Social Media from the social media dinosaur’s POV
We have heard a lot about Social Media from experts and “experts” out there so I thought it’s about time for change. Here’s my take on social media - from the point of view of a social media dinosaur.
1. If it’s not useful, it’s junk - I dislike so many pointless IT “social media” applications which I find pointless (to the dinosaur, at least). I dislike podcasts or vodcasts or whatever casts because
- I cannot speed read for time efficiency.
- It takes 3 times or more for a podcast or a show to deliver the same message that text and pictures do. It has committed the cardinal sin of time wasting, which I detest.
- It is hard to pretend to be studious at work when there’s voices and raucous laughter emanating out of my PC speakers.
- Seriously, unless you are Mr Bakchormee Brown, forget it.
- There is a reason why screen artistes are eye candies. Period.
For example, I use Facebook, only because -
- it has event functions which friends and associates widely use to publicize their events and invitations
- it has a useful business element (groups and notifications) which I use to leverage my businesses
- I can disable or ignore time wasting applications like Superpoke. If you want to kiss me or throw a stone at me, do it in person.
2. Forget rules and what nots – it makes it too intimidating for the noobs. After all, social media is about engaging, and not rebuffing or snubbing. Whatever happened to common sense? For one, I would not post a totally unrelated event to ride on the publicity of another. On the other hand, I don’t react violently if others are deliberately or cluelessly obtuse – after all I believe that professionalism and sincerity are important elements in corporate communications. I’ve had similar businesses advertising and publicizing in my group and spamming my friends on Facebook etc. Common sense, though, is an elementary concept that people seem to have differing yardsticks on.
3. It’s powerful if leveraged correctly. What I know of social media is fully transcripted here. Basically I accidentally harnessed the power of social media (I didn’t even know it’s called social media) and created awareness with exponential effect. My inventory ran out on the second day - and this is stock which I had prepared for one full month’s buffer. With every Tom, Muthu, Xiao Qiang and their grandmas jumping in on the online shop wagon, this is a powerful weapon to harness.
4. Understanding bloggers and their readers – at a glance, Xiaxue and I would probably have a very different readership profile. If I were to run a business on hair or beauty services, I would, in all likelihood, advertise on Xiaxue (where the demographics of her readers seem to be a significant portion of females in their teens to 20s, than on my own blog, where readers are predominantly males in their 20s to 50s (judging from the comments and emails). I would, going by the same reasoning, advertise about Blackberry products on my blog. The reason is crystal clear. And yet you have businesses which ignore demographics and go for blind volume. Is that wise?
5. What is the blog angle? I feel that businesses looking to engage bloggers need to understand this - primarily because bloggers attract like-minded readers. A business specializing in eyelash extensions would be more interested in engaging Xiaxue as a blogger than say, a food blogger (regardless of her statistics).
You have the popular bloggers with their “fans” and then you have those like me, who are big on content relevance. I don’t have time for blogs that offer no value to me in terms of knowledge, interest or humour. Unless you are a friend of mine or are particularly interesting, I can hardly be interested in what you ate, bought, went or did today. I write in a similarly pragmatic manner too. I share my discourse and analysis about social and political issues and welcome sharing and alternative discussions. I write about my family outings - to share about the places of interest, heritage, culture etc here or overseas. I write because I have something to share.
Imagine if I post only pics like these in every post. Frankly, nobody gives a rat’s ass. I’d be bored, you’d be bored.
Bleeding boring.
Some bloggers, on the other hand, make their blogs a purely pictorial one full of pictures and very little content. That’s perfectly fine. It’s not in my position or my intention to dictate blogging style. What’s one woman’s meat is another woman’s poison. I might also use these pictures to share about my personal style and fashion sense in another blog, but that’s because it’s a style and fashion ezine.
My point is, what’s the blog angle?
Use that blog angle to your advantage.
6. A winning strategy is a winning strategy. I cannot comprehend why “serious bloggers” tend to be extremely harsh and bitter about “popular” bloggers like Xiaxue (again). Instead of examining the factors that propel her to phenomenal readership statistics and success, they choose to lampoon her by criticizing her lack of content. I beg to differ. She writes about the most mundane stuff and snippets of her life – which by right should be so boring that watching my toenails grow would be more interesting and fun. Why then does she command the interest of 20,000 daily readers and more? The ability to write in an interesting manner about the most mundane of things and the ability to engage her readers using the basest medium of humour are key points. Rather than look or sound like a squishy sad sack of sour grapes bitching about how “brainless” Xiaxue is (hello, Mensa anyone?), “serious” bloggers would do well to glean applicable tips from the method of Xiaxue and apply it to their own serious blogs “full of content” but “not as popular”.
7. Effectiveness of Blogger Outreach - I’ve read about the Samsung Social Media night organized by Daniel Goh of Samsung. While I think it’s a great initiative taken by a MNC to engage bloggers, I couldn’t help but consider the objectives of the program from the business owner’s angle.
- How is the success of the program quantified in terms of outreach and target market?
- Are the bloggers being selected on the basis that they were interested in the event and to cover it in their blogs, or were they selected more for their readership audience? (this, to me, is extremely crucial)
- How can the impact of the program be measured in terms of sales impact? For example, let’s say that I wanted to buy a Samsung Innov8 after reading it on Nadia’s blog. There is no special discount available to blog readers and there is no information collected at point of sale. How then does Samsung quantify the success of this particular marketing strategy?
- As a business owner, I would examine the readers of the bloggers invited for such an event to fully leverage on the strength of the outreach. While it is good to see bloggers from all walks of life, I could not help but notice the absence of bloggers in other demographics. The target market for the Samsung Innov8 I imagine, might be tertiary students, young working adults, senior professionals, business owners, busy parents multi tasking work and family, just to name a few segments. Where then are the mummy bloggers? (do not underestimate the outreach to mothering forums like moms4moms.info owned by Ratna, my friend) Where are the professionals like Walter, Nelson and Mandrake? Where are the business owners like ECL and Paddy? I found their absence most jarring and conspicuous. Are they absent because of a failure to engage them or the complacent belief that there is no need to?
- A quick check indicated that it is mostly the same faces at every blogger activity and event. Why is this so?
- *UPDATE: An excellent review done by Nicole on Samsung Innov8.
8. Identifying and zeroing in on your target market - I found this article very interesting. While people trust those like themselves the most, they trusted bloggers the least. Is it not imperative then, that businesses should be extremely cautious about the bloggers they choose to engage, lest they inadvertently create a turn off to the very target market they want to engage? It’s definitely food for thought.
9. Numbers are important – and yes, the more the merrier. This is a small town – you get the same bloggers covering events and the sphere of influence remains the same, if not smaller as readers come and go. While it is perfectly fine that the same bloggers cover different events, should there not be an active drive to engage more bloggers in different blogging styles and target audiences? Who would say no to a bigger share of the pie? Of course, the above points need to be considered for the reach to go out to the correct numbers.
10. Tap on the interests of bloggers. Quit blabbering on and on about technical applications when trying to engage bloggers. Understand that not all bloggers are geeks. We may use some applications in the course of blogging but surely blogging and interaction mean more than technical applications.
Say how about a writing workshop to enhance writing skills? A mini photography tutorial? A grooming class where you can tie in with cosmetic companies to offer talks ot tips and sponsor the goodie bags?
My point is - there are so many ways to engage bloggers. Surely we can think out of the box.
Hi Rachel! I told you you were into social media, even if from a personal point of view
I’m just going to zoom in on the blogger outreach programme because it’s one of my pet topics. I think it’s very easy to look at blogger outreach in isolation and judge effectiveness/ROI from there. One thing you’re right about is Samsung didn’t integrate a “tracking system”. Maybe they never intended to, I’m not sure.
However, the recent Pat Law post on her blog Blankanvas, and in fact, many blogs who have bloggers bitching (rightly or wrongly) about a product/service, IS affecting ROI, just negatively. And if companies aren’t using socialmedia, they won’t know about it and will be unable to react.
What I’m saying is there are two sides of the coin. As easily as execs can say “I don’t see the benefits”, we can easily show them what they are losing out as well.
A very refreshing take on the social media.
My take is that the definition of social media is everchanging, it takes it own form as the trend and direction defines itself. Is social media really something new or just a repackaging of something that we already know but the delivery method is different?
One thing that dont change, and that is engaging the right people for the right thing be it for business or just networking expanding the reach to more people, in the right manner. And some tend to see it in a whole different perspective that this delivery method has to be totally different and unique.
As we all know there are many social media gatherings happening almost on a daily basis, some bloggers are there to interact, to learn something new (nothing beats talking to the real people than just via blogs) and like any social gatherings, some just to be seen, to see and perhaps rub some shoulders with people or products.
Several businesses that believe in social media are itself caught by its definition of which is which and tend to think that it is a totally new thing for them to grasp to get this group of bloggers to talk about their products or services and forgot about the more on the ground way of engaging bloggers effectively.
Companies tend to see bloggers as a different group of ’species’ that has to be treated specially different, give them extra special privileges even to not daring to step on their toes in case there is any backslashes against them. So instead of engaging them more effectively, most just prefer to stay away from anything that has to do with bloggers.
It takes both hands to clap and to define and set the direction what social media really is when things change in internet speed.
I agree with the bulk of your article here, but I beg to differ that “numbers are important”. I barely touched on it in my recent post why metrics can be redundant.
The IT/marketing/PR industry here is metric-obsessed, and that’s how they are selling themselves. Even when armed with high readership, that does not necessarily translates to sales conversion. Neither does it point to anyone taking a liking to the brand. In a small scene that we see the same few faces again and again, what we need is not more, but a replacement from the current cohort.
Metrics are not going to tell you the quality of “connection” between individuals too. Likewise, I’ve been looking at Innov8 like yourself but I scrapped reading blog coverage totally. Something I explained in my post too. The bloggers are not providing the kind of quality information a potential customer need to know. Does a potential customer cares who’s there? No. Not unless you are Angelina Jolie or Cameron Diaz endorsing the product, MAYBE that can cause a stir.
I feel we also need to detract away from using numbers to justify moves in social media. Let’s be more creative. Intangible benefits are often unmeasurable, and it’s a real bad idea to advocate that we should ignore these intangible goodness.
http://www.communplug.com/social-media/metrics-are-so-yesterday
Hi Rachel,
A big thanks to highlighting our first attempt at engaging the blogosphere here in Singapore.
I’ll address two points you pointed out in your post:
1. Identifying the right “target audience”.
I basically invited people I knew and trusted, as well as the people they recommended. Also, I invited people who responded to my post on Plurk. In essence, I was only looking for the people who would be expressed true interest in the product. I’m not even interested in the type and size of their readership - if I trust them as genuine bloggers, I believe they will attract the right audience. Whether this is the “right” approach or not, it worked for us.
And yes, the product will appeal to multiple audiences. We had 21 people from various backgrounds - students, professionals, even a mother - there. Mommy blogger? Molemole. Paddy was there too, if you missed his post.
Also, just because they didn’t post their experience doesn’t mean they weren’t there. And I’m not about to force blog about it either.
But the truth of the matter is that any event, of any scale, even one for the social media, cannot cater to everyone and everybody.
2. Effective ROI.
You are right in wondering about the effectiveness of such outreach efforts by big companies. Is there effective ROI? How does this translate into sales? Of course this are legitimate management concerns.
But what if sales is not our only objective? My company is also interested in having a conversation with early technology adopters. These are the people who can give valuable feedback to my company on our products, technology and marketing strategies.
Nicole (nicole.sg) emailed me and gave me her feedback about the Innov8, and proposed that the location of the headphone jack would be better placed somewhere else to improve user experience.
Just this one piece of feedback makes the entire event worthwhile, and more precious than say, 100 units of Innov8s sold.
Daryl: Heh. I thought with all the inputs from experts and “experts” out there, it might be refreshing to hear from this dinosaur who knows nuts about social media.
I’m very interested as to how professionals are measuring ROI from their campaigns and I would like to speak with you further on this when we could.
To be very honest, I think some bloggers can also shoot themselves in their foot (or in this case, mouth) when they shoot off their mouths about negative experiences but without cohesive or credible reason. No wonder some businesses are writing off bloggers as a credible marketing tool. We as readers would also question how credible are such reviews in terms of being objective towards the products or services? Sorry for my rambling - I hope I make sense here.
I am also keen to know how it can be communicated to businesses that “they are losing out”. Thanks for your insights - it’s been very interesting. Hope to discuss further!
Paddy: Thanks for your comment!
This is extremely interesting. How does the delivery method have to be totally different and unique?
I think this does not help in terms of credibility. If I knew that a certain blogger (or bloggers) is being courted with “special privileges” I would not believe a single word of his or her review. That’s a 100% fail rate.
If I were in social media for any company, my emphasis would be on sincerity and honesty. I would encourage bloggers to give honest feedback be it good or bad. And then work on the “bad” feedback to improve on the product or service. A good feedback is always good to have, but to harness the power of a “bad” feedback and turn it around - and have it blogged about - that, would be the ultimate PR and social media coup.
To me lah.
Ed: I think in a way I did get where you are coming from - after all I did mentioned that although a blogger’s readership might be high, it is moot if the target market is not existent.
My take on numbers being important is simply this - the more people you reach out to, the greater the possibility of that conversion to a quality influencer/ prospect/ customer. And in that, the target market has to be identified and zero-ed in accurately in the initial stage of campaign.
I read your article on metrics. I agree that metrics definitely is not everything, but it would be unwise to totally dismiss it.
Hi Daniel: Thanks for your reply! First off, I hope you did not think I was pin pointing or fault finding when I focused on your event. Far from it - I thought it was a great initiative on your part to kick start something like this in Singapore. My purpose of raising the questions is from the consideration of a business owner.
While we might have a differing view on “target audience”, I think the fact that no obligation was foisted on the part of the participants to blog about the event brought more credibility to the table.
Thanks also for sharing about the ROI of the event. I believe that would account for the intangible benefit of such an outreach.
@Xtralicious: No offense taken at all! I thought you brought up really pertinent questions and I was glad to be able to share our point of view.
I hope you continue to ask such “hard” questions as it will only help to shape the new media scene here in Singapore.
Also, I’d be more than glad to invite you to future sessions. Let me know.
All the best!
Hi Rachel, thanks for linking me. I am also a complete outsider (or as you say Social Media Dinosaur) when it comes to the matter of social media. Even so, I have also written several posts on this matter and there’s a center theme to all of them - i.e. that many such social media events have turned into nothing more but a gathering of a small group of ’social media elites’. And that has become a sore point to me not because I ain’t invited but rather the good reviews of the product / event are far and few in between. (Frankly I think some of us - Paddy for e.g. - may finding it difficult to attend some of these activities as we have our work commitments.)
While it is hard to measure success or reach based on what was written, companies might start looking at just how effective these events are by the quality of the reports written by the attendees. In fact, if local bloggers cannot produce a quality report as those in other locations, companies may find no reasons to ‘duplicate’ the event locally as economic conditions continue to worsen and companies looks to tighten their belts.
On top of which, when they find out that all these events ends up nothing more than a meet for a group of self-styled ’smes’ (social media elites) then the end result maybe social media in Singapore will die still-born.
xizor2000: Good but hard points made. I gather that people in the circle might hesitate to make such points for fear of “being ostracized” or “being gossiped about”, but thankfully we are exempt from that pressure.
Daniel: Great, thanks.
Yes definitely some bloggers are contributing to the lack of credibility by doing stuff like that. I think the discerning companies (and those who will win in the long run) are those that will do their proper research and stick to the credible ones.
That said, something that needs to be pointed out is that blogger interactions is a SMALL part of social media efforts. It seems like that’s all social media is because 1) it’s the most visible and 2) singaporean companies are typically doing the one with the most hoohah, but it is just one aspect, so death bells if blogger outreach doesn’t work out is highly premature.
Leave your response!
Subscribe to be notified of new posts
Xtralicious Plurk
Most Viewed
Categories
Archives
The Author
Recent Posts
Most Commented
Most Viewed