me, my passion & digital marketing
Asian Bloggers and Social Media Conference
Jul 30th
Over the last 2 days, I was at the Asian Bloggers and Social Media Conference 2010 in Berjaya Times Square in Kuala Lumpur. It was a very last minute decision to go to the event and a decision that gave me opportunity to get insights and to meet people I’ve known but never met.
The event was huge, attracting probably around 400 pax of bloggers, social media professionals, marketing personnel and brand owners. I got a few good pointers about blogging and social media – though some of the stuff I’ve already known because I have also been reading a fair bit about the topic. It was a good event and a topic close to heart.
I had the opportunity to meet many people @shareenmy ; @lightyoruichi (the Malaysia Foursquare Ambassador) ; @liewcf (he is the person behind the famous tech blog, www.liewcf.com) ; @andygts ; @accentize (he sat beside me on day 2) ; @blogie (he is one of the speaker and panelist who manages 7 blogs, one of it being www.wp-evangelist.com) ; a Bernama reporter seated in front me and a few others whom I did not get their twitter IDs.
I now have 3 urgent things on my to-do list :-
1. Design my own name card
I want to design a name card for myself. Personal branding stuff 
2. A whole stuff I want to do with my WordPress.
After talking to @blogie , I am convinced that there is still a lot of stuff I need to do with my WordPress
3. Use the information I learned about social media in my marketing work
The information I have gotten over 2 days is useful for my current and future work .. so have to start working on it
Its a tiring day.. work tomorrow. Feeling inspired to do a whole lot of stuff.
UPDATE
Just as I was looking through the photos I took during the event, I found a few interesting ones that I MUST share. Enjoy…
I like this setup – having two huge banners on both sides and the projected image in the middle. I think they use a back projection for the video – which is expensive but necessary if you want to have a fuss free front area. Very good, even sitting at the last row, I could see the face of the speaker clearly.
“Believe the Unbelievable, Dream the Impossible, Never take NO for an answer” was a quote shared by Tony Fernandez.
If your brand talks, you don’t have to buy fans. Cool… but smaller brands may have a need to ‘buy’ fans.
It was an honor to have an opportunity to listen to Dr. M’s speech live.
This has got to be the best pic of all. It was the last session – the forum with 8 panelist and Kenny Sia being one of them. While Blogie was giving his opinion, Kenny Sia was making weird funny faces and I felt amused too – so I snapped a pic of it. At one point, his eyes went squint! He’s really hilarious!
Three of the eight panelist for the forum. From right is Niki Cheong, Kenny Sia and Blogie.
The ideal social media team! That’s a huge team.. This slide was presented by the speaker from Virtual Consulting, Indonesia.
Understanding Who You are Following
Jul 18th
The Story
I use an automated tool to reciprocate my followers, thus I have an equal number of those I follow vs those who are following me. I rarely filter, and it is becoming impossible to do so now that I follow close to 1,900 Twitterers. It is very interesting to find out that out of this amount, a very huge percentage of those I follow (voluntarily of involuntarily) are garbage (as termed by http://thetwitcleaner.com )
Yes – I am using a new tool called thetwitcleaner that is helping me to understand the Twitter ID I am following. It is very simple and it is totally free. Once you sign in and generate a report for your Twitter ID, you get to access the report which is sent to you via DM. The summary tells you pretty much and the detailed version is displayed below the summary. Here’s a summary of mine :-
Dodgy Behaviour 43.5% which is made up of 1.Trying to sell you crap 2.Multiple @s 3.Nothing but links 4.Tweeting the Same Links all the time 5.Tweeting idential tweets all the time 6.Other dodgy behaviour, now absent
No activity in over a month 4.1%
Not much interaction 10.7% which is made up of 1.Not active yet(fewer than 10 tweets) 2.Don’t interact with anyone 3.Hardly follow anyone
All talk, all the time 2.7%
Little original content 3.1% made up of high percentage of retweets and high percentage of quotes
That leave only 36% of of those whom I’m following that does not fall in any of the above four categories. I’m going to start evaluating those I’m following and will selectively unfollow them. It is going to be a tedious and slow process as I will see each Twitter ID one by one before unfollowing. The entire purpose of this is to ensure that I don’t miss the good tweets and filter out those that are in the dodgy behaviour category. Hopefully after cleaning this out, I can see all the quality tweets and filter out the blatant ads.
My First Tweetup
Jul 17th
Its my first time.
Meeting up with my Twitter buddies. *phew* I’m not really the ‘meeting-up’ kind of person and I was feeling very unsure until the very last minute. I would say that its fate that brought us all together – so we met ala-@JasonGan-coffee-talk-style in Starbucks Jaya One. The group comprised of @JasonGan @PrincessJoLing @eltonkuah @Flashout13 and of course yours truly @chewmeiling.
I liked the fact that everyone turned up in their everyday attires and that sets the mood to ‘relaxed’ – something that made everyone felt like friends for a long time. It was a cool sharing session, mostly about social media and also a little bit of our personal life. After all, it was the first time we met so we took time to get to know each other a little bit more.
There were a few things I concluded from the sharing session :-
Social Media is about Ideas
Technology enhances ideas. Without ideas, technology is dead. No amount of tools can replace the need for ideas. Without ideas (good ones!), social media is not function-able. Fresh, crazy ideas are a must!
Social Media is about being daring
Recycling ideas are for those who are not daring enough to venture into something new. Maybe due to business restrictions, a lot of social media campaigns today are nothing new. If no one dares to try new ideas, we are as good as staying status quo in everything we do?
Social Media is about real business results
I’ve read a gazillion of times that social media is not able to bring real business results, but yesterday’s discussion changed my perception. I used to think that its about engagement, bla bla bla… but now I know that social media can bring in actual business results … like increased sales, additional leads, more reach!
Social Media is an art and science, combined into one
Putting up a Facebook page and having a Twitter ID is just the beginning. You need a consultant who can go deep dive into your business, utilize his brain juices to churn out actionable, business-driven campaign to meet end objectives. The who what why when and how are answered by numbers and statistics; justifying actions and forecast results – now that’s not just about guessing or estimating!
Social media is here to stay
In 2009, I told my peers that every marketer must equip themselves with social media knowledge. I foresee digital to be a very important chuck in every marketing plan and in 2010, it happened. With the multiple benefits social media can bring, its no surprise that more budgets are being allocated for this and more companies are jumping into the bandwagon. Social media is not a fad, it delivers real business results and is going to stay!
I became involved in digital 4 years ago when online banners were mainly big boys, and in my small tiny organization I recommended the use of online medium in a large way. Now, I’m ready to get into action. Digital marketing is my passion and expert I may not be but that has never stopped me from doing what I’ve wanted all this while. I agree with @eltonkuah and @JasonGan that once you are doing something you are passionate about, it really doesn’t feel like a job. Some time back a peer told me that if I put in the exact amount of energy, effort and excitement in my own venture, I would go very far. Now is the time to test it.
There will be more meet ups … and more Starbucks? I think I’ll go get a Starbucks tumbler as well *LOL*
UPDATED :
I think I like the below… hahaha.. I’ll go check it out first. And, I also found that there is a Starbucks Merchandise Store in Ontario, California! Wahh..
