Friday, December 4th, 2009
Mark started the ball rolling with his 2010 predictions for social media, and now it’s my turn to weigh in on what I think are trends going forward and what that means, particularly for businesses engaged in (or thinking of engaging in) social media.
In no particular order, here we go:
1) Simultaneous fragmentation and consolidation
From blogging platforms (Typepad, Wordpress, Blogger, Livejournal and now Posterous) to analytics platforms (Omniture, Web Trends, Google Analytics) to listening tools (Radian 6, TNS Cymfony, Techrigy, Brandtology) to social networks (Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, QQ) to search platforms (Google, Yahoo, Bing, Naver, Baidu), the choices that arise just to decide where to ‘play’ can be overwhelming.
Part of the social media sphere is that it’s inherently easy to set up these platforms at low costs and immediately compete with the big boys. As a business, have you done your due diligence to know where your target audience is and which platform works for you? Or are you really going to assume that Facebook solves all problems and use it to reach China (where Facebook is blocked)?
At the same time this fragmentation isn’t going to go on forever. We’ve seen Adobe acquiring Omniture and Facebook acquiring FriendFeed this year. The danger of investing in a platform that may have a very real chance of disappearing or swallowed up by another company in the next 12-24 months is real, so choices have to be thought through more carefully than ever.
2) Social media is becoming more exclusive
Private Facebook profiles, walled gardens like Google Wave and Twitter lists all make it even more challenging to reach the ever-elusive ‘influencer’. If someone has 2,000 friends on Facebook but his profile is private, you’ve lost a way to reach 2,000 people. Twitter lists are naturally exclusive but penetrating the right one could really help you. In-groups are forming and the later a company gets with the programme, the higher the barrier to entry. How high a barrier do you want to deal with?
3) Social media policies will be set in stone.
From the NFL to Honda to Dominos, companies are feeling the heat of not putting down hard guidelines to encourage employees to participate in social media, but to participate responsibly. Nothing is secret anymore and if businesses let employees run unchecked, it could spell big problem for the company.
4) Sentiment analysis will become increasingly important
More emphasis will be placed on sentiment analysis. Perhaps not necessarily the accuracy of it, but what can actually be done with the data. A free Google Alert can tell me everything I need to know about my brand, but can the sentiment analysis tools put data together in a way that makes cohesive sense? Can they understand native language nuances? Can they segment by country? Will the phrase “a terrific example of bad customer service” be recognised as positive or negative sentiment? As advancements in the language recognition software gets more advanced, these questions will have to be answered and listening will be more crucial than ever.
5) Mobile access points
To me, netbooks can fall in the category of ‘mobile’ these days, not just handphones. As access on the go becomes even more ubiquitous (at least in developed countries) are you ready for a proportion of your customers to be accessing your site or service online? Or are they going to be even more frustrated at the lack of usability (I’m looking at you, local cinemas)? Are you enhancing your services with the idea of mobility and flexibility, or are you still operating with the mindset that customers only think about your products and services when sitting at home, thus losing the opportunity to snag them when they may be walking right by your physical store?
6) Transparency and disclosure
Beaten over the head to death. Companies and agencies who don’t understand the idea of transparency and disclosure aren’t going to last very long. On a personal note, I think bloggers who get into pay-per-post kind of schemes are doing themselves a disservice and there needs to be a better way for bloggers and companies to work together.
Bonus: Singapore special – Blogger outreach has to change.
Speaking purely as a blogger, I’m really frustrated, no I’m more than frustrated, I’m sick and tired of agencies reaching out to me for events, products and services which are so far from something that I might be interesting that it really grinds my gears. Agencies need to learn this is as cardinal a sin as pitching the technology editor a piece of fashion news (and I don’t mean tech-news with a bit of fashion in it).
The way of doing outreach aside, the events themselves have to change. This one off ‘come to my event and touch my product and read my press release’ has to change. And bloggers need to make it known that they’re tired of it by not going, rather then going for the sake of being invited to the next one.
So there you go. Agree? Disagree? Let me know in the comments.
[this was originally a post on Digiramblings, a shared blog by four Gen Y agency folk in Singapore trying to make sense of digital and social media
Tags: 2010, asia, predictions, Singapore, social media, trends
Posted in social media | 3 Comments »
Sunday, May 31st, 2009
Happening in September, the Social Networking World Forum comes to Asia, and as conferences go, I’m pretty excited for this one as they are great speakers like Ian Stewart, Benjamin Grubbs and Paras Sharma, all of whom I have heard speak firsthand, and I’m sure they will deliver outstanding sessions at the conference.
I’m also really excited on a personal note to be one of the media partners of the conference, and I think it says a lot that a worldwide event like this is beginning to recognise blogs as “media”, and going through the effort to partner up with them.
So what I really want to do with this blog post is highlight a few things:
1) Details of the conference: 22nd and 23rd September at the Grand Hyatt in Singapore.
2) An exclusive 15% off (on top of early bird discount) for readers of this blog and Twitter followers (get your boss to spend his/her budget!)
3) A free exhibition pass is also available.
4) You can follow the Forum on Twitter: @SocialNetworkWF
Feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions, you can find me on Twitter: @uniquefrequency
Tags: 15% off, @socialnetworkwf, asia, benjamin grubbs, early bird discount, free exhibition pass, ian stewart, media partners, paras sharma, september 2009, social networking world forum, twitter
Posted in Events | 1 Comment »
Thursday, March 12th, 2009
At the beginning of the year, one of the things I said I’d try to make a focus of this blog was to talk more about actual instances of business using social media. It’s taken a little while longer that I thought it would, but I finally have my first article, featuring HBO Asia.
I was previously blown away by HBO’s level of personalisation with their outreach attempts, which was really the catalyst for me to meet Karen, Angela and Yin Qi for lunch awhile ago.
What They’ve Done
The first time I met anyone from HBO, was at Social Media Breakfast | Singapore 3 way back in August of 2008. Yin Qi was there and the first casual connection was made. Stemming from that, there was an event for one of HBO’s shows, “Flight of the Conchords“, and ended with a regional contest which was well-talked about.
The Inspiration
When I asked them about who/what prompted the dabble in social media, surprisingly, there didn’t seem to be an “Eureka!” moment, but rather something that grew organically. Ultimately, it all came down to fit: “Flight of the Conchords” is very heavily viewed via online channels like YouTube, they resonate with the younger audience who is online, and the very nature of the show made it the perfect talking point.
Obstacles
From our discussion, the difficulty faced wasn’t so much organising something in Singapore, but organising something regional. This is something agencies should definitely take note of in Asia, because differences between countries within the region can be pretty big, and at the minimum, a basic understanding of that would be added value.
Metrics
As their first foray into social media, it was as much an experiment as anything else, so hard metrics were not particularly the focus. However, they were sufficiently satisfied with the online discussions and conversations to be convinced it was a worthwhile avenue for future efforts. Even though no hard metrics are available, just looking at the YouTube videos produced on the “Flight of the Conchords” blog from all over the region, the comments and the links, it looks like it certainly did not go unnoticed by the blogosphere.
What’s Coming Next
I got the benefit of discovering that a second blogger outreach event will be happening this year, this time for a different show, “True Blood“. Given that I missed the “Flight of the Conchords” event as I wasn’t in Singapore, I’m looking forward to this
What do you think are they key points from HBO Asia’s social media journey? Is it an issue that agencies don’t have regional capabilities as yet? What do you think HBO Asia could do better? Comment away!
Do you know of a company that should be featured on this column? Would your company like to be featured on this column? Comment below or send me an email at uniquefrequency [AT] gmail (dot) com.
Tags: asia, blogosphere, eureka moment, flight of the conchords, hbo asia, social media across asia, social media breakfast singapore, social media metrics, true blood, younger audiences, youtube
Posted in Singapore, blogger outreach, case studies, social media | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, March 5th, 2008
It’s today and I got invited by Bjorn via Facebook.
I have to admit at first I was a little lukewarm because, well, I’m not a developer per se. I’m a social media junkie.
Then I got to see that marketing and monetisation of Facebook will be the topic of a panel discussion and now I really want to go because I’m really interested to know whether other people think Facebook is slowly dying out and if we’re really facing Facebook Fatigue, even here in Asia.
My personal guess is that in Asia it’s not as obvious as in the US, because if the whole world were mapped on to an adoption curve, I think people in this part of the world would probably fall under early to late majority. So there’s plenty of room yet for the m to jump on board.
Unfortunately, I strongly doubt I’ll be able to attend the event because I have a fairly important exam the next day. How much does that suck?
Anyone else going? Can I get Twitter updates?
Tags: adoption curve, asia, early late majority, facebook, facebook developer garage, facebook fatigue, marketing monetisation facebook, social media, twitter updates
Posted in Singapore, social media | 2 Comments »
