All posts tagged: social media

The Coolest Social Media Campaign in Travel.

Ever since travel destinations have started flocking to social media, my travel wish list has been growing. It’s hard not to ogle atΒ Visit Norway‘s eye-candyΒ on Facebook and hatch secret plans of hanging outΒ amid the Norwegian fjords. It’s easy to get distracted byΒ Visit Jordan‘s teasers on Twitter, and be constantly tempted by the need forΒ Spain. Shivya NathWelcome to my blog, The Shooting Star. I’ve been called a storyteller, writer, photographer, digital nomad, “sustainability influencer,” social entrepreneur, solo traveller, vegan, sustainable tourism consultant and environmentalist. But in my heart, I’m just a girl who believes that travel – if done right – has the power to change us and the world we live in.

Incredible India: A social experiment in travel.

Update: Thanks everyone for getting in touch. Keep up the enthusiasm! I’m working with a small bunch of you to refine the idea. If you’ve indicated your interest, I’ll keep you in the loop of developments. If you’re interested to join the initiative, feel free to drop me an email or a comment πŸ™‚ India is a beautiful country. It’s richness of culture, natural wonders, people, traditions, festivals, landscapes, history, art, food, languages and wildlife, is as stunning as it is overwhelming. Even for an Indian, it’s impossible to explain in detail the diversity of India’s travel offerings or the riches in its every nook and corner. So here I am,Β excited at the thought of a social experiment, aching to make my contribution to India’s economy, with an idea to facilitate tourism in India through social & social media collaboration. Here I am, inviting you to join me in this social experiment, because I know you’re aching to be that spark for India too. Shivya NathWelcome to my blog, The Shooting Star. I’ve been called …

Are We Losing Our Identity to Social Media?

Some of you may be familiar with the story of how I was threatened to be sued by a restaurant for a negative review. I refrained from telling my parents to keep them from getting worked up, until they stumbled upon my blog. Fail. Many of us are tending toward a high external locus of control, which is to say that we change ourselves, our behavior, our thinking, our attitude, as many times in a day as our environment changes. This is becoming increasingly true, and challenging, with our addiction to social media platforms that allow us to assume pretentious personas not meant for everyone. Professional identity We all pay close attention to maintaining our reputation as subject matter experts in the workplace; a necessity for people to take us and what we do seriously. However, our publicly open social media presence is diluting that identity. Would you use Twitter / Facebook the same way if you knew your boss or co-workers were scrutinizing your every tweet / update? Family identity Whether it’s your family …

On Social Media & Free Speech

I am a little flustered right now. My head is flowing with many thoughts, but I must start at the start. A month and a half ago (mid Sept), I had an unfortunate lunch-time experience at a restaurant I frequented. In a nutshell, a server spilled all kinds of food all over me and my clothes while I was eating, seated along the corridor, and the “service recovery” after that was excruciatingly bad; all in the middle of a work day! Expectedly, I was appalled by the experience, and also exhausted by the conversation I had with the restaurant manager. I resorted to HungryGoWhere, a popular Singapore-based site where I often review food joints. Here is my entire review on Zaffran, the restaurant in question. With little else to pacify myself, I moved on and went about my life as usual. Until a few days back, when HungryGoWhere’s moderator wrote to me the following message: To this, I immediately replied with my contact details, standing by the integrity of my review. Following 4 days of …

The world is a-buzz

When gmail meets twitter, we buzz. Google is shrinking the world into a tiny little capsule, facebook is keeping it intact, and twitter is keeping it on its Β feet. Brands have a lot of catching up to do to make their space in this compact new web of people. Pepsi’s abandonment of 23 years of superbowl advertising for the refresh project, a massive social media campaign, is just a baby step for a multi-million brand in the big (not so bad) world. I’m latching onto the social media buzz in the tourism industry soon. Can’t wait to get my hands dirty! Shivya NathWelcome to my blog, The Shooting Star. I’ve been called a storyteller, writer, photographer, digital nomad, “sustainability influencer,” social entrepreneur, solo traveller, vegan, sustainable tourism consultant and environmentalist. But in my heart, I’m just a girl who believes that travel – if done right – has the power to change us and the world we live in.

Social media

I recently discovered that a lot of people are unaware of the social media phenomenon, even though they are very much a part of it. As a believer in the power of social media, I owe this post to them. Simply put, social media collectively describes all tools that enable people to talk online. Often interchangeably used with the term Web 2.0, social media consists of social networks like Facebook, content sharing sites like Youtube and Flickr, blogging platforms like WordPress and Blogger, and user-generated information sources like Wikipedia. The term, coined only recently, is creating waves in the PR world. It is aΒ colossal avenue for people to share their insights, opinions and knowledge, through interaction with others like them on the World Wide Web.Β  Currently, the size of the social media community is estimated at 400 million. According to a study by Strategy Analytics, by 2015, 1 in every 6 people will be users of social media platforms. Billion dollar companies like Dell, Starbucks and Coca-Cola are reinventing themselves through social media and reconnecting …