Expert Speaks Interviews have been inspiring a lot of young minds. This is the first #ExpertSpeaks interview with a Ph.D. holder and the cherry on the cake is that she is India’s 1st Social Media Doctorate (Social Media and Consumer Behaviour).
She calls herself as CEO (Creative Everything Officer) and is one of the best social media marketers in India.
It gives me immense pleasure to introduce you to Dr. Khushbu Pandya. Here is a little about her before we start our interview.
Who is Dr. Khushbu Pandya?
Dr. Khushbu Pandya is a social media strategist, trainer, and founder of Konvophilia Communications. She is helping businesses excel in social media since 2008.
Dr. Khushbu has trained more than 50,000 individuals and is also a TEDx speaker.
She has published a book on social media and has been featured on Times of India, Divya Bhaskar, Connect Gujarat, etc. Gujarati people reading this would have watched the movie Ratanpur.
Dr. Khushbu Pandya has successfully managed the social media for that movie. She has worked on several such exciting projects.
She is also a visiting faculty at institutes like Symbiosis Bangalore, PDPU, Navrachana University, etc. Dr. Khushbu Pandya was invited by Airtel India on International Women’s’ Day 2019 to deliver a keynote talk addressing their women workforce.
Her accomplishments don’t end here. But, this was just a brief introduction to one of the most creative and talented person in Social Media.
Let us begin with the interview and hear it from the expert herself.
Expert Speaks Interview with Dr. Khushbu Pandya – The Social Boss
1. Glad to interview India’s 1st Social Media Ph.D. holder. Let us begin this interview with your Ph.D. itself. Can you tell us what inspired you to do this and describe your entire experience in achieving this?
Well, it all started with curiosity. During my teaching career in 2007, I was searching for some innovative topics to research on. Somewhere in the research paper from abroad, I read the term “social media marketing” in early 2008. It led me to read more on it, research about it and try to understand the term.
After clearing my Ph.D. entrance exams, I was convinced that I want to pursue “social media” as a subject of my research thesis, which led me to clear 7 to 8 interviews from my University research panel.
Because they weren’t satisfied with my subject choice. I went with all my intuitions and gut feeling that this medium has a huge potential. So I risked my career, quit my job and pursued my doctoral studies.
The whole experience of researching from the literature review, to connecting with professors abroad and chatting with them about research processes, to making new connections on Orkut and Facebook, to have new ideas every day to implementing newly learned skills on demo projects – was an amazing and out of this world feeling.
2. You have worked as a Relationship manager before your Ph.D. How was the overall experience? What are your key learnings from this experience?
As a relationship manager, I learned the most valued skill that helped me a lot in my social media career as well – PEOPLE skills.
People skills – how to delight people, how to approach customers, online reputation management, relationship building and maintaining them. This major skill even helped me in my research process while I was working to get my questionnaire filled online and offline.
What I realized very early in my life was that wherever you are, whichever industry you work, and whatever work you do – at the end of the day you have to be in touch with people around you. If you make a good rapport, things happen fast and quick. But it is also extremely hard to achieve this skill.
3. You’re the founder of Konvophilia Communications, what made to start this journey? We would also like to know what were the challenges you faced and how did you overcome that?
KONVOPHILIA = KONVO (conversation) + PHILIA (love & friendship) – “Love for conversations” was just a Facebook page while my research days.
It was a page for experimentations, for implementing things I learn daily and to publish my learnings, share other people’s work, inspire my network and an informative page for the social media marketing industry.
Later, when I started freelancing – the same became my brand name and today it is a private limited company.
I started this journey with a gut feeling so obviously there would be lots of challenges. But I loved every bit of my journey because each challenge was an opportunity for me to learn new things and I would always end up increasing my knowledge. So in a way challenges made me richer. Even today, I love encountering challenges.
4. Currently, what type of clients do you serve? How do you measure their satisfaction with your work?
Currently, I provide social media strategy consulting and 1 to 1 coaching to entrepreneurs and business owners; also I conduct on-demand corporate trainings and workshops.
My business has grown out of word of mouth. I have never felt a need for advertising and I guess that’s the biggest form of work satisfaction. What more you want when the work speaks for itself?
Social Media is a huge part of every business today. It’s because your customers are on it. Social Media is impacting our lives and has drastically changed the way people do business. From small hawkers to big multinationals – each business has got affected.
The purchase decisions of your customers change while in stores. Online retail numbers are increasing every year. Smartphones have changed the way people and businesses interact and process transactions. These are some examples of how social media marketing has affected businesses.
Latest trends of 2020 :
- Video content is here to stay and will dominate
- Social Commerce will get more explored and gain importance
- Voice search will gain importance than ever before
These are some of the many trends that I feel are important to the social media marketing industry and every marketer have to stay updated about the same. Campaigns have to be planned innovatively keeping in mind these trends and consumer insights.
If a brand does not change as per trends then they would lose attention and visibility very very soon. Hence, it’s important to stay updated with the changing business needs and user experiences.
WEAVE Model is a book about basics and fundamentals. As I always keep saying since years till now that platforms and tools will keep changing, evolving and diminishing, but marketing fundamentals and basics remain constant.
The book was written even before I finished my Ph.D. but it’s still relevant in many ways. It works as a guide to a fresher and a starter in a social media industry.
Authoring WEAVE Model was an amazing journey because its a product of my research findings and experiences I had during my conversations with people and businesses.
My key takeaway from authoring my book was – the experience of getting published from an international on-demand publisher. The process was a learning experience in itself.
My most favorite one is CONNECT GUJARAT. The brand was built on digital and grew on digital organically. It’s an utmost delight to work on this project because from its inception I have been a part of it. The brand has a Youtube Silver Play Button, a highly engaging Facebook page, super active WhatsApp groups and a website with million views per day. All this happened by applying strategic digital marketing and social media approaches.
The second project worth mentioning is Her Business Buddy. I had a pleasure working with this brand because the objective wasn’t increasing followers but to build leads through Instagram. The brand is a marketplace for digital marketing services. In a span of a month, we were able to attract 100+ potential freelancers to associate with the brand.
And the third one is Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara. This project was a special one because it wasn’t just one page but a cluster of pages and accounts for whom we had to make content strategies, growth strategies, and engagement strategies. The results achieved were amazing. Pages and accounts not only grew but it made an impact in traditional media, as the activities on online platforms were tracked by offline media and based on it news mentions and features got printed.
Get your basics right – the only advice I have for every fresher in the industry. I have lots to say about this and I guess my Instagram profile is overflowing with such advice and information.
You can connect with Dr. Khushbu Pandya on Instagram – instagram.com/drkhushbupandya
I have always believed in human connections and relationships. Sure AI and Bots have changed the marketing techniques and have made things easy for marketers.
But I am old school I guess. I love the human interacting with human more. Automation is ok within limits. Overdoing it is something I don’t appreciate.
Social Media is more about people and less about technology. If it remains the same way, only then the medium is going to stay interesting and empowering.
I think over the years social media will create more chances for people to help each other through community care, faster info travel time, collaborations over digital and life saving and crime-solving technologies. It will surely empower us if put to the right use.
12. You have also founded “Her Business Travel” in 2017. What is it all about?
“Her Business Travel” is a global community of female business travelers. The idea is to provide a place to discuss and discover business travel trends, knowledge sharing, help women travelers, provide empowering and inspiring content.
I felt this need to create this community because no challenges that women face during work trips are totally different than men and the community is a safe place to talk about it. It has inspired women to take solo work trips for their own business. This is an achievement for this community.
13. Social media posts in regional languages have more impact than the ones in English. What’s your take on this?
That’s true. Regional languages are more powerful because people can express themselves the best in a language they feel most comfortable in. Hence, it makes a most powerful impact on social media platforms too. For e.g. Helo – a language centric social platform has a huge and increasing user base due to the same fact. Even Facebook is now emphasizing more on regional languages and has started monetizing language centric pages too.
As I said before – people express themselves greatly in a language that they feel most comfortable in. I am throughout English medium student and for some reason, I have always loved expressing myself in English.
My Gujarati vocabulary is limited and I wouldn’t be so good at it. But yeah it’s a good idea and I can think of getting my blogs translated.
15. How was your overall experience of this #ExpertSpeaks interview? Would you like to nominate and encourage your favorite 3 digital marketing experts for this interview?
First of all, thank you so much for having me on #ExpertSpeak. I thoroughly enjoyed the process and answering all the wonderful questions. I would like to nominate Digital Prateek, Suresh Babu and my friend Ishan Beri for this interview.
Thank you once again.
Conclusion
Thank you so much Khushbu for your time and the fabulous answers. You answered the questions very honestly.
Readers, Thank you for reading the entire interview. Social media is an integral part of our lives and I hope this interview would have answered a lot of questions that many social media enthusiasts have. Besides, if you have any further questions for Dr. Khushbu Pandya, you can write them down in the comments section below.
Also, you can connect with Dr. Khushbu Pandya on her LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/drkhushbupandya
You can watch Dr. Khushbu Pandya’s TED Talk here – How Social Media Changed My Life?
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