2009 August | Oasis Interactive

Is a huge number of Twitter followers important?

August 25th, 2009 | 0 comments

If you are a twitter user, you probably will have a couple of people following you every week. You visit their twitter page, realized that these ’social media celebrities’ has tens of thousands of followers. You think to yourself, I should reciprocate and follow back. You are not alone. Many marketers believe that it is important to have many twitter followers – as many as possible. It helps them create a channel to broadcast, to establish their online reputation as “I am important” or it simply makes they credible. I beg to differ.

The method of mass following is common. Many ‘twitter gurus’ make a business out of this by teaching others how to increase the number of followers in a very short time. Their tools include softwares that automatically follows people, hoping that they will reciprocate. I am not saying it is wrong. I just don’t agree.

(My earlier post on “How to increase your twitter followers‘ will interest you if you are looking at building your follower base without robots and softwares.)

The number of followers is irrelevant if most of them don’t even know who you are, what you do and what you are saying. Would they care a sxxt what you are trying to ‘push’ them when you have a product to sell? I don’t think so. We heard about the success of dell using twitter to market its products, reaping in a million dollars. They did not do mass following. They offered twitter exclusive offers instead. Dell creates a reason for followers to follow them. In this sense, it is 2-way.

There are ‘contents’ that the followers are interested. It is about commitment (time & resources) because social media marketing requires commitment. It is time, money and manpower. It requires sustained efforts. I relate that to real-life socialization where you need to dedicate time and money to get out there and know more people, and be known at the same time. If all these sounds a lot to you or your boss, social media marketing may not be your cup of tea.

How to increase your Twitter followers

August 18th, 2009 | 0 comments

Most digital marketers believe the number of twitter followers they have can be equated to one’s reputation in the twitter world. I agree and disagree.

Agree because if you are able to have a large number of followers that follows you because they look forward to your tweets, you’re the man.

Disagree when you uses some kind of auto-follow software and hoping people you followed blindly will reciprocate by following back. To me, that’s a no-no. I have tried that once just to see how it works but decided it is definitely not for me.

I do have some techniques to help you increase the number of followers. No overnight miracles though. ;o)

1) Introduce yourself
Have a photo & updated bio of yourself. That’s the basic. People wants to interact with people, but a masked charactered hiding behind the screen. The only place you can do that intro on twitter is by customizing your twitter background or simply update the Bio fields with information about yourself. Never leave it blank!

2) Search and Follow prominent twitter users
Learn from prominent twitter users in your industry. See what they tweet, what they retweet. See what kind of tweets will attract more retweets.

3) Listen and engage in conversions
Just like in a real social networking event, being a newcomer to the community, you listen first. Understand the conversations that are happening and then participate. Direct message someone. Reply to someone’s questions or comment. Start a conversation and make yourself heard.

4) Retweet
Retweeting helps you get noticed too. Originator of the tweet will be appreciative when you retweet his/her tweets. You just need to make sure the content that you retweeted is relevant to your followers.

5) Tweet with photos
Photos are retweeted more than text & links. A classic example is the photo of US Airways Flight 1549 – near to half a mil views! Check out apps for mobile phones take allows you to upload photos while on the move. I uses Twitterific on my iphone.

6) Publicize your twitter account
Ensure you flash your twitter URL after a presentation, have it on your namecard and in your email signature. When you comment on someone’s blog, add the URL in too.

Need to know how we can help you in your digital marketing strategies by incorporating twitter as one of the channels? Speak to us today!

Why are you not out there in the Social Media Jungle yet?

August 12th, 2009 | 0 comments

95% of social media users believe a company should have a presence in social media.
(Cone, Business in Social Media Study, Sep 2008)

But hang on, that does not mean using social media as an outlet for broadcasting hardsell messages. Think dialogue. Not monologue. You have to talk and listen at the same time. And listening does not mean to just put a contact number and email address. In social media, the minute you talk, people expect you to listen and react.

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85% of social media users believe that a company should interact with its customers in social media
(Cone, Business in Social Media Study, Sep 2008)

Resistance is futile. 2.5 million Singaporeans (comScore, Inc., Mar 2009) are out there creating content, consuming content and sharing information. Go where your customers go. If you’re not there soon, your competitors will be there – well, that is, if they aren’t already!

Social media is not just another marketing channel.
It’s so much more. It is Public Relations, Customer Service, Branding, Networking, Thought Leadership and Customer Acquisition all in one! So what are you waiting for? Stop thinking “campaigns”. Start thinking “conversations”! Don’t be afraid to be out there and receive backlash. If anything, your customers will remember you as a brand who has nothing to hide and can handle negative comments very well.

But wait, social media is not the answer to everything.
It’s really not. If your product is less than ideal, nothing can help you. But, if you need more word of mouth, social media is your friend! If your customer service is bad, hey, look at what Starbucks is doing with Twitter. That’s good and prompt customer service!

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Listen. Engage. Measure.

If you don’t try, you’ll never know what social media could for you! Call us if you need help.

P.s.: Have you heard of “The Risk of Social Media Abstinence”? Read about it here. It’s real.

Singapore Property Developers Using Social Media

August 4th, 2009 | 0 comments

If you had found this post via any of the search engines, it goes to show that internet marketing has gone a long way in Singapore property market. A quick search on one of the latest property, The Gale in the eastern end of Singapore, will show good examples of how once a brick & mortar business has evolved itself into one that makes use of every available tool of the social media front to showcase condominium information, artist impressions, site plans and amenities to tickle the senses of enthusiastic property hunters.

The Gale, named after bog myrtle, had everything to that spelled CLASS on the front and great unification of the different media working together. Mass Media Visual Front: A nicely worked out TVC concept that used simple use of alphabets to personify The Gale. It also spared no budget in splashing out our National newspaper during the weekend. The Voice: a carefully worked out media schedule blasted Gale radio ads at the right place, at the right time.

But The Gale carried through its marketing like no other commercial projects that were out there. The use of Facebook was largely publicized during the TVC with a blurp that showed “The Gale is now on Facebook”. The group drawn 477 Fans and there are information in there to give you a nice idea how your future home will look like. There are enough friendly agents over there to answer any questions you may have. Sure, the fans numbers are not impressive compared to many others pages but @ $700 psf, its quality not the quantity they were seeking.

The Gale also took a bold step in going against a nice FLASH website and instead, opted for a blog fronted website. It is a clever move because blog sites are highly Search Engine Friendly. The blog site also acted as a holding area for other social media front that had Gale’s digital footprint as well. Galleries were posted on Flickr.com and extra efforts were made to create videos (though the music is a little bit off. :O) and posted unto youtube.com. The clever connection that they made assured that they were able to make use of traffic sources collectively.

The Gale Project, is not only a showcase of ‘commercial’ can work in internet but more importantly, the myth that the discerning and wealthy are not receptive to this new age media. Think about it. Dot.com era started about late 90s. The youth and young adults in that era are in their 30s and 40s now, the right age with the right spending power.

So Gale is definitely on the right track as far as we are concerned. We thought it would even be more interesting if they could even better their effort in the future (understand developer Tripartite still has more development to release soon)

“It’s a blog. Why close comments?”

The blog idea was great but the idea of participation was very much stifle by the administrator shutting off the comment function, leaving a one way communication. Sure, there are some sensitive topics like prices, availability and other agent related information that could not be communicated in the public but this could be stated upfront to the customers. The blog website will definitely be more lively with customer’s participation.

“There are only few posts and they were more of announcements than contents”

The posts were rather uninteresting really. I would imagine that if I were to be buying a dream home, I would like to have good read rather than cold hard facts from the agents about how many units have been sold. Some suggestions

a) What is the concept behind “The Gale?”
b) Developer or the architects’ personal view about The Gale.
c) Living life in the eastern part of Singapore
d) Home buyer interview
e) etc..

“Remember, audio visual is pure entertainment”

There should have more emphasis on audio visual for online visitors enjoy an experience. The “10th July” you tube preview was a valiant effort but they were really hard selling on the overwhelming response rather than The Gale itself. We thought that the audio visual could also do better with its own channel in YouTube showing broken down snippets of previews, the different showrooms and surroundings and the nice advertisement that they had invested so much in.

“A blog site need not look like a blog site”

Similar to Oasis Interactive Website, we are blog fronted because of our focus on our contents. But with a tinge of creative, a blog site need not look like one. In fact, thegale.sg could have had applications like 3D Walk Through, calculators and live chat with different agents integrated into its blog as well. For sure, it could really do with better looking contact us form.

There are other tweaking from the technical and aesthetic aspect that would make this digital piece a real perfect masterpiece. It is a pity that the execution of thegale.sg was by our professional standard, slightly slip slop overall with a general ignorance for user experience and aesthetic.

But the point that we are trying to make here is not to speak ill about anybody (and we really applaud thegale.sg for its vision).

The point is web 2.0 is not the future, it is here right now and some of the property developers are beginning to understand that the journey of the consumer path may not be just through traditional media like newspaper anymore. We believe more and more developers in the next few years will largely exploit the social media tool to create a greater reach out to their target audience.