Thoughts: Living with no regrets.

Just saw on Facebook notification that it's one of my mom's friend's birthday today. She was fighting cancer and was an inspiration to my mom to take care of herself better. Wanted to send her a message to wish her & tell her how much she helped my mom battle her illness, only to find out she had passed on. That's life isn't it? You go through day after day, thinking you have time to say things, to do what you always want to do. Truth is, we don't. 

Morbid way to start the second half of the year..but I want to push myself further to do things I'm not comfortable with, don't want no regrets. 

Gotta take life in my own hands. 

Dont want to keep living life to seek validation from others. Just living it for myself. At the very least, I'm gonna try.

Great Marketing Idea

Imagine if an online security company took this comic literally, and start hacking sites & computers - to promote their product... LOL, no need for media budget and it will make a great digital marketing case study!

Digital Dudette: Are Malaysian Bosses Embracing Social Media?

Here’s a poll done by The Star Online in August 2010  and 68% of them said that some (if not, all) of the social sites have been blocked in their working place. 

Following that, there was an article from The Star about “Net Surfing ‘Freedom’ Too Costly“. In short, the article states that:

1. Employees on social networks are causing lost of productivity & money.
2. Cuepacs advised civil servants against accessing social sites because they believe it’s distracting.
3. Malaysian Employers Federation says BAN SOCIAL MEDIA!!!
4. 54% of the companies in the US has already banned it.
5. However, not all local businesses are against the use of social networking sites.

I personally think that this is a typical case of one man’s meat, the other man’s poison. Perception is not fact, hence how does one derive to a conclusion that social media is causing lack of productivity when tons of creative ideas are mostly shared via social media?

With more & more people worldwide embracing it, we’ll be at the losing end if we choose to shut it down instead of developing with it.

A post by Marshall Kirkpatrick says it well – using social media provides a mental break for employees, thus increasing productivity by a whopping 9%.

“The activity helps keep the mind fresh and helps put you in a better place when you come back to working on topic”, the scientists said.

And this 9% is merely the minimal increase as some users do productively use social media to share experiences that are work-related.

So it’s important to first study the motivation one has to use social media, before accusing that all pots are black.

This is a repost from TalkPower, my previous blog.

Related Post: Why Immediate Fix is Crucial During a Social Media Blunder

OPINION: Planning for Social Media Campaigns

As I was crafting my previous blogpost, Facebook's new metric to measure engagement and it spurred me to think about how publishers and media owners have been selling the idea of "viral" and social media "influence". 

I don't understand the logic behind selling/buying Facebook updates/tweets based on the number of fans/followers. Heck, it's like newspapers and magazines selling their ads on a value based on readership, not circulation/subscription. 

Fine, with that being traditional media, we have to make the assumption that you could potentially reach xxx number of people provided all readers flipped through every single page of the magazine and shared the paper/magazine with two other people. 

But we're talking about digital media where almost everything was supposed to be trackable, and it's a sad story to tell that we're tolerating this buying/selling media based on assumption. I would rather pay a minimal "ambassador-ing" cost + premium price on CPC once we're able to gauge how many people clicked on the "celebrity's" post. 

What would you prefer - pay per fan/follower or do you know of any other buy/sell methods?

Marketing With Social Media: Why Facebook Likes Is The Wrong KPI | Digital Dudette

I'm excited with Facebook's latest metrics, "people talking about this" for Pages which rolled out early October 2011. The number is a combination of many interactions that takes place within the Facebook pages for the past seven days. It includes:

• Liking a Page
• Posting to a Page’s Wall
• Liking, commenting on or sharing a Page post (or other content on a page, like photos, videos or albums)
• Answering a Question posted
• RSVPing to an event
• Mentioning a Page in a post
• Phototagging a Page
• Liking or sharing a check-in deal
• or checking in at a Place.

Though I don't see how it's going to affect user experience but as a marketers, I see that it helps in three different aspects.

1.Understand that fans are not a measurement of engagement. 

Many brands are rolling out campaigns after campaigns to recruit fans without having a long term conversation plan (I hate!). This new metric is a more accurate way for brands to measure their engagement on Facebook as compared to likes. It limits the use of likes as an indicator of success.

I made a comparison for the top five brands on Facebook in the Malaysian market (source:Social Bakers), calculating the engagement rate based on "people who talked about this" number and divided by the number of fans. Obvious observation shows that a brand can't buy their way into popularity all the time, in this case - the 1Malaysia Facebook page which lacks interaction for obvious reasons. This could call them to rethink their engagement strategy to justify the money they are spending on social media.

2. Think long term. 

The stats on "people talking about this" challenges the social media marketers to have an all-year-long engagement plan without blindingly running contest every once in a while. As this engagement number is based on the last seven days, pages might see great engagement numbers when they have got Facebook ads running to promote their page contests etc, what happens when the contest stops? 

3. Helps digital planners choose their paid online advocates carefully. 

Publishers, media owners and bloggers have been selling social media "influence" based on the number of fans/followers (which I do not agree, but that's another topic all together which I discussed in my new post: Planning for Social Media Campaigns). This engagement number would help planners decide if they should or shouldn't use a particular online "celebrity" instead of blindly paying them to post an update. 

Also here’s an example of paid tweet by a celebrity gone wrong. Though they claim that it was a publicity stunt for Del Taco, who would describe their food as shitty? Here’s the article on it on Mashable. 

Related Post: Why Social Media is like Volcano Eruption

Be Significant To Be Successful | Digital Dudette

"If you really want success, don't make it your goal. Instead, work towards being significant. Success will follow naturally." 

Oprah Winfrey.

Malaysian Police Dept Develops Mobile App to Trigger Help Signal | Digital Dudette

I just heard about PDRM's My Distress application for smartphones. With this mobile app that's equipped with GPS,  users can signal for help in emergency situations using their smartphone. The signal will immediately be routed to the control rooms of the Selangor police headquarters and eight district police stations.

Signal for help using your mobile phone

I foresee many prank signals of people trying to 'test' or 'accidently' signaling the cops but I'm interested to know how the cops are going to curb false calls. Also, will be good to see how fast is the response time for this app. But overall, I think it's a great effort from the police department to invest and develop apps which are beneficial to the public. 

P/S: Much better use of fund compared to the 1Malaysia Email system which I still think is a complete waste of money.

8 Steps to create an Infographic Resume | Digital Dudette

Yes, I admit it. I’m also a victim of Michael Anderson’s wave of creativity that tossed my old resume down the garbage. He spurred me to rethink how usual resumes are done.

This is his resume in case you haven’t seen it.

Infographic Resume

Here’s what I created when I just got out of college, with a bare diploma in my hands. 

You can download it here for a clearer image. Usual details with a lil fancy designing to give it some umpph. My reasons for doing this was simple:

1. I wanted to illustrate that I enjoy do art.
2. I wanted to get a job that would cultivate my ‘artistic’ skills.
3. I’m not plain so why should my resume be so?

I’d like to think that I was pretty creative with my first resume, I still wish I’d thought of Michael’s approach earlier. But I’m quite happy with it, it got me the job I wanted and it was always a conversation breaker when I had an interview, easing my nerves.  

But my fascination grew when I saw Michael’s resume. Not needing a resume, I still wanted to create one for three reasons:

1. It was a challenge. To prove to myself I could create something similar (atleast almost creatively similar) using Powerpoint.
2. To get noticed, set me apart from the rest.
3. It’s a fun process anyway.

So I’m calling it my background details, instead of a resume.

8 Steps I took to create an Infographic Resume.

1. I assessed myself.

• What have I accomplished?
• What have I learnt along those success?
• Am I proud of it?

2. So I wrote a list of what’s worth mentioning, and prioritized it. I've personalized it by mentioning what I've learnt from each experience worth mentioning.

3. I divided my list into three sections; (1) Key highlights (2) Describe Experience and (3) Summarize what I did.

4. Then I looked around for inspiration. There are many great examples of infographics resumes out there. See tons of examples here.

5.I sketched out how I wanted to arrange my information.

6.I choose a color scheme. I knew I wanted to use blue, it depicts professionalism. I chose to pair it with it contrasting hue, orange to add a splash of fun.  Here are some examples of palettes.

7.Experimented with some cool online tools that help create colorful charts & diagrams. Check this links out:

• 10Awesome FREE Tools To Make Infographic

• 32 Free Online Tools To Create Different Diagrams

8.I played around with the layout till I got the one that I was happy with. 

And this is my final product! :) I’d appreciate any feedback, let me know what you think. 
  

One of the reasons why I love creating pieces like this is because you get to assess yourself. You get to see how much you’ve accomplished along the way. It’s self-recognition. It usually gives me a new confidence to set higher standards and pursue them. 

So anyways, I’ll be blogging next about Pros & Cons of Infographic Resume, look out for that!