How I got a job because of Social Media?

Hello everyone, I am Ram Manohar Bokkisa, presently working as a Web Analyst in a MNC. I have been working there since August 2011. Let me tell you the story, how exactly I ended up here.

Schooling and Noob Blogger:
I did my schooling and +2 in Hyderabad. Then I wrote JEE and joined Civil Engineering Dual Degree course at IIT Madras in 2006, Chennai. I was not much interested in the course from the beginning.

In the summer before I joined the college, one of my friends showed me something called a Blog which was hosted on Blogger. He did lot of cool stuff, put up fancy widgets like a map showing visitors to his blog, a HitCounter and so on. I really got fascinated by the concept of the blog. It was amazing to me that I can post whatever I wanted onto a page which can be viewed from all over the world. This attracted me towards understanding Blogger. Initially it was difficult for me to understand the technical aspects. But my disinterest in my academics resulted in spending more time towards Blogging. I started posting random stuff like Interesting Forward emails, Interesting Facts, Pictures and others. But I was not satisfied with what I was doing. I started adding fancy gadgets which show off my blog's popularity. I was still not satisfied. I started learning HTML and CSS so that I can change the design of my blog. The old blogger was based on an XML template where you can change anything on CSS part. I started tinkering so that I can get a design of my choice. Then my brother told me about a Blog called Hackosphere maintained by a person called Ramani. I'm not sure whether he is active now or not. But back in 2006, his blog and a blog called Beautiful Blogger I guess, were like a rage to beginners like me. I started changing the functionality of the blog based on the tutorials on their blogs.

Crossing the Noob category:
By this time around early 2007, I got interested in understanding how many people are visiting my blogs and from where they are coming. To solve this problem, I placed HiStats Free counter on my blog. The kind of statistics it provided were amazing back at that time. I used to spend hours analyzing data and understanding what is the driving force of traffic. I understood that most of the traffic to the websites come from Search Engines, basically Google. So, how to make my blog rank in the first page of Google? I came to know about something called SEO (Search Engine Optimization). At the same time I came to know about Google Analytics, but I was not much interested in that since I got stuck with an amazing tool called GetClicky. I guess if I remember correctly, it was the first tool which started giving Real Time Data of traffic to your blog and that too for free. The only hiccup was that it comes with a 21 Day trial. I used to create a new account with another email Id at the end of 21 days :D to get going. That was the power of Real Time Data.

Time for Earning:
Once I reached a particular stage, I came to know about a website maintained by a person called Amit Agarwal, Digital Inspiration and I heard that he used to make a lot of money from his blog. I wondered how? Those were the times when you have a Google Account, you have a Google adsense account by default if you enable it. So I enabled it and started posting ads on my blog. I wanted to check whether Google is intelligent enough to see the pattern of clicks I am making to my own ads. Yeah, it was. I got banned from Google Adsense :( At that time my father started a blog called Early Tollywood, where he used to post a lot of stuff related to old Telugu movies. So I used to change the design make nice 3 template layouts and all. Also I added that blog to Google Analytics and started posting ads using Google Adsense. My father posted so much of content that within 2 months we started getting huge traffic to the blog and Adsense started ticking. The earnings went on for more than 2 years till 2010 when I stopped updating most of the blogs.

Novice Programmer:
Meanwhile I got interested in making websites, blogs looked very simple to me. So I started learning PHP, basics of MySQL and how websites work. After getting familiarized with web programming, I started creating simple stuff. But it was not enough to construct a website. Again, my brother told me about something which was fantastic to me. WORDPRESS! We can host our own blog on a server easily. With Wordpress and my basic PHP knowledge, I have started a website called Prep4Civils in 2010, which at one point of time made into Alexa 100,000. But I was not much excited about the idea behind the website and stopped updating the website.

Path to Web Analytics:
Once I am into my final year I was very rigid and determined that I will be an entrepreneur and will start something on my own. I did not attend placements. But to become an entrepreneur you should have an idea which I did not have. So I thought I should choose a career which interests me. So I started searching for companies which does Web Analytics in India. There were not many exciting results. But I found a blog of Web Analytics Association. There was a blog post mentioning about WAA India and thereby contacting some people from the blog through Facebook and receiving an immediate response and giving couple of interviews, consequently I landed on a Web analyst job in a MNC and it's been more than 2 years I started working there and I am enjoying every bit of it.

This is how I have landed upon the job I'm currently doing. If you observe the major points in my previous 7 years of life, everything was majorly related to Web and Social Media. If my friend had not showed me that Blog during the summer just before I was joining the college in 2006, I would have been a slogging Civil Engineer who doesn't know Civil Engineering properly and who is not satisfied with his life. If I had not pursued my interest in Web after coming to college I would still be a slogging Civil Engineer. If I had not the enthusiasm to learn more about the web I would not have the exposure to many things on Web and ultimately I would have not learned Civil Engineering properly or Web Stuff properly. If I had not looked at the blog post made on WAA blog, I would not have come to known about the people I know now and I would not have joined the company, I would have gone mad by thinking about ideas on what to start and how to become an entrepreneur.

So, the bottom line is, Never underestimate Social Media. Use it wisely, lives can be turned upside down!