I was wondering what content was drawing the most readers on my blog for the past year or so that I’ve been blogging, so I logged into Wordpress Statistics and checked out the top 10 posts, traffic-wise, for my blog:
Brands On Blogs
Of the top 10, eight are posts that talk about brands: EA Games, Evernote, Plurk, Yahoo, Magnum, Association of Bloggers Singapore, Twitter, and Flip.
Looking at the top “brand” post that has the most traffic, my review of the Flip Cam Mino, it’s interesting to note that although the post was published in August of 2008, there’s pretty much been a steady stream of people actively searching for it and landing on the page (I know this because Wordpress Statistics also has keyword statistics, and every other day “Flip Cam Mino” or “Flip Cam Review” turns up).
Flip Cam Review Traffic
So what’s the point? If you’re still not convinced that blogs are really powerful, just consider this data (granted, sample size of one), and think for a minute about the millions of blogs worldwide that could have said something negative or positive about your brand pretty much since the dawn of the internet, and what that means for your brand if you don’t do something about it, right now.
It’s been three weeks but the next episode of The GennY Podcast is finally here! Full disclosure: This was actually our first recording, but we felt that the episode we released first was better suited to be our first, introductory podcast. Coincidentally, some topics actually touch on what was said at Social Media Breakfast | Singapore 6, but in slightly more detail.
Once again, this episode was brought to you by the same people behind episode 1 (Krisandro, myself, Dorothy, Yin and Yinqi), but we hope to shake that up for subsequent episodes.
GennY Episode 2 Team
The show notes:
00:00 – Daryl starts us off – introductions all round
00:55 – Yin starts us off on the topic: How can we get traditional companies to start slowly on the social media path?
01:35 – Social media allows you to know what your consumer wants, what trends they’re picking up, and hence customise your communications/marketing
03:02 – Why don’t companies go where their audience is?
05:42 – Is there a perceived credibility problem with social media?
06:48 – How well received would brands be on Plurk?
07:50 – Maybe if they talked about things other than just selling, they might be better received.
08:31 – No messages from unknown faces please!
11:46 – Should employees reach out from their own identity, or create one aligned with a company?
13:02 – “Dear All” = Fail
15:03 – How about Facebook Groups?
15:39 – Facebook Groups more as personality “labels” rather than a communication channel
16:40 – Maybe Facebook Groups would work if the creators made an effort to communicate to the group
16:47 – But this can be overdone too
18:20 – Is this an intrinsic problem because Facebook Groups have no RSS?
If you’ve been following me on Twitter or Plurk, you may have gathered hints about a podcast coming your way.
Well, it’s here! It’s called Genny (pronounced Jenny – you have Krisandro to thank for the name) and the deal behind the podcast is that we decided to just get a handful of people from Generation Y in Singapore, and just really talk about what’s going on. Sometimes it’ll be about social media, sometimes it won’t be.
First, let me introduce the people in this podcast:
GennY Episode 1 Team
Krisandro, myself, Dorothy, Yin and Yinqi make up the people behind this episode, but it’s a revolving team and the voices will change from time to time, depending on who’s available to record the show. (Big thanks to Ingrid for putting together the graphic!)
As our first episode goes, this is pretty raw because we just sat in a room and talked into a laptop (Anyone wants to sponsor us proper podcast equipment?), but I hope you enjoy it anyway. It can only get better.
The show notes:
00:00 – Krisandro starts us off – introductions all round
00:53 – The topic: How is Gen Y different in the work force?
01:28 – Will Gen Y mindset change during the recession?
02:26 – Gen Y has no qualms with changing jobs, even in a recession
03:39 – Perhaps Gen Y feels there isn’t enough recognition at work
05:08 – Did the media influence Gen Y’s outlook on life?
07:56 – How is Gen Y different outside the workspace in peer-to-peer interactions?
09:57 – How does online interaction affect offline interaction?
10:51 – Krisandro claims he’s 19
11:01 – Are there different norms that apply online and offline?
11:58 – Maybe it’s easier for us to verify if people are weirdos online
15:10 – Blooper!
Please check out the podcast here and give us your feedback! If you’d like us to cover a certain topic, just drop a message in the comments. Thanks for your support!
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!
Ridz shared a news article via Plurk (yes, that’s how we get our news), talking about the aftermath of the cleaner who got killed by the white tigers in a tragic accident at the Singapore Zoo.
Somewhere in the article, is this paragraph:
Tool And Nail
So my question is: who proof reads this stuff? As it is most people aren’t reading the newspapers anyway, should we have to suffer painful recording in the digital version as well? And just who wrote the article anyway? I see absolutely no mention of the author which almost makes me feel it was assigned to an intern or something.
There was an allusion to “Tribes” a couple of times in yesterday’s post, listen to Seth Godin talk about it for more than an hour in this special edition of the Marketing Over Coffee podcast. It took me a long time to finish it because my daily commute is five minutes, but so worth it.
Generation Y, Digital Natives & Millennials
Workplace 2.0: Motivating and Managing Millennials – Very short (12 pages total, about 8 pages of content) PDF file on managing millennials (aka: us). It doesn’t actually give much of a “how to”, but it does lead you to understanding us more. I must say he is right on about fervour, hard work and tireless labour. I’d work overtime, for free, for a job that’s rewarding in an industry I’m passionate about.
Digital Natives are here by Mitch Joel – Again, great post to help the people in management understand the digital natives. I feel a lot of people still aren’t ready to accept that our generation is a little bit different and that being constantly connected is more of an empowerment than a distraction. But those organisations who do grasp that, are going to be able to channel us much more efficiently.
Social Media Strategy
The Strategist and Social Media by Kami Huyse – Great slides in there that you should read if you’re beginning to think of a social media strategy, especially points about risks of social media engagement, and the Sea World case study.
MTV to MySpace: Post Our Content, Please – you might remember in my review of the book/rant Cult Of The Amateur by Andrew Keen that he called Viacom (parent company of MTV) suing YouTube a “powerful message”. I say the partnership between MTV and MySpace is a) a more powerful message b) a sign that at least one player in the industry waking up to reality.
The Top Ten Reasons iTunes Sucks – I agree with every single point mentioned here, and it absolutely sucks that Apple obviously doesn’t care what people are saying, with similar issues existing in 2006. At this point I hate iTunes so much, I’d pay money for a programme that would solve these problems.
As always, share your links with me in the comments, or you can find me on delicious.
Our criteria is simple: If we are likely to use a particular brand on an average day, we’ll include it in. So for example, even though I may only use my Flip Mino once or twice a week, I include it because the probability I use it on an average day is about even.
While originally, this was organised by timeline (i.e. at what time would you interact with which brand), I’ve decided to do it by category because I think it says more about my consumption patterns that way. Does it mean I use all of these brands everyday? No. But it’s fairly representative in that if I feel like a coffee, Tim Hortons is my destination.
Social Media/Web Apps
Social Media/Web Apps
So I’ll start, obviously, with social media and web apps. This is fairly straightforward, but the one thing I noticed when I started to list down the brands I’d include, was that Windows Media Player was an app I particularly wanted to list due to my immense dislike of iTunes.
Technology/Gadgets
Technology & Gadgets
Pretty straightforward here, so I’ll leave it as that.
Apparel
Apparel
This was just about the hardest category to do. For each of the brands listed up there, I have only one or two products from them: Zara (jacket, coat), Nike (sneakers), American Eagle (wallet), H&M (jacket, scarf), Guess (jeans), Levis (boxers, jeans).
This by no means indicates clothes aren’t important to me, just that I’d rather find some obscure shop and find a “slogan” tee, rather than head to the Gap or wherever to purchase one. However, the brands I do purchase for clothes (particularly Zara, Guess and Nike), I’m particularly loyal to.
Hygiene
Hygiene
Hygiene was fun to do because I have so many products. The ones I’m listing here are only those I’m using here with me in Canada, and I’m sure I have plenty more back home. I’m going to say hygiene is one area where I’m most susceptible to advertising.
Oral B from the whole “more dentists use” ads, Colgate was on all the time growing up, Axe from all the cool male advertising, Gillette is everywhere as well. I also want to say I actually have a strong dislike for Adidas as a brand, but only use their deodorant because it complements the cologne.
Interests
Interests
This was another really hard category because you don’t have brands for “books” or “music” or “Heroes” or “Lost”. So I included the brands of graphic novels I’m likely to read, as well as MTV (the TV channel I’m most likely to watch) and EA Sports which is the brand of the game (FIFA ‘09) that I’m playing now
Food
Food And Drink
This was not surprising at all. I generally don’t care about the food I eat, but I do like my drinks. The interesting thing here is that none of these brands would exist if I was blogging about this from Singapore. Tim Hortons would be Starbucks, Molson Canadian beer would be Corona, and Vitamin Water doesn’t exist. In other words, my brand preference is rather flexible and easily changed. Prior to coming here I hadn’t tried either Tim Hortons or Molson Canadian, but they’ve displaced my usual brands pretty quickly.
Finally, one miscellaneous brand:
Equality Logo
This is Equality, which is, from what I can tell, the house brand of Canada. Easily 20-40% of the stuff we buy here for the house, is from the Equality brand. Microwave food, toilet paper, eggs, canned food and much much more is all Equality.
I guess this is meaningful because when we first came here and went to the supermarket, we didn’t know what brands to get, but the mere pervasiveness of Equality made us gravitate towards it. Also, even though Equality easily accounts for a large portion of our weekly expenditure, I couldn’t find its’ logo online, and had to take a picture to get it. An overlooked brand, perhaps?
My takeaways from this exercise?
1) I experiment with a lot of brands. Nikon, HTC, Molson Canadian and Vitamin Water didn’t exist in my mind one year ago, but they do now.
2) I consider myself part of the “tribe” of some brands than others. Skullcandy, Nike, Flip, Sony, Axe, and MTV just to name a few.
3) Old habits die hard. I don’t think I’ve ever used another toothbrush except Oral B, or toothpaste except Colgate. Even if I did see products from other brands on the shelves, they don’t even register. It’s also very hard for me to use other social bookmarking tools like Twine because I’m so used to Delicious.
4) Word of mouth influences my purchase decisions a lot. Skullcandy, Sony, Nikon, Axe, Firefox, HTC, Flip, Versace and Tim Hortons are all word of mouth brands, that are now favourite brands.
How about you? What are the brands you feel passionately about? How do they fit into your daily/weekly/monthly behavior? If you were to do one of these by category or by timeline, how would it look?
ps: I’m sure I left out some brands of stuff that I use but just didn’t take note off, please excuse that.
Following people who aren’t creating enough value (as opposed to “individuals that can create the most engaging media”)
and that “Any individual who isn’t “hyperconnected” is not going to benefit equally and I would argue is much more likely to eventually leave the site.”
I don’t outright disagree with these points (although I feel everyone joins Twitter with little to no followers and is far from “hyperconnected”), but I think if you distill it down to one single thing: they’re people who aren’t willing to invest the time to get the results:
They don’t bother finding out who’s talking about the topics they’re interested in (or for the companies, who’s talking about their brand)
They don’t bother finding the niche who is interested about the type of value they create.
And they certainly don’t spend the time to cultivate enough relationships to be “hyperconnected”.
I cross-reference this to a very important point from Christopher Penn’s video: Building Blocks of Social Media: Social Media Prerequisites: if you’re not used to spending time talking and listening to people (or if your company isn’t), then social media is not for you.
Maybe that’s why it’s okay to hire someone for your social media firm if he’s demonstrating an understanding of Twitter. It’s the right fit as opposed to those wanting instant results, instant relationships and instant ROI.
ps: I’m using Twitter for this post because that’s the context of the post I linked to, but it could easily apply to Plurk, FriendFeed or any other tool that requires a lot of communication and interaction.
It’s the wrong move, but ad spend, marketing and PR are the first things to go when budgets get cut, especially in recessions. Which means it’s never been a better time to look at social media tools as a great alternative.
In those small pockets of time that Plurk is down, some of us still go over to Twitter, and Brian Solis gives a great rundown of tools available, which is worth reading if you’re using Twitter for business or community management. (ps: I’m on Twitter too)
Community Management
Speaking of community management, Corvida over at Shegeeks.netrecounts her lessons as community manager for Read Write Web. Most important for people thinking they’re community managers, “Everyone wants to be our friend” is a very terrible misconception. Get with the programme.
Word Of Mouth
Andy Sernovitz aka the word of mouth guy has a post called “Give away your buns” which brings home the lesson: “Every spoiling asset is a marketing tool”. I’ve seen this – or rather the lack of this – at work too many times. It’s time for companies to start utilising word of mouth more effectively.
Did you read anything mindblowing this week? Would you care to share? Share it with me on Delicious.com, or post it in the comments below! Did you find the links useful? What type of links would you like to read more of? Love to hear from you as well.
Taking a page out of numerous social media sites, this blog post has the sole intention of asking you to subscribe to my rss feed so you can get content delivered straight to you, and never miss a post!
If you have no idea what an rss feed is, I have a nifty little guide to get you started (complete with images). If you’re already subscribed, do you have a friend who’s into social media? Facebook? Vimeo? Twitter? Plurk? Or just trying to figure out this whole Web2.0 space? Why not recommend this blog to him/her?
Here are a few posts which generated some interest recently, if you’d like to pass them along:
