Suvrat is right in many aspects of the world of social media and blogging. Of course, AG’s scepticism is justified, because a lot of the rules of print or electronic media do not hold true in the ‘blogosphere’. The philosophical underpinning of the world of social media was articulated in a digital book called The Cluetrain Manifesto by Christopher Locke, which is “markets are conversations”.

Unlike other media where communication is primarily one way, blogs can be likened to a place where any reader can be a publisher. Most blogs cater to a select group of readers. Andy Warhol’s famous words can now be paraphrased to “Now everyone is famous for 15 people” and while bloggers also yearn for (and the very few also achieve a readership of tens of thousand or more people a day) a larger readership, their readership is mostly very splintered and niche.

For engaging with bloggers, businesses should understand what drives them. As Suvrat says, one of the biggest reasons why people blog and frequent social networking sites is to discover communities of people interested in the same things as themselves. The driver for this behaviour are two fundamental human desires to self-expression and a search for relatedness.

People have been consumers for far too long, listening to other people shape their worldviews. Now they want their own views to be heard. Instead of the neighbourhood tea shop, they do it on the Internet, visible to everyone, archived by the all-seeing eye of the search engine spiders and searchable by anyone interested in that specific topic later.

The most interesting aspect of blogs is that they can be syndicated. Using a technology called Really Simple Syndication (RSS), users can use free Web- based ‘aggregators’/ ‘readers’ like Bloglines and Google Reader. This means that blogs cannot ever take their readers for granted. Unsubscribing from blogs is merely a click away. That fact keeps bloggers humble and always focused on their readers’ needs. This fact also keeps blogs easy to read.

As AG says, the sheer number of blogs is overwhelming. Searching for right blogs amongst 57 million can feel as daunting as searching for the proverbial needle in the haystack. However, searching this haystack is a breeze, thanks to the evolved search technologies. Websites like Technorati and Google Blog Search can track conversations on whichever topics are keyed into them.

Technorati is very useful because apart from showing what a blog is saying about a particular topic, it also shows the ‘authority’ of the same blog. Authority in the hyperlinked cyberspace is defined as how many websites and blogs have linked to your blog in the last six months. Hence AG’s question is easily answered, by a cursory glance. However, details like hits and how much time and ‘readership’ of a blog is sometimes viewable only to the blogger.

The higher the authority, the more likelihood of the blog’s ability to be an influencer in the given domain. A blogger might not be a maven when he or she starts a blog. He/she might be merely a connector, connecting people to people or people to ideas. However, as readership rises as more and more people discover blogs and read about them, a connector can turn into a maven. It works the other way too, mavens producing original content gets readership much faster than in the real world, where they have to rely too much on connectors.

So how can Suvrat and AG actually leverage the music communities that are congregating around certain blogs ?

The most important advice is: Do not try to manipulate blogs or blog readers by trying to ‘inject’ messages. Blogs thrive on interactivity, linkages and conversations. That means making your brand vulnerable and opening it up to criticism. Most businesses are wary of doing so, and yet that is the only way they can appeal to bloggers. That is the appeal of real, human and authentic conversation as opposed to crafted, polished, corporate brochure language. Unless businesses face this reality, they cannot leverage either the reach or richness of the blogosphere.

Crown Music can leverage on blogs and blogging in various ways:

• Crown should start its own blog, one that connects with the Indian music lover, with insights into the music making business and showcasing previews. This is a risky strategy. Blogs started by corporations will be held up to a higher standard and its openness would be scrutinised by the bloggers and readers who follow blogs.
    
• Connect with the biggest bloggers in the niche it wants to start a conversation with. Connect doesn’t mean sending press releases. Most bloggers get them over e-mail and hit the delete button. To connect, read the blogs, mail them with a specific benefit you want to communicate. Previews of unknown musicians, free sharing of audio files. At some levels, bloggers also look for ‘scoops’ that their readers would value.
    
• Crown could also choose merely to advertise on specific blogs either directly or even sponsor a blog, which it perceives to be a maven blog. Of course, the blogger and Crown would both have to tread a fine line, because any change in editorial content by the blogger might result in backlinks being lost, readership erosion and loss of authority.

It is an uncharted territory in the world of social media for organisations, but Crown can steal a real lead by being the pioneer to engage real people in real conversations.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The author is an organisational development consultant and one of India’s first business bloggers. His blog http://gauteg. blogspot.com focuses on organisations and talent.