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ASK AASHISH stuff on Content, Video & Viral Marketing!

As a part of our ASK RODINHOODERS series, may we present Aashish Chopra. He is new to therodinhoods, but has a great deal of experience in Content & Video Marketing and was excited to be a part of this initiative!  

Profile

Aashish Chopra is an award winning viral video marketer, having made and marketed videos with millions of views. He is passionate about content and believes that in the times of declining attention spans and chaotic newsfeeds, creativity is the differentiator.

He heads content marketing at ixigo.com. From ideation to execution he has been instrumental in making video marketing a growth hack for ixigo. “In today’s fast evolving digital landscape, social media strategy for any brand revolves around remarkable content. Content must be compelling and share-worthy, period. Every brand today is turning into a media company.” he affirms. 

Before diving into video marketing, for two years Aashish was active in visual content marketing, with several Infographics going viral on Slideshare. Before that, he started a web services company in Canada and learnt the lessons of being an entrepreneur and the value of building relationships in traditional old-school businesses. As early as grade 8, he was designing websites and helping others with new tools and technology. He lives in Gurgaon, and is dealing with the everyday challenges of having a cat 🙂

 

Reach out to Aashish about: Content Marketing, Viral Marketing, Video Marketing

Check out these amazing insights Aashish has shared here on how they achieved the fastest 100 k video views in 24 hrs!

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Aashish is following this page – so go ahead and ask him everything you want, in the comments below! 

Follow him on twitter! @aashishc 

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27 Comments

  1. Hello hello, good to be here 🙂 Let’s start the content marketing discussion. Every brand today is becoming a media company, newsfeeds are chaotic and competition is getting fierce. Creating remarkable content which rises to the top, engages your users/customers is the holy grail of marketing today. Let’s discuss and find solutions/growth hacks, to make your content contagious 🙂

  2. Hey Ashish,

       You are just what the doctor ordered for me !. Its really great to read your story on your website and to see how you really achieved the growth for ixigo. I would love to get to know more about you and how you do your awesome stuff. Loved the Travel Hacks!

  3. Aashish, congrats on all the success. I have a small health food startup, I want to boost awareness via social media and have more engagement on the website. Can you suggest me some really cost effective solutions?

    Facebook.com/sattvicfoods
    http://sattvicfoods.in

    I already have distribution in niche stores in Goa, Mumbai and the products are selling well. Just need some help getting the brand a little better known.

    Any help would be greatly appreciated

  4. Great to have you here Aashish. Can you help us with following

    1. An Intro post on what content marketing means to _____ (Brands, S&M companies, Startups)
    2. How should the content marketing team looks like for a _____(Brands, S&M companies, Startups)

    We can help you with more researched links/case studies for people to understand it better.

    Thanks
    Aji Issac

  5. Hello Aashish,  Good to read your story.

    Question : We all use social media everyday and press the like/favourite only which brings value to us. But still lot of Startups and bigger organisations concentrate ONLY on pushing Sales through social media OR since we know we exact number now impressions/reach are social media marketers are new age sales guys.What are we missing here ?

  6. Hey Bimal, Thank you for message 🙂 ixigo’s content marketing journey has been an exciting one. Every video, every news-jack, which got us leaps ahead, went down in my phone as notes for learning. Uploaded a bunch of slide-decks from recent talks, you may find it useful https://www.slideshare.net/aashishc

    If you’re Gurgaon anytime, give me a shout.. let’s meet 🙂

  7. Hi Jeetu,

    Thanks for writing in 🙂

    Just checked your website, and at first glance could not find links to your Facebook/social communities. If you have them great, if not, start investing in one. The kind of business you’re in, you’ll definitely find a niche, but i’m sure you already know that.

    About driving more engagement on social and website, IMO nobody’s gives a *** what you do, but why you do it. In this case, I’m sure you have passion and a solid reason why you champion this cause and run this business. If you create a content plan, and focus on helping people solve/answer everyday problems/challenges about food habits, I feel the content would add value and become share-worthy. This could drive organic likes, but do keep spending on FB to grow your community. FB is notorious for digging into your wallet. (that’s a rant for a different post :))

    You can spin into articles, minimalistic graphics, infographics, possibly video, slideshares. The only thing to focus is to solve customers pain points, and NOT promote the products/brand. People will buy your idea, products will follow 🙂 Pain points could be challenges about health food, q&a about food in grocery stores, organic food 101, how to read labels, health then vs now etc etc

    Hope that helps 🙂

    Aashish

  8. Hi Aji,

    Hope I understand your comment correctly, do you want me to write on those topics here or is it Intro post for another post? Not sure. Here are my 2 cents 🙂

    What content marketing means for Brands, Startups

    The Indian growth story in internet adoption is fast becoming yesterday’s news. The change is not constant, it is infact accelerating. There’s an epic shift of eyeballs from traditional media to internet/social. And for any brand, big or small, this is where the game will be played, period. Building a community and nurturing that community with content that impact their lives, will leave last impression on users’ and longer shelf life for your content. It’s all becoming about content, and one thing to be very clear it is not about Ads and promotions. Legacy agencies were joyous about YouTube, coz now they could upload 5 minute commercials, but it’s not about Ads, but content which is share-worthy, useful, which takes your brand leaps ahead, coz you start or take part in relevant conversations about solving problems and not just Sell (selling is part of business, but let’s trojan horse it, let’s build it into the story, the narrative) Coz social is like a party, no one likes that one person distributing business cards, but relationships formed at a party can bring monumental results 🙂

    How should the content marketing team look like?

    Writers (Storytellers) + Designers + Filmmakers (yes, experiment with it) + Social Media manager

    This would be a startup team, you can scale up a required for Content Marketing 🙂

    hope that answers your question

    Aashish

  9. Hi Prabhu,

    Thanks for writing in 🙂

    Answer: Selling on social is like selling at a party, no one likes that one person distributing business cards, do we? Traditional marketers and many legacy agencies, saw the rise of social as another channel to push their Ads to, but social is no push medium is it. Here’s the simple answer, the startups/brands who concentrate ONLY on pushing Ads/Sales through social will eventually lose our to better and faster players, who build long term relationships with their users/customers with content. Producing content which impacts the world, makes a dent in the universe, will take any brand leaps ahead! Social media marketers are not Sales guys, but agents of change IMO, but that’s coz I look it from a very different lens 🙂

  10. Thanks Aashish, helps for sure 🙂 … great going!

  11. Hello Ashish,

    We have an app named ” InstaMapia a new way for InstaGram” (https://instamapia.com). It’s created out some curiosity not much planned on monetizatoin and marketing strategies.

    Android version

    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.webmobtech.instamapia

    iOS version

    https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/instamapia-new-way-for-instagram/id888718623?mt=8

    Basic concept of an app to place on near by images around a person on a Map (almost a live feed images). A one can explore the whole world in terms images by tapping anywhere on Map , it will get you the name of place and loads up recent images taken around that location. Current source of images are InstaGram.

    We are getting 30-50 downloads on daily basis without any marketing. Previously we tried out tweets and posting on relevant page and social media but that didn’t get us much required result. 

    It would be great if you can have a look at app and suggest someway to make it viral content around it.

    Thanks.

  12. Hello Aashish

    I am in the process of shifting my Magento based website to a SaaS platform. A few queries I had regarding marketing of website

    1. How often SEO has to be done for a site. I mean we can do in intervals of 2 months to keep refreshing the searches or is it an ongoing process 

    2. Considering the cost effectiveness and productivity, what is more prudent :

     a) Outsourcing digital marketing to so many companies offering it ( quotes vary like north and south pole )

    b) Hiring freelancers to work from remote location

    c) Hire full time employee ( we can take up a co working space probably)

    My website is http://www.littlecharms.net

     

  13. Hi Roshni, 

    1. I’m not the best person for answers about SEO, my focus is entirely about creating content which is closely tied to distribution on social. My 2 cents would be to keep refreshing the site with updated kick-ass content on regulr interval. Google loves new content and if that content is widely shared, love gets all the better 🙂

    2. About execution, I see content as fuel for a space rocket.

    a. You’d need everyday fuel to keep going forward (which would be regular articles in your niche) which can be outsourced (freelancers can do this, to keep costs down) 

    b. You’d need to invest in nuclear fuel, which would take your rocket light years ahead. This type of content requires research and a little more investment of creativity, perhaps a little budget. I see this type of content as something worthy of being shared crazy. It could be a video, infographic, slides or photo gallery on Facebook or perhaps an indepth guide or a self published kindle book for that matter. I personally think about this type of content to solve user pain points, which has worked well in my experience. This type of work, I would keep in-house, perhaps a rockstar employee who can either manage this from vendors. This person would be a content marketing person, who would be responsible for the idea, execution etc. You can keep costs low by hiring student filmmakers for video or freelance designers. The control over quality and direction must entirely be in your control. (I have seen amazing results with new talent, once you’ve given them the right direction)

    Hope that helps

    all the best 🙂

    Aashish
    PS: An idea for the nuclear fuel type content could be, making personalised gifts perhaps for under-privileged kids in the city, gifts that could be useful to them. Spin it in photo series or a quick video. I feel content marketing gives us a chance to make an impact in the world, and customers come to you not because what you do, but why you do it 🙂

  14. Hi Pramesh,

    Sorry for the late reply.

    I feel you could spin your content strategy entirely around local events and news-jack (riding the news). Perhaps become like crazy journalists in hitting places where live events are happening or which are in the news. And curate the feed (images) and create news-like articles on your site, which you can share on social. Your content having relevance to news or live events, Facebook will love to show it longer in newsfeeds (relevancy) and would give you more reach and engagement. You could perhaps run contests around the country, and give away cool rewards, and crowd-source this journalism teams around the country. Bring out a simple role description: a) get the app b) go to event location c) save images d) come back write an article e) unlock your reward. Then you could use this content to share and plug your brand in the end (powered by). 

    I feel the brand must enable story-telling, facilitate the process, empower story-tellers, and NEVER be front and centre like an Ad. Your brand must be part of conversations, for app downloads to happen, and this way it will be, news never dies 🙂

    all the best

    Aashish
    * If and when this works out, donate my consulting fees to charity of your choice 🙂 Hope your app makes it to the news, when there’s the next breaking story.

  15. Hi Ashish,  

    Hope you are doing well. And thanks for this initiative. 

    I run an education based firm ( http://www.pythagurus.com (https://www.pythagurus.com/)) – and we have been a brick and mortar model for a long time now. However, we are releasing new online products- hundreds of videos( Roughly 10 GB Data to start with- and I am facing a technology handicap- Where to host it? – I know there are lots of solutions available( Vimeo, Wistia, Amazon Cloud), however, if you have done something similar, I would really appreciate any help you can provide. 

    Some of the questions below

    1. Where to host the videos? ( Vimeo? Wistia? Amazon? Youtube( Does it have an unpaid option? ) 

    2. Which one is most economical? 

    3. Which platform supports the most in data analysis? ( Number of views/average time spent/Drop out rates? Which one would you use if you have to analyse the performance of your online courses? ) 

    4. Outages? Which one of these is most reliable? 

    5. SEO Optimisation: Does not matter what platform it is on? Right? Or does it depend on that as well? 

    I could be asking very naive questions- but – I would appreciate if you could help a layman here. 

    Thanks in advance, 

    Jatin Bhandari

  16. Hey Jatin,

    Guess this message got lost in my overloaded inbox, didn’t see it until the cleanup, sorry about that. 

    About your question, I have had experience in developing content for public distribution, not so much about restrictive distribution as a product and technology about the hosting. I choose platform based on the distribution benefits it offers. YouTube works well when there’s a massive subscriber base and Facebook works well with existing FB fans, so FB is my platform of choice right now. But your question is beyond this, I’ll answer to the best of my experience 🙂

    1. Where to host the videos? 

    YouTube is the best to host video if you’re looking at in-depth analytics right now. You could also have subscription based model for YouTube videos. Read more here. Vimeo and Wistia on the other hand offer password protection on videos, in case you want to protect the videos, to be seen by specific users. Viddler.com also offers cool options to build a subscription based store. 

    2. Which one is most economical? 

    Not sure about that, haven’t used anything beyond FB and YT and little Vimeo.

    3. Which platform supports the most in data analysis? ( Number of views/average time spent/Drop out rates? Which one would you use if you have to analyse the performance of your online courses? ) 

    YouTube right now has the best video analytics I have seen, and they have become in-depth with their data.  but again YouTube is by far the biggest in the game. (FB playing catchup with analytics features).  But again, I haven’t had experience with paid/subscription based video content yet. I would explore YouTube as my first choice before looking around 🙂

    4. Outages? Which one of these is most reliable? 

    Not sure

    5. SEO Optimisation: Does not matter what platform it is on? Right? Or does it depend on that as well? 

    If the content is not public, SEO shouldn’t be an issue. For teaser videos perhaps yes, you could.

  17. Thanks Ashish. I think Youtube is a limitation for us as the videos will be paid for and are not free. But I got your point. Thanks for the response. 

    Regards, 

    Jatin

  18. Hi Aashish,

    Your post on ‘A content experiment which broke the internet’ was awesome. May I ask a favour?

    Need suggestions on how we can enhance a video that describes our platform. The current video is at https://youtu.be/1pHSKlb0fWU.

    Thanks/ Rameshwar

  19. Hi Rameshwar

    Saw your video, here’s what I suggest: Try an app called ‘Adobe Voice’, it’s on iOS. Play with it, experiment, it will make super quick and crisp videos for you, on the same format you’re making.

    cheers

    Aashish

  20. Thanks, Aashish. Will check out.

  21. hey all, aashish is doing a RodinChat with us this thursday (april 21) on TRH MAIN CHAT ROOM – check details & RSVP! don’t miss a chance to ask him everything you always wanted to about content marketing!!!

    https://www.therodinhoods.com/events/ask-aashish-anything-on-content-marketing-on-trh-on-april-21st

  22. Hi Aashish,

    I would like to speak to you about creating a product video. 

    How could i reach you ? Followed you today on twitter. Do DM on twitter and we can take the discussion forward.

    Regards

    Raja

  23. hi raja,

    the whole idea of this page is for folks to reach out to aashish HERE and ask all their queries here itself. that way this becomes a resource page for everyone!

  24. Hi Asha,

    Am looking to avail Aashish’s service for creating a product video for something that am working on.

    So not sure, what more i can share here which can be considered helpful to others.

    Regards

  25. raja – i think you’ve mistaken aashish’s job profile. he is the head of content marketing for ixigo.

    if you are looking at creating a product video ping anil of my promo videos – https://www.therodinhoods.com/profile/AnilKumar779

    or hariharan of brand love videos – https://www.therodinhoods.com/profile/hariharan

    or nikhilesh of stagephod – https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/stagephod-com-creates-solutions-to-find-and-hire-video-makers-for

  26. Thanks Asha,

    Indeed i was little confused on Aashish’s job profile.

    Thanks for the leads, i will pursue them.

    Regards

  27. Hi Ashish,

    I just logged in to this awesome community ! And also plugged in my first post here. https://www.therodinhoods.com/post/writersmelon-curious-case-humble-beginnings-incremental-ambitious-growth/
    Let me know your initial thoughts on the platform.

    Asha, You are doing an awesome job in keeping all of this together here.

    Much love ! and best wishes 🙂

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