The customer journey

Most companies have an imbalance toward acquisition of customers over retention of them. Just compare marketing and advertising to support, service, newsletters and emails. Channeling people through the sales channel far outweigh building trust and relationships.

I found this customer journey created by Oracle, showing an infinite loop. When we travel travel through this journey as customers, we observe what works and what don't. There is often a shift that we can perceive between sell and service.

I like this Oracle model as it conveys empathy with the customer's perspective.

It is essential that we recognize that this is a continuous cycle, as customers come and go, in and out of this journey, and if the sales and service ends well, they would also recommend, and in today's digital world, this may mean that they are part of a new customer's research to start a new cycle again.

-- Robin Low

How to get more engagement on social media

Understanding psychology does has its benefits. Understanding psychological principles of human behavior can benefit you in social media marketing.

Children's Curiosity.

Have you heard a kid asking, "Why ... ?"

"Why do things work the way they do?"

Young Children do not lie. They will continue to probe until they get a good answer.

However, adults think it too, even if they do not voice it out.

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Have you watched a political debate and gotten frustrated by the politicians dodging direct questions?

How do you feel? Do you get frustrated?

This is the same when you engage in social media and do not give a satisfying answer. People do get frustrated and you will lose your audience. However, when you answer in full clear details, you may start to build loyal followers.

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So the big question is: HOW DO YOU ANSWER IN FULL CLEAR DETAILS?

1) You need to do your research. There are many sites like Yahoo Answers, Quora and various forums on Linkedin and other technical sites which hold the answers, and you can find it using your favorite search engine.

Of course you will get a lot of answers, and some of them will be good while others rubbish. This is the problem with search engines today, and it they could give you what you want perfectly, then your social media engagement would not be required.

So to add value, you need to sift through the various answers, get a good understand of the topic itself, and add in your own knowledge. When you are ready, answer it on your own website. (or blog)



2) Now, you need to find the best way to answer them. Getting all the research materials, curating the content, putting together is a well organized fashion is key.

Simple is better. Avoid using too many technical terms, and edit over to make sure it reads well. To do that well, you need to ask yourself some questions.

a) How long is it going to be? (Short answer? Video? Blog? )
b) Which is the best format? (Video? Infographic? Text?) *Visual is always best
c) Determine how you are going to present it. (pdf for download, blog, answer on quora)




3) With a good reply, think of how you can retain the audience. Perhaps give them more information, a video and other links if they join your mailing list? Have a good idea of up-selling and giving more, even if they do not pay for more, having the option to contact them next time would be a bonus.



4) Gift Economy.

Free things can come at a price. Blogs, infographics, videos full of information and data, organized in a clear and brief manner is great value for people. If they get it for free, they may follow your blog, twitter account and join your mailing list.

When a waiter gives you attention and fulfills all your requests, answers all your question and offers you a free mint at the end, would you give the waiter extra tip? They are after all doing their job.

You can apply the same principle to the influencers whom you find their blog useful. Create links to their blogs, share useful tweets and help promote others. Have good meaningful discussions on other blogs with similar topics, and these influencers may do the same as well.



5) Engage with the audience.

When someone asks a question, give a good well thought of reply. (And not those short brief ones) Ask if some of them want to contribute to your blog.

Feel free to post and share blogs on different mediums, Twitter, Facebook pages, forums and other question polling sites. Engage with others on the sites.

The more people see you, the more they will like you.



-- Robin Low

Trust, reputation and collaborative online model

The Internet business is built for trust. From Amazon to Ebay, many online businesses enable strangers to meet and trust each other for transactions. It took a long time before people embraced the Internet, making it more open and collaborative. Making transaction online relies on a lot of trust. Trust that the buyer pays and the seller actually sells the right product and ships the products that are paid for. There are many checks and balances build in place to encourage honesty and simply do what is supposed.

Trust and reputation are two interrelated concepts. We can find trust at personal level. Reputation expresses an opinion resulting from collective opinions of community members. This evaluation may lead to risks such as penalty of innovative and minority ideas, problem described as “tyranny of the majority”. (http://www.gnuband.org/files/papers/trust_it_forward_Tyranny_of_the_Majority_or_Echo_Chambers_paolo_massa.pdf) If they give each user reputation scores that take only other similar users’ opinions into account, they run the risk of becoming “echo chambers” in which like-minded people reinforce each others’ views without being open to outside perspectives. 

On Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia, perhaps, most of the webpages on the Internet, having an honor code is very important. On Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the other social networking sites, you use your real profile so your friends, contacts, classmates and other acquaintances can find you and connect. Real accounts and profiles are important for online businesses to function as well. Today, more websites allow you to login using your Facebook profile and your real profile is important for many of the other services to function well. 

However, when people use fake profiles on Facebook, the whole fabric on what the Internet is built on is disrupted. Many people waste their time to maintain fake profiles just to spread hate and troll online. This behavior is very unproductive and serves absolutely no purpose -- sort of like the Nigerian Spam emails you get. Most of the people can see through the veil and ignore the trolls online that are just out to get a reaction and pick fights. 

Sadly, when a government is involved in Astroturfing and running fake accounts to "defend" their own opinions, it becomes a waste of taxpayers money. 

A property which characterizes the relationship between trust and reputation is reciprocity. The reciprocity is defined as the reciprocal exchange of assessment (favorable or not). Decrease any of these automatically conduct to the reverse effect. 

Like it or not, it is important that our society do not degrade to hate mongering and abuse, however controlling the medium, and being intolerant to bloggers critical about their policies, will only drive people to continue their conversations on other platforms and use fake IDs. 

In Singapore , although communication is more democratic today than what it was before, laws like defamation or contempt against critics are use used when the government could simply engage these parties in an debate to collaboratively find solutions to solve the problems.

Singaporeans are not stupid, they are very capable of finding solutions that work for them. There seems to be an open call for ideas, however, many good ideas are rejected by the government because it simply comes from the opposition. There are many views and opinions online, and just because they are different from the government’s view, it does not necessarily mean they are destructive, but instead it means they care about their country to comment. There are always the good, the bad and the ugly, online and in real life. Singaporeans today are better educated, and can think critically. 

To say that “satisfied people don’t go to the Internet, unhappy people do” feels like the Prime Minister has given up on engagement. It takes time to build trust and reputation but it is very easy to lose it. Sadly, there will only be more “unhappy people” as the future unveils more technology to keep more people connected – on the Internet.

-- Robin Low

Engagement and Relevance.

Many organizations, governments and companies want to get on to Social Media because they want to hear good things about their companies and perhaps get business with the help of word of mouth. However, it is important to know that even when businesses are planning and building social media programs and campaigns to try to gather more support, no matter how enthusiastic they are to create the best campaign, customers will always engage on their own time.

People go on social media to feel connected with friends and family. However, they are not going to "connect" with a brand or a business. Companies must strive to a higher purpose to design sharable experiences that deliver tangible value in return for the customers' "time, attention, endorsement and data."

Even when a customer gives a negative feedback, the feedback can be used as a learning case so other customers may not get the same negative experience. It does take time and effort to give feedback, positive or negative. For some customers, the situation can actually be saved, and resolving it transparently can win positive sentiments as well.

Take in the good and the bad.

Stay Relevant.

-- Robin Low

Social Media is the Reason Governing is Harder #Singapore

From Today Singapore where replies are disabled, showing how eager the government is listening to the citizens.

Previously, Singapore can ignore the coffee shop talks as they control and still control all forms of media. Ranked 149/179 on Press Freedom, Singapore has always struggled in winning views.

On Social Media, China, Vietnam, Sri Lanka have a lot of angry people online, and Singapore have their fair share. The fact that in many of these controlled countries with poor press freedom, views are very polarized and there are many hurtful remarks as many of these people use fake IDs.

In the US, you do get the occasional troll, however, there are a lot of constructive feedback as well.

I would say, the reasons why many people criticize about your government or your company is mostly because they do care. They want to share their views, and if you can actually share the reasoning behind your opinion, some may understand and you can win some over.

I must say the Prime Minister is trying to communicate, and I must be supportive of him trying. However, I do have some opinions to share.

Social Media being quick and real time, is actually a great opportunity for you to improve your government. If you truly want to engage, you will find that your actions and words, though gets analyzed by everyone, and critique by everyone, the bright side is that you can get instant feedback. To humanize is very important. If you reply transparently, share thoughts and confess to errors, people can see the human side and forgive. However, demonizing people who do not agree with you does not help at all.

On Social Media, we communicate. We do not wait for the best super-rationale, non-emotional and politically correct answer. It feels detached, scripted and formal. Proper engagement can gain trust and relevance. Policies can be crowd-sourced and co-created. If you want people to engage, you must listed to people, and take in both the good and bad. And most importantly, take actions that can regain the trust of citizens. (yes, even those on social media)

-- Robin Low

The Internet and Cats

If you are on social media, chances are, you probably have watched cat videos and browsed lots of cat images. Cat owners are creating their cat’s profiles, and sharing updates in character on Facebook. Cats have their own friends, wall posts, conversations and even relationships.

A local (Singapore) Cat, @Satsugai Cat has more than 5,000 friends on Facebook, 3,000 fans(https://www.facebook.com/catwisdom)  on Facebook and 20,000 followers on Twitter. (https://twitter.com/satsugaicat) Another cat, Duke Orange(https://twitter.com/dukeorange)  has more than 1,000 twitter followers and more than 1,000 friends. (https://www.facebook.com/dukeorange)  In the US, there are lots of famous cats, Sockington (https://www.facebook.com/sockington) has more than 10,000 fans and 1.3 million followers on Twitter. (https://twitter.com/sockington) Maru the Cat has more than 18 million viewers on a video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_AbfPXTKms) . Grumpy Cat has a lot of Memes, A coffee Drink (http://grumppuccino.net/) and a movie deal. (http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/grumpy-cat-signs-a-hollywood-movie-deal-still-not-impressed/) 

One might ask why people follow cats. I’ve looked at many cat Facebook profiles and cat Twitter accounts, many of them are humorous, some pretty serious, while others – creepy. The things shared on their posts are generally cat or pets related. 

So why are cats more popular?

There is a new dimension of self-expression with cats. These creative people share cat pictures with captions on LOLCats in Catspeak, a language with spelling and grammatical errors made to sound cute. (http://icanhas.cheezburger.com/ ) When someone finds the images with the captions intersting, they share it with their friends who share it with their friends as well. This happens so often that the guy who started the I Can Has Cheezburger network managed to build a multimillion dollar corporation out of silly cat pictures. 

The following are reasons are why cats are popular online.

People relate to cats.

In many ways, cats are very expressive and have a range of emotions which can be captioned. Many people on the Internet are introverts, and cats are seen as self-dependent introverts because they are more likely to spend time with themselves. 

Cats are cute

People like to share cute animals like dolphins, hamsters and puppies. And yes, cats are cute. To add to the cuteness, the behavior of young cats are often unpredictable and interesting, and they can be very creative to get what they want.

That’s how cat owners socialize

You can bring your dog out on a leash to a park, but you can’t with your cat. Perhaps the Internet is the way for cat owners to socialize. If they do not bother to bring their cats for walks, posting their cat photos and videos and commenting on others is the next best thing. They can do it at their own convenience.

Cats transcend culture

No matter what language you speak, cat videos can speak to you. Recently, in August 28, 2013, over 10,000 tickets were sold for Lil Bub and Friends (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx6cY84XmwU)  at an event at the Internet Cat Video Festival. (http://www.walkerart.org/press/browse/press-releases/2013/walker-art-centers-internet-cat-video-festiva)

Cats are funny

Cats seem to be cute and self-possessed, but at the same time arrogant and self-pompous, making them perfect vehicles for Internet humor. Cats have a lot of dignity and somehow humans like to see them getting humiliated online.

Culture shift to own cats

Many people own cats because of their lifestyles. Geeks tend to own cats as cats don’t need walks and cats are pretty independent. Everything is good when food and water is provided and the litter box is not full. Cats are also gaining popularity as pets as people who own pets later in their lives tend to get cats and many household with cats tend to own more than one as well.

On the Internet, people can be interacting with friends and other pet lovers by commenting and sharing cat video or pictures, even when they are allergic to cats. Thus Internet cats become a social object to be shared and conversation point to help connect people. Perhaps people secretly want to be like cats as cats seem totally comfortable being exactly what they are and they live for the moment.

The Convergence of Social

Social Convergence

Corporate Social Responsibility or CSR is not fit for purpose, and we need something better to hold corporations to account for their social and environmental impact. Business is business -- If there is a conflict between maximising shareholder value and an environmental or social impact, the bottom line will win out in this model.

In many cases, CSR is framed in terms of restricting harm a business can do or to "white wash" its business activity, and little to do with having any good impact they can actually bring. In many cases, the more harm you do to society, the more funds is placed into CSR, as donating money to some causes or funding some initiative with a tiny fraction of the profits make is going to make the world a better place.

On social media, the customers do play a big role in sharing the good and the bad. Many corporations which may have been in the spotlight for doing something bad will have a lot of negative buzz created. This will in turn cause possibly boycott of the products or these customers pressure their politicians to do something, which may have a negative effect on the bottom line of the corporation. And sometimes, no amount of CSR can change the opinions of the public.

A common question asked is "Is there a better way in which we might assess and improve business’s impact on society and the environment?" When people start to get more information from the articles they read and conversations they engage in, many things that corporations are involved in get exposed. It is not enough just to have a CSR program and believe that it will change the impression of the public, corporations need to think beyond CSR and engage with stakeholders beyond shareholders.

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On Social Media, the question asked is "How can we used New Media to get closer to customers?" Basically, people like to do business with people they like. However, in many organizations, their primary focus is on operations, margins, and efficiencies over customer experience. It is hard for a customer to empathize when the organization is more focused on a spreadsheet. It is impossible to change if you can't see what it is they value.

Humanizing the brand and being customer-centric starts with breaking down internal silos. It is having a culture of listening and communicating with customers as well as using feedback to improve relationships and experiences. Its about empowering the employees to improve and contribute to a new era of customer engagement and collaborations. They have to care, not because they are human, but because it is part of corporate culture.

Innovation and collaboration is an outside-in and an inside-out process. Engaging with customers forces a groundswell that inspires top-down transformation from the bottom-up. It is time to invest in relationships that yield insight and impact. To gain influence, the business must earn affinity, loyalty, and advocacy through ongoing relevance.

There is much learning and adaptation, and a corporate culture that recognize the connected customer and having a management infrastructure necessary to adapt is key.

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Putting 2 and 2 together, transforming CSR with customer advocacy can bring the social to the next level. In an era of capitalism,  many people feel the income gap problem between the haves and have nots needs to be addressed. Striving to have high stock price does not mean a company cannot also have high social capital. Philanthropic Capitalism -- the merger of philanthropy and capitalism may set the stage for a new era of socially responsible businesses.

There are many opportunities wealth provide, and many questions on the responsibility of wealth. With more companies increasingly interested in humanistic capitalism, a consumer can find opportunities to work together to make the world a better place through everyday commerce.

Many companies are mismanaging CSR opportunities. Because the initiatives need to yield more returns in the form of sales or simply branding, often millions of dollars are spent on CSR Programs and millions more marketing the campaign. The companies are also not transparent and not taking on the core problem or even the problems they cause while doing business, and CSR are often seen as "white-washing" the companies.

Meanwhile, social projects, socially driven by staff and customers can be supported by the company, and this gives a different dimension to the social engagement. Otherwise, companies can also use their influence to promote and create social awareness. The RED program for Starbucks is a great example where customers paying with the RED rewards card also contributes to Global fund to help people living with HIV / AIDS in Africa.

Philanthropic capitalism nurtures empathy into a competitive advantage. It allows the corporation, the staff and customers to do good while doing business together, and with social media, amplify their efforts for a greater cause.

It is natural for Social Media to converge socially. It is the future direction for the social evolution.

-- Robin Low

What is the use of Vision, Mission, and Core Values?

Singtel is a large organization, it seems to be well funded, but with such bold Vision, Mission and Core Values are those shared throughout the organization?

Mission

---

Breaking Barriers, Building Bonds.

We enable communication by breaking barriers and building bonds.

We help businesses and people communicate anytime, anywhere and in various ways.

We make communications easier, faster, more economical and reliable by:

• Breaking the barriers of distance, price, time and technology, and
• Building strong bonds among SingTel employees, and with our shareholders, customers and business partners.

We believe that creating and delivering value to our customers, employees and shareholders is fundamental to our business.

Core Values

---

SingTel's Core Values underpin our desire to create a unity of purpose across the Group. They reflect our common aspiration to foster a performance-based culture that is open and innovative, and that promotes mutual trust and engagement.

 

Customer Focus

Our success is based upon our customer focus. We listen to, and connect with, customers and treat them with dignity and respect. By understanding and anticipating their needs, we make it easy for our customers to do business with us. We aim to offer them value and quality services to enrich lives and enhance business success.

---

Challenger Spirit

The creativity and innovation of our people set us apart. We look for better ways of doing business and share a passion for making a difference. When faced with challenges and opportunities, we do not say “Cannot” but ask “Why not?”.  We are tenacious and we compete fairly.

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With Traditional Media, you would think this is such a great caring company. Probably a good company to do business with. However with technology and social media today, marketing is no longer a simple job. Customer service is not just a nice to have department to generate report. Engaging in social media is not just something a company could do because its cool or everyone has it.

Singtel Word Cloud.

Many of the words used to describe Singtel does not seem that positive. Isn't the vision share throughout the company?

 

Singtel actually has quite a good response team on Facebook, they can direct the customers to the right place to share their problem. However, these other places are not very accessible. I've tried calling Singtel in the past and it too such a long time before I could talk to a human on the other end, I usually end up going to a Singtel store, and sometimes, they want me to call to resolve the problem.

So in essence, customer service is not so good.

And yes, on Twitter, Singtel is not so well spoken of. just type in Singtel in Twitter search, and I've always came out with negative remarks.

You can also find a lot of blogs talking negatively about them. So why are companies on social media if they are not engaging? Are the vision, mission, core values not shared by the employees?

I feel this is very common in traditional Asian companies. When the organization get to a certain size, the management although would like to embrace new technology, trends and communication channels, the staff, customer service and other employees not necessarily gets empowered much to do things. As a result, most of the brilliantly written values are not shared through the organization.

Lets look at the govern....

I guess I should not go further and you get what I mean.

It is important that the values of a company is shared throughout the organization. If the customers want to be treated right, the staff has to be well trained, paid well and empowered to do their jobs. Having social media does not make customer service better.

-- Robin Low

Public Relations / Social Media Crisis Management

In view of the multiple online negative sentiments generated when 3 students got into trouble after shaving their heads for charity, I have decided to share some tips on crisis management again.

Bald Solidarity Proves Hair-Raising to Singapore School
-- Wall Street Journal
 
Singapore Students Get In Trouble For Not Wearing Wigs After Shaving Heads For Charity
-- Huffington Post

When it reaches international media, the national problem suddenly becomes the talking point and there are a lot of buzz all over social media, all reacting to the news.

Education Minister Heng Swee Keat even talked about it in a post on Facebook on Wednesday morning as he praised the resolution. And ultimately, with the words form the top, the situation seems to be resolved. The students need not wear wigs and all the blame was on the principal and not the education system in Singapore. The resolution did not take too long before it became a more serious discussion, and everything seemed to be rather resolved. Some people agreed with the principal about the agreement made should be followed, while other feel that the principal should support the students and not force her backwards beliefs on them.

With other company and crisis like Scoot's virtual flight contest, McDonald's Hello Kitty Promotion and National Geographic's publicity stunt at Raffles Place, it is important to know the basics to resolve any PR or social media crisis.

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Here are some few steps when a crisis hits:


1) Gather the facts through investigating and get what ever is available.

2) Search the internet and social media for all the rumors and other information which the crisis generated.

3) Construct Blogs, Tweets, YouTube Videos, to do the following:

a) Show how some of these rumors are hilarious and so far from the truth. (Funny sells, and can go viral)
b) Shed more light on the facts, and share any available information. (Truths)
c) Create spin off content that is ridiculous about the incident, get laughs to ease the rumors.

4) Monitor the public opinion and social media for the new development in the crisis. 

5) Participate and encourage the hilarious and ridiculous videos, hopefully creating a lighthearted side to the crisis, and laugh it off.

6) Channel the affected consumers / conversations to pro-brand environment (like corporate blog / Facebook Page)

7) Actively listen online and identify potential escalating issues and resolve them quickly.

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Many companies do not care about social media crisis until it happens. Most of the incidents come from situations out of the control of the companies, and will happen whether the companies have or have not engaged on social media.

It is important to have a clear understanding and all the facts right, and most importantly -- act fast. Crisis can happen to anyone at any time. It is important to know how to react to these situations when it arise and fix it before it becomes a meltdown.

-- Robin Low

Will Freddie Mercury be Trending soon?

I have seen more and more Freddie Mercury Memes and Art, and is this going to be the next trend that is coming to you on social media?

If you noticed other Freddie Mercury Art, please let me know!

-- Robin Low

Memorable moments in Social Media -- 2012

1) Twitter has 200 million active users -- no longer considered a fad.

Watch out of live tweeting at events which may yield results faster than even live TV.

2) Facebook is really big!

• Monthly active users now total nearly 850 million
• 250 million photos are uploaded every day
• 20% of all page views on the web are on Facebook
• 425 million mobile users
• 100 billion connections
• Zygna’s games revenue is currently 12% of Facebook’s total income
• 2.7 billion “likes” per day
• 57% of users are female

3) MySpace is back!

Watch the video.

4) Gangnam Style -- 1 Billion!!

-- Yep, there can be 1 billion views on Youtube.

5)  Social Media users have POWER

Instagram declared that they can use your photos for ads and angry mobs online threatened to boycott Instagram and delete their accounts and guess what?

-- The mob wins!

-- Robin Low

Tohoku: Road to the Future Event

Preparing for an event and marketing it takes a lot of time and effort. For the event to be successful? So for a successful event, how do you go about creating awareness for it?

1) Creating a Facebook Event. (Tohoku - Road to the future - Art and photo Exhibition)

Create it, invite friends, friends of friends, Alumni, family. Invite it through emails and send messages to people whom yo think may come but have not replied.

2) Post it in relevant groups that you join to promote the event. Relief 2.0 - Japan

3) Do research online on reporters / bloggers who may be interested in the event. Write a pitch letter and send it out! Remember to include your contact information and specific information on the event.

Artitude Pitch
Singapore Business Review
Yesterday SG
Plush Asia
The Online Citizen
Life in Boston
SPH's AsiaOne

Your pitch letters may be picked up and reporters will call you for an interview, or you can submit a press release with some photos and the news / bloggers can run the press release.

4) Besides pitching to News and Bloggers, you can try pitching to TV and radio stations as well.

I managed to get on Channel News Asia and various Radio stations as well.

Put event up on event sites like Eventbrite.
And WhatsHappening.SG

It takes effort to invite people and get them to come, so regular posting of information on the event page and other groups and forums to inform people about the event does help bring more awareness.

It takes practice, patience and experience. There will be a lot of rejections, but occasionally you get a successful pitch and build your contact.

Don't give up!

-- Robin Low

Social Media at Universities

I've talked to several universities and people managing social media at universities and was not surprised that most universities are already on social media, and are very interested in engaging their prospective students, current students and alumni. Many faculties have started their own social media initiative and even within faculties, there are departments within that are doing their own engagement.

Most social media initiatives, though seemed independent of each other, are getting better with more interaction, and as the staff get the hang of it. Some universities have good policies to support the initiative while others need to get clearance, however, seeing that with or without permission, conversations about the university is going to happen, most universities get to engage on social media.

One thing I find in common in some of these universities who are starting their social media initiatives within departments of a faculty is poor communications. Many tasks are duplicated and there is not much collaborations even between faculties. After some central coordination, social media engagement can become more effective, however I still can see some major improvements that can be made.

1) Better Transition Required.

Admissions, Student Affairs and Alumni office need very good communications.

The transition between prospective students to students need to be well coordinated as there are influencers who became students, and the list of influencers should be cultivated to be student leaders to continue to help spread awareness of the University's messages.

Upon graduation, the students who are engaging with the social media team of student affairs or respective faculties should also be properly transitioned to engage in alumni affairs and get their friends to join as well.

The departments currently in all universities that I've spoken to seemed distinct and separate. There is nobody in charge or remotely interested in caring about the transition. The student affairs department sees their duties are done when students graduate, and the alumni office will try to only get the students after graduation. There may be collaboration in may other ways like running events, however, on social media, most universities do not have a transition plan.

2) Faculty vs Alumni Office.

In many universities, the faculties engage their alumni, and the university does it as well -- but separately. Being engaged twice make an alumni feel that the university does not have their act together. On social media, for an alumni to follow the university's alumni page and the faculty's page, they need to be of course different. Having all the faculties post on the university's main page is also not the answer.

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There are many other issues which the universities that I met with encounter, however I feel that most of them can be addressed with simply better understanding on their audience and a better focus on what they want to achieve.

-- Robin Low

My shrinking world

It is interesting that when social media started, the world got smaller. Suddenly, I could connect with some many more people, and learn more about the little things of my friends and families.

Search engine technologies has brought us information on our fingertips. Today, we can read about a product which we are interested in buying from another person who is not paid by the manufacturer, an honest opinion which we can trust. We can also research and compare features, specifications and pricing.

Our collective voices get heard. From blogging to tweeting, we share information and form groups with common interest. We curate information and share news that matter to us with our friends. We learn more about our friends and ourselves a post at a time.

With improvement in technology, things are changing. Today, I find that my world is shrinking. Somehow, my searches are tailored to my previous searches with the preferences of my friends. My newsfeeds show me news that my friends are sharing. Suddenly, even my Google searches are tailored to my preferences.

I am not sure if it will improve the quality of my searches, however, on my YouTube recommended videos are showing me what my Google+ friends are watching.

Looking at it all, I believe our experience online is getting narrower day by day. The role of search engine optimization is changing. Perhaps we should take social media optimization more seriously.

I've seen many videos and articles that went viral, as they get to the right networks of people and spread like wildfire. There are a few key factors in common with viral content:

1) Title
2) Description
3) Tags
4) Content Distribution

It is very interesting that now, well placed content can reach many people in a short period of time, however, it is also very disturbing that even the best articles without the right distribution can never be found.

-- Robin Low

#SMRT Social Media Crisis -- no end in sight

With the breakdown in SMRT trains, 3 times this week, the public was increasingly angry as it comes after the announcement and price increase for Taxis in Singapore.

This week, Circle Line was down, and on 15 Dec, the NS Line is badly disrupted and it created a crisis where power was out, ventilation was cut off, and someone had to break a window for air.

Then it comes the memes.

Clearly at this point, people are concerned and unhappy. On a few articles, thousands of people voiced their unhappiness. However, the state media and the communications department started to make stories which enraged the public more.

‘Train disruptions unacceptable and unforgivable’

The credibility of State Controlled Media -- Straitstimes is also questioned.
The Straits Times reports factually – not

The news title keeps changing on Straitstimes.
Singaporeans confident of MRT despite Thursday's MRT breakdown

The media also tries to cover things up with the "Extra income fiasco"
Yahoo! News 1 The Straits Times 0 Either that or the ST reporter is not trying too hard.

This is the photo which enraged many Singaporeans too.

Next comes the #PRFAIL from the communications department.

MRT breakdown: Don't break the windows, says SMRT
One frustrated commuter used a fire extinguisher to smash the glass on the door.
He should not have done so but considering the situation, he will not be penalised, SMRT officials said.

This is official statement from SMRT where a train stuck for hours in a tunnel without ventilation, and when passengers find it hard to breathe, a man smashed the windows to let air in, and SMRT was "considering" the possibility of pressing charges. -- WHAT KIND OF RESPONSE IS THIS?

The state controlled media also penalized Hossan Leong for sharing information on the incident which he read on tweets on Radio, informing the public that the MRT may be down and asking them to seek alternative transportation methods.

And this led to the awkard moment on TV.


So not only had the PR team of SMRT fail to handle the crisis, it seem to enrage the public more.

Unfortunately for SMRT, the worst is not over as the trains broke down today again.

So did the bus ferrying the passengers.

How can SMRT restore confidence and happiness in passengers?

It seemed like in their monopolistic market they are in, they do not really care as shown in their attitude and response. Will the government step in? I do not think so as well as it was quite clear that PTC and the Minister of Transport is one of them.

There is a Facebook Page to share your experience on the MRT http://www.facebook.com/sgmrt

I am not sure if they are interested in solving the problems, but there is a crisis growing, and people are not getting satisfaction.

-- Robin Low