My laptop died on me recently, so I was searching for a new one online. The review sites gave a Dell model pretty good reviews, and knowing how Dell is active in the social media space with their blogs at Direct2Dell, I thought I’d take the plunge and get one.
However, once I announced my intentions online, I got a few people telling me not to get a Dell because of their poor after-sales service (what’s new). So although I told them I felt that Dell had changed, I decided to give it a little test.
One thing I like on websites that I’m buying from, is a “chat” function where a customer service representative is on hand to answer any questions you might have. Bluehost did this really well and I purchased a hosting plan with them within minutes. However when I tried it out on the Dell website, it wasn’t convincing.
The gist of it was I said I liked the Dell model, and know they have great initiatives in North America, but was worried about it in Singapore. I then asked if after-sales was reliable and quick.
I was met with 6 minutes of silence (maybe the representative was flipping through a manual?) and got replied to me with “It’s reliable”. Not going to address my concern about it being quick?
I still think Dell is making good moves, but perhaps for a company as big as theirs it’s hard to train everyone internationally. However the bottom line is: if you’re communicating a change, you gotta make sure everyone the customer comes into contact with is living that change. I didn’t feel convinced, and ended up not getting the Dell.
Perhaps when I need to get a new laptop in three years I might try again, but right now… I’m just not feeling comfortable enough…. yet.
It was really nice to see yesterday that of the 10 most popular posts on ping.sg, three were about SMB:S2, even though it was three days after the event!
As always, I think it’s great to have a central “collection” point for all the media generated around the event, so here’s the rundown:
Video: Social Media Breakfast 2.0 by Miccheng (ps another video on Geek Goddess TV should be out June 4th!)
How do you keep up with the comments you leave on other blogs? I think if you’re truly interested in joining and contributing to a conversation, you need to check in again to know how the discussion is evolving over time and whether the author has replied to you. The worst thing you can do is leave a comment and never visit the page again.
What I do (or used to do) is after I’ve left a comment, I bookmark the page under a “check for comments” folder and track it daily until the comments die out.
Something I’ve realised recently is thatcertainblogs have a “receive follow up comments via email” check box, which is really useful to me as it saves the trouble of bookmarking the site. Disqus is another option, but it’s a bit of a hassle to verify.
So today, Krisandro was helpful enough to point me in the direction of the Wordpress plugin and henceforth, you’ll be able to follow up with the comments too. I’d highly encourage it because I find that I’m must more involved in the conversations when I track them after I’ve posted.
This came up in a couple of conversations during Social Media Breakfast: Singapore 2. Who’s the hardest to persuade when trying to implement a social media initiative? I’m guessing there isn’t a singular person, but clumps of people:
1) The C Suite
I hear conflicting stories here. Some C Suite individuals are very keen to get into social media (whether they know what they’re doing is another matter). Others are firmly entrenched in the delusion that this is a fad and will go away, and that one-way messaging continues to work and that mass media is king.
2) The Marketing Department
This one I’m guessing. The social media budget has to come from somewhere, and the most likely avenue probably sounds like the in-house marketing/communications department. Money spent on social media = less money for them to by 30 second spots and billboard ads.
3) Customer Service
These are the low-laid, unmotivated staff that come into contact with customers every day. And these are the people who will be online joining the conversations. Speaking as someone whose job was to answer the phone and prepare medical records way back when, it’s really hard to persuade this class of people to care for the customer.
I’m sure I’m missing out some possibilities, so what do you think? Also, do you think the “culture” of embracing social media should come from the top (ie C Suite) down and enforced? Or bottom up? Is one way more effective? Or do different methods work for different companies?
Awhile ago I questioned whether bloggers with overlapping audiences is a good or bad thing. Last weekend at Social Media Breakfast: Singapore 2, I found out the power of overlapping audiences in conversations to be very powerful indeed.
Case Study: Tommy Print
I don’t know how it works in other countries, but in Singapore, everyone has a name card. So I asked Sheylara (one of the co-organisers) where she got her name card from, to which she said it was a place she didn’t recommend, but that everyone was using Tommy Print. So I asked around a little more and Jayden and Nadia were using it as well. Later on I also got a really nice namecard from Ennn and I asked where she got it from to which she said “some place in Funan” which turned out to be… you guessed it, Tommy Print!
Honestly, Tommy Print couldn’t have gotten better word of mouth if they tried.
So in these conversations you see a couple of things at work. People like me overriding the “blogger” category in the influencer scale, and reaching out to more people who share the same network helps to reinforce the message.
I do, however, suspect that it worked so well in this instance because
1) It happened in real time, face to face as opposed to online
2) The product was a suitable one.
Do you think this is an accurate case study? Are there other variables that should be included?
As much as I think SMB:S2 definitely did better than the first, there are a couple of things that bug me:
1) Retention metrics
2) RSVP-ing
Retention Metrics
I ran through the name list from the last SMB and looked for overlaps with today and it showed that only 17 out of 34 people who came for the first SMB, also came for the second. A 50% attrition rate is pretty scary, especially when the feedback we got from the first one seemed largely positive.
RSVP-ing
A rough count on the Facebook page shows that about 24 of the 62 people who said “yes” to coming, did not appear in the end. That’s about 38%. Luckily this was offset partially by people who said “maybe” but came in the end, as well as people who aren’t on Facebook who came, but the point is: someone has to pay for the food/venue. We’ve been lucky enough to have a great sponsor in Caleb for the last two rounds, but not turning up means we’re potentially wasting money by over-ordering.
I have a few solutions to this:
1) Stop mass-catering. ie each person pays for him/herself, which could end up in the region of $20/person including drinks and venue charges.
2) Make the event invitation-only with a combination of registrations and/or white/black listing.
3) Take the amount of “yes” RSVPs on the Facebook event page and cut down by 30% to save cost, but run the risk of running out of food.
Feedback
So in light of this I’d like to hear feedback from both those who came and those who didn’t. Was there a problem with the timing? Location? Just didn’t feel like coming? Overslept? No value to be gotten out of it? I’m curious to know so that you can help us improve the event.
If you did come yesterday, do you want more or the same, or something different? What would make you come back again? What wouldn’t make you come back again? Is there a “fatigue” developing due to the high number of events (this week alone had three or four). Post anonymously if you must, but frank and honest feedback/constructive criticism will definitely help myself and the other co-organisers hold a better event in the future.
I know there are people who are really into building the community (you know who you are!) and I thank you for supporting us, your feedback will definitely be welcome too! If the results show that we’re the only people who’ll take SMB seriously, perhaps we’ll need to work around that.
Yesterday was SMB:Singapore 2, which was great because we had the unveiling of the first version of the logo (which was printed out on all the name tags), just under 60 people appearing, pretty good food and what I thought was a nice cozy venue at Cafe Domus.
For me, it was really good meeting people like Siok Siok and Krisandro, Rony Thomas in person, and finally getting to meet Preetam, as well as interesting conversations with Su Min, Jayden, Hun Boon and many more. I also had a kick ass time being interviewed for Geek Goddess TV together with Sheylara and Derrick. (Mic, please make me look good in post!)
If you came for SMB and we didn’t manage to connect, do drop me a comment or look for me on Twitter (@uniquefrequency) or on Facebook, and we can start a whole new conversation there! Just drop me a note so I know you’re not some random person looking to add me.
You might notice this post says “The Success Part”, more on “The Failure” part later today. Also, I’ll be putting up a post consolidating all the media coverage of SMB2, so if you have a blog post, pictures, video, audio, anything, drop me a comment so I can link you!.
And now, on to the pictures (mouseover for captions):
That’s pretty amazing, but before you jump in and get yourself a Twitter account, it’s not really about that one tool. It’s about building an online presence, getting people familiar with you, and building your personal brand. More from the article:
PR students listen-up. If you want a fast track career in digital PR use your holiday time to get work placements and like Matt immerse yourself in the tools of your trade such as Blogger, Facebook, Flickr, Google Tools, Twitter and Wordpress. Chances are that if you do you’ll have a head start on many of those that have been in the industry for several years.
I’m always gobsmacked by candidates, both graduates and those that have been in the industry for some time, that come for an interview (almost always via recruiters) at Rainier PR that don’t make an effort to look at the agency web site or our blog. They typically don’t use an RSS Reader and haven’t had “time to look at Twitter”. Bollocks. Don’t waste your time – or ours.
How true is that? I think it extends to any communications effort and I don’t think you even need to be in PR. Let’s not even talk about the real world. If I had to form a team to do a communications/marketing plan for a student club in school, I wouldn’t want someone who doesn’t know how to use Google Alerts or Wordpress (at the very least).
Congrats to Matt Watson (who I am now following on Twitter @mpwatson) and I think this is only the start of things to come, and we’ll definitely be hearing more of such instances in the future.
You can find me on Twitter (@uniquefrequency). Feel free to follow!
I know you guys secretly laugh at my “logo” that we’ve been using for Social Media Breakfast: Singapore so far (the picture of the airline food bun), so I approached my friend of 11 years, Shermeen, to do up a proper one. And here it is:
Now before you go “that’s just a cup”, check out the writeup from Shermeen:
The logo’s a coffee cup, with the handle and saucer forming the acronym “SMB”. It can also look like a person having a bright idea..with the face/head having 3/4 profile. I’ve opted for sketchy lines, so the logo looks professional enough, yet informal enough to be fun.
Did you see the “SMB” being formed from the handle and saucer? I certainly didn’t! I love that it’s a simple, elegant logo, yet with these intricacies behind it! Awesome.
If you’re interested, Shermeen will be posting her full thought process and inspiration behind the logo on her blog at http://inthespace.wordpress.com, it’s not up yet so the easiest way is to subscribe! Alternatively, you can contact her directly via email at shermeen.t[AT]gmail[DOT]com.
See you guys on Saturday!
Edit: Claudia suggested printing these on the nametags as well, it probably will be tight for this weekend, but you can definitely look forward to seeing that happen for SMB3!
I was at an informal meeting today which I quite enjoyed. We had bloggers, client-side people, agency-side people, all of whom were interested in social media. I thought the discussion was generally good, but one question in particular stood out.
Someone mentioned that if hotels wanted to blog, why not get the concierge desk to blog as the stories of what goes on on the ground as well as useful information about the city would be useful and relevant to travelers visiting the hotel or deciding where to stay. It was raised that there could be a number of authors running the blog or just one person, but they should be anonymous. Perhaps blogging as “Your friendly concierge at the Hyatt”, for example.
Bill and Coleman called him out on this and said companies who blog should have full transparency and name their bloggers. But the very reasonable reason of “one day they’ll leave” surfaced, and I’m having a hard time reconciling the two.
On one hand I am a transparency advocate. There are times when anonymity helps (ie when needing to talk about a sensitive issue), but generally for an external blog, I think the public should know who is the person blogging.
But I think the person leaving is a real concern. Take Matt Cutts for example, arguably Google’s “face” on the internet. If for some reason he jumps ship to Yahoo! tomorrow, would that be a problem? Thousands of readers may just migrate over. And who would take over that role at Microsoft and Google? How long would it take the new person to re-build a community?
Of course, I know, Matt Cutts is hardly the best analogy for concierge staff, but you get the gist.
So what would you do if you had to hire a community manager or social media evangelist? Would you be comfortable with them being your company’s Web2.0 “face” online? Would it worry you if they moved on? Would you be confident of replacing them with little to no loss in interest from the community?
