Rajiv Dingra : Founder and CEO of WATMedia

Mr.Rajiv Dingra had a very interactive session in which he emphasized the financial implication of using social media as compared to the traditional media . Mr.Dingra started the session by defining the 4 Cs of doing business consists : Connect , Converse , Collaborate , Co-Create

As Mr. Dingra explained, connect is the way the two parties communicate with each other. Traditionally the ways of communicating were through letters, newspapers, television etc. While this looks like an efficient way of communicating with many people at once there is no way of measuring how much impact was caused by the advertisement. Contrary in case of social media measuring the number and the length of comments the response can be judged more accurately.

Mr.Dingra next went on to explain the next C that is Converse. In traditional media like newspapers , television , radio conversation is one way. Getting the consumer to respond by means of telephone or mail takes a lot of time and money. Mr. Dingra emphasized that the main difference between the social media and any other means of media was the distributed network effect. It is the ripple effect which one conversation creates by multiplying into many more conversations. Using any other media it is very time consuming to get the same impact of the distributed network effect and also costs more. Also there is no guarantee of the response from the target audience.

Next C is the collaboration which Mr. Dingra said was easily possible by means of social media and very difficult to achieve using other media like newspapers, radio etc. Options like google docs, maps make collaboration in social media very easy which cannot be done using other forms of media.

The last C as explained by Mr.Dingra was to Co- create. Co- create is creating value by both the parties. As measuring the response of the audience is more achievable using social media co –create is more achievable in social media.

Mr.Dingra then went on to explain the future trends in social media. The most important trend is the rising trend of using internet on mobile phones. The combination of mobile and social media can redefine the way social media is perceived. Social media has an edge on 3 factors which are real time, timeliness and relevance. With increase in the number of users using internet on mobile phones , the impact of these three factors will be more significant.

The other future trends in social media according to Mr.Dingra are business networking, knowledge networking , business application that enable workforce , education 2.0 , government 2.0 etc.