Rede: The journey so far
The title of this article sounds grander than it should be — Rede, our journalism-driven intelligence platform for the aviation community in India — is actually at the very beginning of a journey. But the past few months have been a great learning experience.
Baby Steps
The first step we took was deciding the platform’s DNA. We settled on a B2B platform, based on user feedback.
The next was creating various platforms to reach the audience and marketing them. We have a website up, a weekly newsletter is being published and a small but rapidly growing community is being built through social media.
The appetite among the Indian aviation community for accurate news and information was confirmed when the first story that we published on Facebook — how Indian passengers were affected by the US ban on electronic devices on US-bound flights from the Middle East — was liked by more than 1,000 people. We continue to publish original content and share articles and videos that are useful for the Indian aviation community.
But building a platform is one thing. Growing an audience is another. Growth has been, to put it mildly, slow.
There are limitations to marketing efforts on social media, we have realised. Facebook and Twitter enable businesses to reach a vast, targeted audience. For example, by spending a skosh over $25, we reached more than 21000 people with our signup promotion on Facebook. One of our stories that we promoted on Facebook cost us around $5, but reached more than 3,500 people.
But the conversions have been modest. The truth is that to coax people to become subscribers, unless you are already an established platform, is not easy.
Huge Challenge
Our big challenge now is this: how do we grow an audience quickly? The answer probably lies in increasing our offerings: more original content and more interesting curated content.
We also need to spend more time and energy in marketing. The good news is that several key players in the industry are aware of our platform and have been generous with their time and feedback.
As we go forward, we will provide information and intelligence useful to key sectors of Indian commercial aviation. We will run polls on Twitter and Facebook that give airlines insights into what passengers think of their products and services.
Rede will produce data-driven reports and information from the prism of technology, passenger behavior and the business that adds value to the Indian aviation community. We are exploring collaborations and will leverage relationships with our partners to produce more content.
It is going to be a long flight. But these are early days and that gives us room to experiment.
