Facebook Seeks Political Ad Dollars

Published by MIT

Political advertisers are going to flock to FB this year  

There’s certainly money in politics, and Facebook knows it. The company, now under pressure to to justify its enormous $104 billion IPO, is trying to hire someone to maximize political advertising sales during the 2012 election season in the U.S.

“The Client Partner will establish and strengthen key relationships with national political campaigns and organizations with a focus on driving revenue, platform adoption, advertiser education, and advertiser satisfaction,” the posting on Facebook's website says.

How much money is in politics for Facebook? That's hard to say. But with the rise of the Super PAC, campaign spending on advertising will likely reach record-breaking levels this year. A growing percentage of that is moving online, in part because fewer people are watching live TV than during previous election years, according to the global ad agency WPP. The Hill reports that the Obama campaign alone is on track to spend $35 million on total online advertising this year, up from $16 million in 2008.

Unlike other advertisers that have questioned the value of Facebook this week, both the Romney and Obama presidential campaigns are likely to appreciate Facebook's importance. It had 40 million U.S. users in 2008 compared with 160 million today—almost the entire American voting public, according to The Guardian.

So, yes, we’ll be seeing a lot more politics in and next to our News Feeds over the next few months, targeted based on our activity and our friends' activity on the network. Whether the lifting of corporate spending limits on political campaigns, a result of a Supreme Court decision in 2010, will actually be a meaningful boost Facebook’s bottom line this year is unknown. The company’s total advertising revenue worldwide was about $3 billion in 2011.

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Asia from an Asian perspective

Singapore’s Channel News Asia plans to penetrate the US and European pay TV markets, but faces challenges posed by surging social media.

SINGAPORE television, which helped Lee Kuan Yew defeat his left-wing foes and stay in power for 50 years, plans to go worldwide 24 hours a day from next year.

The global push by the state-owned Channel News Asia (CNA) to extend its reach from Asia to cover the United States and Europe is an ambitious project, given the adverse cable news market.

Last week, America’s CNN (Cable News Network), despite its vast resources and experience, reported a ratings drop of up to 50% in the first quarter.

All three global networks suffered declines, having lost audiences to the new digital media.

The declines are not deterring CNA, whose predecessor had played a historic role in the People’s Action Party’s (PAP) elimination of the powerful left-wing Barisan Sosialis in the 60s.

Despite its near-monopoly, circulation of Singapore’s main Straits Times broadsheet has stagnated.

“For us to be a true global player in the news channel space we need to broadcast 24 hours, every hour on the hour, with live news,” said a CNA spokesman.

“This will eventually allow us to penetrate the US and European pay TV markets, so that people there can get Asian news with Asian perspectives whenever they want.”

Having their state TV moving into the world arena has raised a little sense of pride among some Singaporeans.

Informed citizens, however, are questioning its chances of success considering that it is considered to be a government mouthpiece. And taxpayers are worried about footing the bill for potential losses.

A small-time businessman commented: “I wish it well, but if powerful global networks like CNN are losing out, what chance has the state-owned Singapore TV to succeed?”

Not everyone agrees. A polytechnic lecturer said Singapore has become an economic international player and a provider of jobs for professionals.

So TV has a small part, but, he added, if it is thinking of taking on the big players in providing global news, “I would say forget it”.

The vast majority of Americans and Europeans don’t really care for Singapore’s idea of “Asian coverage of Asian news”.

The biggest handicap is its ties to the government.

Most people I talked to doubted if many Westerners would be well disposed to news from a government news channel (BBC is different because of its long history of objective reporting).

Even among Singaporeans, one in every two believes that the Singapore media is biased, according to a survey last year.

On average, in a normal day, however, newspapers and television are the top sources of news here, with the Internet coming in a close third.

But in last year’s election, some 48% turned to Yahoo! for quick news, with CNA in second place at 23.8%. Newspapers, however, were the people’s main source of news.

Television was launched in 1963, the year Singapore joined Malaysia, and when it left two years later, the telecast of Lee Kuan Yew weeping caught the imagination of the world.

At the launch, only 2,400 Singaporean homes had TV sets, but tens of thousands of people, young and old, would sit on wooden benches in community centres to watch the magic box.

As a 23-year old then, I joined enthusiastic friends to meet outside a department store TV display window and watched celluloid scenes of the PAP developing Jurong or building public flats at a rate of one unit every 45 minutes.

It was a powerful message for a poor squatter country.

Eventually the leftwing hold among the vast Chinese-educated was broken. To the viewers, moving pictures could not lie.

The hard-working Barisan Sosialis representatives resorted to knocking on doors to get to the people, but they could not match the power of moving pictures.

Since then, the government has kept 100% ownership of television. Despite much talk of going public, TV news remain in official hands. About half of Singaporeans polled last year felt that “there is too much government control of newspapers and television”, according to an analysis by the Institute of Policy Studies.

With 3.37 million Internet users out of a 5.18 million population, the expectation is that while mainstream newspapers and TV remain on top of the pole for news, erosion among young readers is likely to continue.

This is because CNA is widely perceived as the voice of the government. An advisory committee said in 2009 that this factor could hamper its credibility as a news conduit.

The circulation of the Straits Times has been dismal over the decades despite a big population jump.
Not exactly good news for the ruling PAP.

An authoritative source once told me that for the PAP to remain in power, it must have control over three things – security forces, finance and the media.

The first two remain more or less in place, but control of the third – the media – is being challenged by the day by the surging social media where every citizen can be both a reporter and a reader.

INSIGHT DOWN SOUTH By SEAH CHIANG NEE

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Middle East Faces Tensions Between Online Child Protection and Internet Freedom

Larry Magid, ForbesContributor

Panelists talk about how to protect children without censoring the Internet in Qatar

I’m in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar for a two-day conference where representatives of government, non-profits and businesses from throughout the Middle East will join their counterparts from other regions to discuss “Promoting Online Safety and Cyber Ethics in the Middle East.” The conference is run by the Washington-based Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) along with ICTQatar. Sponsors include Google, Microsoft and Vodaone.

Social media and Arab Spring

I came to moderate a panel on the impact of social networking where speakers from Facebook, Yahoo, Aljazeera and OfokSystem talked about the role social networks like Facebook and Twitter played in Arab spring. Although conditions on the ground in Egypt, Tunisia and other countries were responsible for the unrest, social networking provided a vehicle for protestors to spread the word and organize protests.  There was a general consensus among the speakers that the best path for governments going forward is to encourage openness and a free flow of information lest other leaders risk following in the footsteps of ousted Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak.
David Gross

The conference’s opening sessions featured a discussion between FOSI CEO Stephen Balkam and  former U.S. ambassador David A. Gross, who took delegates on a walk down memory lane about the history of Internet regulation in the U.S. and Europe.

Balkam asked Gross to comment on the tension between the tendencies to want to protect children via Internet regulation and government imposed filtering vs. wanting to promote free speech.

“Every parent naturally as a matter of biology as well as intellect wants to protect children,” said Gross. “A lot of these issues are variations of an old theme with each country wanting to make its decisions in their own way based on their own culture.”

But what’s different is that kids are often more tech savvy than adults. “The extraordinary and maybe unprecedented twist is that technology and Internet related technology seems to be more intuitive for young people than the adults who are making the rules.”

Gross said that the Internet does not lend itself to being heavily regulated by government but instead “a more organic multi-stakeholder approach that includes government but also schools, parents, non-governmental organizations and corporations “coming together to field their way through it.”

Changes over time

Gross pointed out that the difference between the nineties and now “is that the issues are more complex,” thanks in part to cloud computing and the rise of international companies like Google and Microsoft.  Also, the discussion, which used to be between Europe and the U.S. is now “a conversation that is truly global which means that the complexities have gone up enormously. Instead of two players you now have 100+ players,” he said.

Recognizing cultural differences among countries, Gross does not advocate a one-size-fits all policy.  “Ultimately there are going to have to be accommodations and how these things get resolved will fundamentally determine the economic well being of many countries.” While this may seem daunting, he’s optimistic that it can be worked out. “With technology and clever policy making everyone will be able to live within their own set of rules.”

In the past, said Gross, “what your future would turn out to be depended mostly on who your parents were and where you were born but, because of the Internet, that is no longer the case.” Access is truly global and truly open, but the danger, he added,”is from those who will shut that down.”

The conference is being held in conjunction Qitcom 2012, a technology exhibition and conference that features technology companies from around the world seeking business opportunities in Qatar and neighboring states.  Forbes lists Qatar as the world’s richest country while the CIA World Fact book estimates Qatar’s per capita GDP at $102,700.

While Internet safety advocates and tech professionals were meeting at the FOSI and Qitcom events in one part of the city, eight heads of state from the Arab region, government ministers and Arab tech industry leaders were participating in the Connect Arab Summit to talk about expanding technology opportunities in the region.

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Think before you "Like" on Facebook

Corporations are engaging in a social media arms race

 
By Chris Taylor Annie Scranton has a little problem.

The founder and president of New York City's Pace Public Relations is a successful and sober-minded individual, but when it comes to this one thing, she has a definite compulsion. It's the "Like" button on Facebook -- she just can't stop clicking it.

"I'm totally obsessed with it," says the 31 year old. "Just like a lot of people I know. My friends and I call it 'Like-Bombing', where you go online and like everything."

So it's a good thing for serial "Likers" like Scranton that there are more and more rewards for consumers who click that button.

Hotel chain Marriott, for instance, is currently offering prizes totaling 10 million reward points for those who Like its Facebook pages, including two grand prizes of a million points each.

Think of it as a social-media arms race among corporations, to see which can amass the greatest number of online followers.

"It's become a real competition between companies to grow the size of that number, and to have more fans than your rivals," says Matt Simpson, marketing director for Phoenix-based Bulbstorm, which develops social-media apps for companies such as NBC and World Wrestling Entertainment.

"Over the last year, we've been seeing more and more of it, and it's been driven largely by promotional applications like sweepstakes."



PROMOTIONS AND LIST BUILDING

If you "Liked" Toys 'R Us before Thanksgiving, for instance, you got a shot at a limo ride, a $1,000 shopping spree, and exclusive store access before its doors opened for Black Friday sales.

Travel site Expedia, meanwhile, hosted a 'FriendTrips' sweepstakes for those who Liked its Facebook page, offering voyages to one of 13 different destinations.

As a result, in the third quarter of this year, an average of 100 million "Like" buttons were being clicked on Facebook every day. That's double the amount of liking going on, compared with the same period last year.

Corporations are doing this for a reason, of course. They're building marketing lists, they're aiming to boost sales, and they're planting themselves in users' news feeds.

When Coca-Cola has more than 36 million Likes, and Disney has more than 29 million, they've assembled a ready-made audience that can be tapped at any time.

And here's a little secret: While companies are certainly happy to have you as a fan, what they're really interested in isn't you; it's your friends.

Because if you officially Like Starbucks, your friends see that you've liked Starbucks, and they become more likely to spend there as well.

"Friends of fans represent a much larger set of consumers than the brand's own fans," says Elisabeth Diana, Facebook's manager of corporate communications. "In fact they're 81 times the size of the actual fan base, so Likes are a way to reach those people as well."

The promotional pushes seem to be paying off.

Expedia's FriendTrips campaign, for instance, garnered 900,000 new Likes for the company. And while Marriott's contest is ongoing until the end of the year, its new Marriott Rewards Facebook page has already gone from zero to more than 170,000 Likes.

"We've surpassed all other hotel rewards programs in under three weeks," says Michelle Lapierre, Marriott's senior director of customer relationship marketing, taking a slap at rivals Hilton, Starwood and Hyatt.

LIKING, PHASE TWO

Of course, once you have an army of online followers, that's not the end of the marketing road. Then there's the question of what to do with them all.

That's why companies are now proceeding to Phase Two of the Like operation: Figuring out how to engage and entertain consumers on an ongoing basis, with a flurry of polls and quizzes and games.

"Collecting Likes by giving away prizes is a great way to build a fan base, but it's not the be-all and end-all of Facebook marketing," says Bulbstorm's Simpson, who himself won a 10-day trip to Hawaii from just such an online promotion.

"Savvy brands are starting to focus on things with more entertainment value, to keep you around longer than the seven seconds it takes to fill out a form."

Beware, though, that Liking something publicly makes companies keenly interested in who you are and where you're surfing.

Not only that, but Facebook is rolling out so-called 'Sponsored Stories' of such activity. In other words, if you officially like Target's Facebook page, your friend Jim might get a Sponsored Story in his news feed announcing that thrilling development.

So if you're uncomfortable with your personal business being public, then maybe Like-Bombing isn't your best online strategy.

"Facebook 'Like' buttons are increasing in prevalence across the Web, raising serious privacy concerns for those who value the privacy of their online reading habits," says Rainey Reitman, activism director for the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation.

"This collection of information about one's Web browsing habits may violate many users' expectations of privacy. Our reading habits can be incredibly sensitive, and Facebook has a long history of playing fast and loose with user privacy."

Facebook reached a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission in November, agreeing to get users' permission before altering privacy settings and submitting to independent privacy audits for the next 20 years.

As for Pace's Annie Scranton, though, she has no plans to rein in her Like campaign - especially since it's brought her a number of new business prospects. So if you get Liked by her, don't be all that surprised.

"My business is inextricably linked to social media, so if I wasn't constantly Liking things, my clients wouldn't be happy," she says. "Even when I'm working, I'm on Facebook all day long. You can never do enough Liking."

(Editing by Jilian Mincer and Linda Stern)
(The author is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.) 

Social climbers in Malaysia: Race, Datuk, Datin or Puan Sri, not professional meritocracy

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Social climbers aplenty

A Writer's Life By Dina Zaman

In Malaysia, titles carry a lot of weight. People lie about their names, and some second wives even insist on being addressed as Datin or Puan Sri.

IT all began when I met a fortune teller in Butterworth who chided me for not using my honorific title before the name that you see now. In other words, a family title.

“If you acknowledge this heritage, this name that your family ancestors gave you, you will become very, very, very rich!” she said.

I thought, I could live with that. I am tired of being a financially struggling writer.

A month or two later, I edited my LinkedIn profile and put, ahem, the title in front of my name. Boom! Boom! Boom! I received a monthly average of three potential connections to link with.

Now, I have been a member of LinkedIn.com for more than seven years, and I would receive an invitation to connect like, perhaps, once every two to three months.

This very strange phenomenon affirmed the following to me: First, I’m not a celebrity, hot, and popular. These new friendships confirmed to me that a lot of Malaysians in general are social climbers and will only befriend you if you have wealth and social standing.

My charming personality and some brains have nothing to do with my instant popularity. Tsk.

Before we go on, allow me to clarify a few things. I do have a title tagged to the name my parents gave me. I do not understand why there are women who want to marry into the firm, because having an honorific is hell on forms and documents.

I am grateful that my parents gave me a beautiful name. Maybe at that time of registration, in 1969, there were many tiny boxes to fill in my title and name, but 21st century forms are horrible to fill in your particulars.



Two. Maybe I am related to some very titled and privileged people and maybe I am not. So don’t bother befriending me. I cannot guarantee you an invitation to the istana or a royal event.

I myself do not attend such dos. The one or two times I had been invited, I had to cover an event. If there ever was a personal invitation, and I cannot remember any, I chose to sleep.

I have always invested in very nice beds and mattresses. They win hands down all the time.

Also, if I am related to some Tengku or Raja, it would be 100 times removed. I call myself a SociaLIKE. I only mingle with people I like.

That LinkedIn caper left a bitter taste in my mouth. Surely all the work I had done over these 18 years would have amounted to something. I worked very hard to get to the little mountain I am on now. I can do this, and I can do that.

Actually, I am smarter than some of these titled people. Still, was an honorific my passport to professional and social success?

Unfortunately in Malaysia, titles carry a lot of weight. People even lie about their names.

Friends who work in events and public relations will call me, laughing over guests’ pretensions. “Wah, since when ah, did this person become a Tengku, or Datuk?”

I myself have seen a business card which had the grandfather’s datukship! Since the person’s father was not a datuk but the grandfather was, the person insisted on having it on the card.

How do you take someone like this seriously? Obviously many do, because the person is a director of a public-listed company.

I have also met second wives who insist on being addressed as Datin or Puan Sri. Darlings, think what you will, but that privilege belongs to the first wives only. Non-negotiable. Lu sudah sapu sama laki, mau sapu title pulak?

There is little professional meritocracy practised in this country: it’s not just your race, it’s who you are related to, who you know in this country, (and perhaps also the bomoh you’ve hired) that gets you places.

This may be 2012, but Malaysia is very much a feudal society. A title may not get you that timber deal, but at least the waiting staff or sales clerk will stand to attention.

And perhaps this is why we hold on to social status like a limpet: because there are so few honest successes in this country.

I have been asked before what I thought of the monarchy in Malaysia. If there is one legacy any monarchy should have, it would be that it has served its people well.

It should act intelligently and be compassionate. It should not be known for excess and wastefulness,
especially in times of austerity. Granted, there are a number of royals who have contributed to the country, but how many have left proper legacies?

I do enjoy reading the Malayan history of monarchy and aristocracy. Reading the Hikayats make me yearn for simpler days. Modern day aristocracy has lost that romance, refinement and adat.

Three months into my experiment, I was already getting irritated by requests to connect. My e-mail was constantly alerting me of new possible friends I could network with. And I still have yet to hit the jackpot. So I called the fortune teller in Butterworth.

“Aunty! Apa dei, I put the title in front of my name and I’m still not rich la!”

“Aiyo, it is the month. The stars are not aligned … you see, my dear …”

I squawked on the other side of the phone. I had no time to deal with astrological alignments. I went to my laptop and edited my LinkedIn.com profile. Goodbye title.

And what a marked change. To date, I have only had two requests to network with me, and these were old friends from university. I like it that way.

To those who added me on the basis of my name, I don’t want to do business with you. And to those who appreciate my work, and think that there are possibilities, you know how to get me.

> Dina Zaman is a writer based in KL. She is interested in Malaysian religious histories and its people.

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Financial Advisors Get Social

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 Raymond James Financial Advisors Get Social

Tom Groenfeldt, Forbes Contributor

Financial advisors at Raymond James are now able to use social media tools including LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter through the Actiance compliance tool, Socialite. Advisors also have optional access to a library or pre-approved content and tools to measure engagement.

Mike White, marketing director at the Florida-based financial services firm, said the Actiance alliance fulfills a commitment made early in the year to provide social media tools for advisors.

Financial firms have been slow to adopt social media, he said, and they have watched to see how regulators would interpret social media communications.

“In addition to incorporating the technology and archiving platform with Actiance, we have developed guidelines, training sessions and marketing and communications support to help advisors leverage social media in their client engagement and new prospecting activities,”  added White.

In the two months since the Actiance rollout, 1,200 of the firm’s 5,000 advisors have signed up. The company offers interactive video training to show advisors how social media can be used properly.

“We know there have been a lot to mis-steps [with social media] by public figures and we want out advisors and our brand to be protected in the process.”



Early adopters at Raymond James spread across all ages; the fastest to move to social media are the advisors who are most marketing oriented, White said. As the technology becomes easier to use, the age skew is not as pronounced as it once was, he added. Grandparents are among the most active users of Raymond James online services.

White thinks advisors will use social media both to stay in communication with existing clients and to prospect for new ones.

Raymond James has several people in its 200-strong compliance group who review all social media content before it goes out, with the result that approvals can usually be done the same day content is submitted. Tweets and posts go through a workflow process to provide the firm compliance oversight while allowing advisors to offer a personal touch.

“Our understanding [of the regulations] is that we do not have to review communications ahead of time, but we are being conservative.”

White said that in addition to approved canned content the company offers Tweets and posts from its economist or stock strategist.

“One great thing about Actiance is they were relatively early to the game of social media so they understand the importance of providing flexibility and insight to the communications.” The company also reviews blogs by its advisors before they are posted, a process which White said is now at the point social media was a few years ago.

“We treat blogs as ads that have to be pre-approved.”

The Aite Group, a financial research firm, entitled a recent report on social media for financial advisors “The Bloom is off the Rose.” Roughly 7 in 10 financial advisors use social media for personal purposes and half use it for business, figures which have increased since 2009, said Ron Shevlin, senior analyst with Aite Group and co-author of this report.

Use of LinkedIn has increased for business purposes and the time spent on Facebook, Twitter and blogs has declined among financial advisors. Advisors don’t spend much time on leading social media finance sites such as Stockpickr or Wikinvest; only a third of the advisors surveyed were even familiar with them.

Advisors are seeing diminishing returns from social media, according to Aite. Reaching new prospects was cited by only 19 percent, half the percentage in 2009 while increasing revenue or fees linked to social media declined from 16 percent to 6 percent.

Just six percent of advisors who don’t already use social media plan to do so over the next year. Thirty-eight percent said it wasn’t worth their time and 34 percent just don’t like to communicate with customers that way. Nearly three-quarters said their firms have policies that limit or ban the use of social media.

Vendors had some suggestions for the best ways to use social media. Actiance told Aite Group that responding to clients’ postings, such as a new child or a new job, with an appropriate messages is effective.  Echoing what White said about early adopters eMoney Advisor noted that advisors who are good at marketing are good at using social media. Financial Social Media’s recommendations suggest why some advisors are losing interest — they recommended Tweeting three to five times per day and updating LinkedIn and Facebook at least twice a day. That suggests a substantial time commitment. Other vendors of social media tools including SocialVolt, Socialware, SocMediaFin, SunGard, ThomsonReuters and Wired Advisor had a variety of suggestions about defining an approach to marketing, listening to the market and building out social networks.

Aite concluded that many financial advisors have decided that social media is not living up to its hype.

“The absence of tangible benefits from social media is muting advisors’ perception of its potential importance,” said Shevlin. Financial firms should expand their focus beyond compliance to look at effectiveness, added Aite, offering several specific suggestions for defining messages, choosing the proper platform and improving marketing skills.

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How To Use Social Media To Promote Your Small Business

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Kym McNicholas, Forbes Staff

Image via CrunchBase

You have a small business and you haven’t bought into the social media craze? Guess what? Silence is no longer an option. People are online talking about your company as you read this, whether you like or not.  If you don’t engage in the conversation, you risk losing your customers. But maybe you don’t have a choice as many small airports do in the State of California and across the United States. Many are owned by cities who don’t give them a dime and yet take money whenever they please. Those city managers force their airport managers to jump through hoops and political red tape to be able to promote their facilities. These airport managers have their hands tied in dealing with counties which just recently decided to launch a website, let alone a social media marketing strategy. So, I was asked by Michael McCarron, Public Information Office for San Francisco International Airport, to speak to the managers of small airports through California about the benefits of having a social media presence, so that they can convince their ‘bosses’ to allow them to open Facebook, Twitter and Google+ accounts, as well as to create blogs.

Here’s part of my presentation. I hope it helps you with your online social media strategy. If You have more ideas, please share them in the comments section at the bottom of the post. The more ideas, the better.

1. ASSESS YOUR ASSETS: The first action you should take before engaging in online marketing or social media marketing and engagement is to look at what are you’re trying to promote. What are your assets? Who are your target customers? It may seem obvious. But, A Bay Area airport had small planes for rent. But business was slow because they were simply targeting pilots trying to rack-up hours. Turns out there was a larger audience they could target through social media, tourists looking for aerial Bay Area tours. Business took-off.

SIGN-UP FOR SOCIAL MEDIA: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn. Facebook allows you to create a business page.  Make sure you read the rules for businesses first. You can even ‘create a page’ through your personal account, if your business allows you to do so. That makes it easy for small business owners to manage it. On LinkedIn, every employee becomes your best advocate.



FIND A SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER: Managing multiple social networks is daunting. So, before you start posting content, requesting friends and adding followers, sign-up for a social media manager such as Ping.fm and HootSuite. It allows you to manage all of your accounts on one site and schedule your messages to deploy so you don’t have to sit over it all day. It also allows you to review the success of the tweets real-time with click-through statistics. And you can gather all the mentions of your brand, industry or search terms on Twitter through it as well. That’s for the free version. I suggest trying that first. As you get more involved in social media, I prefer SproutSocial.com. You have a choice on plans for nine-dollars to $49. There’s a 30-day free trial to make sure it works for you. What I like is that it allows you to take all of those you follow and the followers and create contacts out of them which you can manage in the system and track engagement. It also has one inbox for all of your messages from all the networks. Plus, it allows you to track check-ins at FourSquare and Gowalla.

POST UPDATES: It’s important to have content on your social media pages before you start adding friends and followers. When you try to find friends, they’re going to look at the page to see if they want to follow you. So you need to give them a reason to follow you first. Provide valuable information about the industry. Post pictures of your business or people enjoying your business. On YouTube, post videos of your business, customer experiences, and encourage customers to make their own. You can also ‘favorite’ other YouTube users’ videos and they will end up on your page. If you’re a small airport, posting cool aerobatic videos of the Patriots’ Jet Team is a possibility that would add value to those who ‘subscribe’ to your page. Also, share those videos on your other accounts such as Twitter, Facebook and even LinkedIn.

FIND FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS: Twitter and Google+ are easiest. Search keywords to find followers. On Twitter,  If you’re a small airport, for example, search ‘pilot. You can also search ‘flying.’ Searching your town and surrounding areas as well to find key influencers, news outlets, bloggers and city officials. Also, search for large players in your market. For airports, try Boeing, Virgin America, United Airlines and Southwest Airlines. If they share your posts, you have the potential to reach thousands.  I suggest adding just a few people at a time.  On Google+, comment on one of their posts immediately. On Twitter, mention them in a post immediately. You can also comment on one of their posts or simply say that you look forward to following their great content.  If it’s a reporter or blogger, give them story ideas and leads that have nothing to do with your business. Get them to trust you. To find fans on Facebook, it’s best to start with real friends and family. You can also pay as little as $100 to have an ad for your Facebook page syndicate across the network for a designated period of time.

7. ENGAGE FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS:
Cory Colligan who used to be head of marketing for California Bouquet friended me on Facebook. When she asked to be my friend, she typed a personal message, saying how impressed she was with my work and how she’s enjoyed watching my work evolve. I couldn’t remember where I knew her from. Was it a television station, radio station, or was it from school? I wasn’t sure. I was too embarrassed to ask. And she seemed harmless. So, I confirmed her friend request and wrote her a note back thanking her for her feedback and saying that I look forward to connecting. She proceeded over the next few months to follow my videos and stories. She engaged in great debates and conversation with me as well as my friends. I knew just days after I added her that I didn’t know her personally. But I was so impressed with her and the relationship we’d developed over the months, that when I was traveling to her town, Fresno, I suggested we have lunch. When I arrived she had a full basket of goodies from her shop, including the best dark chocolate covered strawberries I’ve ever tasted, waiting for me. Since then, I have been a regular customer and am quick to share her products on my page.

So, your first priority should be building that relationship with people, not pitching your service or product.

Give them story ideas and leads that have nothing to do with your business.

On Facebook:
Share their links on your wall and/or comment on them. Wish them a Happy Birthday. Birthdays are big on Facebook. Always acknowledge them. Maybe even offer them a discount coupon for a birthday treat via Facebook.

On Twitter:
Retweet their stories and comment on them! Reply to each and every message. Keep the conversation going. Get them to trust you. For example, one of my favorite Twitter followers is @heykim. She is an amazing example of how to do it right. She has thousands of followers. But she has even more friends. She friended thousands of people little by little and engaged with them, retweeting their tweets, commenting on their tweets, checking in on topics those folks had tweeted on days before. Now, she’s constantly in conversation with folks like Morgan Fairchild, Alyssa Milano and Kathy Ireland. Alyssa Milano even just shared a linked @heykim posted tonight about how Twitter has transformed over the last five years. Who would’ve thought? She’s not famous. The key is she knows how to engage. And she never misses a #FF (Follow Friday). On Friday’s many people share with their friends, their favorite people to follow, encouraging others to follow them as well.

Google+: It’s a cross between Facebook and Twitter. It’s great because you can create circles of certain people you want to target for different reasons. It makes it easier to post certain promotions to one group vs. another.LinkedIn: The best way to engage with potential customers is by joining industry groups and starting group discussions.

Very important: Do not ask for help/favors from people until you’re friends or at least warm acquaintances with them. And the #1 way to become friends is to offer tons of help/favors without expecting anything in return. In the words of Michael Ellsberg, Forbes Contributor and Author of “Self-Educated Millionaires: The Seven Skills You’ll Never Learn in College, “Networking is a *long term* activity – it CANNOT be done for short-term results. Follow these basic concepts, and you’ll be ahead of 99.99% of the knuckleheads out there who are botching their networking attempts online!” Also, a great book to read is by Brian Solis, Principal at Altimeter Group, “Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web.”

8. STAY CURRENT: Get alerts sent to your phone when folks engage with you via your social networking sites – at least in the beginning – that way you respond quickly.

Please share your tips and tricks that will help small businesses sign-up and use social media. This certainly just scratches the surface. Please share the most creative marketing campaigns via social media in the comment section below.

The Millenium generation and the challenge for social stability

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THINK ASIAN By ANDREW SHENG

AS we enter into autumn, 2011 is turning out to be quite a year. Who would have thought that the immolation of a jobless Tunisian graduate in December 2010 would have sparked off the Arab Spring, with uprisings in North Africa and Middle East and now a variant has appeared in Britain?

Other than the social unrest fermented by unemployed youth upset with government corruption and inability to create jobs, the common element was the use of the social media. Even the Chinese high speed train crash in Wenzhou sparked off microblogging that spread the news faster than before. Twitter, Facebook, Google and mobile phone texting have changed the nature of news transmission and the whole governance structure globally.
Image via Wikipedia

Human behaviour reacts to new information, hence our obsession with breaking news. We need information to plan, respond and act.

Traditionally, the control of news and information was confined to a relatively small number of powerful newspaper groups around the world or government media. Radio and television changed the game, but the information was essentially one way. News feed meant news was fed to the consumer. Advertising was about promoting products and services and conveying information to the user.

Society became concerned about the use and misuse of information, hence the intense debate about control of media and freedom of information.



With the arrival of the Internet and social media technology, information became two-way. Two simultaneous events happened with the arrival of social media, both of which are totally new and not fully understood.

First, information became available, faster and more comprehensive to more people than ever thought possible. Papers like the News of the World were considered successful if they sold more than one million copies daily. A successful book would sell 100,000.

However, today, there are five billion mobile phones in use, compared with just over six billion people. More and more people everywhere are connected to the Internet. Every month more than 30 billion pieces of content are shared on Facebook. Twitter can reach millions instantaneously.

Second, because millions of people can receive news simultaneously, they can react synchronously. This is the rise of flash news and flash mobs. The news feedback mechanism has moved from months to nano-seconds.

Governments which had time to react to news, now have no time at all to understand and respond to instant public opinion or even sudden appearance of thousands on social protest.

When someone rich and famous like Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested, there was almost instant decision on the Web whether he was guilty or not.

In the past, legal justice could have the pretense that the jury should not be biased by newspaper comment. Today, there are no “clean” decisions everyone is affected by the public opinion.

There are several serious implications for the media industry and social governance.

In economic terms, the traditional print media is suffering in the advanced countries. The good news is that print media is still growing in the emerging markets, as less access to Internet and a rising young population look voraciously for news.

More and more people are turning to instant news on their mobile phone and the Web. The bad news is that with instant news are instant judgements Like or Do Not Like. The fates of major social events are no longer judged by Royal Commissions of Inquiry, but by 140 character limit of news transfer by Twitter or other micro-blogs.

The events and responses of daily life are now black and white, demanding instant solution, not complex matters of grey requiring careful analysis and cautious response.

Thus, in many ways, the world has moved into a multi-dimensional complex transformation, facing simultaneously forces of demographics (more and more younger people and at the same time ageing people), urbanisation, industrial transformation, dramatic technology advances and the visible effects of climate warming and natural disasters.

Hence, mankind is facing changes in the natural environment even as we are confronting massive social change. But the most profound change is the great divide in the inter-generational understanding of each other.

The baby boomers of my generation marched in the streets in 1968 to demand greater social equality, including gender and racial equality. We were less than 5% of our age group who went to university. We were an elite.

Today, the baby boomers (those born after World War II) are beginning to retire. They have become the establishment.

University or tertiary education has become much more broad-based. More than half the population of the world is under the age of 21. The protesters in the Arab Spring or the rioters in Britain represent a generation different from their political leaders.

The new generation has largely grown up not in an age of war, but in an age of global peace. But the biggest challenge for social stability is the challenge of jobs for Gen Y or the Millenium generation, people born around the turn of the century.

In China, there is general acceptance of the fact the post 1980 generation (after the implementation of the one-child policy) has social behaviour different from those when families were multi-children.

In the next 15 years, more than 700 million young people will enter the labour force, of whom 300 million will come from Asia.

Already, the International Labour Organisation estimates that there are roughly 100 million unemployed people in Asia, before the global financial crisis.

If we cannot create enough jobs despite massive fiscal deficits and industrial restructuring, expect more social disruption from the new generation.

Andrew Sheng is president of the Fung Global Institute.

The convenient scapegoat barring technology and social media

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The convenient scapegoat

ALONG THE WATCHTOWER By M.VEERA PANDIYAN veera@thestar.com.my

Barring technology and the social media is not the answer to quelling unrest.
Image via CrunchBase

IS the social media and free flow of information via digital technology good or bad? It depends on where it happens and whom it affects.

Text messages, Twitter and Facebook were hailed as powerful tools against repression when the people of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya took to the streets to protest against their authoritarian rulers in February.

British Prime Minister David Cameron declared then that the Internet and social media belonged to people who had “enough of corruption, of having to make do with what they’re given, of having to settle for second best”.

But when riots and anarchy broke out back home in London and elsewhere in Britain, the reaction was patently different.

“Everyone watching these horrific actions will be struck by how they were organised via social media.

“Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill. When people are using social media for violence, we need to stop them.”

And Cameron told an emergency session of the British Parliament: “So we are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.”

The UK police have rounded up close to 5,000 people and taken about 1,000 rioters and looters to court since the ugly wave of unrest and arson hit.

Britain’s entire national intelligence machinery – including its Security Service, or M15, which usually handles espionage and terrorism – is now focused on identifying the culprits and trying to prevent future occurrences of disorder.



The authorities have been generally blaming the misuse of social media for the mayhem; it appears that Research in Motion’s (RIM) BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) was the most effective tool used because of its tight security features.

The BBM application provides password-protected messages to individuals or groups that can only be read with a PIN.

During the height of the riots, British MP David Lammy used Twitter to call for the halt of the service by tweeting: “BBM clearly helping rioters outfox police. Suspend it.”

RIM, Facebook and Twitter have since given assurances that they would comply with the UK’s Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, the country’s privacy laws.

Besides his government’s willingness to consider shutting down or blocking access to social networks, the British PM also pledged a “zero tolerance” system of policing under which no form of law breaking would be condoned.

Critics have been quick to censure Cameron’s call for curbs and tough measures as smacking of hypocrisy and as a violation of free speech, civil liberties and human rights.

Index on Censorship news editor Padraig Reidy slammed it as “a bizarre and kind of knee-jerk reaction by the government”.

“More recently, we’ve seen this kind of thing in Egypt,” he said.

Actually, the most recent incident of shutting down a phone network happened last week in the United States.

The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) shut down the cell phone service at four stations to prevent a protest rally over the shooting of two men by police.

BART deactivated the service from 4pm to 7pm to stop protest organisers from communicating.

Meanwhile, China, which was subject to Western sermons over its fierce crackdown on dissent in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings, has raised safety concerns over the 2012 Olympics to be staged in London.

The Chinese media has responded to the UK riots with “a mixture of shock and schadenfreude”, as fittingly described by the Daily Telegraph.

“The West has been talking about supporting Internet freedom, and opposing other countries’ government to control this kind of websites. Now we can say they are tasting the bitter fruit (of their complacency) and they can’t complain about it,” wrote a People’s Daily commentator.

But the real issue to be addressed by governments everywhere is distrust brought about by the gap between the haves and have-nots and unfairness, whether real of perceived.

Ian Williams, a veteran journalist and analyst, described it aptly when he said the UK government’s posturing ignored the fact lawlessness in the highest places was at the root of the riots.

“The rioters who were interviewed and people on the streets all remarked upon members of parliament stealing expenses from the tax payer, mostly with impunity, although some went to jail,” he said when interviewed by Press TV.

“They look at the bankers making billions of dollars and getting away with it; they look at Rupert Murdoch, the head of News International, hacking innocent people’s telephones, and getting away with it.
“So basically the message that is being sent from the ruling classes of Britain is that the law is not there to be obeyed.

“So to start shouting that the lesser people - the people who steal televisions - should be locked up for life whereas the people who steal whole industries and banks and countries should be given knighthoods and peerages for it is not really a sustainable one on the streets I suspect.”

> Associate Editor M. Veera Pandiyan likes this quote by Edgar Allan Poe: The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.

Successful Leadership to Elevate Your Career and Your Organization

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10 Steps to Successful Thought Leadership to Elevate Your Career and Your Organization

As employees seek to strengthen their identity in the workplace they must find ways to make an immediate impact for the betterment of the company as well as themselves.  This requires a commitment to share your voice with others so that your influence can be naturally felt throughout your team, your department and the organization.   Strengthening your identity is not a self-serving act, but rather a responsibility to those that you serve.  The goal is to become a thought leader.

What is a Thought Leader?

A thought leader is a person who identifies trends, common themes and patterns within a particular industry or functional area of expertise to help others identify new opportunities or solutions for growth.

Most people believe that thought leadership is only for senior executives. In the traditional workplace, this still is the case. However, in the new workplace where the sharing of ideas is welcomed regardless of hierarchy or rank, any employee can be a thought leader. In today’s business world, the most relevant employees are starting the conversations – and benefitting both individual and corporation.

What are the steps to becoming a thought leader as an employee in your organization?

In the brave new world created by the economic shifts of the last 5 years, successful participants will let go of old-fashioned thinking, change their resource model and vision, and begin to get to know the new hierarchy. They’ll launch their thought leadership based on the strength of their onsite and online community that they have developed.  And they’ll develop an identity that will give them longevity and security in an insecure world.

After many years of developing my thought leadership platform (The Immigrant Perspective), I would like to help you with yours.   Here are my (10) most effective steps to successful thought-leadership:

1. Define and Manage How Other People Experience Your Personal Brand.
Before you can become a recognized thought leader, you must define and manage how other people will experience the following four characteristics of your personal employee brand:

• What is your brand’s enduring idea?
• How will your brand best differentiate itself?
• What is the primary experience your brand will deliver?
• Whom will your brand serve?

2. Identify the Methodology that Defines the Problems Your Personal Employee Brand Solves. 

You may be knowledgeable about a particular subject matter, but have your experience and insights given you enough breadth and depth to earn the right to propose solutions in your area of expertise? As a thought leader, your personal employee brand must support a proven step-by-step methodology that defines the approach for the problems your brand solves. Your methodology must be able to show how to overcome the most challenging set of circumstances.

3. Manage Your Thought Leadership Profile.

A thought leadership profile is your management tool that keeps your personal employee brand, methodology and subject matter expertise updated, fresh and relevant. This profile should be a living document that you update on an ongoing basis. The following are the primary elements to include in your thought leadership profile:

•  Subject matter expertise
• Problems that my thought leadership solves
• My methodology
• Target audience
• Industry pain points
• Industry opportunities/ROI outcomes
• What my audience needs to hear
• Targeted media outreach
• Conversations and topic ideas for articles, blogs, tweets and video blogs.

 4. Write it Down! Share Your Ideas and Experiences.

Seasoned thought leaders know that writing and sharing of experiences is a natural extension of their leadership role and responsibility. Convert concepts into practical applications that support your methodology. Be innovative in your thinking, yet simple in your writing style. Don’t limit your audience.

In your thought leadership profile, prepare a list of topics of conversation that you would like to share with your audience. Create a list of useful resources to support your writings. Demonstrate that you can articulate complex issues in terms that a broad audience can understand and apply. Show your audience that you care about the problems that it is trying to solve. Assemble a “knowledge vault” of materials that support your writings to further demonstrate your commitment to solve your audiences’ problems.

Finally, allow your community to connect with you personally in your writings. Share personal stories that support your content themes. People want to connect with your voice in ways they can relate to personally. Sharing your personal identity (within reason) allows for a more purposeful and meaningful relationship to blossom.



5. Speak and Speak Some More.

Writing is your starting point to speaking and articulating your thought leadership ideas and ideals. Identify trade shows and conferences that customers and industry influencers are attending and participate on panels or lead workshops. Find out about the local associations that host speaking events and offer to give a keynote or sit on a discussion panel.

Your ability to remain active as a speaker is critical to becoming a sustainable thought leader. When speaking, focus on providing useful information. No one wants to listen to you pitching your product. You are there to inform and educate, to provide a unique perspective.

6. Create a Blog and Activate Your Social Media Tools.

Create your own blog and activate your favorite social media tools (ie. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.) to make it easy for your community/audience to follow your writings, upcoming speaking engagements, trade interviews, media appearances, etc. As a selected voice that represents your organization, your blog and social media tools must be a prominent and visually appealing outlet that supports an interactive two-way exchange of knowledge and ideas with your community.

7. Share Your Secrets and Build Trust with Your Community.

Make it simple for people to access your content. In the end, thought leadership is about building a trustworthy relationship with your community. You begin to lose that trust once you appear to be holding something back. No secrets allowed! Though your community may not always be responding (in the form of commentary), they are reading and listening to your words carefully. Your content (regardless of format) is generating a two-way communication stream of thought, ideas and trust.

8. Cultivate Purposeful Relationships with the Media.

Don’t leave it solely to your PR agency. As a thought leader, you should have a list of 15 writers and editors who regularly report on your industry market. Journalists are very busy people, always on a deadline. So, when you call you need to give them something that they can use to make their life better and easier – a lead, a story, some insight, a quote, customers to whom they can talk for quotes.

Don’t wait for the media to find you. You must be proactive in building relationships with the media. Research media outlets and key contacts that would benefit from your subject matter expertise. You can always hire a PR agency, but when getting started it’s best to get your hands dirty and learn how the media really works yourself.

9. Control Your Google Identity and Relevancy.

In today’s business world, people initially experience your personal brand identity and its relevancy as defined by Google. When you Google a person’s name you immediately create an impression of that person based on what you read and its context. So who is controlling your Google identity and relevancy? Is it Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, or Twitter? Or, is it your blog and its articles, video blogs, white papers and all of your original content that supports your methodology and what defines the experience of your personal brand?

As a thought leader, you must become best friends with Google. You must be accountable to manage how Google positions your personal employee brand and subject matter expertise. This inherent responsibility is important not only for your own personal benefit, but more so for your community. How do you control your Google identity and relevancy? Follow points 1 – 8!

10. Make a Commitment to Thought Leadership!

The sharing of ideas and insights do not require your organization to have market share dominance or millions of dollars. In today’s new normal, content is a commodity and readily available. Thought leadership is a difference maker. Your generosity and transparency can help you outsell your competitor. It can lead to higher margins. In a world in search of trust, it’s all about people and your thought leadership will expand the breadth and depth of who you are as a person and how others interact with you.

We are transitioning from a knowledge-based economy to a wisdom-based economy. It’s no longer just about what you know, but what you do with what you know. It’s about trust, transparency, opening up your heart and leading with kindness. Thought leadership is another form of corporate social responsibility. It’s about leaving a legacy and earning the respect of your community.

Thought leadership is your path to career security, continuing relevance, and a vibrant company environment.  It is no longer optional for those who want to control their path through business life; it is mandatory.

May my journey help you with yours!  May this immigrant perspective serve you well.

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Social Media Isn’t Free to Entrepreneurs or Anyone

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 By Martin Zwilling

If you are an entrepreneur today, and not using social media to promote your business, you are missing out on a huge opportunity. But, contrary to what most people preach, it isn’t entirely free. Most social media outlets don’t require a subscription charge, but they certainly require an investment – in people, in technology, your reputation, and your time.

There are hundreds of consultants out there who will take your money for guidance in this area, but I recommend that you start with some free resources on the Internet, or one of the many recent books on this topic. One I just read, “How to Make Money with Social Media” by Jamie Turner and Reshma Shah, Ph.D., hits all the right points from my perspective:

• There are risks as well as benefits. As with many startup activities, you only have one chance for a great first impression. You can jump into social media with a poor brand definition, poorly focused content, unrealistic expectations of customer service, or be killed by malware or viruses.

• Assess social media relevance to your product or service. If your business is industrial B2B products, social media should be low on your list. Spend your time and money on other platforms. If you are selling to consumers, especially younger ones, your business won’t survive without an effective social media presence.

• Attracting key stakeholders requires sensitivity. For some customers and many investors, a heavy focus on social networks and viral marketing may be a negative, rather than a positive. A balance of conventional and social communication and marketing is always advised.

• Pick the right platform for your business. Within each of the platform categories defined above, there is a right one and a wrong one for your audience. For example, LinkedIn is attuned to business professionals, Facebook is dominated by the social and upwardly mobile crowd, and MySpace is for tweens and creative types.

• Communication and writing skills are required. Heavy texting experience is not a qualification for communicating via social media. In additional to strong journalistic writing and storytelling, you need business acumen, strategic thinking and planning, and the ability to do the right research. These days, video production is also a useful skill.

• Make social media an integrated part of an overall strategy. An integrated marketing strategy starts with an overall brand management strategy, delivered through online and offline communications, promotions, and customer engagement vehicles. Your Twitter YouTube messages better match your print advertising message.

• Find the right tools to analyze the ROI. Return-On-Investment metrics are not new, but the tools are different. Get familiar with current social media tools, such as Google Analytics, Omniture, and HootSuite analytics. Over time, put together the data you need to measure your progress on a weekly/monthly/yearly basis.

The key social media platforms today include communications (WordPress blogs, Twitter), collaboration (Wikipedia, StumbleUpon), and multimedia (YouTube, Flickr). In looking ahead, don’t forget the mobile platforms (iPhone, Android), and location-based services (Foursquare, Gowalla).
As with any resource or tool, you need to optimize your social media costs against a targeted return. That means first setting a strategy and plan for what you want to achieve, then executing the plan efficiently, and measuring results. It’s not free, but it’s an investment that you can’t afford not to make.

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