Archive for the ‘social media breakfast’ Category
Monday, August 31st, 2009
Today Coleman tweeted that the Ministry of Education’s teachers’ day website was a risky move, and coincidentally at the time when I clicked on the link the one and only “careless” tweet appeared (screenshot courtesy of Coleman):
Teachersday.sg
Yes, I give MOE credit for trying something new and for experimenting, but there are still points to be made/lessons to learn:
1) It may have been the only negative tweet, but I think we need to think about these things. Who else will see these tweets besides the teachers? Other kids? Parents of kids? It’s entirely possible to get on to a service like Pheed.me and remove foul language in advance. And I think we need to be keenly aware of our target audience.
2) I understand that the purpose of keeping it uncensored was to maintain authenticity, but looking at the tweets that came out.. I’m not sure how many were just set up for the sole purpose of tweeting this one hashtag.
3) As Daphne points out, this web portal wasn’t largely publicised and therein lies why this was the only “careless” tweet. If more of the general public got to know about it, I bet it wouldn’t be long before tweets like “Miss Lim from [whatever] school I remember you for being such a b!tc# 20 years ago and I hope you’re still single #tday09” start appearing, and this turns into a #skittles fiasco – where people tagged on racist/malicious comments to the #skittles hashtag for everyone to see.
So for a moment, let’s forget this is the Ministry of Education (MOE), let’s forget that the people tweeting are predominantly kids, and let’s think about it in the real world:
First, while I don’t think the people who are involved are inexperienced or ignorant of social media, I think they jumped on the shiny object bandwagon without thinking it through. From their blog post:
If Facebook was the vehicle that brought social media to the mainstream, Twitter is the shiny new Ferrari F70 of the online space
Accurately said. I shiny new Ferrari isn’t an everyday, run-of-the-mill car. It’s like re-taking your drivers’ licence test again and making sure you understand the vehicle and can control it under all sorts of conditions, sunny or stormy.
Second, I know I’ll get some flak by being critical of something like this where there’s one negative post in a sea of hundreds. But that’s not where I’m coming from. It’s not specific to the case. It’s specific to the understanding, usage and application of social media that I think we have to be aware of. Those of us who are fortunate enough to work in this space really have to be conscious of this. If you did this for a client, or your CEO of an MNC and they saw this happen. What do you think are the odds you’d get budget for your next “social media experiment”? Slim to none?
Basically, I think you have to be careful how much risk you take with your brand. It’s great to hand over control to the consumers, but you gotta know your audience. Have you already been in the community cultivating “antibodies” for awhile who will come to your defence when someone steps out of line? Or are you jumping in cold? Just because you introduce a platform for one, noble purpose, doesn’t mean it will be used that way by everyone. And you have to take the good and the bad.
Back to the specific case, although the boy managed to delete his tweet and seemed quite embarrassed afterwards, I really hope he doesn’t get punished or anything because of this. It was a conscious decision to make this platform public, and therefore consequences that arise of it being public comes from that choice to be public, not the user.
After all, he just served as a reminder to us that anybody can be made aware of anyone’s social media efforts at any one time, and they’re not always going to be in sync with your organisation.
Tags: know your audience, metacole, ministry of education, teachers' day website, teachersday.sg, twitter
Posted in Marketing, SMU, Singapore, case studies, education, social media, social media breakfast, twitter | 6 Comments »
Sunday, March 29th, 2009
Wow I have to say even after doing this for a year (well technically eight months because I was away for a bit), today’s Social Media Breakfast | Singapore was really challenging.
A lot of it had to do with physical constraints. The space was a little odd, the sound wasn’t as good as we’d like, but the truth is, we signed off on that. I signed off on that. I knew that venue being long might have been an issue, but thought the main venue of having it in Tangs would be a nice trade off. Well, and I guess we weren’t expecting that many people (I think we hit 100 this time).
In all honesty, I see or hear the negative feedback, and sometimes it’s tough to take. Not because it’s untrue, but because I’m the type of person who wants things to succeed. But I think at the end of the day, it’s a learning process for all of us. We all have day jobs (or school), we don’t have a lot of money, but we make the best out of things. And I think it’s always encouraging for me to see familiar (and unfamiliar) faces make the effort to come down even for a little while, and tell us they appreciate the effort.
I’ve been watching the development of the social media scene in Singapore for awhile now, and I am more convinced than ever that the direction we’re taking is the right one. It’s about community. And relationships. And partnerships. And a community who will tell you what sucked because they want things to be better.
And we will be. Because we’re not motivated by money, or “fame” or what have you. We do it for passion. A lot of problems can be solved by charging, and getting money. Or making the event invitation only. But knowledge is never meant to be horded, but shared with as many people as possible, taking both the good and the bad of that decision.
I just want to end this post with a big thank you to everyone who might have come for the first time today, everyone who has consistently appeared and supported us with you presence and especially our consumer panel with Krisandro (http://krisandro.com), Daniel (http://tech65.org), Don (http://plurk.com/booonster), Nicole (http://cherrymagazine.blogspot.com) and Yin (http://twitter.com/clicktokill).
I want to particularly thank the people who donated money to us. You know I opened the donation “box” at the end of the night, and I saw $3 in coins in there. I don’t know if it was from one person or a few. But the point is, even in recessionary times like this, you felt that what we’re doing is important or valuable enough to drop your change in and keep us going. So thank you.
Lots of data from the registration form that I’m going to look at soon. If you have the time, fill up the feedback form! It’ll help us greatly.
Finally, if you do have feedback about the event (not related to the venue and sound because we know that already), please comment here, or if you feel it needs to be private, drop me a mail directly at uniquefrequency [AT} gmail *dot* com.
Tags: donations, passion, recessionary times, smbsg, smbsg6, social media breakfast singapore, tangs singapore
Posted in Events, Singapore, community, social media, social media breakfast | 10 Comments »
Wednesday, December 10th, 2008
Our fifth (and last) Social Media Breakfast | Singapore for the year, will be held this Saturday at the Samsung Store at Vivocity and you can find out the full details on the SMB|SG blog.
There’s no fixed agenda this time around, but it will simply be a great time for everyone to meet up and relax as the year winds down. If you’ve been supporting us so far, I really hope you can come down and have brunch with us for the last time in 2008 (and get excited for 2009!)
Tags: samsung store, smb singapore, social media breakfast 2009, social media breakfast singapore, vivocity
Posted in Announcements, Singapore, social media breakfast | 3 Comments »
Friday, October 10th, 2008
First, I’d like to direct you to Dorothy’s excellent post questioning corporations engaged in social media on what they really want. While my previous post was a personal critique, hers includes research.
In re-reading my earlier post, and certainly from some of the comments, I realise some parts of it may be sending the wrong message, so I’ll use this post to clarify some points.
1) Agendas are fine
I don’t have anything against practitioners coming with a set goal in mind. In fact, if you’re waking up at an unearthly hour to attend SMB on a Saturday morning without an agenda, you’re better off staying at home and sleeping two more hours. Go to network, to “seed” your ideas, ask people what they think about your brand, meet other people in the field and find out their obstacles, figure out which blogger you want to invite to your next event, whatever.
Hedirman asked me what I would do if I were on the other side of the fence, a company figuring out what to do and attending SMB. My response:
If I were a company trying to get my way into the scene, I think there’s no other way than to just jump head in. Definitely research. I wouldn’t just come to SMB and “observe”. I’d want to know who’s going, what they blog about, who’s relevant to my vertical, who should be a top priority to introduce myself to, so on so forth. Then I’d want to go back to the office and tell my boss “I’ve met x number of bloggers, their audiences read them because of y, I think we should do something.” I mean otherwise, I think Saturday mornings can be better spent sleeping in!
2) Sleazy corporate agendas are not
Note earlier I said “ask people what they think about your brand”, not “tell people about your brand”. There’s a difference, and most of the people who are reasonably familiar with the space will be able to tell the difference. If you want to give a spiel, save it for the proper circumstance. If you’re a new startup and someone asks you to tell them more, that’s a different story.
3) Don’t come thinking 2.5hrs at an event makes you part of the community.
This really irks me. If you really want to be involved, be involved. Meeting 20 people in the span of an afternoon and getting their namecards or a Facebook Group address, doesn’t mean you’re entitled to spam people. It’s about making connections and relationships of quality, not quantity.
4) Don’t come thinking a $500 food sponsorship is your “buy in” into the community
I’m not going to dwell on this, but I know how this works. A $500 sponsorship sounds excellent to get yourself the names, email addresses, blog addresses, twitter and plurk accounts of some of the top influencers in Singapore. Sorry, no. You want to build a houselist, go be a gold/platinum/whatever sponsor at one of the trade shows and spam everyone there.
5) How long are you going to let “new” be an excuse?
As Dorothy puts it, how long are you going to be a “curious spectator”? It’s true, you can’t jump in and be familiar with everything at once, but it doesn’t take years and it isn’t rocket science. Jump in and get your feet wet, or get out of the pool.
6) SMB shouldn’t be your only outlet
And this was the point I was principally attempting to drive across. I would like to see more corporate-led initiatives for sharing/collaboration. Something along the lines of Verge or Web Wednesdays or Third Tuesdays.
When you think about it, SMB was started by a student, a model/actress and someone who wasn’t even in the army or legal to drink at the time. Not by the people supposedly “working” in the space.
What I’m saying here is I find it a little bit strange, bordering on outrageous, that the corporates/agencies who are supposedly “in the space” are relying on an initiative driven principally by people not in the workforce to get together. Even Podcamp Singapore is driven primarily by the academic field.
It’s like if we were scientists, we’d be waiting for kids playing with “my first physics set” to organise something and go for that.
What happens if we sit up in 2009 and decide we’re too busy to continue with SMB? Or it evolves into a “bloggers only” event? Social media in Singapore crawls back to the dark ages?
Put another way, I look at the people I consider my “mentors”, though perhaps not from direct influence, the Mitch Joels, the CC Chapmans, the Joseph Jaffes, the Christopher Penns, the Brian Solises, the Andy Sernovitzes, and wonder why there are no such people in Singapore. They’re practitioners, we have practitioners. They’re out there building up the space, we’re….. not.
Tags: dorothypoon, no corporate buy in, sleazy corporate agendas, social media breakfast singapore, verge
Posted in Singapore, community, social media, social media breakfast | 5 Comments »
Wednesday, October 8th, 2008
As I’ve been reading the blog posts (and more importantly, comments) about Social Media Breakfast, I’ve come away with two thoughts:
1) We Aren’t Perfect – And That’s A Good Thing
I appreciate feedback from Su Min, Coleman, Brian and everyone else who contributed to let us know the panel wasn’t as balanced as it could have been, that we should’ve added a blogger on it, that we needed more audience interaction, to be conscious of the level of involvement of corporate entities.
It’s great because it prevents us from resting on our laurels. Not that we would, but arguable each SMB has been an improvement on the last, and it would be easy to say “We improved!”, but it’s comments and feedback like this that reminds us that improved we may have, but there’s always room for more.
We always learn from the events, and with your help, improve. From SMB2 we learned we needed structure, from SMB3 we learned structure doesn’t come naturally, so we need to “artificially” introduce it via a panel, now we learn a panel is not the be all and end all, but the execution needs to be worked on. I remember one of the “P”s from Dorothy’s live blogging: perpetual beta. That’s exactly what SMB is and it’s your feedback that helps us improve that beta product.
As we’ve said time and time again, it’s everyone’s not ours.
2) Where Are The Agencies/Companies Taking The Lead?
This is a very cynical view, and you can feel free to disagree with me, but where are these agencies and companies? I may be putting my future career on the line by calling them out, but I think it needs to be said.
Ben Koe has a list of case studies of social media marketing examples in Singapore, and I see some action going on, but nowhere in the proportion to the talk I hear about social media and Web2.0.
I’ve said this before in an audio podcast for For Immediate Release, as reported by Michael Netzley: It’s as if everyone is sitting back and waiting for someone else to jump in first, show results, and then everyone is going to be like a lemming and follow.
There are more than enough corporates attending SMB to plead ignorance anymore. By some attendees accounts, there are too many corporates attending, that it’s affecting the social. There have been suggestions of breaking SMB up to a “corporate” track and “social” track.
You know what? Not going to happen. The agencies and companies out there have hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe millions in budget, hardware, software, resources, connections, tools, networks, people and skills, to get a similar “corporate” version of this going around. If you don’t want to because you’re afraid that by sharing you’re losing your competitive edge or actually benefiting your competitor, then that’s the landscape we will have to deal with.
And no one benefits with that kind of landscape.
i also commented on Pat Law’s blog that the idea of sharing our “fishbowl” ie attendee list with marketers who would be interested, is not something we would do. The traditional way to get such a houselist is to go sponsor something like a huge IDC event or pay for money at an Ad:Tech booth and get it from there. Maybe some companies are looking at SMB with a lightbulb going off thinking “Hey these are the alpha consumers, the innovators and early adopters, maybe we can cheaply leverage that somehow”.
So that’s my frustration. If attending SMB is your company’s cheap way of doing some “research” into the shiny new object that is social media without actually getting your feet wet, I’m afraid to say you’re not going to get very good results. Sometimes we get someone approaching us with a “partnership” deal, it usually stinks of “let me leverage your network so I can shove my brand in people’s faces”. Sorry, no.
In short, I look at the current social media scene here and it’s driven by organisations like E27, TDM and us. Us being six people, half of which are still in school. Look at the podcamps worldwide and the SMBs worldwide, they’re organised by people who work in agencies, blog, podcast and live the social media life.
Is that the best Singapore and all the “top agencies” can offer? I really want to hear from you, bloggers, entrepreneurs, agency, corporate people alike. Is this a fair critique of what’s going on? Or are there things I’m not seeing? Love to hear it.
Tags: ad:tech, blankanvas, coleman, communicate asia, eok, fir, for immediate release, harmlessbananas, IDC, michael netzley, pat law, perpetual beta, social media breakfast singapore, social media marketing examples in singapore, ssumin, where are the agencies
Posted in Events, Singapore, community, social media, social media breakfast | 15 Comments »
Wednesday, October 8th, 2008
I’ve been following up on Social Media Breakfast | Singapore 4 (SMB4) from Canada, and I’m glad that the general sentiment is that everyone had a good time and found the discussion meaningful. I want to just quickly blog about the team and how we evolved to where we are today.
You might remember me mentioning how we literally started out as strangers from SMB1. It was just Derrick posing an idea to me, and Sheylara joining us out of nowhere (neither Derrick and I had any idea who she was at the time. Oh how times have changed).
By the time SMB2 rolled along and with it came our brand new logo, courtesy of our designer Shermeen, the first “unofficial” addition to the “team”.
Claudia came on board with us for SMB3, and as you will know from attending SMB4, has been crucial in getting our website up as well as the forum and really tying together the threads that we missed from SMB3. In many ways the current manifestation of SMB has really been her work, especially with the three founding members essentially MIA at this period of time (I’m in Canada, Derrick is in the army and Sheylara is juggling multiple blogs AND work!).
Finally, Dorothy, was overseas for SMB1-2, but appeared for 3, and we decided to con.. er… convince her to join the team. You can tell what a difference the manpower made from the liveblogging of SMB4 that occured (that, by no means insinuates that all Dorothy will contribute is liveblogging).
When we were at five members, we debated over whether to get anyone new. On one hand five is “just nice”, on the other, six will provide us with additional manpower to cover missing personnel. So with six we went, and I think it’s a comfortable number for the foreseeable future.
Our criteria for taking on new people for the team? We don’t really have any, except that they live in the world of social media and fundamentally understand what it’s about, and what SMB stands for.
Why am I writing this post, you may ask. Am I necessarily revealing anything you don’t already know? Maybe, or maybe not. The key message for everyone is these guys have “day jobs”. It may be conventional like Shermeen and Claudia, unconventional like Sheylara’s, or school for myself and Dorothy, or army for Derrick, but we have them. Yet, every two or three months, somehow the time gets dug up from somewhere to organise Social Media Breakfast | Singapore, and no one gets paid for it.
So If you haven’t yet, do drop by their blogs, or the SMB blog or the SMB forum and drop them a comment, start a discussion, word of encouragement, and do keep supporting us with your enthusiasm, attendance and kind donations.
I think we’re in the middle of a social renaissance both in Singapore and globally, but this is only the start. Only by coming together and building community and forging bonds and relationships can it happen, and I hope you will continue to join us and grow from the sharing that goes on, develop from the networks you form and learn from the mistakes we, and others, make.
Tags: claudia.sg, derrickkwa, in the space, shermeen, sheylara, social media breakfast singapore, social media breakfast singapore forum, social media breakfast singapore logo
Posted in Singapore, collaboration, community, social media, social media breakfast | 5 Comments »
Friday, October 3rd, 2008
So I’m not trying to re-tell you why this analogy works, but an instance locally (ie back home in Singapore), that I feel it was done well.
The salesman at a party analogy is used a lot in blogger outreach and social media. The idea is if you’re at a party and everyone’s talking about the latest episode of Lost (and why wouldn’t they, it’s awesome), then if you’re the salesperson who jumps in and starts giving your insurance pitch, people generally get turned off.
Today I saw a Plurk from Nadnut telling us about Samsung’s Social Media Night and of course, being a fan of how blogger outreach is developing, I had to check it out.
I have to say, I am flat out impressed by what I saw. A decent venue, engagement, no “in your face” stuff, a contest that was fun and not overly campy, and what I feel is most important: generating media (and by that I mean real world media) out of something like this.
Photos the bloggers took remain on the Samsung wall. (Picture from Nadnut.com)
So the man behind this is Daniel from Samsung, who came from Social Media Breakfast | Singapore 2, but I didn’t get to talk to until Social Media Breakfast | Singapore 3, which in itself says a lot about not being pushy. When you consider the time it was from SMB2 (May) till the first Samsung Social Media Night and the effort put in to attend two SMBs (on Saturdays, no less), I think it’s safe to say they did their homework, worked on those relationships, and reached out properly.
I’m going to put it right out there: I don’t own anything from Samsung, and I don’t know if I ever will, but the fact is by reaching out to bloggers (and make no mistake, they are influencers), there are a few positive effects for the company, delivered through the readers of their blogs.
At the very least, you’re spreading the word about your new product launch that they might otherwise not read (don’t forget, we’re not reading the newspapers).
Even if they aren’t a current consumer of your product (like me), you still gain mindshare.
Even if they don’t necessarily buy your product, they can certainly talk about it to someone else who might be looking for, oh, I don’t know, a new phone.
One thing I also need to bring up, is that when I last talked to Daniel in August, he told me he was doing all this independently, without an agency. I don’t know if that’s still true, but if so, it says a lot about the state of agency work back home.
And on that note, you may have noticed that this blog post starts with “doing it right”, rest assured I have a “doing it wrong” case study (from an agency) to share. I’m just in the process of deciding whether or not to reveal names.
In related news: Social Media Breakfast | Singapore 4 is happening tomorrow morning. Are you missing an opportunity to meet people interested in your brand?
Tags: are bloggers influencers, blogger outreach, brand mindshare, doing blogger relations right, gen y not reading newspapers, insurance sales man at the party, samsung social media night, social media breakfast singapore, talking about your product, word of mouth, young upstarts
Posted in Events, Gen Y, Singapore, blogger outreach, case studies, community, social media, social media breakfast, social media business | 3 Comments »
Monday, September 29th, 2008
Although two members of the team are semi-incapacitated geographically, Social Media Breakfast | Singapore 4 (or SMB4) marches on this Saturday, the 4th of October!
There are two big changes this time around which I think are worth talking about:
1) We have a panel!
Unlike previous events, we have managed to secure five people for our panel. We realise it’s difficult for any spontaneous social media discussions to get off the ground and so have decided to give it a little nudge! The full lineup can be found at our Facebook Event page
2) We’re accepting donations!
Although the “recommended” donation is $2, it would be great if you guys (especially the working folk) can donate more to keep us going, because $2 barely covers the food. We’re running largely on “angel” money right now, and while accepting corporate sponsorship may happen down the road, we’d like to stave that off as long as we can. So please help us! All the finances will be kept on an open ledger at the Social Media Breakfast | Singapore blog.
While obviously I cannot be in attendance because I am in Kingston, I hope everyone will give Claudia, Sheylara, Dorothy and Shermeen your support, and let’s build this community together.
Tags: claudia, donations, dorothypoon, shermeen, sheylara, smb4, social media breakfast singapore, social media panel, sponsors
Posted in Events, community, social media breakfast | No Comments »
Saturday, September 13th, 2008
The continual frustrations over Social Media Breakfast | Singapore are really getting on my nerves, moreso because I’m here in Canada and can’t be on the ground dealing with things.
Here’s the thing for everyone who wants to partner with us for any Social Media Breakfast | Singapore: Go pick up Join The Conversation by Joseph Jaffe (my review here), and understand the idea of community, dialogue and partnership, and then we’ll talk.
We are not a business. Your venue is not the be all and end all. We don’t need to impress anyone with our venue. When you bring up money or revenue, you demonstrate that you don’t understand partnership.
You demonstrate that you are no different from any other business that wants to broadcast your message in a one way communication method.
You demonstrate an extremely myopic view on the short term, instead of an investment in the future.
You demonstrate that you don’t understand the importance of relationships in the new world.
You demonstrate that you want to be involved in this new space, but you bring the old mentality with it. And the Web 2.0 crowd sees through that.
Maybe this post will dissuade people from offering to “sponsor” future breakfasts, in all honesty, I hope it does. Companies who read this and still feel there is value to be reaped by partnership and don’t dictate terms, will be exactly the type of companies we want to partner with.
At this rate, the next Social Media Breakfast | Singapore will be a picnic with sandwiches. And you know what? I have a feeling that may benefit the community even more.
Tags: community dialogue partnership, corporate sponsorship, join the conversation, joseph jaffe, social media breakfast singapore
Posted in Singapore, Uncategorized, community, social media, social media breakfast | 8 Comments »
Thursday, September 11th, 2008
Last week I was explaining to Eric the concept of Social Media Breakfast | Singapore. And I made the mistake of saying one of the perks was “networking”. To put things in perspective, coming from a business school that does nothing but try to set up the business world equivalent of blind dates, “networking” is sort of a dirty word in our circle.
I think the big problem is the way the school packages these “networking” sessions and teaches us about networking. They put it in such a way that it should be beneficial, you should come with an agenda, you should plant seeds that are meant to be reaped later. But that’s such a turnoff to us.
To switch explanations, I gave Eric the “gamer” analogy (we’re both pretty avid gamers): Imagine going to a gaming conference and meeting many, many other people who are into the latest games, talking about that secret combination that gets you to the hidden level, or talking about the next coolest game to be released.
In a lot of ways I think events like Social Media Breakfast | Singapore, and the other plethora of social media events do serve the “networking” function, but most of the time I don’t think of it in that context. It’s people coming together with passion to talk about, geek out over and share their love and experiences with social media. Networking just becomes increasing your social circle of people interested in the same niche, and if personal experience is anything to go by, there’s seldom the element of going into it with an agenda and getting something back in the future.
I don’t know if your experiences with networking are different from ours, but I would love to hear it or any other networking analogies that work!
Tags: dirty work, networking, school networking, smb, social media breakfast singapore
Posted in Singapore, community, social media breakfast | 3 Comments »
