WeeKee Today

 

I read an interesting article that blog about a report by Hitwise which suggest that Plurk is more popular than Twitter in Singapore.

Personally I am not too sure that is really the case. One factor pointed out was that Twitter has more tools that enable users to update without visiting the site. Even if that wasn't the case and there is indeed more visits to Plurk, I am do not think that number of visits implies that Plurk is more popular.

Hitwise is a competitive intelligence tool which perform ISP based data capture. It works with various ISPs to collect web traffic on different sites. This provides great breadth and may not give the same amount of details as what you could get from analytics reports from individual sites. I might be wrong but I would think that it is measuring only visits but not unique visits.

This would mean that it could be Plurk has a smaller base of users and these users visit the site more often. This could be the likely scenario since Plurk is more engaging in the sense that instead of just updating your status, there are various conversations going on which users can take part in.

I would think that Plurk is more engaging but not necessary more popular (I am using number of users as a metric to measure popularity) from this perspective.

One model that I thought could be interesting in understanding the difference in the usage of Twitter and Plurk in different regions is the Geert Hofstede™ Cultural Dimensions.

Would a higher IDV score indicate that the more expressive nature of Twitter would be more relevant while a lower IDV score indicates that some thing more conversational like Plurk would be more relevant in these regions? 

Hmm would be interesting to see if there is any correlation between IDV and the type of social tools that are popular.

What are your thoughts?

Recently Facebook decided to change the design for the Facebook page. Facebook page has been a useful tool for businesses to reach out to a huge user base and create their own community.

The previous design for Facebook page is clean and looks rather different to a user profile page. The new design tries to achieve the same look and feel as the user profile page. I am still not too sure if I like the new design. As my content are mainly photos, the new design looks good better with bigger display of the photos. However, it seems that it might be more difficult for businesses to distinguish themselves since they look too much like normal users page.

Another important change is that the new Facebook page has become better integrated with the news feed. This allows businesses to easily share updates with their members. You can now post status updates though I think businesses should be careful not to over communicate with this feature that updates become more like spam. 

Currently i find it weird to converse using a business as an entity. I mean I can use the status update to provide information to members such as Pitstop Cafe is organizing a meetup but it can become weird with status update that says Pitstop Cafe finds the group of girls playing Monopoly kinda of adorable. Not that I want to do that but you can see that it doesn't feel that human and it isn't that conversational. It will be interesting to see how business can use these new abilities to engage their customers better. 

The new Facebook page does provide new opportunities for viral marketing but it also brings up an interesting issue on control. The change to the new Facebook page design might not be optional and businesses do not have much control over this aspect. It is should be one of the factors to take into consideration when deciding between using existing social networks or creating your own branded social network.

What are your thoughts? Do you like the new Facebook page?

 

I am going to setup a blogger association. Who say it is not relevant? There will be tons of money to be made. Let me show you how.

Association meets with advertisers and companies.

Association: "I want you to pay me ten million dollars in advertising fees."
Companies & Advertisers: "Siao boh? Why should I do that?"
Association: "I am the official and authorized representative for one million bloggers in Singapore. Our unified group of professional bloggers will kill your products give an objective and credible review of your products."

Companies and advertisers shit in their pants and give ten million bucks to the blogger association.

Association then arrange another meeting with bloggers...

Association: "All of you need to pay $100 to join this official association."
Bloggers: "Siao boh? Why should I do that?"
Association: "I am the official representative for all the companies and advertisers. I can make you rich and famous."
Bloggers: "Eh $100 is expensive leh!"
Association: "You know, the cure for all this talk is really a good dose of incompetent management. You get that alternative and you'll never put Singapore blogsphere together again. You will have no ads on your page, your special invitation to preview events will disappear, your ads earning will drop, your reputation will be worth a fraction, your writing will be crap and your readers will become other people readers.

Bloggers shit in their pants, give the $100 and join the association.

And everyone live happily ever after and I am a couple of bucks richer. Shoik!

Keen to join the blogger association? The best thing is that there are no cliques or in groups. All are welcome provided that you get the invite and the approval from the association.

It has been a month since I last shifted from using the Ning platform and focus on using the Facebook Page. The Facebook Page currently has 350 plus members. Though it is still lesser than the number of members on the previous site, the results are pretty decent considering that the page has only existed for a month or so. Do note that using the number of members on a site alone isn't a really good matrix for measuring the performance of community sites but for the sake of simplicity, I am currently only striving to work on this matrix.

After trying to establish my own branded community site and subsequently use the Facebook platform, I have come out with a simple framework to share some of my learning points on how businesses can build a community site to engage with their customers.

I had used level of brand awareness as a variable on the y-axis and degree of customer engagement on the x-axis. Based on the 4 quadrants, I provide my personal thoughts on how businesses can use social networking sites (SNS) for their businesses.

Quad 1: Low level of brand awareness and high degree of customer engagement
Lets face it. Everyone has talk about engaging their customers but the truth is that it can be tough and businesses need to have resources to do it. Nevertheless, businesses can make use of existing platforms like Facebook, Friendster, etc to build up their brand awareness even though the degree of customers engagement could be low. Facebook Pages are fast and low cost to setup. Start off by getting existing customers to join the Facebook Page and business might be able to increase the level of brand awareness by taping on their customers network. Placing Facebook ads to promote the page does help as well. However without working on the customer engagement aspect, there is limitation on this approach. Nevertheless, considering the effort involved, this is pretty low hanging fruits that small businesses could easily grab.

Quad 2: Low level of brand awareness but high degree of customer engagement
For businesses with plans to actively engage the customer base, the choice between using existing SNS or creating your own branded community site is something worth thinking. There are pros and cons to either approach and it depends greatly on the business requirements for the community site. For example in the case of Clean & Clear (HongKong site), they have a few interesting applications for their user base and hence it might be worth doing their own branded community site. Hence for this case, a lot depends on how the business plans to engage its customers. Understand the requirement and evaluate existing SNS first before rushing to build a branded community site might be a more effective approach especially if businesses do not have adequate resources or the means to justify the ROI to build and market their own community site.

Quad 3: High level of brand awareness but low degree of customer engagement
If you already have a high level of brand awareness but currently have no plans to actively engaged your customers, the best approach might be to do nothing. Creating a community site is also creating a new touch point. Without the effort to actively engaged your customers and provide them with the right experience, a non engaging community site might be more harmful to your brand than having no community site at all. A better way would be to observe the trend, experiment and evaluate the various possiblities on how community sites could improve the business. Plan long term, establish measurement metrics and allocate adequate resources might be better than simply jumping on the social networking bandwagon.

Quad 4: High level of brand awareness and high degree of customer engagement
I think this is the ideal case for most businesses. In this situation, businesses should consider integrating its ability to engage its customers into other aspects of the organization such as CRM programs, product developement, etc. Some example sites are IdeaStorm by Dell and My Starbucks Idea where customers feedback are use to improve its products and operations. In this category, having a own branded community site would be better. There is more control over the branding and user experience, again refer to Clean & Clear (HongKong site). Having a own site also provides more flexiblity in terms of integrating customers infomation into other aspects such as marketing communication, offline purchases, etc.

Hope this entry from the perspective of a tiny business owner is useful in helping you plan your own community site. Do share with me your thoughts.