Sales, Social and Tech

(Disclaimer: I work as the social media consultant for Brandtology - a sponsor of barcamp03 Singapore) Got Claudia to appear in front of QIK. As I have to go off after lunch, please follow @claudia10 or the hashtag #barcampsg3 to get the latest tweets on the unconference.

(Disclaimer: I work at Brandtology and Brandtology is one of the sponsors of barcamp03 Singapore) Preeetam Raj, one of the organisers for barcampsg3, providing a quick update on barcamp03 Singapore. barcamp03 Singapore looking for more speakers next year. Check out http://barcamp.org/BarCampSingapore3 for more info.

(Disclaimer: I work at Brandtology and Brandtology is one of the sponsors of barcamp03 Singapore) Saw Andrew Lightheart (@alightheart) tweetering about barcampsg03 so decided to ask him on his thoughts of Bernard Leong’s earlier discussion.

(Disclaimer: I work at Brandtology and Brandtology is one of the sponsors for barcamp03 Singapore)

Bernard Teo introduces his Mac OS applications topic for discussion at 1030am.

Jeremy Snyder from Twinity giving his quick introduction to his discussion topic of Virtual Worlds at barcamp03 Singapore. His discussion starts at 1030am.

(Disclaimer: I work at Brandtology and Brandtology is one of the sponsors for barcamp03 Singapore) I am at bacamp03 Singapore now. If you are interested in attending the un-conference, make your way down to Ngee Ann Poly Block 27 level 2. Here are some of the discussion topics posted on the wall. For more information barcamp Singapore, go visit http://barcamp.org/BarCampSingapore3 .

Reportedly, the BBC says most people have read only 6 out of the 100. Copy and paste in your notes. Put an x to those you have read. Be truthful. 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - x 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien-x 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - x 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - x 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - X 6 The Bible - x 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - x 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens -x 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller - x 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare- 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier - 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - x 17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks - 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - X 19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - x 20 Middlemarch - George Eliot - 21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell - 22 The Great ...

I have this personal agenda to get the B2B community here to understand and use Social Media. However, one of the biggest draw back is that such companies would rather wait for another company to take that leap before executing one of themselves. I recently posted a Tweet how Social Media can be use to build relationships with your brand’s antagonists and got a status update on Facebook asking me for a quick 30 minutes on the 5W and 1H of Social Media. Let me take a stab here. So what is Social Media? The essence of Social Media is derived from the meaning of SOCIAL which is “interaction”. Blogs, Forums, Social Networking Sites,etc these are just the MEDIA. So Social Media is all about interaction. Previously, interaction between brand and customers only happens when the sale is made. The brand will create a product or solution, market and sell them to the customer. When the customer has parted his cash for the product and solution, it is an indication to the brand ...

Found this Twitter app called Twittersheep from Daryl Tay of UniqueFreqency.com . The value of this site is that it helps determine if you have right followers looking at your tweets. Since you are most likely to follow your followers, this tag cloud is also a good indication if you are following people of your interest. The above is the tag cloud from my Twitter account and it shows that I do have the right followers. I don’t find it shocking but it is nice to see “dad”, “father” and husband as part of the tag clouds. Technorati Tags: Twitter , Social PR , Social Media

My initial thoughts were that the English sites would top the list. I was wrong after going through the list. Here’s the list. 7. Mypaper.sg (315,953/100,000,000) Mypaper is Singapore Press Holding’s to Mediacorp’s Today free newspaper. It started off as a full Chinese daily but soon became a English-Chinese daily to compete with Today. Mypaper is at www.mypaper.sg 6. tamilmurasu.tamil.sg (295,100/100,000,000) One of the problems with Alexa is that it have problems measure second level domains. Tamil.sg is ranked but not tamilmurasu.tamil.sg so I am assuming that it is related to tamilmurasu . Surprisingly, this site comes in 2nd last behind Mypaper.sg   5. Todayonline.com (74, 037/100,000,000) A journalist who follows me on Twitter asked about the stats about the online status about his publication, Today . Based on the Alexa ranking, it is ranked 6th.   4. businesstimes.com.sg (49, 977/100,000,000) Singapore Business Times is n...

The Americans have this saying that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. The tools for Social Media activities online are mostly free, but does this mean that you can have your Social Media campaign done without any cost? B.L. Ochman for BusinessWeek wrote that your Social Media can come cheap, but it is not free. Wrote Ochman , The budget for an effective social media marketing campaign begins at $50,000 for two to three months. I'm sure companies have spent less, and I know they've spent more. Building a site that incorporates interactivity, allows user-generated content, and perhaps also includes e-commerce doesn't come cheap from anyone who knows what they are doing. Even taking free software like WordPress and making it function as an effective interactive site, incorporating e-commerce, creating style sheets that integrate with the company's branding, takes more than time. That takes skill, experience, and money. Though I have not been given $50,0...

I was going through some Tweets and saw this interesting Twit from techxav, who is Singapore’s Top Twitter based on the number followers. The list is interesting as it highlight the popular sites in the Internet universe and it gives online marketers some figures on website’s to advertise. It is interesting to see the top 1 million sites based on Alexa’s ranking as I usually use that to see an estimation of the stats of bloggers I looking to invite for events. Below is the top 20.sg sites based on Alexa’s ranking. Interesting ebay.com.sg ranks as number 2 at 3115 against 1,000,000. 496 google.com.sg 3115 ebay.com.sg 5484 nus.edu.sg 5843 singaporepools.com.sg 6257 hardwarezone.com.sg 7763 singnet.com.sg 9309 jobsdb.com.sg 9735 ntu.edu.sg 12347 stom...

First it was known as New Media and now we know it as Social Media. If there is Social Media, there must be Social PR to keep the sphere in its yin and yang balance. So what is Social Media and Social PR? The word “social” itself refers to interaction and Social Media must have something to do with interaction. So Social Media is a medium that provides content creators to interact with readers and vice versa. Blogs seems to have filled that role nicely. A blogger creates content and readers comment on that post almost instantly.  Blogger finds an interesting post on another blog, cuts and pastes the link in a new post. Readers comment on this new link and if they like it, they share it on their on post or even via Instant Messaging. You get to see the interaction involved but Social Media isn’t just about blogs or bloggers. There are other forms of the Social Media. You have the Web1.5 version called the forum where interaction is almost instantaneous. You now hav...

Saw this on @ryuworks Twit of him doing a QIK at the Singtel launch of the HTC Android Phone in Singapore. SingTel now has monopoly over Apple iPhone and HTC Dream. In the earlier post I mentioned that Samsung is also going to launch Google Android phones in 2nd half of 2009. I predict that 2009 and 2010 will see the OS war in the mobile smartphone space. It is the sign of the times that the maybe 10 years ago, the war was for desktop OS. Technorati Tags: HTC Dream , Google Android , Singtel

It has been quite awhile since I was invited to an event as blogger or as media. Daniel Goh for Samsung invited me to this evening announcement of the new Samsung phones via Twitter earlier in the day. The invitation via Twitter was as sign of how things have changed since having left the media scene some six years ago when I was writing for PC World Singapore and Hardwarezone.com. Armed with the Samsung Omnia and Qik.com installed, I was able to do some “live” broadcast of short clips of the launch. Unfortunately during the launch, I wasn’t able to access Twitter so I updated via my Facebook status page. Winston Goh, product manager for Samsung, introducing the new Samsung mobile models It was after the event and during the train ride home that it struck me to how the tools of content creation have changed so much since my media days. Mobile data rates have fallen by so much that it allows me to transfer data via mobile Internet without me having to worry a...

As much as our local government pushes for eServices on the Internet, I found it better to make a short trip down to the immigration offices to get my questions answered in person. First of all, the customer hotline is so hot that you either get an engage tone on the first try or if you are lucky to get through, you might to wait up to an hour before you speak to a human. I wouldn’t want to stick my ear to the phone for that long. I usually try the other line but that’s the quality control hotline. What I got was some answers, but I wasn’t confident of it. In fact, what irk me was the judgmental remark the operator made about our decision to choose to bring my son into Singapore using a passport from the country up north instead of the Singapore one. Shouldn’t operators take a neutral position in their responses? If you send an email, it will take up to three working days for a reply. So I decided to make a stop at the immigration office on the way back from meeting a client. ...

One reporter vs one product marketing consultant. One made rude Twitter remarks while the other stayed cool and calm throughout the whole fight. The latter claimed Twitter victory. It all started when the reporter called the marketing person and she didn’t return the call back. Product marketing consultant, April Dunford, then tweeted what the reporter said about her. @sirdavid, the reporter, replied.. wtf? sirdavid : @aprildunford what the fuck. I called you for comment two days ago. What did you expect when you called me back? Don’t post that shit online sirdavid : @aprildunford furthermore, I called you several times in the afternoon. Don’t be condescending to me when I actually wanted to talk to you sirdavid : @aprildunford how about you stop blasting personal conversations on twitter and call me back. what the hell is wrong with you. aprildunford : @sirdavid All I did was return your call. I didn’t expect you to do anything. Wow. Like, seriously, ...

I had a discussion with a PR acquaintance of mine who gave a bleak look at Social PR in the digital space today. She highlighted that some of her clients are looking at Social PR in the digital space as a luxury rather than a necessity. In the current economy crisis,  its better to spend on the necessity rather than on a luxury first. She pointed out that necessity her client was for print media. Good news for print though, but her views are 180 degrees of other PR agencies I have been speaking to. Giving her comments some deep thought, I was suddenly reminded of the Pepsi Challenge and how it is similar to the social PR campaigns I have heard and seen in 2008. The Pepsi Generation will go gaga over mentions of the Pepsi Challenge, but I guess this will sound more retro to the Gen Y. The Pepsi Challenge went like this. You are at a supermarket and the demonstrator will pour two type of colas into two 1ml cups and you were suppose to choose which you prefer.  You ...

Free was the prick that burst the dot com bubble. With the current economy crisis, free seems to be making a return soon. However, John Jantsch, of Ducttape Marketing, says that with so much free stuff around, consumers might be suffering free fatigue. Too much of a good thing isn’t a great thing after all. However, John suggests marketers should look at upping the value of free. John wrote “There are some that will actually place a higher value on free information if they have to work a bit to get it. The totally free, no strings, no exclusivity, no nothing appeal has, well, lost it’s appeal under the flood of junk that comes by way of this offer. “Bill Doerr of Sell More Marketing shared a brilliant strategy for raising the price of free. He promoted a seminar filled with very valuable information, the kind that people pay hundreds for, at the low cost of $99. When attendees arrived, they were greeted with a crisp $100 bill at their seats. The $99 assured attendees were ...

For those who know me personally is well aware of my interest in technology and web2.0. If you are visiting this blog for the first time, here’s an exclusive opportunity to know more about my history Internet. I was introduced to the Internet at the Internet Cafe when I was 20 years. That’s a good 13 years ago. My father brought me to the cafe and see if I could learn something new besides playing California Games on my old 486. I wasn’t fascinated with the Internet at the cafe, but more at the staff playing Quake II multiplayer. The second time I visited the cafe, I approached the owner to see if I could work there part-time. I submitted the request form and went home. A few days later, I got a call from the owner who said he wanted to me to do part-time over the weekend. I immediately agreed. Hence, I got on the job training on how to use IE and Netscape browsers, setting POP and SMTP accounts for tourists looking to access their emails. I was also responsible for recomme...

Dell shook the PC market with its direct to customer strategy plus innovative inventory management system. I was once told that that Dell had more finance people in Penang rather than assembly people because when you make a payment online, Dell has a lead time to use your money when you credit payment immediately. I am not sure how true this is, but it does make sense (pardon the pun). Dell in December 2008 made headlines again when it announced that it made USD1million via Twitter. You could say USD1million isn’t made, but Twitter is free and that means a 1,000,000% profit. Wrote Internet News , “Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) says Twitter has produced $1 million in revenue over the past year and a half through sale alerts. “People who sign up to follow Dell on Twitter receive messages when discounted products are available the company's Home Outlet Store. “They can click over to purchase the product or forward the information to others.” So how can you sell on Twitter? Here’s so...

(Update: It seems there are only 2,137 Singapore twitters from a statement in Twitterholic.com ) The Straits Times today reported that blogging is passé and that microblogging is the new Internet rage. From reading the article, it seem that the stats do show that the while visits to blog sites have slowed, the numbers of visitors to Twitter and Plurk has exploded. Tan Weizhen , for The Straits Times, wrote “According to research firm Hitwise, blogging traffic slowed last year, while the usage of Twitter and Plurk has exploded. “The number of Singaporean users visiting and using Twitter 's site jumped 602 per cent between January last year and last month, said Hitwise, which does not reveal absolute figures.” So is blogging so yesterday? I disagree. Its like saying because SMS growth has exploded compared to voice-calls, is voice-call dated? Or saying that there is a jump in growth in visits to online media hence print media is dated? A check at Hitwise paint a...

Congratulations go to Claudia for appearing on mainstream media about her enterprise, 24seven.sg . Last month, the Association of Blogger (Singapore) appeared in the mainstream media too. Bloggers were also quoted on the events that follow the association after it hit the news. It seems bloggers are becoming the new darlings in Singapore. There are blogs out there who tell PR how they should approach bloggers. There even blogs out there from the PR side how they and the clients should talk to bloggers. But I doubt there is a post to tell bloggers how to talk to the media in Singapore. Here are some notes I have learned both as a PR person and as a tech journo a long time ago. Note 1: No such thing as “off the record” Please remember there is no such thing is “off the record” when you talk to the media, especially if it is an interview or even over beer. If you feel that it is something that should not be say, do not rattle it off your mouth. Anything you say...

What a start this year has been for the Singapore bloggers. In just a period of one month, bloggers here have been described as as bacteria and loose sand . Like I always say, no publicity is bad publicity (if you catch the double pun, nice!). At least SG bloggers are being talked about rather than shunned away like leapers. Interestingly, meeting my PR and marketing peers in agencies and in-house have taken a even more serious look at Social PR than last year. For agencies, a good, simple and effective Social PR strategy has given them an edge over competitors when pitching for a new client. For in-house folks, it has help them to stretch their marketing budgets a bit more. However, when I speak to my peers, the general agreement I get is that the Singapore blog-o-sphere lacks the expert or maven bloggers that can be found in the US, Europe, Taiwan and even Japan. As per Wikipedia , mavens are “trusted experts in a particular field, who seeks to pass knowledge on to o...

We, the web2.0 generation, have to grateful for how the Internet has evolved to provide us with the various means of communications. We communicate via our blogs, our Facebook social network, via Twitter, via IM etc. We know how to use these tools to reach out to the world. These tools cost us almost nothing. But for the earlier generations, such web2.0 tools of communication sounds very foreign to them. Their known means of communications is only via the telephone phone and pay much for overseas IDD calls. Over these Lunar New Year, an incident at my in-laws place in Kuala Lumpur highlighted how we have taken for new communications tools for granted. One of my in-laws have a son, his wife and their child, living in Australia, while she lives in Malaysia . Her only means of communication with them is via phone and expensive IDD calls. For the last few months, she has heard of stories from other relatives who have visited her son in Australia have told her that her son has bee...

I have been busy with family for the Lunar New Year week but it seem the Singapore blog-o-sphere was active, and is still is, about recently formed Association of Bloggers (Singapore), ABS for short. To cut a long story short, the announcement of ABS via mainstream media didn’t go down well with Singapore bloggers and in the end resulted in some speculation to why ABS was set-up in the first place. A post by the ABS president defending herself against a harsh criticism from a blogger added to the bad start and created even more speculation that ABS was set-up with an ulterior motive. A week later, some founding members of the pro-team started posting up notice of resignation on their blogs and this just added fuel to fire. Again, a story of ABS appeared in mainstream media and this lead to even more disgruntled bloggers asking why the president isn’t responding via her blog or the association’s blog. I also responded to a post about the ABS incident. You can catch a summary of...