Tommy Vallier from Kingston, where I lived for almost five months, talks about a great idea of local hashtags to make local tweets even more searchable and relevant:
It’s been hard, though, because while big events have dedicated hashtags, smaller going-ons never do.
Because long hashtags don’t make sense thanks to Twitter’s 140 character limit, and over-general hashtags like #singapore would generate too much noise, Tommy suggested breaking up Kingston the same way Canada Post does, by postal code.
Kingston and Singapore have a lot in common. We’re both very small (although Singapore’s population is something like 45x on the same landmass), and we’re quite easily broken up into zones. The problem with hashtags like #sgtweetup and #smbsg and #openroom is that they can only be found by people who know what they’re looking for. The chance of serendiptous discovery is slim to none.
So what if we added in hyper-local hashtagging? Districts like #amk or #cck are too local (I feel) and too limiting (what’s the hashtag for Simei?). Perhaps the answer is in separating it into 5 parts:
#sgn - north
#sgs - south
#sge - east
#sgw - west
#sgc - central
An extra four characters to keep it short and sweet and easy to add on. Of course this isn’t fullproof (I don’t know where I’d put Sengkang), but if we imagine the rough outline of where the MRT trains go, we could possibly give a close to subjective hashtag to add more relevance to our tweets.
What do the Tweeters in Singapore think? Too troublesome? No one cares about local tweets? Or would it help tell you more about events, traffic, weather, news etc? I want to know what you think.
I don’t know about sales, but I bet it got a few people thinking “oh yeah, time for me to replace my Gillette razor blade”. The 195 ratings with an average of 4.5 stars since it was posted two weeks ago surely can’t hurt either.
In short: It’s fun, fairly tongue-in-cheek, actually provides some useful information and is definitely spreadable. What’s not to like? Oh and it probably came in at a fraction of buying an ad on tv.
Happening in September, the Social Networking World Forum comes to Asia, and as conferences go, I’m pretty excited for this one as they are great speakers like Ian Stewart, Benjamin Grubbs and Paras Sharma, all of whom I have heard speak firsthand, and I’m sure they will deliver outstanding sessions at the conference.
I’m also really excited on a personal note to be one of the media partners of the conference, and I think it says a lot that a worldwide event like this is beginning to recognise blogs as “media”, and going through the effort to partner up with them.
So what I really want to do with this blog post is highlight a few things:
This is a quick overview of Day One of Youth Connect! which I had the privilege of attending and being a panelist at today, and I had a really good time.
For the first time in a long time, I could listen to people who actually knew their stuff go up there and tell us about their social media efforts, demonstrate some form of ROI, and hold up under scrutiny. I admit I was all ready to roll my eyes in cynicism when a speaker went up and said he was well-versed in digital marketing with an advertising agency, but then he actually knew what he was talking about. Very different from some speakers who just talk a lot, but don’t really say anything.
So my highlight was really speaking at the youth panel with four other people from the other universities, and I have to give Graham Perkins (@grayperks)props for really revving up the crowd even though it was the last session of the day. It was by far the most interactive session I’ve had the chance to speak at, and I think the smaller size of the conference helped people get used to one another and ask questions.
One thing that I “feel” intuitively at this conference, is that people understand more about social media than they did a year ago. The types of questions I had to answer a year ago and the types of questions I had to answer today, were quite different, and basic knowledge of what Facebook is, what Twitter is, what iPhones can do, can be pretty much be assumed, which makes a lot of difference when you’re trying to answer questions without leaving anyone behind.
As always, my favourite topic of newspapers came up again (which I will blog about soon), and I did have to answer one question about the effectiveness of advertising, and whether youth actually notice them. The room gave a slightly audible gasp when I told them Gen Y is pretty much trained to “ignore” interruptive marketing and advertising, but I think it’s not an exaggeration to say that.
When one other attendee asked if anyone of the five of us saw a physical ad (print, tv, outdoor) and went online to do research on that product or service based on the ad, the answer was a resounding no. So there you have it.
Lots of other stuff I want to talk about, a few great case studies that I really enjoyed listening to, I hope to blog them soon. It’s going to be Youth Connect! Week on the blog this week, but I think you’ll enjoy reading about it.
I will say this about the organisers: It’s not a big event, but I think they brought in great speakers. Companies who paid money to attend this (especially in this recession), should be very satisfied with the value they got out of it.
A couple of days ago I was particularly bugged by bad communication and tweeted this:
My Tweet
Of course it should read “written and spoken english” instead of just “written and english”. Was totally in my mind, but somehow didn’t get translated to the keyboard. The result?
So the lesson here is really, be careful what you tweet, but if you do make a boo boo, try to see the humour in it! It happens!
I was listening to Jaffe Juice #127 a couple of days ago, and it was an episode featuring Mitch Joel from Six Pixels of Separation, two of my favourite podcasters for the “price” of one!
Amidst the many things they talked about, what really caught my attention was how they’re both doing new things. Mitch with his book and Joseph with Jaffe Juice TV. And it really got me thinking about one point:
1) If you don’t experiment you’ll never know, and if you never know, you shouldn’t be in a position to talk about it
Joseph mentions that a prerequisite to work at Crayon (his agency) is that you have to blog. And awhile back , Pat Law asked “if you ran an agency, I would…” and my response was hire people who blog. I just think you really need to know about the medium before being able to advise anyone on what they’re doing.
And sometimes the point of experimenting is just to give it a go and figure out whether it’s an avenue you want to go ahead with or not. With The GennY Podcast, we don’t even have metrics or anything, but I think just us getting together and bouncing around ideas really at least gives us an understanding of what podcasting is, and if it would make sense to bring it to work, school, whatever.
Right now, giving that organisations and companies are so far behind the social media curve, it’s the best time to start “dabbling” in it, maybe just a few hours a week, because that’s the only way you’ll know what works and what doesn’t. Just because something has been working for the last five years, doesn’t mean it’ll continue to work as well as it has been for the next five.
I guess the same lesson goes to all the people jumping on the Twitter bandwagon and just using it as a broadcast medium. Because they never tried and experimented with it in the beginning, they’re late, catching up, and as a result, using it wrongly and plain wasting resources.
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.
Awhile back I was talking to a friend who I went to school with, and she was telling me about a social media training session by an “expert” who was teaching them how to use social media to monitor their brand. This apparently covered the usual Google Alerts, as well as some of the more popular forums here in Singapore. So I asked the obvious question: “When’re you going to start participating?”
“Oh. We have to pay more for training for engagement.”
Say what?
I’m definitely not against having training for engagement. It’s way too easy to do the wrong thing when commenting on a blog, using Twitter, using Facebook or just replying on a forum. Not to mention there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for participation, and it’ll have to be customised to fit your company’s needs, which will differ from industry to industry, and even within industries, between companies.
Here’s the thing though. If I were an agency or a self-proclaimed “expert” (a term I really don’t like), I’d love it if a company contacts me and doesn’t include a request for engagement in the “training package”. Great for greed, great for money.
It’s like going to an agency and asking for something “viral” just because it’s the latest buzzword, but not having an inkling what it’s actually about, and when the agency comes back to you with an idea which is far from viral, you won’t know any better and have to take their word for it. Do you really want to take that kind of risk with your money these days?
So I think as a client, do yourself a favour and do some research on what your agency should be offering you and what you should be asking for. And if you don’t know enough and don’t have the time to know about, at least bring someone on board in your company who can tell you when your agency or “expert” is obviously shilling you.
I suppose this isn’t news, but Starhub (one of the three telcos here in Singapore) has brought its presence to the social media scene in the form of a Twitter account, @StarHubCares.
During the first few weeks, there were a few issues like @StarHubCares replying other Twitter users, asking them to direct message (dm) @StarHubCares directly, but because @StarHubCares wasn’t following them on Twitter in the first place, there was no way for a dm to get through.
Thankfully, with some help from the community, this was quickly sorted out and @StarHubCares quickly followed these people (myself included) back, and got down to replying their issues.
Here are a few questions that I do have about the initiative:
1) Should it be more transparent that the person behind @StarHubCares is not actually someone from Starhub, but their agency? Some online feel yes, I’m slightly on the fence.
2) Is Twitter the best (or even a right) channel for them to be on?
3) @StarHubCares seems to do a good job of listening in and replying to questions/problems, but are there actual accounts from them or from the general public about cases being closed, problems being solved?
4) Do regular Starhub employees know about this service, so that maybe when they close a sale at a retail outlet, they can tell customers about this service in addition to the customer helpline?
What do you think? When should a company be on Twitter? Does it fit Starhub? Should they be doing more with it? Less?
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?
