Blogout! 2009 Day 1: Two thumbs up! (Part 1)

Introduction

It’s now 3.03am and I’m starting on my post about Blogout! 2009 Day 1. Let’s see how long it takes to get to the finish line. I hope to give a summary of the presentations and also add in some of my personal thoughts and questions that arose from the discussion.

Negative comment time…

I’m going to start off by giving what I think is my only negative comment about the Blogout! 2009 event: There’s no free wireless Internet and I couldn’t get a good Wireless@SG signal.

I’m sorry, I thought about it a bit more and realised that I actually shouldn’t blame them. I’m just to cheap to pay for my own mobile broadband. Ok, then there’s nothing bad about the event! (heh).

Welcome by Howie Chang, President of The Digital Movement (TDM)

Howie shared the vision of TDM’s founders, which was to bring a piece of Silicon Valley back to Singapore. Imagine S.E.Asia as a new innovation centre. TDM’s founders wanted to bring thought leadership in the digital sphere to the region and as part of that, they’ve striven to run events that build conversations, allow for knowledge sharing and idea generation. I think that from the two TDM events I’ve attended (not including this one), I can say that TDM’s definitely on track.

I find it amazing that Howie only turned 27 on Friday. I think for someone his age, he’s accomplished quite a bit, which does make me a little disappointed in myself, but I can only hope that I’m as good as him in some other aspect of my life.

What I do lament is that we still don’t really have prominent thought leaders in social media in Singapore. The closest people I can think of are Benjamin Koe, Daryl Tay, Kevin Lim, Coleman Yee and in govt, Walter Lim, Van Tan and Ivan Chew (though I think they may not be comfortable being labelled as thought leaders). Perhaps it’s because there’s a lack of like-minded people, that’s why we don’t have the ability to nurture them? Not sure. Perhaps some of you might disagree and say that the people mentioned above have already reached that status. I would say, almost, just not quite there yet.

“Social Media and Business, Why It Won’t Work” by Melvin Yuan, Waggener Edstrom

I know Melvin from way back when we were in OCS, so it’s always good to catch up with him at such events. He opined that social media is like new gadgets: It’s the latest thing that everyone wants to get, but once you get it, it loses some of its shine (pretty similar to the teen sex analogy).

Melvin decided to be a bit contrarian and explain why social media won’t work for businesses, which was an interesting way of highlighting the challenges companies will face (I’ll draw out some similarities between social media+companies and social media+govt agencies later). There’s supposed to be 7 but I only took down 6… must have missed out something somewhere.

#1 We have a listening problem

Social media is about the conversation. However, most companies only want to talk, they don’t want to listen, and when they do listen, they have trouble understanding the groundswell of positive, negative and neutral comments. Many companies also don’t have the capabilities to listen to the social mediasphere.

#2 Transparency and Accountability won’t exactly make us money

Transparency and accountability are where businesses are failing at. The fact is that companies are not ready or not able to be truly transparent and accountable.

My own thoughts are that for accountability, the challenge is that the company needs to be accountable to three main parties – its shareholders, its employees and its customers – and these three parties’ interests may not always coincide. I would say that companies can only be transparent and accountable to a certain point.

#3 We lose the passion and authenticity

Melvin feels that by and large, a lot of employees are not truly passionate about their companies’ products and services. If employees can’t exude passion about the products, it’s so much harder for the customers to believe in the products.

#4 We try to operate in the new world with the old world mindset

Businesses fail to recognise the change that’s happened in the world due to social media. The examples given were the old PR system of inviting the media to a press conference and the really great ad. Businesses tend to ignore the long tail.

My thoughts are that this point is a bit weak. I think some businesses do understand social media (e.g., Daniel Goh and Samsung) and are enlightened. Perhaps a better statement would be that some companies are still working with an old world mindset when approaching social media?

#5 We don’t get along with the IT dept

IT is a challenge. In large organisations, there are usually legacy systems and IT policies that are outdated. In general, marketers and IT dept don’t really get along – hence it’s difficult for anything related to social media to take off.

Till not long ago, my organisation blocked youtube. Thankfully, they’ve become a bit more enlightened.

#6 We don’t understand the new math

I think this is related to #4. Companies are working on old models for metrics with new media. E.g., measuring survey results, ad rotation, reach of ad, whereas now you have sentiment analysis etc. I think that it’s impt. that we start breaking away from the habit of placing old world measurement systems onto social media campaigns.

He also highlighted the 7 “rules” for businesses engaging in social media inititiatives, which I didn’t manage to catch, but I understand that the slides will be uploaded or sent out, so will update this post eventually.

Ok, it’s 4am and I’ve decided that I should sleep before Day 2. Will endeavour to post all by Sunday night.