Why, How and What? : Checkin Story
In the past 3 years, I along with Soham & Team Digiwale have worked with 100+ brands, most of them being internet products. We’ve been a part of their growth stories helping them with ideation, social, search, UI & UX. That in return has helped us grow as better Product Marketers. So much that we also engage with them in their Business, Tech, Operations and HR level decisions.
Hacking growth is not easy and to do it for different brands in different categories for longer periods of time, takes a different skill altogether; making you more competitive and competent. 💪
I have always been fascinated by — how internet can do a world of good to you if you have something really good to offer. The value creation process doesn’t need to have an out-of-the-world kind of an idea. It just needs to make some sense and you need to have enough in you to really CARE about it. It needs to be there for so long that you work on that ‘thing’ and work on it day in and out. Right from how Facebook created the same value to Twitter, to Uber, AirBnb, to Snapchat, all the way to Medium, we’ve seen internet grow radically — connecting people. 😄
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I’m a HUGE fan of Airbus and its planes. As a kid, I grew watching the making of the Airbus 380 in Toulouse, France on National Geographic Channel. Something that I still go and watch for inspiration. Few months ago, I was watching a video — the launch of AirBus 350 and its inaugural flight from Doha to Frankfurt. ✈ I was amazed with the kind of importance travel bloggers, #avgeeks got as they were invited for the launch. CNN’s Richard Quest, whom I’ve been a fan of as a kid was also a part of this flight. Out of curiosity I started watching more such videos and some inspirational travel journeys of bloggers. A simple Google search allowed me to read through many travel bloggers and their travel stories. Soon, I realized that there’s a huge gap between the people that are going on sites for Travel inspiration and the ones who write about their travels. Meaning — people go on sites like LonelyPlanet, Nat Geo, TripAdvisor, Maptia, TravelPod or other travel magazines / sites and the other source of inspiration comes from Travel bloggers who contribute to their own sites or to the above mentioned sites in some cases. We haven’t come across a better platform that brings all the best and new travel stories around the world while uniting the passionate travelers. 🌎
I and Soham had couple of brainstorming sessions on this and to get more insights, we started getting in touch with various travel bloggers & people from the community. While we were doing this, we were also (we still are! 😺) hooked onto ProductHunt. We love the way it heavily revolves around ‘community building’. We thought if we could apply the same principles to build a platform for travel stories & inspiration, the problem can be solved in a very unique way.
Our strengths are Marketing & Community Building! Keeping that in mind — we started with a few community building activities. The first activity we launched was in March where we started interviewing Travel influencers / heavy travelers on our Podcast, hosted by Shrutee. We have completed 14 Podcast interviews till now and will be doing more in coming days. On an average we are getting about 150–200 plays per Podcast episode. The second parallel activity along with the Podcast we’ve been doing is posting blog posts on our Medium Publication. Our team (bunch of enthusiastic travel writers) has written over 50 articles that have resulted in the community reading of over 1500 minutes. The third activity we kickstarted this Thursday is #CheckinChat — a weekly Twitter chat that is hosted by Dumbbells and Drama.
Oh wait! I also created a Messenger chatbot 🤖 (in less than 5 minutes) for Checkin Story. Why don’t you guys give it a shot? Start with a Hi or Hello!
Gary Vaynerchuck says “You’re only as good as your last at bat.”
And we’re fully aware we need to ship things in continuity and keep getting better at the same time. Having said that, we do have some really kickass community building activities lined-up that we cannot wait to share it with you guys. SOON! 😎
“We firmly believe — building a passionate community around whatever you do always helps you and your brand grow in the right way. That is the No.1 goal we have for Checkin Story.”
Let’s talk TECH!
The platform itself is not going to be tech-heavy but we have planned for something that you might like. We made the wireframes ready this month along with the UI. Here’s how it’ll look when ready — with few iterations.
Web + Mobile will go hand-in-hand in phase I, followed by native apps on cross-platforms. With big data and analytics around the content, we plan to make the platform better and smarter for the Travel community.
How will it work?: Let’s wait for some more time?! 😌
Till then, why don’t you go listen to few of our inspiring Podcast episodes here.
Travel has been a passion for both of us. While I’ve traveled to 9 countries (few of them more than once), Soham has gone on adventure trails, solo trips and loves biking and photography.
Our domain expertise has been Community building & Marketing; that’s what we will be doing around our passion — Travel by uniting passionate travelers. 💛
PS — We both also plan to complete the PCT, one day! 💪
