THE BLOG.

On brand positioning, social media and entrepreneurship.

Have You Replaced Your Wipers for #SocialMedia?

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Have you ever drove in a heavy downpour with a faulty wiper? Not so much of it being broken, but not able to give your windscreen a clean wipe – especially at night. If you haven’t, it looks something like this:
driving with bad vision on social media

Without going further, let me tell you that I’ve been driving in this condition for quite sometime. I know I can easily change the wiper blades but somehow it is always not worth the hassle and it didn’t seem like it would rain! When it does, I find me telling myself that I can handle it since I’m experienced.

How often do we have the same thought? We choose to stick to our current condition just because it is a hassle or inconvenient to change. In fact, we may think that we’re good at it – because we’ve ‘trained’ under the same situation for numerous times.

Change your social media wiper blades!

Why should you?

#1: Your vision is greatly limited

It never is a good thing when your vision is limited – especially when you’re driving. The same goes to managing your social media presence. You may be aware that you need a social media strategy for your business and it is true; but it takes more than just strategy for you to make social media work for you. You must be able to see what lies ahead of you and adapt to change and requirements because social media is about people, and people change. They can pull their brakes causing you to crash right into them because you just couldn’t see it coming.

What can you do: Always be on a look out for signs. Know what your competitors are doing. Know what you target audience are looking for. Be aware of the latest happenings especially when it comes to marketing. You do not want to be last on board the next Facebook.

#2: You drive a LOT slower

The heavier the rain, the slower you get. Many times businesses fail to integrate social media into their marketing strategy because they are stubborn. They are determined to drive forward relentlessly despite the heavy rain – which is not necessarily a good thing. Sure, it can be rewarding when you get to your destination but you may have taken much more time and exhausted much more energy than usual.

What can you do: Sometimes it is better to stop by the road to re-plan your journey with a clearer vision. Maybe you’re using the wrong route or the wrong tools to begin with. Could it be that your prospects aren’t even on Twitter?

#3: You max out your level of concentration

It takes great effort and strength to remain focused over a long period of time. Imagine driving in that condition for an hour or more – it’ll suck your life dry because you’re simply trying to make vision out of no vision. Don’t get me wrong, concentration is great and your determination is plausible but don’t you want to use that for the right purpose? You may be putting all your effort into the wrong area – whether by trying too hard to keep up with trends, emulating A-list bloggers or even digging deep for followers.

What can you do: Concentrate where it matters the most for you. It can be producing quality content, engaging with fellow bloggers from the industry, participating in tweet chats to build your networks or listening to what your customers have to say – social media isn’t social anymore if you’re too focused on the numbers.

Imagine…

clear vision on social media Driving down the road with 100% clear vision with a perfect set of wiper blades. You now can drive normally, yet enjoy the journey by perhaps turning up the music and humming away to your next destination.

It’s time to replace that wiper blades of yours for a new one.

p.s. I’ve finally replaced my car’s wiper blades!

#SocialMedia Lessons from Traffic Lights. Yes, Traffic Lights

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And I’ll say it again – traffic lights. You know, those rectangular shaped boxes on poles that flash the red, yellow and green lights on the road? How can anyone learn anything from that thing? I did.

Waiting at a traffic light

#1: The green light that everyone loves

Most people begin their journey on social media networks hopeful and they foresee increase in enquiries, sales, visitors and building a huge database of customers – they have a green vision. You’ve read success stories, attended seminars and workshops and you think you have all it takes to get you started. You created a blog, a Twitter handle, a Facebook page and all is well and green. You’re ready to roll..

#2: But the light ain’t always green

In fact, you’re likely to bump into a series of red lights when you’re just starting out – even if you’re doing everything right. It takes more than having the right plan / strategy on social media simply because you’re dealing with people on social media networks, commitment and consistency plays an important role and strategy does not.

#3: And there are times where you need to slow down

Are you pushing it too hard in your networks? Could it be that your followers cannot keep up with your countless tweets and updates enthusiasm? Slow down! Observe how are they reacting to you and talk to them for a change. You’ll be surprised of what you can find when driving at a slower speed.

#4: And beating the red light will cost you.

When faced with a red light, many at this stage resort to buying fans, followers, visits or comments which only brings temporal pleasure – such as how you may feel after beating a red light at the junction. You may feel good because there’s activity happening again but it’ll never last and it may bite you in return as purchased followers are never your followers to begin with. They probably are bots anyway and when this happens, you’re just buying numbers, not true followers.

If that isn’t enough, you may also lose all that you’ve worked so hard for, rammed down just because you couldn’t wait for the lights to turn green. Whether it is purchasing too many backlinks that backfired on search engines or driving away real followers with bots, you do not want to risk that.

Red lights are the perfect opportunity to evaluate what you’re doing on social media because you’ve got nothing to lose. It can be a time where your readership or interaction dips in numbers and it is the perfect time to identify the cause.

Remember, red lights don’t stay red forever.

Brand Focus #6: The Power of a Common Cause Using #SocialMedia

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You may have heard of many stories on how powerful social media platforms are to drive causes such as the Pepsi Refresh Project that rewards individuals with refreshing ideas or the Fair Tweets campaign by Ben & Jerry’s. What do they all have in common? 1. A great cause 2. An innovative idea and 3. Huge participation that led to success.

While there isn’t a success formula that you can reproduce, the one thing that stands among all successful marketing campaigns or causes is that there is something for others to talk about – a common passion, a common interest, a common curiosity or even a common anger like the recent lashings against designer brand Versace.

Having that said, it is not the level of innovation that draws people together (although it contributes to its success) but the level of the common ground established.

The Power of a Identifying a Common Goal / Cause on Social Media

A community is a powerful ‘being’, be it offline or online and today’s social media networks makes it so easy for one to start their own community. It is no wonder why businesses jump unto the bandwagon almost immediately as they recognize the need and the power of having their very own community.

It was all over the news – Malaysia, the country I live in became famous over the weekend as it was broadcasted globally due to a recent event named Bersih (clean) which involved a peaceful rally in the heart of Kuala Lumpur demanding for a fair and clean upcoming election. You may have only heard about it and perhaps are aware of what happened during the rally but what caught my interest most was how the entire cause was promoted heavily over social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter weeks before.

spreading a cause using social media

You’ll realize that the cause not only drew close to 160,000 fans but people also spread the cause willingly because it was something they can relate and resonate with, to the extend that they opted to place a badge on their display pictures (as seen in the screen shot above) to indicate their support.

What happened on Twitter? Well, you can simply search the hashtag #bersih to find out for yourself. All I can say is that the tweets flew by so quickly that I can’t even read them (and I thought I was well trained on #blogchat).

On top of that, Malaysians in other countries such as Taiwan, Melbourne and Singapore also ‘participated’ in the rally by gathering where they’re at to show their support. The medium of communication? Social media. Live updates on Facebook, Twitter and even recorded videos on YouTube.

From a business viewpoint, that is definitely a success story as word-of-mouth has taken its course and in this case, internationally.

What is it in your cause that causes others to resonate?

This is the question you should be asking yourself whatever your cause is, profit or not.

What makes others passionate about the cause? What is it that causes others to feel the same? Could it be empathy? Could it be anger? Could it be pride? Could it be fun?

Have that answered, then all that’s left is to identify the right communication medium to spread the word.

Is there a specific cause that strikes you the most? What is it that draws you to it?

My 1000 Awesome Things: Elevator Opens Immediately When Pushed [2/1000]

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In case you’re wondering – this site also reveals part of my happenings in life, injecting a little bit more flavour to the site as a whole; something lighter than the usual information dosage, especially for the weekend :)

jan wong's 1000 awesome things

Waiting for the elevator is always a pain – especially when you’re rushing for time and running up the stairs to the 20th floor is a test of endurance. Have you walked over to the elevator, pushed the button and it opens immediately? That happened to me twice this week!

Double awesome!

1000 Awesome Things is initiated by Neil Pasricha and I’m simply sharing my own 1000 awesome things to remind myself of how awesome life can be if we pay attention to the small yet awesome things in life.
What is that awesome thing that happened in your life today?

Is #SocialMedia The Culprit for The Growing Yet Shrinking Web?

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So I recently came across this article and it really got me thinking – is the world wide web as we know it shrinking?

The size of the World Wide Web: Estimated size of Google's indexA quick overview of the estimated size of Google’s index reveals that there are about 45 billion webpages to date and is showing no signs of stopping. The numbers aren’t surprising as websites have become so affordable and easy to setup throughout the years especially with the introduction of blogs and microblogs.

So why is the web also shrinking?

Sure, it may not seem like it in size but do think about it – how much of the web do you actually explore in a day? Let’s see… I go on Gmail, Facebook, PostRank, Buffer and perhaps 10 blog articles regularly on a daily basis and it would seem that I’m not the only one. ComScore actually reported that people actually use Facebook a whole LOT more than other websites:

is the web as we know it shrinking today?In other words, social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter may have (or already have) been replacing the need to discover other websites while enhancing the ability to discover content from all over the world. No longer people are required to look into directories or portals but yet able to remain updated through various social media channels – whether it is Facebook’s News Feed or Twitter’s Timeline.

To be honest, I spend even more time on TweetDeck which allows me to discover even more content than what I could possibly absorb in a single day without having the need to Google.

What do I think?

Social Media as the Gateway to Discovering Content

I don’t know about you but I do not see social media overtaking /shrinking the web but rather as a gateway to discover even more content. It may be shrinking the door to the web since many people I know start out the web by first subscribing for an email account (mostly Gmail), followed by a Facebook account and they’ll stay like that at least for a while but through that door there are content, content and even more content.

What does it mean to you?

1. Stop watching. Start connecting! If you’ve only been sitting on the sidelines watching all the action, it is time for you to get connected. Start talking to those with similar interests and you’ll find that it is not that difficult after all! There are tons of #hashtags on Twitter to get you started on this one.

2. Create your own content. When you’re feeling a little more confident, perhaps it’s time for you to create your own content. Yes, to contribute back to the masses of information in the web and yes, even you have something you can share – be it based on a passion, an interest on a specific topic or simply a hobby.

3. Maximize content discovery. Don’t just sit and wait for great content to appear on your news feed. If you’ve found one, subscribe to it to stay updated. If you’re on Twitter, creating lists is a great way to organize your busy timeline into different groups.

4. Don’t be stingy. Share that great content you’ve found! It’s only a click away.

Perhaps the right question to ask is: How do you discover information from the web? Which are the sites you go on to every day? How are you maximizing your time on the web?

 

Brand Focus #5: Groupon in Malaysia – Friend or Foe for Your Business?

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will groupon help businesses grow?It has been a couple of months now since Groupon officially came into Malaysia by acquiring GroupsMore.com and many businesses have hopped unto what I call the Groupon hype – a similar scene happening around the world. Businesses go on Groupon for marketing purposes, to draw crowd or bargain hunters to their store / outlet and hopefully translates into future sales (click here if you’ve never heard of Groupon before).

I managed to talk to two different business owners recently and we somehow got to the topic of Groupon and it would seem that they both have been badly ‘pinched’ by Groupon.

Initial Observation: Groupon As a Foe

1. Their business actually experienced losses. Groupon deals attracts the crowd, that’s for sure. If your products already have low margins to begin with, you may experience losses – especially when the crowd pours in for your awesome deal.

2. Their business cannot cope with the crowd. So you’ve got a deal up and you’re fully booked for the whole of next month – but you do not have the resources and the capacity to manage each and every customer. Mismanagement may turn away customers for good and if you’re planning to invest into more manpower and equipment, you better have the margins well calculated because…

3. Your existing customers (that may not be on Groupon) will also want discounts because of the awesome deal you’re already giving to others.

4. On top of that, the customer retention rate is said to be very low, at about 5% – 10% and in some cases it still does not make up to the ideal margin.

While the above may not be true for every business out there, many have experienced the negative affect of Groupon which led me to think – is Groupon really that bad of a business / marketing model to adopt?

My answer is: no.

7 Tips on How to Maximize Groupon for Your Business

#1: Know Your Margins

Understand this before proceeding: while every business can use Groupon, not every business should use Groupon. The reason is simple – if your business operates on very low profit margins, you’ll definitely end up with a loss – especially if you’re a small business without any marketing budget set aside. Know how much of a margin you’re able to spare (and survive), even if there’s a large crowd. Set the group discount rate at a level in which you’re comfortable at and yet remain attractive.

#2: Know Your Business Operations

This applies best to the service industries. Know when are your peak and off-peak seasons or timings in a day. ‘Sell’ your off-peaks cheaper in return for crowd. This is where Groupon can truly shine – put in terms and conditions specifying that the offer / deal will only work during specific timing of a day (e.g. 3-5pm) to boost sales rather than not making any sale during the off-peak hours.

#3: Never Give in Quality for Quantity

Use the crowd to your advantage – show them what you’re able to offer even when you’re under pressure. Whether it is customer service or food preparation, make sure you’re showing your customers the best you can offer. This is the time to give them a reason to come back for more!

#4: Build Your Database – Engage

Take this opportunity to build your database by engaging with your customers individually. Talk to them, get them to subscribe to your newsletter, ‘like’ you Facebook page, ‘follow’ your Twitter handle, sign-up for a loyalty programme, participate in a contest or even to write a testimonial for you. In other words, do not let them leave without leaving you with something valuable for your business. On top of that…

#5: Follow-up Offers

Don’t let them leave empty handed! Give them something in return to invite them to come back for more. Something along the lines of “bring a friend on your next visit to enjoy a similar treat” can do wonders. Retention rates are low because businesses do not give the customers sufficient reasons to stay. So why let them leave empty handed?

#6: Make The News

Make use of the crowd to spread the news! Snap pictures, tweet away, launch a Foursquare special and create buzz across existing social media platforms. Customers are drawn to crowd and if you are already attracting one, let them know you have one!

#7: Encourage Feedback

This is the most important of all – always ask for feedback from your customers so that you’ll know what went wrong / right to do better in your next Groupon deal. Offer as many feedback options as possible – through Twitter, Facebook, contact forms or emails and be sure to respond to everyone of them positively.

Have you used Groupon for your business? How did it work out for you? How else do you think Groupon can benefit businesses?

My 1000 Awesome Things: Waking Up Before the Alarm Goes Off [1/1000]

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In case you’re wondering – this site also reveals part of my happenings in life, injecting a little bit more flavour to the site as a whole; something lighter than the usual information dosage, especially for the weekend :)

jan wong 1000 awesome things - waking up before the alarm goes off

Don’t you hate those times when your alarm goes off at just about the time you were about to get some real rest?

On this day you opened your eyes and you’re refreshed. You took a peek at the clock to find that you’re minutes away before the alarm goes off. You reach out to turn it off and jump out of your bed to embrace another brand new day!

Waking up feeling tired to the alarm? Dreadful.

Waking up refreshed before the alarm goes off? Awesome!

1000 Awesome Things is initiated by Neil Pasricha and I’m simply sharing my own 1000 awesome things to remind myself of how awesome life can be if we pay attention to the small yet awesome things in life.
What is that awesome thing that happened in your life today?

Are You Building Engagement Points for Your #SocialMedia Campaigns?

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The objective of this article is not to remind you how powerful and important social media is to your business today but to tell you that being on social media is not the solution to stay competitive in the market.

We all know that social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are great tools to maximize online visibility. The question is, how can your business capitalize on the growing evolution of social media and not fizzle out?

If you already have a social presence, great! This may help you enlarge your ‘territory’. If you’ve yet to integrate social media into your business, consider this as a point for having one:

Creating Social Engagement Points for Your Business

Yes, you may have a blog or a Facebook page but do you know how many engagement points are you using? In other words, how are you allowing your customers to engage with you? Identifying your engagement points can maximize your effectiveness on that platform simply because you’re allowing your audience to engage with you differently.

Take a look at the video below:

Now this video has nothing to do with blogs, Facebook or Twitter but it holds one powerful concept to being successful on social media: enlarging engagement points so that their customers can engage with them (through purchasing) even outside of their stores.

Tesco realized 2 important points:

1a. To increase engagement points does not mean they have to be opening new outlets everywhere. In social media, that also translates to you do NOT need to be on every social media platform just to be seen engaging with your customers.

1b. To effectively engage with your customers, you need to be where they are at and in this case, it was the subway. Where are your customers congregating? Are they even on Facebook to begin with? Or would they be hanging out in technology forums? DeviantArt, perhaps? Know where they are and be there!

2. The power of having 1 platform but multiple engagement points. Tesco used the subways as the platform along with QR codes – not one, but one for every product. Think about it – Tesco could have done only ONE QR code and redirect the customer to their online shopping site for the purchase to take place but they chose to have them individually. This boosts interactivity and allows customers to actively engage in a different way.

How are you allowing your customers to engage with you on social media? Only on your Facebook wall? Your comments section? How many engagement points do you have?

17 Simple Engagement Points for Your Blog and Facebook Page

Facebook

#1: Wall (yours)
#2: Wall (your customers’)
#3: Questions / Polls
#4: Contests
#5: Welcome Page
#6: Subscription Tab
#7: ‘Like’ / ‘Share’ Button
#8: Profile Picture (e.g. fan of the week)
#9: Photo Tagging
#10: Events

Blog

#11: Comments
#12: Social Sharing (Retweet, Share, Digg, Stumble, +1, etc)
#13: RSS Subscription
#14: Email Subscription
#15: Contact Page
#16: Links to your Social Profiles (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube etc)
#17: Guest Posting

What are your thoughts on having multiple engagement points? What other engagement points you think businesses and individuals should also implement?

Brand Focus #4: Using #SocialMedia for an Offline #Marketing Campaign

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So I was heading to Digital Mall a week ago and this caught my attention:

@the_officeguy spotted working outdoors

The guy was dressed in working attire, complete with a tie, in a pair of orange boots sitting by the pavement by a busy road. I moved on since I initially thought it was some flyer distribution gimmick but there were similar guys situated all around the area. They were pretty difficult to miss and I was totally intrigued with what’s the entire concept all about. I spotted the Twitter handle @The_OfficeGuy and decided to look him up.

the_officeguy twitter profileSo, the Twitter profile and the timeline did not say much about him. I dropped him a @mention and he introduced himself the same as in his profile. That made me wonder – if this is supposedly a promotional campaign (and I was pretty sure it is), why isn’t he promoting a single bit on the product / service? After observing the timeline for about a week now, @The_OfficeGuy is all about running contests and replying @mentions.

At this stage, I was determined to uncover this ‘mystery’ of @The_OfficeGuy. After several searches I found that it is actually a campaign by Microsoft – promoting their cloud solutions (that’s why the cloud is there) such as Office 365.

@The_OfficeGuy is related to Microsoft cloud solutions

3 Things We Can Learn from This Campaign

#1: Curiosity drives conversations

It is a good idea to use social media platforms to drive conversations for your offline promotional campaigns. The reason is simple: you get people talking – especially if the campaign actually DO drive conversations! Why not bring the conversations online in which you too, can respond to them?

#2: You put a face to your campaign

Microsoft managed to put a ‘face’ and a real-life scenario to its cloud solutions. This way, the promotion takes a more human and conversational approach without being in-your-face. Consumers had it enough when it comes to blatant advertising.

#3: Provide a reason to follow you

Here’s where I think @The_OfficeGuy should have done better. The campaign created curiosity and people (with Twitter) naturally began engaging with them but it would seem that not many decided to follow him. Why? I came up with 3 reasons:

1. People somewhat know that this IS a campaign. So why follow an advertisement channel?
2. All it does is to talk, talk and talk. What can I get out of listening to his conversations with others?
3. (Referring to the Twitter profile) What value can I get out of the misadventures of someone?

I can’t argue it’s capabilities in drawing curiosity and responses but if you can’t keep the consumers, you’re merely a shopfront display. It may be more effective if  there is a balance between the tweets – engagement vs providing value. You do not need to sell your product, but cleverly picking out its benefits and usage in an educational tone will do better.

Bonus: This works great with local businesses

There’s no need for expensive print advertisements. If your business has a targeted audience in a specific geographical area or even with limited budget, you may want to consider narrowing your promotional focus such as Microsoft. Concentrate on one location to build visibility and utilize social media platforms for engagement to take place. Your business may be the next talk of the town!

What do you think about the campaign? Are there areas that you think they’ve done well? Is there anything lacking?

My 100th Post and a 1000 Awesome Things

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Thank you for your support!

This blog is about 10 months old now and this is my 100th post! It has been quite a journey I must say as it definitely wasn’t easy keeping it up all these while due to work and project commitments but I’ve never regretted in any way and I’m not saying that because I’m getting tons of readers daily (in which I don’t get many), but for allowing me to meet great people such as yourself that is currently reading this post.

What about the 1000 Awesome Things?

I came across this book called the 1000 Awesome Things and found it very cool and inspiring. Nothing fancy, but it talks about all the positive, little and simple things in life that happens everyday. Reading the book somehow gives this great feeling that makes you realize that life IS filled with awesome things – it’s just that we don’t realize it.

One of my favorites written by the author, Neil Pasricha is how awesome it is to have the elevator doors open the moment you’ve pressed it. Does that somewhat resonate with you?

Having said that, I’ve decided to attempt putting down my own 1000 awesome things on a weekly basis just to keep track of the awesome little things in life and to hopefully remind you (and hear) of the awesome things in yours, too – just a tiny break away from the usual topics I write on.

Let me know what you think :)