Dell + Twitter = $1,000,000.

Twitter has made Dell $1 million bucks in revenue. This is such major news for 2 main reasons.

1) It proves Social media can be "cash in hand" profitable
2) It begs us to examine the "How the hell they made this happen?"

I'm sure the article from Internet news will spark a gazillion emails from CEOs and MDs down to line level digital managers telling them to get their ass on twitter. Although those may not be the exact words, i'm sure some "leverage", "explore", "forefront", " maximize" was thrown in for good measure.

So is Twitter the new revenue stream for brands to take notice of? Will tweeting about your latest product promotions ( like Dell does) bring about a new spring of cash? The answer i feel lies in Dell's background. First off, lets not just look at "Dell + Twitter = $1,000,000". The equation goes much deeper as we examine some of Dell's social media position.

Dell has been conversing with its customers ever since Michael Dell took over back in 2007. The best thing he has done is to have made customer focus his only focus. ( It stuns me everytime someone in a meeting says we need to focus on several things) By thinking about what his customers want and hearing those comments enabled sites like Ideastorm and DirectoDell to take place. In the words of the man himself " "If we don't do that at Dell.com, it's going to be on CNET or somewhere," Michael Dell says. "I'd rather have that conversation in my living room than in somebody else's."

From redefining customer service to customer driven product innovation, Dell has over the last 2 years proven to be sincere about this shift in focus. As a result, their tweets are received by a multitude of followers that resulted in this million dollar revenue opportunity.

There is no shortcut to engagement and the equation certainly isn't as clear cut as it seems. If you are suddenly thinking about getting your 15% store discount on twitter. Stop. Go back to the chalkboard and look at the origins of the equation. Yes, you can make revenue from promo tweets but the pre cursor is your followers need to be your friends and top priority.

Song of the blog

Cheated on me by Gavin Degraw

Anytime, Anywhere, Anyhow?

I got myself a nifty Ipod touch last month and i am seriously addicted to all the apps you can download from the itunes store. What's impressing me on a daily basis however, is the internet browsing experience on this gadget. Hands up for all those people who have tried your phone's internet access and been really turned off by

1) The speed ( or lack of)
2) The design/layout
3) The speed

On the itouch however, with a wifi enabled safari browser, i found myself surfing web pages not unlike a netbook experience. This led me to realize the problem with mobile marketing isn't the device, it's the user experience. Remember i spoke about how i believe branding is formed by experiences. We have been fed the slogan "Anytime, anywhere" so many times over the last year, yet are we really consuming more mobile content anytime anwhere? NO.. and the reason is simply because "Anytime" and "Anywhere" is not "AnyHOW".

How we feel when we access those WAP pages and How we perceive communication over the mobile screen is just if not more important than anytime or anywhere. Whats the point of telling me its a buffet if the only thing on the table is boiled water and old bread.

Mobile phones are designed primarily to help us stay connected. We use calls, sms, mms etc to stay in touch. Social networks want us to be plugged into them 24/7. The natural affinity means social networks are learning to adapt from an online experience to generating good mobile ones. My experience with the facebook app on the ipod touch was absolutely spot on.

So, how about companies? Brands, services? If companies start embracing social media as a new way of conversation, then the mobile internet surely must be part of that plan.

Any comments or good mobile internet experiences to share?

Song of the day is by Lesley Roy ( she sings like she has a frog in her throat but its enjoyable)

"Unbeautiful" by Lesley Roy

Social media on the inside

I'm reading Peter Kim's social media predictions for 2009 and i would like to add my very own personal view on what i think should happen more in SMM.

"Companies will develop social media techniques as an in house productivity tool to drive business during this economic downturn" -Melvin Kee

David Carter wrote a great article about companies embracing social media during economic turmoil as a way of engaging outwardly with customers/consumers. I would like to propose while that may be true, social media can probably help companies inwardly just as much.

Pete Blackshaw said "Intimacy touches emotions, emotions power conversations" This is as true as the sun's rays and if you are in the business of a product or service, then your employees/staff are the touchpoints of these conversations. What exactly are these techniques that im talking about? Well consider these,

1) Employee profile pages where everyone in the firm can view/connect with any other employee.
2) Mirco blogging site for easy exchange of updates
3) Community driven and collaborative wikis for research and analysis and commentary
4) Easy, 1 step , direct channel for feedback on front line staff tips, comments and general talk back
5) Community pages for birthday greetings, group gift sharing, lunch discussions etc

Yes, some of you out there are thinking, "this sounds like an extremely tree hugging way of encouraging my staff to slack off on the job." I certainly don't discount the possibility of these tools being abused by a percentage of your office, however, consider that the workplace is essentially a social environment and humans are social creatures. Channeling interaction into productivity makes sense especially now that social media is so much a part of our lives.

Happy employees make passionate workers. Passion drives a relationship between employee and brand . Relationship suggests intimacy which hopefully translates into external meaningful business conversations borne right from the walls of your office space. After all, isn't it the inside that counts?

Song of the blog is "Little Tornado" by Aimee Mann. ( this is the best i could get on youtube)

C'mon J Co! Wake up a little!!

Remember how i talked about companies who treat communities as a a marketing fad and make zero use of social media? Welcome to the world of J Co.

Good Donuts, terrible coffee, horrible service. For those who have access to Krispy Kremes, consider yourselves kissed by the sugary dessert gods. I went down yesterday to a J Co takeaway joint to get myself some "why didn't i just go to starbucks" coffee and ended up wasting 20 mins of my lunch hour telling some counter dude it shouldn't take this long to percolate, heat up , swish and serve. And because, he was struggling with my latte, he turned to serve the lady (pretty) behind who had a much easier order of frozen yogurt. He actually just gave up.

So, what's a guy to do these days in this age of citizen journalism?

I went looking online for a J Co feedback channel. Surprisingly, i found their community site. Initial thoughts were "finally! something they're doing right."



But lo and behold, the community site had nothing that allowed me to feedback, compliment, complain or even interact with anyone from J Co.

A site like this where there is no brand presence or semblance of engagement from brand to customer is like saying " here, enjoy this lovely community space i have prepared for you to talk with fellow customers, i hope you have fun cause i won't. In fact, i won't ever come in. I have a webmaster to do that"

Again, to all brands and marketers out there, every brand needs to have a face, an identity, a personality. If you don't think your brand represents anything or anyone then it surely defeats any purpose of anyone showing up at all.

It was just in the last post that i blogged about corporate branding police. Obviously, now with this entry, J Co's google alert might be sounding off but was this necessary? Imagine this scenario,

1) I find the community site
2) I find a talkback section
3) I talk
4) J Co listens
5) I blog now and it's a MUCH better blog about how J Co gets it.

Comments? Anyone else had a J Co experience to shout about?

As an enhancement to my posts, i will be adding some youtube music videos at the bottom so my old music blog readers can come back. ( nod to mr kim, Pepe and co)

For my new readers, this used to be a music blog but social media has kinda taken over, decided they need not be mutually exclusive even though there is little relevancy. Anyway, here is my late addition to today's post. A beautiful track taken of the Banquet OST. (btw, i love how there is no visual on the screen, just enhanced the music for me that much more.)

Brandtology? yes or no

I came across Walter's blog  where he spoke about a new company called Brandtology that is offering social media monitoring services that focus on PR and brand reputation analysis. This is their message "Brandtology offers the world's first 24x7 online managed brand and reputation services"

As much as i can gather, it's quite like hiring a spy to lurk around forums and social networks and identifying potential attacks to brands by users or highlighting certain key assessments that is sussed out from peer to peer conversations. In order to do this, they have a mix of technology and people who act as social media consultants who then help evaluate and report their findings. 

What do you think? First off, let's agree that eavesdropping is not a form of communication. Assuming you wanted to know more about what people thought about your brand, or to get relevant feedback and allow ranting to happen, wouldn't the logical option be to get involved in these communities personally? I have spoken before that the 1st step to building a connection with your onground community is to establish trust and to get involved. A 2 way process is critical to really understanding what people are saying. And since it's impossible to teleport yourself to every single touchpoint, the next logical step would be to create a productive condusive environment for this to happen. Look at starbucks with their superb talkback site, or Dell whom has a home for innovation to happen .

Most people complain because they want to be heard, if these people knew their complaints were being heard by the company whom is interested to know and resolve these issues. It makes sense that those complaints would be aired in this controlled setting.

Without knowing too much about Brandtology's measuring methodologies, i can't say too much about if their qualitative and quantitative indexes are worth their weight in salt. But i can say that employing people as 1st or 2nd level evaluation fences smells pretty funky. I mean , where's the yardstick if you take into account human bias, past experiences, tolerance levels, different intepretations etc etc. These all contribute to various opinions based on various personal experiences and i'm not sure thats a good standard measure tool to gauge brand influence or reputation.

On the positives, i actually think the service has a market and a demand. Most companies are scared to death of social media because of the openess and transparency the web brings to the table. Sending out spies is probably a safeguard so they can prevent any PR disasters. But here's my takeaway point, you reap what you sow. The web is a double edged sword but any company can turn it into a powerful tool to build engagement and really use conversations as a starting point to improve and grow. 

Let's look at the US, negating potential threats with offensive stealth and strategic measures didn't really help the republicans much did they? What's Barack Obama's stand on potential conflict resolution. In Iran's case,“economic engagement” and “security assurances" are tactics Obama wants to employ. In a nutshell, communicate. 

There are better ways to prevent a PR disaster than employing some branding police to do your dirty work for you. Here's a tip, put on your gloves and start opening up those channels. 

Thanks for the spam Mr Lim

-Social networking site Facebook has appointed iHub Media as its regional advertising sales representatives.

ihub Media will market the range of advertising products available through Facebook Ads and offer homepage and integrated ad units as well as video and skyscraper ads across Facebook pages.-

“Social networking will prove to be more than a cost-effective advertising option or a tool for small players to level the paying field. It will also be a critical element in every mainstream marketing programme that companies large and small cannot afford to ignore,” said Kyle Lim, CEO of iHub Media.

Seriously Mr Lim, social networking advertising will never be associated with "cost effective" as long as click tru rates for banner advertising stays as relevant as sunblock on a rainy day. We don't go on facebook to watch ads, we don't "somehow" ingest banner advertising while we update photos and post comments. As the CEO of an online ad interactive agency, i would expect Mr Lim to be slightly more intuitive in his insight of online advertising. Or is he?

Let's assume he is and like most profiteers, is merely raking in the middle man agency fee while local marketers scramble to get a piece of the facebook advertising action. Well then, no one really to blame then except to point the all mighty finger of ROI at these ill educated marketers who are creating this demand.

The beauty and potential of social advertising is the ability to profile and serve relevant ads. Now , the question therefore is "when are ads relevant?". I dont know about you, but it's been a looong time since i saw an ad and i went " oh my! oh relevant"

I believe that the above statement is true that advertisers will eventually understand how to use data to serve relevant advertising. But i also believe it wont be in the form of banner ads and skyscaper units. The next obstacle we need to overcome is to correctly redefine our tired mindsets on how advertising should look like.

If we are all correct to say communication and conversation and authenticity is the key to engagement of audience and potential customers, then "advertising" must happen in the midst of a 2 way process. When channels are truly open, authentic needs for superior services should become part and parcel of the communication strategy. Banner ads to me constitute as much relevancy as email spam. Marketers need to stop thinking about how to push advertising on facebook and think about what they are trying to accomplish with these adverts and if a social networking platform is the right place to do it.

Mr Lim i'm sure has an inkling to the actual click tru rates and conversion ratios that banner advertising offers. But he knows that many marketers don't and that's why i'm going to be spammed the next time i log on. Spam book..

This is home, a reminder of whats important.

Hi all, social media takes a break today in the aftermath of the violence that has hit home so hard over the last couple of days. Singaporeans can sometimes feel disconnected, as if we are cocooned in our sunny island where the realities of terror and death are somehow muted by distance and time.

No more. We have all been waking up to not just news, but reality. A reality of uncertain times that forces us to re look our priorities and perspectives. While we may ask all the questions to which there are no answers, we should ask ourselves the questions to which there are.
What are the things that we need to cherish more each day? And who are the people whom we need to connect with before complacency weakens our resolve to love.


For me, the answer is clear. Family & Home.

Here is a song from Switchfoot that i think is brilliant. What's important to you? Share with us your own resolves.