Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Blog Birthdays
This past Wednesday was Pat’s third anniversary party for Blankanvas (we all need to have blog birthday parties) and needless to say, the woman knows how to throw a party!
I also belatedly realised that January is this blog’s birthday and looking back on my very first “serious” blog post that was posted the day of my first Digital Media Across Asia class and a lot of that wonder and excitement is still there. The unfortunate thing is there hasn’t been a whole lot of opportunities for me to put what I know into practice. That’s something I really hope to change in 2010.
I think 2009 was a great year for the blog. The focus on local content has been working out well and although my blogging frequency has gone down, I’m still pretty happy with the content I’m putting out. I’m very much experimenting with my writing style (you might have noticed some of my more recent posts are much shorter than usual) and it’s something I’ll continue to be doing in 2010.
So embarking on the third year of the blog, I really hope by the time it “turns three” there’ll be a lot more real world case studies and organisations that can be featured here (and in many company’s case study books) as successes we can take into 2011.
[image via Laughing Squid]
Tags: birthdays, blankanvas, blog birthdays, blogging frequency, case studies, digital media across asia, january, local content, pat law, recent posts, turning two, writing style
Posted in Announcements | 2 Comments »
Monday, May 18th, 2009
Earlier in the year I reviewed Tactical Transparency and said that it’s a good book for an introduction to the social media scene. However, I now feel Personality Not Included is the book I would recommend as the intro book, simply because it explores more than social media, and is about really changing the mindset of organisations from within, which is what the vast majority of organisations these days need to do. Social media is merely a byproduct and tool to helps make achieve this change in mindset easier.
There are five main thrusts to the book:
- Find (and use) your accidental spokespeople
- Define your personality by being unique, authentic and talkable
- Craft a backstory people will care about
- Conquer internal fear about embracing this change
- Finding and using personality moments
The first half of the book is about explaining why these are important and providing many case studies of real world examples, and the second half provides steps that can be taken to bring the aforementioned concepts to reality. Of course, the steps are general guidelines and must be tweaked to be made relevant to your organisation.
Many of these concepts and steps will sound simple and intuitive to those of us who have grown up in a world where mere transactions aren’t enough anymore, but is probably difficult for the Generation X or Baby Boomer boss at work to wrap their heads around. If so, buy this book and give it to him or her, and make it an office copy after that.
There’s a really good video introduction to Personality Not Included that I encourage you to check out at the Personality Not Included blog (sorry, I couldn’t find a way to embed it on the site!)
[image taken from Flickr.com]
Tags: accidental spokespeople, accidental spokesperson, authentic, baby boomers, backstory, book review, case studies, changing mindsets, embracing change, generation x, generation y, internal fear, introduction to social media, main thrusts, personality moments, personality not included, rohit bhargava, social media scene, tactical transparency, talkable, unique
Posted in Books, Reviews | No Comments »
Monday, December 15th, 2008
This week there was a bit of a big deal over Chris Brogan’s Kmart experience that I got to read about from Steven Hodson over at the Inquisitr.
On one hand we have people saying he’s a sell out and other negative things (please, why does Chris Brogan need to sell out for $500??), on the other hand Jeremiah Owyang posts a nice round up post on the whole thing.
For the record, I’m fully in support of compensating bloggers, and I think as long as it’s done with full transparency (as in the Kmart case), it should be fine.
I do however want to turn attention to two important questions that I saw in a couple of comments about the whole thing:
1) Would Chris Brogan have blogged about Kmart if he wasn’t paid? (personally, I don’t think so)
2) Did getting paid affect objectivity in any way?
I think these are the big questions that we’ve been debating over back home as well. So far I think our sponsored blog posts in Singapore are working out well, but maybe it’s because by and large we haven’t had the need for separation between out personal and professional lives.
I’ve struggled with this issue for awhile before finally starting up my personal blog (which by the way, averages better traffic than this blog) and I think if ever companies were to approach me to talk about their product that didn’t fall in the technology or social media field, it’d definitely go there.
Important takeaway from this issue? Risks and consequences don’t just extend to companies dabbling in social media and blogger outreach, but bloggers as well. It’s definitely making me think twice over ever accepting any offer outside my respective niches.
Do you see a problem with this? Does Chris Brogan the consumer blogger have less clout than Chris Brogan the social media blogger?
Tags: case studies, chris brogan, consumer, daddy blog, kmart, social media
Posted in Links, case studies | 2 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
Tags: book review, case studies, jaffe juice, jaffe juice podcast, join the conversation, joseph jaffe, social media experiment, unm2pnm
Posted in Books | 7 Comments »
