digiramblings in singapore

So I just left my job at BLUE (still serving the two months notice) and I randomly recalled the first episode of the GennY Podcast:

"Gen Y has no qualms with changing jobs, even in a recession"

In talking to a few other people who graduated at the same time, there is this feeling of finding jobs with a better "fit", that allows us to do what we really want to in life. But (and this may be the cynic in me talking) does modern corporate life really care about what we want?

In any case, there's a great post by Christopher Penn (from the Marketing Over Coffee podcast) about fresh starts and transitioning - worth a read for anyone making or thinking of making a transition soon.

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This is more of a discussion for us Digiramblers (who have fallen off the bandwagon and need to get back on!).

Is social media marketing in Asia really feasible? The more I think of it from a purely financial ROI standpoint, the more I think maybe not.

Let's take for example a soda brand (Coke or Pepsi) here in Asia. How many cans and bottles of that stuff would you have to sell via social media to justify the cost of hiring someone to handle the Tweeting, blogging, Facebooking, listening, commenting etcetc? Probably a hell lot.

And then the real problem comes - it doesn't scale.

This isn't the US where one or two people can actively manage a company's social media efforts from a central location and then divert it across the country. You'll need someone separate for Singapore from China from Korea from Japan from Hong Kong from Vietnam so on and so forth. With the lack of scale the cost of implementing social media (remember - purely financial ROI) goes through the roof relative to the possible gains.

There are a few possible outcomes from thinking about this - but I wanna hear from you (yes you my Digirambling co-hosts) as well as you reading the blog. Is this just the reality we're facing or is there more than that? Does the non-financial, intangible benefits help make a case for overall benefits vis a vis costs? Let's hear it in the comments!

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What? No post since 28th November? Shame on us!!

I've been giving a bit of thought to how the web ties together, at least from a digital marketing point of view. I've pretty much settled on a triangle involving search, usability and social.

(note: when I refer to stuff it can be your blog, your company, your product, your service, whatever. It's all stuff.)

1. If they search for your stuff but they can't find it, you lose.
2. If they can find it but they can't figure out what they should do (what's the call to action?), you lose
3. If they can find it and do a next step but the interaction ends there, then you've left money/equity/publicity etc on the table.
4. If one way of passing it on and being social is telling someone "search for [insert keyword here]" and they can't find it, then we're back at point one again.

Simplistic model, but for me it works when I think about content to be put on the web. It's not static like a brochure and a little bit more thought needs to be put into covering all the sides of the triangle.

Thoughts? Am I missing out an element? Or overstating the importance of these elements?

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Mark started the ball rolling with his 2010 predictions for social media, and now it's my turn to weigh in on what I think are trends going forward and what that means, particularly for businesses engaged in (or thinking of engaging in) social media.

In no particular order, here we go:

1) Simultaneous fragmentation and consolidation
From blogging platforms (Typepad, Wordpress, Blogger, Livejournal and now Posterous) to analytics platforms (Omniture, Web Trends, Google Analytics) to listening tools (Radian 6, TNS Cymfony, Techrigy, Brandtology) to social networks (Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, QQ) to search platforms (Google, Yahoo, Bing, Naver, Baidu), the choices that arise just to decide where to 'play' can be overwhelming.

Part of the social media sphere is that it's inherently easy to set up these platforms at low costs and immediately compete with the big boys. As a business, have you done your due diligence to know where your target audience is and which platform works for you? Or are you really going to assume that Facebook solves all problems and use it to reach China (where Facebook is blocked)?

At the same time this fragmentation isn't going to go on forever. We've seen Adobe acquiring Omniture and Facebook acquiring FriendFeed this year. The danger of investing in a platform that may have a very real chance of disappearing or swallowed up by another company in the next 12-24 months is real, so choices have to be thought through more carefully than ever.

2) Social media is becoming more exclusive
Private Facebook profiles, walled gardens like Google Wave and Twitter lists all make it even more challenging to reach the ever-elusive 'influencer'. If someone has 2,000 friends on Facebook but his profile is private, you've lost a way to reach 2,000 people. Twitter lists are naturally exclusive but penetrating the right one could really help you. In-groups are forming and the later a company gets with the programme, the higher the barrier to entry. How high a barrier do you want to deal with?

3) Social media policies will be set in stone.
From the NFL to Honda to Dominos, companies are feeling the heat of not putting down hard guidelines to encourage employees to participate in social media, but to participate responsibly. Nothing is secret anymore and if businesses let employees run unchecked, it could spell big problem for the company.

4) Sentiment analysis will become increasingly important
More emphasis will be placed on sentiment analysis. Perhaps not necessarily the accuracy of it, but what can actually be done with the data. A free Google Alert can tell me everything I need to know about my brand, but can the sentiment analysis tools put data together in a way that makes cohesive sense? Can they understand native language nuances? Can they segment by country? Will the phrase "a terrific example of bad customer service" be recognised as positive or negative sentiment? As advancements in the language recognition software gets more advanced, these questions will have to be answered and listening will be more crucial than ever.

5) Mobile access points
To me, netbooks can fall in the category of 'mobile' these days, not just handphones. As access on the go becomes even more ubiquitous (at least in developed countries) are you ready for a proportion of your customers to be accessing your site or service online? Or are they going to be even more frustrated at the lack of usability (I'm looking at you, local cinemas)? Are you enhancing your services with the idea of mobility and flexibility, or are you still operating with the mindset that customers only think about your products and services when sitting at home, thus losing the opportunity to snag them when they may be walking right by your physical store?

6) Transparency and disclosure
Beaten over the head to death. Companies and agencies who don't understand the idea of transparency and disclosure aren't going to last very long. On a personal note, I think bloggers who get into pay-per-post kind of schemes are doing themselves a disservice and there needs to be a better way for bloggers and companies to work together.

Bonus: Singapore special - Blogger outreach has to change.
Speaking purely as a blogger, I'm really frustrated, no I'm more than frustrated, I'm sick and tired of agencies reaching out to me for events, products and services which are so far from something that I might be interesting that it really grinds my gears. Agencies need to learn this is as cardinal a sin as pitching the technology editor a piece of fashion news (and I don't mean tech-news with a bit of fashion in it).

The way of doing outreach aside, the events themselves have to change. This one off 'come to my event and touch my product and read my press release' has to change. And bloggers need to make it known that they're tired of it by not going, rather then going for the sake of being invited to the next one.

So there you go. Agree? Disagree? Let me know in the comments.

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With analyst pulling out reports on 2010 trending, I thought I start our very own chain based on our experiences about what's going to be hot in the digital space next year. We'll probably have our own internal debate over the list below, but feel free to join and share your views? 

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I don’t know about you but I’ve been hearing “this is the year of mobile!” shouted from the mountaintops every year for the last few years, but for the first time I’m beginning to believe than 2010 may just be it, especially if the global economy gets back on track.

Last week I saw two pieces of news that have been leading me down this path:

1)      P&G gets an iPhone app

“The application 'uART' allows iPhone users to take their photo and use the application to try new facial styles, ranging from full-on beards to custom goatees. "The application allows you to try out a new look while test driving the new Gillette Fusion Power, a five blade razor which includes a single blade precision trimmer for angular and precision styling. The iPhone even vibrates to simulate the powered vibrations of the razor," Jonathan McKenzie, digital creative director for BBDO/Proximity Singapore, said.”

2)      Pizza Hut iPhone app generates US$1m in sales

“After being live in the App Store for three months, the Pizza Hut application for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch has surpassed $1 million in sales.”

Talk about hardcore ROI. One million in three months via mobile channels is an amazing number and I’m sure people are pointing to this the way they pointed at Dell’s $3m revenue from Twitter and thinking “this is where we have to go next”

So what do you think? Mobile – destined to be overhyped for the next year or has its time finally come?

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At the risk of sounding preachy (given the other post on social media time allocation), here are three more images from a great post called social media time management: resource allocation.

The first is allocating time by function depending on your organisation's social media maturity:

The second is allocating time by person (and hours):

And the third is applying that to larger organisations:

Those of us who blog, podcast, tweet etc know how time consuming it is (on top of our regular day jobs). This would be really useful in setting expectations and making sure organisations know what being engaged in social media and creating content really means.

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As I type this, there's a live concert going on on YouTube (yes, YouTube) by U2.

I'm by no means a fan of U2 (don't kill me) but there are a few interesting things about how this is done.

1. While I wouldn't call U2 an "old" band, one would argue their fan demographics skew slightly older. Getting a concert on a social channel could help spread the world to younger (< 18) fans in this day and age.
2. U2 is a smart band. If you look at the stream (screen shot above) there are calls to action everywhere. Whether it's monetary (buy album now), opting in for future news/transactions (joining newsletter) or spreading word of mouth (sharing on Facebook, Twitter) anything someone clicks on adds value to the broadcast and U2 in some way.
3. This could really be the future of broadcasting where everyone globally interacts at the same time. We already see it during soccer matches if you follow them on Twitter. But what if it were aggregated to one channel (ie YouTube) for everyone in the world? It really changes your perception of television, media and broadcasting.
4. Less of an observation but just a thought: how much bandwidth do they have?!?!?!

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