Tommy Vallier from Kingston, where I lived for almost five months, talks about a great idea of local hashtags to make local tweets even more searchable and relevant:
It’s been hard, though, because while big events have dedicated hashtags, smaller going-ons never do.
Because long hashtags don’t make sense thanks to Twitter’s 140 character limit, and over-general hashtags like #singapore would generate too much noise, Tommy suggested breaking up Kingston the same way Canada Post does, by postal code.
Kingston and Singapore have a lot in common. We’re both very small (although Singapore’s population is something like 45x on the same landmass), and we’re quite easily broken up into zones. The problem with hashtags like #sgtweetup and #smbsg and #openroom is that they can only be found by people who know what they’re looking for. The chance of serendiptous discovery is slim to none.
So what if we added in hyper-local hashtagging? Districts like #amk or #cck are too local (I feel) and too limiting (what’s the hashtag for Simei?). Perhaps the answer is in separating it into 5 parts:
#sgn - north
#sgs - south
#sge - east
#sgw - west
#sgc - central
An extra four characters to keep it short and sweet and easy to add on. Of course this isn’t fullproof (I don’t know where I’d put Sengkang), but if we imagine the rough outline of where the MRT trains go, we could possibly give a close to subjective hashtag to add more relevance to our tweets.
What do the Tweeters in Singapore think? Too troublesome? No one cares about local tweets? Or would it help tell you more about events, traffic, weather, news etc? I want to know what you think.
Ogilvy’s Digital Influence team held another Open Room, titled “Journalism’s from Mars, Social Media’s from Venus” and after tonight, I think it’s clear that the problem they have is the problem everyone (businesses, schools, non-profits, the music industry, etc) is having. They were sitting on a model that was working for the last 50 or so years, have been blind-sided by the sudden tidal wave of social media and not only are they not scrambling to catch up, but they’re actually holding on to the old world for all that it’s worth.
As with panels, I was fully prepared for some of the audience to be un-accepting of some young (and even worse, enemployed) punk telling them what the world is like. And it was no different this time, which is fine with me, it makes life exciting! How awfully boring would it be if everyone just nodded their heads and agreed.
I think it was a really interesting discussion. There was as much uncommon ground as there was common, and it’s painfully obvious both sides have to learn from each other. Monetisation is not a dirty word, but neither is trusting a fellow blogger. I think we have to move away from our normal worldviews that content creating is done for passion (for bloggers) or that the man on the street (or the Tweeter on Tweetdeck) is less reliable and/or credible than the journalist.
Thinking about “journalism” from the point of breaking news and real good opinion pieces is one thing. But I think we need to think about where the money comes from. Thinking about subscription models and what not is fine (even though they won’t work), but as Thomas Crampton brought up, mainstream media has enjoyed the monopoly on reaching people and advertising for a very long time, and companies are just beginning to realise that they can bypass the “middleman” entirely, thus crippling the revenue model. Will it provide them the reach? Probably not. Will it provide them the influence? Barack Obama’s YouTube channel suggests yes (yes yes I know it worked in tandem with traditional media).
As a closing comment: someone said that old habits die hard, referring to the staying power of traditional media and being used to opening that Sunday edition of the paper over a slow and leisurely breakfast. Here’s a thought: my “old” habits from the old world started changing by the time I was thirteen, and many were gone by the time I was seventeen. Radio, once a nightly listen for the dedication show, is an afterthought, so are magazines. TV serves my purposes when I want it to, newspapers have flown out of the window, music exists in the form of mp3s, not cds. The only “old world” habit I maintain is the reading of books.
My point is this: as much as old habits die hard, to the new generation, new habits form at an alarming speed that the world has never seen before. When, if ever, has a generation been influenced so quickly and successively like from the transition to Friendster to Facebook? That’s not just the speed of platform change, but the speed of diffusion from half a world away. When and how fast did we take up texting to replace calling? The speed of change is crazy. Geographical boundaries barely exist anymore. And I would ask people who believe in the “old habits” to take a look at their children, their nephews, their nieces or anyone under 20 and tell me how many of their “old habits” they see replicated in them, and ask how different the world will be in five or ten years, and if now’s the time to think about that change, or cling on to “old habits”.
I don’t know about sales, but I bet it got a few people thinking “oh yeah, time for me to replace my Gillette razor blade”. The 195 ratings with an average of 4.5 stars since it was posted two weeks ago surely can’t hurt either.
In short: It’s fun, fairly tongue-in-cheek, actually provides some useful information and is definitely spreadable. What’s not to like? Oh and it probably came in at a fraction of buying an ad on tv.
This is a quick overview of Day One of Youth Connect! which I had the privilege of attending and being a panelist at today, and I had a really good time.
For the first time in a long time, I could listen to people who actually knew their stuff go up there and tell us about their social media efforts, demonstrate some form of ROI, and hold up under scrutiny. I admit I was all ready to roll my eyes in cynicism when a speaker went up and said he was well-versed in digital marketing with an advertising agency, but then he actually knew what he was talking about. Very different from some speakers who just talk a lot, but don’t really say anything.
So my highlight was really speaking at the youth panel with four other people from the other universities, and I have to give Graham Perkins (@grayperks)props for really revving up the crowd even though it was the last session of the day. It was by far the most interactive session I’ve had the chance to speak at, and I think the smaller size of the conference helped people get used to one another and ask questions.
One thing that I “feel” intuitively at this conference, is that people understand more about social media than they did a year ago. The types of questions I had to answer a year ago and the types of questions I had to answer today, were quite different, and basic knowledge of what Facebook is, what Twitter is, what iPhones can do, can be pretty much be assumed, which makes a lot of difference when you’re trying to answer questions without leaving anyone behind.
As always, my favourite topic of newspapers came up again (which I will blog about soon), and I did have to answer one question about the effectiveness of advertising, and whether youth actually notice them. The room gave a slightly audible gasp when I told them Gen Y is pretty much trained to “ignore” interruptive marketing and advertising, but I think it’s not an exaggeration to say that.
When one other attendee asked if anyone of the five of us saw a physical ad (print, tv, outdoor) and went online to do research on that product or service based on the ad, the answer was a resounding no. So there you have it.
Lots of other stuff I want to talk about, a few great case studies that I really enjoyed listening to, I hope to blog them soon. It’s going to be Youth Connect! Week on the blog this week, but I think you’ll enjoy reading about it.
I will say this about the organisers: It’s not a big event, but I think they brought in great speakers. Companies who paid money to attend this (especially in this recession), should be very satisfied with the value they got out of it.
Singapore’s “first ever” Tweetup (#sgtweetup) happened tonight at Geek Terminal, and I say “first ever” because Claudia and Kelvin already had a Tweet Tuesday sometime back, and even though it wasn’t branded as a tweetup, make no mistake, it was.
Even before reaching the event, I got updates via Twitter about models appearing for some Supermodelme tv thing and alarm bells already went off: Is this a social media event or an event gathering social media people with a hidden agenda? Evidently, it was the second, and from the tweets, people didn’t like it.
Also, on the way there, I saw the following tweets with no relevance to the event (but using the #sgtweetup hashtag) from the event venue and one of the organisers. Hashtag hijack?
Hashtag Hijack
Within ten minutes of entering the premises, I had these “models” handing me their namecards, followed by the real world equivalent of “kthxbai” as they moved on in search of the next person to hand out their namecard to.
Let me borrow a picture from Ingrid’s post to illustrate what happened:
Model Namecards
And if you check out their profiles on Twitter, you’ll find that the models have no pictures, no tweets or one tweet, almost as if they were handed their Twitter accounts just prior to the event to capitalise on it.
Model Twitter
Model Twitter
Let me just say that such “shady” event organising really makes social media take a step backwards. In a world where we’re all asking for more transparency and more authenticity, there is no room for hidden agendas to “taint” the impression of such events. As I said on Twitter, it’s not about the models, it’s that having a hidden agenda of using a tweetup to push and broadcast a commercial entity is repulsive.
Just as a closing point, I’ve been feeling for awhile that local social media events need to change. It’s all fine and good that anyone and everyone can organise a tweetup or impromptu meeting, but I think we need to focus on building up events with credibility, where people know what they’re getting into, and can make informed decisions. Events where you appear and have a curveball thrown at you…. not so much.
What do you think about the “first ever” tweetup? Is there a space for social media shilling at events? Are there too many events?
Edit: Because word is going around about the organiser @CarlGriffith not knowing about the models and that the event venue sprung it last minute, I don’t know what went on but 8 hours before the event, Andrew Peters, listed as an administrator for the event, posts the following on Facebook:
Surprise
Now maybe the models weren’t the surprise, or the admins didn’t communicate to each other, I don’t know. But it reads that way to me. I didn’t actually say Carl personally was at fault, the issue is that as a whole the shill leaves a bad impression.
[Full disclosure: I am on the team for Social Media Breakfast | Singapore and obviously being a local social media event organiser and social media enthusiast, I do have a vested interest in how the public perceives and reacts to social media events.]
A couple of days ago I was particularly bugged by bad communication and tweeted this:
My Tweet
Of course it should read “written and spoken english” instead of just “written and english”. Was totally in my mind, but somehow didn’t get translated to the keyboard. The result?
So the lesson here is really, be careful what you tweet, but if you do make a boo boo, try to see the humour in it! It happens!
I’m going to be at the Youth Connect! Conference on the 18th of May as part of a youth panel called “Youth Speak! - What makes Youth Tick?” that aims to “reveal what shapes their lifestyle, spending habits, what’s in & what’s not”.
So I have two questions:
1) To the organisations: What would you want to know?
and
2) To fellow youth, here’s a visual from the conference pamphlet:
Cool vs Socially Conscious
I know what’s my answer, but I’d love to hear from you! The comments are yours.
I was listening to Jaffe Juice #127 a couple of days ago, and it was an episode featuring Mitch Joel from Six Pixels of Separation, two of my favourite podcasters for the “price” of one!
Amidst the many things they talked about, what really caught my attention was how they’re both doing new things. Mitch with his book and Joseph with Jaffe Juice TV. And it really got me thinking about one point:
1) If you don’t experiment you’ll never know, and if you never know, you shouldn’t be in a position to talk about it
Joseph mentions that a prerequisite to work at Crayon (his agency) is that you have to blog. And awhile back , Pat Law asked “if you ran an agency, I would…” and my response was hire people who blog. I just think you really need to know about the medium before being able to advise anyone on what they’re doing.
And sometimes the point of experimenting is just to give it a go and figure out whether it’s an avenue you want to go ahead with or not. With The GennY Podcast, we don’t even have metrics or anything, but I think just us getting together and bouncing around ideas really at least gives us an understanding of what podcasting is, and if it would make sense to bring it to work, school, whatever.
Right now, giving that organisations and companies are so far behind the social media curve, it’s the best time to start “dabbling” in it, maybe just a few hours a week, because that’s the only way you’ll know what works and what doesn’t. Just because something has been working for the last five years, doesn’t mean it’ll continue to work as well as it has been for the next five.
I guess the same lesson goes to all the people jumping on the Twitter bandwagon and just using it as a broadcast medium. Because they never tried and experimented with it in the beginning, they’re late, catching up, and as a result, using it wrongly and plain wasting resources.
Responses to my posts over the last couple of weeks have really got me thinking about this issue. I’d think it’s always nicer to have someone from the company who can react quickly without having to check back with the client about details, but this isn’t always possible, especially with large organisations.
From the Starhub post, it seemed like most people felt like their Twitter efforts were still a small, isolated part of customer service, poised to be properly established when the timing is right, and perhaps when more training is done.
The possible problem with leaving things to agencies, is that, as Jonathan points out, for better or worse, they are now representing your company. So when bad PR happens, your brand is automatically tainted as well. Arguably this can happen even if the person engaging is in-house, but if the communication plan is discussed properly internally and placed in the hands of someone who knows how to engage, the risk might be slightly reduced.
Finally, there’s the issue of the agency taking advantage of clients. At this moment while social media is the shiny new object, clients are going to need training for everything from monitoring to engagement, which is fine and good. But again there’s the extra unnecessary step of back and forth between agency and client, and as Liana points out in the comments, when someone from the organisation itself is responding, it’s easier to maintain the “feel” and “culture” of the organisation compared to if someone was responding on the organisation’s behalf.
To close, I guess at this point while everyone is still finding their footing in social media, it doesn’t really matter because mistakes are going to be made anyway. The important thing is to really bring those learning experiences into the DNA of the company, and begin to empower people in-house who will truly understand the organisation to be your spokespersons, rather than the agency professional who may be better at it, but ultimately is probably juggling three different accounts.
And one way to get this moving a little faster, is to get someone with some rudimentary knowledge of social media on board now, so that when your organisation is finally ready to take on the responsibility fully, you’ll at least have someone ready.
I was wondering what content was drawing the most readers on my blog for the past year or so that I’ve been blogging, so I logged into Wordpress Statistics and checked out the top 10 posts, traffic-wise, for my blog:
Brands On Blogs
Of the top 10, eight are posts that talk about brands: EA Games, Evernote, Plurk, Yahoo, Magnum, Association of Bloggers Singapore, Twitter, and Flip.
Looking at the top “brand” post that has the most traffic, my review of the Flip Cam Mino, it’s interesting to note that although the post was published in August of 2008, there’s pretty much been a steady stream of people actively searching for it and landing on the page (I know this because Wordpress Statistics also has keyword statistics, and every other day “Flip Cam Mino” or “Flip Cam Review” turns up).
Flip Cam Review Traffic
So what’s the point? If you’re still not convinced that blogs are really powerful, just consider this data (granted, sample size of one), and think for a minute about the millions of blogs worldwide that could have said something negative or positive about your brand pretty much since the dawn of the internet, and what that means for your brand if you don’t do something about it, right now.
