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, May 7th, 2008
Without doubt the podcast of the month for April goes to For Immediate Release which I usually have problems keeping up with (it’s released twice a week, one hour each), but the content for April was excellent and I found myself listening to it first among my podcasts.
- #336 highlights: Using Twitter/Friendfeed differently for business, conducting proper blogger outreach
- #337 highlights: Facebook tools that can really help you
- Live call in show #5 highlights: How should companies reach out in social media without offending the people in it? Great analogy of standing at a party table and interjecting about insurance while they’re talking about something else.
- #338 highlights: Kami Hyuse Seaworld case study and talk of the virtual internet
- #339 highlights: Dan York & Sallie Goetsch take over. Lots of Twitter news and I have a comment left via Twitter!
I have to say, hands down, if you’re doing anything in the digital/social media space, you need to be listening to this podcast.
Other notable listens this month:
- Inside PR #106 - Live episode with a great question “Who owns the social media space?”
- Managing the Gray - Manic Mummies episode, great case study on GM and how to do sponsorship in social media.
- Marketing Over Coffee - “Captcha and Turk“, lots of stuff on startups as well as a whole slew of Wordpress plugins I never knew about.
- Shill #6 meandered a little this month, but still a worthwhile discussion about whether there’s any value in re-posting news.
- Six Pixels Of Separation #98 (interview with Collin Douma), #99 (very interesting, almost counter-intuitive information regarding online reviews) and #100 (long conversation between Mitch, Brian Eisenberg and Avinash Kaushik).
Did you listen to any of these podcasts? Are you listening to different podcasts? I’m always on the lookout for great social media related podcasts, recommendations always welcome.
Tags: avinash kaushik, blogger outreach, brian eisenberg, collin douma, facebook, for immediate release, friendfeed, inside pr, managing the gray, marketing over coffee, podcast of the month, podcasts worth listening to, reaching out in social media, shill, six pixels of separation, social media podcasts, twitter
Posted in Podcasts, social media | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 6th, 2008
I’ve decided to take a page out of Louis Gray’s book and highlight six blogs (in no order) that have really caught my attention in April, as well as one link that I feel is a recent notable read.
1) Bryan Person - BryanPerson.com, brains of Social Media Breakfast
2) Dan York - Disruptive Conversations, correspondent for For Immediate Release.
3) Charlene Li & Josh Bernoff - Groundswell, authors of Groundswell.
4) Brian Koh - Harmless? Bananas!, Ogilvy PR and co-creator of The Open Room.
5) Eric Berlin - Online Media Cultist
6) Tara Hunt- Horsepigcow
The amount of new blogs I’m subscribing to monthly is decreasing (I suppose there’s only so much information I can process), but if you know any great ones, recommend them in the comments space below!
Tags: blogs to subscribe to, blogs worth reading, brian koh, brian leery, bryan person, charlene li, dan york, disruptive conversations, eric berlin, for immediate release, groundswell, harmless bananas, hits, horsepigcow, josh bernoff, litford, missrogue, new marketing, ogilvy pr, online media cultist, rss subscribers, social media breakfast, summize, tara hunt, the open room, tweeting for companies, tweetscan, twitter, twitter for companies
Posted in Blogs, social media | 4 Comments »
Friday, April 11th, 2008
This is late so I’m going to jump straight into it. My choice for the March podcast of the month goes to Six Pixels of Separation for the interview with Seth Godin in #93. I also listened to #94 - #97, and #97 is the episode where Mitch talks about Social Media Breakfast: Singapore, so you might want to check that out as well.
Other podcasts that I really think you should check out:
I really enjoyed listening to CC Chapman on Managing The Gray where he responded to Intellagirl’s challenge on how to get non-social media people into social media, as well as his coverage of SXSW.
With that said I also enjoyed Shill’s thoughts on SXSW coverage happening literally everywhere else, and how that feels from people not at the event. I really felt their point of view because I was one of those people getting bombarded non-stop on Twitter about SXSW. Probably something everyone will have to figure out for the next event.
Joseph Jaffe also weighed in on the SXSW coverage and Intellagirl’s challenge in Jaffe Juice #107 as well as facing outward from the fishbowl. An observation which I think is spot on.
Marketing Over Coffee was also good this month with an episode on what to do with your house list, two parts on the state of search and talking about the power of free.
Two new podcasts I picked up are For Immediate Release which comes out so frequently I can barely keep up but some good, thought provoking content in there, as well as Inside PR, whose discussion on ethics in PR to be very enlightening in #103 and #104
As always I am open to any and all suggestions for new podcasts to listen do. Just drop me a comment! While you’re at it, why not check out the podcast of the month for February and January as well?
Tags: cc chapman, facing inward fishbowl, facing outward fishbowl, fishbowl, for immediate release, great podcasts, house list, inside pr, intellagirl challenge, jaffe juice, joseph jaffe, managing the gray, march podcast of the month, marketing over coffee, marketing podcasts, mitch joel, podcasts worth listening to, power of free, pr ethics, pr podcasts, seth godin, shill, six pixels of separation, social media, social media breakfast singapore, social media podcasts, state of search, sxsw, sxsw coverage, twitter
Posted in Podcasts | 4 Comments »
