I advocate the use of information architecture to build user-centric websites and leverage on social media channels popular in Singapore to drive relevant and recurring traffic. Let me share with you how social media marketing can help your business in Singapore.
// March 7th, 2011 // No Comments » // Digital Campaigns, Social Media Marketing
I shared this video sometime back on how Old Spice uses the social media in their digital campaign – “The man your man can smell like’. Now check this case study out.
Old Spice Social Case Study from Digital Buzz on Vimeo.
// September 20th, 2010 // No Comments » // Social Media Marketing
A cheeky yet clever facebook campaign that I came across this morning.
First, it uses facebook’s founder Mark Zukerberg as the subject since facebook is one the most popular social networking site whom huge datacenter infrastructure consumes a whole load of electricity that was generated by the dirty old coal. Second, it drives the message across strongly using the concept of ‘befriending’ and ‘unfriending’ in facebook to challenge users to exert pressure on facebook and leading organizations to switch towards environmental-friendly energy sources.
Greenpeace has been working on the IT sector for the last 5 years and according to Greenpeace, based on current growth rates of data centers and telecommunication networks, the two key components of the cloud Facebook depends on, will consume about 1,963 billion kilowatts hours of electricity in 2020. That’s more than triple their current consumption and more than the current electricity consumption of France, Germany, Canada and Brazil combined.
Let’s see if social media can help this meaningful cause.
// September 16th, 2010 // No Comments » // Social Media Marketing
The web is finally ‘humanized’ after all these years and that’s how we want it to be. Consumers expect brands to listens and if that happens, they are more willing to start listening to brands as well. Blogging or micro-blogging will help brands and businesses to start engaging the consumers on an authentic and personal level.
As I have always said to my clients, if your products or services suck, social media will not fix it. On the contrary, it may help to amplify those flaws. The key is to understand from the conversions and learn why consumers think your products and service sucks. Fix it! On the other hand, if your products or services rocks, you may jolly be hitching a ride on the bandwagon, getting leverage from the word-of-mouth that can be generated from social media.
The corporate online newsroom are seen as an online depositary for press releases. The fact is most journalists research using the web and if the online newsroom is search optimized, you are on your way to being found. Apply SEO techniques and best practices to your newsroom is key to standing out and being found.
When brands get out in the web and start to engage consumers authentically, they can start building an audience. As that conversation grows, the audience evolves into a community. Over time, when trust between brand and consumer is forged, you get people that are willingly listening to what you have to say. Wouldn’t that beats email blasting content to an unknown base and hoping for click-throughs to happen?
It takes a mindset shift for companies to be able to engage authentically with consumers on the social web. The effort is ongoing and there aren’t shortcuts to building a loyal and satisfied community on social media. But the fruits of labour will be equally sweet.
// September 15th, 2010 // No Comments » // Digital Campaigns, Social Media Marketing
An interesting application of Facebook Places in digital marketing by Nike Sportswear. Probably one of the first few campaigns that uses Facebook Places.
With Facebook places, marketers can now explore location-based campaigns such as checking-in to a store to enjoy discounts or freebies. Developers can also leverage on the Facebook Places API to integrate their apps with Facebook Places to pull information about people, locations, groups and more. At this point, only a couple of apps like Foursquares will integrate with Fb places.
Looking forward to see this being launched in Singapore soon. For Businesses, remember to ‘Claim your business’ on Fb Places the moment it is launched here so early adopters can start checking-in @ your location.
// August 25th, 2010 // No Comments » // Social Media Marketing
With the launch of Facebook Places in US and hopefully it will be rolled out here soon, the potential in leveraging on this to connect to consumers is now even greater. With an open API, I’ll imagine when you visit a restaurant’s website, you will be able to see a list of friends whom have dined at that restaurant and the comments that they have left. You may even catch a friend whom have just ‘checked-in’ and is there at that exact moment.
// May 25th, 2010 // No Comments » // Social Media Marketing
Since the time when social media marketing gained the attention of marketeers, it has always been perceived that social media marketing is free. You don’t need to pay Wordpress, facebook, flickr, youtube and linkedin (even though some of them have paid service) to get on the social media bandwagon. And again, viral is perceived as free since it is the users that is sharing, retweeting & forwarding content to their network for you, without asking you to pay them!
The truth is the tools are often free but the labour required to set up, manage and maintain the individual outlets are not. Social media marketing basically reallocates some of your budget for paid media to paid labour. Realistically, companies that are embracing the social web need to know it is not a short-term, tactical campaign. The true form of social media marketing is to engage, influence and eventually build trust and relationships to create brand loyalty. Having said that, the manpower costs incurred need to be audited and accounted for prior any long-term social media implementation. Manpower to manage this initiative should not conveniently be the marketing team. This will avoid the initiative being stalled or reduced to crawling speed when the allocated (or should I say ‘arrowed’) resources are busy with their primarily work responsibilities.
Here are some pointers to take note:-
1. If you’re into blogging, build an editorial calendar and identify the resources required to write the blog posts. You will see if existing company resources are sufficient in handling that.
2. If you’re onto social networks, know what you want to do and intend to achieve from these networks. Allocate sufficient time per day to monitor, respond and engage the community in these networks. Review if your existing headcount can handle those tasks.
3. If you’re into flickr or youtube, ask if you have the resources in content creation. It sounds easy to grab a camera or video camera to shoot and post but realistically, it takes time to do that and more than often, the post-editing part is 2-3x the time spent on photography/filming. Identify costs of outsourcing these if you intend to.
4. In a long run, you will need someone to manage your social media initiatives. Identify consultant fees, workshops/courses for internal teams, agency fees and even a dedicated headcount if things get bigger.
I’m not saying social media is going to cost you an arm or a leg, neither am I saying it is not worth embracing it. The key is to set the expectations right.
// May 21st, 2010 // No Comments » // Social Media Marketing
I like the part where it says (2.45 min)
“Do you like what they are saying about your brand? You better”
Anyone came across stats that are based on Asiapac?
// April 14th, 2010 // No Comments » // Social Media Marketing
Photo courtesy of Marco D @ Flickr.com
Year 2000 or earlier, campaign objectives revolve around customer acquisition. A decade later now, clients raved about customer retention – to retain customers, build customer loyalty, establish trust, increase referrals – all aiming at increasing profits for the client. In my opinion as a digital marketer being socially optimized will help the client’s business a great deal in retaining customers and increasing profits.
Digital campaigns that I worked on require some form of measurement so the client and I know what worked, and what did not. I am inclined to measure effectiveness of each campaign based on the level of engagement and interaction in each campaign. Here is a list of metrics that I used in some of the campaigns:-
The only logical way of measurement, to me, with a lack of statistical data over a significant timeframe, is to measure the above metrics over a period of time (3-6 months) and peg the statistics to actual sales figures or revenue. With that, I can correlate revenue growth vs metrics. This shows what worked, what do not. Again, I stress that the expectation in measuring success of a digital campaign needs to be worked out with the client so both digital agency and client is on the “same wavelength”.
// January 28th, 2010 // No Comments » // Social Media Marketing
// January 27th, 2010 // No Comments » // Digital Campaigns, Social Media Marketing
The part that hits me most is the summarizing slides:- “It is okay to lose control. Because you are no longer in control.” What companies and brands in Singapore need to know is the consumers have a voice louder than theirs and the way to go is to embrace and co-create the experience with consumers. One-way, top-down, monologue will not work in today’s environment (okay, it will probably work a little if you have lots and lots of budget).
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