Web Design, Digital & Social Media Marketing in Singapore

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.

Will the Twitter craze hit Singapore?

// July 2nd, 2009 // No Comments » // Social Media Marketing

Twitter in Singapore

I asked myself this question before I decided to take the plunge into the world of tweets. I cannot find statistics of twitter users in Singapore. I asked around and most of my peers heard of twitter, probably got an account but has never used it since then.

The question is our mind is – who the hell what’s to do what you are watching, eating or playing with? I can do take on Facebook, I can share that on my blog so why twitter?

I recalled 10 years back when Blogs hit the shores of Singapore. People where asking, who the heck with the right frame of mind will want to publish his/her diary online? And who would want to read them?

Today, blogs have evolved. It has taken over corporate websites, spearheading the frontlines of digital marketing for various companies, allowing them to share their thought process and beliefs with clients. Blogs has became an integral part of digital marketing, a powerful tool in SEO and a necessity for promoting thought leadership. Would those would ridiculed the thought of a Weblog10 years back be left wondering how mypoic they were? I was one of them. my friends.

I see Twitter as a form of blog -micro-blogging. I didn’t coin that that word. With the emergence of multiple social media channels, consumers and companies will find it more an more difficult to devote their precious time to these channels. Maintaining a blog is time consuming task. As such, we are seeing a hybrid of blog and tweets. Blog sites can now pull twitter feeds real-time. Integrating these 2 channels allows content to be updated regularly. Tweet content that are shorter, or a hyperlink to a good read somewhere, etc. Blog content that are longer and requires more efforts in articulating your points.

Twitter will take roots in Singapore. Soon.

Integrating social media marketing into your digital strategy

// July 2nd, 2009 // No Comments » // Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing in baby steps

All these years, we have been focusing on SEO (and also SEM) as part of our internet marketing strategy to drive traffic to our websites. We have been obsessed with page rankings, keywords optimization, inbound links, etc. We are not wrong. But today, it is important to recognize that consumers are not just relying on search engines to find information, there are many more places that they search now.

We need to look into social media marketing as part of our strategy. Companies need to be more searchable in social media networks as well. Probably soon, somebody will be coming up with a social media page rank. From this perspective, Search Engine Optimization should be expanded to include Social Media Marketing, thus the new term Search Optimization.

According to the Aberdeen group research report released in March 2009:-
* 63% of companies surveyed plan to increase their social media marketing budgets
* 21% plan to increase spending by 25% or more
* 34% responding plan to make no change.
* only 3% plan to shrink social media budgets

This clearly shows that despite the current economy turmoil, which also hit us badly in Singapore, companies are beginning to understand that traffic sources are no longer solely dependent on SEO.

Companies in Singapore is slow to pick up social media marketing. They have heard alot about it but is clueless what it can be done and how it should be done. If we understand the important of being Search Optimized, our strategies our clients should  My point is that agencies need to start educating clients, encouraging them to take small steps into social media marketing. Illustrating to them their ROIs and managing their expectations. Small steps in this infant market is crucial.

Social Media explained

// June 26th, 2009 // No Comments » // Social Media Marketing

Social Media in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

A simple-to-understand video on what’s social media all about.

To me, the emergence of Social Media, globally and in Singapore, allow consumers to influence decisions of fellow consumers. At the same time, it shifted the way businesses are managed and forces people like the ‘Big Ice Cream Factory’ to rethink on their marketing strategies.

The video did not really touch on how the ‘Big Ice Cream Factory’ be affected by groundswell. Although it benefited directly from the increased sale of vanila flavoured ice cream, there are other more crucial effects that may result from this.

First, social media flattens the playing field. Small start-ups that has a ‘better idea’ can now compete on a level playing field with the big boys. They focus on a niche market, has a smaller but more loyal customer base. They are nimble and if they are listening to their customers, they will be able to change product offerings based on consumers’ demand. The ‘Big Ice Cream Factory’ now faces the risk of losing market-share, when more and more such start-ups emerge. What the ‘Big Ice Cream Factory’ can do is to then flex their ‘$ muscle’, invest heavily in traditional advertising and attempt to influence buying decisions. That increases cost of sales and diminishes margins. Even if the market share is maintained, profits are reduced. How long can that last?

It is natural that companies will start looking at this powerful medium eventually (if they have yet to). That will change the way they market their products, engage their consumers, develop new products and even the way their organize their teams. The effect of social media to businesses is deep.

Chris Brogan: Listening in Social Media

// June 21st, 2009 // No Comments » // Social Media Marketing

Social Media is not merely for marketing. It is a space where meaningful conversations on brands are taking place. It is beneficial for companies to filter these conversations from chatters and derive insights on information pertaining to their brands and products. I found a tool call SPY by Ben Hedrington. It is a search engine that sniffs out conversations on blogs, flickr, twitter & more.

Chris Brogan – Don’t be that guy!

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

Excellent way in articulating the ‘wrong way’. We cannot further emphasize that social media is not a place or peddling your wares. You don’t do it in real life too. I was doing a presentation couple of days ago and was emphasizing that to the client. Imagine going into a social gathering for the first time and you whipped out your products and started pushing them to everyone you meet. We just don’t do that in real life. People that do these things are usually ‘excluded’ from the community immediately. In social media, it is the same.

Listen to Chris – don’t be that guy. please.

Why a Facebook username?

// June 13th, 2009 // No Comments » // Social Media Marketing

Facebook Username

The debate among the facebook community over the need to have a vanity URL, similar to what Twitter and MySpace, has been around for some time. It is until 87 mins ago that Facebook allows us to ‘land-grab’ our own piece of digital property. I got mine – http://www.facebook.com/jason.lim. I was excited. I email blasted all my colleagues at Oasis Interactive, my family and my buddies. Some asked me the need to have that URL?

Shareability

Less than 2 hours ago from this blog post, you need to tell your friend “search for Jason Lim on Facebook” and “I am somewhere on the 2nd page”. At this exact moment, I will say – “Find me at http://www.facebook.com/jason.lim“.

Branding

Having a vanity URL allows more ways to incorporate facebook as part of one’s personal branding strategy. Your links are now more meaningful and may even be useful in some aspect of SEO too.

Have you gotten yours?

LinkedIn made easy

// June 3rd, 2009 // No Comments » // Social Media Marketing

photo credits : Binkiexxx

One of the most asked questions from my clients – What’s LinkedIn and how it can benefit my business?

If you use Facebook to connect to friends, you can use LinkedIn to connect to business associates. LinkedIn is a social networking site where an individual creates an online profile of his/her professional resume. With that profile, he/she then connects to someone in LinkedIn and through that network, establish new job opportunities or business opportunities.

Within your network of business contacts, you can recommend or as to be introduced to other contacts. LinkedIn allows users to also create and join groups. Within these groups, users can discuss and share ideas on the specific topics.

Here are some ways that you can use LinkedIn to leverage on your career or business:-

Join groups and get involved in discussions

Participate in discussion within groups that are related to a your industry. It is through this participation that you inherit new ideas and also made yourself known. In your discussion, you have the opportunity to be heard, make relevant references to your blog posts and even use case studies in your business to reinforce a point you are making. If you are doing it right, you will be able to increase the visibility of your business and brand, generate sales leads, drive traffic to your websites and even enhance your SEO efforts.

Set up a company profile

A properly crafted company profile page will open your company to attract potential candidates. Add links to your company’s blog, facebook group, twitter account, etc. Your digital footprint is something that you can leverage on to attract talents, at the same time, give your potential clients a feel of your corporate culture.

You may want to know before jumping in…

There are a few issues you may want to keep in mind before launching a campaign on LinkedIn.

Confidential corporate information – Similar to any online social media networks, the risk corporate information leaking is real. That risk is multiplied if there is a huge number of employees in LinkedIn. You may want to communicate some simple house rules for employees to aid them in understanding what’s considered ‘confidential’.

Poaching – It is known that recruiters use LinkedIn and other professional networking sites to headhunt potential candidates for their assignments. You may also want to know even without LinkedIn, poaching and headhunting still exists.

You are want you posted - Again, like any social networking, you are what you post. Your corporate culture is also reflected based on how you ‘behave’ on LinkedIn. Be mindful that you are being watched by potential employers, clients and more importantly, your BOSS!

Have fun!