Avatar, the movie, was SIMPLY mind blowing! I remember going into the theater thinking that this is going to be another 3D sci-fi movie. Little did I know, what was in store for me. I felt I was walking in that jungle and James Cameron totally impressed me with the use of Sci-Fi technologies. I had never experienced something even close to this… and of course! all my friends were surprised since I was the last one to catch this movie.

Coming out of the theater, I was convinced that the movie is setting a new standard for movie makers, marketers and brands seeking exposure.

This box office superhit broke every record. The results in its case were a $232 million opening weekend, a total of one billion dollars in revenue by year’s end, and the rank of #2 highest grossing film of all time. Cameron’s $500 million act of hubris has paid off.

Needless to say, social media had a role to play in this.

Continue to read my post on Active Garage: Social Media and making a $1 Billion movie: Avatar

I have ready many books and heard many leaders and they all put passion at the top of their list. Passion comes from the Latin verb patior, meaning to suffer or to endure.

So, if this is suffering or endurance then why it tops the list for success?

Here is what I found:

1. It is important to have passion to do something because before you become successful at anything you will have to do a lot of it. So, you better be willing to endure the hard work and persist through the suffering that comes from failures and breakdowns.

2. It is important to have passion because you have to be willing to pay the price before you get to the prize. There is a lot of sacrifices you will have to make and it is important that you are willing to pay the price.

3. It is important to have passion because success at a thing is a consequence of millions of failures at that thing. So, there is no instant genious in solving a problem but a sequence of failures of solving the problem before you get the right solution.

BE PASSIONATE

Digital branding in the new internet marketing age is creating the need for marketers to understand how they can measure social media interactions with their brand, how to measure social brand loyalty and create social brand equity. Companies are more and more interested in learning how to make social media work. There are many assets on the internet that a company can create using Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and many other such channels. And then this creates a need for them to manage their digital presence and brand.

Here are some channels that companies have frequently started to build:

1. Facebook Fan pages
2. FB Connect
3. Twitter Channel
4. SEO and Ad Targeting
5. Social media enabled company web sites

But the HOT question still remains – What next? How to set goals and identify gaps?

Here are some of my recommendations:

1. Revenue Growth: The social media activity needs to have a strategy to increase revenue. It is important to choose social media tools and tactics that align with increase in engagement to ultimately drive revenue growth. This is a distribution channel to leverage information you develop daily. Don’t be afraid of social networking or Twitter. Virtual Goods and Gaming are huge opportunities as are fun quizzes and polls and other lead generation activities.

Continue Reading my post on Active Garage: Social Media BRANDing – 5 tips to make it work

Why do people succeed? Is it because they’re smart? Or are they just lucky?

Two days ago, I got up with sore throat and fever. I could not swallow anything and this was sure sign of flu. My body resisted every movement and I discovered body parts that I did not know existed.

So, I have been sick in the past few days. In the olden times, staying home alone, taking care of yourself and making your own food might have sounded pitiful. But I found that this is not the case anymore.

Here is what I found:

1. I can work from my bed. All I needed was my cell phone, laptop and internet.

2. Who say’s I was alone. I had all my friends on FB pinging me, wishing me get well soon and some even called and chatted with me. Infact it was good to catch up with a few friends who I had not spoken to in a long time.

3. All my business associates wanted me to take care of myself and settled for conference calls.

4. My mom was showering her love over internet telephone and yahoo messenger.

Well! yes the throat hurts, the body aches but I would have not been able to appreciate the power of health if not for this breakdown. And in the meantime, while I wait for the flu to takes its due course, I discovered the blessings of modern life, love of my family and friends and concern of associates – Alright FLU – I am taking you head on…

Can’t wait to back in Full ON Action…

Intimacy generally refers to the feeling of being in a close personal association and belonging together. It is a familiar and very close affective connection with another as a result of entering deeply or closely into relationship through knowledge and experience of the other. Genuine intimacy in human relationships requires dialogue, transparency, vulnerability and reciprocity.

So, you may ask what does it have to do with Social Media?

Intimacy with others:

Every morning, we wake up and some of us reach out to our laptops. This is true for those who go to work. But what I have started to see is that most of us log into Facebook. What we are checking out is our news feed. We start to see what some of our friends are doing? What some of our business associates are saying? What some of those people we don’t know are talking about?
Suddenly, this simple act of checking our news feed cultivates into interacting with them. We start to comment OR like some of those news feed. And then there is a sudden feeling of being close to people we care about and those we would like to know better. There is a dialogue that makes us feel part of their lives and transparency that they display wins out instant trust with them….And this dialogue and transparency was the genesis of building relationships even before social media arrived.

Intimacy with self: Continue reading my post at Active Garage: Intimacy scores with social media

Just recently StartupPrincess share my experiences of building a company. I was thrilled at the opportunity. This gave me a chance to reflect on some of my experiences and share some things. The thing that was surprising for me to discover was that as a kid I wanted to become a pilot or a movie producer…So, what happened?

SP: What you wanted to be when you grew up: When I was little, I always wanted to be an air-pilot or movie producer. Funny, I still haven’t given up on becoming both.

DB: What you are: I am founder and president of Invincibelle, a company empowering diverse, multi generational workforce and women to thrive in a multicultural world.

Brief Summary of your Start Up: Invincibelle brings trusted and relevant content to accelerate personal and professional growth of women worldwide. We provide service like Workshops, consulting, Event programming, Research to help clients enable women in their companies, institutions and communities to succeed in their specific professional domains. I also do many speaking engagements. Currently, I am building Personalized Leadership Optimization Programs to help women in mid-management roles optimize their leadership effectiveness.

Continue Reading my interview: Introducing Deepika Bajaj, Founder and President of Invincibelle

Apple named its latest device, iPad. Ofcourse! this shows a little oversight from their team in coming up with the name. But I truly believe this is NOT why we need women executives in Apple’s team. We need more women executives – AGREED. But naming a device “iPad” has been blown out of proportion – what about HELIPAD, NOTEPAD – are all these names reminder of female hygiene – I don’t think SO.

In Business Week, Vivek Wadhwa argues more women are needed in the executive suite. Wadhwa provides a grim snapshot of women in the top echelons of the technology and financial sectors:

“Apple isn’t the only company with a male-dominated executive team. No woman has ever been CEO of a Wall Street firm. Women were primary owners of only 19% of the 237,843 firms founded in 2004, according to the Kauffman Foundation’s analysis of Dun & Bradstreet data. And only 3% of tech firms were founded by women in that year.”

“Given all the similarities in background and motivation for men and women entrepreneurs-and the fact that women now outnumber men in universities-we remain perplexed by the dearth of female startup executives.”

A societal failure

Wadhwa explains that the root of the issue is societal expectations of women:

“Evidence suggests that this does not reflect a failure on the part of women but rather a societal failure. Consider the contrast with India, a country that is in many respects more conservative than the U.S. It might therefore be expected to be even less amenable to women in leadership. Yet there, women are rapidly rising through the top ranks of the business community.”

“HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS and Fidelity International in India are run by women. So is the country’s second-biggest bank, Icici Bank, and its third-largest, Axis Bank. Women head investment banking operations at Kotak Mahindra and JPMorgan Chase and the equities division of Icici. Half of the deputy governors at the Reserve Bank of India are women.”

The article explains that an entrenched boys club feel and spirit in the industry – something that is prevalent in America but not quite as rigid in the emerging financial services market in India – may contribute to this.

So, are we ready as a society to reject stereotypes of working mothers, address the concern of leadership for women and accept a more balanced lifestyle – not engaged in happy hours and golf games?

Every day I come across people who either love or hate social media. Some say they get it and some DON’T. Some say it here to stay and some say it isn’t. Whatever the case, there are people who are leveraging it to build their identity, relationships and followers.

So, what are the characteristics of these ROCKSTARS…???

Like traditional ROCKSTARS, these social media ROCKSTARS have similar characteristics.

1. Talent par excellence - For any ROCKSTAR to get a celebrity status, what is needed most is talent. Similarly, the social media ROCKSTARS have a inherent talent to make their presence felt with their blogs, articles and videos. They seem to produce this with their focus on what is meaningful to their readers. They don’t talk about their hobbies or pets or travel plans – they know what their readers are looking for and offer that information in a powerful manner.

Continue Reading the article on Active Garage: Social Media ROCKSTARS!!!

At her Harvard University commencement speech, “Harry Potter” author JK Rowling offers some powerful, heartening advice to dreamers and overachievers, including one hard-won lesson that she deems “worth more than any qualification I ever earned.”

She says, “What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure. “

Se continues, “Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it.”

Here is the video

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

My thinking is there is nothing more crippling than the fear of failure. Get over it. Move on.

I,myself, have been driven by fear of failure and it took me time to face it. Failure teaches you things that you would have never found out about yourself…it makes you stronger.

You must believe in YOURSELF. If you are not to believe in yourself, then why would someone else believe in you?

The fear of failure is one beast that needs to be tamed and not surrendered into. Don’t take it lightly, if you don’t confront it and get rid of it then you are doomed to fail. I can bet that this is the single biggest challenge why most people never act.