A couple of weeks back I was toying with the foolish notion of making some mini-bucks with my blog.
Don’t laugh.
Every noob blogger thinks he can rake in the moolah with the magic draw of his words.
Never mind.
After much online research, I turned to Adsense.
Some trials and errors later, having done the needful changes to my Blogger layout and settings, I gleefully clicked the “View Blog” link.
There he was.
With a benign smile on his face, I had Advaniji on the banner ad on my blog’s homepage urging me to vote for the BJP.
Damn.

I was seriously hoping to get a BMW, iPod or something like that on my blog.
Not Advaniji.

However hard I tried, I couldn’t run away from him.
He kept reappearing on my blog banners.
Benign smile included.

Coming to the point, the BJP was all over the web this time.
Zillions of banners across the www.
The new web savvy face of the party.
A clear attempt to connect with the youth of the country.

It didn’t work.

There are plenty of post mortems floating around by now.
I have 3 cents to add to the same.

1. Just because you are present on a younger forum doesn’t mean you will be seen as young. I mean I just can’t see respected Shri Advaniji as the face of new India. Sorry.
2. You don’t barge into social media and expect to be welcomed. You need to make yourself part of someone’s social world first. And then ask for favors.
3. Before you put the bucks behind the message, put some thought behind the message itself.

I guess you can’t just do an Obama and expect a landslide victory when you don’t have a credible, powerful clarion call as Obama had in the first place.

I also believe you don’t advertise on Social Networking sites.
Social Networking sites are like people’s homes.
Nobody wants an ad in his/her private space.

If you search for Advani or BJP on Facebook, you will find quite a few pages and groups.
The maximum number of members in any group is less than 900.

Kiran Bedi’s facebook profile meanwhile has 2022 friends.
And I don’t think she had to spend a penny to get there.

Moral of the story?
Unless you have a credible message and unless you use the medium the way it should be used, all the 2.0 you do could fetch you nothing more than a zero.

P.S. Advaniji’s website is still working. It already has his views on the election debacle.