Monday, March 30th, 2009
Michael starts on the beer
I got invited by Mark a few weeks ago for a discussion at Edelman regarding responsible participation and what it means. Also present was Phil Gomes, John Kerr, Michael Netzley, Ben Koe, Preetam Rai and Eastcoastlife.
I’m not going to say too much about the discussion itself, as Michael has written a very comprehensive post detailing the discussion, but I will make two quick comments:
1) No one seems to really know what responsible participation means. Does it mean different things depending on context? For example, does “responsible participation” take on different manifestations in a B2C context as contrasted with a public-sector context?
2) Responsible participation, regardless of the context, needs to be two-way. I’m astounded at the sentiment on one side of the fence that calls for, or demands responsible participation, without even being engaged and participating themselves in the first place. Reciprocity is a global norm, no?
John collecting opinions
As a side note, I had a subsequent class visit to Edelman the following week, and the topic of discussion was “Crisis communication”. Before any of us could bring up the Wal-Mart example, the speaker brought it up first as an example of how they had to deal with it and it’s nice to see them openly acknowledge past mistakes and use them as a learning experience.
All in all, it seems like Edelman is genuinely trying to tap into the community to aid them in their social media efforts and this is only the first of such discussions. I’m looking forward to see what comes next.
Tags: b2c, ben koe, communicate asia, crisis communication, discussion, eastcoastlife, Edelman, john kerr, michael netzley, Phil Gomes, preetam rai, reciprocity, Responsable Participation, roundtable, wal-mart
Posted in Marketing, SMU, Singapore, Tools, case studies, collaboration, community, social media, twitter | 1 Comment »
Sunday, January 18th, 2009
When Prof. Michael and I were discussing what to include into the Digital Media class this term, one thing I thought we should make compulsory is Twitter. Even though it had its downtime in 2008, I think the service definitely has potential, and so this week, it’s almost all about everyone’s favourite (or “favourite”) microblogging tool, Twitter.
If you’re lazy, Steve Spalding has the Essential Twitter Guide ready for you, which is a collection of the best Twitter-related posts and guides around the web.
From the student’s point of view, Studentlinc has a post on Figuring Out The Benefits Of Twitter.
Steven Hodson is doing his Twitter and Friendfeed spring cleaning, and he points to Twitter Karma as a way of discovering who’s a mutual follower, who’s just following you, or if you’re just following them. One sneaky trick that some people use is to follow you, wait a couple of days to see if you follow them, and then unfollow you so that they can artificially inflate their follower number. This helps safeguard against that.
Finally, the one non-Twitter related link for the week, is the question “What’s A Community Worth?” over at Social Voice. It’s a fairly long article, but the real world examples/case studies of how community can be beneficial to an organisation.
I have a whole chunk of Twitter-related posts generated over the last year, (including a small Twitter 101 segment) feel free to check them out!
Tags: benefits of twitter, communicate asia, digital media, essential twitter guide, michael netzley, social voice, steve spalding, studentlinc, twitter, twitter 101, twitter karma, twitter spring cleaning, what's a community worth
Posted in Links, twitter | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, January 7th, 2009
This year, I can foresee my blog being occupied by two new things:
1) Digital Media Across Asia
As I’m taking over the teaching assistant role from Amelia this term to work with Michael, I can see a constant flow of inspiration arising from the class, and it will be nice to get back to working on the Digital Media Across Asia wiki again.
2) Highlighting local social media examples in business
As we’re gradually seeing more and more developments in the local social media scene, I’d like to invite anyone who wants an avenue to tell their story, to tell it here. I’d like to go beyond the usual blogger outreach story and hopefully be able to interact with a company who’s started a blog or twitter account for business purposes.
What else would you like to see on Unique Frequency in 2009?
Tags: amelia, communicate asia, curious foodie, digital media across asia, digital media across asia wiki, local social media, michael netzley, social media in business in singapore, social media in singapore
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Monday, December 1st, 2008
I’d like to join Prof. Michael Netzley and Mark to echo my support for Amelia’s nomination of the Social Media & PR Across Asia wiki for the 2008 Edublog Awards. It’s submitted for the Best Educational Wiki
I think our wiki is deserving of a nomination (and a win) because it is the epitome of crowdsourcing and collaboration, the very things that inspired wikis. It’s been maintained for over a year by over 100 students, but not by their efforts alone. We’ve reached out to the prominent figures all over Asia to get their input and integrate it into a comprehensive wiki for anyone to find out more about different social media usages across Asia. I daresay it is the most comprehensive resource for anyone looking to get a quick primer on social media in Asia.
Coming here to Canada for exchange, I’ve met people from all over Asia – Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, China, etc – and it’s amazing to see that our collective research really does mirror what actually goes on in their lives.
If you’ve seen or used our wiki, or even just like the idea of the wiki as a central informational tool, do give the wiki your support and drop a link to the Edublog Awards page and support the nomination!
[Disclosure: I am a contributor to the wiki as part of a course (Digital Media Across Asia) in SMU. I will also be teaching assistant for this course in January, and as such feel tremendously involved in this project and nomination!]
Tags: 2008 edublog awards, best educational wiki, communicate asia, curious foodie, michael netzley, oldskoolmark, social media and pr across asia
Posted in Announcements, Gen Y, SMU, Singapore, collaboration, education, social media | No Comments »
Monday, November 17th, 2008
A weekend of travel means less blogging this week, but definitely not less reading!
Blogging
You want to show you know what you’re doing, even if the company you’re in follows prehistoric methods, so that the next person who hires you has a reference point. Joseph Jaffe tells you how in AdWeek – Save Your Career, Start A Blog
RSS
Daily Blog Tips has 50 Simple Ways To Gain RSS Subscribers – some might just come in useful!
Word Of Mouth
Andy Sernovitz gets another link this week for telling us why Your Word Of Mouth Markting Doesn’t Have To Be About Your Product. I’ll admit I liked this post partially because Molson Canadian is my new favourite beer while I’m here in Canada. (Oh and they have a blog, and recently an event right here at Queen’s!)
John Johansen had a great experience at Best Buy, which is the polar opposite of what some companies are doing in this recessionary period. (Examples to be posted, soon). He also mentions that because it was a special event there was extra help, free drinks etc, but many people also bought something. Do you think they included his blog post (or any other positive ones) while measuring the ROI of that event?
Social Media ROI
While we’re on that topic, David Meerman Scott tells us how to Answer The Ultimate Question: “How do I convince my boss of the ROI of new marketing?” – It’s not a long video, definitely worth a look.
Gen Y, Millennials and Digital Natives
Quickly becoming an interest point for me these days. Prof Netzley has a deck on Educating Gen Y and how collaborative technologies foster participant-centered learning. . I’d say it’s definitely worth flipping through, especially if you’re trying to figure out what the heck Gen Y is about and how we learn.
Tags: adweek, andy sernovitz, best buy, blogging, collaboration, collaborative technologies, communicate asia, daily blog tips, david meerman scott, digital natives, educating gen y, Gen Y, generation y, john johansen, joseph jaffe, michael netzley, millennials, molson canadian, new marketing, participant centered learning, queen's university, recessionary times, ROI, rss, save your career, social media roi, start a blog, ways to gain rss subscribers, word of mouth marketing
Posted in Links | No 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 »
Sunday, August 17th, 2008
SMB3 broke huge new grounds yesterday at the Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) thanks to great partnership with the National Heritage Board (NHB). I was getting messages all Friday long about people being excited to attend SMB at the ACM and I heard about the River Room from the NHB folks and saw the pictures at the website, but I was completely blown away when I stepped into the venue. It’s a HUGE space that looks like a swanky ballroom rather than a location for an informal event like ours. In fact when I met Claudia to set up, I said “Wow, maybe we should’ve gotten a smaller room so it won’t look so empty if less people turn up.”
The reception table
NHB!
Enter… the River Room
Huge, classy and stylish.
I needn’t have worried because this was the most amount of people we’ve ever had at an SMB for sure. When people were sitting the chairs were full, if not there were throngs of people standing around. It was really quite something.
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Many, many people!
I felt the vibe this time round was a little more “intense” than previous SMBs. Maybe it was the more official looking venue compared to the previous cosy cafes, but I definitely sensed a lot more interest and enthusiasm and mingling this time round compared to the previous two. It was as if everyone knew they were in a room with bright, like-minded people and wanted to make the most out of every minute and maximising their time there.
One thing that didn’t go too well, was the discussion topic. We wanted to have a panel but that didn’t work out so we thought going ahead with “table discussions” would work. But I guess they didn’t. We’re still experimenting with the format, but SMB is the community’s not ours. We just organise it. So if you felt the topic was too serious, too trivial, too boring, needed facilitators, needed moderators, let us know! We’re going to figure out a way to make this work for SMB4.
Walter from NHB sharing with us NHB’s social media efforts.
For me, the biggest thing at any SMB is the people. And I was incredibly excited that I didn’t know about half the people there! It’s amazing that almost six months after the first SMB, it’s still generating interest among people who are willing to come for the first time. I particularly enjoyed meeting Pat Law in person after so much communication on our blogs, Twitter and Plurk, Todd Murray from Active Channel who I only met online the day before on LinkedIn, Willy Foo from Live! Studios who provided great fun with his photography, and many many others who are too many to list here.
I really love how SMB is becoming this melting pot of people literally from everywhere in the social media space. Bloggers, podcasters, videocasters, in-house people, agency people, casual enthusiasts, academics, entrepreneurs, tech people and everyone else. It’s great to have Miccheng from Podfire filming Geek Goddess TV at SMB2, and the Tech 65 crew recording live at SMB3. It’s truly bringing together the best of both “social” and “media”.
Tech 65 recording live!
Admittedly right now SMB does not have a firm “mission” to drive here in Singapore, but we started off wanting to provide a platform to get everyone together to mix, share experiences and learn from each other, and I think it’s doing just that. Not necessarily at the three hours during brunch, but all the connections and conversations that happen after that. As much as I was delighted to see so many new faces, I was equally ecstatic to see so many returning faces who have been consistent supporters of social media in Singapore in general, and SMB in particular.
At this point I’d love to hear from everyone how you felt about the event. Be frank, be critical. After all if you’re waking up on a precious Saturday morning to come to SMB, it should be worth your time. Let us know what worked, what didn’t work, what you’d like to see more of in the future, etc etc.
Finally, I’d like to thank Walter, Wei Chong, David and Kenny from NHB for agreeing to partner up with us. I cannot state enough what a great help they were with the venue. It was really good knowing that we secured a great venue and not having to worry about it for the last few months. I completely forgot about signage but they had all bases covered with great signboards everywhere ensuring that no one got lost. Thank you so much. Of course, it wouldn’t be possible without my co-conspirators as well: Sheylara, Claudia and Derrick.
Willy has great photos up on Facebook. I’m going to insert two of the group pictures here. Memories of a good Saturday morning well spent meeting great people.
Group Shot 1
Group Shot 2
Links to other SMB3 Coverage:
Walter @ Cooler Insights
Dorothy’s post
Michael @ Communicate Asia
Cullen @ Media Slog
As always I’ll be posting a full rundown of all the blog coverage sometime next week, do let me know if you blogged about it so I can include you! Tagging your posts as “social media breakfast singapore” and “smb singapore” would be greatly appreciated!
Tags: acm, active channel, asian civilisations museum, claudia.sg, communicate asia, cooler insights, geek goddess tv, live studios, media slog, national heritage board, nhb, podfire, river room, smb singapore, social media breakfast, social media breakfast singapore, tech 65
Posted in Fun, community, social media breakfast | 12 Comments »
Tuesday, July 1st, 2008
So today Estee, Ian, Michael, Dorothy and I headed down to Sheraton Tower to speak to about 450 P&G Executives about Generation Y, the New Consumer and our purchase decisions as well as media consumption habits.
Michael, Dorothy and Ian getting ready.
Without a doubt, it was the biggest crowd I’ve ever spoken to (not including emceeing) and I hope they found it useful. One big concern (as always) is how “safe” it is to put your brands in the hands of consumers. As one of the execs put it, how do we know a blog won’t serve as a “brand spoiler”?
Left side of the room
Right side of the room.
I think it’s simple. The point I tried to hammer home today is: If your content or brand or product or service doesn’t suck, it won’t happen. By suck I mean the whole world hates it. I don’t think it has to be a perfect product, but a flawed one open to feedback is fine. And if you’re P&G, the textbook example for great brands, why should you be afraid? Your products should speak for themselves!
The one question I always want to ask is this: If you have kids (say, above 15). Do you really believe that your current media buying habits are in sync with their media consumption habits? I tried asking this today, but less than 10 people in the audience had kids over 15. So it became a moot point.
To some extent I think that’s a very dangerous position for an organisation to be in. If your key decision makers are at the age where they’re not interacting with Gen Y and think they are “safe” in the knowledge that what has worked for the last 30-40 years of marketing will still work, that spells trouble.
The smart companies will pick the brains of their youngest employees. MTV did that when I was there. Almost every week they would ask me “What would your age group think of this?” or “Is this lame to you?” or questions like that. I remember one instance where somebody two levels above my immediate superior (meaning she’s VP level) came to me and asked my opinion on some new VJ audition tapes.
I’m not trying to be a diva, but it astounds me that there were 140 students at Ad:Tech last week, and almost none of us were approached by execs just to talk.
Let’s put it this way: Every six months new graduates enter the workforce and decide what to buy with their newfound spending power. If you haven’t been communicating to them earlier, what makes you think you can do it now?
ps: While we’re on the topic of Gen Y. I found it weird to receive this as a “thank you” gift from P&G:
I don’t want to seem ungrateful but… Boss for women? I don’t get it. In future, either get “thank you” gifts that can go to either sex, or label your “thank you” gifts appropriately.
Tags: brand spoiler, brands in the hands of consumers, communicate asia, dorothy poon, geek goddess, generation y, media consumption habits, p&G, proctor & gamble, purchase decisions, sheraton tower, the new consumer
Posted in Gen Y, Marketing | 9 Comments »
Thursday, May 8th, 2008
Listening to Marketing Over Coffee on the way home, there was a very small section talking about GoogleDocs and how you can activate a form to collect data for you. It also made me think further on the question about how much we’re collaborating (or not collaborating) online.
We had to create a wiki for our social media class, and of course, wikis tell you how much (or little) someone edited the final output. It was noted that a handful of people contributed the majority of the content, which made our Professor, Michael Netzley, less than thrilled. I brought up the point that though a few people may have been the actual ones to enter the text, doesn’t mean the whole team did not collaborate together. Both sides are debatable, but that’s not the point.
I’m an assistant scout leader for my alma mater’s scout troop and every year around this time we have a camp. As with previous years, the emails pile up, meeting minutes get distributed, camp schedules get sent and changed and re-sent and re-changed until eventually, no one knows what in the world is going on anymore.
To solve this, I set up a wiki for the leaders. It’s a private wiki so I’m sorry I can’t share the link. I will however say that we’re using PBwiki, which I find to be superior to Wetpaint in terms of editing as well as help. But that aside, so far it’s been helping us keep track of personnel and manpower, topics of discussion, a couple of things to be noted, schedules, equipment lists and so on.
No more losing of minutes on paper, no more “can you send me the latest schedule? I can’t find it”. Everything is up there and updated. To the minute.
So why aren’t more of us doing this? Is it the challenge of working alone as Michael brings up? Or an unwillingness to change our styles of working?
Does it make sense for us to share our items on Google Reader (my shared items are here)? Or on del.icio.us? How about collaborating on Google Docs in the classroom? In the office?
To me the biggest problem is convincing the people you’re working with that it’s worth their while. In my scout case study, I knew the people who were primarily going to enter the data would be the younger adult leaders, while the older leaders would keep and eye on it from time to time. To both of these groups, you gotta speak their language.
To my peers, it was the idea of collaboration. To see everything in one place, to have links and for easy reading. To the senior leaders, it was the idea of streamlining information. Not losing paper, not having to distinguish whether schedule(final).doc is the true schedule or schedule(final)THISISTHEREALFINAL.doc is the true schedule.
So how’s collaboration working (or not working) for you? Are you using wikis regularly? Online document processors or software based? Is it a challenge convincing your classmates/colleagues to use it as well?
Tags: collaborating with google docs, collaboration, collaboration on google docs, communicate asia, google docs, googledocs, marketing over coffee, meeting minutes, michael netzley, pbwiki vs wetpaint, schedules, scout wiki, scouts, sharing google reader items, social bookmarking, social media class, wiki
Posted in Google, Icio, Research, collaboration, social media | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, April 29th, 2008
What Read And Comment Day?
Yesterday was Read and Comment day, where you have to make an active effort to comment on blogs and join the conversation. It was suggested by Chris Brogan, and true to form, he even left a comment here as well. Read and Comment day also inspired me to encourage people to strengthen their links to people on Twitter, especially the weaker links.
My Report
I put aside an hour last night to really go through my Google Reader (learnt how to use it yet?) and properly digest blog posts and comment. In a lot of ways, it reminded me of when I first started blogging in January when Prof. Netley advised us that we should comment twice as much as we post to establish a presence and drive traffic. I’m a little embarrassed to say that I forgot that along the way, but Read and Comment day really reminded me how important it is not just to create my own content by blogging, but to add value to others’ content as well.
How About You?
Have you found yourself commenting less than usual? Something holding you back from joining the conversation? Go post a couple of comments today. You’ll feel great!
My Conversations
All great topics, especially if you’re into social media. Why not read and comment on them (or right here) yourself?
Tags: chris brogan, commenting on blogs, communicate asia, google reader, how to use google reader, michael netzley, read and comment day, social media, strengthen twitter links, twitter
Posted in Blogs, Fun, social media, twitter | 3 Comments »
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