Shashi Bellamkonda Washington Business Journal Articles

It was either a knee jerk reaction or a claim on personal space, but whatever your stance, the Sunday night story of United Airlines Flight 1462 from Newark to Denver - with an unscheduled stop in Chicago - has travelers talking.

I don't know about you, but if I was seated on a plane that suddenly had a cabin filling with smoke, tweeting a selfie would be far down on my airborne to-do list. Not Shashi Bellamkonda. Regular readers of the Washington Business Journal know Bellamkonda as the vice president of digital marketing at Greenbelt-based The Bozzuto Group and occasional WBJ columnist.

Staff Washington Business Journal Shashi Bellamkonda, known to just about everyone in Washington as the Go-To Guy for all things social media, has announced that he is leaving Network Solutions (now part of Web.com) to take a new job with the Bozzuto Group. He'll be vice president of digital marketing for the Greenbelt-based real estate firm.

Shashi Bellamkonda, Vice president of digital marketing, The Bozzuto Group The past few weeks have seen a stream of social news from Google. News of the departure of the head of Google+, Vic Gundotra, raised a lot of doubts about the future of that fledgling social network.

In today's reality, customer feedback is immediate. Twitter updates detail every minute of the day. Food reviews pop up online while a diner is sitting at the restaurant. Product critiques come out within minutes of its launch.

A former chef in his native India, Shashi Bellamkonda is one of the D.C. business community's most tireless social media practitioners. He's fluent in five languages and has a basic command of two more. He has tweeted more than 70,000 times.

In today's reality, customer feedback is immediate. Twitter updates detail every minute of the day. Food reviews pop up online while a diner is sitting at the restaurant. Product critiques come out within minutes of its launch. "The Internet has a huge footprint, and customer behavior has changed to searching for information online," said Network Solutions Senior Director of Social Media Shashi Bellamkonda.

Shashi Bellamkonda, Vice president of digital marketing, The Bozzuto Group Google provides account activity stats to all those who have an account. Within my Gmail account I discovered that I had received 8,233 emails and sent 153 emails last month.

Jennifer Nycz-Conner Staff Reporter Social media swami. Yes, that's an actual job title, and it belongs to Shashi Bellamkonda of Network Solutions LLC. The company originally was a Web domain registrar but now wants to be the Web services provider of choice for small businesses.

Over the weekend I installed Facebook Home on my Samsung Galaxy S3 that runs on Android. Facebook had done some amazing pre-release PR for the Facebook Home launch. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg seemed to consider this launch important and pitched it to the media.

Of late, if you have been noticing, there seem to be an awful lot of cars on the roads with dents. I have read that, due to the recession, Americans are now holding on to their cars longer and paying off their loans.

The past few years has seen a trend of retailers setting up pop-up stores at South By Southwest to attract attention and buzz around their products at what is probably the largest conference of early adopters. This year D.C.'s Goodwill Industries International and Goodwill Industries of Central Texas are hosting their first pop-up retail shop POP!

A study released this week surveyed more than 500 members nationwide of the D.C.-based National Association of Women Business Owners in partnership with Web.com (parent company of Network Solutions LLC and the company I work for).

Hearing the voice of the head of the company through a blog is very powerful. CEOs can show their influence, knowledge and leadership through expressing themsevlves in a less formal way. Here are some D.C.-area CEO blogs that are on my must-read list: Bill Marriott: Executive chairman and chairman of the board Marriott International Inc.

In typical blogger style Vic Gundotra, senior vice president of Google Inc., announced in a blog post last week that Google+ was the "fastest-growing network thingy." My top takeaways from his post: * More than 500 million people have upgraded, 235 million are active across Google+ ("+1ing" apps in Google Play, hanging out in Gmail, connecting with friends in Search.), and 135 million are active in just the Google+ stream.

In typical blogger style Vic Gundotra, senior vice president of Google Inc., announced in a blog post last week that Google+ was the "fastest-growing network thingy." My top takeaways from his post: * More than 500 million people have upgraded, 235 million are active across Google+ ("+1ing" apps in Google Play, hanging out in Gmail, connecting with friends in Search.), and 135 million are active in just the Google+ stream.

Staff Washington Business Journal Social media expert Shashi Bellamkonda is getting into the real estate business. Bellamkonda is slated to start March 18 as vice president of digital marketing at Greenbelt-based The Bozzuto Group. We chatted with him about real estate and social media. Why did you decide to go into real estate?

Scott Case, founding CTO of Priceline and now CEO of Startup America, and Rohit Bhargava, author of "Likeonomics," recently spoke at TechCocktail in D.C. on the topic of relationship building for startups. Startups may start in basements, dorm rooms or garages but successful entrepreneurs utilize the power of serendipitous networking to find talent and build a robust peer-to-peer mentoring network.

A study of more than 500 small business owners by Web.com (Network Solutions' parent company) revealed a lot of enthusiasm and positive results from small business engaging in mobile marketing. More than 69 percent of small business owners surveyed believe that mobile marketing is key to their growth over the next five years.

More than 200 technology entrepreneurs gathered at the offices of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman in D.C. for the first event of the D.C. Tech meetup. The D.C. Tech meetup was organized by Frank Gruber, CEO and co-founder of Tech Cocktail; Michael Mayernick , co-founder of Spinnakr; Zvi Band, co-founder of ProudlyMadeinDC; Peter Corbett and and DJ Saul of iStrategylabs; Justin Thorp, director of customer happiness at Clearspring.

Online video is becoming an important tool for businesses to use to bolster their online marketing. EMarketer Inc., a firm providing research and trend analysis on digital marketing and media, estimates that in 2011, 68.2 percent of U.S. Internet users, or 158.1 million people, are watching video content online each month.

A patient's chair at a doctor's office is the last place where you would start an online marketing conversation and that is exactly what happened to me a few year's ago and of course I was in the patient's chair.

Findings from the Small Business Success Index conducted by Network Solutions LLC and the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business have shown that a dramatic increase in the adoption of social media at the beginning of the year has tapered off and holds steady at 24 percent.

The Washington Business Journal and YayaStream are collaborating to live stream the GrowSmartBiz Conference and Expo ( Register here.) on Friday so people who cannot make it to the conference can participate as well. "Videos tell stories. Online videos create access for all.

Heidi Kallett runs The Dandelion Patch , a retailer specializing in custom stationery and gifts and is a panelist on "Starting a Business 101" at the GrowSmartBiz Conference. If you have not registered already , register now.