Digital & Social Media Marketing in Singapore

Digg is 5 years old – Celebrates the power of consumers’ voice

// January 28th, 2010 // No Comments » // Social Media Marketing

TED : It is okay to lose control

// 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).

5 steps to generating leads from LinkedIn

// January 26th, 2010 // No Comments » // Social Media Marketing

Your profile is what you are

On LinkedIn (just like in any other social media spaces), you are what your profile says. As such, it is important that your LinkedIn profile is not only up-to-date but clearly reflects that you do and what you are good at. Put some thoughts into crafting a profile for the job you want.

If you are are a Business Analyst looking out for opportunities in the digital marketing space, changing your current job title to ‘Business Analyst (Marketing / Social Media) will put you within the search radar immediately. Integrate your blog and blog about relevant topics. Get affiliated with relevant groups and start participating in LinkedIn Answers.

Get connected and reconnected

Once your profile is up-to-date and is able to tell people clearly what you are doing and good at, start connecting with people that you know. Take the stack of namecards from your drawer and start searching for contacts that are on LinkedIn too.

Make it a point that whenever you receive a new namecard, do a search on LinkedIn and see if you can locate the contact. Build your network this way and see it grows! Remember to include your LinkedIn URL in your email signature, blog and any digital assets so you can be located easily.

LinkedIn groups – Be seen, be heard.

With new connections adding up, look into potential customers’ profiles and see what are the groups that they are active in. Join them and listen to the conversations that are happening within these groups. Not only will you be able to identify trends, you may even identify gaps in the industry where your expertise can fill. If there are specific conversations that falls within your expertise / knowledge, participate and contribute. That makes you visible to your potential customers.

LinkedIn Answers

As part of your personal branding, you should be actively participating in LinkedIn Answers, sharing experiences and knowledge with peers and potential customers. If there is a particular question that you would like to answer, create a blog post that is related to that question and blog about it. At LinkedIn Answers, give a condensed version of your answer and refer the reader to that blog post. That way, you drive traffic to your blog when answering the question.

Don’t Forget LinkedIn’s Profile Update

Many LinkedIn users skipped this which comes in handy when you want people to know your newly acquired customer, a new solution or product that you have launched or even a new project that you are working on. Keep your LinkedIn connections informed!

Social Media Marketing – A new business opportunity for digital agencies?

// November 3rd, 2009 // No Comments » // Digital Campaigns, Digital Marketing, Social Media Marketing

Digital agencies are probably getting more enquiries on social media marketing lately. Clients have been asking what can they do on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc. All of a sudden there seems to be a huge demand but is this an opportunity for digital agencies to monetize or it is a wake-up call for us to understand the need to stay relevant in this ever-evolving digital space.

At the end of the day, the agency job is to equip the clients with a strategy in connecting with their customers, a platform to do that, best practices in managing it and tracking metrics to allow R.O.I. reporting. But the actual implementation is still very much by the client. The only possible way to monetize is a retainer fee to help the client stay on the intended path, or help them in making tweaks to fine-tune the entire strategy.

So if you ask me if there’s money to be made here, I will probably say no. As an agency, knowing how to deal with social media allows you to integrate them into your digital strategy, making your outreach campaigns more viral, more influential, more human. Social media marketing should be seen as part of your client digital strategy and it is key that the agency is able to harness this to build better brands via the digital space.

Jetstar Asia’s radio ads – Example of content marketing

// October 2nd, 2009 // No Comments » // Digital Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Web Design

On my way to work in the morning, the Jetstar Asia’s radio ad always catches my attention. I think it resonates strongly with my belief in content marketing. 90% of the ad talks about highlights of the destination, content that tourist visiting will like to know. That’s an excellent example of content marketing. You share contents that are relevant to your potential customers, allow them to consume these contents, over a period of time, build a relationship and influence a sale at the end of the day.

I was hoping to get more information on the ad about nightlife in Taipei from their website. To my surprise, there was indeed a free travel guide for Taipei that I could download for free. 2 thumbs up!

I see an extension to this radio ad campaign to the digital space by publishing these guides onto a Jetstar travel blog, allow their customers to comment or share experiences and thus, completing the entire experience. The blog posts which are search engine-friendly (if they are properly crafted) will also help drive relevant traffic to the website.

I will fly Jetstar the next time I visit Taipei. ;o)

Google SideWiki changes the world wide web to a singular Social Web

// September 27th, 2009 // No Comments » // Digital Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Web Design

Google recently launched the SideWiki plug-in for firefox and IE browsers. With SideWiki installed, anyone can now contribute comments to any webpages. Yes, any webpages. That effectively converted the entire world wide web to a singular social web that empowers consumer to comment on anything & everything.

The SideWiki feature adopts a user rated system that determines the ranking of each comment. Comments that are voted ‘useful’ gets a higher ranking. Abuses can be reported to Google so the folks there can review the offending comment and decide if it should be removed.

Brands hesitant in embracing the social web now has a new challenge right at their doorstep. SideWiki has basically created a comment box on all their webpages allowing anyone to pen their views. Think about your competitors posting a comment that focuses on the weaknesses of your product and emphasizing their strengths over yours. Think about happy customers complimenting your staff for a pleasant experience at one of your outlets or a unhappy customer complaining about the quality of your services. Can you ignore these like you used to because it is happening elsewhere and not on your website?

This is major step forward in the transition of the world wide web to social web and there is more to come. The key is to start learning how to embrace the social web, understand and accept that your corporate website has became a platform where consumers can now openly discuss, comment and compliment you. Listen to the consumers and address issues to deliver a more consumer-focus, consumer-centric and consumer-driven service / product. Equip your people with skills in handling positive and negative feedback and not sweep them under the carpet.

Video : Did You Know 4.0

// September 22nd, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Agency Management, Digital Marketing, Social Media Marketing

Ain’t you glad you are in this exciting business? ;o)
Tip – Great stats for you when preparing your decks!

Video – Clay Shirky: How social media can make history

// September 8th, 2009 // No Comments » // Social Media Marketing

This is a great video on how social media will change the way we see, understand and do things. It is also a great tool to use to convince brands the power of groundswell and the need to understand it. The takeaway piece for this video is the need to understand and adopt the ‘mature way’ of embracing social media.

btw, you should make it a habit to view one video a day from ted.com. I sure made me smarter. ;o)

Are digital agencies in Singapore embracing social media?

// August 3rd, 2009 // No Comments » // Agency Management, Social Media Marketing

Social media changes the way we do businesses. At least, that’s what most digital marketers believe and preach. We have always been telling our clients here in Singapore the importance of listening to the clients, building relationships and establishing trusts online. So how about ourselves as digital agencies?

Marketing
I did a quick search on google “digital agency singapore“.  The 1st page contains 5 local digital agencies (I have filtered out those non-agency results):-

• Profero Singapore
• Above 1
• Adwright
• Oasis Interactive
• Method Media

There is no doubt that all these agencies are established and respectable companies that serves some of the best brands in the Singapore. My question is – if we are are digital marketers, shouldn’t the agency be embracing digital media to the fullest, including social media? Blogs, LinkedIn, Twitter feeds, facebook, etc….

People
Like our clients, we started off with people that are not exactly into social media. There is a phase where existing team members need to ‘educated’ on social media marketing and I have been through that myself. Implementing social media to a group of team members that have their primary jobs to perform is not exactly the easiest task around. People that live on social media do not need to be reminded to tweet, update their blogs, tag their friends of flickr & facebook… I would see the shift in recruitment criteria in digital agencies to include being ’sm-savvy’ as one of the primary criteria soon.

To be continued…

Banking & Social Media in Singapore

// July 14th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Social Media Marketing

Banking and Social Media

I chanced upon an article shared via Twitter a couple of days ago. It is called ‘Social Media and the banking Industry’. The article touches on statistics on the adoption of social media as part of the banks’ digital strategy as well as some examples on how they were implemented. I was just talking to a good friend whom runs a financial institution in Singapore about the use of social media for banks. This blog post is for you bro.

The use of blogs for knowledge sharing with fellow team members across organizations has been adopted by many corporations for years. However, for the banking industry, we have yet to see blogs as a form of social media marketing tool being embraced by banks and financial institutions. I’m going use Wells Fargo as an example to showcase how blogs can be part of banks or financial institutions’ digital strategy.

Wells Fargo was the first bank in US to launch a corporate blog in March 2006. It has now expanded the use of corporate blog as a key platform in listening, understanding and communicating with its customers. It takes courage within the hierarchy of a bank to do this and they have my deepest respect.

The roles of the blogs run by Wells Fargo is to communicate. To communicate in a personal, non-intrusive way. To enable a conversation between the bank and the customer. To allow the bank to listen and know what the client wants and expects.

In the case of a merger between Wells Fargo & Wachovia, the blog not only allows merger news and information to be disseminated, comments from the ground are also heard and addressed. If such concerns are widespread, the following blog post will address them in greater detail. Adopting a blog approach in their digital PR strategy in this case facilitated listening and allows ‘questions’ from turning into ‘issues’.

The blog also focus on specific products like the student loan. It engages potential customers with good and useful content,  allowing banking relationships to be build from college years. That relationship is eventually the key factor in more businesses when the student graduates.

Banks need to wake up to the call of groundswell. There are numerous forums and online communities in Singapore that are talking about banking products and services. Choose to ignore gets you out of trouble momentarily, choose to listen allows you to learn insights of market demands, choose to engage will give you the leading advantage over the rest of the pack.