Blogging Is Not A Magic Bean For A Magic Beanstalk I wanted to blog about this last week but in the hassle of packing and flying it slipped my mind until I was listening to a Jaffe Juice podcast while wandering around New York today: Blogging is not about planting magic beans and expecting beanstalks to sprout up. Your blogs are probably not going to affect activation on a large scale for weeks or months! You’ve got to work at this. You’ve really got to work at this. So if you’re not planting those seeds right now, and you don’t have a plan to grow and promote and nurture and join a bigger conversation, then really what are you doing? I first thought of this while walking past the Raffles Place train station and saw the Xbox/Sheylara poster I’ve been hearing about over the last week. Think about it: to move from a social media channel (a blog) to getting paid mainstream media publicity at one of - if not the most - heavily trafficked train station in Singapore. How does this happen? With lots of hard work and patience, that’s how. And that’s the one thing you should keep in mind when you’re blogging or dabbling in social media, be it as a company or brand or individual. You’re not going to make a hit overnight, but if you stick with your passion, you just might. The earliest archives I can see on Sheylara’s website is December, 2005, but I have no idea if she was blogging before that. In other words, at the very least it took almost two years to really get established in the Singaporean blogosphere and established enough to be picked up by a big company like Microsoft. There are probably many more reasons, but I can think of at least three that have contributed to this success outside of just “working at it”. 1) Being relatively focused on a niche. Be it posing with guitars, talking about the latest Xbox games, pictures of she and her friends playing Rock Band and Gamer Girl Fridays, there’s no doubt that Sheylara is one gamer girl. Heck, when I was trying to tell a friend that at least one person in Singapore is playing Rock Band, I showed him her website. She doesn’t blog only about games, but there is a consistency in it that is hard to ignore. 2) Reaching out beyond offline interactions I also previously blogged about Sheylara “cold e-mailing” to offer her help when we first started Social Media Breakfast | Singapore. I don’t think that got her the Xbox Xpert role per se, but it probably helped people sit up and notice that this is someone to be taken credibly in the local blogosphere. And as we all know, credibility is everything. 3) Being absolutely professional Unlike certain other female bloggers I shall not mention by name, Sheylara always deals with her detractors with a touch of humour. In fact, I think more often her community are the ones who fight fire with fire. (The company parallel here is letting your antibodies work for you) Again in the social media space, there’s little to no tolerance for bitchfits. Either you can work things out like adults, or you prove to the world you never mentally graduated from kindergarten. On the flip side, I give absolute credit to Microsoft and their agency for what they have done in this space. One, for moving into the space at all. Two, for selecting a good choice, and three, for taking time to determine that this choice is the best for them. I don’t think the Xbox Xpert happened overnight, but it was a relationship and mutual effort that was slowly worked on and cultivated, as I mentioned in a previous post. Let’s note also that the three points about Sheylara’s efforts online easily extend to a company like Microsoft too. Again I emphasise that this is an effort that literally can take years to work. I’ve been blogging seriously for about eight months and still haven’t passed the 100 subscriber mark. You just gotta keep telling yourself you’ll reach it some day. Maybe I should blog about something else for a year and get some company endorsement deal eh? Just kidding, I probably couldn’t tear myself away from this blog if I tried. Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with a picture that can act as a metaphor for whatever your brand, company, or individual blog is trying to achieve. (Full disclosure: Sheylara is a friend of mine and we work together on Social Media Breakfast | Singapore. I also do not know the exact details of the Xbox Xpert deal, but am commenting on the process as an observer of the social media space) Alignment Difficulties Aren’t Reserved For Companies You might have read that the Social Media Breakfast | Singapore team had a meeting last week and one of the big issues we discussed (and are still discussing) various ways of partnering up with companies, agencies and organisations for future breakfasts. The reason why we’re taking so long to come to a conclusion, is because it’s not an easy one to make. Walter mentions the concept of “fit” and that’s something that’s important to us. How does the company view social media? How do they view the community? Is our network something to be leveraged on, or developed? What’s their interest and/or agenda? How transparent are they in revealing this interest/agenda? Does aligning with them discriminate against other brands, companies or agencies? Lots of tough questions, all not easy to answer. So here’s the challenge: If you’re one of the commercial entities who are looking at partnering with us - send us something that will not only convince us it’s the right move, but leave no shred of doubt that it’s a good move for us, for you and for the community. If you understand social media and community, it shouldn’t be all that hard. For the bloggers, podcasters and others in the community, how do you deal with this issue? Does any partnership/sponsorship do? Or are there deeper questions to ponder? Comment below! In New York Hi everyone! I’m in New York right now before heading up to Canada. I do have a couple of posts in mind but they’ll probably not be as frequent as I’d like depending on internet availability, but do check back or subscribe to my rss feed if you can! Meanwhile, Social Media Breakfast | Singapore has a home! Check us out! Trust Issues In The Singaporean Blogosphere - How Do Companies Choose Who To Associate Themselves With? Saturday’s conversations at SMB3 was about blogger outreach programmes (the theme was set way before I received the email) and I think it’s apt. I’ve had conversations with people from various companies asking “How do you decide who to invite?” or “How do you decide who are influencers?” or “How do you quantify influence” and such questions. Clearly who the companies are associated with is a key priority by people both on the agency and the client side. The trust issues in the local blogosphere just means that companies who dare to venture into it, need to take note of some things. First to the companies: It’s scary but this is not new. Any decision from which newspaper you associate yourself with to which celebrity endorses your product, runs the risk of external events happening and aversely affecting your company by association. Be cautious, not scared. Here are a few steps you might want to take when deciding who to reach out to or associate your brand with: 1) Credibility & reputation over reach Reach is an old metric. It doesn’t matter that a blogger (or for that matter, a publication) can reach tens of thousand of people, if no one takes that particular source of information seriously. In fact, associating yourself with a blogger who has a bad reputation that reaches out to tens of thousands online, may do more damage than good to your brand. In essence, you’re much better off finding a fledgling blogger with a solid reputation and small following, and allow the following to grow. 2) Follow the blogger for a decent amount of time Seeing as how a blogger is viewed in the community can change literally overnight, it would be prudent to follow their blog for awhile before deciding if he or she is a good fit. A couple of good product reviews doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Consistency is the key. 3) See how he/she deals with conflicts Issues and conflicts pop up every now and then, the important thing is to see how the blogger deals with it. It could range from name calling and personal attacks to open honest discussions resulting in agreeing to disagree. I don’t need to tell you which is preferred. 4) What does the community say? Ultimately, I find this to be the true litmus test. It’s not really about what the blogger posts, but the community’s reaction to it. What they say in the comments, what they say in the forums, what they say in outbound links. It’s the easy and lazy way to just read a blogger’s content and gauge, but doing proper research means looking at what others say too. These are just four points that came off the top of my head, I’m sure there are more so feel free to add on in the comments! Trust Issues In The Singaporean Blogosphere: What Does It Mean For Companies? Yesterday I talked about the trust issues surrounding our tiny little blogosphere, and I can imagine companies rolling their eyes thinking “not again”. But there actually are a few learning points here: 1) It’s a good thing Think about it. If you’re organising an event and people are actually bitching and being sore about not being invited/attending, that says something. People hating you isn’t a bad thing. People being indifferent is the worst possible thing that can happen. I would’ve felt much worse if no one turned up for SMB3, compared to people thinking it was so exclusive that there was a blacklist in effect. 2) Stuff like this will happen ie: Be prepared. If it’s going to happen, it will happen online, so you should be monitoring what’s going on. How you react to it, in what manner and via which medium should be decided too. Sometimes it may not even be worth acting on, depending on the credibility of the bloggers involved. 3) When stuff like this happens, trust your “antibodies”. I don’t do much to monitor my blog besides checking my inbound links and having a Google Alert set up. Invariably I’ll miss something, but like the person who sent me the email, other people in the community highlight it when people are starting flames. It’s the same for any organisation getting involved online. There are going to be people who jump at any chance to launch an attack, but there will be those who will defend you. I personally feel the most important thing is to trust your supporters or “antibodies” because they will be your first line of defense, and probably the best line of defense. 4) The earlier you realise you can’t please everybody, the better. No matter what you do, there are people who are going to find fault with it. Is it worth your time placating them, or should you spend the same amount of your time building relationships with your supporters? It’s really your choice. Again, not every instance of a disagreement and/or attack warrants a reply. In fact, sometimes silence may help the situation even more. That’s it for today, what other concerns do you think companies would have entering this space? Tomorrow: How do you decide which bloggers are “safe” to align yourself with. Quirks Of The Singaporean Blogosphere - Trust Issues Sheylara and I were just talking about Social Media Breakfast: Singapore 3 and talking the pros and cons of expanding the team, one of the cons being politics, especially in Singapore’s blogosphere, where overnight, friends can become enemies and form opposite posses. I got emailed by someone anonymously (the person went through the trouble of creating an email account just to send me this email), showing me the contents of a private Plurk between some people with fairly malicious content about me, my blog, Social Media Breakfast and my professional life. I only know one person personally from that private Plurk, so I messaged the person on Facebook asking what was going on. It’s seemingly turned out to be a misunderstanding and I take it as it’s sorted out, but I don’t understand how people can have so much malicious intent inside them, especially towards someone they don’t even know personally. One of the issues behind the misunderstanding was that the person thought there was a “blacklist” for SMB3. Firstly, I’d like to tell everyone that there isn’t. SMB isn’t my “event”. It’s a team effort between Sheylara, Claudia, Derrick and myself. Secondly, SMB is an open event, we would never stop anyone from attending. It’s for the community! We have never ever discussed who should attend and who shouldn’t. It’s open to all. Thirdly, I don’t necessarily like every single blogger I meet, but that doesn’t mean someone else won’t like him or her, or someone else won’t get some value from him/her. That decision isn’t mine to make. An event like SMB is held so that everyone and anyone can attend, and each person can decide who to mingle with and keep in contact with from there. I have two big issues with this particular quirk of the local blogosphere: 1) You don’t know who to trust I can’t speak for everyone, but I don’t enjoy going to events like Social Media Breakfast and blogger outreach programmes and having to wonder who’s genuinely shaking my hand and saying hi, and who’s doing it with the figurative dagger behind their back. How do you know the next person you reach out to for help online isn’t going to take the opportunity to demolish you instead? I think people have had their differences in the blogosphere (myself included). Some have solved it like adults, some haven’t. But regardless, I would like to think we can disagree and/or dislike each other, but we don’t have to let it devolve into outright hate do we? 2) It hurts credibility Between this kind of behavior and that of our dear local female bloggers, is it any wonder companies are so hesitant to enter the local blogosphere? Can we as social media evangelists truly recommend a social media strategy in the best interests of their clients, knowing full well today’s “influential” blogger is tomorrow’s public antagonist number one? I’ve two follow up posts to this (which I haven’t gotten down to writing yet): 1) How does this lesson translate to businesses involved or looking to get involved in the social media space? 2) Knowing how the local blogosphere is, how do organisations decide who to associate themselves with? Keep checking back or subscribe to follow the posts. Organiser’s Report: Social Media Breakfast: Singapore 3 SMB3 broke huge new grounds yesterday at the Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) thanks to great partnership with the National Heritage Board (NHB). I was getting messages all Friday long about people being excited to attend SMB at the ACM and I heard about the River Room from the NHB folks and saw the pictures at the website, but I was completely blown away when I stepped into the venue. It’s a HUGE space that looks like a swanky ballroom rather than a location for an informal event like ours. In fact when I met Claudia to set up, I said “Wow, maybe we should’ve gotten a smaller room so it won’t look so empty if less people turn up.” The reception table NHB! Enter… the River Room Huge, classy and stylish. I needn’t have worried because this was the most amount of people we’ve ever had at an SMB for sure. When people were sitting the chairs were full, if not there were throngs of people standing around. It was really quite something. ‘ Many, many people! I felt the vibe this time round was a little more “intense” than previous SMBs. Maybe it was the more official looking venue compared to the previous cosy cafes, but I definitely sensed a lot more interest and enthusiasm and mingling this time round compared to the previous two. It was as if everyone knew they were in a room with bright, like-minded people and wanted to make the most out of every minute and maximising their time there. One thing that didn’t go too well, was the discussion topic. We wanted to have a panel but that didn’t work out so we thought going ahead with “table discussions” would work. But I guess they didn’t. We’re still experimenting with the format, but SMB is the community’s not ours. We just organise it. So if you felt the topic was too serious, too trivial, too boring, needed facilitators, needed moderators, let us know! We’re going to figure out a way to make this work for SMB4. Walter from NHB sharing with us NHB’s social media efforts. For me, the biggest thing at any SMB is the people. And I was incredibly excited that I didn’t know about half the people there! It’s amazing that almost six months after the first SMB, it’s still generating interest among people who are willing to come for the first time. I particularly enjoyed meeting Pat Law in person after so much communication on our blogs, Twitter and Plurk, Todd Murray from Active Channel who I only met online the day before on LinkedIn, Willy Foo from Live! Studios who provided great fun with his photography, and many many others who are too many to list here. I really love how SMB is becoming this melting pot of people literally from everywhere in the social media space. Bloggers, podcasters, videocasters, in-house people, agency people, casual enthusiasts, academics, entrepreneurs, tech people and everyone else. It’s great to have Miccheng from Podfire filming Geek Goddess TV at SMB2, and the Tech 65 crew recording live at SMB3. It’s truly bringing together the best of both “social” and “media”. Tech 65 recording live! Admittedly right now SMB does not have a firm “mission” to drive here in Singapore, but we started off wanting to provide a platform to get everyone together to mix, share experiences and learn from each other, and I think it’s doing just that. Not necessarily at the three hours during brunch, but all the connections and conversations that happen after that. As much as I was delighted to see so many new faces, I was equally ecstatic to see so many returning faces who have been consistent supporters of social media in Singapore in general, and SMB in particular. At this point I’d love to hear from everyone how you felt about the event. Be frank, be critical. After all if you’re waking up on a precious Saturday morning to come to SMB, it should be worth your time. Let us know what worked, what didn’t work, what you’d like to see more of in the future, etc etc. Finally, I’d like to thank Walter, Wei Chong, David and Kenny from NHB for agreeing to partner up with us. I cannot state enough what a great help they were with the venue. It was really good knowing that we secured a great venue and not having to worry about it for the last few months. I completely forgot about signage but they had all bases covered with great signboards everywhere ensuring that no one got lost. Thank you so much. Of course, it wouldn’t be possible without my co-conspirators as well: Sheylara, Claudia and Derrick. Willy has great photos up on Facebook. I’m going to insert two of the group pictures here. Memories of a good Saturday morning well spent meeting great people. Group Shot 1 Group Shot 2 Links to other SMB3 Coverage: Walter @ Cooler Insights Dorothy’s post Michael @ Communicate Asia Cullen @ Media Slog As always I’ll be posting a full rundown of all the blog coverage sometime next week, do let me know if you blogged about it so I can include you! Tagging your posts as “social media breakfast singapore” and “smb singapore” would be greatly appreciated! Social Media Helps Land Another Job I’m very happy to share with everyone here in Asia that Hutch Carpenter got a job at Connectbeam via social media. I’m not going to rehash the whole story because I think he tells it better on his blog, but I just want to share how amazed I am that a job could be the end result of a comment going: Hutch: Would love to connect with you and discuss some ideas. When did we ever have a world like this? Where blogging and leaving a comment could result in a hiring opportunity. Utterly amazing. I’d also like to point out that Hutch’s employer had a Google Alerts feed for “enterprise 2.0″, which is what Hutch is into, further emphasising the importance of tagging, and making sure you’re deeply associated with what you blog about/your passion is. I’ve blogged about Hutch previously in a “Blogs worth reading” segment, feel free to check that out as well a a previous story on a student getting employed via Twitter or my own experience with getting employed via social media. Will employment opportunities like these start to exist in Asia? Or do they sound like wishful delusions right now? Probably somewhere in the middle. I’m going to say in Singapore particularly, just blogging or being online is not going to work. You’d probably need to meet people who will then refer you to someone else. I think as management starts to get more sophisticated and spend more time getting used to this new digital world, the opportunities will start to increase. So start working on it now, just don’t expect instant results. More Twitter Fail! My Twitter usage has been down to practically zero since I started using Plurk. It’s a good thing because the way Plurk actually works is like a community, so I’m getting much more referrals via Plurk than I ever did via Twitter. I have to admit, though, that it’s a bad thing as well because it means I’m not working as much on the network I have on Twitter, which is about three times the size of the one I have on Plurk. That aside, today I got an email that essentially says Twitter will not be allowing users to receive Twitter updates any further unless they’re in the US, Canada or India. You can read the full details on their blog. I draw attention to one paragraph in their email: It pains us to take this measure. However, we need to avoid placing undue burden on our company and our service. Even with a limit of 250 messages received per week, it could cost Twitter about $1,000 per user, per year to send SMS outside of Canada, India, or the US. It makes more sense for us to establish fair billing arrangements with mobile operators than it does to pass these high fees on to our users. It may be easy for me to say this as an outsider, but shouldn’t they have thought about this as a business issue from the beginning? Shouldn’t projections have been run and costs estimated? Why wait for two years before settling this? At the end of the day it comes down to expectation management. Users have been used to receiving smses to keep up with their friends locally and internationally while they’re not at their computer. If you remove that, it takes a lot out of the service for these people. I could point you in the direction of numerous Plurk conversations today in dismay at the lack of this service. I think there’s still value on Twitter. The past months have been dismal for them, but there’s no reason why their recent VC injection can’t breathe some new life into the service. But if they keep going down this road, the Twitter “fail whale” might need to be changed to an even bigger animal. Social Media Breakfast: Singapore 3 - The Agenda We’ve finally settled most of the details about SMB:S3 and the day is going to go something like this: 1000 - 1045: Arrivals & Introductions 1045 - 1130: Discussion topic: Blogger outreach programmes are catching on in Singapore. What does this mean for the company? For bloggers? For audiences? 1130 - 1300: Brunch & free roam of the museum. Everything you see above is voluntary. If you just want to come for the discussion that’s fine, if you just want to come for brunch and networking and mingling that’s fine too. We’re really experimenting with the format this time round, so let us know if you have suggestions and/or comments. Do note that while there is a central discussion theme, by no means are conversations meant to be restricted around them. For people coming for the first time, it would be really good if you could come for the introduction session, which would probably make the less of the day go by much more smoothly. Don’t worry, we’re a friendly bunch =) If you haven’t yet signed up for it, the Facebook event page can be found here. Derrick and Sheylara have things to attend to and so they won’t be around, so it’ll really be me and Claudia holding the fort this weekend. Approach us if you need to! Further Thoughts On Magnum’s Advertising Going back and re-reading the comments from the Magnum post both here and the replies on Plurk, I’ve been thinking a little bit more about the Magnum ad. 1) Does aspirational advertising work? We know what this is, they teach this in school. Subject A uses product X for benefit Y, so you can be like subject A too. Smart, sexy, whatever. Does it work? Reading through the comments it would seem that the association of Eva Longoria with being sexy and stuff works although at the same time it’s mentioned that surely we can’t believe that eating multiple Magnums gets you her figure. So what gives? 2) How much of it is celebrity endorsement? This comes up because the comparisons between the Magnum ad, and Utt and the Brands ad came up. In a sense it’s a fair comparison. The Brands ad is everywhere and Utt is fairly popular, but does Eva have more “celebrity pull” than Utt does? Or maybe it’s just easier to reach out and buy a $2 ice cream? Or maybe again this has to do with textbook marketing: get someone “in line” with the brand so that it works. 3) Would non-traditional advertising have worked? More specifically, would social media have worked? A plurk dialogue page? A blog? A platform for Magnum lovers to share their experiences? An “ideastorm” like page for people to suggest flavours? Or for a product like Magnum, was the best way to really throw themselves out there with traditional means? I’m not actually trying to make a point here. Just further points that have hit me since posting and reading the great, great comments that have come in that have further inspired me to think about the issue further. Do you have more? Sony Continues To Impress With Excellent Customer Service So I chose a Vaio over a Dell a few months back and was suitably impressed with Sony’s excellent customer service. Recently, my laptop crashed so I had to bring it in to the customer service centre at Wisma Atria. All was good, they told me they’d take my laptop for a week and give me a call. That was on Monday. Fastforward to Wednesday, I got two missed calls from an unknown number and a third call within an hour. I was all ready for it to be some telemarketer but was pleasantly surprised to find it was Sony. Persistent customer care. It would’ve been so easy for the customer support guy to just hang up and call again tomorrow, after all, they did say a week. But there was effort made to get me on the phone once the job was done. So after I got on the phone, I was told my hard disk crashed. I told the representative I was greatly disturbed that I had just bought it a couple of months ago and it had already crashed. To this I was given assurance that anomalies happen and he gave me a few tips to take care of my hard drive when I got it back. Finally, I got the pick up details and needless to say, I was thrilled to get it two days ahead of schedule, and more importantly, Sony continues to impress me with their customer service. If it was just once when I was buying the laptop, I could write it off to a salesman trying to close a deal. But it has been consistent across multiple touchpoints with pre-sale, post-sale, warranty people, the person who helped me deal with my laptop and the tech support guy who called me after to explain the problem. Normally, if a laptop died on me within three months of purchase, I’d be furious. But through Sony’s customer service and expectation management, it’s turned into an positive advocacy piece on my blog. Well done, Sony. Lifestreaming: The Future Of Blogging? How lifestreaming is transforming the internet has been quite well documented, and this week on ReadWriteWeb, the future of blogging has been revealed. And yes, it’s in the form of lifestreaming. Three thoughts: 1) Does it work? I’d always thought of the “other” stuff that goes on in lifestreaming as a complement to blogging. They fill in the gaps but they’re not always the main content. Snacks in between meals, if you will. But in this day and age, who really has time to read a 700 word post anymore? Even a 500 one? Especially when it can be done in 140 characters. I fell ill a week back and didn’t have the energy to blog about it, but I did Plurk about it. By the time I was well enough to punch a blog post out, I realise everyone knew about it via microblogging, so it didn’t serve any purpose. There will be “long form” bloggers as Sarah mentioned who will need to blog just as a way of capturing the content. But how about the average personal blog? If you look at the examples on RWW, my gut feel is they could work. 2) Is there a culture difference Friendfeed is the epitome of lifestreaming. I know it’s hot, I know it has its’ uses, but it hasn’t caught on here in Singapore yet. Without any proper research, I’m going to guess that culture has a part to play. As a society we’re not that voyeuristic yet (some are, but it’s a small sample), which maybe accounts for some of it. There’s also the element of privacy and collectivism that exists here which might result in self-censorship when it comes to lifestreaming. For example, it may not be the best thing to flag a certain controversial book you’re reading because it may not be socially acceptable in this setting. 3) It’s already happening Prior to publishing this post, I asked aloud on Plurk (not that you could ask silently) what people thought about the article and got varied responses. In a sense that’s what lifestreaming is about isn’t it? Come across something in your life, share it quickly, get short 140 character responses back and then everyone moves on to the next item. It’s all very interesting. I don’t know if it truly replace blogging per se, but it definitely will be exciting to see where this fits in in the next 6 months to a year. And more importantly, if everything (blogging, content, attention spans) are getting shorter, how do companies engage and connect? Sorry For The Hiatus From Blogging In addition to being away last week, I also fell pretty ill, which pretty much took up any and all time and energy I had to do anything, much less blog. One thing that I found interesting was that the Magnum advertising post generated a lot more talk than I thought it would both here and on Plurk. It surprised me not because I thought it was a bad post (though I worked on it on a weekend while away), but because it came out of nowhere, from the simple act of my colleague buying a Magnum. Just goes to show you can’t predict what people will talk about on the internet. Working at a multi-million dollar TV channel (which is as mass media as they come) for the last month has been very interesting for me. On one hand it reminded me of my passion for music and youth, on the other hand the nature of the environment meant I was thinking a lot in the “mass media” setting than in the niche, web2.0 setting than I normally do. Is there a way to merge the two? Surely there is. I don’t have the answer to that (and maybe no one does yet), but it was definitely a very exciting month. The least “social media” month in 2008, to be sure. Moving ahead, I’m leaving for Canada on the 24th of August and will be there till the end of the year on exchange. I’m really looking forward to checking out how their social media scene is like and meet some people, maybe attend a conference or two. If you have links to people or bloggers or companies embracing web2.0 there and wouldn’t mind sharing, do let me know. Greatly appreciate it. And now, back to regularly scheduled blogging. Did Magnum’s Traditional Advertising Work? I take the train to Dhoby Ghaut station most days to work, and there’s this huge (one level high) Magnum ad with Eva Longoria, as well as this large Magnum prop that’s easily two to three times my height. One day I walked past and in my usual cynical manner with all things traditional, thought to myself “Does this actually work? Is someone going to see this and buy a Magnum from the 7-11 upstairs?” Then a few days ago my boss purchased a Magnum and I asked “Did you buy that because of the ad at Dhoby Ghaut?” He said no, but then we proceeded to have a conversation after that about the ad and the huge Magnum and how my boss always likes to grab a Magnum. So did the ad work? It didn’t lead directly to sales but I did remember the ad enough to recall it talk to someone about it, which is more than I can say for most ads. And I remembered it was Magnum and not a Cornetto or something else, compared to the ads for TVs that I can never tell apart. Thinking about why that is, I’ve got a couple of reasons: 1) I pass by the ad almost everyday. Maybe there’s something to be said for repetition after all? 2) The giant Magnum is huge and impossible to miss. On the verge of being remarkable? If you’ve seen the ad or the huge Magnum, did it make any impact on you? Overseas For The Next 12 Days I’ll be overseas in Malaysia for the next two weeks (roughly) and probably will not be able to blog much. Do pardon my temporary hiatus! I’ll try to blog as much as I can but it probably won’t be as frequent as I’d like. Bear with me! Five Golden Rules In Advertising A couple of weeks ago I was at Ad:Tech and besides meeting some companies who treated us like idiots and some that didn’t, there was a pretty decent talk by three creative directors with their own set of “Five golden rules” in advertising. The first and the last creative directors gave typical rules like stay true to the brand etc. Very advertising in the ’90s or web1.0. Now one of them gave five points that were much, much more relevant to this day and age: Understand your consumer Own an issue, stand for something Spark & manage a conversation Involve your audience Aim for impact Alright understand your consumer and aim for impact are normal, but while the other two were talking about transmitting one-way messages, at least he mentioned “conversation” and involving the audience. If you’re paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to an agency to do your advertising, wouldn’t you rather it be an interactive, engaging effort instead of one of 2 million “impressions” that registered in their peripheral vision for all of two seconds? Because if you’re still engaged in the transmit model (i.e one way monologue) as opposed to conversation and two way dialogue, it seems like a waste of time. Especially if your demo is Gen Y. The Ping.sg 2nd Birthday Party & Awards Yesterday was the Ping.sg birthday party and awards. You might remember me mentioning I was nominated for “Most insightful blog”, “Most insightful post” for “Are bloggers really influencers?” and “Best review post” for my review of Plurk. The great news is I managed to snag both “Most insightful post” and “Most insightful blog”, so thanks to everyone who voted for me, and the people who nominated me in the first place. It’s obviously nice to walk away with something and I’m glad the blogosphere in Singapore is beginning to read and recognise that blogs aren’t just Meepok Blogs about what I had for lunch. One thing I do wanna say is let’s be clear that the awards were only open to people in the Ping.sg community. By default that leaves out other great insight blogs like Michael’s and Priscilla’s. Let’s also not forget other content blogs like Vanessa’s, Kevin’s and Walter’s who post great stuff, but maybe don’t always have the time to engage with the people on ping.sg. After all, voting always boils down to a popularity contest. Still, I hope this means more people are going to recognise the impact of social media and start bringing it into their lives, work and play, and hopefully we will see a much needed change locally in the near future. (ps: The pictures and “fun” stuff will be up on my personal blog later. Stay tuned!) 200 Nipples Covered A Month Last week I was looking through my feeds on Google Reader (an act that is becoming less and less frequent with work piling up), and saw one of del.icio.us’s “hotlist” saying “200 Nipples“. How could I resist clicking? Turns out it is a t-shirt selling website that runs batches of t-shirts in exactly 100. Hence they aim to cover 200 nipples every month if they sell 100 t-shirts. The interesting thing about them is that each t-shirt is uniquely numbered, and corresponds to the amount you pay. So you’d pay $70 for t-shirt #70, and $1 for t-shirt #1. Pretty interesting concept and a novel business idea. Sounds to me like they would’ve had to have done some pretty intensive forecasting and cost modeling to come up with this, so credit given there. What I really like about the company is their blog and product is geared towards conversation or discussion pieces, as you can read about in their writeup for their t-shirt for the month of July and their not-too-serious FAQ page and of course the story behind their company name, gives them a sense of “character” that most brands don’t possess. Will they be a big player in the world of t-shirt businesses, only time will tell. But for now, I’m subscribed to their updates so I know when their latest design is released so I can snag me a t-shirt (hopefully when I’m up in the US so I can save on shipping). What Not To Do When Selling A Homogeneous Product (Part 2) Yesterday I talked about two things not to do if you’re selling a homogeneous product in the context of comic book stores. Today I’m going to wrap it up with two more. #3 - Don’t fail to manage expectations properly. When I moved over to G&B Comics, they gave away Previews (a comic book catalogue) free every month, to the people who shifted over from Colin’s. No mention of time frame, no mention it was a temporary thing. That was one thing that won me over in the beginning. Then, come last week, after 3-4 months, I was suddenly told that they weren’t continuing it anymore because it was “for awhile only”. Really? When was this mentioned? If they had told me it’s just for 4 months, at least I could manage that expectation and be ready to pay for it in the 5th month, rather than get a rude shock when I’m physically standing at the counter expecting a free copy. #4 - Don’t make it seem like all you’re in for is the money. I understand that if you’re not making money, you’re not in business. But it doesn’t mean your customers have to perceive that all you care about is making money. For example, I’m heading off to Canada from September, so unlike the store, I thought it’d be good to manage expectations and tell them not to get my comics (and save them some money) for the next quarter. Here’s my email to them in it’s entirety: Dropping you a mail to let you know I won’t be in Singapore from September till December of this year. Just to drop you some early notice so you can manage the future orders. Speaking of managing expectations, must say I’m pretty disappointed that the free Previews for those who shifted over from Atomix was suddenly dropped. Came as a bit of a surprise that it was a “temporary” arrangement cos that’s not what it sounded like at the beginning. And here’s their response: Hi Daryl, your membership number is 1586 correct? as we’ve a couple of membership number named under Daryl Tay. We need to put on a notice so that your comic subscriptions will continue during this period that you’re not in singapore. Thank you. All that email read to me was “Can we clarify your number (instead of your name), so that we can cancel your orders and save us some cash”. No further communication about the poor expectation management, Nothing. Did I feel like they cared about anything other than money? No, not really. For the record, Colin, the owner of the previous comic shop, also had a few customers going by “Daryl Tay”, but he never got it mixed up. Why? Effort and giving names to customers instead of numbers. If you’re dealing with products or services that are easily available elsewhere, do take note of these points. They’ll help to keep your customers happy and perhaps even loyal. What Not To Do When Selling A Homogeneous Product You might have read the “About me” section that I put up on the blog maybe a month ago and picked up that I collect comic books/graphic novels. The thing about comic books (and to some extent normal books), is that they’re homogeneous. I could get them from any comic store (or book store) in Singapore (or the world, for that matter), and it would be the exact same product. So what do you have going for you? Either a very competitive price, excellent service and customer relations, or both. (Singapore is pretty small and all the stores are centrally located, so I’ll leave location out of the equation). I had to move to G&B Comics when the previous shop I went to closed down. Their prices are not terrible, but I’m paying more than I did at the old shop, and I can get some stuff at Kinokuniya at a better price. What really irks me is the customer service. So much so that I’ve had time to sit down and think of four things not to do if you’re in their position, of which I will share two today. #1 - Don’t give your customers a number The thing about this store (as opposed to previous stores) is that they don’t know who the hell you are. We go by numbers. So every week when I go to the store, I report my number like a prison inmate before I get my stash of comics. It’s not a great feeling. #2 - Don’t employ the wrong people In the previous store, Colin did everything himself, which means he knows a little bit about the comics industry. If you needed to order something, he’d take note immediately. The people hired at this store, aren’t like that and they’re literally like the checkout people at a supermarket. They’ll take your cash, but ask them about anything actually related to comic books, and you’re out of luck. It also doesn’t speak very well of the store if you’ve told the staff three or four times to help you keep a book, and they keep leaving it out. After awhile actually becomes easier for me to just forget about asking them “Sorry I’m missing a copy of Manhunter” and just pick it up elsewhere instead. If they can’t be bothered about taking note of my buying preferences, then some other place can take the money. #3 and #4 coming tomorrow. By the way don’t take this post like I hate the store. I’ve just had countless negative experiences in a few months that have been bugging me, despite me giving suggestions on how to improve. Social Media Breakfast: Singapore 3 At The Asian Civilisations Museum In a month, Social Media Breakfast: Singapore 3 will be happening. The tentative date is Saturday, 16th August at the Asian Civilisations Museum. I finally got to meet up with Walter at Ogilvy’s Verge event, and pitched him with the idea a week later, and it’s worked out pretty well. We’ve got verbal confirmation from ACM about the venue but the date is still tentative. What’s going to be different this time? Well first of all, we’re going to dedicate maybe 45mins to an hour to focus on discussing about social media. The topic is up in the air right now, so feel free to throw something in. Hopefully it won’t be something covered 73529573 times before (like should we pay bloggers to review products), but something different. Just to manage expectations, don’t expect the names or turnout like you see at other “conferences” because at the end of the day we’re a four man team with no budget! Speaking of a four man team, another key difference is that Derrick will be taking point on this one, primarily because myself and Sheylara are going to be pretty swamped with work. We’re also welcoming Claudia into the mix, who’ll help with working out what exactly that social media topic should be. Who better than the community manager of Yebber who deals with social media every day to take up this job right? Shermeen, our masterful logo designer is unofficially on board helping us with what ever design stuff/torture we can throw her way as well. While we’re on design, Sheylara and I have been discussing about getting a full-fledged domain for SMB:Singapore, so stay tuned for that. And finally, everyone who comes gets free access and a guided tour of the Museum, and we’re in the process of persuading them to relax their photography rules for just one day so that as always, our bloggers can go crazy with their photo-taking. More updates as they come in! We really want your feedback on how SMB should evolve. It’s not our “baby”, it’s everyone’s. So please comment below! ps: In case you don’t know what SMB is about, read up on the first and second ones here! Blogger Survey Result #4: Time Spent On Blogging & Blogger Advice This is part four (of four) of an analysis of a blogger survey conducted by Text 100. You can find out more from the previous parts: Part 1: Bloggers are open to company contact Part 2: Send the right person to make contact with the right content Part 3: Is the social media release relevant? Bloggers are talking about you Fig 1: 67% of bloggers spend less than 4hrs a week on blogging Okay personally I’m not sure what this particular piece of data is supposed to show, but I think it says this: what other medium do you know that engages people for four hours a week? Television? Print? Radio? I don’t think so. Also note that this figure is purely spent on blogging. In other words there are many other hours spent chatting, on Lively, reading blogs, on YouTube, on Facebook. Are you still spending 90% of your adspend on mainstream media when we’re spending 10% of our time on mainstream media? (if even that). Finally, I wanted to post some quotes from the survey in the form of advice from bloggers to companies. Maybe a traditional company will read this and find the quotes bordering on arrogant, but the truth is, these are your new consumers. They want personalisation, proper treatment, good service, and their loyalty only lasts as long as the next better deal comes along. So what’re you doing to continually be that better deal? Fig 2: Blogger advice to companies I think it’s easy for many of us in the “fishbowl” to look at this and say “so what’s new?”. But we have to keep in mind that companies by and large do not know this, or are skeptical. Solid, empirical research by a firm like Text 100 definitely helps bring some credibility to the discussion (especially in Asia), and I personally applaud the time, effort and I’m sure money put in to make this happen. Blogger Survey Result #3: Is The Social Media Release Relevant? Bloggers Are Talking About You. Bloggers seem to know what the social media release is about. Or at least 60% of them do (Fig 1), and 72% of those who do, find it an effective communications tool. Fig 1 - The social media release The social media release results I take with a little pinch of salt purely because of the small sample size. It’s easy to look at it and say “Wow Singapore understands the social media release!” but remember we’re talking only 14 bloggers in Singapore. Let’s add on a second bit of information, that 88% of bloggers aware of the social media release would use the related material in blog posts (Fig 2). Fig 2 - Using social media release material in blog posts This makes the picture a little bit clearer. Bloggers don’t have a lot of time to write lots of original stuff about you. Providing them with the right quotes, videos, pictures, etc can make their life easier. Think of it as how you submit a ready-to-print press release to a journalist, compared to the bare minimum and expecting the journalist to write the rest himself. Not gonna work right? Here’s where it’s easy to put two and two together. Bloggers are receptive to using your material, and bloggers like using video. Need I connect the dots for you to say what you should include in your social media release? One thing though, if you’re not confident of your video standing up to scrutiny, you should just skip on it, because the focus can very quickly turn to “look what a joke this video is” instead of focusing on your message. Fig 3 - Sources of information about companies Finally Fig 3 tells us that more than one in two bloggers talk about companies. Also, the accompanying caption in this slide points out that social bookmarking sites are the lowest ranked for bloggers to find out more information about a company. I’d like to point out that “other bloggers” is ranked first. So bloggers turn to other bloggers for information about your company, and generally speaking, one in two bloggers talk about companies (maybe yours). Does that scare you? Before I end, I’d just like to drop off a couple of quotes that I saw in the survey about what bloggers feel the contact person should be saying/doing. “Keep it short and to the point - lay off the extreme glorification of companies” “Information in advance is crucial so the blogger has time to consider, research and develop the content into meaningful posts” “Few corporates and almost no PR companies have websites that provide regularly updated, easily searchable press release archives” How’s that for some Sunday afternoon reading? Tomorrow I’ll close up this topic with a few more quotes and a ball park figure for how much time bloggers spend blogging. This is part three of an analysis of a blogger survey conducted by Text 100. Here are links to part one and part two, as well as the social media release template. Blogger Survey Result #2: Send The Right Person To Make Contact With The Right Content Yesterday I tackled how bloggers are open to company contact, and knowing that, today I’ll explore what the research says about who should contact the bloggers, and with what content. Fig 5: Who should contact the blogger? There seems to be a preference for the PR person, though the score for the company executive scores just over 50% which isn’t bad in my books. I personally have no explanation for this difference. I’m not entirely sure bloggers can tell between a PR rep, comms rep and company executive in the first place. What I like about the findings here is the verbatim quotes on the right, particularly “what they talk about should be relevant to my blog” (sounds like something I would say), “Prefer to talk with active bloggers or those prominent in the blogger community“. This tells me three things: 1) Please be relevant 2) For people looking to be hired by a PR firm or in-house communications department, your network can be a huge asset. If you’re a well-known, well-liked person in the blogger community, people are going to listen. 3) Companies who don’t have this well-known, well-liked blogger in their office, it’s time to start a blog and become one Fig 2: Should there be prior contact? From Fig 2, we see that 78% of the respondents prefer initial contact to be made before shoving a press release down their throats. 78% across all respondents and countries suggest it to be pretty significant, so I’d pay attention to this. What should the initial contact comprise of? Show us you read our blog with responses to our blog posts (Fig 3) Fig 3: What content appeals? I find for me, if someone sends me a message demonstrating he/she has read what I’ve blogged about, even if he/she disagrees, I’m more likely to be receptive to the message. Research is not Googling “social media” and emailing the top 10 searches, it’s reading their blogs too. Note that “corporate news announcements” scores the lowest by quite a wide margin. Simply put? Bloggers don’t want to hear about your quarterly earnings or the usual stuff we can read in the papers. Give us something with a story, something to be excited about, like a new product. If you’ve made it that far, knowing bloggers invite company contact, and you’ve sent the right representative and made contact in the right way, what should you send them that’s related to you? The response seems to be overwhelmingly video (Fig 4) Fig 4: What content appeals to bloggers It’s no coincidence that in my first post, I chose to upload the four videos supplied to me as a primer to the research results. Video is fairly painless to upload (unless you’re using Wordpress) and very easy to view. A word of caution: if you are going to use video, please use one that doesn’t insult the intelligence of the blogger and his readers. Tomorrow: Should you bother with a social media release and some blogger comments Blogger Survery Result #1: Bloggers Are Open To Company Contact Yesterday I posted up four videos (which didn’t work), but I promised to get into the Text 100 survey results further in detail today, so don’t worry, you’re not missing much without the videos. Before I start, I want to say that while the absolute number of bloggers surveyed is actually pretty substantial (n=125), the numbers per region are actually pretty small (Fig 1), so I would advise caution in saying this applies to everyone (the survey says this too). However, I do find the aggregated results to be quite interesting. The first one that comes up that I’ll deal with today is that bloggers are generally open to contact by companies (Fig 2) Fig 1: Respondent breakdown by country Fig 2: 84% of bloggers welcome contact from companies Not terribly surprising if you ask me. At least locally with the bloggers I know, you can’t throw a stone and not hit someone who has been in contact with a company. Bloggers like to be contacted via email, or a comment on their blog (Fig 3), with those coming out with the highest 2 mean scores. Fig 3: Preferred method of contact What I find interesting is that “face to face meeting” scored 30% on “third ranked method of contact”. That means 30% of the respondents chose face to face as their third preferred communication method. At first glance that might tell us that we maybe should initiate a personal meet up with bloggers, but then another piece of data comes in Fig 4: Face to face preference On the importance of face to face meetings (Fig 4) you can see the mean score is almost right in the middle at 5.4. First thing that jumps to mind? The data tends towards the extremes, which is why the average falls in the middle. Interesting stuff (and kudos to them for picking this out). What I’d like to see is whether the importance scores particularly higher in certain countries and maybe lower in certain countries. That might help us understand culturally, where the differences are. My conclusions from this so far: bloggers in Asia are open to contact, digital means should probably come first, with the invitation/option to meet face to face if the blogger desires. So far, very much in line with how I view company contact. Tomorrow: who should initiate contact, what you should do before contact and what kind of content bloggers probably want. Edit: By the way, research is not really my field of study in school. So if I’m interpreting some results wrongly or there is another way of viewing the data, I’d really appreciate if you point it out! Thanks! Text 100 Blogger Survey Results I was very fortunate to be asked by Rony of Text 100 to participate in a blogger survey which is believed to be the first of it’s kind in Asia. I’m going to actually trawl through the results and give you my thoughts on them, but before that, let me share four short clips on the outcome of the survey: The videos give very generic details about why this is important, how to engage bloggers and what bloggers want, but it is nevertheless important for companies to understand this basic primer, because that level of understanding is clearly not there yet. More on the results tomorrow! Nominated For The 2nd Ping.sg Blog Awards I must really apologise for not blogging much this week. I think it has been the least I’ve blogged since I’ve started the blog, but work has really been tough (though incredibly enjoyable). The 2nd Ping.sg blog awards (blog aggregator in Singapore with about 3,500 blogs) have their nominees and I’m nominated in three categories: (for “Are Bloggers Really Influencers?”) (for “Why Plurk Over Twitter #3: Organic Conversations“) Thank you to those who nominated me. If I’ve ever talked to you (in person) about why I blog, you know it’s not for the “fame” or money (I don’t even have ads!), but it’s really just me trying to share my love for this fascinating new digital space with you, and hopefully help spread the word about social media and how it can help you in your personal life, academic life or professional life. I didn’t nominate myself for anything primarily because I thought it’s be a good gauge to see what the community finds valuable. I think the fact that the community has chosen two posts in particular that are aimed at convincing businesses that bloggers are indeed influencers and fostering conversation and community tells me that locally, the people who’re reading are listening and finding some value in it, and that is very, very encouraging. So do check out the awards nominees page and vote for who you like. I’m not going to ask that you vote for me because looking at the nominees across the board, I think the community has already won. Speaking To 450 P&G Executives About Gen Y So today Estee, Ian, Michael, Dorothy and I headed down to Sheraton Tower to speak to about 450 P&G Executives about Generation Y, the New Consumer and our purchase decisions as well as media consumption habits. Michael, Dorothy and Ian getting ready. Without a doubt, it was the biggest crowd I’ve ever spoken to (not including emceeing) and I hope they found it useful. One big concern (as always) is how “safe” it is to put your brands in the hands of consumers. As one of the execs put it, how do we know a blog won’t serve as a “brand spoiler”? Left side of the room Right side of the room. I think it’s simple. The point I tried to hammer home today is: If your content or brand or product or service doesn’t suck, it won’t happen. By suck I mean the whole world hates it. I don’t think it has to be a perfect product, but a flawed one open to feedback is fine. And if you’re P&G, the textbook example for great brands, why should you be afraid? Your products should speak for themselves! The one question I always want to ask is this: If you have kids (say, above 15). Do you really believe that your current media buying habits are in sync with their media consumption habits? I tried asking this today, but less than 10 people in the audience had kids over 15. So it became a moot point. To some extent I think that’s a very dangerous position for an organisation to be in. If your key decision makers are at the age where they’re not interacting with Gen Y and think they are “safe” in the knowledge that what has worked for the last 30-40 years of marketing will still work, that spells trouble. The smart companies will pick the brains of their youngest employees. MTV did that when I was there. Almost every week they would ask me “What would your age group think of this?” or “Is this lame to you?” or questions like that. I remember one instance where somebody two levels above my immediate superior (meaning she’s VP level) came to me and asked my opinion on some new VJ audition tapes. I’m not trying to be a diva, but it astounds me that there were 140 students at Ad:Tech last week, and almost none of us were approached by execs just to talk. Let’s put it this way: Every six months new graduates enter the workforce and decide what to buy with their newfound spending power. If you haven’t been communicating to them earlier, what makes you think you can do it now? ps: While we’re on the topic of Gen Y. I found it weird to receive this as a “thank you” gift from P&G: I don’t want to seem ungrateful but… Boss for women? I don’t get it. In future, either get “thank you” gifts that can go to either sex, or label your “thank you” gifts appropriately. Gen Y Responds When You Don’t Treat Them Like Idiots Remember my earlier post where OMD treated about 140 students like idiots and thought we didn’t know they were farming for ideas under false pretenses? Well here’s the flip side. MTV came in after lunch with their execs in regular MTV attire, and gave us a straightforward, no bull$#!t account of what life is in MTV. Talking around with my friends afterwards, the general sentiment that they were the most “genuine” of the three companies that we interacted with that way. No “rehearsed” lines provided by PR or HR, no “dumbing down” because we’re students and they’re execs, and I think that made the difference. I think the proof showed when many students went up to find out more from the MTV execs after the panel discussion. I think anyone who was at the earlier panels would know that the crowd largely dissipated once they ended, but people actually had to be ushered out of the room this time. Maybe the “clout” of the MTV brand name is stronger? I don’t know. Lesson learnt? We may be young, but we know when we’re being treated as proper talent that your company may want to hire, and will respond in kind. Maybe companies want to think “Ahh, undergrads are a dime a dozen, they’ll flock to us anyway. Just show them all the awards we’ve won and credentials we have”. Perhaps that’s true for the masses, but the sensing I get is we want to work with companies we identify with, who recognise that we aren’t a dime a dozen, and we’ll seek out the best companies which treat us as such, and not like we’re a dime a dozen. (Full disclosure: I served my internship with MTV last week and will be re-joining them on Tuesday on a freelance project. If anything this proves my point because if they truly were faking their panel discussion, why would I go back?)