Archive for June, 2008
Monday, June 16th, 2008
I had a very belated listen to Joseph Jaffe’s Jaffe Juice #109 last night while crowding around with a million other people at the PC Show in Singapore, and was moved by the social media miracle experienced by Keith Burtis, who was auctioning his wood turning artwork to the online community to get an engagement ring for his girlfriend.
It really got me thinking about the generosity of people I’ve met thus far in my social media journey. Within the first couple of months of jumping into social media, Sheylara drops an email volunteering her help for SMB, Caleb volunteers to sponsor SMB while absolutely getting nothing out of it, Tania of The Open Room helps me score an additional two tix to Marie Digby even though the initial tickets she had were gone, Sherms designs a SMB logo which took time and effort which frankly, she could’ve put into something that would actually make her some money.
And those are just the tangible ones, not including the help I’ve gotten when trying to find a place to stay in Canada or looking for specific case studies or news, and I am sure that I am forgetting a few more instances and I apologise for that!
There is something about people engaged in this space. A natural desire for community and exchange and sharing, even if the person giving doesn’t get anything out of it. Sure, there are people who I would call shit-stirrers within any community, but so far, it seems like they’re the minority.
What are your experiences with giving/sharing in the social media space? Is there anything I could help you with? Just ask and if possible, I’ll definitely help!
Posted in Blogs, Singapore, collaboration, community, social media | 6 Comments »
Saturday, June 14th, 2008
Passed by this yesterday, one of the many banners hanging on street lamps.
Two almost exactly identical banners hanging from every street lamp for a block.
So here’s where it doesn’t make sense.
1) Why two? If you really had to waste money putting a banner outdoors, wouldn’t one do the trick? Or does placing them on either side of a street lamp guarantee double the eyaballs?
2) Why every street lamp? Why not every alternate one? When I drive past by the time I see the first one and look up more closely, it’s the third street lamp anyway.
So essentially, they could’ve either done one banner on every alternate street lamp and spent a quarter of their budget, or done it over a larger area (ie four blocks) and spend the same amount of money.
Or they could’ve just contacted animal, dinosaur or bird enthusiasts online and invite them to come and spread the word. It’s not like putting up street lamp banners are any more measurable than doing a blogger outreach exercise.
I bet the ad company is laughing its way to the bank.
Posted in Marketing, Photos, Singapore, mainstream media, social media | Comments Off
Thursday, June 12th, 2008
When I was contemplating a new laptop, it was between Dell and Sony. After Dell failed the customer service test (for now), Sony was next. I’ve had my laptop for just over two weeks and have had experiences with their service reps pre-purchase, during purchase and post-purchase, and it’s been pretty consistent. Consistently good, that is.
Pre-purchase I gave them a call to ask some questions about their extended warranty programme and the lady on the phone was pretty helpful, even if she had to ask somebody else for details a few times. When I went down to purchase the laptop, the salesperson, Johnny Guo, approached me to help very quickly. The laptop came with a free RAM upgrade and I love using technology, but that doesn’t mean I know how to set it up. So he was happy to help me with it, and spent the next 40 minutes setting up my laptop for it’s first run as well as answering a constant barrage of questions from me. Look for this dude if you want to buy anything from Sony at the Wisma Atria shop.
After that I had some problems with registering my online warranty and sent an email which was replied within a couple of hours by Nelson, who helped me very quickly and efficiently. The warranty was probably my fault (I couldn’t recall what the ID was) but he helped me fix it anyway without me feeling like an idiot.
(Sidetrack: Sony was offering a free two year warranty if you register it online, it’s a great way for them to build up a database with useful information like email and demographics at the cost of two years warranty.)
All in all this experience has been really good for me. I don’t know whether it’s a conscious initiative on Sony’s part or if I had the good fortune of interacting with great employees, but it’s left a lasting impression on me and one I hope is not tainted in the future.
The interesting thing is this. Sony has no snazzy “customer chat” that Dell has, but does the basic things right and portrays a consistent image across functions (at least those that I’ve interacted with), but it’s serving them better than it is Dell, at least in Asia.
Posted in Singapore | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, June 11th, 2008
This very disturbing story came in my RSS feeds just before I left work. Remember the Plurk Badges made by PatLaw over at Blankanvas?
Well LiveCrunch was asking for some of them badges and was referred to Blankanvas. This is what followed. (click for the full screenshot)
So I headed over to LiveCrunch and posted a comment basically asking what gives. Now LiveCrunch moderates its comments, and used that moderation ability to basically not allow my comment to get through and hide this ugly behavior from the rest of the world.
How do I know? Because when I checked my site stats tonight, I saw one referrer:
So I infer from this that LiveCrunch saw my comment, went to the “edit comment” page on Wordpress, and then did not approve it. I think this is really bad practice. Moderation is not meant to keep negative comments out. I moderate mine to prevent crazy stuff from appearing, but people are free to disagree with me if they wish or call me out on certain statements, and they do.
Well, since LiveCrunch won’t reply to comments, I’d like to ask everyone who reads this to drop him a Tweet at @Livecrunch or Plurk him at http://www.plurk.com/user/LiveCrunch, ask him why he literally stole Pat’s creation and did not credit her, and then did not own up to the fact afterwards openly on his blog via the comments. The online community should speak up. What trust (or lack of) does this foster among our designers who are happy to create things for others for free, and don’t even get some credit in return? Especially when it’s explicitly offered?
As for me, I have two words for LiveCrunch with the very same Plurk badge that PatLaw made:
Posted in Blogs, Plurk, Uncategorized, community, social media | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, June 10th, 2008
So on Sunday night I was talking to Rubin and said “Very disturbing. If I Google you, I get your Facebook profile and your profile picture is that of you at a party”. So we had a long conversation where we generally had opposing views. I said it mattered, he said it didn’t.
Monday I came into the office and found (to my surprise) Pauline here, starting a five month internship. Somewhere in the middle of the day she said something to the effect of she has to watch her Facebook pictures now that she’s at work.
That got me thinking, is this caution over ones’ online identity and online reputation restricted to us in the communications field? Or should it apply equally across the board? Are employers in the banks less likely to Google their prospective employees than communications professionals?
I don’t have empirical evidence for this, but my gut says no, they should be equal. As much as you want a proper resume that indicates your prospective hire isn’t an ex-murderer, you’d probably want to run a search to make sure your wealth management employee doesn’t have a history of being in the press for the wrong reasons, or that the lawyer you’re going to hire for your firm isn’t being slammed online for bad legal advice by disgruntled people online, or that the last house your prospective architect designed for another client didn’t cave in on itself. You get my point.
I’d say that at at best, when someone Googles you, something positive comes out. At minimum, something neutral that doesn’t indicate you’re a poor performer. At the very least, finding something about volunteer efforts is better than pictures at a club. Rubin thinks differently, ie that not even appearing in a Google search is good. No news is good news?
What about you? What do you want your prospective employer to find on you when they Google you? Or do you think they won’t Google you? Is your online identity an important part of your resume to manage? Are Google searches on prospective employees more likely to occur in one industry over another? Share your thoughts!
Posted in Google | 19 Comments »
Monday, June 9th, 2008
I got directed by Katherine Druckman (who I found out only recently is the wife of fellow Plurker and Twitterer Gary Druckman) to this great video of Gary Vaynerchuck on the topic of community.
I can’t embed the video, but here’s the link.
If you know me personally you know I don’t spend time on watching videos or browsing YouTube at all. When people send me links I watch them for 30secs and switch them off, but this video kept me watching from start to end. Trust me when I say: You. Must. Watch. This.
I watched the video and think I totally identify with what Gary is saying. I have the benefit of having a relatively small community right now and it’s important that I reply to all comments (yes, I know sometimes some fall through the cracks and I’m sorry!) and I engage as many people as I can through Twitter and Plurk, heck when someone I don’t know comments on my blog, I send an email to him/her if they left a valid one just so I know who they are and what why they chose to spend their very precious attention on my blog.
I don’t care who these people are. They could be some hotshot banker or someone going through a hairstyling apprenticeship (yes, that’s Tasj from Australia who loves the “little guy” coffee chains as opposed to the big Starbucks franchises), I value them all the same. And I choose to believe these relationships matter and if nurtured, will grow in to bonds of value that you just could not put a value to.
If you’re blogging or you’re involved in an online community in any way, do not take them for granted. Don’t think you’ll start caring when you’re a B-list or A-list blogger, you gotta form those bonds and show some appreciation now. Drop an email to a commenter, @reply them on Twitter or message them on Plurk saying thanks. Even better, head to their blogs and leave a comment in return. They’ll payoff sooner rather than later.
Posted in Blogs, Plurk, community, social media, twitter | No Comments »
Monday, June 9th, 2008
I’m beginning to feel the load of reading a lot of blogs right now, so every month when I subscribe to new blogs, I put them on a “probation” list, look at them at the end of the month and then decide which are worth keeping. Here are those that I’ve added to my Google Reader permanently this month, as well as one post I loved recently that I would like to share with you.
1) Colin Walker
2) Deirdre Breakenridge - PR 2.0 Strategies
3) Hutch Carpenter - I’m not actually a geek
4) Jason Falls - Social Media Explorer
5) Jonathan Wong - Armchair Theorist
6) Corvida - Shegeeks
- What college students can’t get from blogging - A nice contrarian view from someone who’s also gotten an internship from blogging, but a good reality wake up call for students who may think blogging is the solution to everything.
7) Pat Law - Blankanvas
8 ) Meg Roberts - PR Interactive
- Building brand you - I try to read as many PR students/fresh grads as possible, Meg is one of them I really like. And she watches Lost!
9) Sherms - Design is ________
10) Ellie - The PinkC
11) Julian Baldwin - Notes, thoughts, ideas and responses
That’s it for May, if you have new blogs to recommend, feel free to plug it in the comment box. Let me know if you liked these recommendations as well.
Posted in Blogs | 13 Comments »
Monday, June 9th, 2008
Dorothy’s been looking for a place to host her blog, so I volunteered to let her park her domain on my host with Bluehost. I’ve mentioned before that Bluehost has a great customer service chat function which was really what closed the deal when I was deciding which host to use, and Dorothy has found that out as well.
Sure I’ve heard Bluehost has its problems and Dor is having some problems with Joomla scripts (sounds like an alien organ or something), but the fact that a handy Bluehost chat dude is on hand makes things better and opens the lines of communication.
If you have a website that gets a lot of questions, why not invest in a live-chat function? I’m willing to guess it’s easier to convert prospective customers that way, and keep existing ones coming back. We all want something that’s reliable.
Posted in Blogs, collaboration | 6 Comments »
Sunday, June 8th, 2008
The biggest compliment I can give to Joseph Jaffe’s new book, Join The Conversation (currently #37 on Amazon’s business books list), is that I took so long to finish it despite receiving it in late February as part of the UNM2PNM initiative. I whiz through fiction fairly quickly, but when it comes to non-fiction, specifically marketing, communication or social media specific, I need to read the book with an open notebook and pen next to me so I can take notes and review them later. Obviously, this means more time because doing that on a bus can be a hassle, so many hours of camping at Starbucks and Borders later, I’ve finally finished the book and what can I say, it it any surprise I love it?
The first thing I need to tell you, is that if you’re already well immersed in this social media fishbowl, then as Joseph has said many times on the Jaffe Juice podcast, this book isn’t really meant for you. It’s less of a “how to” book and more of a “why you should” book, which you should probably pass on to your manager or CEO to read, and get more buy in for your social media experiments.
What I really enjoyed were all the case studies. I’m almost embarrassed to mention that I didn’t recognise most of them. I’ve realised more and more that case studies are important when trying to sell your social media idea. Showing the best examples of initiatives that worked, and the worst examples of ignoring the consumer (the latest comes from Joseph Jaffe himself with Delta Airlines), can work wonders in getting execs stuck in their prehistoric ways to wake up.
If you’re currently struggling with implementing a social media experiment, or even thinking about it, give the book a read. Learn from some successes and failures and do better! If you don’t have the time to read it, try tuning in to Jaffe Juice (the podcast). I’d recommend starting with #105 which is a nice roundtable discussion with executives from different companies talking about their initiatives and the results, or check out the Join The Conversation blog
Posted in Books | 6 Comments »
Saturday, June 7th, 2008
Patlaw from Blankanvas delivered on her promise to make some Plurk badges over the weekend, and here are my favourites:
Mother Plurker!!
Plurk Me
And my very own customised badge, Plurk UniqueFrequency. Aww.
Want yours? Head over to Blankanvas to take them. FREE! Show your love for your newest addiction, Plurk!
Posted in Fun, Plurk | 1 Comment »
