blog
using social media to promote tourism
Posted by simon ashwin On Monday 05 Apr 10
Tourism is an important pillar in almost every country’s economy. While some countries are really good at promoting themselves, others need some serious work.
For example, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” was an instant hit, and Las Vegas can’t seem to find something better to replace it. On the flip side, Australia’s “Where the bloody hell are you?” tagline didn’t work too well for her.
With a new tagline, “There’s nothing like Australia,” and a $4 mil campaign, we thought all would be well again. But I guess the tourism board didn’t see this coming: someone went out and registered the domain NothingLikeAustralia.net, and started posting spoof versions of the campaign.
Having no clue how to deal with this, Tourism Australia (TA) considered taking legal actions against the site. If you know anything about the people online, you wouldn’t want to consider legal actions. Laugh it off and leverage on the situation instead. Luckily, TA came to its senses before getting a severe backlash.
If concocting well-received slogans is so tough, and tourism campaigns are so expensive (and might go terribly wrong), what else can a tourism board do? It surprises me that tourism boards are taking so long to try out social media. Those who are already on it are seeing very impressive results!
Here are some things they did that I love:
social networking and the economist
Posted by simon ashwin On Saturday 03 Apr 10
The Economist on social networking - world of connections
At the end of January, The Economist, every Capitalist’s favourite magazine, published a special report on on social networking.
A World of Connections, provides an excellent overview of the current state of social media for those still trying to get to grips with it. You can download a free pdf of the report here. Or check out my summary of key highlights below.
Introduction: A world of connections
- “Online social networks are changing the way people communicate, work and play”
- Facebook users post over 55m updates a day. 70% of users live outside the US.
- Social networks are superb tools for mass communication [NB the report is a bit light on their strategic use as a driver of 1-to-1 customer-to-company communication]
- “the most avid online networkers are in Australia, followed by those in Britain and Italy”
- Social Networks have “become important vehicles for news and channels of influence”. Indeed, they “played a starring role in the online campaign strategy that helped sweep Barack Obama” ...
- optimising websites - making them mobile and smartphone friendly
- making social sharing easier - sophisticated scripting to know whether you're logged in to social network so you don't have to...
engagement over selling any day of the week
Posted by simon ashwin On Friday 26 Mar 10
Have you ever been at a 21st birthday party where the best friend gives a speech that sounds more like their own biography? How about a wedding where the best man's speech forgets trivial matters such as how the couple first met? Looking at a number of company fan pages on Facebook the other day, I was reminded of not only these scenarios but of a speech given at a charity dinner I attended about six years ago. As with most charity dinners, there were a number of suppliers that offered products or services in exchange for brand exposure, with one major sponsor given a speaking role at the event. The speech given by the representative for the company that night lacked any connection to the charity they were there supporting and unsurprisingly, by the end of the speech, there were almost as many people taking bathroom breaks as there were remaining within the function room.
Like the speaker at this event, it can be difficult for brands to get the ever tricky balance between promotion and engagement within social media right. So what are the main things?
The art of showing.
How many Facebook fan pages or Twitter feeds have you seen where a brand is all too eager to throw a promotion at you? It kind of makes sense; however, the problem is that this is the first reaction every other brand has as well, which means that the world of brand pages (on...
boosting business through social networks
Posted by simon ashwin On Thursday 18 Mar 10
The other day, we mentioned how some businesses are struggling to make the great shift towards going social. Social Networking, as you probably know by now, is now very much in, and with Facebook continuing to rise in popularity, hitting 200 million members early this week, and social networking in general getting more popular every day, it's becoming clear that social networking has a lot to offer the business world.
Using services like Facebook, Twitter and other social networking services and tools has more to offer than many business owners and managers would probably like to admit. It's that reluctance to admit it, or embrace it that is probably slowing their business growth down. The bottom line is, trust is key and the internet and social networking is now offering you more ways to build that trust than ever before. Starting a Twitter page is a fast way to directly, and we do mean directly, connect to your customers, fans and potential clients. By opening those lines of communication and increasing the transparency of your business, trust is built.
I am seeing some of my more its savvy clients that have embraced social networking boosting traffic to their sites by up to 7-8% each day. Compare this to typical search, paid or display campaigns and the budgets they typically attract and you’ll see why social networking can help increase traffic and consumer engagement.
When it comes to Australia, it is true that many businesses and business executives are a bit ahead of the game,...
social media shifts into top geear
Posted by simon ashwin On Thursday 11 Mar 10
As with all industries there are winners and losers among Social Media companies. MySpace, so long the darling of the social sites has experienced a dramatic and undignified fall from grace. At the risk of getting egg on my face, I ‘m happy to stick my neck out and say that it is just a matter of time before this once mighty trailblazer is consigned to the dustbin of history.
Conversely, other players, some new (Zynga, Twitter) and others longer in the tooth (Linkedin – established way back in 2003!) are experiencing rapid growth in both users and revenues. [a caveat here – I am still on the fence re Twitter as a platform for the masses, who among your friends do you know using it? Be honest!]
But there is one undisputed winner: Facebook. The site has over 400 million active users and adds more than 700,000 new ones every day. This is impressive stuff. And the growth isn’t slowing. If anything it’s speeding up.
In an article published on 03 March Business Week cited a new index created by SharesPost Inc., a marketplace for trading in private companies, valuing Facebook at a whopping $11.5 billion. Some estimates put the company’s revenue for 2009 north of $750 million and on track to exceed $1 Billion in 2010.
Now there have been a raft of new announcements which point towards this ubiquitous platform maturing in to a truly unrivalled marketing platform.
In an article in TechCrunch on 24 February, Marc Benioff founder and...
are you socially linked in?
Posted by simon ashwin On Tuesday 02 Mar 10
There are a host of social networking sites including MySpace, Facebook and Friendster. Each of these is designed to bring individuals together. In the right scenario, these sites can be used to find business relationships. However, their feature sets are best suited for more casual relationships. Fortunately, there is one social networking site geared specifically towards business professionals that is continually gaining popularity. LinkedIn now boasts over 30 million profiles, including high level professionals from all Fortune 500 companies. Perhaps you already have a profile on LinkedIn. If so, are you getting the most out of your membership?
Here are several valuable ways to take advantage of the LinkedIn Network:
Increase Your Visibility
Did you know you have the option to make your LinkedIn profile available to search engines? LinkedIn profiles generally receive a pretty high page rank in Google. By creating a profile complete with applicable keywords and exposing it to search engines, you can greatly increase your visibility.Promote Your Website and Blog
You can increase your visibility even further by adding links to your website and blog within your profile. Since your profile is visible to search engines, provided you took the above advice, these links will also be indexed.Research a Business Partner
There’s little doubt that LinkedIn can assist in locating potential business partners, but did you ever consider researching the stability, reputation or expertise of a potential partner? LinkedIn offers a reference checking tool that allows you to find individuals who have worked with...
the singapore airshow goes social
Posted by simon ashwin On Friday 12 Feb 10
For those who don’t follow aviation closely, the world’s third biggest airshow recently took place in Singapore. And there were a number of things different about it. For one, there are no big plane orders expected, which is normally the most common at airshows. Also, unexpectedly, there was a ton of social media infused into the happenings, which made the airshow really hot. Here’s why.
Journalism on steroids, powered by Social Media
Generally at airshows, Journo's get “daily digests” – thick printed booklets with a summary of all the happenings of the previous days at the airshow. This time FlightGlobal’s coverage has taken it a step further – they had digital daily digests called “iFlight”. These contained interactive graphics, high-definition videos from the show and even Tweets from key FlightGlobal bloggers on the ground. And it come in your inbox everyday, so you don’t even need to be at the show to get it.
When it came to broadcast, not only did CNBC Asia have an on-site studio for Live telecasts, they also had a very lively GuestBlog happening and also made embeddable video clips available on their website.
Power to the people
It sure looked like there’s great trade coverage of the airshow through social media. But what about the general visitor? Aviationweek.com gave visitors the ability to upload videos, and photos on their website, which may have been selected for printing!
return on your social media investment
Posted by simon ashwin On Tuesday 12 Jan 10
There’s a lot of buzz and excitement about social media on the web at the moment. Everybody wants their website to integrate with facebook or Twitter and so on. There’s no question that these social networks (and others) can be a powerful part of your company’s online presence, but sometimes convincing the corporate decision makers can be difficult.
This is where the Social Media Return on Investment Presentation comes in. Olivier Blanchard has prepared one of the best (and most fun) presentations on social media we’ve seen. In the presentation he clearly explains the underlying principles of measurement and focus – and the importance of applying these measurements to everything the business does, not just social media.
It’s odd, but true that people often forget the ‘ROI’ part of the equation. It’s easy to be distracted by the bright allure of social media in all its glory and to neglect the return on your investment. Ultimately though, is what the board and shareholders care about most of all. Put the ROI into everything you do and you’ll soon find the decision makers paying a lot more attention every time you’ve got a new idea.
friendser finally becomes oficially asian
Posted by simon ashwin On Monday 28 Dec 09
Friendster, the venerable social network that ignited the second wave of social networks around the globe, was acquired by leading Malaysian firm MOL Global on Thursday December 10th, and the tone of the coverage was quite interesting. Certainly the purchase price (reported by Reuters at $100 mm) was meager compared to the incredible exit of Myspace.com and the even more incredible valuation of Facebook, and this is what most of the stories focused on. And after all as the Wall Street Journal reported:
Friendster raised at least $46 million from early investors Battery Ventures, Benchmark Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as well as from Duff Ackerman & Goodrich, Founders Fund and IDG Ventures SF.
The reports, then, seem to focus on the exit as a bad thing for the investors. However, the survival of Friendster is also a story of the surprising strength of its Asian users as much as anything else. Friendster, after all, is less than an also-ran in the U.S.: its traffic does not even come close enough to Myspace and Facebook to even compare.
Friendster, however, had just begun a big rebranding campaign, and had been making many moves to capitalize on its many strengths in Southeast Asia, where it is the number one or two social network in many of the nations of that region. Recent partnership announcements and corporate...
what does social media offer me?
Posted by simon ashwin On Friday 16 Oct 09
Sure, social media sounds like a great idea. After all, everybody’s doing it – with their facespace pages, Tweetbooks and so on. But before you can even worry about how to make money out of it, you’ve got to work out how you’re going to afford to invest in it in the first place.
So why shouldn’t you just dump it in the too hard basket and forget about it? There are only two reasons that your business should be engaging in any new endeavour. It must do at least one of these to be worthy of your time and effort and should ideally do both.- The new initiative will result in a cost reduction.
- The new initiative will generate more revenue.
In order to be able to determine if your investment in social media is achieving these things, you will first need to establish a baseline in your company’s financial performance. It’s very easy to be distracted by all the cool things that you can measure using various web analytics tools, but at the end of the day what makes the initiative a good investment is if it achieves at least one of the two objectives mentioned above. These are the business case for the investment.
Once you’ve established the baseline, you will be able to measure the real, financial impact of your social media initiatives. Here are some tips on measuring this performance:- Page impressions and blog...
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the love story that is social media
Posted by simon ashwin On Friday 02 Apr 10
Love is not just found in the intoxicating haze of romantic, but in countless other ways. Most of them pretty ordinary. I’ve found love in a cup of Marble Slab sweet cream icecream with marshmallows. Darn.
Yes, we all look for love. Something to love. Someone to love. And for companies and products in our lives that make it easier to do so. As a marketer, it is my job to communicate benefit and make customers fall in love with client products.
But, things have changed. Social media marketing is not about talking to people the way advertising talks to people – it’s about spreading the love and indulging in 2-way conversations. Getting social. The more I think about it, the more I know, social media marketing is simply about genuinely giving a damn. Passion is easy to share, even with strangers. But like love, it’s rather hard to fake.
Like, when she told you it’s not about the size, it’s how you use it. She was right. Social media marketing too, is not about the tools, it’s the way you use them. Just setting up a twitter account and a Facebook Fanpage, won’t cut it. Where is the love my friend? Products and ideas go viral when you can share them like gifts. Think Google Wave invites.
So, lets narrow down this whole social-media-is-about-love theory. Love begets love. Making a social gesture with a product, gives the product a social element. Something people can have conversations about. Seth Godin, calls this remarkability....
hong kong social media marketing survey 2009
Posted by simon ashwin On Friday 02 Apr 10
it's time to get social (youtube)
Posted by simon ashwin On Wednesday 31 Mar 10
the social media revolution (youtube)
Posted by simon ashwin On Wednesday 31 Mar 10
founder of fanfou, a chinese twitter clone, launches meituan, a chinese groupon clone
Posted by simon ashwin On Tuesday 30 Mar 10
Fanfou, China’s most popular Twitter clone from about a year ago, has been quiet for more than 6 months, ever since being shut down by the Chinese authorities. Its founder, Wang Xing, launched a new site in early march. The new discount shopping site, Meituan.com (link in Chinese) — beautiful group, in literal translation, but also a pun on the acronym of group purchase every day — could aptly be summarized as a Groupon.com clone.
The two websites look very similar in design (aside from the different background colors), which is not a surprise for a Chinese clone. There are similarities in features too. Meituan.com currently runs one product sale per city per day, and offers a heavy discount on the product in question. Since March 8 was Women’s Day, the product on offer in the above screenshot was a spa package.
The site lists 15 major cities in China, though only the Beijing site is actually in service. For information on the product being offered, the site pulls information from other websites – in the spa package’s example, reviews on the spa are scraped from Dianping.com (the Chinese-equivalent of Yelp, which is a very unfair statement since Dianping actually launched first).
With Meituan, Wang Xing is now officially a serial entrepreneur. He started the Chinese Facebook clone, Xiaonei (now branded Renren), in 2005 and sold it for...
a new enterant to the korean social media market
Posted by simon ashwin On Tuesday 30 Mar 10
Korea’s second most popular search engine, Daum is preparing to launch its own Social Network Service called Yozm (http://yozm.daum.net).
Various modification of a Twitter-like services have developed in Korea to better serve Koreans’ socializing habit, needs and interest:
-me2day(www.me2day.net by NHN Naver), Twitter-like service instead offers 150 words
-sfoon(www.sfoon.com by Nurien), Connects your twitter, Me2day, Flickr, You Tube accounts in one viewing convenience
-itgling(www.itgling.co.kr by Mediare), socializing with people who share similar web surfing/using pattern rather than choosing to follow or request to be friends
So, how is Yozm different from the rest?
Well, first of all, Yozm, meaning “nowadays” in Korean, allows the user to select/type in
- What you like
- What you dislike
- What you are good at
- Where you go often to find friends.
Under each category, the user can enter up to three things, which can be changed at anytime.
This function, not offered in Twitter and Me2day allows the user to quickly socialize by allocating and becoming friends with people who share similar taste and lifestyle.
Like me2day offers 150 words to input a message but it also allows the users to upload image (not just a link) to the message box.
Yozm is being tested through active social media users now. It is expected to launch sometime in the first quarter of 2010.
10 essential rules for brands in social media
Posted by simon ashwin On Tuesday 30 Mar 10
These days everyone seems to have advice about how to run your social media marketing program. There are so many tips floating around, it's hard to know what truly essential strategies you should follow to effectively use social media to build your business. Questions abound: Do Facebook fans drive sales? Why should I fund forums for consumers to pillory my products, ridicule my service and tout the competition? And, whatever I decide to do, how I will I know if it's working?
In the search for truth, sometimes social media is its own worst enemy. With a self-credentialed guru waiting at every click, finding actionable, fact-based insight is tricky.
So, in a modest attempt to bring a dose of sanity to this intellectual frat party, I've reined my impulse to lob more "personal picks" into the fray. Instead, I'll follow the wisdom of an august data mining colleague to just "let the data speak."
Our process was to query data from hundreds of our brand clients to see what testable truths emerged -- and here's what we found: 10 rules that hold up across category and time.
1. The 1% Rule
In category after category, our data show that a small fraction of site visitors are responsible for a substantial portion of total site traffic. On average, the percentage of influential users (defined for our purposes simply as a visitor who's subsequent sharing actions result in at least one additional site visitor) on a given site is 0.6% and rarely above 4%. However,...
social media secrets to success
Posted by simon ashwin On Monday 29 Mar 10
Social media is a hot topic for most businesses looking to expand their online marketing strategy. Sites such as Twitter and Facebook provide direct access to millions of potential customers. Since users have various ways of indicating their interests on social media sites, you can easily identify the individuals most likely to become customers and place your greatest efforts there.
If you have decided to invest in this arena are you receiving the results you anticipated? Too often, businesses setup accounts on popular social media sites and then simply wait for traffic to increase. In almost all instances this approach will generate very little interest. No matter how much money you spend creating engaging profile pages there is only ingredient that will offer a return. That investment is time.
Do not forget that social media is truly about the social aspect. Social media sites are organic communities where your reputation is earned. You must be prepared to visits these sites frequently and participate often. The content you contribute will be a direct reflection of your business. It must be well-written and add value. If not, your efforts will be overlooked by other members of the community.
If your goal is to have a large presence on several social media networks you may find it helpful to create a team of employees dedicated to this purpose. The team would be responsible for adding content, updating profiles, responding to comments and all other management. This ensures that you maintain a high-touch approach to the key...
2010 australian social media compendium
Posted by simon ashwin On Monday 29 Mar 10
Social media exploded in Australia in 2009, and steep upward growth trends have continued ever since. In 2009, I compiled my first social media statistics compendium to assist marketers and agencies convince key stakeholders that social media is not a fad and needs to be considered as part of the wider online strategy.
Over the past year a lot has changed in the social space, and thus I have again compiled an updated social media statistics file for some of the major networks and social media sites in Australia, as well as provided some insight on what we should expect from some of the major platforms in 2010.
Overall Australian Statistics & Usage Trends
Australia’s Social Media Audience; A recent Nielsen study found Australia’s social media audience is estimated at 9.9 million.
Social Media vs Search; According to Hitwise social media and search traffic is now neck and neck. In the week ending the 16th of January, social media was just .4% behind search as an online category in Australia.
Brand Interaction; According to Nielsen nearly 40% of online Australians are now interacting with companies via social networking sites, reinforcing notions that Australians are open to engaging with brands and companies online.
Mobile Social Media Nielsen’s social media 2010 report found that 26% of social networkers participated in mobile social networking in the past year. Younger consumers are the most likely to participate in social networking via mobile as 66% of mobile social networkers are...
social mobile usage - women out-use men
Posted by simon ashwin On Sunday 28 Mar 10
Nielsen posted these mobile social stats from December 2009 about the gender differences when accessing social networks via mobile devices. You may be surprised to discover women were found do use their phones to 'tweet' and 'friend' 10% more than men. Nielsen research also showed the 35-54 age group had more active mobile social networkers than any other group.
Nielsen posted these mobile social stats from December 2009 about the gender differences when accessing social networks via mobile devices. You may be surprised to discover women were found do use their phones to “tweet” and “friend” 10% more than men. Nielsen research also showed the 35-54 age group had more active mobile social networkers than any other group.
This was exactly the data I was researching last year about how iPhone was shaping mobile social use and was driving a lot of mobile content creators. 9 months on, and I feel the impact of iPhone and other smart phones is just starting to hit the mainstream, and the statistics support this. AdMob report growth of nearly 300% in iPhone and iPod touch use in Australia alone, between January and November 2009 So how can we use these insights?
