Would you dare to share!

Today, we are bombarded by promotional e-Mails, overflowing advertisement web banners, unknown Facebook invitations and wall posts… Personal Touch is one of the most important success factors for any e-Marketing and social media campaigns. In our own experience, by addressing the recipients’ individual names in an e-Mail, the eDM open rate can actually be increased considerably. However, in order to do this, one needs to diligently collect and update the distribution list on a better eDM platform. The eDM platform should be good enough to cater multiple languages including Traditional Chinese & Simplified Chinese as well as SMS Text Messaging with programmable follow up actions to create a tailor-made user experience.

In order to win over the e-Marketing & Social Media game, you need to dare to share as a person. We have seen many e-Campaigns running in the past couple of years, though Think Virally will always be the best way to win, the traditional Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing is the basis for Viral Marketing. WOM is based on personal relationship and trust, if you cannot build up this personal trust, you will never get very far!

Personal Touch is also about the language you use, in a lot of cases of Social Media Marketing, you really have to use colloquial language to get resonance or echoes from your target audiences. We often have arguments and clashes with our clients about using colloquial language versus formal written language, for example, on wall posts of Facebook. Corporate Communication Managers and PR Managers do not like us as they have very restricted guidelines on the tone of communication. However, they really have to tune their mindsets and maybe have a new job position open as Social Media Communications Manager to be more socialable!

Responsiveness & interactive conversation is another area of the challenge if you dare to share on Social Media. The question is do you have dedicated staff to respond to the “happy” problem when your target audiences/customers are really responding to your invitation and comments and how quick can you respond? A typical answer I give out often is 24 hours at maximum you shall respond to the comments. Well, you have the choice to do it yourself or to hire some consultants like Adams to do for you.

Copyright (c) 2011. By Matthew Kwan, Principal Consultant
Adams Company Limited
W:www.adamshk.com FB:facebook.com/adams.news

Social Media: Business or Not??

Dear Friend,

Greetings to you!

I am so glad to share with you that we had a very successful event with Wisers Information Limited (Wisers) earlier this month on the topic of “Brand Formula through Social Media”. The event was FULL HOUSE in a room packed with 160 people coming mainly from companies of Banking & Finance, Government & NGO’s and Marketing Professionals. I was thrilled to speak alongside with domain experts from Greenpeace, Ogilvy and Wisers. If you are interested to view my presentation, please feel free to check it out on http://www.slideshare.net/adamshk/adams-wisers-social-media-seminar-20110602

Facebook

So, do you think you can get business through your Facebook Account or Facebook Fan Page or Facebook Groups or Facebook Social Ad? If I have lost you on these terms, you definitely need to get yourself educated on the differences, otherwise you will not be very successful to promote your company/products/services using Facebook. Why am I pinpointing on Facebook? It is because there are more than 3 Million registered users using Facebook in Hong Kong which is about 75% of the total Internet population in Hong Kong. This is a serious matter as there is no single advertising media have this kind of direct reach on a personal basis than Facebook in Hong Kong and in the world. There are actually more than 500 Million Facebook users in the World which contribute to more than 25% of the worldwide Internet population. The most important success factor is to ensure there is element of “Viral Effective”. Majority of Adams’ larger projects in the last 2 years are all related to Facebook and we always think Virally to bring pivotal results for our customers. You may read more on our methodology and philosophy on http://www.adamshk.com/e-Marketing/social_media.htm

Twitter

Are you really ready to engage with the customers and do business? According to a article on www.mad.co.uk, Dell managed to make over US$6.5 Million sales throughTwitter alone by end of 2009 and US President Obama is having over 8M followers on Twitter alone. However, Twitter is not so popular in Hong Kong as it does not offer Traditional Chinese interface but Adams is recommending customers to use Twitter as a connector to multiple Social Media. There are actually a number of way of doing it if you know the right tools. It is highly effective for disseminating your company and product news to multiple channels.

YouTube

Do you know Hong Kong is one of the highest visit location of YouTube? Do you know you can actually post Video advertisements (Traditionally only available on TV) right next to videos of your target customers when they search for interested topics? It can be so targeted and relevant and effective but we do not see a lot of these advertisements yet in Hong Kong. Are you aware that we live in post-modern age that people enjoy watch videos than purely reading texts? Have you opened you YouTube channel for your company yet, showing demos, advertisements, testimonials, events….to create a prominent online presence? What I am trying to say here is that a lot of companies are lacking behind on using YouTube tactically and effectively. The potential results can be exponential if you are doing it right. Adams has started helping customer to place their TVC’s on YouTube for quite sometime and the ROI’s are very clear.

China

Earlier, www.renren.com (人人網) has merged with www.kaixin.com to form the largest Social Media Network in China. On May 4, 2011, RenRen.com has become the first ever Social Media Network being listed on New York Stock Exchange raising US$743.4 million with highest trading price at US$21.93 on the first day of trading. There are many business implications with its huge growth potentials. If you are planning to reach customers in China, then you really have to understand Sina’s Weibo (microblogging site equivalent to Twitter), Youku.com and Tudu.com (Video Broadcasting sites equivalent to YouTube), Baidu Tieba (China’s largest discussion forum) and a whole bunch of other Social Media Network sites. The competitions are furious and extremely exciting. However, the cost of exploration is not small at all! Adams is actively helping customers to use the most relevant and prominent social media in China to create most effective online presence and awareness.

Summary

Ultimately, we are living in an Internet Age, people tend to find you through Search Engines and Social Media than anything else. We are talking about Online PR and Online Branding exercise here. It is exactly the same as you would do it in the old days, you need to manage your public facing communications to get the best branding, perception and awareness. If you do not act now, it is going to be too late as your competitors are out there looking for ways to penetrate the market any minute NOW using Social Media. We see a lot of companies have started their effort in testing the effect of Social Media Marketing but we also see too many cases that the companies are not having a clear strategy! If you would like to understand more how to plan your Social Media Marketing Strategy for your special business, please do not hesitate and contact us on +852 27239977 or email us at admin@adamshk.com .

Best regards,

Matthew

Matthew Kwan

Principal Consultant

Adams Company Limited

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