Quick web design approvals. How to give & get appropriate feedback without destroying the design creative.

Posted by Ron on July 25th, 2011

Have you ever sat through a meeting that resembled the Bingo Mad Angles commercial, where the obvious was overlooked and everyone was trying to prove their usefulness by giving bullshit feedback. Well, I have sat through enough of those to know that the result is never good. I have also sat in meetings where the client has simply asked relevant questions and given a quick nod trusting his design team to do the right thing.

So here are a few quick tips to help thing along both for business owners and web designers alike.

Web Designers – Present a well thought out strategy and design note to the client with your designs

 A website design seen in a vacuum will be judged solely on its design elements which is definitely not how you want your design to be evaluated. A design strategy note before the design unveiling primes the client to view the design in the right context.
Some ideas on what to include in the design notes:

  • Review the target audience for the website
  • Outline the concept & thinking behind the design (hopefully there should be some)
  • Explain exactly what behaviour you would like the visitor to do e.g. click on the ‘More Info’  button.

Priming the client will help you make a more effective case and defend the design better.

Business Owners – Limit the size of your team giving feedback to 2-3 persons max. Too many cooks spoil the broth.

Imagine presenting the design in front of 20 people (I have seen owners make their entire staff sit in on a site design presentation) with each contributing his/her two cents worth. A horrible mishmash of ideas and feedback with no background and relevance. In contrast a smaller more focused team involved right from the briefing stage looking at the designs from a mission oriented perspective makes more sense.

Corollary to this point – Do not leave the design approval work to low level staff.

Atleast have someone of VP level sitting on in the meeting. Senior staff bring experience and perspective to the table. Lower rung staff tend to get caught in the little things instead of viewing the big picture. Also you need people who can communicate effectively with the web team.

Web Designers – Be prepared to defend your design like a lawyer would. You are on trial and so is your design.

Yeah, I know, sounds a bit too confrontational? But many clients will eat you alive if you are not prepared to defend your designs. Of course this implies that you must believe in your design and feel that what you have come up with is relevant and defendable.  Don’t be confrontational, be diplomatic. Play up the strengths of the design, refer to the original briefs for backup. But this is not a battle to the death. Be prepared to give a little too.

Business Owners – You selected them, appointed them, paid them, so the least you can do is trust your web designers.

Not listening to the web designers feedback is like second guessing your own judgement. If you don’t trust the web designers work that means you made a wrong selection from the beginning. If you have hired experienced designers then trust their judgement, allow them some latitude and give their ideas a shot. You might be surprised at the results.

Web Designers – Listen, I mean really listen, to the clients feedback. Clients have something useful to say too.

Although I consider myself and my team as experienced web designers with hundreds of sites under our belt, I many times find clients pointing out things that should have been obvious or come up with really cool ideas. I have had the privilege of working with many very smart and saavy clients and they have taught me a lot too. They are after all business owners who have made it to this level.

Listening is a skill every web designer needs to learn. The type of listening I am talking about is a very advanced form of listening where you not only hear the words but also digest the meaning behind them with your full attention.

It takes two to tango – No web design project would be successful without both parties contributing equally.

It all comes down to respect. Respect between the client and the web designer can speed things along tremendously and that has to be cultivated from both sides. Like any relationship there has to be give and take. One side cannot dominate, bully, intimidate the other and expect good results.

So the next time you are sitting in a design approval meeting remember the Mad Angles ad. Keep it real.

Cheers,
Ron

Book Reco: Built to Sell by John Warrillow – A must read for small business owners including web design agencies and other creative firms

Posted by Ron on July 23rd, 2011

Absolutely loved it!! Its quite rare to come across a business book that grabs my interest and keeps it there like a racy thriller, but this one does just that. I practically read the whole book in a day and enjoyed it thoroughly.

‘Built to Sell’ by John Warrillow is the story of a owner of a small creative agency and his struggle to transform his business into a sale-worthy one.  The narrative is in an interesting second person format rather than the tell-you-what-to-do types of most common business books. Thats makes an interesting read and you find yourself identifying with the hero of the book.

You take a journey with the protaganist as he works step by step to change his business and his mindset (which is the most difficult thing) and how he succeeds to finally make it to a life of freedom. And that essentially is what the promise of this book is – Freedom, freedom for small business owners.

Although I am not personally planning to sell my business, I do want it to be run by professional managers independent of myself and start more businesses. This book is a wake up call for me as it will be for all readers.

I would put this book at par or even better than Micheal Gerber’s E-myth Revisited, and highly recommend it for small business owners, creative agency owners and other entrepreneurs struggling to outgrow their businesses.

Buy the Book at FlipKart.com >>

More information about the author including additional training material and programmes is available at www.builttosell.com

Cheers,
Ron

P.S: As a sidenote the author, John, was kind enough to promptly respond to my email about the book and that made my day. We expect many more such great books from him.

P.P.S: Since all of Micheal Gerber’s subsequent books have all been crap, there is a vacuum that John can and should fill in this niche.

Improve bounce rates and time on site with an intuitive context driven navigation rather than category driven navigation.

Posted by Ron on July 23rd, 2011

This month we have to redesign, revamp and reorganize the content of two client sites with a lot of information and pages. Normally we would take a linear approach, categorize the content and then provide a simple navigation to browse the content by categorized listings. There is only one problem with this approach. It hits a ceiling in terms of customer retention on the site.

People read by context not category. Create a context driven path rather than a category driven path for the visitor to follow.

This is sometimes counter intuitive to web designers who like to segregate everything into neat little categories.

In a nutshell people like to follow a trail of thoughts rather than a category. Phrase or even words in an article can get them thinking along a ‘thought tangent’ and they will follow that tangent in the next article they read. The smart webmaster provides visitors with a ready set of tangential links with which they explore instead of trying to freeze them into a preset category.

Lets take a normal scenario with say two categories.

Now the obvious path would be A -> B -> C -> D -> E

However visitors reading patterns are not that obvious. A more likely pattern would be A -> B ->H ->I ->E

Ideas for making your site navigation paths more intuitive & visitor friendly

  • Identify ‘Thought Tangents’ and provide links: Any article will have tiny inflection points I like to call ‘thought tangents’. They could be triggered by a word, phrase or an entire para. What they do is make the visitor go looking for related information not directly connected with the current article/page and completely change the browsing direction. A good idea would be to identify these in your site and ideally provide fodder for these in effect guiding the path the visitor takes.
  • Come at it from all angles: Visitors rarely visit your site with the same requirements. Each visitor looks at her/his need through from a different angle and its your job to address each one. Some might be looking for features while other are looking at pricing. You need to cater to a variety of ways to get your content across.
  • Matrixing content is a good idea for complex products/services: Any service / product will mostly likely belong to different mutually exclusive sets of differentiators. Eg. A software can be cross matrixed by industries, functionality, enterprise levels, pricing and more. Ensure that you cater to all of these in your product filtering. Provide a industry wise listing as well as a function wise listing and if necessary provide a price scale listing too.
  • Videos provide a more engaging experience than text only:With modern technology so easy to access and use, creating multimedia content should be a priority. A video streamed from Youtube has more staying power for a visitor then just a verbose article. At the least you can add some images or diagrams to make your point.
  • Content discovery is important, make sure you have a fully functional site search – A good on site search function can help tremendously in content discovery and allow the visitor to jump to the most relevant content. So many times I go to sites (and have been guilty of doing also) where the site search does not work or is so pathetic that you rarely find the right item you are looking for.

Bring the business concept of ‘Easy to do business with’ to the website.

Ultimately the goal for any website is to make it ‘easy to do business with’. A visitor should be able to find what she / he is looking for, should find a intuitive reading path from page to page and should be mentally able to draw a picture of your products / services.

Cheers,
Ron

Best social media strategy in India is to take the middle path and use common sense. The proper strategy should be rewarding and sustainable.

Posted by Ron on July 6th, 2011

A friend alerted me to this article in the Economic Times about the dangers of overrelying on Facebook or any one platform for that matter.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/features/brand-equity/being-on-facebook-alone-doesnt-guarantee-more-market-share-it-could-even-evict-you/articleshow/9114185.cms

Nowadays you can see the website URLs being replaced with Facebook URLs for companies in TV and print adverts. I think thats a bit dangerous. I had earlier written about how ‘Facebook owns Facebook’ and no one else and current events have proven me right. However there is no need to panic as well. As always the best path is of balance and steadiness.

Some quick recommendations for fine tuning your Social Media strategy.

Facebook ‘Likes’ or Google ‘+1′ is not equivalent to sales. Use common sense to evaluate your social media strategy.

The part about being able to purchase ‘likes’ is really scary. Google is all the time dealing with people trying to ‘game’ the system and Facebook faces the same challenge. Why do so many people like to go for ‘shortcuts’ when the proper path can be rewarding and sustainable. Each company should figure out their own goals from their social media engagement and they can be wildly different from another company in the same industry. Like they say, ‘Each to his own’. Copycatting is not a good strategy on Social Media.

Always engage with a Story. A story is more powerful than some random posts designed to elicit response.

Your social media effort should tell a story. A story can be as simple as ‘How we are green friendly’ or ‘The way we do things around here’. Bring out the individuality of your business through an engaging story. Leverage the story with regular posts, stretch it out with a continous narrative. And for god’s sake make sure its got a bit of ‘Fun’ in it.

Showcase creativity on your social media platforms. Facebook allows a lot of opportunities to showcase creativity.

Although Social media is often associated with more ‘verbal’ communications it can also be used to showcase your creativity. It won’t do to have a spanking website and a dull Facebook page. Utilize Facebook’s functionality of custom tabs to create unique creative avenues for the visitors. These can be hosted on your site but piped to Facebook through Iframes and custom tabs.

Start thinking beyond Facebook & Twitter. Scan the horizons for what’s next.

Facebook and Twitter are settling into an equlibrium position. They have created their slots in marketing lore alongside Google & YouTube  and from here onwards they will most probably only remain the same or even decline. Like nature, marketing (especially online) abhors a avacuum and something new is bound to come along. The circus will begin again and the whole cycle will be repeated till even that finds its niche and settles down. Its a never ending cycle.

As part of the online marketing world we watch with bated breath fresh developments, especially ‘Google +1′ (although I suspect it will be more of the same)

Cheers,
Ron

Virtual Sales / Spokes Persons – Humanizing your site and adding a bit of ooomph to it!!

Posted by Ron on July 5th, 2011

Imagine visiting a site and being greeted by a beautiful women talking about its products. I don’t know about others but it definitely gets my attention.

A growing trend of adding a ‘Virtual Sales Person’ or a ‘Virtual Spokes Person’ is catching on and we see them popping up in more and more sites.

Their creators claim they can dramatically improve sales. The argument goes that having a human being introduce the site gives it a more homely and less technical feel thus creating a desire in the visitor to interact more fully.

Does it work? Would it work? Maybe

I think it all depends on the message being mouthed by the virtual sales person. Sometime back a client drafted a very boring and simple message which I suggested we rewrite to give it more ‘ooomph’. No point spending so much for this and them giving a lame intro.

You can customize it exactly as you want it

Virtual sales person vendor VSP Worldwide  allows you to customize everything from selecting the models to their attire and mannerisms. You can tailor the spokesperson (rather you can choose) to fit your product category and industry. They have a whole bunch of models, both men and women, to choose from. Although I did have trouble choosing an Indian looking person. We ended up choosing a Latin lady who looked closest to an Indian.

How much does it cost?

VSP charges anything from INR 10,000 to INR 30,0000 per message which includes selection of model, filming and final edited version to put on the site. Others are also in a similar range. It might jack up your hosting bandwidth costs so that’s something you should check up on.

Do you have to change my site design for this? No, its layered on top of your existing site.

The great thing about this type of virtual agents is that you do not need to change your site design. The virtual salesperson appears in a layer on top of your page and disappears after the message leaving the visitor to browse as normal.

Some Vendors offering this service (caveat – subscribe at your own risk)

and many more.

So go ahead and give your site that extra oomph!!!

Cheers,
Ron

SEO BPO? Has India become the low cost SEO outsourcing destination? Overcoming the perception will be a challenge for genuine online marketing firms.

Posted by Ron on July 2nd, 2011

I recently had to interview for an SEO expert and I received several resumes from persons working in 200+ teams at different firms. I was intrigued by how a 200+ SEO outfit works and how strategy is planned.

Turns out no strategy is planned. These outfits only take on routine mundane link buildng work from overseas clients. Marketing strategy, planning etc are not required from these firms. Just good old fashioned donkey work BPO style.

It is obvious that if India were a good destination for other BPO services it would also be good for SEO services as well. But the challenges technology companies are facing due to India’s image as a low cost low end services provider will affect the SEO industry as well.

Try convincing an overseas client that you can create strategy, planning, budget allocations and overall execution when he has LC-LE (Low cost – low end) SEO on his mind. Its a tough sell.

Its always tough to move up the value chain when the majority of your industry is selling itself as a low cost no brains required out sourcing service.

So should these firms stop, of course not, its thier business and justified too. But somewhere along the way it must be communicated that India can take on high value high end SEO work too and deliver it superbly.

As a side note I have noticed that a lot of these low end SEO outfits are shutting shop since outsourced work from the west is drying up (hence the resumes).

Cheers,
Ron

How much should a website cost? Making sense of the wide range of pricing for website design in India.

Posted by Ron on June 24th, 2011

This is probably one of the most controversial posts I might make. But this question has been coming up with alarming regularity in one form or the other. Typical questions such as:

  • Why is there so much difference in the prices quoted by different vendors for the same work?
  • I saw on TV websites being advertised for INR  2500 only, so why is your cost so high?
  • Why is your cost so low? Are you sure you can give quality work?

Such questions in one form or the other are regularly asked of web designers all over India.

Normally a web designer will try to justify his cost on overheads (or lack of them) or quality or some such parameter. But always the client will choose the cost which is most comfortable to him no matter what he says initially. After all India still remains a very cost conscious web design market.

To make sense of the huge difference in costings you need to understand the web design community heirarchy.

It follows a very typical pyramidal form with a lot of low cost vendors at the bottom and the high flying boutique firms and high brow ad agency subsidiaries at the top.

 So here’s a quick primer on what you could expect from each level and type of agency you engage for your work. These are of my making and not necessary any standard.

  Ad affiliated web agencies Web design boutiques Freelancers Mid-level marketing firms Small scale software companies Web Hosting/ Hardware Cos.
Share of web design market Very small Large Large Large Medium Medium
Quality of work Excellent – Good Excellent – Good Excellent to Poor Good to Average Average to Poor Average to Poor
Reliability Very reliable Quite reliable Extremely unreliable Quite reliable Somewhat reliable Somewhat reliable
Cost of work Extremely High High Low to High Medium to High Medium to Low Low
Staff Sizes 10-50 persons 5-150+ persons 1-5 persons 5-50 persons 5-25 persons 5-25 persons
Technology Use Excellent Excellent – Good Good to Poor Average Good Good
Marketing Savvy (On behalf of clients) Excellent Excellent – Good Average Good to Average Poor Poor

a. Ad Agency affiliated / Ad agency subsidiaries:

  • These are children agencies of the big ad agencies.
  • They mostly live off the work given to them from their parent agencies.
  • Fulfill a digital marketing gap in an ad agencies service suite.
  • If they take on independent work its for a bomb and very few businesses can afford them.
  • By their very nature they are very few in the market although they rule the roost in terms of brand and pricing.

b. Mid-level to Upper level boutique web design firms:

  • These are firms whose whole and sole business is web design and online marketing.
  • They can consist of teams of 10 to 100 people and dominate the current web design scenario in India.
  • Our firm MiracleworX would also fall into this category.
  • They usually charge medium to high and the work quality and delivery is also very good.
  • There are exceptions but overall they produce some of the best online work out of India.

c. Mid-level Marketing Firms:

  • These are marketing only jack of all trades who do all kinds of marketing work such designing logos/ brochures, presentations, banners and websites.
  • Web design plays a large part in their portfolios but is not their bread and butter alone.
  • They charge median and also deliver median quality work.
  • They form a large part of website design work done in India

d. Freelance Web Designers:

  • These are individuals who have not invested in the overheads of a firm but take up web design work on a free lance basis.
  • For most the overheads are low
  • Their prices can vary a lot as they don’t follow any structure and quote whatever they feel like.
  • Quality of work too varies a lot from designer to designer.
  • They are an essential part of the web design community as they take a lot of work outsourced by established firms.

e. Small Scale Software Companies:

  • These are jacks of all trades.
  •  They can create software to online applications to websites.
  • Again web design is not their core business and
  • They usually outsource or have a low quality web team in-house.
  • They quote very low prices.

f. Web Hosting Companies / Hardware suppliers:

  • These are opportunity based vendors whose main business is not web design but
  • Take it on when the opportunity from an existing client arises.
  • Usually they quote very low and outsource to a freelancer someone else.

The situation always affects the choice and eventual cost.

Situation Go with…
Image is important, money no object. Ad agencies, boutique agencies
High expected earnings directly or indirectly from the site. Ad agencies, boutique agencies, marketing agencies
Time is of the essence. Speed is required. boutique agencies, marketing agencies
Budget is very tight Freelancers, marketing agencies
Budget is extremely tight, cannot afford much Freelancers, web Hosting, Hardware/Software cos.
Don’t really care how the website turns out, just want it done. Freelancers, web Hosting, Hardware/Software cos.

If costs are close or equal among agencies how do I choose one?

I usually recommend the following factors for choosing an agency if all things are equal:

  • How good is their past portfolio of work? Does it match your tastes and expectations? (Most important factor)
  • How is their presentation? Does their representative know what he is talking about? Are they confident and experienced?
  • Are they transparent? Have they outlined all possible costs for you and are not concealing hidden costs?
  • A gut feel for who you should go with. The subconscious will notice many factors and give you a signal whom to go with.

In conclusion 

The wide range of pricing and options are primarily due to the low cost of entry into the web design industry. A guy sitting in his bedroom with a laptop can also tomorrow declare himself to be a web designer. However, businesses will always require top quality professionally run firms such as ours to deliver tomorrow’s websites. We will cost fairly and proportionately to the work. As always its up to the clients.

Cheers,
Ron

Check out our work at http://www.miracleworx.com

Our dear friend & contributor Prashant Pinge has just launched a children’s book – Naughty Avantika. Those with kids definitely do get this one.

Posted by Ron on June 22nd, 2011

Our dear friend and regular contributor to this blog has just launched a children’s book Naughty Avantika.

 In his own words:

My latest book of children’s fiction, Naughty Avantika, has just been published by Happy Squirrel, an imprint of Leadstart Publishing.

About the book
Naughty Avantika comprises of amusing stories about Avantika, an eight year old girl who has an uncanny knack of getting into trouble. In Avantika’s world, naughtiness reigns supreme and mischief is the order of the day. But fortunately for our heroine, her twinkling eyes can melt the toughest of hearts. And for those times when she really turns things upside down, Avantika’s lucky red stone always comes to her rescue.

So join Avantika as she embarks upon misadventures galore and takes you for a ride full of innocent mischief and good-natured humour.

The book is available at all leading bookstores across India.

Online ordering information
In India, on Flipkart
http://www.facebook.com/l/362606k1xqCA1qNOOiUhkEiGtJA/www.flipkart.com/b/books/naughty-avantika-prashant-pinge-book-9381115589?_l=CJHVEqJO3veuHytbACc9dw–&_r=H0jKgjuqareDrPcXilrDSQ–&ref=dc365309-3714-400f-bf92-4f61a599db86&pid=jt33f9v26x

Globally, on eBay
http://www.facebook.com/l/362606YJUpluelzE8K2w_xUIu9A/cgi.ebay.com/Naughty-Avantika-/200615568494?pt=US_Childrens_Books&hash=item2eb59ea46e%23ht_500wt_1156

Do let all your friends and family know.

Hope you enjoy the stories.

Thanks and warm regards,

Prashant Pinge

We wish him all the best and hope this book sells a million copies. If you have childern do buy this book or if you know people with children it will be an execellent gift.

Cheers,
Ron

Planning a dotcom? Hire us as consultants / advisors and boost the chances of your online success.

Posted by Ron on June 21st, 2011

Dreaming of being the next Facebook or Linkedin? Have a great idea for a online business? Don’t have a clue about starting a dotcom? Hire us as dotcom consultants. (There you have it… a straight pitch).

Why do you need us?

Starting a dotcom needs planning and a different mindset from a normal business. Its not as easy as it seems. Making a profit and growth online is difficult and painful. We help ease the pain and speed up your eventual profitability. Poor planning can result in you loosing all your investments which could be avoided by some good advise and planning. We bring 13 years of hard earned experience to the table.

This is NOT a webdesign service offering. This is consultation offering.

This is a consultancy offer i.e. we help you brainstorm, plan and initiate the dotcom idea. Our services are restricted to advise and counsel only.

What we are offering?

We are offering the following services:

  1. Initial Brainstorming & ideation: We take your initial idea, test it, challenge it and refine it. From a vague idea it turns into a goal. We look at it from all angles using our experience and suggest the best route forward. This step in itself will save you enormous time and money in the future.
  2. Planning & documentation: Before you can start approaching investors or hiring vendors you need to have a feasible plan in place. This plan must encompass all aspects of the project from financials to technology. A structured methodical approach helps to convince investors, partners and vendors that you know what you are doing.
  3. Vendor Selection & Project Management: Many ideas get stuck at this phase where you would not know whom to trust and how much to pay for each item. We help you design RFQs, shortlist vendors, interview them, selection and project monitoring. Our services will save you from fly by night operators, unnecessary delays in implementation and unprofessional vendors.
  4. Marketing & Business Development: Launching the site is just the beggining, there is enormous amount of marketing to be done. This is the critical part of the project. This is where the rubber meets the road. This is the stage where you product meets the customer. This is also where the maximum budget is spent. This is where you will need us.

Kind of entrepreneurs / businesspeople we prefer to work with.

  • Highly motivated: We love working with motivated individuals who would do anything to see thier project through.
  • No Wishy washy ideas: Come to us if you have a clear idea in mind and we will help you scale it.
  • Respect Our time: Our time is valuable to us and while we understand you wish to talk at length about your project please ensure that you have an agenda before calling us.
  • Financially sound: We cannot help raise capital for persons who do not atleast have some seed capital of thier own or a good financial track record.
  • Business experience preferred: Not a hard and fast rule but we would prefer people who have atleast some business experience. Helps the dialogue go faster.

We respect your confidentiality and will sign an NDA.

A common fear would be of someone ripping of your idea. We respect your confidentiality and if we are to work together we shall sign an Non Disclosure Agreement to protect your rights. We beleive in doing business with Integrity and our clients can testify to that.

Want to know more? Call us – Ron – 9820302118 or email at ron@miracleworx.com

Cheers,
Ron

The holy trinity of social media – Facebook, twitter and the blog. Aim them at an idea, concept or service you want to promote.

Posted by Ron on June 20th, 2011

After the explosive growth of social media platforms it seems to be coming down to this holy trinity of social media – Facebook, Twitter and the Blog. And if you think about it, seems like a very complementary trio. Facebook fills the social quotient, Twitter is a form of micro-blogging and the blog is well… a blog.

Between these three any business can project a very healthy social footprint combined ofcourse with the main website. So how would a business ideally use these three in combination? Best answer would be to support each other in putting out the message.

When to use Facebook?

Facebook would be ideally used to post a message which needs dialogue with customers. The post has to be provocative enough to evince a response from your visitors. It would be posted on the Wall and someone from your business should ensure that responses are going out to people who are commenting on your post.

When to use Twitter?

Twitter would ideally be used as a fetch-em kind of post where you summarize and link to (small link) either the website or the blog. Multiple twitter posts can be used to highlight multiple areas of a single facebook post, blog post or website article.

When to use the Blog?

A blog entry would be ideal when its too long for a Facebook entry and too short for a website article. Ideally it could enunciate the idea put forth on Facebook and give meat to the argument. Ultimately a blog post will fade away just like the Facebook debate and the Twitter post.

All three are temporary to provoke discussion and awareness about a idea, concept or service.

Ultimately these are short horizon tools which can be used in small bursts to promote an idea, topic or service offering. Each post on Facebook, Twitter or Blog has a shelf life within which maximum advantage needs to be taken. Therefore it makes sense to aim them towards a single goal.

 All three are not mutually exclusive and have to be used in tandem to generate the right level of engagements.

I am normally asked how many blog posts should I do or how many twitters should I send in a day. The answer – as many as it takes. Use common sense. You have to promote and support your idea, concept or service. These services are like Carnival hucksters who used to shout out the attractions and get the crowd gathered around.

Form an overall theme and then feed information to each of these services.

Start with the idea or concept. Outline it and then fill in the information. Then decide what should be fed to what. Twitter will require small pieces, Facebook slightly larger updates and the blog can have a full blown analysis of the concept.

Lets take a small example to illustrate usage of these tools.

Idea: Want to promote a ‘Water Bowls’ project where water bowls are placed on street corners so that thirsty dogs, cats and birds can enjoy a refreshing drink during the summer heat.

Twitter: Start with small idea openers like..

- Ever notice how these poor animals on roads suffer in the summer heat?
- A friend gave us an execellent idea about helping animals..stand byfor more info.
- A concrete water bowl cemented to the street filled with water..what an idea sirji.
and so on…

Facebook: Posts would go something like this..

- How many stray dogs do you have in your neighbourhood? Have you noticed if any of them look thirsty in the summer heat?
- We were discussing this and someone came up with a great idea, a concrete water bowl cemented to the street filled with water. What do you think?
- Our first water bowls rolled out today in the suburbs of Mumbai..looks like its going to work.

Blog: Here the discussion can be more academic…but not necessarily boring.

- The summer heat takes a toll on all of us but spare a thought for those poor animals on the street. What can we do for them?
- The water bowl project takes off. Here’s a look at how it works and how you can join and contribute.

Combining all three and responding actively to interest generated you can create a lot of support for any idea, concept or service.

Cheers,
Ron

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