Firstly I would like to thank all the readers for their constant support over this last 12 weeks as today would be the last blog post for this semester and we are gonna talk about….. *DRUMROLL*

Are we(digital marketers) overreacting over social media and digital marketing?

Social media and the world of search engines is constantly changing and evolving as we speak to offer us better options and better capabilities. At no point is our one strategy set in stone and used permanent for a long period. Some of the best social media marketing strategies are the ones which are constantly being monitored by a team and constantly adapting to how the world is changing and how the market reacts to it, example of trends and new tools being introduced to the public.

However as all things introduced to us, there are often pros and cons and I believe we have been talking about the pros over the past few blog post and now let us explore the limits of social media and digital marketing and what critics think of it.

1. A high number of fans on social media does not equal success

According to reports online, many companies use the number of social media followers and participants in a campaign to measure its effectiveness. But that is a very superficial way of looking at things. Having fans does not necessarily equate to true brand enhancement or real leads. Comments and shares are much more powerful because they show affiliation to your brand but they are limited to very active fans – it is possible to have engaged less active fans who do not leave a comment or share your post. – *HINT HINT* whoever is reading this please start leaving some comments.

Being active on most of the social media is undoubtedly very effective for businesses, however the main concern is the complex process of measuring ROI from all its campaigns. It’s important to know how much worth the marketing activities on social media is bringing to your company but it’s difficult to get the exact numbers.

2. Protection of user’s privacy limits data collection

Although social media may seem like a very open space, social networks themselves limit the amount and specificity of data that you can collect to protect the privacy of its users.  Fans themselves would also expect a certain level of privacy to protect themselves from getting stalk. A Fine example is how Facebook would provide an overall breakdown of where fans of a brand Facebook page resides without identifying exactly which fans and where they live to prevent marketers from ever directly targeting them and pester them.

3. The popularity of a social media platform may matter more than which platform is a suitable medium for your campaign

At this current stage of the world, our focus is now about which platform has regional dominance rather than which platform is the best for a particular type of campaign. For example, Instagram and Pinterest can be the most effective for campaigns heavy in visuals, Twitter and Pinterest is not as popular in Asia countries as it is in the US and Instagram is mostly used by the younger generation. Facebook is a good option for interactive and game-based campaigns but it is not available in mainland China, where Sina Weibo would be the way to go.

4. Reduce or Exclude face-to-face Socialization

The lack of face-to-face socialization would often lead to distrust as people can “hide” behind the mask of their computer and say certain thing freely doing viral and nasty things to others with total impunity. It seems common sense & human decency are moving farther to the way side as a side effect of social media.

5. Negative customer reviews are harmful

Social media is also a big platform for customers to complain about your products and services. Not everyone will directly contact you for any issues, they may land on your social media company profiles and post complaints or negative feedback/reviews about your offerings. The more complaints you get, the more your brand will suffer. Undoubtedly it is one of the disadvantages of social media for your business.

THE FEAR OF MISSING OUT (FOMO) is a strong effect in recent time as well. As our generation grow with social media and digital marketing, FOMO becomes a key driver to leading to users to use digital marketing and social media to push their business and products, I feel this is rather accurate as it can be seen in the recent bitcoin rise and crash last year. Everyone wanted a piece of the pie at that point but now, no one wants a bitcoin anymore.

According to Ritson, who is a strong critic of social media and digital marketing, I would agree to what he said to a certain extent especially on point 1, it is really difficult for brands to calculate ROI based on social media campaign as results can be edited and with this age of technology, fake accounts can be used to bring up a company’s marketing campaign. HOWEVER I do feel that social media and digital marketing closes the gap of the world and bring brands closer to consumers than ever.

The issues would be converting these passive followers and fans to become active followers and helping to share and raise brand awareness. We have to also take note of the geographical usage of social media too as seen, China does not allow facebook thus their marketing is often done on Weibao instead. We must also realized the impact of digital footprints and how it would affect a business as well, when it is not handled well, the negative online reputation does not disappear, it would stay on forever.

Thus lets end this post with this question, do you followers agree with Ritson that we digital marketers are overeacting and do you agree with some of the points I have shared? Is the world behaving with the fear of missing out, thus social media and digital marketing works?

Hey guys its a brand new week once again, hope the weeks been treating you well!

Today we are gonna be discussing about spam, fake accounts and bots on social media platform and how it affects everyone on it. Especially with the recent fight with fakes news all over the internet.

Social media has been one of the best invention of our time and it has been the best way for us to connect with one another without even leaving our house or spending any form of money, it has granted us the ability to travel 10000miles in the shortest period of time and meet everyone from all walk of life.

But as all good things, there comes the bad things that follow which are fake profiles and fake account which are made by humans (WHY WE DO NO DESERVE ANYTHING GOOD) and companies to data mine and catfish you into giving very personal information and in-turn use to blackmail you or sell your information away to someone else. Alternatively it could be your VENGEFUL ex who made a fake profile to stalk you too. (who knows she might be reading this right now). It can also be your friends catfishing you for the fun of it but majority of the times, its people who want to sell ur personal information or blackmail you tho.

Usually these spams and fake accounts would come in different forms

1. Click-bait links – where they would have a sexy thumbnail to scam you into clicking it before installing some spyware into your comp and spread like a wildfire after that.
2. Application – it might come in a form of add on in a game for special perks or bonus or even a special add on to a normal app and when you connect into it, it will steal all your data and sell it off.
3. Chats – this would usually happen on dating apps, facebook messenger or instagram dm where a fake account would pm you and talk to you and con you into givign them money or something personal before blackmailing you with it after that.

These are generally the popular way these fake profiles get to you and as times goes by, they are getting smarter and tend to blend it up and mix it up just to con you.

In order to prevent ourselves from falling victim to all these nonsense, it is important that we must constantly update ourselves of the latest online scams and what are they looking for and not giving them, we must not share our personal information or credit card information at un-trusted sites.

As a digital marketer, we must also be able to be wary of fake accounts taking part in our social media campaign as these fakes accounts give us fake results and would affect how our product is moving in the digital space. It is important that we protect ourselves by doing research on how to prevent fake accounts from trolling us and our followers as well. Although some unethical marketing companies would purchase bots and fake accounts to beef up their account followers. (we know who you are)

We must also take note as digital marketer to ensure our campaign links are not prone to virus or weird to ensure our followers can click them safely and not get redirected to some dangerous site as this would affect the brand image especially in emails and social media post. As it would cause a chain effect if a malicious link gets shared and cause a followers to have their personal information to get leaked.

In conclusion, as a digital marketer and a normal user, we must always be careful of what links we share and do our due diligent when we do our campaign and make sure this social media platform stays a safe place for everyone!

Do share your experience if you have been clickbait or experience fake accounts and spams and we can discuss on it!

This week we are going to talk about traditional vs new generation marketing, which side of the table are we on? With the world moving at such a fast paced with the internet and new technology coming out every so often, its no wonder some of us are having issues keeping up with the trend and some might even just give up trying to catch the new stuff. I myself find it rather hard to keep up with the latest technology in a mobile phone, whats the latest Samsung phone in the market now? S9? S10? Its all too confusing and I guess we have to thank the digital advertising done by the companies these days, so many digital ads are fed to us on a daily basis through social media, youtube and any internet platform. It has come to a point at times we just blank out because there is just too much information to process unless we really are interested.

Now let us dive in depth to what the different between traditional media and digital media.

Traditional Media

Traditional media has been part of our culture for over half a century way before the internet came online. It came in forms like television, radio, print advertisements, and billboards. The most expensive form of traditional marketing would be television and radio ads ( Still in use these days and its still very expensive!) have the power to reach broad and targeted audiences, depending on the reach of the channels selected. Print advertisements such as those in newspapers and magazines, and billboard ads continue to be used to attract large groups of people at once but are slowly losing its power because of digital marketing and also the battle against global warming.

In terms of reach, traditional marketing is designed to have a shotgun effect in which mass marketing directed at large group. Traditional marketing is also advertising a product or service, getting the brand name out without a thought to the individual consumer, something like a one way street where the focus in on the brand and company.

Digital Media Marketing

Digital media marketing  refers to audio, video, and image content that has been encoded and shared through the internet. Encoding content involves converting audio and video input into digital media formats. Typically, this includes social networking sites, website advertisements, blogs, vlogs, and podcasts. While blogs, vlogs and podcasts are relatively new to the field of media, social networking sites and internet ads have been dominating for several years. Digital media marketing has been gaining traction due to the fact that everyone owns a smartphone and its easily accessible.

In terms of reach, Digital media marketing is more of directed at an individual and is tailored to that individual, hence precision targeting like a snipe rifle, where a marketer needs to know their target market and demographics on the different platforms.
Digital media marketing is reaching out and pulling in consumers, making them feel like the marketer is talking to just them giving them a physical connection and its more of a two way street where consumers can engage the brand and share their idea and view

Now that you’re all caught up, lets take a closer look at how brands create a strong viral campaign! Ever wonder why brands like “OFF WHITE” and “SUPREME” become so trendy to the point everyone on the street are wearing them?

Well their marketing team actually performed a 6 steps integrated campaign to market out their product. Now I’m going to explain it to you in the shortest and easiest way possible.

Step 1: Know Your Target Audience

Knowing your audience inside and out to be successful with any marketing tactics, specifically within an integrated approach. Understand who they are demographically (age, gender, education) as well as psychographically (behavior, attitudes, interests). This information will help you choose the right channels and develop effective messaging. Determining their motivations are, how they like being communicated with, which sites they visit regularly and magazines they peruse, and what their questions and pain points are is a crucial first step to developing a successful integrated campaign.

Step 2: Select Your Channels

Quality over Quantity is a key important in selecting channels,determined which channels your customers currently use, you’ll have to consider the channels’ strengths and weaknesses. Be certain they will be able to help you reach your business objectives.

Step 3: Pay Attention to Brand Consistency

While messaging should be tailored to each individual channel, you must be certain your visual brand identity remains consistent across all. This goes beyond having a logo present and entails having an overarching design. Style of graphics and photography must be consistent and content should be able to make an immediate visual connection when seeing your ads, no matter where those ads live.

Step 4: Develop Content with Re purposing in Mind

To get the best results (and make your life much simpler) make sure that every piece of content you develop can be used in multiple places. For instance, a white paper could be broken down and made into 6 different blog posts. You could take the content from a popular blog post and turn it into a script to create a more engaging video.

Step 5: Get All Team Members on Board

Making sure all team members are on the same page so messaging and band image stays consistent. This could be as simple as having weekly meetings.
Appoint an in-house team member who will be responsible for coordinating all efforts.

Step 6: Track and Adjust

As with any campaign, an integrated effort requires the right analytics to determine whether or not you’re hitting the mark and seeing enough conversions. You might use a specific tracking platform for your social media channels

Phew that was a handful of content, to sum it all up these are all the 6 steps in creating a viral campaign and this is how brands like OFF-WHITE and SUPREME actually does it and make themselves so well known to the world.

Finally to end my post for this week, I would like to leave it out there for you readers on this question, do you prefer traditional or modern marketing style and why?

Ever open up your web browser and search up something and realized that certain products or stuff are always linked to the same few website? Well it ain’t magic that this is happening to you and no you are not affected by any virus, its actually the power of Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

How SEM works is basically using search engine’s complicated algorithms to ensure that the most relevant results return for each search, including location and other information it can gather from you. This is how companies actually work these days using the search engine to market stuff to you.

Lets break it down how it actually works with an example , above is myself searching for cheapest flight on Google and after typing it in the search bar, you noticed the top 3 links are all companies ads whose keywords matches the word “CHEAPEST FLIGHT” in my search. These websites all appear in prominent locations on the page as you can see and these are paid listing thus making them first few links as we are more likely to click on these links before anything else.

Now lets dive deeper into SEM and what is made up of. It is actually made up of two techniques which is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Paid Search Marketing PPC.

Generally nowadays majority of marketing companies are using PPC more often due to its quick set up and how fast trend changes where there isnt much time to set up organic search engine optimization. For digital marketers these days its like “if you snooze you lose” Every company is trying to get on page 1 of google to ensure they get the most exposure when consumers google products or services linking to them.

The fight for the Iron Throne (Page 1 of Google) is ever so competitive in this age of technology. Digital Marketers like you and me are often in this situation where we must decide if what method of marketing technique should we use? SEO or PPC?

SEO – We target visitors who are actively searching a keyword and pay to always stay on page 1 even if we do not get traffic? Like casting a fish net and wait with no guarantees but cheaper and generally have higher returns?

PPC – We use money to make sure we are always on page 1 on search engine and earn from click baits and digital cookies? Expensive style but we get immediate returns and easier to measure?

So the question leads back to, as a digital marketer what would use if you need to get content out for your product? Do leave me a comment and share with me your insight of this SEO VS PPC battle!

You must be wondering whats is IOT and Big Data?

IOT actually stands for “Internet of Things”, I am pretty sure this phrase must sound really familiar to you lately as it has been gaining attention for the past few years due to how fast technology is advancing.

With internet connecting us to every corner of this Earth, nothing is impossible to find as long as we have any form of data trail online. From submitting an online form with our name or any form of information, we leave a digital footprint and we are immediately connected, pretty amazing eh?

Here are some example of the IOT already being in our lives.

1. Google Home, a smart assistant by google which uses speech to power your home, making it a smart home

2. Smart Home Device to make your home smart which allows you to control your home with your device

3. Phone Powered Coffee Making Machine

All these products are basically connected to the internet and are part of the IOT. Based on research, it is estimated that every human on this Earth owns at least two devices which are able to connect to the internet and the numbers are suppose to be 4 times by the year 2020. Can you imagine 26 billion devices as compared to human population?!?!

All these IOT devices basically can listen, sense, see, interact and record according to our behavior and adapt to the changes faster than us humans which is rather scary but cool at the same time.

Now linking back to how IOT can help marketers gain advantage and use it to better market their product.

1. They are able to use IOT to analyze their target audiences buying habits across multiple platform which gives them an insight to know how to market their product and know what to target.
2. They are able to use IOT to have a real time update of what are trending at the moment and use it to their advantage and direct their targeted ads at their audience.
3. They are able to use IOT to have a quicker platform to resolve issues and help to better understand customers issues and give a better resolution when faced with issues.

Despite the Pros of IOT, there are also certain disadvantages that IOT might bring.

With billions of devices connected all around the world through the internet, security concerns become a bigger concern as our data have become much more accessible as well. IOT is like a double edge sword, it gives us conveniences, it also gives hackers conveniences as well to access our data. Imagine our secure data being accessed by hackers and publishing it online or used as a blackmail.

Ransomware has become very popular recently as hackers found a way to make money off taking data from companies and individual. This is why it is very important that we must constant keep updated on how to take precaution of such stuff and be alert when things are too good to be true.

Next up I’m gonna talk about BIG DATA, which is kinda like the partner in crime of IOT. Without one another, they would not exist

Big Data is generally made up of 3 different type of Data.

Firstly it is made up of Consumers Data which is the behavioral and transnational data by each individual where they access social media, websites to do their online shopping, loyalty programs and customer surveys they took part in. These are data collected and stored in the internet to allow companies to access to better understand their consumers.

Second would be financial data which is made up of sales, revenue, profits and other type of information with regards to money which are stored online to allow organizations to better understand what are their finances like.

Lastly would be process data which is made up of processes in which organization operations are kept online and these data are constantly review when organization need to perform streamlining or cost cutting and reallocation of resources.

With trillions of data in the world right now, it is important that we analyze the data wisely and filter out the useless ones and keep the important ones, By doing so would help organization and marketers better understand their consumers and discover new trends and create better products in the future.

Big Data has helped to improve many lives in the world and business functions but there are also concerns as so much data in the world right but which of it are real and which of it are fake? The battle of fake data vs real data will carry on till we are able to create a way to filter out the bad data and only keep the good data to help us gain better insight and make better decision!

In conclusion, with the introduction of IOT and Big Data, I would say our lives has been made better but as all things goes, we human would always find a way to mess it up thus it is important that we do our part in steering all these good things in the correct direction and not let it fall into the wrong hands. I would like to end this post with this word below.

Lastly please share with me your insight on IOT and BIG Data, do you think that IOT and Big Data will lead us to a better future or would it be the start of the end?

Viral Marketing, a term in which is ever so present in our society these days, call yourself a viral marketer and everyone will move back and thoughts like “Do you have a vaccine for that?” come to mind.

A simple job title with the most power in recent years, in the right environment, a viral marketer single post of content would grows exponentially just like a virus without having to mate, where it self replicates again and again till it spreads all over the world wide web!

Viral marketing and virus share the same concept, all it got to do is pass onto a single individual and it spreads to another person and so on, creating the potential for exponential growth by the marketing content with it intended message and influence and by the end of the day millions would have caught it.

Viral Marketing has been given many forms over the years like “Word of mouth” “Content creation” “Social influenza” “Creating a buzz” and will continue to change as the generations go by. There is no way to control it but only to jump on the bandwagon and used it to our advantage.

A very recent example would be the “Go-Jek Saga with the kidnapped passenger” which I believed everyone has seen and have used the phrase “Is it because I’m Chinese” and “Its auto lock” among our friends in chat or in real life.

The video itself has already clock up to 146,000 views in less than 2 weeks on youtube! Making it one of the fastest growing video in Singapore in recent time and even lead to different parody being made. Companies and even Singapore AirForce has also taken part in the fun!

So here comes the important part, what actually caused it to blow up to such extend, mainly it has managed to hit STEPPS of viral marketing.

Clearly the Go-Jek saga has hit all of these point, by providing social currency to us audience who saw the video and shared it among our friends, by being in the loop to this saga shows our peers we are updated with the latest trendy stuff which in this case is “Is it because i’m chinese?”

Triggers were also actually found in this video, as viewer of the videos felt a sense of connection with the Go-Jek Driver as they knew that if the video was not posted by him, he would have been framed for something he did not do.

Emotions of people who saw this video wanting to make sure the Go-Jek Uncle was not being penalized for something he did not do if he has not self recorded the video and how things would have turned out if that passenger had submit her side of the story only. As the people who saw the video knew what was going thus by sharing it all over the net was a way to express their emotions

We were able to see the Public factor as viewers wanted the public to know that they have seen it and was part of this phenomenal saga as well.

We could observe practical value as people were able to relate to it in the sense that viewers wanted to share this saga with their friends to remind that if ever such an incident happen to them, they should always react calmly like our Go-Jek Uncle.

Well we got to admit this Go-Jek saga did make a good interesting story to be shared during all our recent meet up especially during Chinese New Year when we meet our relative and laugh about this saga and some might even share similar experience over the past year.

As we can see this Go-Jek Saga is a real good case study on how post get viral these days and how it spread like a virus when it gets on the internet. Sometimes the most retarded thing seems to be the most viral things these days, which really leaves many questions in my head, do brands sometimes create certain sagas online and make it viral to gain brand awareness and followers? Do negative things seem to become viral more quickly than positive things? Tell me what you think in the comments! Do like to hear from you readers especially if you are chinese 😉

You must be wondering what do I mean with what kind of a Facebook-er are you? Isn’t Facebook like Facebook only?

Lets start with company example and the different types of Facebook-er the company’s marketing team targets and it will make more senses after that.

The Company we will be focusing on will be Adidas Singapore.

AdidasSG marketing team actually has a very unique style of marketing their product to different type of users on Facebook so let us go in depth and dissect them one by one.

Firstly AdidasSG make use of social influenza via Instagram and Facebook to promote their new products and best selling products.who enjoys getting the attentions from their followers when they pose with their new gears from Adidas. Below are some examples.

These “Celebrity endorsers” and brand ambassadors are what AdidasSG use to drive sales and fashion trend where they would empower them and get them to represent their products which would translate to their followers[Attention Seekers and Devotees] wanting to follow them and wear the similar products.

Next up would be targeting followers [Entertainment Chasers] who are constantly following their Facebook page and building hype with contest and ballot for their “limited” production items. Preying on the exclusive and wanting to be special mindset of their followers, Adidas SG tend to create such events to keep followers who chase such rare drops interested and sticking with the brand.

Thus Adidas SG strategy for these followers on their Facebook would be constantly keeping them excited and giving them a sense of exclusiveness, I’m pretty sure all of us have queued for something exclusive in hopes of getting it before our peers and bragging it among our friends! 😛

Lastly would be the followers[Connection Seekers] who follow the page for events and groups gathering from the brands, In AdidasSG context, it is a place where they are able to get their followers to gather together and at the same time identify future brand ambassadors and at the same time have a better understanding of consumer feedback.

Now its time to zoom back out and ask yourself, what type of a facebook-er are you? 1) Attention Seeker? 2) Devotees? 3) Entertainment Chaser? or 4) Connection Seeker? Which of these do you see yourself in when you are a brand page?

With a population of 7.5 billion in the world, nearly half of the world are internet users and 42% are active social media users while 68% are mobile users. We have become more well connected as compared to previous generations with the help of smart phones, tablets and computers and this has helped to close the gap between the countries all around the world.

At present, staying connected to the internet has become a basic need in our daily life. From the moment we get out of bed, we would naturally pick up our phone to see the latest news and messages that we missed while we are sleeping. Some may argue that we are too glued to our devices that we stopped taking notice of our surrounding but who can we blame? With the help of social media and technology, all of us are able to see everything online in real life at different parts of the world without being physically there.

Now let us zoom into a country called Singapore where it’s population is 5.75 million which is less than 1% of the world population and see their digital data demographic compared to the world.

With a total population of 5.75 million, a staggering 84% of it’s population in Singapore are internet users and 83% are active social media users along with 82% being unique mobile users shows that the majority of the country is constantly connected and plugged into the internet. For a country of its size, the numbers are really shocking! Imagine what would happen if the internet went down for a day in Singapore?

Lets take another deeper dive into the time spent for an average user in Singapore.

As you can see, an average Singaporean spends about 7 hours which translate to about 29% of his/her day on the internet. In this 29% of the time 2 hours is used on social media such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, where they are constantly keeping up with their friends, social influenza and idols all around different part of the world.

Based on these stats, companies all over the world are beginning to notice the pattern of using social media and the internet as a platform to increase outreach and drive traffic to their brands.

Below are a few examples of using social influencer as a form of digital marketing to drive traffic and sales to their websites and platform.

As we can see, companies such as Adidas, Shopee and Gillette noticed the pattern of using social media as a marketing tool and understands the power of social media and its outreach on the local market, they engage different type of Instagram profiles to market their products to their viewers. By using such Instagram profiles, their followers who are constantly look at their profile would be drawn to buy their products as the products are endorsed by their so called “IDOLS” in hope to be like them. The companies uses the esteem part of our human needs to push their products as followers would want to be respect by others and follow their idols and own the same products as their Instagram idols.

As a result of using this form of marketing, the data does not lie, E-commerce activities are high as followers who see the products tend to want to buy and end up searching for the item online and attempt to purchase it online which translate to the spending above.

I’m certain that we will continue to see growth in these numbers in the next few years as this is only the start of the digital marketing using social media tools. What do you guys think? Do you think that this is going to be how companies sell their products in the future? Would there by any new form of innovation coming or would this stick for a long time? I will be interested to hear from you readers regarding this!