We train companies and individuals in the usage of Digital Media, including Social Media, leveraging the different platforms to better engage customers, vendors and other stakeholders. Do not mistake us with other traditional schools teaching web design and digital image processing
For one, eBay and Amazon is getting more popular than before. With low prices and lesser overhead costs (no real estate rental) They continue to thrive with lower prices.
With smart phones, buyers are increasingly aware that for most sales, the sale prices are more than that of Amazon! The Internet is increasingly integrated into our lives as this is one of the way we connect with our friends and family through social networks.
On the Internet, you do not need to compete with crowds and queue in long holiday queues. You have a wider choice and most times it costs less than stores. You expect less in terms of customer service and thus the experience is generally better because of the less expectation.
Social commerce is getting more important and popular than ever. With the profits Groupon is getting, they are getting more sales staff and targeting more SMBs which the big boys are not going after.
On the social front, social media has powered them to leverage on the masses to make the incredible sales happen. For some deals, powerful influencers can easily bring enough people to make it happen.
Many things have changed. To be successful today, businesses must embrace online strategies and social networks. Marketing traditionally can only get you that far, and the market share is shrinking. Do not stay in the past. Embrace the future.
Many things have evolved in the year 2010. Social Media is HUGE -- Facebook has more than 500 Million Users, and if users of Facebook were in a country, it would be the third most populous country in the world.
In terms of usage, Facebook Users spend a total of 500 BILLION minutes on Facebook monthly. (Compared to 150 BILLION least year)
24 Hours of Video is uploaded to YouTube every minute (More than double last year), 200 BILLION videos are viewed daily (More than double last year), 4 BILLION Photos Uploaded to Flickr last year, 95% of companies in US use LinkedIn to attract and hire employees, (59% use Facebook, and 42% use Twitter), 27 MILLION average number of tweets daily (8x increase from 2009).
Social media has changed the way how a lot of people communicate, especially those under the age of 30. Together with mobile devices, social media and text messaging is more popular form of communication than voice communication.
Social media is now mainstream. Businesses are realizing that social commerce is very important, and engaging with their customers and influencers is very important as many people use the Internet to find information on products before they make the purchase, and the decision is largely based on reviews and recommendations from friends.
"Social Media is like water. On its own, water does some cool things, but when combined with other compounds it enabled the evolution of all life forms.
Social media itself is nice, but when combined with other tools, it is enabling everything to evolve from communications to business to politics to marketing"
-- Mike Voipe, CEO Hubspot.
In engaging with customers, social media empowers the customers once again, and companies need to have strategies which focus on employees and customers. They are in control.
With social media and personal branding, I have known so many people who get jobs through online networking, participating on forums or simply having great informative blogs.
With the power of social media, will we reach a point where a resume is no longer required? By the time the resume is needed, the contract will probably already be signed and the resume may simply be a formality for the HR department to file away.
Just like any superstar or movie stars, your portfolio is public, and everything have done is known to everyone. There will be not much need for a resume. You are your brand!
It is very interesting how Nike Commercial can spark so many spoof videos and many of them very well made, targeting and leveraging on the controversy to help the other videos get popular (and go viral)
Original Ad:
South Park Response:
Cleveland Cavaliers Fan Response
Michael Jordan's Response:
This is real time marketing at its best.
Leveraging on current controversy and media hype over the return of Lebron James to play against Cleveland is a good way for a video to go viral.
Real time marketing is the ability to react to these micro-trends to help get a blog or video to go viral. Often, when people are trying to search for the new thing or other interesting spoof, your video can be found and played, and if its humorous, it will be shared by many as well.
The last Michael Jordan video is on the money. Well put, and great branding for Jordan. Whether it is or not made by Air Jordan, it is yet to be known, but Jordan denies it.
Whoever it was that put that spoof together did a really good job at it. Even though MJ nor Nike had anything to do with it, it sure fooled me the first time I saw.
The Rise commercial was a slap in the face to a lot of people (namely Clevelanders) so it’s no surprise there are a countless spoofs of the video. He needs to realize that everything he does will be magnified more than before so he needs to think these moves out a little more.
This currently draw a lot of attention, and if hey, do you have a Lebron video to share as well?
Amazon and Ebay are giants in terms of online retail and e-commerce, but with the marketplace going in the future in terms of both monetization and socialization on social commerce, will their position be threatened?
There are a lot of smaller companies on the rise. I particularly like Woot.com where there is a new deal every day. The community actually does chat about the deals and I do find out about good deals on Twitter.
Another site that is on the rise is Groupon. I like the idea of getting together a group to ensure a deal happens, and this sometimes get influencers to spread the news of a certain deal just to make it happen. Groupon recently raised a massive round valuing the company at $1.35 billion.
Although Amazon and Ebay are trying to be more discoverable, I've not seen much effort in leveraging on social commerce by them, even on Cyber Monday. I don't blame them as they are cash rich companies, and can acquire what they lack. For example, Amazon recently made a $1.2 billion acquisition of Zappos, which I would say is a leader on customer service using Twitter and social media.
With the rise of Groupon, Gilt, LivingSocial, Vente Privee or even a possible Facebook e-commerce site, we can be assured that social commerce sells, and in the near future, I would love to see more social e-commerce site giving better interaction and engagement as we know that is what that really sells.
I've went to several events and I've seen social media used in some of them. A properly used social media for events really makes the event much better. Though it is a no brainer to leverage on social media for event management, many companies still do not use them.
However, I've been to several social media conferences fail to use social media properly for the event.
Here are some good examples which I've seen using social media well.
Article from Mashable: Blogworld takes advantage of a multitude of social networking platforms like, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Plancast, Sched.org, USTREAM () and Plixi to amplify the conference experience. According to founder and CEO Rock Calvert, the company’s use of social media prior to, during and after the the world’s largest social media conference and trade show is “…light years ahead of other conferences.”
Prior to the conference, Calvert uses various social platforms to inform people about the event, accept speaker applications and make announcements. In addition, Blogworld allows attendees to socially pick sessions, as well as invite and tell people that they are attending.
During Blogworld’s three-day conference, social platforms help facilitate and encourage attendee participation. Facebook is used to create polls, allow for public comments and encourage suggestions from attendees on how to improve the event. Organizers also encourage attendees to micro blog, which gives readers the opportunity to experience the event from numerous vantage points. Calvert credits these tools with “keeping the Blogworld experience transparent.”
How does social media make Blogworld better? In 2009, Blogworld set a Guiness World Record for the distribution of the largest mass message through social media, with a #Beatcancer hashtag. The campaign also raised more than $70,000 for social good efforts. In addition, Calvert tells us, “Social media creates social attendee lists, starts conversations, encourages meet ups, [and] allows conference organizers to react to issues immediately…. Incorporating social into our conference simply makes the experience better.”
Social Media (Twitter #Hashtags)
Hashtags are very important to an event. Planning a good hashtag to describe the event and ensuring the hashtag is not used by other people / companies for other purposes.
5 Reasons why you should have a good hashtag for the event:
1) With a properly publicized hashtag, attendees can follow the event and anything leading up to the event.
2) Attendees can connect with one another with the hashtag.
3) People who cannot attend the event can follow the event by following live tweets with the hashtag.
4) Q&A can be opened to the ground and others outside the event via hashtag.
5) Attendees can ask questions regarding the event and customer support can attend to their needs enhancing the before / during / after event engagement.
Here is a document I've created that share other best practices of social media in event management.
When you think about the World Cup 2010, what do you think of?
I've asked this question to many people around the world the question,
"Who won the world cup in 2010?"
I get the answers, "Holland, Spain... Germany??"
However, when I ask this question,
"Do you know about Paul the Octopus?"
Everyone seem to know about this psychic octopus!
The phenomena of the psychic octopus seemed to catch the attention of hundreds of millions world wide, and before every match, people will search for videos on the octopus and see his prediction.
Just think, if any company had leveraged on this micro trend, just by posting a video of an octopus picking up their company's devices and products over the competitor, and somehow link it to the actual Paul the Octopus videos, the chance of this video going viral is much higher as during that period that span about 10 days, there is a huge trend to search for Paul the Octopus on Google and on Youtube. (getting millions of viewers is not difficult!)
Recently, there is a video of a Bruins Fan kicking a pillar in a toilet at TD Garden in Boston.
This video got viral among many Boston residents as it made it to the news.
Well, as more people are savvy about the concept of real time marketing, riding on the trend of a viral video and leveraging on the popularity to market their brand, and this can be seen by the Bruins video to the fan who vandalized the toilet.
This video reply is well timed, and I do hope it is well viewed by Bruins fans!
When I give introductory talks in Singapore, the #1 question that everyone asks is "How do you manage negative feedback?" My answer, "People are already doing it now, its just that you may not be aware of it. To manage negative feedback, you need to be transparent and engage truthfully to resolve the problem. Find out exactly what happened, and FIX IT!"
Usually after some discussions, people generally agree that with or without their participation on social media, negative comments about their businesses is going to happen. However today, there is generally a lot of interest in getting on social media as many companies see it as another form of PR or advertising.
After more than a year of talks, classes and consulting, I've revisited some of these companies, and most of them have some form of Facebook / Twitter / Blog. I would congratulate them for taking action, but my pride for them was short lived as many of them can't seem to deal with negative feedback and practice, "Selective Censors."
I would not blame them as they probably just followed what the government does. In the article by SMU "Managing social media: An exercise in managing organisations" The government is seen keen to engage on social media, but deletes all negative feedback and comments. This was documented on a couple of blogs and word quickly spread over the selective deletion of comments, which led to accusations that the constituency did not care for negative feedback.
On the hand, many big brands actually embrace the negative feedbacks and comments and in return they do become a stronger brand as they are seen as respecting feedback and responding to comments. Gap is a good example, as recently, Gap change their logo and there was a large amounts of people who hated their logo. And as a result, they actually changed their logo -- AGAIN!
The Gap had a very bad situation at the start of the week and they probably all had some sleepless night after the logo they thought was the future was derided all over the web. Rather than sitting back and ignoring the critisism through The Gap have stepped up to the plate and used social media to try and fix their problems. If they are really smart they will turn this negative in to a huge positive and involve all their customers in the process of finding the new logo. They will say that yes we were wrong and open the competition up to people all over the world. Imagine the good will and buzz The Gap would create by having an open logo competition. This example just goes to show that no matter how bad things are and how much abuse you are getting online there is always a fix and if you listen to what people are saying and engage with them there is always a way out of the online disaster. I think The Gap seem smart and fairly clued in and will probably end up coming out of this pretty well.
I wonder if it is Asian culture to be defensive and never admit a mistake? I still strongly feel that one can definitely crowd source for ideas and leverage on the network, and engaging fans and supporters with social media should be the way to go when using social media, and build up a strong brand.
Infographics help communicate information in a digestible manner as they creatively present data in an understandable and engaging format.
Adding color, data and information in an interesting manner, Infographics can brighten up presentations and blogs with ease!
The Biggest Shift
The Biggest Shift details the importance and extent of social media. Essentially, if you are looking to utilize word of mouth advertising, social media is there to help boost your efforts. By focusing your marketing attention to the top social networking websites, you will see the immediate benefits of “fishing where the fish are”.
Basically, the concept is to look for location where your supporters or audience are located and engage them and make your presence felt there.
Social Marketing Compass
A compass is a device for orientating oneself and guiding physical direction. The social marketing compass points a brand in a physical and experimental direction, allowing them to connect with their customers, peers, and influencers, where those users already interact and seek guidance online.
Created to illustrate social marketing within the book Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web, this infographic was also available as a poster to celebrate the book’s pre-sale.
(by Brian Solis)
Social Landscape
This infographic describes and ranks 10 popular social media channels by customer communication, brand exposure, traffic generation and SEO impact, which enables us to get a good grasp of how each tool helps users achieve business goals.
It acts as a roadmap of the social web and demonstrates which social channel will give the most bang for the buck in terms of customer communication, brand exposure, traffic, and SEO.
Infographics are definitely a fantastic tool to show information, and I love to search for great ones to share them with you.
With New Twitter, I feel that more people will start using twitter at Twitter.com.
New Twitter has a split-screen and view pane that lets users share video and photos from at least 16 different media providers like Flickr, YouTube, and TwitPic. This new enhancement probably made Twitter on par at least with Facebook where embedded links with videos and photos can be seen.
I feel however, many people follow a lot more people and brands than their friends. Compared to Facebook, I follow a lot more people on Twitter and I have a lot more followers. Twitter allows me to network, and network FAST! Although Facebook pages may be like twitter, I usually go to Facebook just to read updates and interact with friends, and when I'm on twitter, I sometimes search hashtags and other interesting keywords. I also follow a lot of people, and if I read interesting things, I RT.
Recently, in an article on Yahoo by PCWorld, "Twitter Crushes Facebook For Marketing" According to a study by SocialTwist, Twitter seemed to be a far superior marketing tool compared to Facebook.
There are a few interesting points made by the article and I would like to add that for successful Facebook pages, the threaded conversations started by fans are simply priceless, and a great way to collect CRM data.
Recently, I've done a survey on my 500+ connections in LinkedIn on "Is LinkedIn a better platform to promote Industry Events?"
Thanks to my network and their replies, I have some good feedback. (The answer was basically -- YES, but...)
1) LinkedIn will allow you to target your audience and industry. There is a higher chance of response when you ask questions or promote your events in LinkedIn groups.
2) Most users on LinkedIn do not check it daily. Do not expect a lot of discussions from a lot of people. Some LinkedIn users login once a week, and check their groups maybe once a month. Facebook however has a lot of traffic, and a lot of people check it daily.
3) LinkedIn allows you to looks at the credential of your audience. When someone asks a question, you get to see his job description. You can also tailor your response depending on your audience.
4) A Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn Hybrid is great. Facebook and Twitter is used to drive traffic to the LinkedIn Group Discussion by posting interesting articles or questions to entice people in the relevant Facebook groups to participate.
As LinkedIn is not used daily, event promotion must be done early, and even after the event, Facebook can be used to upload photos of the events, to keep groups active and engaged till your next event.
Cebu Pacific Air has plans to have more airlines featuring the dancing flight attendants.
Their Youtube Video has about 8 million viewers and growing.
The video shows the flight attendants dancing in the A-320 cabin while demonstrating the use of life jackets, oxygen masks and safety belts.
Cebu Pacific has explained that the flight attendants were not forced to dance. They actually “volunteered” and “enjoyed” the dance performance. They also clarified that the formal safety instructions required by Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) was not replaced by the dance routine.
The CAAP believes that the stunt was a promotional and marketing gimmick that has violated international safety standards. It has since initiated an investigation. CAAP already talked to Cebu Pacific officials about their plans of deploying inspectors to watch the dancing flight attendants live.
Still more Cebu Pacific flights will have dancing flight attendants.
If they watched the video
Does it create awareness? -- YES
Do people want to fly Cebu Pacific if it is comparable to other flights? -- YES
I would say that their gamble was indeed a success!
This YouTube Video is gaining a lot of popularity. Panda Cheese, a product from Arab Dairy which I understand is popular in Egypt and the Middle East.
I however feel that the company has yet to act on its YouTube success in anyway.
The commercial, I believed to be filmed in 2007 suddenly became a hit on YouTube when several influential websites like boing boing shared it, and the video immediately became an instant hit.
In my opinion, this is a WIN for the company, and they should embrace REAL TIME Marketing, and ACT on this success to start a YouTube campaign to sell more... cheese.
If I were the marketing director of the company, I would do the following.
1) Create a new Panda commercial. This time, focus on the newly found success, and label -- 2010 Never say no to Panda -- Stand a chance to win a flight to Egypt and be in a commercial with the Panda, by buying Panda Cheese.
2) Create a Panda Cheese competition where there is a serial number for each cheese sold.
3) Create a Cheese competition site. Customers can login to the site, input their personal particulars, join their Facebook group and input the serial number of their cheese to take part in the competition.
4) Share the Panda commercial video online on YouTube, and inform customers about the chance to be in the Panda commercial, and ACT NOW.
5) Track the number of customers who are joining the mailing list, collect personal information and at the same time measure ROI of increase of sales of competition due to the commercial on YouTube.
6) Pick a random winner, be transparent about the process, make another Panda video with the winner, fly Winner in and thank winner for being a customer, and create another Panda video.
I am pretty sure that this online competition does not cost much, but the impact can possibly be BIG. Celebrating customer and possibly giving away PANDA costumes to people to make more panda commercials may also work.
This is such a waste if this company misses such a golden opportunity.
In a recent report on best global brands 2010, BP fell out of the top 100 rankings after being on the list for nine years.".
Coca-Cola topping the list for the eleventh straight year as they consistently perform very well, online and offline.
The Top 10 (value in millions)
1. Coca-Cola $70,452
2. IBM $64,727
3. Microsoft $60,895
4. Google $43,557
5. GE $42,808
6. McDonald's $33,578
7. Intel $32,015
8. Nokia $29,495
9. Disney $28,731
10. H-P $26,867
BP on the other hand failed to remain on the list after the oil spill incident. I feel that it is not the crisis that actually out them out of the top 100 list, but rather the way they handled the crisis.
They failed to give a clear direction on where BP is going in the long term. In terms of strategies and tactics used during the oil spill, it is clear that they obviously did not handle the situation well, and yet they tried to cover some of the facts, which will lead to a loss of trust.
Brands are build on trust and relationship. When you lie about something, and there is no transparency when a crisis happens, people tend to speculate and the results are much worse than the truth itself. (see Tiger Woods Case) The damage to the brand is often not considered when strategies are formulated, and it does cost the company billions and a long time to repair the damage.
Companies are only as good as the people that work for them. Giving a clear vision to people inside and out is very important to them right now. BP was unable to give a clear direction, and it makes the employees uneasy, and it is hard to perform well if the future is uncertain.
In contrast to BP, Toyota was able to better manage its recall scandal, although the carmaker did drop to number 11 in the rankings vs. number 8 in 2009.
With Digital Media getting more popular, it is important to manage and engage with the public as comments online can influence people when they are making decisions. News are happening almost in real time, and time to respond to crisis is shorten drastically.
Getting your presence on social media, and building a good base of supporters is a good way to help brands build trust and support, and in turn it may help too in times of crisis.
I totally agree that businesses must now compete in domains where consumers define their experiences through the connections they decide to make. In order to compete for the future, businesses must now establish a presence and earn attention, build new connections, and cultivate meaningful relationships to foster trust, loyalty, and advocacy.
Although many companies are interested in engaging in social media, the upper management is usually preventing real progress from happening as the new technology, widely available and cheap, could transform the way branding and marketing is done. Customer service, marketing and public relations can all be benefited greatly.
In order to harness the power of Web 2.0, companies need to re-organize and think of new ways and strategies. Staff needs to be trained so that they understand what is and what is not appropriate.
Many staff can influence their own groups of people, and evangelize for the company. Instead of shutting them down and quenching their passion about the company, strategies that help in the management of the networks these staff and sometimes customers have will in turn promote branding and marketing in a unparalleled manner.
From analyzing data, to illustrating the importance of a certain social media tool, Infographics provide a vivid picture of the data in the form of colorful diagrams.
I'm a big fan of Infographics, and even information about dead people on Facebook can be made to catch your attention.
A well designed Infographic can go a long way as many people will share them and use them in some presentation.
Infographics that provide a lot of current information can find its way into may places, and with cleverly placed company logos, these Infographics do provide great information branding for the companies who came up with the Graphics. Definitely a great marketing tool.
It is definitely a great way of bringing data to life in a very attractive and colorful manner and it brings the message across better.
With more people using Social Media and more chatter on brands, being on social media is very important as you can listen to what people have to say, and customers' experiences can often be enhanced or damaged through social media.
Engaging with customers on social media becomes evermore important, and dealing with negative feedbacks and engaging with bloggers with good reviews are just as important as traditional marketing.
Engaging users online is now key to many businesses as it provides word of mouth marketing and at the same time reduces the risk of a social media crisis and customer service nightmare.
In an article by Jeremiah Owyang :"The Four Tenets of the Community Manager", He lists a few good roles the Community Manager should have.
The Four Tenets of the Community Manager
In the following, I’m not going to list out all my findings, but it was clear there were 4 number of Tenets, or beliefs that each role holds. In nearly all the job descriptions, the following beliefs were spelled out as requirements for the role.
1) A Community Advocate
As a community advocate, the community managers’ primary role is to represent the customer. This includes listening, which results in monitoring, and being active in understanding what customers are saying in both the corporate community as well as external websites. Secondly, they engage customers by responding to their requests and needs or just conversations, both in private and in public.
2) Brand Evangelist
In this evangelistic role (it goes both ways) the community manager will promote events, products and upgrades to customers by using traditional marketing tactics and conversational discussions. As proven as a trusted member of the community (tenet 1) the individual has a higher degree of trust and will offer good products.
3) Savvy Communication Skills, Shapes Editorial
This tenet, which is both editorial planning and mediation serves the individual well. The community manager should first be very familiar with the tools of communication, from forums, to blogs, to podcasts, to twitter, and then understand the language and jargon that is used in the community. This individual is also responsible for mediating disputes within the community, and will lean on advocates, and embrace detractors –and sometimes removing them completely. Importantly, the role is responsible for the editorial strategy and planning within the community, and will work with many internal stakeholders to identify content, plan, publish, and follow up.
4) Gathers Community Input for Future Product and Services Perhaps the most strategic of all tenets, community managers are responsible for gathering the requirements of the community in a responsible way and presenting it to product teams. This may involve formal product requirements methods from surveys to focus groups, to facilitating the relationships between product teams and customers. The opportunity to build better products and services through this real-time live focus group are ripe, in many cases, customer communities have been waiting for a chance to give feedback.
In my previous blog on Community Managers, in my opinion, Community Managers should be like Anime Characters, Big eyes and small mouth -- being able to watch the trends, while saying enough to facilitate information and not broadcast.
The Internet should not be used as a broadcast medium, and Social platforms (like online networks) are now "listening stations" for organizations.
"Every network has an underlying purpose" and motivations for such network creation. The role of the community manager is to hold the collective vision, create and manage relationships and manage collaborative processes.
Here are 10 tips from Mashable for Aspiring Community Managers:
1. Be an Expert and Evangelist of Your Product or Company
2. Love The Product and Company, But Be the Users’ Advocate
3. Work on Your Communication Skills
4. Blog and Have a Social Presence
5. Be Authentic
6. Be Multi-Skilled and Prioritize Your Platforms Strategically
7. Listen, Add Value and Build Relationships
8. Engage Online and Off
9. Think Like an Entrepreneur and Be Quick to Adapt
10. Empower Your Colleagues to Be Community Builders
When you can't sleep at night, and your friend would not meet you even when you came from another country to visit, you can always make a video to tell all his friends about what happened in a video.
And what's even better, Hitler will be involved.
Hopefully your friend will learn quickly not to miss another appointment again.
I attended the CASE Masterclass conducted by Andy Shaindlin and he has brought out some fantastic points that I would love to share:
Organize without Organization.
Today, Universities and Alumni Associations no longer have monopoly over Alumni Data.
Alumni can organize their own special interest groups and target event invitations to exclusive audiences.
In fact, many students have already started their own Alumni Groups on the different social media platforms, and the birth of Web 2.0 have already enabled Alumni to self organize, self coordinate and self form their own interest groups to network and organize events.
So instead of hindering the self formation of ad hoc alumni groups, Universities should look in to facilitating such phenomena.
The Birth of the Community Manager.
Just like a social media team in a company, the idea of leveraging social media in education advancement is to build a non-marketing voice and build online networks.
As Andy put it: "Internet is not a broadcast medium"
Social platforms (like online networks) are now "listening stations" for organizations.
"Every network has an underlying purpose" and motivations for such network creation. The role of the community manager is to hold the collective vision, create and manage relationships and manage collaborative processes.
In an article by Jeremiah Owyang :"The Four Tenets of the Community Manager", He lists a few good roles the Community Manager should have. The Four Tenets of the Community Manager
In the following, I’m not going to list out all my findings, but it was clear there were 4 number of Tenets, or beliefs that each role holds. In nearly all the job descriptions, the following beliefs were spelled out as requirements for the role.
1) A Community Advocate
As a community advocate, the community managers’ primary role is to represent the customer. This includes listening, which results in monitoring, and being active in understanding what customers are saying in both the corporate community as well as external websites. Secondly, they engage customers by responding to their requests and needs or just conversations, both in private and in public.
2) Brand Evangelist
In this evangelistic role (it goes both ways) the community manager will promote events, products and upgrades to customers by using traditional marketing tactics and conversational discussions. As proven as a trusted member of the community (tenet 1) the individual has a higher degree of trust and will offer good products.
3) Savvy Communication Skills, Shapes Editorial
This tenet, which is both editorial planning and mediation serves the individual well. The community manager should first be very familiar with the tools of communication, from forums, to blogs, to podcasts, to twitter, and then understand the language and jargon that is used in the community. This individual is also responsible for mediating disputes within the community, and will lean on advocates, and embrace detractors –and sometimes removing them completely. Importantly, the role is responsible for the editorial strategy and planning within the community, and will work with many internal stakeholders to identify content, plan, publish, and follow up.
4) Gathers Community Input for Future Product and Services Perhaps the most strategic of all tenets, community managers are responsible for gathering the requirements of the community in a responsible way and presenting it to product teams. This may involve formal product requirements methods from surveys to focus groups, to facilitating the relationships between product teams and customers. The opportunity to build better products and services through this real-time live focus group are ripe, in many cases, customer communities have been waiting for a chance to give feedback.
Basically, a community manager should have big eyes and small mouth.
Perfect Community Manager
And the 2 important questions that the alumni association needs to ask is:
1) For the initiative you want to start -- does the alumni want it?
2) For the service you want to provide (or build) -- is it easier to be accessed elsewhere?
If your organization is interested in engaging Alumni and Students in Social Media, please bear in mind: What works for someone may not work for you. But feel free to consider all the best practices by other organizations around the world.
The conference will have a series of talks, workshops and exhibitions to visit. Many well known speakers on Social Media like Brian Solis will also be here!
This is one social media event not to be missed. With over 40 conference sessions and 50 leading speakers from the Asian social media market, this event will definitely be the ONE event on social media to attend.
From now to 22nd August 2010, you will get a 25% off if you register soon!
Conference highlights include: - Two days of interactive & engaging conference featuring leading key figure keynotes, brand case studies, topical Q&A and debates, exhibition hall, workshops and networking. - The event will enabling attendees to become educated, discover, engage, network, share and collaborate in the world of social media. Ideal for those looking to embrace the latest in brand engagement, monitoring, ROI, advertising and building communities. - The key differences between the Asian Social Media market and other parts of the world - How brands are using Social Media, Engage with customers though mobile apps and Mobile Social Media, learn about the future of Social TV, get some top tips on selecting your Social Media Agency - How to increase customer intimacy and empowerment through Social CRM - Best practices for delivering PR campaigns across multiple Social Media platforms - The new buzz word “Social Search” - HeliPad Networking Party - Free to attend exibition-only pass available
For more information on the event, please visit their site here<--
Digital media buyers have been trying to kill the banner ad for years. With MSNBC's decision on Monday (June 28) to ban banner ads might be a start of major changes to come in digital marketing.
Once the bread and butter of Internet Marketing, will Banner Ads soon become the thing of the past? If the banner ad is not dead, is it undergoing an evolution?
There are many interesting discussions on certain sites on the future of banner ads.
But even more radical is MSNBC.com’s decision to no longer serve banner ads, long the Web industry’s bread and butter. “The banner is dead on our site,” said Tillinghast. “They’ve become too commoditized,” particularly when they are served every time a user clicks to a new page, no matter how quickly they depart or whether they even see the whole page. But the new MSNBC.com is designed to be anti–page view to bring more content to the surface and require far less navigation by users.
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“If someone says they are going to stop running banners, the question is why? If people have told you by their activities or communications that they don’t like banners, that’s wonderful reason to stop doing that.” -- link
I do agree with many of the decisions to stop banner ads. Web ads are eminently ignorable, and rarely move one to laugh or cry. Interruptive marketing has seen its day, and with the increasing popularity of social media, advertisers and brands have to adapt to the changing landscape -- Engage.
Even with the animated banners, many companies find that they may get page views, however with video, photos, comments, that stuff was all disparate. Banner Ads are simply not engaging, and even if they bring traffic to a site, people leave the site and have no interest in staying.
I welcome this new vision of innovation for online marketing, and the new evolved large format ads on MSNBC looks pretty interesting and dynamic content ads will increasingly replace static ads going forward.
We are in the age of change, get with the program or be obsolete!
Many companies that previously overlooked Twitter have to relook at it again. Since 2008, there is simply an increase in the number of users on Twitter, In a recent research done in April 2010, there are 105,779,710 users on Twitter and the numbers are definitely growing, especially in Asia.
From the report, in Singapore, there are 930,861 users, and with a population of 4.6 million people, this is easily 20% of your population. However, the majority of this number of users are Gen Y, and with growing affluence, this market segment does have significant buying power.
A research done by Michael Netzley on the behavior of Singaporeans online, conducted by students on their friends and family yield the following results.
His findings are as follows:
1. The results from 2010 are extremely similar to 2009. I am reading this consistency as corroborating evidence of our 2009 survey. Gen Y demonstrates that it is very different from Gen X (a generational shift here comparable which, in my mind, is comparable to the U.S.'s generational shift between Gen X and Baby Boomers). Internet users in Singapore continue to consume content and observe while showing comparatively little desire to post original content (UGC). In other words, remaining in the shadows appears to be common behavior. And as we have seen in other commercial reports, social networking and watching online videos are popular online activities.
2. Twitter grew 308.5% in 2010 as compared to 2009. Still, only 47% of netizens are using Twitter each week, so the impressive uptake must be kept in a proper perspective since slightly fewer than 1 out of 2 netizens here are using Twitter.
Still Singapore enjoyed moments of popularity when Orchard Road flooded on 16 June 2010. There were many blogs talking about the flood, and "Orchard Road" became a trending topic at 9:30am.
When there was a suicide at Bedok MRT Station a few weeks back, Twitter was also flooded with Singapore Tweets about Bedok MRT.
I do believe that there is incredible potential for Twitter in Singapore and leveraging on Twitter to spread word of mouth. If your target demographics is Gen Y, and you have snazzy interesting tweets, spreading the news using Twitter in Singapore may prove to be a breeze!
I've noticed social media activities increasing in Singapore. As a social media trainer, I have been getting more requests for training.
A report by ZDnet: S'pore firms top social media adoption has results from a survey done, showing that the number of businesses engaging in social media is much higher that the global average.
After interacting with numerous companies in Singapore on social media, I observed that the larger organizations which are bureaucratic cannot implement social media well as there are still many layers of management for a decision to be made. However, many SMEs are very nimble and with little help, many of them can manage their social media activities well.
I believe the number of users on social media is also on the rise, hence it is imperative for a business to get onto social media. However, there may be pitfalls if it is not managed properly as I've seen many companies still broadcasting offers and ads on social media channels, turning off their fans and followers.
In time, I believe that social media would be just like email today -- a form of communication. However, the early adopters may be much further ahead and gain much more of an edge over the competition.
The popularity of social media is definitely growing as more and more people get onto Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. More companies are also getting into engaging the public with social media, with some doing very well, and others missing the point.
The high Internet penetration of about 75% in Singapore makes the growth of social media easy as there is much availability of 3G enabled devices. It is no wonder local companies are getting onto the bandwagon.
The major media channel -- XINMSN, a collaboration between Mediacorp and Microsoft is recently launched to try to get into video sharing and social media.
When Google (search engine) has lost out to Facebook, and with the popularity of social media still growing, it is imperative for corporations to think about social media policies and make social media one of their channels of communications.
With large companies, with plenty of market research getting onto social media, if your company is in South East Asia, shouldn't you jump on the bandwagon too?
For B2B and promoting industrial events, LinkedIn is probably one of the more focused social media tools an event organizer can leverage on, but what exactly makes it so good?
I'm helping a friend who is running an event management company that promotes the use of new sustainable energy for vehicles. A group was started before the event next month and got slightly more than 50 members now.
After getting used to the different arsenals you can leverage on LinkedIn, I have some observations.
In LinkedIn, the people that join your group are usually from the industry, and most of them have a lot of knowledge. There is sometimes no replies, even in big groups if the topic is not interactive enough, simply because a lot of people who join the groups are just "readers" and not a lot of them will be active enough to post discussions.
Compared to Facebook, many users do not check their LinkedIn everyday. Many people I connect with check LinkedIn once a week. In terms of going into groups and reading or posting discussions, people check even less.
Suggested from fellow social media enthusiasts, I started a Facebook group on the same topic and cross promoted the groups on both LinkedIn and Facebook. And testing some links posted, I find that people are much more active on Facebook than LinkedIn. However, many people may still feel uncomfortable to join groups in Facebook, and they are more likely to participate in discussions on a LinkedIn group.
The idea sort of worked as whenever there is new information, I post on LinkedIn and Facebook, providing multiple touchpoints for group members, and members do get involved slightly more as there are multiple places to get to the discussions and news.
I hope to get more data on this new hybrid way of using a Facebook Group to draw people to the LinkedIn group for discussions, will provide more information soon.
Many companies are interested in getting onto social media, like in the dot com boom, having a webpage. But like before, building a webpage is not enough, getting traffic is the key to a successful webpage.
Even when these marketers successfully mastered optimizing their webpage to reach people, the Internet today is a slightly different place. The audience is creating and people have so much information on their fingertips. They are more unlikely to trust a corporate page's information, and they would believe a fellow blogger.
With Web 2.0, the trick now is not only to have presence and have a blog and webpage, the goal now is to grow your influence.
This presentation give you a good idea on getting more follower and growing your influence -- a must have today if you want to have a successful social media campaign.
I just finished a training session with an event management company.
After researching and getting advice from network and friends, I came out with this presentation. Social Media could help a company a great deal if they can fully leverage on their social networks to spread their events through word of mouth.
In today's digital age, it would be naive to think that it would be enough by just "getting by", doing your job, working for a company. With the financial turmoil, there is no such thing as a stable job, and the old saying of "studying hard and finding a career with a big company" does not hold water anymore.
With tons of mergers and acquisitions, companies going bust, it is no longer true that you can just work for a company for the rest of your life. Even though there are no world statistics on the accumulated number of jobs of the population, there is some information on the US and UK: the book “The Economics of Earnings”, by Solomon W. Polachek and W. Stanley Siebert, presents a study in which the UK population aged between 60 and 64 years had accumulated an average of 6.9 jobs; in the US, this number for the same population equals 10.5. An average between these two figures corresponds to 8.7 jobs in a lifetime. It is safe to say that getting known and branding yourself is becoming more important than ever.
The Brand -- YOU
People have been long searching for a way to one-up the competition. With the world going into the digital age, the process of applying for jobs also have became digital.
HR departments, headhunters, VCs and other stakeholders are using the Internet and their personal networks to find opportunities. Whether it is looking for a job, starting your own business or selling your products and services, the Internet plays a big part in many industries.
Personal branding is not a new thing, for several years now, many people have been sharing good value in the Internet on their blogs. Through other social media channels or search engines, their thoughts and deeds are made known, giving them opportunities to network and even better -- find a job or business opportunity.
I have personally know many individuals who have found jobs by just networking online. How do they do it? By simply making themselves more valuable to the marketplace by showing their skills and competence.
Digital Footprint
Your digital footprint plays a very big role. In job hunting or starting a business, many people do use search engines to find out more information about you. When is the last time you search for yourself online? Is the outcome positive?
Well it is not too late. Personal branding takes time and effort. Building relationship online is the same too. It is never too late to start. Whenever you post good information on forums or blogs, or if you contribute any articles online, remember to use your real name. You will never know the things you write would be picked up somewhere and your brand would be BIG someday.
In Shanghai, the World Expo can be overwhelming, I'm here for the third day, and I've barely seen enough exhibitions. (I blame it on China Expo for the long 2 hour queue.) Every participating country brings its A-game to the table and plan before you venture in blindly. Here is a list of participating countries... Hope it helps.
-- Robin Low
AMERICA (26 countries) Participating in World Expo 2010
El Salvador
Antigua and Barbuda
Brazil
Nicaragua
Mexico
Grenada
Venezuela
Ecuador
Suriname
Jamaica
Haiti
Guyana
Peru
Chile
Uruguay
Argentina
Trinidad and Tobago
Guatemala
Costa Rica
United States
Bolivia
Commonwealth of Dominica
Cuba
Canada
Dominican Republic
Barbados
Bahamas
Panama
Paraguay
Honduras
Belize
Saint Lucia
Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Colombia
EUROPE (44 countries) Participating in World Expo 2010
Malta
Iceland
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Estonia
Slovakia
Norway
San Marino
Sweden
Denmark
Austria
Cyprus
Ireland
Romania
Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
Czech Republic
Greece
Finland
Serbia
Portugal
Russia
Belarus
Moldova
Montenegro
Lithuania
Belgium
Turkey
Albania
Luxembourg
Poland
Bulgaria
UK
Croatia
Germany
Ukraine
Italy
The Netherlands
Spain
Monaco
Switzerland
Hungary
France
Slovenia
Azerbaijan
Latvia
Liechtenstein
European Union
Armenia
Georgia
AFRICA (50 countries) Participating in World Expo 2010
Malawi
Libya
South Africa
Botswana
Ghana
Somalia
Chad
Liberia
Guinea-Bissau
Mozambique
Niger
Mauritius
Ethiopia
Uganda
Democratic Republic of Congo
Madagascar
Sierra Leone
Tunisia
Rwanda
Cameroon
Gabon
Morocco
Kenya
Sudan
Namibia
Zambia
Zimbabwe
Senegal
Tanzania
Egypt
Angola
Cote d'Ivoire
Comoros
Seychelles
The State of Eritrea
Mali
Lesotho
Mauritania
Cape Verde
Guinea
Nigeria
Djibouti
Benin
Equatorial Guinea
Togo
Burundi
Central African Republic
The Republic of Congo
Algeria
Burkina Faso
Gambia
ASIA (45 countries) Participating in World Expo 2010
The State of Qatar
Israel
Jordan
North Korea
Syria
United Arab Emirates
Bangladesh
Afghanistan
Maldives
Iran
Oman
Iraq
Thailand
Bhutan
Lebanon
Brunei
Kuwait
Korea
Indonesia
India
Palestine
Uzbekistan
Saudi Arabia
Japan
Yemen
Laos
Malaysia
Kyrgyzstan
Cambodia
Bahrain
Myanmar
Kazakhstan
Viet Nam
Mongolia
Nepal
Pakistan
Sri Lanka
Singapore
Timor-Leste
Tajikistan
Turkmenistan
Philippines
China
OCEANIA (15 countries) Participating in World Expo 2010
Marshall Island
Solomon Islands
Kiribati
Tuvalu
Niue
Cook Islands
Fiji
Samoa
Micronesia
Tonga
Papua New Guinea
Palau
Vanuatu
Australia
New Zealand
Nauru
International Organizations (45) Participating in World Expo 2010
