Tim Ho » Social media

Free Tool: Global Web Index Lite

Tim Ho — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 02:41:09 +0000

GlobalWebIndex has recently launched a free tool that allows users to quickly get a snapshot of their data on social media insights, this free tool was built based around the data they have gathered from Wave 2 database from January 2010. The latest data, Wave 3 from July 2009 is only available for GlobalWebIndex clients.

This tool comes very handy when you are looking to create quick slides with valuable data that gives brief understanding of online behavior for specific group of people from different regions.

I tried to embed the tool to this blog post but I failed to adjust the size of it.

Start playing with the tool now

Stop listening on Social Media!

Tim Ho — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:29:15 +0000

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!

The DI Tweetup 2010

Tim Ho — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 08:51:08 +0000

Why Tweetup?

Some of you might have seen tweets about the Ogilvy’s APAC Digital Influence Summit lately. Ogilvy’s DI Summit is an internal event held by the Asia Pacific Regional team where all the digital experts from around the region will be attending a 3-day event in Hong Kong to exchange digital knowledge, connect and bond with other team

Although the event is not open for public, we would like to offer you a chance to meet our team, head of the global digital influence team John Bell will also be flying all the way from Washington DC! It is a very rare opportunity for you to meet all of us at once, in the offline world!

When?

Tweetup will be held this Sunday, June 27th at 7pm. Not the perfect timing for tweetup but due to the World Cup schedule, this is the only time when venues are available.

Where?

Tweetup will be held in RED Soho as usual.

How to sign up?

Here

See you there!

Graph: Traditional VS Social Marketing Funnel

Tim Ho — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 10:17:46 +0000

Remember the marketing textbook from University? There were all these marketing principles, rules, and graphs, marketing funnel must be one of them. I don’t think we need further explanation on the tradtional marketing funnel with Awareness, Consideration, Preference, Action, and Loyalty.

This graph by Forrester explains the new marketing landscape, most of us rely hugely on recommendations before purchase. With the help of social media and other communication platform, recommendations, peer reviews, and user generated content really play a really big role during consumers’ purchase decision. As the graph suggested, the landscape these days is more complicated than ever!

Pop Music and Cuban Music of Social Media

Tim Ho — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 04:17:59 +0000

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.

What I learned from the University Students

Tim Ho — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 08:53:41 +0000

University is always a fun place to be, I went to Hong Kong Polytechnic University to give a presentation on how Social Media is changing the advertising industry last Friday.

As I told the students, I was THE bad boy when I was in University. Never liked to be in class, drank at the bar during “5-minute breaks”, and of course, never paid attention to guest speakers. These students are very different, I was very surprised how fun, active and curious they were about social media and I really enjoyed the discussion with them. Below is what I learned through our discussions.

Is Advertising Dying?

Since they are advertising students, concerns came up during my presentation around the topic on whether the knowledge they are getting now will still be relevant when they graduate. I think traditional advertising agency model is dead, but advertising is not dying, it’s just changing and companies/ agencies are now forced to integrate everything to come up as a strategy to adapt to the new media landscape. Advertising students have to understand how the media is changing and how this “one big idea beats all” theory doesn’t exist anymore.

Learning VS thinking

I think education is only like a tool to get people start thinking, not necessarily about what it will teach. Although education systems from some countries were poorly designed that kill students’ creativity, education wasn’t meant to make people think in a certain way. The key is really to learn how to develop an interest over certain things, then learning will come easy.

What do the Pros think:

When preparing for this presentation, I asked a few experts on digital media and advertising about “How new media is changing the advertising industry” and these are their responses.

Thomas Crampton (APAC Director of Digital Influencer at Ogilvy PR):

“Formerly, companies bought media. Now they are media.”

Matthew Leem (Regional Account Director at Ogilvy & Mather):

“It’s killing advertising (agencies)”

Paul Lam (Account Executive at Ogilvy & Mather):

“Social media is changing advertising because it is directly reinforcing the emotional connection between the consumer and the product.

In the past, traditional advertising would simply sell a product to a consumer. But now the consumer has a direct input in what they experience with the “idea” of the product, which can be shared to anyone openly. It has become more than just some tangible product… Social media has created a direct relationship, where the consumer can express what they feel. This movement has made brands more honest and grounded.

No more glitz and glamour, but simple truths”

Nic Tinworth (Digital Director at Fluid Design + Marketing):

“A common challenge for both advertisers and marketers alike has always been identifying and connecting with the right target audience. Recent trends in Social Media use have caused an unparalleled business paradigm shift, and recent studies have pointed to as much as 80% of ‘decision makers’ finding their own vendors, rather than the other way round. Social Media use is now so mainstream, that if as an agency you aren’t using and engaging with it yourself, you’re not just missing opportunities for your clients, you are also wasting opportunities for new business. To put it into layman’s terms, agencies now have to ‘walk the walk’ and not just ‘talk the talk’.”

Poly U Students:

Thanks for the fun times, I really enjoyed it and it made me miss uni so much! Please free feel to contact me if you need help on your projects, or maybe a beer or six between and after classes.

You can download the pictures with this link.

Goodluck to you all!

Is Social Media Killing Email Marketing?

Tim Ho — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 13:39:34 +0000

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.

Report: Social Media and Small Businesses

Tim Ho — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:42:42 +0000

I’ve seen more and more local success by adopting social media to local SMEs, although what they do are rather tactical and advertising focused, they started to see more and more value from social media. According to a recent study by Small Business Success Index, small businesses has doubled their social media adoption from 12% in 2008 to 24% in 2009.

Many Small Biz just want to “be on it”

Leading ways small businesses are using social media include:

75% have a company page on a social networking site.
61% use social media for identifying and attracting new customers.
57% have built a network through a site like LinkedIn.
45% expect social media to be profitable in the next 12 months.

They don’t like to spend time on it

Small businesses have a number of concerns about social media, including:

50% say it takes more time than expected.
17% say social media lets people criticize their company on the internet.
Only 6% say social media use has hurt the company more than helped it.

Other Findings

Company web sites are a top technology investment in the next two years, with small businesses either adding new features/functionality to their existing Web sites or building one from scratch.
The ability to showcase their products and services online to attract new customers is second in the hierarchy of technology investments small business owners plan to make in the next two years.
Social media investments rank third in small business investments to be made in the next two years.

Report: Oscar Social Media Roundup – Social Media predicted winnings

Tim Ho — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 01:17:50 +0000

Oscars Academy Awards have finally ended, after all the buzz on the Internet, it’s time to round it up and see what the buzz was all about. Social media was actually a big part of Oscar, it actually predicted some of the results.

Key findings from this research:

There are 389955 unique conversations on social media in the past 7 days (March 1st – 8th)
In the past 7 days, 505987146 Twitter users are exposed to a Tweet about Oscar
More blogs talked about Oscar than other channels until Twitter took over 4 hours before Oscar began
There are 98735 unique Twitter users tweeted about Oscar when it’s happening
Brazilian Loves Twitter, 7.5% of the Oscar related conversations online are from Brazil
Portuguese (17.3%) and Spanish (10.5%) are the most popular languages on Oscar topics after English (68%)
Overall, Twitter is the most popular channel for Oscar related topics (Discussions from Facebook private profiles are not included)
Before Oscar began, more people talked about Kathryn Bigelow (59.80%) than James Cameron (40.20%) online
Avatar still had a bigger buzz (54.80%) than The Hurt Locker (45.20%)
Up was most talked about among other nominees in Best Animated Feature Film

Research Keywords: “Oscar AND movie”, “Oscar AND film”, “Oscar AND director”, Oscar AND Actor”, “Oscar AND Actress”, “Oscar AND award”, “Oscar AND (James Cameron)”, “Oscar AND (Kathryn Bigelow)”, “Oscar AND Avatar”, “Oscar AND (Hurt Hunter)”, “Oscar AND (Up AND Movie)”, “Oscar AND (Fantastic Mr.Fox)”, “Oscar AND (Secret of Kells)”, “Oscar AND (Princess and the Frog)”.

Photo Credit: Reuters

Event: Tweetup with Brian Giesen and Tom Smith

Tim Ho — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 07:14:15 +0000

I will be hosting my 2nd tweetup of 2010 on March 2nd. This tweetup is going to be a little different from the previous ones, we will have 2 special guests (actually 3) this time.

Brian Giesen

@bdgiesen is my colleague in Ogilvy who’s based in Sydney Australia, he’s is an award-winning, founding member of Ogilvy’s 360 Degree Digital Influence group and passionate word of mouth marketing practitioner. Brian is extremely experienced in the field, he will be in Hong Kong for one night and we will be lucky enough to have him in the tweetup. (Here’s his bio)

Tom Smith

Tom Smith (@tomtrendstream) is the founder of a technology and social media trend research company Trendstream. He’s also the project leader of the Global Web Index and created Wave @ Universal McCann. He will be in Hong Kong for the FutureWebAsia Event for the Asia launch of Global Web Index. Tom will also come along with another speaker from the event, Jenny Armshaw-Heak (@globalwebasia), who’s the Business Development Director of Lightspeed Research.

Join Us!

Venue Sponsor: RED SoHo (2/f, Kinwick Centre, 32 Hollywood Road, SoHo Central)

Date: Tuesday, March 2nd 2010

Time: 8pm

Admission: Free (drinks not included)

Register Here: http://twtvite.com/ixvugx

Space is limited, registration is required, please secure your place now!