When I was a child, my parents used to give me long lectures all the time. I realized they would stop after awhile if I tried to act like I was listening. I wasn’t learning though.

Listening is Easy

More and more companies these days have started to gather data on what their consumers/ potential consumers say about their brands on social media. Since there are tons of free and paid tools in the market that claim to give comprehensive results, companies started to think that they can do “social media listening” by themselves or just hire summer interns to gather everything they need to know in the online space. But what do these numbers mean to their business?

Agencies’ secret recipe for listening

Many so-called social media agencies started to offer “Listening Programs” and try to hide their listening tools from clients and competitors because they feel like they can lose business if they give out their “secret recipe”. Truth is, the secret recipe an agency needs to gather valuable online consumer insights is not about the tool they use, it’s about how these tools are used and how these data are connected to the brand/ product positioning and link them all with opportunities that help the business.

Start Learning from consumers!

Many people argue there’s no social media experts in the field, but it does take certain level of knowledge in new media and branding to properly gain useful insights through social media, which a blogger with 70,000 followers might not know how to give. Stop listening only because all your competitors are doing the same, try to take advantage of this new media and tailor your products/ services to give most value to consumers through “learning” what they say about brands!

Solid
Instead of getting readers to go through a bunch of text and paragraphs to figure out the key points,  list of reasons can highlight the main points for readers to easily take away.

Easy to gather
It’s easier for bloggers to gather a list, they can just browse around and Google what they want to write about, then put them together sometimes without any personal insight.

Good looking topic
It’s always good to have a topic starting with numbers, grabs immediate attention because it looks apart from text.

Easy to read
Similar to the format I’m using right now on this post (and most of my other posts), it’s very clean and easy to read. One key point, followed by explanations. It allows readers to go through all the points, and perhaps skip the self-explained ones.

Very RT-able
Topics like “Top 10 reasons”, “10 secrets to”, “10 Ways to”, “10 Very good reasons to” always easily get retweeted. It’s just the nature of  Twitter and users like it that way.

Less Logic
Unlike constructing paragraphs, it requires less/ no logic to put together a list of reasons.

Proven traffic maker 1
Because people are likely to share blog posts with “10 reasons” topics, they usually drive more traffic to blogs than any other posts.

Proven traffic maker 2
Because people are likely to share blog posts with “10 reasons” topics, they usually drive more traffic to blogs than any other posts.

Proven traffic maker 3
Because people are likely to share blog posts with “10 reasons” topics, they usually drive more traffic to blogs than any other posts.

And…
Yes, I did lie about the number of reasons I have, and this is what many bloggers do. Sometimes they just don’t provide true value and insight, they just try to repeat the points with different wordings to make up for the magic number 10.
Gaining traffic for your blog is a good feeling, but only bloggers who provide true value to readers, and ones who are truly passionate about what they write can get long-term subscribers and consistant traffic.

Google has developed tons of services and some of them are very valuable but not as widely used, Google Moderator is one of them. It is a very straight forward, easy-to-use service that allows a group of people to brainstorm, share ideas, questions, and opinions.

Google Moderator is more powerful than Google form in many cases because it allows participants to vote on other people’s ideas/ questions. Barack Obama’s transition team created a public Google Moderator series called “Open for Questions” which allows people to ask questions, give suggestions, as well as voting for the best ones.

How I’ve used Google Moderator:

Ask people to submit questions during a presentation

Send out a brainstorming session to colleagues

Venue ideas and voting for events

Live questions and responses during a webinar

Below is the official description of Google Moderator:

• Let your audience decide. Get to know your audience by letting them decide which questions, suggestions or ideas interest them most.

• Everyone’s voice is heard. The voting box at the top of page focuses attention on submissions recently added and on the rise, making it simple and easy to participate.

• Be creative. Include people in your preparation for lectures, interviews and hard decisions or work together to organize feature requests and brainstorm new ideas.

Google Moderator Homepage

I’m often very sad about the music culture these days, when songs are all produced for profit and how they make people love their music with all the lifestyle marketing tactics. Cuban music (or any other non-mainstream music) on the other hand don’t do that, they aren’t desperate for attention, they aren’t playing music for money, they just love music and believe in it.

PR/ Social Media Agencies that produce Pop Music:

Social media is this new shiny thing to all business owners and decision makers, like a new trend of music culture comes up. What agencies do is that they create proposals filled with useless tactics (aka “creative ideas”), they go into client meetings and propose some sort of viral campaigns to the clients. Many clients like to give it a try, they think it’s too good to be true, but they don’t have enough knowledge on it and got greedy after seeing all these viral videos with 2 million views.

Obviously, many agencies like that might not know what they are talking about (like how some pop singers don’t know anything about music), for them it is only business, they just have to do what they can to grab the cash, so they just have to tell the clients whatever they want to hear.

PR/ Social Media Agencies that produce Cuban Music:

There’s another type of agencies, these agencies have great understanding of what social media is, and they know what’s best for their clients. However, not many clients would take the offer, because the process doesn’t sound as exciting as viral campaigns.

What should clients do?

I’m not saying Lady Gaga is bad, and I’m not saying short-term viral campaigns never work for business. I think clients should get the balance and start to think from both perspective when deciding to engage on social media.

This is the question that most Digital Marketers have thought about. In a recent research by Sherastone, only 2 digital marketing “tactics” had increased in budget in 2009; they are email and social media.

Social Media is NOT killing Email Marketing

I don’t think email marketing is dying. I think marketers need to really see social media as a strategy, and email marketing can be one of the “social media marketing tactics” when they are integrated well.

To give, not to sell through email

For example, social media as a whole is a great channel to collect relevant email addresses because it allows us to target personalities and interests through conversations, the key to be successful in email marketing is to provide value to the subscribers. Instead of thinking about what they might be interested in purchasing, marketers should think about what they might be interested in receiving. Instead of following the Direct Marketing nature of Email Marketing, marketers should use it more as a branding and community building tactic that goes hand in hand with social media.

Although measuring is way more complicated than direct marketing, there are still ways to do it with well-planned KPIs.

Email “Selling” is Dead

Direct email marketing (email selling) is dead, people don’t just “purchase” after seeing email promotions. However, with the help of social media, email marketing can still be a very powerful and profitable tactic when the message and execution is tailored to the target.

So you’ve got the education that you needed, the knowledge that you wanted, and the position that you are interested in. Time to send out your well-structured and perfect written cover letters and CVs. Wait, have you Googled yourself yet?

According to a recent survey done by CareerBuilder.co.uk, most of the employers these days screen candidates using social networking sites. From the survey, 53% of the employers claimed that they run searches online through social networking sites to research their candidates, and 43% of the employers have decided not to hire after seeing what’s online. The top reasons are:

• Candidate lied about qualifications – (38%)
• Candidate displayed poor communication skills – (31%)
• Candidate used discriminatory comments – (13%)
• Candidate posted content about their use of drink or drugs – (10%)
• Candidate uploaded provocative or inappropriate photographs or information – (9%)
• Candidate bad-mouthed their previous employer, colleagues or clients – (9%)
• Candidate shared confidential information from workplace – (8%)

Around 50% of the employers decided to hire after checking candidates’ online profiles. The top reasons are:

• Profile substantiated candidate’s professional qualifications – (61%)
• Candidate displayed good communication skills – (41%)
• Candidate seemed well-rounded – (37%)
• Profile gave a good feel for the candidate’s personality and fit – (28%)
• Candidate was perceived as creative – (24%)
• Candidate gave off a professional image – (22%)
• Candidate had received awards and accolades – (15%)
• Contacts had posted good references about the candidate – (15%)

Numbers don’t lie, I don’t think social media profile is more important than qualifications, but I think what’s online about a person should always be transparent. The data above should not in any way encourage anyone to build a fake online profile to impress employers, what’s online should reflect directly who you really are and what your passion is.

Photo Credit: Matthew Flores

I’m not a good listener in conversations, but I’m pretty sure I’m the best listener on others’ conversations in public places. I was at a dinner tonight in a local restaurant, just one of those casual Hong Kong restaurant and I got inspired by some random influencers.

So people from the table behind me were talking about iPhone plans, they said Hong Kong telco Three (used to be the exclusive iphone provider in Hong Kong) sucks at it’s 3G network and customer service, and that he actually switched to Smartone (telco that started offering iphone service 2 weeks ago), even though his phone contract was yet to end. And he was saying that he loves the service provided by Smartone now.

Anyways, the point is, I’m a current Three customer, these people are not my friends, I have no idea who they are, and judging by how they spoke, they are definitely not experts in technology. Why did I trust their piece of advice and actually thought about switching?

Random Influencers influence others by not being influential. I prefer feedback from real users who  have no connection to the company or industry because I’m seeing it directly from a user POV.

Now think about an expert site/ blog that talks about a product, comparing to some random comments by the public. Although not many people are as nosy as I am, but with the growth of social media, these random influencers are becoming very powerful since you can easily see what they are saying online. In general, I would say the influence of 5 random influencer can beat the influence of one expert these days when it comes to purchase decision making.

Therefore, depending on the product or service, marketers these days should not focus too much on getting experts/ publications to talk about your brands, all these years, we tend to go for the way of influencing the influential ones, and get them to influence the “random influencers” (left in image), but now maybe it’s time to influence the “random influencers” to influence the “experts” (right in image).

Photo Credit: _rogers

A new site was just launched with this funny campaign called “Certified Virgins” where people can get a “certificate of virginity” with US$1.00 each, they claimed that “part of” it will be donated to the Aids cure research.

This site has a very clean and official-looking design, but until it is linked to or by an organization with more credibility, I will still be skeptical about where the donations are going to go since there’s no official claims on the site.

Other than the money, they are also collecting emails along with the applications and never claim on how these email will be used. Many “black hat” websites these days like to collect email and sell the mailing lists to other companies, which, eventually will end up with spammers.

As there are more and more similar campaigns like “Verified Virgin” these days, people should always make sure they are donating to legit non-profit organizations.

At this stage, I don’t know if this campaign is “real”, but at least you can still have a good laugh. Below is what you have to agree on before you decide to make yourself a virgin.

Go to the URL now

It’s not surprising that social networking sites are becoming more and more important for most Internet users. Most of the teens these days own a Facebook profile, for both networking and playing online games.

Teens are extremely active on Social Media

From a recent research conducted by Pew Internet, 63% of teens in America go online every day, and 73% of these teens are on social networking websites, a huge growth from 55% in 2006.

Teens Hate Twitter

Twitter is not where they mostly communicate, only 8% of the wired teens use Twitter, far less than using SMS on mobile phones as 66% of them do.

After all the celebrity buzz, many teens signed up for Twitter accounts just to keep track on celebrities, but Twitter is obviously not the main communication channel among friends yet.

Teens are going mobile

75% of teens have a cell phone and love going online wirelessly. With the major growth of smart phones and all upcoming wireless devices, will teens jump on to Twitter as the major communication tool in the future?

Get the full report here

Photo Credit: Sean Dreilinger

More people are using Social Media as a major channel to do self-branding because reputation is all about word-of-mouth, and social media can generate the positive “word of mouse” if it’s done right. If you’ve ever considered managing your own online reputation through social media, here’s 15 advantages compiled by my colleague Ashleigh Flower (@mercuryplanet) who’s now interning at 360 Digital Influence of Ogilvy, please follow her on Twitter.

Embrace your Passion

Social Media allows you to embrace your passion and express your identity to a wide audience all around the world.

Share and Engage

Social Media is an excellent platform for community, sharing and connectivity.

Talk Directly

Social Media allows for direct/public conversations with relatively no cost, from any location, at any time of the day (Compassion, 2008).

Build and Connect

Social Media allows you to build on your own ideas and connect with new people who can enhance your own thinking (Misconceptions, 2009).

Share your experience

Social Media allows you to share your stories, market yourself as the ideal job candidate and get your story across honestly and authentically while making a connection.

Express potential power

Social Media allows you to express your own potential power to ignite positive change – in whatever way that may be.

Message to Actions

If you are active on Social Media, you can expose many people to a cause to serve your purpose.

Optimizing the power of connections

People that you’ve make connections with on Social Media are likely the ones who can spread the messages for you too.

Educate yourself

Social Media builds your knowledge base and keeps you up to date on best practices, resources and technology.

Educate Others

Social Media allows you to educate others about your cause/ interests/ profession.

Differentiate yourself

Social Media increases your visibility and helps you to stand out from your peers.

Online Identity

If there is a lot of relevant, compelling content about you online, you are usually assumed that you’re more knowledgeable than someone who aren’t ranked on search engines.

Connect Anytime

Social media can help you connect before, during and after networking events in a personal however non-confrontational way (Arruda, 2009).

Revalue

Social Media can also be useful for workers wanting to reinvent their career into another profile – “people will start seeing you in this role… and by creating links outside your organization you can change your meaning to others.” (Jonah Berger, Wharton, 2009).

Practical advantages

Social Media helps generate business leads, create a new career and cut out the middle man. For example establishing musicians can create a loyal following of fans and no longer need to gain the support of a music label (Wharton, 2009).

References:

• http://compassioninpolitics.wordpress.com/2008/02/01/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-social-media/
• http://entrylevelliving.wordpress.com/2009/12/10/misconceptions-social-media-branding/
• http://colleendilen.com/2009/12/17/nonprofiteers-personal-branding-will-make-you-better-at-your-job/
• http://rosettathurman.com/blog/2009/12/six-ways-to-use-twitter-to-enhance-your-nonprofit-career/
• http://www.marketingprofs.com/9/social-media-and-your-personal-brand-arruda.asp
• http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2208

Photo Credit: yusuf_alioglu