Social Media needs a PUSH!!

Wow. my first blog entry after a good 4 year absence. Anyways, those who were familiar with my previous blog, I’m sorry to say this one isn’t going to be the same as the previous one.

So why start this blog? There’re a lotta issues that I need to voice out and things that I really wanna share!!

So, the first topic is with regards to a fellow SMU student, Daryl Tay’s question and response to “Why social media is struggling in Singapore?” And looking at the responses of that entry, it really set me thinking and I’ve come up with a few reasons of my own.

Some of the limitations are like Daryl mentioned. Our small population and the fact that the influencers on the blogosphere are really just overlapping each other. Take for example a tech community, you probably get the same few bloggers raving or cursing at the same few products being launched. To make it worse, these same few bloggers usually have the same kinds of readers and the circle really expands at a snail’s pace.

At this point, I now wonder if the companies should be taking more initiatives to push to building a bigger community that can relate to their product. And of course I gotta agree with Prof Michael Netzley that the government could push and pave the way for social media to be taken a lot more seriously. Here in Singapore, if the government says it’s true, 95% of the people would agree.

Ken Mandel, Yahoo SE Asia, VP and regional MD, cites that less than 2% of Singapore’s advertising dollar is spent on the internet. We can’t expect to set up a social network group and hope for the best like what “Heaven and Earth” green tea did with the “Godzilla” idea which I thought was terrible. (They had 28 friends on their friendster account for that campaign and thought it was a success…. real connection for you there huh? They went on to phase 2 of using ambient marketing to increase sales and awareness, didn’t seem too successful to me…)

Linda Locke, CEO of Godmother consulting, says 2007 was the year for social media and 2008 is the year for conversations and interactive relationships. Not much difference to me there, just that social media is going to be the platform for having that conversation and building that interactive relationship. This helps a company to paint a story that their consumers can relate to.

Seth Gordon predicated this in 2006 with “All marketers are liars”, so companies, c’mon man! Pump some money so that when I graduate I can get a bigger budget to play with! :) Given that the demand for results through different kinds of ROI is increasingly adding more pressure to the industry, not many companies are willing to take that leap forward to use social media to build their brand. Like Prof Jorg Dietzel always says, a brand’s gotta be consistent. If they say their doing all they can to relate to consumers and just put up a social networking group, it’s not going to work. We’re not falling for that!

The consumers have responded by forming communites that rave or hate a brand. It’s time for companies to take a good close look at these communities who are you consumers. The governemnt can really help by raising the status of social Media, elevate it to one whereby its a medium which is not just a bunch of whackos talking, but serious conversations which can impact the future of companies tommorrow. So c’mon companies, join in and make 2008 the year that will be all about CONVERSATIONS AND INTERACTIVE RELATIONSHIPS!!

Hmmm, this is getting a little long, so I’ll cut here, my dog’s waiting for his walk! Haha… Thanks for dropping by, I’ll post some of my current favorites of online campaigns!! As my creative comms Prof Gregor Halff would say, these are really redefining and are problem solving to the companies problems. Till then, have a great weekend!!