Hi! I’m the blog.

Claudia the Panda is busy and has not been updating me as regularly as before. And I’m sad.

Two years ago, she would share her adventures with me the very same night; or sometimes almost instantly as the event unfolds as she live blog. When she does that, I get many hits and link love. I was loving every moment of it then. But now, I get hit and missed almost as fast as you can read “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”.

I sensed that many of my relatives are having the same problem too. The owner gets too busy with work or overwhelmed with the number of happenings around her, and we get ignored. When owners ignore us for too long, we die a silent and painful death.

You see, I come from a huge family of many even larger families. Our god (Google) is a very powerful one. We worship her religiously, without her shine of light on us, we will never get any hit at all. When that happens, we die. Many of my relatives died tragically and I don’t want that to happen to me. I want our god to keep shining her almighty light on me and keep me alive.

Claudia the Panda seemed to have diverted her attention to new sisters and brothers of mine which I never ever wished for! There is the one for ladies and tech, the one for rediscovering Singapore, the one where she post via email, the one for her and her man and the one where she doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing with. And I wonder what other siblings of mine are brewing in her mind! Why can’t she just focus on me alone? Aren’t I good enough for her?

I wish Claudia the Panda will keep posting content in me. Feed me with text love and help me get link love. I don’t want to die. I want to be loved like before. I want to get hit the moment she returns from an event. I want to get link love because of her lovely photos she takes of people at these great events. Ok, for this, I blame the my relative’s big brother (Facebook). Ever since he came into the world, Claudia the Panda only uploads photo to Facebook and tag people there, she no longer share it in me. My love and hits had all gone to the relative’s big brother. I’m sad.

If you are a friend of Claudia the Panda, please tell her to stop neglecting me. Tell her that she need to continue to love me and fill me up so that I can be kept alive.

Thank you very much for reading this.

Needing lots of content and love,
The Blog of Claudia the Panda

Recently I spent a little too much time on facebook games. Every night, at least an hour is devoted to clicking on my mouse on clearing crystals from Bejeweled Blitz. I tried to conquer the score board, but it just seems impossible. After much cursing and swearing playing, I’m still always being ranked right at the bottom among my other friends in facebook. I felt frustrated and this kept me playing and the harder I try to push myself by clicking faster and trying to get as many hits as possible, the worst I perform. Than I became bored and will eventually give up.

Bejeweled Blitz is quite a popular game amongst my list of friends in facebook. And because of the number of competitors you’ve got to beat in order to rank high up in the score board, the harder it is for you to reach there. After many nights of playing, you might also just give up and not want to continue anymore.

Just last night, I saw a friend’s scoring in another game call Chain Rxn in facebook. Out of curiosity, I went to check the game out. And after less than thirty minutes of play, I’m ranked 4th among my friends who are playing! That of course makes me happy.

Because there were lesser friends playing Chain Rxn, my chance of getting bumped up the score board is much easier. Just like in, for example, a golf tournament. An average female player gets to bring home the trophy because there were only four other players competing. So the chance of winning is much higher.

Than the thought of blogging came to mind. There have been much talks and thoughts going on on blogging and how much better the blog will perform if its content is focused and niche. The rarer and lesser people blogs about that topic, the better your blog will perform. And for all topics, no matter how rare or niche, there *will* be a community out there who are interested in it. You just need to keep the faith of sharing about that niche topic which you’re knowledgeable and passionate about, one day you will be noticed and you will succeed.

And because of the rarity of these content, people who knows about your existence will be more active in participating in the discussions on your blog, helping you spread the words to those they know, and the journey to being known in this community as a thought leader is also shorter. Of course, the initial struggle will be hard to pass, but good things always come to those who wait.

Are you waiting to be discovered? Or have you already succeeded in your small but niche community?

Often I’ll receive emails or calls from friends from agencies asking if I know of anyone (bloggers) who would be interested in their client’s product or service. Perhaps they ask everyone they know for referrals, like how financial planner does the referral system where you give 3 to 5 new leads for them. And often, those names you give them are people whom you have on your blacklist. YES?

But for social media blogger engagement, I can’t do that. As a community member and one whom has a reputation to uphold, I cannot just pop a few names out and refer them. When I do ever make referrers, I give quality ones with certain standards and who are interested in the subject matter. If you have a relationship with me, often I would be more than willing to help. But if we hardly communicate and the only time I see your name is in my inbox with a BCC press release or media invitation, sorry, can’t help you.

Reason is simple. You’re not listening and participating enough.

There have been many talks and posts on how important relationship and contacts is in the game of social media. Well, at least in context of an event invitation or a possible test drive of products. And there are plenty of ways you can start building that relationship. Or at least, be seen elsewhere other than just their inbox.

Some of the things you can do to start the relationship (and build it):

• Add them in facebook
  And keep in touch regularly or comment on their posts/updates.
• Follow them in twitter or plurk
  And participate in discussion or drop a hello once awhile. These are great listening tools too!
• Read their blogs and start commenting
  Hello! You’re engaging bloggers right? They blog right? They blog because they want people to read and participate in discussions/ commenting right? So… are you giving them what they want before you asking them to give you what you want?
• Be part of the communities
  There are so many social events and gatherings! Join in! Introduce yourself and be seen. If you are not willing to commit some extra hours outside of the official hours, than perhaps you’re not ready. And did I mention that some potential clients are there to observe too? So where are you???

If all the above is beyond what your time and energy permits, than perhaps a system can be put in place to help you. Would you like one which can help you filter out the quality content providers that fits your target audience and list of criteria? How about one that will display very nice profile view of where the person is active in, his highlighted (or best) entries, his authority and influence level? Wouldn’t that be nice? But still, its only a system. The relationship building part still has to be injected somewhere in the process. Are you prepared to do that?

If you’re ready or think that you’ll be in months to come, perhaps you can be looking forward to a system like this, let me help keep you posted. You can sign-up for updates and news here. I believe this system will come in very helpful.

Claudia live blogs! She blogs on the go and her posts get to twitter almost instantly. How did she post those photos at events up online so quickly? Does she has some magic power?? Or did she has inbuilt computer and chips within her brain, eyes and fingers that auto processes whatever she sees, hears and touched into digital format and post it online automatically? How the hell did she do it?!

No! I’ve got no magic power nor potion and I’m 101% human. What I’m doing can easily be implemented into your blogging routine too. It just take a little effort of finding the right tools and ways to link them all up. And with RSS feeds, linking up isn’t that tough.

Let’s use BlogOut! 2009 as an example…

What I used?

1. My Samsung Innov 8 mobile phone
2. My Singtel SIM card with mobile broadband service
3. My email account
4. My posterous account
5. My other blog
6. Twitterfeed
8. My twitter account

Throughout the two days at Blogout!, I posted photos live from the event to my other blog. I took photos with my mobile phone, attached the photo and sent an email to my posterous account where it auto post my update to my blogspot blog. With twitterfeed and the power of #tags, followers online during those two days were able to read updates on their tweets with photos accompanying what was happening during that time. This also resulted in an increase in the views over at my unknown and totally random blog (as seen on the graph on the right).

Example: I wanted to share the prizes we were giving away on Day 1 of blogout, so I took photos of the prizes and sent an email to posterous. It got posted to my other blog and got feed to my other twitter. And because I included the #tags in my email subject (aka the post title), followers of Blogout! on day 1 were able to see the post too if they’re following #blogout09 on the various #tag-following websites.

Its simple isn’t it? For me, I find Posterous useful and fits my needs. Till I discover another tool more powerful and easier than Posterous, I will stick to it. If you want to learn more about Posterous, I did share about it before in this post.

If you’re still unsure of the process of my method of live blogging and broadcasting, let me illustrate the process for you. This is what I always do…

Sometimes, instead of posting to my blogspot blog through posterous, I post direct to my flickr account too. If you’re asking why I choose to post at different places, well, I also don’t know the answer wor. When I feel that its necessary or good to share with my twitter followers, I’ll post on my blogspot (which I’d linked to my twitterfeed), and when I want to use different sizes of a photo I took, I’ll post it to flickr.

Now that you know how it can be done, are you going to try it out yourself? If you are keen to be part of a live blogging/ tweeting/ broadcasting team too, you can sign up at http://tr.im/hpnB or follow @sgtweet for updates.

Here are the updated slides which I shared during Blogout! 2009 last Saturday at 8Q SAM.

The last two weeks passed by in a flash, and I could hardly remember what happened during the last two days at Blogout! 2009. My mind is filled with more emotion than knowledge, which shouldn’t happen since Blogout09 was a learning session. Perhaps its the time, energy and effort put into the event and the adrenaline rush over the two days that was too overpowering for my weakening heart and mind.

Two days before Christmas last year, I met up with a few guys (officially) for the first time. I was told about their plans for Blogout 09, an event too close to my passion to miss, and that’s when I started my first project with The Digital Movement (TDM).

It took us 2 months of countless emails, gtalking and late night meetings to put the show together. The experience with TDM had been a love-hate journey. But I’ve to thank Howie, President of TDM, to give me the opportunity to be part of the team.

Apart from the love-hate journey with the organising team, the planning process was an adventure on its own. When we started putting together the list of speakers we hope to invite for Blogout09, I was tasked to handle the contacting and putting together of the event’s program. My first for such an event in term of scale and format. Indeed quite a challenge. But with support and discussion with the team, we decided on it, and I started the exciting part, getting in touch with Yongfook and Joel Postman. Both experts in their areas and interests. One whom I’d been a fan for sometimes now, and now I’ve converted him as my inspiration. (Yah! I want to be as hot as him!) So you can imagine the excitement in me when I dropped him that first invitation email to fly to Singapore! Let’s keep the crazy fan talk for another post. Moving on to Blogout09…

When Blogout09 day finally arrived, the 48 hours that followed was like living in a roller coaster ride. Seeing the many new faces on the two days makes me very happy. This means we’re not only living in a world made up of the same few people which we see at almost any other blogging/ social media related events. This means that there are many out there who are as interested and wanting to learn more about the mystery and science behind this new generation of media. This means that there’s good hope for the future of social media and blogging or whatever we should call it in years to come. Just visualizing this makes me a very happy person.

So why did I say that it ended with a mixed of emotions? Well, at the end of the two days, I was happy cause most of those who came were happy, I was sad because it was over, I was excited cause of the many possibilities waiting ahead, I was smitten-ed, I was hopeful for what’s to come with TDM, I was angry as some things could have been better carried out, I was tired due to lack of sleep, I was kinda lost too! Anyway, these feelings will be sorted out soon.

Much have been discussed and brought up during the two days. Some can be found on twitter at #blogout09. Hoping to continue the discussions too from the two days, a discussion board has been set up in facebook. Let’s see if the offline conversations at Blogout09 can be brought online and carrying it on till the next meetup.

I’m going to be spending more time over the next couple of days (or even weeks) to reflect and think about the points I’d noted. Don’t want to clutter everything under a single post. Else this post might only go live two weeks after Blogout!

While I carry on pondering about the things I learned from this experience, here are some photos from Day 1…

The amazing audience and friends

The new way of photocopying

Yongfook goofing while camwhoring

Yongfook, me and Joel

More mobile uploaded photos can be found here for Day 1 and Day 2 and the rest on flickr. I’m sure there’ll be more photos to come as the other photographers share them.

As I was going through my twitter page updating myself with what people worldwide are talking and sharing, I chanced upon this twit…

I was interested to find out how HP increases its laptop sales by 85% using bloggers.

And from there, I clicked myself towards HP latest campaigns where they’re giving out USD6,000 worth of products via 50 blogs. Talking about mass social media marketing campaign!

From the previous campaign, quoted from Janet Meiners…
The result was that the first five pages of Google results for searches on HP and HP Dragon were blog posts about the contest. According to HP they had over 380,000 links to the 31 sites discussing the contest. Bloggers got over 25,000 contest entries and an average 150% increase in traffic. Here’s the kicker though – almost 85% increase in sales of a computer that was released nine months ago!

I recall a brand doing similar concept campaign here in Singapore where LCD TVs were given out as prizes on several blogs. I wonder if they got the same kind of effect as the HP campaign. Anyone has a case study to share?

This is one of the reasons why I prefer twitter than plurk. Twitter helps me build knowledge, plurk doesn’t. I would love Twitter even deeper if it stops hanging itself so often.