Sales, Social and Tech

List out your end-game goal before you start your social media campaign. Image Source:  http://ideaswar.com .  It is very easy to start your social media campaign on any social networks, but the problem often lies is most starters do not start with an end goal in mind. Starting a social media campaign should be like starting any marketing campaign and most marketers start them by asking themselves - "What do we want to achieve from the campaign?" If the goal of the social media campaign is to get more customers in-store or to your online store, what are you, as a brand, committed to doing to get them in-store or online.  Once you get them in-store or online, how are you going to track if the customer came from your social media campaign. If customers do not originate from your social media marketing campaign, should you consider improving it or drop the campaign and look at alternatives. If the goal is to share updates and content with your captured audience on...

PRecious Communications and Mynewsdesk released a survey of media and bloggers on how PR practitioners can make their press release better. One of the suggestions given to the PR community was to provide visual links that do not expire. From the  Brands and Media Engagement Survey Report 2013 report, Engaging Visuals. 73% think press releases should contain more than just text. Images should also be made easily accessible to the media, with links that do not expire over time. Here are some suggestions for PR professionals on how they can do so. 1. Use Flickr to store highres photos Now that Flickr is free with 1TB of storage data, there is no reason to start storing photos on Flickr and sharing the photo links in the press release. One other advantage of using Flickr is the automatic resize feature. As such the trick here is to upload the high resolution best quality photo on Flickr. If it is print media, the journalist can select the original version. If it is for onl...

A Facebook acquaintance have highlighted in a Facebook post that the OPT OUT option of Starhub's SMS ad maybe not be working as intended. It seems OPT OUT only works when one complains to the Starhub twitter account. Wrote on Facebook, I have received one SMS dated 27 Jun 2013, and if you look at my opt out at 76333 dated 27 June 2013. By right, I should not be receiving any more unsolicited SMSes from Starhub. However, I have just received another unsolicited SMS from Starhub today, despite I have already sent them an OPTOUT. Either they are lying about their optout option, or they are just continuously spamming me with their offers by paying lip service to a customer's complaint of opting out.  If you are seriously going to implement "Do not call" registry, please get something like this as simple to be enforced.   It was only after a complain was made and tag to Starhub Facebook account was the user removed from the Starhub SMS marketing database. H...

Mosquitoes are attracted to the carbon dioxide that humans emit. So what if you could trick the mosquitoes' radar to sense carbon dioxide? Kite Patch from SPARKHOUSE on Vimeo . Singapore's National Environment Agency should start looking at this Kite Patch to combat the dengue epidemic.

Nokia announced the availability of the Nokia Lumia 625 which will have a bigger screen but with a small price with the other smartphones. It will also support 4G. Rumours have it that that the Nokia Lumia 625 will cost €220 or about SGD370, without contract. If based on Singapore contracts, the telcos here might charge you around SGD50 or nothing for a value contract. This will be challenge for Nokia. Will Singaporeans even grab the phone at this price or free for a contracted plan? But Nokia needs this to succeed as the low-end Symbian phones will be phased out around this time. The jury is still out there for the two 90s juggernauts which somehow lost out in the age of the touchscreen. From the Press Release, Fun, Fast and Affordable: Nokia Unveils Lumia 625 Espoo, Finland - Nokia today announced the  Nokia Lumia 625 , an accessibly priced 4G smartphone to help people see more of what they love. The Nokia Lumia 625 delivers high-speed entertainment to a wi...

I am not ashamed to say I support Mr Tan Kin Lian as a presidential candidate because I believed in what he stood for. And when Mr Tan posted his "misadventure" with a thermometer app, I did shake my head in disbelief that he did that. Source:   http://www.mrbrown.com/blog/2013/07/we-could-have-had-him-for-president.html Thinking twice, there could be a possibility that Mr Tan misunderstood how this app work. Most  thermometer app take data from various weather stations to display the temperature on it. Yes, the technology savvy will do a #facepalm when they read the post and mrbrown's post demonstrated it perfectly. Wrote mrbrown , "Maybe the former Presidential-hopeful didn't realize he needed to upgrade to the Pro version of the app. Then his iPhone would not only measure temperature, it would also measure current PSI (PM2.5 included), tell you if you are having your period, and cook instant noodles. Good thing he didn't try to measure boil...

When it comes to Facebook marketing, getting "Likes" has become a numbers game and you could easily get LIKES in a heartbeat via Facebook Advertising. The real challenge after the "Likes" is to engage these "Likes" on the Facebook Page.  Source:  https://www.facebook.com/business/engage One way to engage Fans is to  "Post at least 1 to 2 times per week" so that the brand stays top-of-mind and relevant to the people who liked your Page".  Facebook uses the metric "People Talking About This" to show the number of engaged Fans.  Wrote Mashable about the importance of " People Talking About This ",  People Talking About This is an important metric because it emphasizes interactions beyond an initial Facebook Like. Pages that create posts that fans enjoy will benefit. When people interact with pages in ways that generate stories, pages reach an audience beyond their existing fan base. Users benefit, too...