Traveling never stops in our lives, neither we stop traveling. It is our character which decides our fate of traveling. I have been virtually forced to write this blog in order to bring some conscience to our fellow travelers who do not follow the ethics of traveling We have ethics in our lives on respecting our elders, our parents, ethics on education, social values on treating the friends, relatives & neighbors,  so ideally we should have traveling ethics as well, at least for the traveling time which is in our hands or on which we have control.

I, myself have traveled almost every nook and corner of the Indian peninsula. Since I was 1, I started to travel with my parents who took me to places like Kashmir, Himachal , Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim, West Bengal, Assam, Rajasthan, Karnataka and many others but I had never traveled out of India till I was 26. These all journeys were land journeys and I took the first flight of my life when I was 22. I have learnt one thing with all these traveling experiences that with traveling comes the obligations of it and if we fully oblige with it, we can be happy travelers & leave good impression with the local’s.

Whatever I am going to write here is not final code of conduct but the just of my own travel experiences and what a common person like you and me are expected to follow. There are and there can be several other methods, ways of conducting oneself when traveling and this learning process should always continue in order to achieve the perfection.

1. Whether one is traveling locally or internationally, always keep in mind to speak in a slow pitch. Speaking softer always leave an ever lasting impression on your host city, hotel staff, flight attendants, fellow travelers etc. Most people living in Western Countries speak in a low pitch when out of their home and they always like to hear you speaking in low pitch. I know it can sometimes be a difficult process as most of the Indians are used to speak in a loud manner as it is not considered a taboo to speak that way in India, but it is a taboo in these countries to speak that way. Sometimes we even do not know the pitch we are speaking with as we are so used to speaking in that way.  Speaking in low tone comes with practice and nothing else. Even if you are excited or angry, take a deep breath always before speaking out. Try to record your voice on computer, tape recorder and check the pitch. This will give you a very good idea of your own speaking pitch/tone and start to improve from there. It will help oneself in a long way. It will not only make you a good traveler but also enhance your speaking capabilities which will help you improve your employment chances, make & keep good relations with your friends and family.

2. Give respect to one and all. This is something which comes for free so why not use it at all the times. When traveling, give respect to your hotel staff, airline attendants, your fellow travelers, your rickshaw puller, the taxi driver-Where is the harm and yet we take out our all frustration, anger, disgust on these people thinking them to be our servants. If they stop doing that work than who will do it-you, yourself. They are just doing their work as you do it when you are working. If the garbage collector stops coming at your home, who will throw that all collected garbage at your home after a week’s time- you, that does not make you a lower personality. Believe in dignity of labor at all times, we all human beings are here to serve each other. If you work as an IT professional, you are serving your clients, will you like your clients yelling at you as if you are their servants, similarly the people serving you also expect the same kind of respect as you demand it from your client. It is a circle of give and take, and we should respect it in the best manner. Learn to be polite and respectful towards others. If you are not given a room of your choice at the check -in time, ask for solutions like shifting you the next day rather than shouting at the front desk staff. Shouting will lead you to nowhere and instead make things worse for you. The staff may look polite to you but they plan to never upgrade you the next day, never offer you the best advice or the offer if you being rude to them. Why harm yourself than?

Always remember an old saying, “One cannot demand respect but earn it”.

3. When traveling out of your own state or country, always do a little research on that state, city or the country where you are going to travel. These things should always be researched before you start to travel:

a. Research about local people, the society- Learn a bit about the city, its past & present. We have the power of Google, why not use it? It will help you know that city and its people well and open you mind for their acceptance. If you do not study about them at all, you are surely going to land up in a culture shock. Culture shock will include the way those people live, the food they eat, the dress they wear, the way they travel and many more. Learning about them beforehand will make sure that you know all about that and you are well prepared to experience them.

b. Never ever try to engage yourself in a debate or fight with the local. Always remember, that they are local, much like you at your home town with all the link’s, friends and local resources at your own virtue. You are going to land up in trouble if you do so in your host city/country.

c. Always respect the law of the land. Respect the local traffic laws, social laws and the local code of conduct. We just can not behave the way we behave in our city/country. Because if you don’t do so, you are bound to be alienated from the local society and hence, it will make you more angry & disgust towards the local’s with no fault of theirs.

We can always presume that we are good travelers until we open our mind and connect ourselves with the good learnings in this world. No one is perfect, neither me nor you but we all work towards the attainment of perfection. Continuous learning always helps.

Consultation in the field of recruitment and providing human resources is not new to the Indian working industry and one can date back this way of working to several decades back at the time when globalization had not touched the Indian scene and the markets were closed for the so called multi-national companies. At that time, we had Indians souring their demand to leave the country for better jobs, wages and most importantly-a better living. The market, one could see became a hub for those recruitment specialists who could provide jobs to those seekers who were willing to pay a huge amount to get settled abroad, and the trend became more aggressive down the south where job seekers were fleeing in huge numbers to various Arab nations. Thus a trend of consultation in the field of providing human resource started to pick momentum and gained a huge popularity among the job seekers and from the prospective employer.

This field has seen a rapid shift in its way of working in the past decade and this is the result of the outsourcing industry which paved its way in the Indian market once the Indian market was opened post 1991 reforms. India could not shy away from the effects of globalization and this gave a chance to some industries which were suffering from the disease of costly and yet inefficient manpower in there original countries. India was found to be a global hub which could provide them with English speaking, literate and overall cheap manpower as compared to their western counterparts. So, as and when these companies arrived in India, they found it tough enough to hire the desired talent and suddenly they were held in a cross world of strangers not knowing on how to deal. This was the time when the professional trend of sincere and motivated Human Resource consultancies started to operate across the country providing these western outsourcing companies with what they required.

The progress of consultation in the field of Human Resource has taken itself to another level where the limitations of this industry are seamless and it has grown from being toy of outsourcing agencies to providing with technical manpower for the other developed industries such as software, real estate, pharmaceuticals, travel and tourism and various others.  According to Morgan Stanley and AC Nielson reports generated, there are more than 10000 registered Human Resource companies in India employing well over 35000 people proved that this industry itself has become an industry showing a newer and positive trends across the nation.

This industry has seen many up’s & down’s and it has survived many failures. These difficult times of global slow down has forced this industry to take many steps which even includes providing value added services to their clients in various forms such as training, decrease in consulting fees and many more.

We, now hereby come to the starting lines, where we were discussing about various aspects of outsourcing industry in India and the fact that Human Resource consultancies are much related to them, can now be known from the fact that this Human Resource consultancies may be survived or become professional due to the outsourcing companies but now these companies are self-sufficient and have spread their wings across various domains. The BPO industry may shift its focus from India to other parts of the world but the HR companies are here to stay for a long and perhaps for ever.

I have had the chance of working with some of the most innovating marketing and consulting firms in India. Some of the ideas and techniques which I learned there is to outgrow your own imagination. If you are able to that efficiently, you have learned the art of selling your product or service. I have always believed that sales & marketing go hand in hand and one can not survive without each other. Marketing needs sales for budgets and sales needs marketing for selling (sounds confusing or boring?). Yes, sales & marketing are two sides of a same coin and requires separate attention by the management. I have come across some organizations which put a lot of stress on sales only and marketing is seen as a neglected form of doing business. Those companies tend to perform unwell as compared to the one’s which balances their focus on a mix of sales and marketing.

Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. The term developed from the original meaning which referred literally to going to market, as in shopping, or going to a market to buy or sell goods or services.

I will define marketing as an activity or practice which helps in selling your product or service to the potential consumer……As simple as that-Isn’t it?

Well, than there are many branding techniques, marketing practices, the 4P’s or the 7P’s involved in the circle of marketing. One can coolly refer Wikipedia or any other source to determine the various methods of effective marketing. Most of the B-School graduates knows it by heart, many of them by practice.

My area of concern is the level of business or the management education being taught in our country. Apart from few top elite schools, we are not adhering to the B-School code of conduct followed across the globe by most of the business schools and that is the work experience. We are just going on producing Master degree holders rather than producing real managers or Entrepreneurs. We just need to put our heart out in CAT/MAT and get into any business school without realizing the real motive of studying a Marketing or business degree. The focus should be to tap students with at least 5 years of work experience and than to make a group of 30 students sit in the class. Business and marketing studies are more about focusing on real time projects or assignments which can be derived only from experience. A fresher will never be able to understand on technique of managing a team of 10 people efficiently till the time he has handled them.

My advice to any youngster aiming to go for a higher degree in Business studies, work for at least 3-5 years in the industry and than go for it. It will really solve your purpose of managing the teams or developing a successful fund house.

Author: Ashutosh Trakroo

http://www.linkedin.com/in/ashutoshtrakroo

Though we as a nation and people have proved to the entire business fraternity across the globe that we have arrived yet I feel somewhere that we have not publisized our achievements in a way it could have been done. Yes, we are still a nation of 1.12 billion Indians, yes, we are a nation of 400 million BTPL (Below the pverty line people), yes, we are a nation of corrupted politicians, yes, we are a nation of The TATA’a, the Ambani’s, The Mittals, The Infosys, The Wipro, yes we are the nation with one of the highest income gap index among the poor & the rich across the globe and all these ingredients sums up to a new flavor called ‘India’.

For some it is still a land of Snake charmers, for some it is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, for some it is a land of new business & opportunties, for some it is a land of lost opportunities, for me it is my mother land, “mother land”- what? There is a round of e-mail joke spreading like a raging fire in our country which proudly explains how an American after visiting India finds out that he was unable to meet any Indian here, instead he found Kashmiri’s, Punjabi’s, Tamilians, Keralities, Delhities, Maharshtarian and many more but not a single Indian. Where are we going, are we too lost in this old flavor of casteism, religion & regional influence that we have lost the real & the new flavor of India.

Sometimes, we put a finger across our neighbourers and boastly claims about them to be a failed nation. Is it so or do we have any right or authority to say so? Are we a successful nation? We need a real introspection into our own identities before we can blame others like this. We have no one to blame, not even our politicians, not the beauraucrats or the system but us. We do not vote, simply, we do not vote!!!!!!!!!!!. I am not amazed to see the voter turnout in these general elections. Barely managing to see a rough 50% and in maximum cases, a good 62-65%. Thats it? Reports have started to pour in from places like South Mumbai where turn out was as low as 7%. And we go on to blame our system and carry on with our daily lives.

I am not an expert in predicting the future but one thing is sure, if we are going on this way, we are heading for disaster and belive me, you need not be an expert or an astrolger to predict this. Soon, we will have a new flavor, the flavor of disaster, the flavor of environmental changes, the flavor of nuclear war and most importantly the flavor of fight for survival.

Author: Ashutosh Trakroo:

httpwww.linkedin.com/in/ashutoshtrakroo

I firmly belive that building a brand from scratch is not an easy thing to do, especially if you are in a market that is very competitive. What techniques and tricks can you use to reach your brand awareness goals? Below I have outlined some of the most effective ways to build your brand using online marketing techniques.

Video Marketing:

1. I would recommend you to create videos that research proves will do well on the sites you are marketing to. Though it may prove to be an expensive tool and may require expert engagements. Our experience shows that usually funny videos and tutorials tend to do well.

2. Decide what video marketing stance you are going to approach with your video marketing: Cut the video and add branding before something funny or interesting happens to redirect the viewer to your site. Or allow the entire video shown to allow for more viewers and impressions.

3. Initiate streaming rich media ads on videos.

4. Distribute your video across these multiple video sharing sites.

Conversational Marketing

5. Leverage sites like Sponsored Reviews in order to create a viral buzz online regarding your brand.

6. Join as many forums as you can adequately sustain a quality contributor.

7. Get to know who the industry voice is for your niche and post comments on there blogs.

8. Contribute to online groups like google groups, linkedin, orkut and myspace groups.

9. Market yourself by adding a blog.

Pay Per Click

11. If you have a larger budget create an account on the top tier pay per click networks, Google, MSN and Yahoo!.

12. If you have a smaller ad budget go with Google and some tier 2 and tier 3 networks.

13. A great way to get branding is to get those impressions. Try giving 3^rd tier networks a try but know that conversions may be lower on 3^rd tier networks.

14. Do extensive keyword research to find optimal exposure and converting keywords.

15. Try to find niches and keyword markets to target that are not as heavily competitive but are highly trafficked so your cost per click will be way down.

16. Mind your ad quality.

Social Media Marketing

17. Stay as ethical as you possibly can.

18. Initiate social bookmarking campaigns online.

19. Create content to support edits in wikipedia.

Email Marketing

20. Sponsor mailing lists with companies who have a wide subscriber base.

Mobile Search Marketing

21. Create a click to call campaign

22. Develop a mobile version of your site.

Search Engine Optimization

23. Optimize all title tags and meta data according to your rev mix.

24. If you are having problems ranking internal pages for there given keyword terms consider developing an effective silo.

25. Develop search engine friendly html sitemap.

26. Develop quality internal linking structure.

27. Create optimized html source code.

28. Create optimized XML sitemap.

Banner Advertising

29. Examine potential sites demographics.

30. Get media break outs

31. Consider Portal Advertising

Application Marketing

32. Create a marketing campaign on Instant messangers

Contextual Advertising

33. Initiate a PFI (pay for inclusion) campaign for in bound links with sites.

On to offline Marketing

34. Clothing is one of the best ways to market a product and service on and offline. By creating clothing that is branded with your logo and services you can ad this clothing line to online shopping sites and having people wear your clothes with your branding obviously increases your brand awareness.

My last and final tip is to make sure that everything you do can be tracked and measured via an accurate web analytics system. If you can afford it I would recommend click tracks. If that is to expensive for you then you might consider web trends. Many of these tips can not only improve your online marketing success but can increase the value of your own site allowing you to be paid much more for your sponsored reviews..

Author: Ashutosh Trakroo

Linkedin Profile:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/ashutoshtrakroo