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Unique-Frequency

Eyes & Ears on Media - Are You Tuned In?

How Important Is It To “Name” Company Bloggers?May 15

I was at an informal meeting today which I quite enjoyed. We had bloggers, client-side people, agency-side people, all of whom were interested in social media. I thought the discussion was generally good, but one question in particular stood out.

Someone mentioned that if hotels wanted to blog, why not get the concierge desk to blog as the stories of what goes on on the ground as well as useful information about the city would be useful and relevant to travelers visiting the hotel or deciding where to stay. It was raised that there could be a number of authors running the blog or just one person, but they should be anonymous. Perhaps blogging as “Your friendly concierge at the Hyatt”, for example.

Bill and Coleman called him out on this and said companies who blog should have full transparency and name their bloggers. But the very reasonable reason of “one day they’ll leave” surfaced, and I’m having a hard time reconciling the two.

On one hand I am a transparency advocate. There are times when anonymity helps (ie when needing to talk about a sensitive issue), but generally for an external blog, I think the public should know who is the person blogging.

But I think the person leaving is a real concern. Take Matt Cutts for example, arguably Google’s “face” on the internet. If for some reason he jumps ship to Yahoo! tomorrow, would

Blogging Yields Fruit (Like An Internship)May 12

Remember why students should blog? Well I’m happy to announce that the third internship worked out and I start on Wednesday. Exact details won’t be posted because of confidentiality issues, but suffice to say it’s social media related.

To me the biggest value is to be thrown into the “real world” and see if the stuff I’ve been blogging about makes sense, or am I living in this dream from the outside looking in. Could be a harsh slap of reality, but better now than later.

The downside is that it’s only six weeks (because I’ve committed the whole of July and half of August to my previous employer, MTV to work on the MTV Asia Awards held in Malaysia. That is going to be a blast!

However, rest assured the blogging here will not be changed in anyway. I definitely won’t be blogging about work unless given express permission, and if I do, it will be fully disclosed. I might end up blogging less than normal because of work hours, but that’s what RSS is for! (Don’t know how to subscribe, here’s my handy guide).

Finally, I want to thank everyone who’s been reading, commenting or interacting with this blog in any way. This could be the best blog in the world (it’s not), but if no one was reading it, it would be useful.

Don’t Look Any Further. Social Media = CRM (Customer Relationship Management)May 11

I originally meant for this post to show some excerpts from Pat’s blog today, titled “The Holy Trinity Of Blogging“, until I realised she has it so spot on and so easily understood that there really is little else I could add by posting about it. (That said, do check out the link, relevant to individuals and companies alike.)

But as I sat down to start writing tonight, I realised there’s a bigger question here: Why, out of the many, many links sent to me and blog posts that I read a day, did I want to particularly highlight Pat’s? Someone who I have never talked to online or in person? Of course because it’s relevant and well-written, but there’s something else.

It started with a tweet:

This is the second direct message she sent me, the first was even more targeted, saying something like “for the social media junkie” followed by the URL.

Let’s go back to CRM, according to Wikipedia, it

helps companies understand, as well as anticipate, the needs of current and potential customers.

Isn’t that exactly what happened here? Unlike the mass tweets about a “new blog p

How Would You Help Lucky Charms?May 10

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.

My Social Media Breakfast: Singapore 2 ChallengeMay 9

The attendee list on the Facebook Event page for Social Media Breakfast: Singapore 2 has been at 40 people for a couple of days now, about 60% were present at the first one. This is good in the sense that we’ll be familiar with each other and really move the conversation forward and talk about the crazy issues that plague all of us who’re trying to figure out the space.

However, there’s also something missing. New blood! I talked before about the fishbowl and being insular
, and if we want the landscape of social media to change, we have to reach out. To people who are just entering the social media domain, to people who are curious but still on the fence, to people who don’t even know about this world yet!

So here’s the challenge: Convince one other person (friend, classmate, colleague, family) that this is worth their while. Let them know it’s newbie friendly, after all, most of us are new to the space anyway!

That’s the mission if you choose to accept it, come back and let everyone know how it went by posting in the comments section!