STOP With the Satire!! A chat with Touseef Ikram

Here’s a scenario you’ve probably heard several times: a website is setup and out of the blue, it gets loads of traffic making the domain owner a millionaire overnight! Believe it or not, lots of sites have success, but the process is rarely ever overnight. Many developers often compare the entire process as a great labor of love or a longterm investment.
And that’s why for this issue of CMO, we got in touch with someone who has been at it for a while, has a lot of innovation in his approach and comes back with a pinch more of optimism than the previous email.

Meet Touseef Ikram. Social Media Development and Marketing Professional. Founder and Co-Admin of STOP.PK and PakSatire.com. It is the dream of every developer to have lots of traffic though only a very few actually achieve realize it. Were you expecting both the sites to get the kind of positive response? Touseef starts, “Well, I was very optimistic about the response but yes, it really was exceptional. When we launched Stop.pk with a load of social networking features tied with an activity point system, I was hoping to get around 10,000 registrations if everything worked according to our plan.

However our easy load offer worked really well and we ended up with more than 15,000 registrations in our first month, giving us a solid lift off.”

“PakSatire.com,” he explains, “is a different kind of experiment with a different target market.” Considering the site is the only original satire-based blog with Pakistani content, it seems to be doing well. After all, it caught our eye, didn’t it?

“On both of our properties, we serve close to 10 million ads monthly with roughly 4 million page views by half a million unique visitors. Being a ‘webpreneur’ is not a routine kind of job; it is a lifestyle of its own. You actually end up living every second of your life in it. But just for the sake of a figure, I start my day around 9:30 am and leave around 9:30 pm in addition to always being online and connected. I’d estimate I work about 12 hours a day.”

Drawing from your experience, what are some effective ways to get an online service (such as stop.pk) publicized?

Well, our biggest problem is that we would gladly spend a few million rupees in real estate but hesitate in spending a penny in online or virtual estates. This happens because it is an emerging market which is also the same reason it could work much better than real estate.

Don’t be afraid of spending money for an online venture just because it isn’t something you can touch or feel (or put in your pocket!). I agree there are very limited ways to get your money back but if you are here for the long run, take your idea as a business and not something which you do in your spare time while relying solely on your existing friend network.

When you are online, it’s all very spontaneous or impulsive. You decide almost in first 30 seconds that you are going to click it or not and then you are going to explore it further or not, and then you would sign-up or make a purchase (become converted). So a strong “call of action” associated with an attractive deal can do wonders for you.

Once you have the offer or ad ready, you can have multiple channels to broadcast the ad depending upon your target market. You can go to online ad publishers such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo or MSN or use traditional ways to market your site. But for a website, an online campaign is always the best option.

How important it is to be a social blogger (as in visit and be in touch with other bloggers within your ‘physical’ community)?

Well I think it is important. It gives a more networked feeling in addition to giving you the chance to learn from the people you interact with them. Personally I don’t get a lot of time to visit my blogger friends in person because all of us are just really busy. Meeting up in person is important.

Would you say the trend of individual blogs has given way to community blogs and social networking communities? Is that something developers should be focusing on more?
On the contrary, I think it is the other way around. There have been many individual bloggers who have very limited readership. It was when the social networking community bug bit the audience that created a more aware audience. This further created greater user involvement for their blogs, ultimately resulting in the shape of more discussions. This also has encouraged that readership to come up with their own blogs so you are seeing this massive increase in blogging.

Do you think the blogger scene in Pakistan is reaching some stage of maturity? Individual and personal blogs will never give the blogosphere the kind of boost that perhaps corporate or more meaningful blogging style would. What do you think it will take for the blogosphere or market to reach that stage?

Well, I would not call it ‘maturity’ as I think maturity will come once our acknowledged journalists, writers, poets, cartoonists and other professionals start using their blogs and when they rebrand themselves with their blog names instead of their associations.

Having said that, things have improved considerably. If we could engage some acknowledged professionals from every discipline to start blogging about their respective fields and aggregate these threads at a community level, it will add a lot of authenticity and weight to the whole blogosphere.

From the perspective of the corporation or marketing director at a company, everyone tells them that the online media is where they should be advertising and promoting their concepts. As a seasoned professional, what are the compelling reasons you would present to them?

It is economical so you can experiment with it till  you get the desired results.
.It is targeted so you only pay for the exact market  you want to reach.
.It is interactive so you can get the viewer involved with your brand more easily.
.It is track-able so you can pin point the source giving you more ROI.
.It is restless and sleepless, so you can rest and sleep while it works for you 24/7.

Do you think advertising agencies understand what the online media is all about?
There definitly is a learning curve involved and the majority of them still seem reluctant to drive any kind of benefit out of it. But the few who are using online media to generate brand awareness are setting some trends and giving brands the opportunity to get into this amazingly economical, transparent and effective age of the internet.

Can you share some ‘pre-campaign launch’ things companies should keep in mind before they think about getting online?
The biggest mistake some companies make is to start spending online without “preparing” themselves to effectively convert all the targeted traffic into sales figures and then badmouth the medium itself. Just like in the real world, you cannot expect a sales agent in shabby cloths and poor communication skills to get you any sales, you can’t imagine making sales from an unprepared site? This preparation could be a simple face lift to a total re-engineering of your site.

If you had to describe the phase of the online media we’re at right now in Pakistan, what would your description be like?
We are in our learning phase. First we learn the media where a few companies experiment and share their success. Then we enter a developing phase where policies and standards are created and aligned with infrastructure. Only then will you see a greater potential being unleashed by companies. When you see small items such as shoelaces being webvertised, you’ll know we’ve reached a critical mass.

Anything else you’d like to add?
It’s been a tough road and we still are experiencing the ups and downs of business, but we’re certainly not stopping there. We haven’t even scratched the surface and then there is the whole iceberg beneath it. We sure are going to bring some revolutionary changes in the way an ordinary Pakistani internet user thinks of a social network and what media blogging is capable of.