Tuesday, December 8th, 2009
I’m about halfway through Mitch Joel’s book called Six Pixels of Separation and in the early chapters he talks about how he started blogging as a way to grow his business and even though it felt weird giving away content for free (he used to be a journalist), it wasn’t long before it producing content for free led to tangible benefits, the latest of which of course is his book deal.
[note: throughout this blog post I use the word "attention" not in a "HEY LOOK AT ME" way, but in the way we choose to give a person attention over other people, or a brand attention over other brands. It is a form of earned attention, not interruptive attention like TV advertising]
This got me thinking about my own journey with blogging and social media and I realised I never shared the story of my first job offer, so I’ll do it here.
I started blogging in January 2008 (though I had a “website” since 1996) and it was primarily for the social media class I was taking under Michael Netzley at the time. It quickly took on a life of its own and by March I had started Social Media Breakfast | Singapore with Derrick, by April I was a panelist at an IDC conference, speaking to 450 global marketing executives from P&G and eventually speaking at ad:tech Singapore in 2009.
This led to me getting called up by someone present at ad:tech and after a couple of interviews, they offered me my first job offer (coincidentally, the company had a colour in it’s name as well). I didn’t take it but I sincerely believe that blogging and starting Social Media Breakfast | Singapore for free led to all these opportunities and it is all these opportunities and connections that eventually built enough of a network and experience to land me my job today.
At job interviews, people have given me flak for not being “entrepreneurial” enough and giving away stuff for free. I think that’s losing the forest for the trees. For me, everything changed when I realised I was now my own TV, radio and print channel rolled up in one. As Seth Godin says “In a world of free, everyone can play.”
As Chris Anderson illustrates in “Free” the first step is using free to get people to pay attention to you, the second step is converting that attention into something of value. This is especially true in the attention economy, as ours is.
My blog and Social Media Breakfast earned me the “attention” that was converted into references, networks and relationships which in turn served as a way to earn more “attention” that was converted into a job.
People balk at free because of their inability to convert the earned attention into something of value.
That fault is theirs, not with free.
Tags: ad:tech, attention economy, michael netzley, mitch joel, p&G, six pixels of separation, social media breakfast
Posted in social media | 5 Comments »
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 »
Thursday, February 12th, 2009
Prof. Michael blogged yesterday about a Hitwise article pointing to much higher (1.5x) more visits to Plurk than Twitter recently in Singapore, and has attracted more traffic since July of 2008.
This data (though I do have some questions about it which I will blog about tomorrow) seems to validate what I’ve been feeling intuitively over the last six months or so. If I had to point to reasons, I have broadly speaking, two:
1) Twitter failed us
Looking back, my very first post on my switch to Plurk was on the 3rd of June, 2008. The blog post even leads with
Twitter’s downtime over the last couple of months has really pissed off a lot of people, most of all me.
With that timeframe in mind, let’s look at Hitwise’s research:
Plurk vs Twitter Visits
The image clearly shows the surge in visits occurs somewhere around the 28th of June. A reasonable enough time for a technology to diffuse down the adoption curve.
2) Localisation and Intimacy
When I first wrote about the switch to Plurk I had four main reasons:
Now that I’ve been using Plurk for awhile, these reasons have compressed into two: intense localisation and intimacy. My theory is Singaporeans don’t need the wide reaches of Twitter. Because of our relatively smaller size as a country, we’re used to smaller interactions, which is perfect for what Plurk achieves. I think most people have less than 100 friends, which makes following easy. This is different from the Twitter “power users” in the US, as following 5,000 friends on Plurk would probably literally send someone insane.
The second theory is that by nature of Plurk consisting of small, threaded, intimate conversations, it lends itself naturally to a very high level of localisation. When you join Plurk and realise the Singaporean users are talking about local places, local weather, the movie releases in Singapore and what’s on television, it has a much more relevant feel than Twitter (were you on Twitter during the recent Superbowl?) and as a result presents a very, very low barrier to entry.
Recently a few people from SMU joined Plurk, and while I would never have imagined them on Twitter, I think Plurk works perfectly, especially when there are friends you know using the service already.
In closing, I think Singaporeans are terribly practical, and have no issues with community migration on a small scale (let’s not talk about migrating 500 friends on Facebook). The first factor, Twitter failing, led to the search for an alternative. What many of us found, is the second factor – a level of relevancy and community that Twitter did not offer. In short, the new application provided a better alternative, and most of us have never looked back.
If you’re a Plurk user in Singapore, do you agree? How about if you’re a die-hard Twitter user? Let’s hear it!
Tags: adoption curve, community migration, facebook, hitwise, intimacy, localisation, michael netzley, organic conversations, Plurk, superbowl, threaded conversations, twitter, twitter fail
Posted in Plurk, Singapore, case studies, community, twitter | 18 Comments »
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 »
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 »
Thursday, May 1st, 2008
One thing I’ve continually questioned is why social media is blooming slowly but not blossoming rapidly in Singapore. I’ve noted that we don’t have problems other countries do, but yet social media is still a very, very small slice of the pie.
Discussions with Michael Netzley, John Bell and Ridz have all resurfaced the same theme: We’re too small. ie the benefits of social media don’t translate as much when you can sms a friend and meet him/her in person in 20 minutes, compared to someone living on the opposite coast in America.
Social media events in North America bring together people who see each other a few times a year. We can see the same people twice in a week at events here!
When we all read the same papers, watch the same news and television and generally consume the same media, does new media still bring additional benefits to the table?
Tracking social media events over the last few months, it does indeed seem like the same people are going for the same events. It’s not a bad thing in itself, but it also means that options to companies are limited. Kami Hyuse’s case study on SeaWorld is an amazing one with great ROI. Attracting 22 roller coaster enthusiasts? That would be hard to replicate here. Obviously I don’t mean for roller coasters (because we have none), but for almost anything in general. It would be easier and simpler (maybe even more cost effective) to put out a print ad than to do a blogger outreach programme, just by impressions alone.
HP did a great blogger outreach programme, but does that value dilute if another company tries something similar and the same bloggers turn up?
I’ve anecdotally heard that 20 million is the magic number for social media to take off. Not in the sense that it’s an automatic qualifier (Indonesia has 25 million but that’s a fraction of it’s population), but it’s an indicator. Given that we’re at something like 4 million total population, does it mean that we’ll never get there?
That said, there is obviously a huge social media interaction on platforms like hardware zone, to some extent Facebook and others, suggesting to me that there is an audience, but we haven’t found a way to properly leverage it yet.
There are a lot of instances when I wish companies would engage the social media participants. But let’s think about it, if 5,000 people talk about your brand in a year (and I’m already stretching it), would you hire a person to monitor that and engage? Or is it easier to close an eye to that miniscule number, and focus on other things? Let’s face it, most companies aren’t Dell with hundreds of thousands of customers complaining. It’s a real question where companies only have a limited amount of resources, and have to prioritise.
Do you think our size is the biggest limiting factor? Do you have other thoughts on why social media’s influence is still limited in Singapore? Most importantly, do you see it changing? In how many years? Or will this being small turn on its head and be a strength? I want to hear from you.
Tags: blogger outreach singapore, john bell, michael netzley, ridz85, singapore's population, singapore's size, social media benefits, social media in singapore
Posted in Singapore, social media | 18 Comments »
