Completed a tough training in Singapore. Initially, when they need me to do training for different levels of management to try to get them to think about direction and strategies, and with different understanding of the various platforms, customizing the training to please everyone was hard.
Giving examples of what you could do with social media for your business does raise many eyebrows and effectively use of the different platforms by researching and understanding keywords seemed new for some people, however a few people who were in charge of SEO seemed bored.
Breaking into groups to plan strategies seemed awkward as well. The person in charge seemed to be not interested in the doing, which seemed to be not helpful at all.
Furthermore, when a department in the company decided not to take part in social media and yet "forced" to take part of the training, seemed to mock parts of the training and seemed very resistive to the idea that their targeted audience is on Facebook, I thought, wow, why is this person here?
There are a lot of forced engagement, and when asked to think of solutions, as Singaporeans, many try not to say anything at all. However, overall, I found that videos seemed to work as it engages everyone and some humor seemed to bring everyone on the same wavelength, and getting the group to open up seemed easier after the videos.
Overall, after a week, they worked with me to craft out a social media calender, guidelines and policies which seemed very exciting. I will be checking on their progress and hopefully they can be very successful in what they do.
There are a lot of difference between "likes", "comments" and actually getting people to take action.
The number of comments that you get when you share a post, and the sentiment is also very important.
It takes time to build followers, trust and affinity. And Public Engagement is a skill that one should not assume that one already knows in the new digital sphere.
Come find out more about social media, open your mind and learn more.
He is beguiling, wide-eyed, charismatic, eloquent, effectively bilingual, selfless, determined and social media-savvy.
And when he speaks in Parliament, he has everyone eating out of his hands.
When he updates his status on Facebook, he creates a virtual stampede to see who can "Like" his post first.
Half the ladies on my Facebook friends list are saying they fantasise about the day they meet the Workers' Party MP in a dark, lonely alley.
So that they can have the chance to converse with him in their half-past six Mandarin without anyone within earshot and feeling embarrassed that they are only mastering the Chinese language now to communicate with this Taiwan-born maverick.
The other half, more or less, are quite convinced they want to have his babies.
It's safe to say if this trend carries on, it won't bode well for your party in the future."
After the Arab spring, many countries have blamed their problems on New Media. "Information is spreading too fast. We can't stop all the rumors."
For many decades, the government in many countries have no transparency, and a state controlled media where information they do not wish to share is simply not reported. Controlling the media allows the government to craft their messages and share what information they deem is required.
New media had caused turmoil in the Arab world, where popular uprisings ousted the autocratic leaders of Egypt and Tunisia and brought the Libyan regime to its knees. In Singapore, new media sites are more influential than all the other newspapers with more engagement, discussions and reads.
Many governments want to "control the Internet", either by censoring or blocking sites or imposing fines on a certain code of conduct. Many government are unable to respond to critics when they roll out an unpopular law, and pledge "responsible expression" or a code of conduct on the Internet. In Singapore, the ministers call social media, "The Wild West" and condemn the use of many site which reports on their failings.
But what exactly has changed? What made these government fear or hate social media? In essence, nothing much have changed. People will always complain about bad policies or information that seems unjust. The only main difference is, the government gets real feedback from real people who feel the need to share. So why do the government fear the rise of social media?
1) Unfamiliarity causes fear. Most people in power are not Gen-Y and do not grow up using their gadgets. But just think about emails, 10 years ago, many of them will still be expecting mail, but now email is a standard form of communication.
2) Some may feel that they are too important to engage with the public on social media, or their privacy is threatened. The truth is, you are the one sharing data, and if the information does not put you in a good light, then you have the choice not to share.
3) People will give lots of negative feedback if you engage on social media. However, people will talk with or without you. With social media, you get informed on the negative feedback and it is not filtered from you.
4) People can form groups faster and create instability. On social media, it is true that people can form groups faster. But instead of complaining, large organizations like Red Cross and many other NGOs have used it to create more awareness and raised more funds for their causes. The government can also engage and influence to win more people on their policies.
5) Social media is a waste of time. Although social media may be a "time-suck", when use properly, it disseminates information faster than one-to-one communications. When you ask a question on your twitter account, all of your followers can read and may respond to you.
A good policy is important for successful social media engagement. Social media is here to stay and it is just another medium of communications. Don't blame social media. Instead on leverage and you can find the ease to reach more people and get real feedback.
I have been encouraging companies who are getting into social media to get a community manager, and even explaining the concept of the Community Manager, many people still do not get it. The person they tend to hire is a Social Media Manager, and there is a difference.
Social media manager
A social media manager takes the lead in managing the overall efforts of a company social media platform. He is responsible for creating content specific to a product or brand strategy across social networks. They monitor and create engagement to achieve goals of a specific campaign, and measure ROI.
Community manager
A community manager's role is mainly to monitor and engage the public for that community. After which, the community manager will feedback what is learned from the community to the company. I consider a community manager to be more detailed and involved in certain aspects of social media, whereas a social media manager can manage more of the bigger picture aspects of online marketing.
Do you believe they vary for a small business vs. an enterprise?
Usually, an enterprise would hire several social media managers, and they may not be even in charge of developing the strategy, however for small businesses, a social media manager would wear many hats and focus on one or 2 channels.
A community manager in a small business may actually take on the role of social media manager, having many responsibilities including creating content, however a community manager in a large enterprise may just be in charge of engagement on one or 2 channels.
With a good community manager and social media manager, a company or an enterprise can monitor brand and prevent social media crisis from happening.
In 2006 when the government first attempted to ban internet electioneering. It did not work. Now The government is also using tools to monitor and restrict free speech online.
A man in Singapore is facing charges of incitement of violence due to comments made on Facebook about the Government’s preparations for last month’s Summer Youth Olympic Games.
Abdul Malik, a 27-year-old project officer in a construction company, was a a member of the Facebook page “I hate the Youth Olympics Games’ Organising Committee”, an on-line dedicated to criticising the Government’s preparations for the Games and the cost of them. On the Facebook site, Abdul called for “us to burn Vivian Balakrishnan”, Singapore’s Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports the head of the organising committee.
Malik claimed meant the statement as a metaphor – to vote out the ruling People’s Action Party, of which Balakrishnan is a member.
Temasek Review, a site critical about the government is also taken down.(quietly)
“The government has, over the last few years in particular, referred to the new media in largely pejorative terms – the Prime Minister has previously referred to it as the “wild west” and more recently, as a “cowboy town”. But the reality is this – the new media is here to stay, and it will continue to eat into the mindshare of the mainstream media, no matter what the government chooses to call it. Temasek Review may have gone offline, but it is not going to be too difficult or technically challenging to bring 10 new incarnations of Temasek Review online overnight.”
-MP for Aljinied GRC, Pritam Singh
Many of the world's media have evolved into a more open and engaging media. News have became more social than ever before with the internet, yet many news broadcasters have this believe.
To come up with innovative ways to engage viewers, public broadcasters will have to refine and improve our story-telling techniques.
Isn't this public diplomacy? This concept should not be new to any broadcasting network that is not in a monopolistic domain. This role differs in many ways from traditional public relations or public affairs, which despite a recent influx of new technologies still mainly involves “providing information for the public” at its core. Corporate public diplomacy, on the other hand, involves actively shaping the communications environment within which corporate activities are performed, and reducing the degree to which misperceptions complicate relations between the company and its customers. In my view, this complex mission is conducted using what I call innovative social engagement.
We are told stories and rhetoric all our lives, and we get engaged in a story that we can relate to. News and information are all experiences which can be told in a form of a perspective or story. However, the story needs to be believable and balanced as well as savvy readers can see a spin.
The problem with a controlled media system is that the view are very much one sided and for other views, readers will go on blogs and other "non-traditional" media for their daily reads. When the other outlets have a differing opinion, the government gets upset as they have lost control over controlling the medium.
In the Internet age, I feel strongly that controlling the media is not a cost effective and efficient way to public engagement. The more restrictive the views are, the more interesting differing opinions will be. (And more people will read)
How do you market an unpopular cause? There are no easy models or quick fixes for a people seeking to establish a legitimate identity or share their experiences and feelings. And an over focus on media and message dissemination (should we have a Facebook page? How many radio stations?) while important, is no replacement for the deeper work of developing a identity story that resonates with the people.
There is a lot of articles online sharing the state of media in Singapore. This one is very interesting. "Impending crunch on New Media?"
New media is not new to the government, they have ignored it much in the past, and tried to control the messages, and today, they are still trying to do so. I feel that the media landscape have changed with the times. To engage people today, the keyword is trust and transparency. Information gets around very quickly and the more "secret" the leaked information is, the more easy it gets viral.
I feel that if the government really wants to engage the public in discussions and move together forward into the future, the media should be more transparent and less controlled. The attempts of their very own "Astro-turfing" has to end and people should be allowed to air their views -- both positive and negative -- in a constructive manner which encourages discussion.
There is a lot of progress as shown by the MPs having Facebook pages, but there should be more willingness to open up, especially to allow feedback (A lot of feedback channels are still blocked on social media.) Addressing the feedback on the channels transparently will also create a positive effect as it show that the government is acting and listening to the public.
It is time for the nation to have a better representation of the people in parliament, after all it is a democracy, and not ALL Singaporeans are scholars (like the majority of the MPs) The ministers do not need so much qualification to run the government, but what they need is empathy, to listen and feel the challenges the public is facing. The multimillion salary also puts the minsters in gap above the average citizen that it is hard to understand their needs and one can only assume as a $15k or $4MM salary means you do not need to take even the efficient public transportation anymore.
New media is not new. The public sentiments are all there to search for, and I'm sure the government does have all the keywords the 80 - 85% who say negative things about them online. Now is the time to act and show you are here to change for a better future of Singapore -- all with the help of social media.
I've always advocated the need for social media to be in house in Singapore.
Not only social media is important, corporate wide training is essential.
Here in Singapore, pressure groups have employed social media to protest against Resorts World Sentosa's dolphin issues. Most recently, we witnessed how Wildlife Reserves Singapore was flamed on social media as a result of its sudden cancellation of the Halloween Horrors event.
Crisis often comes with internal staff training as well, KFC Malaysia had staff shown a video on them playing with food, and it attracted a lot of attention and negative publicity.
Social Media training is very important as it prepares the whole corporation to engage with the public in a transparent and natural way. Empowering the staff, most staff will not take the opportunity to destroy the company's reputation. With trained staff, enlightened empowerment can indeed allow the business to react to queries faster, and attend to feedback before a disaster occurs.
Monitoring social media does not need to be a one department job.
-- Robin Low
More info: Read.
http://www.todayonline.com/Singapore/EDC111004-0000106/Why-businesses-need-in-house-social-media-teams
After the poor performance online, lack of understanding the ground and the inability to control the conversation, the government decided that they need to do better in engagement.
"You need, basically, two people just to maintain one site, and typically, the respondents come (online, sometime after dinner). " "So it's not trivial," "Facebook is not owned by any Singapore entity; it's an entirely foreign entity and putting in the resources online in this foreign entity, it could shut off Singapore," Says the "experts"
It seems like the government experts have much fear of social media because they do not understand the medium and are unwilling to engage.
I hope they get real training and learn to listen to the public and not just censor comments and negative feedback. It is a whole mindset change and there needs to be proper policies that encourage engagement and empowering everyone to participate, so the responsibility is not on a "team" and hopefully they do not need to get permission to answer the questions raised.
I hope the executives would be willing to learn and create policies that support social media. Hopefully we can see a more vibrant Singapore in the near future.
This is the comments made by DPM Teo in a dialogue with students.
I feel that this statement is not very valid. While social media is "very powerful in amplifying voices of people who are most articulate" Articulate or not, social media allows the public to have a direct feedback unlike the traditional one way broadcast the government is used to have. The truth is nobody needs to have a good command of English to comment on news or articles they read, they simply have to care.
"One negativity I personally don't like in social media is anonymity because it allows you to make statements without responsibilities. And I don't think we can have a responsible discussion if one is not asked to be responsible for what he says," Mr Teo said at a dialogue, Singaporeans in Conversation, with 250 students yesterday. "That results in a discussion which quite often becomes skewed and unproductive."
I do not believe that social media has anonymity. It takes time and effort to build trust, and anonymous posts will not be given much attention unless it is either interesting, humorous or inexplicably -- convincing.
Social media allows the government to crowdsource ideas, broadcast information and get real feedback from the masses. In terms of making statements without responsibilities, it is easier to spread rumors through coffee shop talks. For credibility and trustworthiness, reputation needs to be built, and this is a long process and cannot be done overnight.
The influencers in Singapore like Mr Brown, Mr Miyagi and other popular blogs all took time to build their reputation and create their following.
In terms of leaving anonymous feedback, if the government is willing to put the time to engage and understand the cause for the feedback, it might learn something new. Although there are times people may leave hurtful remarks which may seem to have no basis, but taking the time to investigate further may reveal whether it is a hoax or it is valid concerns which needs to be addressed.
Like any corporation which want to engage with their customers, it does take time, effort and the willingness to engage. Just having a Facebook page, Twitter account and a blog is not using Web 2.0 in the most effective way. It is a whole new change in mindset, policies that would support the engagement to be able to succeed.
I've many friends who asked me about how Asia is getting on social media and all the data I've got, they all point to very strong growth in the region.
With strong growth of mobile technologies and mobile broadband in Asia, it is not really a surprise that it shows in the pick up rate of social media here.
As more people try out Facebook and Twitter, it is no doubt that they will be curious about the other social powered tools that leverage on crowds. If you own a business and you want to find out more about things like Foursquares, Facebook Pages and how to use Twitter to engage the public, there is a course tomorrow in Singapore.
This is an extensive course which introduces you everything about social media, to engaging the public and measuring success. With this course, you can plan and start your social media campaign for your company.
And if you already think you have enough knowledge about social media, there is a second part of the course just on Real Time Marketing and new ideas on Social Engagements. Get information on actual case studies of companies that succeeded and failed, so you can learn from these examples and do have to run into the same mistakes.
I just arrived in Singapore after running the course on the Eastern Coast of United States, and the course in Singapore starts tomorrow, be sure you check it out!
The PAP does not engage on social media. They have their fans write good things about them, and delete negative posts. For their YouTube Pages, no "likes" or comments are allowed.
The PAP does very well on the controlled media, as reports after reports, focused on their leaders and agenda, even on "cooling day" The rest of the opposition is covered much less than the PAP.
On social media front, the new candidates like Nicole Seah seemed to be fantastic! She has more than 60k fans on Facebook, and she replies to feedback and comments.
For most parts, Angry Singaporeans numbering thousands bashed PAP online, and the sites theonlinecitizen became a very popular source of info.
Most dormant Singaporeans share their stories and blog about their thoughts freely. The PAP indeed lost out on the social media front.
So the big question is, will social media affect the results of the election? How much of a role will social media play to determine the results?
Social Media can do a lot of things, it can empower those without voices, connect those in need, enable you to reach a wide audience without a big budget.
Recently, Carlos the founder of Relief 2.0, went on a mission to Japan, and I helped in the engagement and creating awareness of the situation, leveraging on social media.
Within a short period of 1 week, we are able to use social media to form a team to go to Japan, and raise funds. Through social media, I tell the story from the ground from the perspective of an independent unit with the goal to use local capacity, and empower the survivors to rebuild their businesses.
You can learn more about social media and use it for more than just a marketing tool.
Social Media is a great way to engage your customers, getting a good feel of what the market wants, needs, and thinks about your brand. For an Entrepreneur in a startup, time must be spent smartly, however, it is also very important to engage with your customers. Besides creating awareness, Social Media can help in branding, product development, customer service and much more.
LinkedIn -- LinkedIn can be used to create awareness, finding B2B sales leads, and network with other professionals in the industry.
Facebook -- Facebook has more than 500 million users, and FB pages are getting better by the day, providing analytics, and allowing your fans a place to share and discuss about your products and services.
Twitter -- Twitter is a fast way to share information and get information. You can follow a lot of people at the same time and get lots of information as well.
Quora -- If you have some questions you need the answer of or answers to questions with your products or services, this is the place to be.
YouTube -- Sharing videos of your products and services, how to guide, etc -- fantastic way to create awareness and possibly go viral.
Flickr -- Sharing photos go a long way.
Blogging -- Your blogs containing keywords can drive traffic to your Facebook pages, YouTube account and homepage. It is asynchronous and can generate traffic even after years.
Foursquare/Gowalla -- If you have a restaurant or shop, you may be interested to increase the stakes of giving more rewards to the "Mayor" -- Make it fun and interesting.
Don't forget -- GroupOn
There are many other social media / social tools to look at. The social media sphere is filled with opportunities, however it may be different from your personal usage.
There are always short courses and tips which you have not learn, and keep an open mind. Read blogs and be in touch of the latest happenings, by following influencers on Twitter.
Have you ever wondered how some people could get some much opportunities or move up so fast in Organizations? Do you know of friends who get job offers even without putting up any online resumes?
Networking is key for success. If you know more people, you get more opportunities. Have you every realized that even when you have lots of resumes on every job site online, you still cannot search for them on Google?
The Internet opens up so much more opportunities if you know how to use it. Social Media is a tool which you can use to brand yourself as a competent individual who is an expert in various fields. However, if you unaware about your digital footprint and do not take steps to limit bad information about yourself, it may impact your progress, and affect your career.
Just remember, you may have a lot of talents, but if nobody knows about it, how can they discover you and hire you?
Aventis School of Management is running a course on Unleash your Brand, and this course will unlock your expertise and let you understand the various social media tools to leverage upon to build your brand and get you more opportunities.
Don't be afraid, empower yourself with the knowledge to market your skills and talents. Engage!
For the past few years, The Singapore Government has been trying to get on social media. However, they do not welcome feedback and censor comments.
“The Singapore government, as a whole, is not averse to using new media. We’re not ruling out the opportunities it presents us. But we’re not completely sure how to use it yet.”
– Goh Yam Song, Deputy Director, Emergency Preparedness, Land Transport Authority, Singapore –
Even when more ministers are getting on social media, I still feel that they don't get it.
A Facebook user, Abdul Malik Ghazali, was arrested few weeks ago on charges related to incitement of violence due to comments he made on Facebook. The 27-year-old had urged other users on the social networking site to “burn” Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, Minister for community development, youth and sports.
Does he sound serious or frustrated?
On Facebook, even Singapore's Broadcast Media -- Mediacorp is on Facebook, but they do not invite any comments, and they only allow comments on the posts they make. Furthermore, active moderation is also seen.
I feel that if any nation, company or individuals is interested in Social Media, they need to be prepared to engage -- accept both positive and negative feedback, and willingly resolve the issues transparently.
With the coming elections, there are more ministers with blogs and Facebook pages, but the engagement is heavily moderated, and they types of posts does not seem genuine and engaging as well.
It was originally started by the government, heavily moderated, and eventually nobody cared. It now serves as a page where people complain and nothing seems to be resolved.
I hope things change as social media can be a cheap and effective way to engage with the public, and together, we can shape the country together. The government should be inclusive and the public, empowered to share their ideas and comments freely.
The end of the year is coming, and many people are doing their annual clean up of their apartments. As you know, it does get increasingly hard to clean up as more things pile up. This is also very true for your social networks.
As you know, many problems are easily solved when they are small. They take much less time, and are pretty easy to get to. This is true for car maintenance, maintaining your weight, and also social media.
So what is there to do for your social media?
1) Prune your Twitter Followers.
There are many deadbeats that you may have previously followed and some who just stopped tweeting. To maintain a good follower / following ratio, it is essential to remove people whom you do not need to follow anymore and follow some more interesting people.
There may also be some people following you that may be interesting, so make sure you follow some of them as well.
A good tool to use to prune your followers is Tweepi. Tweepi allows you to clean up your Twitter account from spammers and deadbeat users, as well as make sure you follow tweeps who deserve to be followed.
There are also interesting stats for Tweepi, and like Follower / Following Ratio, and Last Tweeted which may be helpful to manage your Tweeps.
2) Backup your Facebook.
There are so much information people put on Facebook now. I know many friends who solely keep their photos of themselves and their friends on Facebook. What happens when your Facebook account go down when people try to hack in? In the world of data portability, Facebook has allowed us to download our profile, so why not do it?
The process is really too simple to forgo. Here’s how you can stow away your social life for safekeeping:
1). Go to Account Settings,
2). Click on “Download Your Information” and allow Facebook (Facebook) to download your info,
3). Wait for an e-mail that will let you know your info is ready (it takes a while, what with all the stuff you probably have on Facebook),
4). Go through the security test that allows you to download your info (kudos on that one, Facebook), and, voila, your profile is ported to your desktop in a nifty folder.
3) Backup Your Tweets
Have you shared some great links which you wish to keep? As twitter search only go back a few weeks, sometimes whatever you tweeted is lost forever. But have no fear, there are tools that can allow you to back up every single tweet that you have previously tweeted -- Your Tweets may be backed up!
TweetScan will track your data back to 2007, and, using OAuth, will even grab your timeline, tweets from friends and direct messages. It is pretty fantastic and easy to use.
4) Backup Your Photos
Many people upload their photos on photo sharing sites, and sometimes forget their passwords. I own several devices which can upload photos themselves in the camera. The Eye-fi memory card allows you to upload photos directly from your camera to the Internet. So what if you have lost all your photos on your harddrive and every photo you have is on Flickr? Don't worry, you can download them all with tools of course.
Lots of apps and tools let you back up your Flickr photo stream, but a quick, fuss-free way to unload years of photo uploads is the Adobe Air (adobe AIR) app Flump. The app works on Mac, Windows (Windows) and Linux (Linux) and downloads a copy of each photo in your stream to a folder of your choice.
4) Backup Your Blogs
Wordpress and many other blogging sites allow you to backup your blogs with a click of a button.. (Sometimes a little more) It allows you to transfer the information from one blog to another, making it portable. Just in case the server crashes, why not back these information up?
Well, the year is about to be over soon, and if you have sometime this weekend and you are taking a break from physical cleaning of your apartment, maybe you can do some social media maintenance as well.
If you are just getting on social media, and would like to know what my thoughts are about the 2011 social media trends, the above is a presentation I did at Harvard before X-mas.
There are a lot of talks about upbeat market, growth opportunities and booming market, especially in Asia. However, I still meet a lot of people who are under employed. And there is no wonder why many of the underemployed and unemployed people are the more matured workers who are aged above 45 years old.
Technology has advanced and many things have changed. Globalization created a lot of opportunities and challenges. The old mindset of getting a degree and climb up the corporate ladder does not work in most cases right now. Today, a degree is nothing special, and it is highly unlikely to stay in the job for a long period of time.
With the instability of the financial system, mergers and acquisitions, it is very common to get retrenched and lose your job. When the economy is good, people move up or move to another company for better prospects.
However, for people who are not as savvy with new channels of communications, they can be at a severe disadvantage. There is a high co-relation between unemployed, underemployed and the older workers. Almost overnight, many later-in-life employees were forced into the job market without the know-how to find and compete for scarce opportunities while decimated portfolios changed their retirement expectations. They want to work but countless numbers struggle to find and keep a job.
------------------------------------------
It is not too late however as there is no law stating that older people should not get on social media and network. According to the study, "just 13% of older job seekers had used online social networking sites compared to 28% of younger job seekers." Together with the stigma of older workers, it makes it harder to find a job.
I've talked to many older people who are out of a job, and many of them seemed to have impressive credentials. At the University Alumni Club, I met people who are in their 50's and some of them has PhDs and masters degree, yet they have lost their jobs and unable find one for more than 6 months.
There was much disappointment in the room, that with their vast experience, they could not contribute back to society. After meeting them and having some thoughts later, I decided that if they have participated more in social media and personal branding, they can share their experience and perhaps possibly expand their networks and find jobs.
There are a lot these experienced could learn about engaging with others in LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Writing blogs and contributing in articles could also help others and at the same time create more visibility and in turn get more opportunities.
Wow, if you are going to sell laptops, I don't think I'd follow a Twitter account @laptopfail and then buy a laptop from the company that owns the account.
There were several interesting talks at #SMWF today 22 Sep 2010, and I've attended some of them.
Going to the "FREE" workshops and to the paid conference, I would say that the workshops are almost a complete waste of time... Unless you have never engaged on social media before.
In my opinion, if you just follow Mashable, you can probably get newer and better information than the sales pitches by the speakers.
Mahesh Murthy, Founder & CEO, Pinstorm
After attending almost a day of talks and panels, I find that one of the speakers, Mahesh Murthy had probably the best presentation, giving a lot of information on social media in the Indian market, as well as insights on the emerging trends.
His presentation is clear and insightful, giving a lot of takeaways which reinforces my ideas and beliefs on how social media should be integrated into a company's business processes.
The Free Workshops:
As with most cases in Singapore, if you offer "FREE WORKSHOPS" Many people will come. The workshop areas are simply too small, and many were left standing. I thought people have to register to go to the workshops, and they have some advance notice on how many people would attend, but I guess, I was wrong. It seemed like pretty bad execution.
The projector screen was too small, and I could not see anything as the presenters had fonts that are too small as well.
My friend Jeremy Woolf from Text100 was there to be on a panel, but I felt that he should be a speaker as the other people on the panel seemed to be just there for show.
In social media, brand tone of voice is important during engagement.
Communicating for an investment bank vs communicating for a coffee shop is different.
Having copywriters respond to inquiries works better than scripts. You do not look like a bot, yet you could have a consistent tone of voice that fits the brand.
Shifts in technology and expectations - Do companies need REAL TIME MARKETING, 24/7?
Companies and brands should not focus on copyright but rather communicate and connect.
To be credible, one does not buy media -- one earns media.
Active social media presence helps in SEO searchability.
Lastly, its a great place to meet friends. The social media crowd in Singapore is so small, you are bound to bump into people you know.
