Ramesh Srivats on what not to do on Social Media and how to build a brand

In this digital age, the rules of marketing and advertising have taken a huge leap forward; consumers now have low attention spans and also have the power to consume media according to their will, as and when they want to. This has posed some problems to brands as it has become more challenging for them to get their consumers attention. The traditional rules of yore do not apply anymore and many brands in their pursuit for eyeballs are resorting to measures that are distancing them from their consumer even more.

Ramesh Srivats, Founder of TenTenTen, with 15 years of experience in the advertising sector, has a cult following of about 239k and 56k followers on twitter and Facebook respectively. Because of his hilarious views and tweets on sports, politics and just about everything, he is surely an able authority to guide brands and consumers on ‘How to stand out in the age of digital clutter and noise.’

Ramesh Srivats took the stage at the TechSparks Grand finale on October 18, 2014, and delighted the audience with his witty insights and jabs on how brands should actually engage with their audiences on Social Media.

Key highlights of the talk

Ramesh Srivats started out his session by introducing himself as a startup guy, currently into his second startup, TenTenTen, after initially starting out with Hungry and Foolish, which he said, “Unfortunately lived up to its name.” He also stated that he was glad to be at TechSparks as these occasions are ideal for networking and making friends with people who are in the same sector with similar interests.

He then went on to outline how both brands and regular folks are spamming social media and forcing content and promotions down people’s throats without even considering who their target audience is and what they want to say.

In our pursuit for ‘Likes’, ‘retweets’ and getting hashtags to trend, brands and people are forgetting the big picture : making actual meaningful conversations with people.

Brands have not made the right transition from ‘old media’ to ‘new media.’ The rules have changed and brands have not got their strategy right. In the good old days, brands could buy an audience, and then push messages. Now, the scenario has completely changed. For effective brand building, brands have to listen to what their users say and respond accordingly. “People talk and brands listen.”

Ramesh concluded the talk with some tips on how to use Social Media in the right way:

“Be yourself. Be interesting. It is not necessary to be only funny; you can be informative, educational, nice, or kind. People tend to share these things, when they see genuine content.”

You can catch the full video of the talk here:

Here is the list of top 30 technology companies that showcased at TechSparks. For complete Techsparks coverage, click on#tsparks.

A big thanks to all the sponsors and partners for supporting TechSparks 2014 – Sequoia Capital, AWS, Intel, DSOA, Verisign, Stanford Ignite, Target, Intuit, Brand Capital and Ola.