Monday, November 10th, 2008
In the wake of the historical moment that happened earlier this week, there have been tons and tons of blog posts on President Obama’s victory. In this special edition of weekly links, I present five of them that really caught my attention, four of them marketing and/or social media based, and one commentary based.
1) Marketing lessons from the US Elections by Seth Godin. - I haven’t read Seth Godin’s “Tribes” yet, but from hearing about it and reading his blog, it’s pretty intuitive what it’s about. Find out how tribes (and stories) played a part in the elections.
2) Obama proves that there is nothing more powerful than an engaged community by Alexander van Elsas in the Netherlands - Tribes, community, they’re the same thing. Having them is one thing, but having them and setting fire to them is another.
3) Ten marketing lessons from the Barack Obama Presidential campaign by David Meerman Scott - Not going to go through all ten, but I loved the points about citizen journalists and putting your fans first.
4) Online Facebook Efforts Prove Successful for the Obama Campaign by Louis Gray - Some interesting data on the Facebook community engaged with Obama. Louis asks if John McCain’s loss could be a result of the lack of social media efforts. I certainly think it’s a key reason.
5) Obama: The morning after and some last thoughts by Steven Hodson at the Inquisitr - I picked this because a) it appeared in my Google Alerts for my name, and b) because it collects some really heartfelt comments from people around the internet, and not all of them American, demonstrating how truly global this election has been.
If you weren’t big on the elections and the marketing/social media efforts, have no fear. Regular round of Links For The Week will be right up tomorrow!
Tags: alexander van elsas, citizen journalists, david meerman scott, engaged community, google alerts, inquisitr, john mccain, louis gray, marketing lessons from the us elections, obama facebook efforts, president barack obama, putting your fans first, seth godin, steven hodson, tribes
Posted in Links, Marketing | 1 Comment »
Thursday, May 22nd, 2008
Got a link in the mail today pointing to Rainier PR and their hiring of staff via Twitter.
That’s pretty amazing, but before you jump in and get yourself a Twitter account, it’s not really about that one tool. It’s about building an online presence, getting people familiar with you, and building your personal brand. More from the article:
PR students listen-up. If you want a fast track career in digital PR use your holiday time to get work placements and like Matt immerse yourself in the tools of your trade such as Blogger, Facebook, Flickr, Google Tools, Twitter and Wordpress. Chances are that if you do you’ll have a head start on many of those that have been in the industry for several years.
I’m always gobsmacked by candidates, both graduates and those that have been in the industry for some time, that come for an interview (almost always via recruiters) at Rainier PR that don’t make an effort to look at the agency web site or our blog. They typically don’t use an RSS Reader and haven’t had “time to look at Twitter”. Bollocks. Don’t waste your time – or ours.
How true is that? I think it extends to any communications effort and I don’t think you even need to be in PR. Let’s not even talk about the real world. If I had to form a team to do a communications/marketing plan for a student club in school, I wouldn’t want someone who doesn’t know how to use Google Alerts or Wordpress (at the very least).
Congrats to Matt Watson (who I am now following on Twitter @mpwatson) and I think this is only the start of things to come, and we’ll definitely be hearing more of such instances in the future.
You can find me on Twitter (@uniquefrequency). Feel free to follow!
Tags: @mpwatson, building online presence, building presonal brand, communications effort, communications plan, google alerts, hiring through twitter, hiring via twitter, matt watson, rainier pr, recruitment, social media hiring, twitter, uniquefrequency, wordpress
Posted in social media, twitter | 1 Comment »
Friday, March 21st, 2008
Now that the SMU = NTU ad buzz is dying down (or is it just picking up? TIMM Guru put an ad up on Google for people to discover why NTU used the keywords), I think it’s important to look at a few lessons from the whole fiasco:
1) Track What’s Happening
I set up a Google Alert for “SMU NTU” yesterday and quite a few people picked this up, as well as the front page of Singapore Daily. If you’re a company, especially in our small market in Singapore, can you afford this kind of negative publicity? Even if there’s no “new media” person at your company, the least you should do is set up a Google Alert for your company’s name.
2) Respond Quickly
But it’s not enough to know that people are talking about you. You need to respond. Fast. I know on the comments page of sg_ljers one NTU student is valiantly trying to defend the school, but it isn’t working. To be fair, for all we know this could have been the result of a genuine mistake, maybe the mistake was on Google’s part, maybe it’s a typo. The fact is we will not know because NTU chose to keep quiet. It’s going to hit 48 hours since the news was first posted and the blogosphere will move on. People will forever remember the incident as a “fault” of NTU’s, simply because they did not take the opportunity to engage and respond.
3) Your Brand Isn’t What You say It Is, It’s What Google & The Internet Says It Is
The commenter on sg_ljers said:
But I just want to highlight how easily people can draw conclusions based on what they see (which is worse than conclusions based on what they don’t see). Hasn’t it occurred to anyone that SMU might have the same tactic? Hasn’t it occurred to you that maybe NTU is not behind that link? Personally I wouldn’t think that the NTU corp comm would be so dumb as to ruin their own reputation like that.
Yes, bloggers draw conclusions at face value and quickly and will look for the most controversial story instead of the most likely one (although in this case they are probably the same). We’re not journalists, we’re not going to do research or contact NTU Corporate Communications to find out. We will just blog. And the internet will represent it as such. And who reads the internet? Well…
4) Know Your Audience
If this appeared in the Straits Times forum, you can bet NTU would have responded quickly. But choosing not to join the conversation online may be their biggest folly. Who’s reading print? Not me. Probably people much older than me. Who’s on the internet? Who’s picking up this story on Twitter? Your prospective students (or from a business perspective, prospective customers). Just because the discussion is not via your media of choice, does not mean the people in that discussion do not matter. They could matter more.
5) The Internet Is Permanent
Google “SMU NTU” now and you’ll see the SMU = NTU ad as the first link. Now every year new students are going to compare the two business schools and see this issue as well as this (from Tomorrow.sg):
They will draw their own conclusions. I’m betting those conclusions aren’t positive. Again, your brand is what Google says it is.
Finally, I ran this article not to be sensational or controversial for the sake of being controversial, but as an experiment to see if NTU would reply, even with an explicit call out. I think the results speak for themselves.
My word of advice to all companies would be not to ignore what is said about you online. The content creators (ie bloggers, Youtube video creators, Flickr posters, podcasters) are the new gatekeepers of the online community. This one post led to all those other online posts which will enjoy the multiplier effect via word of mouth to reach thousands (more if it were Xiaxue). And you ignore them at your peril.
By the way I can’t seem to replicate the results anymore. Can you? Result of NTU getting rid of the ad? We’ll probably never know. Share your thoughts in the comments section.
Tags: fake ntu ad, google alerts, ntu adwords keywords, ntu google advertisement, ntu singapore, prospective students, sg_ljers, singapore daily, smu = ntu, smu nus ntu comparisons, smu singapore, straits times forum, timm guru, tomorrow.sg
Posted in Google, SMU, Search, Singapore, social media | 5 Comments »
