is, the tools are with them, with everybody. Tools are just there to be exploited. They can be badly exploited or well exploited, that's up to them. So the brand definition is important to guide them towards the right direction. But once the guidance is done, you need to stick to it. The biggest or the best analogy that I can give is you spoke about resolution. Most people's New Year's resolutions are around physical health, usually. Hit the gym, or you pay the gym for 12 months, so that guilt itself will keep you going to the gym every day. Or you actually sign-up to Cult.Fit or something like that, whatever you do. Most people's resolutions are like that.
Suppose if you want to [00:22:00] sculpt your body, that's your resolution, and then you hit the gym on January 1, very honestly you do that. By the time you reach January 22, if you start looking at your biceps, will it be bulging? It won't be bulging because it's just 22 days, nothing would have worked. You have to look at it in October or November, if you have been consistent enough over a period of time. Then there will be some kind of response which you don't need to look at, others will look at you and tell, Hey, what changed man? You've been very consistent at the gym, is it? People will notice it. Personal branding is exactly like that. If you are not consistent with that, it won't show up at all.
You need to just persist and go on and on with it. After a point, people will talk about it, Hey, I read the post about you. And then you will know, my god, this is working. It's not that millions of people will tell you hey, I read the post about you. That one person saying, matters, because that one random person has no clue who you are, and you had no clue who that person is. But suddenly they are saying I read the post. What do you think about it? That's how it works, like exactly in health. If you don't put that effort, nothing will show. If you put that effort, everything will show.
Harish Kumar: In fact, when I talked about CTQ Compounds earlier, the prize that you won. It was built around this whole notion of compounding interest. Even what Scott Adams keeps talking about, systems versus goals. You've mentioned that in your book as well. It's about reading that we started with. So we ourselves internally have been reading for the last 1000+ days, actually started on January 1st, 2018. We've completed 3+ years of reading every day. Earlier, we were reading only book summaries. Now we have expanded to other things. Now we have opened it up as a retail product for people. They now treat it as a curiosity diet, 15 minutes of reading every day, we make sure that you get something interesting. Your time is going to be well spent.
We understand the power of compounding, doing it every day; [00:24:00] and also the design of routines and habits that will ensure that it is something which can be sustained. Have you designed or developed any routines for yourself, which helped you stay the course this way?
Karthik Srinivasan: Obviously, that's the whole point actually. Because I strongly suggest, even in my workshops with corporates, I suggest that yes, your brand definition is fine. Your tools are with you. Everything is there. But unless you build a daily habit of it, it will just fall through the cracks. You won't do anything at all. For the daily habit, I strongly tell them that 90% of your work is away from people. It is not in front of people. It's away from your people. It is your reading, researching, assimilating, articulating in your own head, cross questioning your own thoughts. Is it right? Is it wrong? Am I on the right track? Am I just getting the gist of it right? Do I need to read more? That is what's happening in the background. People don't see that at all. What they see is only 10%. You finally share something, and based on that 10%, they form a perception about who this individual is. But the 90% work will actually impact the 10% based on which your perception gets better.
There is a quote in Scott Adams book, "The more you know, the more you can know." It is so true. I strongly suggest to people; you need to read 10x more than what you share. Unless you read 10x more, you won't be able to connect the dots and understand what you're writing. If you don't read, you will just look at a blank new post, and then write whatever comes to your mind, then just vomit it impulsively. There is no point in it at all. You can try it of course, I mean, it is a free country, you can try it. But there's no point. You're not building towards something.
I strongly focus on reading, researching and articulating more and much less on the sharing part. The sharing part is important, how you articulate the share, how you frame it, what is the central point, everything is important. But before that is the research part. [00:26:00] That is very crucial. That research will come only when you put time. And for that you need to build content pipelines that come to you. You don't go to the internet and say, Where do I search for this information? Because the internet is a bottomless pit, you can get lost in it. That's a problem. There are various ways that you can build content pipelines. For instance, one of the things I strongly recommend is newspapers. If you subscribe to at least 10 different newspapers, they're not very expensive, thankfully. If you subscribe to 10 different newspapers, you get 10 various points of view on the same topic, which is very valuable. The biggest advantage of newspapers is, they are not uni-dimensional in one topic. They actually cover whatever happened in the world in the last 24 hours in a whole wide spectrum. So you can actually skim on the headlines and then, Oh, this happened, this happened, this happened. You don't need to actually by-heart them. But it will stay in your mind in the backdrop and when you see something else later after 10 days, you can connect the dots saying - Hey, I saw that ad, and this is happening - connect the dots. You're able to connect the dots which nobody else would, because you are just skimming newspapers. So newspapers are one.
I still swear by RSS feeds. These really work well. I use Feedly. It is a free RSS tool reader. It works very well. Google Keyword alerts, there is a lot of spam. There are a lot of problems in terms of filter to noise ratio. But still, it keeps me alert on some of the topics or some of the brands that I'm tracking. Twitter lists work very well also. I put them in a separate list and track only them. And email newsletters. There are a lot of newsletters that are very focused and topic centric. The news comes to you. You don't need to go in search of it and waste time. It comes to you everybody. So these are the content pipelines that I built. Whenever I want to research something, I just go to my own pipelines. I don't start on a blank slate saying, What do we research about? It’s right here. I make notes here and there. That helps me look and decide what to write about. Okay, I've got about 10 different notes, [00:28:00] research, use more research, think about this more, cross question yourself more and then get to the point and write. So, you need to build a content pipeline for even the habits to kick in. Habits won't kick in automatically. You need to enable yourself to get into that habit, ideally.
Harish Kumar: Right. It's about building the right environment for those systems to stick. In fact, when you were talking, I was reminded of R. K. Laxman's quote about how he used to come up with the common man cartoons. He would just read the newspaper, and it would strike.
Karthik Srinivasan: Correct. Our news is full of such kinds of thoughts, anyway.
Harish Kumar: In fact, even Yes, Minister, and Yes, Prime Minister also, the premise is very similar. They didn't have to really cook up anything, they could just look at the debates in the parliament and come up with these sketches. What about any software tools? Do you recommend people use any tools for say scheduling? You talked about RSS feeds and Google Alerts, what about some of these so called low level tasks, like scheduling? You may not have a rich, fertile day every day. One day is very good. So do you save some of that for a dry day?
Karthik Srinivasan: I generally don't use any scheduling. I've tried all the tools. I've tried tools like Buffer and everything. I've tried the paid version, free version, and quite a few of the scheduling tools also. I've tried most of them. Hootsuite, paid version, free version, all those I've tried anyway. But I'm not a big fan of scheduling at all. I stick to my time; I keep an alarm. If I'm not able to do it, I'll just do it later. But I will do it manually, myself, because I need to track if there is any click through, is there any call to action happening? Do I need to repeat it? So, I don't automate any of the processes. I do it manually so that I'm completely on top of them.
In terms of tools, some of [00:30:00] the lowest level tools that help me is Google Keep. The Google Keep note that actually syncs between my Mac and my phone, because I use an Android phone. It is literally everything because whenever I read, I make a quick note of, ‘This thought sounds interesting. This stands out. I need to research more about it later. I seem to have read something about this 10 days ago, I need to look up on that.’ I just make those notes here and there. There are so many notes in my Google Keep notes. Whenever I want to get some inspiration to what do I write about? I just go there. And there are 100 things waiting for me to explore more. Pick one, research, and there is something. Google Keep is literally my only tool that I use extensively.
Harish Kumar: Right. I have been experimenting with Evernote for some time. I've been trying to integrate...
Karthik Srinivasan: The same kind of tool.
Harish Kumar: Right. But again, slight digression. This whole idea of personal information management, it's becoming a beast of its own. There's so much information, so many thoughts, so many ideas, so many comments that you want to track, and you want to be in a position where you can retrieve them. Do you also use physical notes, pen and paper, or everything is on Google Keep?
Karthik Srinivasan: Keep, everything is Google Keep, quite literally. I used to use a Google draft message on Gmail. But I figured the hard way that if you delete a Gmail draft message, it doesn't go to the trash. It gets completely vaporized off of the internet. You can't retrieve it at all. So I stopped using it and then moved to Google Keep, safely.
Harish Kumar: Thanks for this tip. I didn't know this. I'm sure it will be useful for at least one...
Karthik Srinivasan: It's very important. It's a big deal actually. I lost something very valuable because I used to keep everything on a Google draft mail. I just deleted it by mistake. I didn't even know I deleted it. I go there again, it's not there. I go to the trash. It's not there. Then I read online, [00:32:00] it gets evaporated off the internet. Why? I have no clue at all!
Harish Kumar: Slightly, again, a different question here, Karthik. Some people feel what they say and it might be very genuine also that their interests keep changing. Some people's interests are all about their work. If you talk to say founders, entrepreneurs, they will probably be living and breathing their product, their startup. So what's your advice to such people? There is this tendency or this fear that Oh, we might end up being very boring, because we don't have those many interests - like how we started the conversation - I have only one interest. What's your advice to such people?
Karthik Srinivasan: To people, my advice is it's a very big world. If you pre-assume with a preconceived notion, saying my interest, talking about only my product will be boring to the world, also make the assumption that there will be enough people in the world who might not see it as boring.
For instance, take an example of Manu Kumar Jain. You notice any of his posts on any of the platforms, it's always about Xiaomi. There is nothing else. Even when he's sharing a photo from Goa where he is vacationing with the family and his dog, it says, Here I am in Goa, I'm enjoying the beach and my dog is playing with a Frisbee. And by the way, this photo has been taken by Xiaomi MI10, whatever phone, etc. So you're wondering, Is he trying to advertise his new phone? Or is he talking about his vacation at all. But that's his personality. His personality is so closely tied to who he is from a company point of view. And he is his company, the company is him in India. You cannot remove that. They are just together like one, quite literally. But he doesn't worry about it. If I talk too much about Xiaomi, would I become a brand brochure? Of course, he is a brand brochure to [00:34:00] me. To hundreds of other people, people think, Oh, wow, I get to know so much about Xiaomi from him. So, it's perfectly fine.
It doesn't matter what I think or few people think it is boring. It could be half the world. But there is another half of the world who won't think you're boring. At least try to give them the content. Why try to bother about people who think you're boring? Move away from them and go to people that think that you're interesting. Keep at it. That's it.
Harish Kumar: A lot of these things, as we keep unpacking your answers, it's all about mindset. A lot of these internal censor boards that we have, whether it's the imposter syndrome, or even with something like retweeting content, resharing content. You feel you've put out something and some people have this feeling of guilt that, Oh, am I actually less creative by not posting something again. Your thoughts on that, is that something that people suffer from?
Karthik Srinivasan: In fact, that's precisely my post about today. There is a post that I've written about in my blog. That's the topic today because I was thinking about how often do you see people repeating their content. Large media groups do that. For instance, if you follow the Times of India handle or the ET handle on Twitter or any other platform, they do that. For example, the kind of content they have spent a lot of time researching, they actually repeat it multiple times. Take a TV news channel, I will not watch TV news channels in probably one or two years at all. But at least the time when I used to watch them, they used to repeat their programs very often. Even the headlines. They keep repeating every one hour, by the end of 3 hours, you're bored with it already, and you know them by heart. They do that.
But individuals, they think, If I repeat it, would people think I'm desperate, why am I repeating? But that's also a function of where they're repeating, with the kind of platforms they're repeating it. For instance, today's blog post was about three specific things that I did [00:36:00] not want to do but I eventually learnt that I can do it without making it sound different.
First is repeating content. The point is, if you keep repeating content on Facebook and LinkedIn, people would probably think you're a dork, you're doing it again and again. Because the chances of your first content being seen by a lot of people is very high. They have a slow timeline. Time moves very slowly on a LinkedIn or a Facebook timeline. On Twitter, it's a blazing fast timeline. What happens now in this minute, the whole world changes in two minutes. So if you repeat on Twitter, four times, what you have written, even if people see it, already they have seen and they are repeating, and nobody cares, because things move fast. On LinkedIn, if you repeat, people think, 'Why is this guy repeating the content again and again?' might be a question. But you can still argue saying, I don't care about what people think of me on LinkedIn, when I repeat, I will repeat it. For instance, something like Virgin head, Branson, repeats his content very often. He just changes the line and repeats the content very often. If he can do it, we are normal mortals, ordinary souls, we can do it 10 times more than him. I mean, what's the reason for him doing it? He's trying to build a personal brand. He already has a personal brand offline. But he's trying to do it on LinkedIn. So he does it. So it's perfectly fine. Repeating is totally fine. No problem at all. The only mind-set is we think chaar log kya sochenge? That's what we go by. We are Indians, we always go back to woh chaar log kya sochenge, that's a problem. If we go past it, we can probably conquer the world.
Of course, these are actually hacks. These are not the legitimate way to build a brand. These are not the most credible way to build a brand. Some people would think that you are repeating it, you are desperate. But if the content is good enough, they will probably forgive you saying, Yeah, you're repeating it. But by the time the second time happened, that's when I saw it first and it worked. I've actually tracked this. When I actually tried repeating it, I tracked the first time I wrote something in the morning, I shared it, how many people clicked on it through a bitly link? When I reshared it in the afternoon, just before lunch, how many people clicked. When I reshare it [00:38:00] in the evening, at around five or six, how many people clicked, and in the night I do that. I see that the second or third is probably working much better than the first. So there is genuine use or purpose in repeating it. That's why I do it.
Initially, people used to question me saying you are repeating your own content, you are repeating your own content. But now I don't think anybody cares. If I probably start doing it on LinkedIn, a fresh set of people might ask me. But I just need to let go, saying that's not the point. The point is the new people that will see the content afresh, they are the point, not the people who have already seen the content. They can say anything they want, as long as they get value the first time or second time that should be good enough.
Harish Kumar: The content actually deserves that extra audience which you are denying.
Karthik Srinivasan: According to you... in your own head. You've put the research to it. Of course, if you don't promote your content, who will?
Harish Kumar: In fact, I don't remember the movie for which A. R. Rahman said this once. I think he had this album in Tamil, and he said the movie did very badly in Tamil. This deserves a bigger audience and he used the same tunes in Hindi.
Karthik Srinivasan: There are so many like that, if you ask me.
Harish Kumar: A slight digression here again, Karthik. What about other languages, especially in a country like India, and I'm going to quote a more personal example. My father is a great recountist. He tells a lot of stories, and he snips out stories in his life and then he tells them in a very interesting, engaging manner. So when he retired from government service, I introduced him to the world of blogging and all of that. I said, Why don't you blog? So he started blogging, and he was writing in English. And then he said, It's just me, Ramanand, and my sister who used to read his blog posts. So then he said, I don't want to put in so much effort for just three readers. [00:40:00] He switched to Telugu and he's now become like a Telugu internet celebrity, writing stories, takes on different things. Whatever comes to mind. He will see an umbrella and he'll write something about an umbrella or something that happened to him. And he has fans from all over the world now. Some of his blog posts have been plagiarized into Telugu serial episodes.
Karthik Srinivasan: My god! He has truly arrived then.
Harish Kumar: He says, This is working for me. And he hardly talks about his government service. It's more about life in general, but he has now formed a brand of his own. I can see that. I've seen that develop over the last 10-15 years. So, is that something which should even be considered, looking at an alternate language medium for corporate professionals? Or should we all be thinking only English first?
Karthik Srinivasan: Not necessarily at all, not English at all. There is a dearth of good quality content in Indian regular languages, whether it's Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, it doesn't matter what language, there is a dearth. Initially, the dearth was in a way forced by the lack of keyboards available for those languages, long ago. Now most languages, Indian languages, have keyboards. Even the Google keyboard itself, it's there. You can type in very easily. But forget the keyboard, you've got video now. You can just talk in the language very frequently. You don't need to type anything at all, just talk and make a video. Live video, simple. But even then, there is a dearth of languages. All the language content is probably clubbed under a forward in WhatsApp, or probably in Facebook and everywhere. You don't see much on places like Twitter, or Instagram, or even LinkedIn.
But if you look at some of the Latin American handles on LinkedIn, they speak only in their language, [00:42:00] they don't care about English at all. You need to use feed translation to understand what they are saying. If you see some of the German handles on LinkedIn, they speak only in German. They don't speak anything else. If you go to Korea, no English at all, they don't care. They obviously forcefully don't care. They write in their own language, and the world has to translate and understand it. Because they come to this content. We don't do that very often, partly because most of the metro dwellers in India have stopped even thinking in their own mother-tongue. Even if we want to, we can't. We don't find the right words to fit in, and English comes more, which is not bad. It's not bad or good. It's just the way we have evolved, unfortunately.
I strongly believe that we need to stick to our mother-tongue, understand it, learn it, and try to actually practice it somehow. But the practical opportunities are much less. I love Tamil, which is actually my mother-tongue. I'm thankful that I can read, speak and write in Tamil. But I can't think in Tamil, which is the most important part. I want to think, but I just can't think at all. The right words flow better in English. I need to strain my thoughts to get the right words in Tamil. I do get it. But it's a process. It's a very laborious process. It takes more time. English just flows. Automatically my mind just flows in English. In Tamil, I have to consciously think, right word, wrong word, is there a better word, I need to juggle with all that like a child learning the language for the first time. But if you are comfortable in that language as a professional, go ahead and put your thoughts in that language.
The kind of audience you will suddenly discover is innumerable, because India's a vast country. Each state is very large with a lot of people. So it's a huge opportunity and not many people are exploring it or exploiting it. They are going with the flow with English as a default. Why can't you be the Tamil international techie? The Tamil is just the identity because you are from that state, but you are an international techie working in coding and whatever it is, and you [00:44:00] always share your opinions on everything that's happening in the world in Tamil on LinkedIn. You will probably be one of the very few doing it. And you will be a standout because of that. There are no issues on that at all. We need to do it more often.
Harish Kumar: We need to be the purple cows.
Karthik Srinivasan: Absolutely, yes.
Harish Kumar: And what about the need to amplify content for personal branding? Political parties of all shades will have dedicated followers, brands will pay agencies, they will have bots. Even though Apple has never actually posted a tweet, their promoted tweets are there all over everyone's timelines. But most individuals will not have a troll army of their own. So is that a problem? Should people even be bothered about the need to amplify or the lack of resources to amplify?
Karthik Srinivasan: Resources toh hai sabke paas. I mean, most people have their resources because online amplification doesn't take much money. It's not like a front page ad or a page ad that you take in Times of India at all. It's an online ad. You can boost or promote a post on LinkedIn, you can boost it on Instagram, Facebook, and even Twitter, it's fairly easy to do that. But from a personal brand building point of view, while you can do that, and it's really available to anybody and everybody, it's not even expensive these days.
While you do that, the first option when somebody sees a promoted blog post, from an individual, which is not a company or whatever, is that 'they are trying too hard', which is not bad at all. Let them think 'they're trying too hard'. As long as the content is valuable, let them think 'trying too hard'. But it’s possible that they will think, It's just a blog post, and what does he gain out of it, and he's trying to promote it in my timeline. That's the kind of thinking that usually happens. If you go past that thinking, saying, What will people think, again, What will those four people think? Please go ahead and promote it. I considered it. But I dropped that idea. Because I didn't [00:46:00] want that hack-level of visibility. I wanted visibility and personal brand based on consistency of effort.
So, it's not just a one off promotion and get something and then build an audience, but just be at it. I don't want millions of followers. Even 100 followers are good enough for me, but they stick to me because I deliver value consistently over a period of time. And I need to work hard towards that. That's my approach. But if your approach is you want a big bang, you want to promote it, the tools are available for everybody these days. It's very easy, and fairly cheap. Please go ahead and do it. There is no harm in it at all, if you go past what the people say.
Harish Kumar: Right. And there's always this danger of, if you have a strong opinion on something, there's always this danger, there's something lurking around is the fear that people have. And I think I have actually quoted this example of yours to a few people already, where I remember you were posting something about HDFC. I think it was the online banking interface. You said that I am an HDFC customer, and I will continue to be an HDFC customer. But this is a problem that you need to fix. And you were at it for a few months if I'm not wrong.
Karthik Srinivasan: Yes, six months.
Harish Kumar: Yes. And it never felt as if it was a rude complaint. It was the kindest user complaint that you could come across. But the fact that it was persistent, was enough for people like us, who are neither an HDFC client or closely working with you, to know that something is wrong and you are being wronged there. How do you do that, and your experience with that whole campaign, if I were to call it one, talk about that, as well?
Karthik Srinivasan: This spectrum of [00:48:00] like to hate is a very long line. There are no two linears, no two ends. I love it, and I hate it. There are a lot of in between points that most people don't explore at all. For instance, if you take the latest case that everybody's talking about in the world of marketing, it's the brand of soap called Sebamed, which has gone against Dove, Pears, and they've taken the names, etc. If I write about it saying Sebamed did right, by actually going after this because of so and so reason, that doesn't mean that I'm a big fan of Sebamed, and I hate Dove, Pears, etc. It doesn't mean that at all. So I need to bring that in words also. I can't just leave it and then write it, saying people will assume I'm not taking only Sebamed's side. I need to specify and articulate it in specific words saying what Sebamed is doing is just one way to get your attention by being disruptive. Dove is perfectly fine. Pears is good. We have been buying those products for so long. It's not as if once Sebamed said, everything is bad. So there is a whole spectrum of like, I don't like, I like this plus I like this, I hate this plus I love this, there is a lot of ifs and buts possibility.
That campaign I ran over for HDFC is precisely that. I'm still a customer. I've been a customer for maybe two decades. Like Airtel, I've been with them for two decades. I have had my share of problems with them. And I have had my share of very smooth working with everything. My home loans are from HDFC, car loans were HDFC, my lockers, everything is HDFC. I'm not going to move out of them at all because of that one small transgression. It is not a transgression that is a make or break. If it is a make or break, I will make that announcement saying this is big, guys. I'm going to completely quit this. But that was a transgression. It was wrong. It was actually an opt out campaign which should have been opt in. It's a very basic mistake. And I understand why they did it. They have their numbers. They have their targets. This is just an unscrupulous [00:50:00] way of doing business.
But the more unscrupulous they are, their share price keeps going up. I have no clue what is the weird correlation between them. So you cannot shake them at all. Unless their share price shakes, you cannot shake with one person saying the same thing for six months. But the point is it actually gathered so much momentum because I was not antagonistic to HDFC. I was saying it's perfectly fine. HDFC is a good bank. This one thing is a problem. That's about it. Can they please look at it? And I was trying to be as polite as possible, no rude words, again and again, saying please, please, please. I was just begging them to do something. I don't think they have done anything at all. They'll probably continue with the same opt out process unfortunately. But that's their prerogative. I'm not going to change my life because of that.
Harish Kumar: Are different platforms or apps amenable for different kinds of discussions? In a tweet with 280 characters, you're probably not going to be able to introduce those nuances that you can in a slightly longer blog post. And before people realize that yes, there is a subtext to it, they will already form their opinion based on tweet number one. So what do you recommend to people on how to use different platforms for different kinds of content pieces?
Karthik Srinivasan: There is no thumb rule, there is no golden rule or yardstick saying this is better, that is better. Content is just content. I consciously write a much longer post in my blog post, because I have all the liberty to write any longer kind of stuff. Twitter forces you to 280 characters, and LinkedIn forces you to 1299 characters on a timeline. On a Pulse post, you can do a much longer post. But the basic assumption is that people want to stick to their timeline. They don't want to go out of their timeline. On Twitter, that tweet, if it's a thread, they will read everything in their own timeline, because they are inside an app, and they are just scrolling [00:52:00] up, up and up. And if they find something that breaks the flow of scrolling up, click here to go there, and etc., they pause, they hesitate, saying, I'm very comfortable inside my scrolling. Why do I click this at all? Unless you give a very compelling reason with an initial hook saying, Do you know, this is happening? Click here. I mean, it can't be a clickbait, either. It has to be something meaningful or interesting. And then they will click and then go on. Same thing with LinkedIn. Same thing with Facebook, where you have a much longer canvas to create that kind of surprise element to make them click. Click here, click here, compelling version. Twitter gives you a small canvas. Instagram is the biggest problem; you can't even add a link. It has to be a link in my bio. So it's very complicated. So you need to use an image to create that kind of hook.
But it is up to you basically. For instance, you would not want to drive people to a blog at all, you would want to tell people, whatever it is on those platforms. So you just break down into a Twitter thread. You write it on LinkedIn in one post and comment, comment, comment, you write the whole thing. On Facebook, you write a post on Facebook, you can do anything you want. It's not a blog at all. It's basically what works for you. But just think about people wanting to stick to their timelines and not go out of the comfort of their timeline. If you have to assume that as default, you would probably work your way around much better.
Harish Kumar: That's a very useful way of looking at things. So let's take a pause here and go for the next quiz question, Karthik. While watching the film Funtoosh, when he heard the song, Aye meri topi palat ke aa, his first reaction was, My God, that's my tune. He accused the music director of flicking his tune. And the music director agreed. So who are the two people in question here?
Karthik Srinivasan: Good question. I don't even remember watching Funtoosh in a very long time.
Harish Kumar: Dev Anand starrer. [00:54:00]
Karthik Srinivasan: Oh, Dev Anand starrer.
Harish Kumar: Must be 50s. In fact, I kept that song on YouTube on pause if you want to hear. It won't help you.
Karthik Srinivasan: Yeah, I know, it won't help me. I was just thinking it could be either the senior Burman or the junior Burman, one of S. D. Burman, R. D. Burman types, maybe, I'm just guessing.
Harish Kumar: Okay. So you've actually got both the answers right. The music director is S. D. Burman. When S. D. Burman brought R. D. Burman from Calcutta, where he was with his grandmother for some time, to Bombay, he said what do you want to do? You're not doing well in studies and all that. And he said, I want to compose music. So he composed some pieces. Everyone forgot about them. Then one day, R. D. Burman is watching Funtoosh, he says, Oh my god, that is my tune. He wrote and he said you've stolen my tune. And S. D. said, Yes, I did. So I thought this is a reverse itwofs kind of a question.
Karthik Srinivasan: Exactly it is. It is a reverse itwofs kind of question. But between them, they are both brilliant. Both father and son. They are amazing. They're incredible, both of them.
Harish Kumar: So, again, referring to my father, that we spoke of earlier, he was using the word 'bhakt' for me with R. D. Burman much before the word has got the connotation it has got now. Then people keep pointing itwofs to me with different R. D. Burman songs, and I say, Yeah, this is great. But he's also done a lot of other things.
Karthik Srinivasan: Aur bhi hai. Correct.
Harish Kumar: So there's always this danger. Because itwofs is all about these inspired songs. Back then, [00:56:00] a lot of people also took it probably with some kind of a noble intention that Yeah, I want this piece to reach a wider audience, or whatever. But it's very easy for people to then brand these people, Oh, they are cheats.
Karthik Srinivasan: Copycats.
Harish Kumar: How do you actually address that? Again, this is a nuance, how do you address that?
Karthik Srinivasan: Again, the same answer is that the line between I hate and love is so long, it's a spectrum. It is not two things alone. It's not just a dichotomy. It's a spectrum, there is so much more. You can hate a composer for one particular copy and you can love that composer for another song, which is not copied, till it's probably found to be copied, of course. Even then, you don't have to hate it. You can probably like both the songs, both the original and this. And you can also put it in your mind saying, if they had given credit, it would have been good. They didn't do it. Fine. What do you want me to do about it? I like this song. I like the original song. I like the copied version also. So, big deal. What's the big deal about it? It's not personally affecting me. It's just some song and some other song. I like both. I see it as more positive. I got two songs to love now instead of only one.
The more I listen to the copied version, the more I'm able to understand the composer's mind space. How did they think, I heard this. Let me change this. Let me Indianise it this way. I'm fascinated by the thought process. My most favorite example is a whiter shade of pale, which inspired R. D. Burman for a song in Hindi. You need to check on itwofs, you will know which song he composed. It is so beautifully inspired. I get goosebumps when I hear the original and the Hindi version. I'm saying, This is brilliant, man, you should have just given one credit, your whole song would have gone to the world saying, This is how we did it, it would have gone. It's so sad actually.
Harish Kumar: So, you don't really need to get into value judgment all the time.
Karthik Srinivasan: Absolutely not. You can like both. No problem at all. [00:58:00]
Harish Kumar: Enjoy them.
Karthik Srinivasan: Absolutely.
Harish Kumar: Coming to the next section, Karthik. Are there more challenges for women professionals and leaders when building a personal brand or building a social brand?
Karthik Srinivasan: Most definitely yes. Particularly from an online space. For some reason, not for some reason, for most obvious reasons, they get trolled indefinitely more than men. Particularly for women who are very assertive, who are very confident and who are very good. Who have actually very good command over a language that they are writing in, and who have got very good qualifications, educational qualifications or very top positions. They get trolled as if they don't deserve all this, which is just a very outdated kind of mind-set. But that's the ugly nature of social media, partly because of the anonymity it provides. You can be an anonymous spec in a room with two people following you or just two big trolls. And you can actually troll the highest qualified woman who's saying something very meaningful and purposeful, using all our experience and perspectives and saying, you just reduce everything to saying, Oh, you don't like that leader. That's why you're saying this.
It happened very recently with Gagandeep Kang. It happened very recently, because she just questioned the process of the vaccines, and people reduced her entire qualification and everything to, Ah, you have said something bad about Modi in the past. That's why you're saying all this. That's not the point. She can be this and she can be that also. As I said, it's a spectrum again. People don't get that spectrum. They linearly get into ones and zeros only. That's the problem. They just look at yin and yang and if you're not yin, you're yang. If you're not yang, you're yin. Finished. That's the problem and this gets far worse for women.
Unfortunately, I have no words to say about how to deal with this. I can say that you need to be confident and flow on. But that's easier said than done because it affects your mind. The more bad [01:00:00] things you read in terms of response. I mean, you have some tools within Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn to block them, mute them. But unless you read them, you can't block them. And when you read them, your mind is affected. We are humans, actually. I can say you need to be confident, and you can ignore all that and move on. But even I'm affected when I read those bad posts. So I can imagine what they will be going through. I don't have an answer to it at all, you can't just wish it away. It exists. We just have to live with it the hard way, unfortunately.
Harish Kumar: Right. And talking on similar lines, are different apps platforms, in people's minds, do they have a different sense of proximity? For example, if you posted something on Twitter, and people started arguing, or trolling you, you probably may not, and I could be speaking about myself here that, you probably are going to be taking that less personally than say something that you posted on a WhatsApp group of say, your classmates or some company because you know most people there. You take that more personally, that Oh, why is this person thinking like this? Is that true?
Karthik Srinivasan: Actually, it's not platform-centric. It's platform-agnostic. My broad advice to anybody who's reasonably active on the internet, or just trying on the internet is don't take anything personally, from any stranger. If it is coming from somebody who you know, and they know you, at some level, whatever past level, for instance, even if you have chatted with somebody on Twitter in the past, and then suddenly they ask something of you, which doesn't seem to reflect on the earlier chat, then at least you have some reason to take it personally.
If it's coming from a complete stranger, who you have no clue who that's at all, don't take it personally. It's not personal at all, because they don't know you at all, to be personal. [01:02:00] Absolutely don't take it. It's not platform-centric, it is people-centric and in most social networking, because it's happening between known people, you can afford to take something personally because there is prior contact between both. If there is no prior contact, move on, ignore it and move on. Yeah, say whatever, man, it doesn't matter.
Harish Kumar: Karthik, about the way you post, you've written in your book as well that you write something and then you look at it again, rephrase it, reframe it. Do you aim for a certain cadence for your blog posts and tweets? For example, do you post about an ad, when you come across one? Or do you look for one in order to meet, say, a target of posting. And some of the best ads that I have come across have been because I've been following you on Twitter. So how do you do that? What's the secret to that and what's your routine there?
Karthik Srinivasan: It is both, actually, to some extent, because I have put a cadence in my own head saying I need to blog every weekday. Every weekday, I need to have at least one blog post in my blog. I need to keep the blog fresh every single day. And because of that, I actually read a lot of stuff, whether it's on ad, whether it's from what's happening in PR, communications, marketing, I read a lot. I get paranoid when I don't have enough thoughts in my head. So I want to fill more thoughts, I want to keep on assimilating them.
If I don't have anything, I get very worried and I start watching Netflix, which is very passive. I'm just consuming. I'm not thinking at all. Then I look for something on Netflix, which will make me think, so that I can write something. It is always about wanting to keep the spokes in my mind churning, not stuck with watching something but keep running. So, I keep reading a lot. And, for instance, I generally don't impulsively write about something that's new. For instance, on the new Sebamed ad, I didn't write when it broke last Friday. I wrote about [01:04:00] it only on Monday. I waited for it. I searched more, I read more, but I immediately wrote about it on Twitter and LinkedIn as a brief note, but a longer blog post came after about two or three days after something happened, and some response happened and then you start writing about it. So it's not that impulsive at all. I always want to think harder than I thought.
But sometimes it will be the reverse because something so big happens and I can't wait for it to be shared with the world because I have something specific to add. There is a nice perspective there. And I immediately go to it. But I don't write because I need to fit that one post a day. I usually have about five posts ready to post every day. For at least one week of content, I already have it ready and I break that flow if something breaking comes up and then write something else. So for tomorrow's post, the day after, I already have it ready. I don't want to write about it today because it's already ready. So I actually think like a magazine editor. What is going to be my cover page next month? I need to keep it ready now, otherwise I can't work on it. I can't work at the last minute at all.
Harish Kumar: I think that's a great thing. Anyone who hasn't read Karthik's book must read. There's some excellent tips there about making sure that you don't fall into this bottomless pit as well. The one thing that really struck me was the 10-10, 5-5 routine that you have. I think it's a great way of protecting your time as well, and ensuring that you get the value that you want. So if you can quickly talk about that, it will probably become a more compelling reason for people to go and buy that book.
Karthik Srinivasan: Absolutely. 10-10, 5-5 is very simple. That's mainly for the working professionals, not necessarily for people who are individual or independent, who can do a lot more. It is basically to have small pockets of time across the day, say about 10 minutes of time, every one or two hours. It need not be exactly what I've written in [01:06:00] the book, you can actually play around with the format and technique on your own. It's basically saying 10 minutes before the end of every hour or before the end of every two hours in a day, keep a calendar slot saying, I need to read. I need to consume. Five minutes of the day, I need to write something down, I need to make a note, I need to make a Keep note. If you don't force yourself at a calendar level, you will never do it. You will think baad mein karenge. I will do it later. And that later will never come. It's like just bookmarking something, I will see it later, you will never see it because you are not making time for it. You need to make time for it.
It can even be 5-5-5-5. Have five minute slots across the day for four or five times a day. And put a calendar alert on your phone on your calendar. It needs to tell you this is the time to read. And then you don't start saying what do I read? Because you've built your content pipeline, you go to the pipeline, say start consuming right now. Have five minutes and then read and then move on. Just cut it out and move on because you have got other work to do. It can even be 15 minutes a day, across four times a day. Have the cadence, but the cadence needs to be calendarised. If you don't calendarise it, it won't become a habit. And if it does not become a habit, you can't be consistent. It's all a chain actually.
Harish Kumar: I think that's a very robust and sustainable mechanism of actually operationalizing what we have all been talking about. So that's great. An under the bonnet kind of a question for you, Karthik. As it happens with most adoption of new technology and trends, it's usually the younger lot who are the first to pick up something? So how do you stay on top of the latest apps and latest trends?
Karthik Srinivasan: I keep trying everything just based on my own curiosity. How does it work? What does it do? What kind of new features were added? It all depends on your curiosity. If you're curious, you will go everywhere. If you are not curious, regardless of what age you are, it doesn't [01:08:00] matter. You just won't expand your mind or open your mind to get new information at all. All it requires is to be curious, keep questioning everything. Why is this working like this? What is new about this? What is the latest news about this? Keep questioning and that curiosity will take you places, regardless of your age.
Harish Kumar: But there are some trends and some apps which don't probably make their way to the kind of sources that you are looking at. So how do you make sure that you're on top of such trends?
Karthik Srinivasan: There are many things I'm not on top of at all. For instance, Instagram, I joined only probably last to last year, maybe 2019 or 2018. I joined very late compared to the rest of the world. The whole world was going gaga on Instagram. I did not join at all because I am not a visual first person. I am a text first person, slightly old worldish. I'm a word-first person. And for a word-first person, Instagram was a very constricting kind of platform. It was not naturally suited to word-first at all. It was naturally suited to visual-first. So I had to really work hard on how to mould Instagram in a way that helps me and not in a way that is supposed to be used by the young people. I don't use it that way at all. I use it in a very corny stupid way. That's what people can say. But it works for me, no problem at all. It works perfectly for me. I used it that way. But it took me so long to even join. I joined Instagram, I tried something, it didn't work for me at all. I completely dropped it.
So most of the Instagram trends and topics and nuances, I had no clue at all. In fact, I still don't know many things at all. I just do whatever comes to my mind. But there are many things that I'm completely missing on Instagram because I have no clue that this is how this works. I'm supposed to like my own comments and whatever thing; I have no clue. I don't do it at all. I just use it like LinkedIn and Twitter. And it works for me so far. I don't want millions of followers. The minimum 100-200 followers that are following and finding value, that's good enough. One person commenting under my [01:10:00] Instagram post saying that was a fantastic ad, Karthik. Thank you so much for it. That's more than enough for me. I don't want 1000s of people saying that.
Harish Kumar: Broadly speaking, the principles of how you use different apps, and how you actually go about thinking about this, I think remains the same. And that is timeless. So let's come to the last section, Karthik, where we talk about future relevance. I'll give you some terms, areas, words, and I want you to comment on what you think, is the future relevance of that thing? So the first and quite a few of them are related to each other. But I want you to draw those nuances. The first one is content marketing, what do you think is the future relevance of content marketing?
Karthik Srinivasan: Very interesting question. I'm thinking from the Substack level, because Substack is making a lot of news right now. People are becoming independent content publishers more often, because if you look at least three, four years before, or even before that, everybody's objective was to be featured in an already popular publication, or already popular platform. I write for HBR, I write for Economic Times, I write for Forbes India, whatever it is, that used to be the objective. And that third party validation used to be the most important thing from a content marketing perspective. But now, they are all trying to create their own newsletters, whether it's paid or free. It doesn't matter at all.
They're building their own community in a way, not a community in the sense, but they're building their own audience, which they can see, saying 730 subscribers, 1000 subscribers out of which 10 are paying. So, I think content marketing is getting more and more individual. As it actually gets more democratized, it's getting more individual and micro, and not necessarily people trying to ride on existing [01:12:00] popular third party platforms. Because I am part of that, I have arrived, it is now this way also. You get your own micro. This is something that I've been doing since 1999, quite easily. But without Substack as a thing. The only point is, you just keep doing it. Whether you're doing it in a blog or Substack. I think people are catching up to that now through Substack as a platform, now they're doing it. I see this more often, even on LinkedIn.
There are some people who are extremely consistent with the kind of content they write. And they are there. They show up almost every single day, they do it. Whether you call it a Substack or LinkedIn, the objective is the same: be in front of people very, very often on a few topics so that people are able to relate those topics with you very strongly. That's the whole objective. But it's getting more internalized right now. The one difference between Substack and LinkedIn is the content on LinkedIn is searchable. Substack is not searchable. So you need to join, to be able to read the content. Without joining the community, you can't do anything. I think it is getting more micro, but it's a good process. It is actually a good thing to happen.
Harish Kumar: What about apps like Twitter, LinkedIn, how do you see them panning out, especially with the de-platforming of Trump, every country is now thinking of alternatives to Twitter. WhatsApp now has this brouhaha around Signal. What about the future relevance of these apps?
Karthik Srinivasan: I think these apps will continue to stay. There might be better legal guardrails for not allowing something like Trump to happen for so long. And then towards the end, when he's trying to lose power, or when he is almost on the verge of losing power, people come back to him saying no, you can't do that. They should have done it long ago. But there were no guidelines to do so. In fact, the guidelines do the opposite: don't do anything at all. Those are the guidelines even from the US law perspective. I think the legal guidelines will [01:14:00] get more.
In fact, I probably read this in the Financial Times yesterday. Merkel had said something like, the German Chancellor Merkel had said that what happened with Trump with regard to Twitter and Facebook is wrong, because those decisions were not taken by lawmakers. They were taken by private tech companies. She said, yes, you should take those decisions, but with the backing of the right regulation, by the backing of the law itself, and not individually on your own. So I think she has a point. I think Europe as a whole is working much harder in that direction. If you notice, most tech companies have a much harder time in Europe. And they pay millions of fines, they get really bad PR all over Europe, but in the US they run completely amok, and then pay a price much later. But in Europe, they are trying to do that. I don't think both have got the right mix, whether in the US and Europe.
They're all trying but the US doesn't seem to be trying as hard as Europe. Europe seems to be trying much harder. I think it needs more legal guardrails, which are thought through based on common sense, not on partisan politics, but on common sense and a much longer thought. I think they will continue to stay with those guardrails simply.
Harish Kumar: What about digital data privacy in India?
Karthik Srinivasan: I think it's running completely amok right now. You look at Aadhar, you look at everything. There is no serious question about privacy regulations. There are things around data privacy, laws and clauses and everything being brought about. But there are also a lot of loopholes. There are a lot of backdoor entries here and there, which everybody exploits and a few people talk about it. A few people talk about it in a very criticizing tone, and then few people from the government actually talk about those who are actually criticizing anti-nationals and things go haywire, completely. So we are probably not having [01:16:00] the most serious rights discussions on privacy.
When we start doing it at the level of what's happening in Europe, maybe we will take it more seriously. At this point, we are actually in a free for all mode. It's almost like anything goes, you can do anything, you can do everything kind of stuff. In fact, I just read yesterday that millions of health records of Indians are being exploited online. But it's been reported only in small publications. Maybe after a week, it will come in Indian Express, and some people will take note of it. But after a week or two, it will also go completely. Nobody does anything about it. It needs to be codified. It needs to be discussed seriously in the parliament, somebody has to take a call based on that. For that, the media has to keep the pressure on it. But the media has other priorities to keep pressure on. So that's the problem. It's actually a long process. It has to work. I don't think it's working well in India so far at all. It is being put on the backburner for other reasons and other causes, but we need to take it more seriously.
Harish Kumar: Next one is, I am sure it's close to your heart, advertising. What do you think is the future relevance of advertising? You touched upon it in content marketing. But, if you can just talk about advertising specifically.
Karthik Srinivasan: From an industry level, it's here to stay. It has been there for ages; it will be here to stay. It actually gets more creative, because they try to exploit the interesting tools in newer and newer ways. Things will get more and more interesting once AR and VR come into play. It has not come into play at a major level. It is still at a very minor level. A very few countries have exploited it. Like Korea and China have exploited AR and VR to a reasonable extent. But the rest of the world has not even started scratching the surface. Once they do it, the whole thing explodes completely and so much can be done. It's [01:18:00] probably the most exciting space to be in from a creativity point of view, because there's so much possibility. Of course, there is good advertising, there is bad advertising, there is middling advertising, there is functional advertising, everything exists, everything can coexist in the same thing. Some of them will be spoken about a lot. Some of them won't be spoken about, just like any other industry that's there. But I think there is a lot more at stake in the future when newer technologies start playing up.
At this point, we are still exploring very old world formats, like words is a format to explore, visuals as a format to explore, videos as a format. And videos are 2D videos. That's the only thing we are exploring. Those are the three things where the basic tools of advertising that we are doing. Within those three tools, a combination of those tools is what we use to communicate our ideas to make people stop in their tracks, and then say, Oh, that's interesting! That's a reaction that we need. But once AR and VR comes in, it becomes so much more immersive. It's not just words, videos and visuals. It's words, videos and visuals that will affect us at a more visceral level because it goes into our eyes, it goes into our ears, it goes into our brain at a very different level. That's going to be a very exciting time once it arrives. At this point, we are not there yet, of course.
Harish Kumar: And finally, the last one, Indian Film Music, what do you think is the future relevance of Indian film music?
Karthik Srinivasan: Personally, I love it. I am one of the biggest fans of Indian film music and I generally say to people who think it's more fashionable to like Western music, pop music, Korean music, BDS and everything, I said, you are missing the gold here. We have so many languages and so many languages produce so many film songs week after week, you are missing the gold here. And people say things, they copy, they are trashy, etc. I don't care. I love it. But I think it's bleak. Because more and more film directors are not seeing a value in music as part of the narrative. Those days are gone. [01:20:00]
Even with I think 70s and 80s and 90s, those days are actually going in vain, basically. Now it's going much faster. The theme and the ways to actually make people fit based on a theme is more important. And the theme is not being articulated also in the form of music. Theme is being articulated only in the form of dramatization alone, and scenes alone, not in music. Music is unfortunately being used only for advertising and promotion. Nothing more. Which is, I can personally call it unfortunate, but that's the way it is. That's the way the market is evolving. I can't even name any song that was narratively meaningful to a movie that you cannot watch and not get the movie at all. It's all just an extra fitting now basically. So it is a sad kind of state that we are losing a specific genre of music because that's the most popular genre of music in India.
Nowhere in the world it exists like this at all. We started it probably and we own this kind of genre. Everywhere else it's used very differently. Music is used very differently in movies. We use it as a very core concept. But even we are actually letting go of the thing. I won't rue the fact that it's happening like this. It’s an evolution. This too will change and we will probably change to something else, but I think the future is bleak for Indian film music, unfortunately.
Harish Kumar: On that note, Karthik, I'm just hoping that like how people pronounced the death of blogs earlier and then there was Substack, vinyl records and now it's picked up again. I hope your prediction here is not true.
Karthik Srinivasan: Yes, I would love it that way.
Harish Kumar: And I can listen to more selections from Milliblog as well. I can continue to do that. So on that note, Karthik, it is a fantastic almost one and half hours. Great talking to you. Great chance for me to pick your brains on a whole variety of topics. Thanks a lot for your time, Karthik. It was a pleasure and a privilege. [01:22:00]
Karthik Srinivasan: Thank you! Bye!
Male Speaker: This is the CTQ Smartcast, where we have conversations about upleveling, deliberate practice and getting future relevant.
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