Gaurav Mishra, Gauravonomics

Gaurav Mishra is brand manager of the Indica range at Tata Motors and blogs at Gauravonomics.  Hello Gaurav!

* How long have you been blogging?
I have been blogging since December 2005.

* How did you first hear about blogs?
I first heard about blogs in December 2005 from a friend who blogged.

* Why did you decide to start blogging?
I first started blogging in order to build an online repository of my creative writing, mostly poems. Over time, however, I have started looking at blogging as a tool to discipline my thinking and share my ideas with other people in my domain.

* What process, if any, did you work through from a corporate perspective?
For a very long time, my blog was basically a personal diary. As I started writing an increasingly large number of posts about blogging and marketing, I finally divided my blog into two parts in May 2007:

• At Gauravonomics Blog, I'll write about blogging, marketing and personal development. If you want to read about what I'm thinking about, head over here.
• At Gauravonomics Diary, I'll write about love, life and pop culture. If you want to read about what I'm doing/ feeling/ reading/ watching/ listening to, this is the blog to read.

Now, most of my posts are about social marketing (often with an Indian focus). While I haven't directly used my blog in my work, I have often used insights from my blog at work, especially in the area of online marketing.

* What are your most and least favorite aspects of blogging?
My most favorite aspect of blogging is being part of a conversation via a marketing meme (like social media measurement, mediasnackers, or conversation age). I totally love it when I see some very smart marketing bloggers build on each others' ideas like this.

My least favorite aspect of blogging is maintaining the backend of my blog.

* What would you change with 20/20 hindsight?
Three times over the last two years, after periods of manic blogging, I stopped blogging completely for a few months and had to start all over again. In fact, I have just resumed blogging after a six month break. These breaks have often given a renewed focus to my blogging, but, in hindsight, I would want to be more consistent in my blogging.

* What three blogs have you gained the most insight from in the past month?
For insight per post, very few blogs beat Seth Godin, Hugh McLeod and Scott Adams.

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