Sales, Social and Tech

The recent reaction of Aljunied-Hougang Town Council's to the termination of AIMS financial computer services have put a spotlight on the Town Council's annual reports. Alex Au of Yawning Bread blog has been scrutinising the Town Council's annual report on the amount paid to AIMS for the financial computer service. You can read Part 1 , Part 2 and Part 3 here. Computing services falls under General and Administrative Expenditure section and it was interesting to see that Advertising, PR and Publicity is sometimes one of the highest expenditure spent, yet, details of such expenditure is not to be found. Expenditure on Public Relations, Advertising and Publicity 2010 2011 2012 Ang Mo Kio  - Yio Chu Kang  $          352,401  $        620,520   Bishan - Toa Payoh Town Council  $          213,078  $        513,397   Hougang Town Council    $          20,733   Chua Chu Kang Town Council

You can't avoid Facebook today. With over one billion users, finding somebody without a Facebook account is a rarity.  Lots of F&B establishments have already started on Facebook marketing. Some have found hits, other misses.  After dealing with F&B merchants on how to launch their Fan Clubs for their Facebook Page, I have found that there are still doubts about using Facebook as a marketing tools. As such, I am starting from the ground up. Intermediate and advance marketeers can skip these first few posts.  So why Facebook? 1. A medium which provides you with a captive audience When Facebook first launched Pages, they added a fan button where Facebook users become fans of your Page. They made a decision to change it to Likes but it is weird to call them likers.  So those who join the Page are still known as fans. These fans are your captive audience. Besides email, no other medium provide that online tool to give you a captive audience. Yes

A Merry Christmas to all readers and fans. Drink, be merry and don't drive. If you are already doing a Merlion, take a cab.

Yesterday, I blogged about how a usually cool headed entrepreneur went into a rage rant over Singtel customer service or rather the lack of it. This morning, I saw the newsfeed flooding from Milton Sau, a news producer at Channel NewsAsia,  about his experience with Singtel. His first issue with Singtel was whether Singtel should have charged him to to replace his landline cable that’s outside his home.  So far, it seems he has not got another verification from Singtel. And Singtel tried to call him. Wrote Milton, "Singtel customer service called and said can’t hear me over the phone. And I’m a Singtel subscriber." In trying to get a simple information from Singtel Customer, he got " verbal diarrhoea-ed over the phone". As summarised by Milton, "First I was told my broadband connection wasn't disconnected. Now I'm unable to log onto the web at home. The only consistency with Singtel is its bill reminders." A friend has recommende

21122012 may not be the end of the world yet, but it was a day when the usually cool headed Bernard Leong, founder of sgentrepreneur.com , launched into a rant rage over the customer's service he experienced from Singtel. Wrote Bernard on his tumbler , 1. I have purchased an iPhone 5 at Takashimaya and specifically told the customer rep that I have a multi-SIM. That moron gave me a single SIM and I have to wait for 2 days to get my phone activated. Worse, I have to travel to Takashimaya and get a bad customer rep asking me to wait when the customer service department called and assured me that I do not need to wait. 2. I have purchased a new fibre broadband for my new home and told them that I have an existing broadband in my parents' home. Those idiots, without verifying with me went and cancel the broadband in my parents' home. I have told them that I have two broadband connections and they don't seem to get it. In the end, I have wasted 2 hours to go through th

Scotch-Brite Singapore has launched the Angry Wives Club app which hopes to advise wives on how to get husbands to do their houseworks without getting angry. The app is differentiated into three sections. The first section helps wife to identify what type of husbands they have and how to treat their husbands accordingly to get them to do house chores. The next section provides wives with tips on how to treat their husbands so that they get the household chores done. Keep nagging to the minimum is my favourite. Finally, what's an app without a contest.. The Scotch-Brite Singapore Angry Wives Facebook app can be found at  https://www.facebook.com/ScotchBriteSG/app_116837335150050 .

Harvard Business Review has a good write-up on measuring the real ROI (Return on Investment) on social media. HBR describes metrics like "Twitter followers, or Facebook likes are important by themselves" as nothing but vanity metrics. Wrote HBR , Here are four of the most important metrics you can follow — notice how little they have to do with popular social-media metrics: Relevant revenue . Note the word "relevant," which refers to recurring sales in your core business. Don't count revenue from one-time or stagnant sources. Sales volume . This can be a number like units sold or active subscriptions, something that shows whether or not enough people want to buy what you're selling. Customer retention. Metrics like "new customers" can hide the fact that although you may attract 1,000 new users a month, you're losing 900, which means you're not going to scale. Relevant growth. Too often, companies compound the stupidity of thei

Instagram recently made a change to its Terms Of Service which automatically allows advertisers to buy your photos from them without even the need to ask users, least paying users a portion of the sale. Wrote the new Instagram new TOS, You agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you. There is no option for you to say no, so the only thing left to do is to export the photos I have taken and delete my Instagram account. Before that can be done, there is a need to export photos.  Forbes have a good list of export sites here . Gizmodo argued that you " Stop Whining About Your Personal Data on Instagram You Little Whiny Baby ", while ZDNet says " No, what Instagram just did to its users is not acceptable ". I agree completely with ZDNET. This is my concern. S

The Straits Times has an article of it's ST Happening application. Given that it now has 5,300 users downloading the application and a average daily circulation of 355,700, the print to digital conversion rate is at 1.49%. This is a better conversion than online which is at 0.01%, but is it cost effective for a newspaper ad which is in the ten of thousands than online which a good media buy could only cost hundreds?

Bye bye world...

(Are you looking to launch Facebook Offers? Why not launch a Fan Club instead. Check out the differences between Facebook Offers and Fan Clubs at  http://socialpr.blogspot.sg/2012/11/facebook-offers-vs-fan-clubs.html ) We have been asked about the differences between Fan Clubs and Loyalty Punch Card Apps so we thought it would be great to share it in this post. Differences between Fan Clubs vs Loyalty Punch Card Apps Taggo's Fan Club solution is free for merchants. The service is built into the credit/debit card fees that merchants already pay. Merchants get more fans, more word of mouth advertising, and valuable CRM data, all free. Merchants simply fund the discounts or other promotions for their fans. Merchants keep full control of the customer relationship. Customers don't join Taggo. They become fan club members of the merchant's existing Facebook page. Major brands don't want to promote third party apps, so Taggo's model is better suited to their need