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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.

Search Engine Marketing killer: Social Media?

July 15th, 2009 | 4 comments

Marketing, in accordance to Wikipedia, is defined as an integrated communications-based process through which individuals and communities discover that existing and newly-identified needs and wants may be satisfied by the products and services of others.

Finding the right engagement to marketing your products and goods (if defined correctly by Wikipedia) is identifying the Journey of Discovery. Long before the internet era, marketing was a simple word with major mass media like Television & Radio, Newspaper & Magazine, Direct Mailers and Billboard Advertisements. To have an integrated communication simply meant planning your media diary correctly to the launch and sustenance of your campaign.

Integrated communication takes on another meaning nowadays. The internet has stitched the world flat and helped pieced the continents into one. With a larger choice of media (outdoor ambience advertising, buses, trains, taxis, internet, mobile, movies, psp, iptv, sms, edm…), advertisers are finding it increasingly harder to match their target audience to the journey of discovering their brands. In fact, we have been driven so hard that it is a common phenomenon in Singapore to even have tissue paper packets to drive marketing messages as well!

With all the brands having unique selling points and catering to your needs, consumers can’t tell the difference between the good and the bad anymore. Where marketing tactics are driven by numbers nowadays, consumers are suffocating with too much over promises and deceit (at times).

From the mammoth growth in social media community, it has become clear that it is the consumer’s shelter of truth and refuge. Our recent survey with Synovate for a portal research showed that Singapore Consumers are likely to be irked by a social media community that has commercial and brand affiliation. Consumers are likely to contribute most if there is a cause that they believe in. It is also a sign of our times that the Journey of Discovery has evolved. With so many choices of handphones to select, consumers have added new milestones to their journey of obtaining their desired product. Besides the style and impression that different brands and models are projecting, more and more consumers are seeking like-minded groups for sharing of experiences and evaluation. You may be just one of them that goes through technology websites, forums, youtube and product websites before finally deciding on a handphone.

So is social media a killer of search engine marketing? The point I am trying to make is they are not in the same league in the first place. Search Engine Marketing helps advertisers find the right target audience in the galaxy of users. It is an essential tool in digital marketing and has delivered excellent results to many campaigns in this agency. But there is a new media that is very much a Neverland in the name of social media. Big brands fear its existence. Other brands are unaware how to engage it. Perhaps maybe social media sites are the last frontier for consumers that are afterall, just seeking the truth in what is being advertised.

5 tools/applications to promote your business on Facebook

July 14th, 2009 | 1 comment

1) Mini feed and News feed
The news feed is one of the most powerful components of Facebook. It archives a user’s interaction with your brand and broadcasts it to all their friends.

When a user adds an application, RVSP to an event, plays a game, joins a group or makes a comment in a fan page, all of these are displayed in their friends’ news feeds and on their own profile page. This means added exposure for your brand and your campaign.

2) Facebook Groups
A group for your brand or company means a central place for everyone to participate in conversations about your brand. There are tools like discussion topics, photos, videos, and links that can be put up. Sending news and updates to your group members will be easy and best of all, free as well. There is a limit to the maximum number of people you can send messages to though.

Groups are great for viral marketing because once members joined your group, they can invite their friends and your group name will appear on your members’ personal profile pages until they leave the group.

If you have good relevant content on your group page, your group can grow quickly.

3) Facebook Fan Page
These are like groups with a few differences. Pages can be customized using HTML, Flash or even Facebook applications to your pages thus allowing a better all round experience that users have with your brand. Unlike groups, there are no limitations to the number of fans in your group that you can message.

On a Fan page, users cannot invite their friends to be fans as well. They can only share your page with friends.

The way Facebook Pages work, when your “fans” interact on your page, all of their friends will see a message on their Facebook News Feed. This way, your Facebook page works for you, promoting itself. Facebook is a viral social network, and just about anything you do on it, will be noticed by your friends. You can promote or hold any mini contest that you want and drive traffic from there to your website as well.

Another great advantage of your Fan page, your fan page will be indexed by search engine if you do it correctly. Don’t stuff your fan page with keywords, instead provide relevancy to your fan page.

Some great examples of Fan Pages include:
1. Victoria’s Secret
2. Dell
3. Oasis Interactive

4) Facebook Events
Another free application great for promoting marketing events, sponsored parties, product launches, and any other event. With every event, you get a page much like a group that includes a wall, photos, videos, links and discussion. This makes it easy to get the word out to a lot of people and build a community around your upcoming event.

5) Facebook’s Share Application
This lets users promote any Group, Photo, Link, Event or Application that they come across by either positing it to their profile page or sending it directly into their friends’ inbox.

Facebook can represent many opportunities for you to get your brand and message out. It’s up for marketers and their digital agencies to craft unique and intelligent strategies for the Facebook environment. It will require a lot of creativity but the results can be tremendous.

Like to know more on how Oasis Interactive can help you in your Facebook marketing strategies? Drop us an email today.

How to get more fans for your Facebook page

June 19th, 2009 | 0 comments

So you’ve got yourself a snazzy looking fan page and you are now ready to connect, share and build relationships with your customers. That’s fantastic but, you have few or no fans. What can you do? Here are a few tips for getting more traffic and more fans for your brand’s Facebook page.

Develop a strategy for your Facebook page
The page has to be a valuable resource to your fans. Nobody joins social networking communities to be advertised to. People don’t really always care about your products or services. They want to be able to benefit from being a fan – whether it’s the first to know about certain promotions or learning more about a certain topic.

Good, relevant content will give people a good reason to come to your page. Use the page to post links to valuable articles, post helpful and interesting videos, photos and other fun updates. Do also join other Facebook pages and groups similar to yours. This allows you to see what others are doing and see what works and what doesn’t. Taking part in these communities (i.e.: by contributing to discussions, answering questions, and sharing information) will also give your page more visibility and credibility.

Initiative your staff.
Get everyone in the company to chip in! Share the goals and plans for the page with your colleagues and then encourage your colleagues to support the page.

Staff can use their own Facebook accounts (or start a Facebook profile, if they don’t have one) and become fans of the page. It’ll help to start the momentum by being fans and then sending out invitations to their friends and family to be fans as well. This starts the viral effect. People will be more than happy to support the efforts of a company where their friends and family are employed at.

Give reasons for people in Facebook to join and come back to the page.
Do a bit of research each week and post resources in your field. Publish interesting and relevant content like links to articles and videos that offer good advice and tips. Remember – posting on your wall will cause an update to feed into your fans newsfeed on their home page. You can also send regular fan updates so the existing fans would have a reason to come back to the page. In doing this, you will also begin to attract more fans. Explore the various promotional ways you can leverage on your fans’ news feed to reach out to a greater audience. An example is to offer contests that involve users to change their profile picture to one of your logo or posting a single promotional liner in their status and then giving out attractive prizes. Exclusive discounts can be given to Facebook users as well. There are many ways to do this. Explore and go wild!

Exhaust every opportunity to promote your Facebook page.
That means making use of avenues like, posting a link in your email signature (just think of all the people who read your emails everyday), asking your staff to post a link back to your Facebook page and posting a link back to your Facebook page on your company’s website and blog! Another important aspect of this is to connect all your social media platforms by making sure people can have easy access to your social media touch points just like what Victoria’s Secret Pink has done. They have links on their VS Pink landing page to their Facebook Fan page – making it a hub for all their online presence.

Posting media such as photos and video and tagging them with relevant keywords has also been proven to attract new visitors.

And Facebook ads? An ad campaign to promote your Facebook page through targeted advertising. This will bring visitors to your Facebook page as well, though do note that although it is a great way to jump start a fan page, organic growth can help build a more engaged group.

For your facebook page to be successful, it requires careful planning, dedication and hard work to build your own online community. Hey, but the more effort you put into it, the better the result! Build great content, make it easy for people to share, let people know about it and over time, the community will grow.

Do you have some ideas to share with us on this topic? We look forward to your comments below!