Web Design, Digital & Social Media Marketing in Singapore

Is having a huge number of twitter followers that important?

// May 25th, 2009 // No Comments » // Social Media Marketing

photo credits : brajeswhwar
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If you are a twitter user, you probably will have a couple of people following you every week. You visit their twitter page, realized that these ’social media celebrities’ has tens of thousands of followers. You think to yourself, I should reciprocate and follow back. You are not alone.

Many marketers believe that it is important  to have many twitter followers – as many as possible. It helps them create a channel to broadcast, to establish their online reputation as “I am important” or it simply makes they credible. I beg to differ.

The method of mass following is common. Many ‘twitter gurus’ make a business out of this by teaching others how to increase the number of followers in a very short time. Their tools include softwares that automatically follows people, hoping that they will reciprocate. I am not saying it is wrong. I just don’t agree.

It is about your content

In my earlier post in Social Media Optimization, I talk about quality and not quantity. I also talk about social media as 2-way communications and it is about establishing a relationship. The number of followers is irrelevant if most of them don’t even know who you are, what you do and what you are saying. Would they care a sxxt what you are trying to ‘push’ them when you have a product to sell? I don’t think so.

We heard about the success of dell using twitter to market its products, reaping in a million dollars.  They did not do mass following. They offered twitter exclusive offers instead. Dell creates a reason for followers to follow them. In this sense, it is 2-way. There are ‘contents’ that the followers are interested.

It is about commitment (time & resources)

Social media marketing requires commitment. It is time, money and manpower. It requires sustained efforts. I relate that to real-life socialization where you need to dedicate time and money to get out there and know more people, and be known at the same time. If all these sounds a lot to you or your boss, social media marketing may not be your cup of tea.

Social Media Optimization

// May 20th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Digital Marketing

photo credit – oneredpanther
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We heard about SEO – Search Engine Optimization all the time. How about ensuring your digital strategy is social media optimized too? SMO should be a natural part of your digital strategy. The challenges that we face in embracing social media as marketing tools is uncertainity in results. Here are some principles that I subscribe to when working with social media.

It starts with 2-way conversation.

Social media is about establishing a relationship. A relationship that is built from conversations – 2 way communications, to be precise. Ask questions, answer questions, share thoughts, discuss, co-create. Relationships are built like this offline too. This is the key difference between traditional media where it is 1-way.

Forget about quantity. Focus on quality.

I am sick of followers on Twitter that follows you, hoping that you will reciprocate and follow back. They are doing this just to increase the number of followers. The question is so what you have 10,000 followers? Can you boost that you can influence them with your thoughts? Sway them into making a buying decision? or simply that you can reach them with whatever messages that you think you want them to hear? That’s using marketing 1.0 methods in a web 2.0 world. It beats to have 10 followers that engages with you on a constant basis that to have 10,000 whom never even care to read about your tweets. Quality please.

Forget about viral

Viral is a natural product of correct content for the correct audience. Having ’share this with someone wouldn’t work if your content does not connect at all. Don’t harp on viral. Work on what your audiences want. Viral will come.

Set realistic goals and take little steps at a time

Social media is not the gateway to reach out to entire online population. Don’t expect phenomenon results like what you read in the papers about how successful Dell has used Twitter to increase sales of their boxes. They probably take much more time in planning, executing and tweaking before it works for them. Take little steps and keep the team motivated.

Be patient & enjoy.

When is my job done?

// May 20th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Agency Management, Web Design

It struck me hard that most of the time, digital agencies believe their scope of service ends at the launch of the website. The team’s just dying to move on once the site is launched and little attention is spent on it thereafter.

To me, the launch of the website marks the beginning of part 2 of the job. It is when real users start interacting and consuming contents that we have created. This engagement will need to be measured through properly defined tracking metrics so we can learn if the information architecture is doing its job, if we are really getting that conversion we want, or simply put, if we are meeting our goals.

It is only through this form of tracking that the team (and the client as well) can learn and make changes. That’s the beauty of digital. Track-n-Tweak!

The mindset shift that we need to do this remaining 50% job so that we can really deliver an experience to the client’s audiences and eventually, deliver results to the client impacts a number of things. It changes the way the team works, in terms of scheduling and tasks allocation, it creates the need to think deeper in terms of tracking metrics & it changes the way we do our costings.

More importantly, it changes the way clients see the agency. Which client will not be appreciative of an agency that follow-through the entire campaign, constantly on the lookout for potholes and proactively making tweaks to make sure we see results.

I believe the first step is a mindset change from the top. The rest will follow suit.

Online Campaigns – The legal part

// May 18th, 2009 // No Comments » // Digital Campaigns

Want to know who’s talking about you?

// May 17th, 2009 // No Comments » // Digital Marketing

New to Twitter?

// May 15th, 2009 // No Comments » // Social Media Marketing

Twitter don’t seem to have picked up in this region, compared to US & UK. nevertheless, if you are keen to know more, here’s a video which you may first useful.

It is the ultimate guide to twitter

I have also found an excellent guide to twitter from Design Depot. After you are done with these, read on how your business can benefit from using twitter as a marketing tool.

Enjoy.