Under Construction!

I'm still tweaking it! Give me some time and we should be good to go!

The long awaited update...

Hello seems like a foreign and distant greeting, but I know I haven’t been updating my blog for awhile, hence… Hello everyone. Quite a number of changes have evolved in my life since my last post. I left MSL Singapore in December 2010 after a good 16 months with the company. I have to say that this was far-by the most enjoyable and intriguing work  experience I’ve had in a long time. I was blessed to work

Training : Social Media Marketing & Communications for Enterprise

I've been enduring late nights in the past one month, developing a very exciting social media curriculum for Singapore Media Academy. The 3-day WSQ certified course is heavily subsidised by the Singapore government and targeted at Managers who are interested to learn about the application & integration of social media for enterprises with specifics to marketing and promotion of products and services. WSQ, or

Pace your social media strategy

That is of course, if you have one in the first place. There is often confusion in the "strategy" and the "plan". Let's think of it this way, do you remember the "forest theory" as stated in the book, Seven habits of highly effective people? Don't fail to see the forest because of the trees. More often than not, we are so engrossed in trying to "cut down the trees" that we don't realise we have been bulldozing in

How-to : Social Media for Businesses (Original text from MyPaper Interview)

The text below are the original replies from my interview with MyPaper. As I think some of the points that are being covered may be useful to some readers, hence I've uploaded the original text herein for your reference. Will be translating an English version shortly for the reading pleasure of the larger community.

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digital marketing

Who’s reading?

Posted on December 30, 2008 by Belinda Ang Posted in digital marketing, Social Media Marketing | Leave a comment

There’ll always be a neverending debate on who’s reading what on the internet. Tell a client to use twitter as a marketing tool and they will response with a bang on the table as they give their money to a newspaper instead. True, it is hard to determine the returns, the risks and you can’t really control your demographics. But for goodness sake, I wonder who invented technology, it is capable of anything.

Found this blog from Guy Kawasaki’s tweets. The Brand Builder, written by Olivier Blanchard. It’s enjoyable to realise the wealth of knowledge one can find from these folks if you really take time to read them.
There’s a new article on social media stats and demos for 2008. It’s interesting to see who ranks the top 40 tweetcities in the world and at what a rate this tool is growing intensively. I can’t find Singapore on the list though, for plenty of reasons. One, we have a population too small, two we don’t exactly have a tweeting population. We are just too small for comfort.

Digital marketing is not likely to take off in Singapore or Hong Kong in a big way because people are sitting too close to each other. There are many modes of communications and traditional media still ranks the most popular way to reach out to target audience. Well, I have to admit even for me, I still read newspapers and watch the TV. Digital marketing takes up only 3% of the total media spending in 2007. Where about 1.6million people are online everyday on this island. The newspaper only circulates about 250,000. So that doesn’t really reaches a population of 4 million, does it. (Please refer to digital media report in my earlier posts). However, due to managable distance from home to town, people usually stay out instead of staying in. Hence outdoor media is the one channel that has been growing increasing popular in the past few years. More creative means are being explored from billboards to installations. Government rules have laxed to allow more room for advertising on public property.

However, that also means trying to get attention becomes harder. Many a times, marketeers tend to be successful in executing the “eye-catching” element but may not necesarily be achieving the objective on the movement, whatever that may be. Of course, clients should be realistic about the targets and how will the marketing effort translate into it. No matter it’s sales or awareness. As I am religiously repeating, pick the right channels to the right people.

Work-Life Balance?

Posted on August 20, 2008 by Belinda Ang Posted in digital marketing | Leave a comment

I’m on a site check to see if the event venue where I’ll be holding an event coming weekends has good internet connection. And as I am done with the routine job, I simply continue logged on at the cafe nearby for a tea as well as to catch up on some industry news. A man sits besides me, doing his daily charting for the financial market.

Last Sunday I was at our Prime Minister’s National Day Rally. (In case you are wondering, I’m located in Singapore) But it was also the most historical moment in Singapore’s sports history as our women’s table tennis team was playing in the finals of the Olympics. Being a big national supporter, I quickly logged on my pda via GPRS to load the live scoreboard as the PM is speaking. And I was able to visualise the live game as I’m attempting to digest the bulk of information on policies and economy fed by our PM. What a way to multi-task.

One of his topic was on work-life balance. Judging on the way we are capitalising technology in our daily lifes, I think the definition of work-life balance has sort of changed. It iterally means work is life and life is work. It is hard to make a balance of something that you do naturally that has integrated into your every day. Of course, as in my previous post, not everyone is as savvy. However, the netizen numbers are rising by the day with our Generation Z entering the society. Kids are beginning to “facebook” as young as 7 years old! (my cousin…) And tutorials are now uploaded into school’s server for student’s access. Welcome to the virtual-real world. There isn’t any virtual or real world. It’s just an integrated way of living. And looking at the current trend, apparantly those who does not follow will be left behind quite soon.

And back to marketing, there isn’t really such a thing as “traditional marketing” and “digital marketing”. Marketeers should identify the fact that both co-exist and it is absurb to distingush the two as separate entities. Marketeers should be where the consumers are, not where they feel most comfortable in. Comfort zones are never a game in the marketing arena. Recognizing that and we can take a big step into the integrated marketing era.

Digital is for Generation Y???

Posted on July 10, 2008 by Belinda Ang Posted in digital marketing | Leave a comment

I just returned from Event360, which is a 3-day conference with focus on the Event Industry. And over the conference, there was a speaker from the portal “Conference Bay” who was invited to speak on the latest integrated digital platform for booking of conference tickets. He was explaining the potential of the untapped market for conferences and events on the digital platform and how his company provides the solution to this pool by allowing people to book and bid for tickets at desired prices to fill up the remaining seats of the conference.

Now that created quite some buzz among the audience. As we have a pool of conference organisers at the tables, they start debating on the price control and comparison if people starts bidding at any price they like. Which brings us back to the same case as in travel industry, where you can name your price for air tickets online. Now, why are people acceptable to the practice in one industry and not acceptable in the other? They say, “But we’ve always done it this way.”

When asked how many people on the floor has a facebook account. Surprisingly, that amounts to less than half in the room.

Over the party on the second day. I had a chat with some industry friends from other countries. And not one has linkedin accounts while only some of them uses facebook (not actively) and obviously, none blogs.

On the last day of the conference, a group of us had coffee after the end of the itinery. As we sat down, we decided to exchange facebook accounts. Then a young girl says, “No! I don’t want to sign up for it.” Apparantly, technology is pretty intimidating to alot of people. The idea is “one is enough, I don’t need more”. As we chatted further, I realised most of them do not fully ultilize the potential of the readily made available digital platforms. Another young fella said, “I think if you do your job well, naturally people will come to you. Why do we need to market ourselves?”, the girl earlier then said, “but we have ads.” The comparison between advertisements and a social network is absolutely wrong. It is like comparing an apple to an orange. Interestingly, some of these friends belongs to the media industry, they do media buying and monitoring (on traditional media). Being leader in the media industry, they quite aren’t the leader in the new media industry.

The BIG question is… why are so many people ignoring the potential of digital marketing? Why are there so many people relunctant to explore and understand the tools they have at their disposal when they need it? It came to me as quite a surprise that although we assume everyone has a facebook account, that’s not all true. And most of all, not enough individuals (not to mention corporations) understand the essence of web 2.0, and thus are ignoring what could potentially translate into an infinite playground of opportunities.

Even in the context of events. We must understand that event marketing has gone beyond building a tentage, installing a background and giving out flyers. Marketing through the medium of event should see through the pre-event stage all the way to post-event. Apart from the operations process which is great importance, if your event does not reaches to your target audience, the desired impact cannot be achieved even if you have planned for a great show. Also, there is such a thing we call the “online event”. It can potentially be an “event” online. Coke Cola launched the full animation of “Happiness Factory” on Second Life and invited international media to cover the grand event. If you have no idea what is Second Life, it is a virtual world where you can build anything and has its own rules of economy.

It seems that digital is not restricted to “generaton Y”, but even “generation Y” is not picking up the messages coming through in the evolution of technology. It takes time investment to understand about Web 2.0 and how to use it effectively. So if you only try to learn it when the market truly sees an urgent demand for it, that’d be too late.

So, my advise is spend an hour on social networks daily and the results may be very surprising.

Report on Digital Marketing and Internet Penetration in APAC

Posted on March 16, 2008 by Belinda Ang Posted in digital marketing | Leave a comment

For a start, I’m sharing a very interesting finding with all of you. It is known as the most comprehensive set of data and insight for digital marketing for Asia Pacific available in one place. I have found this report very interesting and some quite surprising findings as well. It definitely gave me a good understanding of the APAC market.

You can download at pdf file at http://www.asiadma.com/downloads/research/pdf/100040/ADMA_Digital_Marketing_Yearbook_April_2007_3.pdf

As China’s internet population is increasing tremendously, there leaves alot of undeveloped markets and potentials in this huge and ready untapped consumers. As compared to countries like Singapore and Hong Kong, which are relatively small in size, digital marketing makes less money sense in reaching out to the small population as compared to print media. As seen in the report, print and TV are still the primary and preferred source of information in these two places. However in China, there seem to be a steady increase of importance for information disseminated through the internet, and growing as the primary choice for interest such as entertainment.

However, despite the growing trend and potential of digital marketing, and it creating so much hype in and around the world, internet is still not considered as the deciding medium for making a purchase, or creating awareness. Is digital marketing really just being overly hyped or is it because it’s unrealised.

Needless to say, and without denial. Web 2.0 has brought about much changes in to our modern lifes. Just as I am writing to you here, it is only possible with the rise of the 2.0 generation. However, just how much influence has it made to the way we think, behave and live? These are points for ponder.

Most people are too eager to jump on the wagon (probably including myself), without understanding the true influence and effectiveness. Thus, truck loads of money are thrown into this pool without seeing any returns on the dollar. This has caused alot of doubts many corporations may have on digital marketing. Everyone knows it’s important (and expensive), but it just doesn’t provides the KPI and desired awareness as compared to the old ole measurable traditional media. So what went wrong?

Well, the fact that the internet savvy are largely made up between 18 – 35, we are talking to a group of consumers who changes very quickly and more often than not, make up the trends we see on the streets. However, these people are getting too smart for “in your face” advertisements, and overwhelmed with so many infinite creatives and attempts to reach their interest, the borderless internet makes it hard to capture a definite number of these people. Your campaign can turn to nothing, or it can also become the next big thing. No most successful marketeer is able to swear by any KPI to measure internet success. It is only as big as it can get. Also, corporation objectives should be very precise. We must first understand that this is not the best and most effective channel for making a sales difference to your product. However, internet has a very effective multiplying and influencing effect which can travel on and on beyond your core campaign period. In this context, it makes thorough money sense. But it’s not everyday you come face to face with such effective marketing stints.

With shrunk advertising dollars, it is not surprising that most coporations put sales as top of the list objective. And so, they must be careful with choosing a viable and measurable markerting medium that will translate into income at the end of the day. They should first realise that digital marketing is not for everyone. What’s trendy doesn’t mean it is effective. It is only effective when you ultilize its possibilities. Without a clear objective and business direction in mind, the most creative ads will still fail you. My suggestion is, keep to one primary objective. The problem with many Marcomm departments is that they try to do too much with the same dollar.

Remember, if you are a hotdog kiosk, don’t attempt to reach the same group of people as Macdonalds. It’s gonna flop.
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