How Would You Help Lucky Charms?

I know there is a percentage of the population who misses Lucky Charms. That cereal with the marshmallows in the shape of four leaf clovers and horseshoes and stuff like that. I know that because when we were in New York over the December holidays, a group of us consumed it like it wasn’t from this earth. I don’t know why, but the cereal mysteriously disappeared years ago, never to be seen again. I don’t know about you, but Froot Loops took the place of my favourite cereal. Guess I just like some colour in my cereal.

Interestingly, my girlfriend e-mailed the major retailers in Singapore and couldn’t find the reason why it was stopped, but confirmed the fact that none of them were bringing it in.

Until two weeks ago.

Jason’s Marketplace at Raffles City is apparently bringing it in, as well as a whole line of cereal from the same brand.

So the question is twofold: What would you do if you were the agency tasked to bring Lucky Charms in and generate some sales? After all, unless you’re looking out for it, it would be just one of the 34,632 other cereal boxes on the shelves.

And from the other side of the coin, what would you do if you were a consumer wanting your sorely-missed Lucky Charms to reach the shores of Singapore again?

Remember, it’s not about whether it would work, it’s about how you’d use social media from either side of the fence. Or maybe… you wouldn’t use social media at all?

Social Media Breakfast: Singapore 2! 24th May 2008

As Sham has already reported, SMB:S2 will be happening in three weeks on the 24th of May, 2008. All the details can be found at the Facebook event page.

Who should come?

Anyone interested and passionate about the social media space, be it blogging, podcasting, social networks, micro blogging etc. What this event is not, however, is a blogger outing that is so popular around Singapore. Read up about the original event and check out the blog coverage if you think you might be interested!

ps: The event is open to all so feel free to invite fellow friends to the Facebook event page, hopefully people who can help move the conversation further.

There’ll definitely be more news and updates as and when it happens, so stay tuned. Meanwhile, we already have 19 confirmed guests on the Facebook event page, won’t you be one of them too? What would you like to see that this SMB? More structure? A proper format and/or discussions? Let me know and we’ll see how we can factor it in.

Are Bloggers Really Influencers?

The topic of “influence” has appeared a number of times, generated out of the “Why social media struggles in Singapore” post. I was writing that post from the corporation’s point of view, and questioning whether a certain factor (size) may be a factor that has hindered social media’s growth.

But let’s look at this from the point of view of the consumers: Are we really influenced by bloggers?

What The Research Says

Result summary: People trust “people like themselves” the most, an “bloggers” the least. Okay wait, before you stop reading this right now and say “Okay, let’s cancel our blogger relations initiative”, read on.

Are Bloggers Really Trusted The Least?
When I saw the findings, my first thought was “But, what if a blogger is someone like me?”. This is something lacking in the research, and is brought up by Jason Mical and Jeremiah in the comments:

[By Jason]I believe about marketing and the direction it’s going in the digital space, and you have a proven record of posting insightful things that I find useful in thinking about this as well. So I would classify you as ’someone with my interests’ before I would classify you as a blogger in this regard.

[By Jeremiah]I agree, I wish I had more insight to how the questions about “do you trust blogs” were done. We need to see the context, as it could be broken down to:

“do you trust bloggers with similar opinions, that you read frequently”

or

“do you trust random blogs you stumble across”

Perhaps the questions could even be posed a different way: “do you trust the opinions of bloggers?”

I don’t think the lines between “people like me” and bloggers are as far apart as the research shows. And I definitely do not think the results are as disparate as the research claims.

I have a couple of case studies I thought of off the top of my head, tell me if they make sense to you, and keep in mind this is written from the point of view of a consumer.

Case Study 1: Xiaxue
I don’t read her, definitely don’t identify with her, to me she’s a “blogger”. But how about the 20 thousand people who read her blog daily? Does she have no influence over them? From the amount of comments generated in her defense whenever someone slams her, I’d say she has considerable influence over them.

Case Study 2: Kenny Sia
I had the privilege of meeting Kenny at the IDC Conference and he blogged about it, linking me. That one post generated almost 1,500 traffic to my blog, the next closest being tomorrow.sg with about 500. I’m not sure how you want to classify tomorrow.sg, but looking at the data, clearly 1,500 people think Kenny is not “just a blogger” but someone who influences them and makes them think “I identify with Kenny, he thinks Daryl is worth putting a link to, so that might probably be interesting to me too”, and hence the clicks. I can’t speak for everyone, but that’s definitely my personal thought process when browsing blogs.

Case Study 3: FriendFeed
FriendFeed is growing in popularity in North America. The level of activity after it opened from beta is exponentially higher than the level of activity before. Let’s look at the other categories from the research. Review on tv? Review on retailer site? I don’t think so.

Friendfeed was spread via word of mouth online from people who follow the early adopters and advocates like Louis Gray. Certainly I don’t know Louis personally (though we’re mutual readers of each others’ blog), but neither is he some anonymous blogger online. He’s someone I know covers a great niche in the social media space on rss aggregation, and I’m interested in all things social media, hence I definitely trust and believe his opinions. In fact I also signed up for LinkRiver, AssetBar and Yokway based on his recommendations. Admittedly I only use LinkRiver with any frequency, but I think that’s attributed to the product rather than the medium (Louis).

This post has gone on a little longer than I thought it would and I have a few more thoughts on reach as well as “weak” links or influences which I’ll try to post this evening. In the meantime, what do you think? As clear cut as the research suggests? Or are there intricacies at work that are unexplored? Do you classify bloggers in the same category as “people like me”? Or are they clear and distinctly separated?

How Was Your Read And Comment Day?

What Read And Comment Day?

Yesterday was Read and Comment day, where you have to make an active effort to comment on blogs and join the conversation. It was suggested by Chris Brogan, and true to form, he even left a comment here as well. Read and Comment day also inspired me to encourage people to strengthen their links to people on Twitter, especially the weaker links.

My Report

I put aside an hour last night to really go through my Google Reader (learnt how to use it yet?) and properly digest blog posts and comment. In a lot of ways, it reminded me of when I first started blogging in January when Prof. Netley advised us that we should comment twice as much as we post to establish a presence and drive traffic. I’m a little embarrassed to say that I forgot that along the way, but Read and Comment day really reminded me how important it is not just to create my own content by blogging, but to add value to others’ content as well.

How About You?

Have you found yourself commenting less than usual? Something holding you back from joining the conversation? Go post a couple of comments today. You’ll feel great!

My Conversations

• CC Chapman had a Twitter story I could totally relate to.
• Chanced upon how to get placement on blogs with a great example by Jason Falls. Read this before pitching a blogger please.
• Frederic talks about how bloggers are filters but not gatekeepers
• Found a great blog by Deirdre Breakenridge and a great post called the Twitter addiction
• Decided to follow Louis Gray’s social media consumption workflow for a day, and was pretty happy with it. Slotting in FriendFeed last makes sense.
• Finally, Steven Hodson’s post on the danger of social media falling in on itself.

All great topics, especially if you’re into social media. Why not read and comment on them (or right here) yourself?

Updating Blogroll: Who’re My RSS Readers?

I noticed that after I posted how to use RSS, the number of people subscribed to the blog increased by a decent amount (up around 50%).

My blogroll has been sorely neglected since I first put up the blog, so if you’re someone subscribed to the blog and want to be added to the blogroll, let me know who you are either via email (uniquefrequency[AT]gmail{DOT}com) or comment below.

Maybe tell me a little more about yourself and what you’re into. That way if I stumble across information that may be relevant to you, I can pass it along.

If you’re not a subscriber, not to worry. If you’re involved in this niche of social media, community marketing, web2.0 etc, I’d be happy to add you to the blogroll too. Drop me an email or comment and leave some similar information.

At the end of the day, I really want to know who the readers are and who this community is made up of. So make yourself heard!

Podcast Of The Month: March

This is late so I’m going to jump straight into it. My choice for the March podcast of the month goes to Six Pixels of Separation for the interview with Seth Godin in #93. I also listened to #94 – #97, and #97 is the episode where Mitch talks about Social Media Breakfast: Singapore, so you might want to check that out as well.

Other podcasts that I really think you should check out:

I really enjoyed listening to CC Chapman on Managing The Gray where he responded to Intellagirl’s challenge on how to get non-social media people into social media, as well as his coverage of SXSW.

With that said I also enjoyed Shill’s thoughts on SXSW coverage happening literally everywhere else, and how that feels from people not at the event. I really felt their point of view because I was one of those people getting bombarded non-stop on Twitter about SXSW. Probably something everyone will have to figure out for the next event.

Joseph Jaffe also weighed in on the SXSW coverage and Intellagirl’s challenge in Jaffe Juice #107 as well as facing outward from the fishbowl. An observation which I think is spot on.

Marketing Over Coffee was also good this month with an episode on what to do with your house list, two parts on the state of search and talking about the power of free.

Two new podcasts I picked up are For Immediate Release which comes out so frequently I can barely keep up but some good, thought provoking content in there, as well as Inside PR, whose discussion on ethics in PR to be very enlightening in #103 and #104

As always I am open to any and all suggestions for new podcasts to listen do. Just drop me a comment! While you’re at it, why not check out the podcast of the month for February and January as well?

Can You Move From Web1.0 Straight To Web3.0?

It’s a hypothetical question because Web3.0 isn’t here yet (although some would say it may manifest itself in personalisation). But let’s explore the scenario:

I’m doing a research project on Indonesia, where the internet penetration is very low (something like 9%) and many web activities are restricted to the old “Web1.5” usage of just a static website with none of the “social” elements that are typical of Web2.0.

One question asked in class was something like “Do you think Indonesia would go straight from Web1.0 to Web3.0 by the time their infrastructure catches up?” with the illustration of starting with Friendster and moving to Facebook, bypassing MySpace completely.

My answer is: probably not. I think Web2.0 is not a “technology” per se in the way we commonly refer to it, but a way of using technology. My analogy is take cars as the parallel to Web2.0. Different brands of cars all fall under the “cars” category. If someone moves up from a Toyota to a BMW (ie Friendster to Facebook), they do advance within the category, but they do stay within that subset. It’s not until one moves out of it (to say, flying), that the previous category is done with altogether.

Do you agree? Disagree? Let me know what you think. I think it’s a fascinating discussion and would love to hear from you.

Incidentally, if you happen to know data or internet patterns/trends in Indonesia, it would be great to hear from you as well.

Blogs I’m Subscribed To: March

A regular feature on this blog, here are the other blogs I subscribed to in March which I feel should be shared with the community:

A VC – I have no interest in VC, but every now and then there’s interesting stuff on social media that I read and enjoy.

Socialmedia.biz is a great site keeping up with social media in the business setting.

I like Student Blog Project because the notion of using web2.0 in education is a curiosity of mine and I was pleasantly surprised to stumble upon it on ping.sg early in the month.

Inside PR is one of the many podcasts that I’ve added to my Ipod (soon to be Ipod touch) this month. I think it’s a great listen to keep up with what’s happening in the PR scene in Canada. Their recent episode talks about interns not wanting to do admin work (?!). Dave & Terry: I will be in Canada later in the year and will be happy to do admin work on top of whatever else you require.

Pamela, who I also follow on Twitter has a great blog, and us PR/social media students have to stick together!

I also added:
bub.blicio.us and PR 2.0 by Brian Solis
Digital Influence Mapping Project by John Bell
Andy Wibbels
Influential Marketing Blog by Rohit Bhargava
Ubernoggin by Intellagirl aka Sarah Robbins.
Winextra by Steven Hodson
PR and Comms Network

As always, if you have a blog you think I should be subscribing to, please feel free to leave it in the comments section. I’m currently a little overwhelmed by my feeds, but anything that adds value will still be greatly welcome.

Tomorrow: Blogs I’m Subscribed To: Singaporean edition. Lots of good stuff, I promise.

Help Me Decide What To Present At Pecha Kucha Night

I mentioned awhile ago that I got invited to present at Pecha Kucha Night next Friday. The only problem is that I’m torn over what to present. My current two options are social media in general, or Twitter specifically.

What do you think are the pros and cons of each? What story would you choose to tell? Right now I’m not sure I have a compelling presentation for either, and if I don’t, I won’t present.

It would be pretty cool to present on Twitter, tweet something out and get replies in real time though, wouldn’t it?

My First Audio Interview

I’ve been sitting on this for awhile, but this is my first audio interview with four fellow bloggers: Amelia, Jacqueline, Nabilah and Calin. They came down one sunday to be special guests on my radio show on SMU Campus Radio (very creatively called The Talk Show), and talked about social media in general and blogging in particular.

I think it’s a very open, sincere and insightful interview with four people who have just started figuring out the whole social media space together with me. It’s not as organised as I’d like it to be as I had to cut out the music due to copyright issues, but I definitely think it’s worth your time nonetheless. Do give it a listen!

I couldn’t find a way to embed it on WordPress, so listen to it here. Doesn’t take long to load!