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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!

Tags: blogger conflict, blogger conflicts, blogger credibility, blogger influence, blogger outreach, blogger reach, blogger reputation, influencers, smb, social media breakfast

1 Comment | Posted in » Singapore, community, social media

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.

Tags: antibiodies, bloggers in singapore, blogs in singapore, local singaporean blogosphere, singaporean blogosphere, smb3, social media, social media breakfast 3, trust issues

1 Comment | Posted in » Singapore, collaboration, community, social media

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.

Tags: blogosphere in singapore, claudia.sg, community event, facebook, local blogosphere, Plurk, sheylara, singaporean blogosphere, smb singapore, social media breakfast singapore, trust in the blogosphere

14 Comments | Posted in » Poor Practices, Singapore, Uncategorized, community, social media

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!

Tags: acm, active channel, asian civilisations museum, claudia.sg, communicate asia, cooler insights, geek goddess tv, live studios, media slog, national heritage board, nhb, podfire, river room, smb singapore, social media breakfast, social media breakfast singapore, tech 65

9 Comments | Posted in » Fun, community, social media breakfast

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.

Tags: blogs woth reading, building your brand, connectbeam, enterprise 2.0, hutch carpenter, online reputation, self branding, social media helps to find jobs, social media resume, student employed via twitter

2 Comments | Posted in » social media

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.

Tags: fail whale, Plurk, receiving smses from twitter, twitter, twitter fail, twitter stops sms support

1 Comment | Posted in » Poor Practices, twitter

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!

Tags: discussion topics at social media breakfast, smb singapore, social media breakfast singapore

7 Comments | Posted in » Uncategorized

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?

Tags: eva longoria, magnum advertising

2 Comments | Posted in » Marketing, Uncategorized, mainstream media

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.

Tags: excellent customer service, laptop customer service, sony customer service

No Comments | Posted in » Singapore

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?

Tags: culture differences online, friendfeed, lifestreaming, lifestreaming and the internet, long form blogging, microblogging, Plurk, readwriteweb, shorter attention spans, the future of blogging

2 Comments | Posted in » Blogs, Plurk, Singapore, community, social media