Lessons For Mallika Sarabhai - Twitter Edition

This morning, I learnt that Mallika Sarabhai, who is contesting for the Gandhinagar Lok Sabha seat against L. K. Advani, was following me on Twitter. So, intrigued and cynical, I ventured over to the account's page and discovered that it was basically a long list of links to her comments on television and in the newspapers. As any self-respecting user of interactive social media will tell you, this is a terrible way to go about things. So I tweeted the following four 'lessons' for Mallika Sarabhai:

Lesson No. 1: Followers on Twitter are not going to help if you don't talk to them.
Lesson No. 2: It's good to get the word out, but putting every single video/article about you in my timeline = spam.
Lesson No. 3: It would help if someone who's not a campaign PR hack used this account. It's called authenticity.
Lesson No. 4: Answer questions, preferably starting with the same ones you asked LK Advani. Then the ones people ask.

This has been blogged at the request of my friend Hemant (blog, Twitter). There is room for more elaboration on how Ms. Sarabhai and others in her place can use the medium more effectively, but it will require more time, thought and energy than I can spare at the moment.

Read More 2 comments | Posted by Sumant Srivathsan |

2 comments

shefaly on 6:09 PM, April 15, 2009

I think above all, it would help if it was possible to believe she is in it for more than self-promotion :-/
sumant on 2:56 PM, April 21, 2009

Shefaly, the major problem we face with our bandwagon-jumpers is that they have no idea what works on each medium, and they're just applying what they know (non-stop push messaging) to a medium they don't know (Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc.), and it's blowing up in their faces.

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Lessons For Mallika Sarabhai - Twitter Edition

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