Find out more about them here. Will talk about my time and experience with them in another post.

Their hard work is being mentioned on today’s Straits Time! Congrats NDPeeps!

Very first thing that you’ll see is the three new links on the homepage…

Ignore all the mess and noise from the public feed and start following your friends’ feed now! Love this feature!

This is who I have on my friends and ignores list now…

but the friends list is sure going to grow soon!

And just to add, once a user is on your friends’ list, all their blogs will appear. So you don’t need to favorite all their blogs. And!!! Once a user is on your ignore list, all their blogs will be ignored! And they’ll not appear on your public timeline too! This is fabulous!

If you’re on Ping.sg, check out your profile page too!

And!! Every blogger wants to learn about their statistics! Don’t lie! Even when you said you’re not, deep down you know you are! :P So this new feature is going to be lovely…

Your monthly Ping statistics!

These are the features I’ve spotted so far, perhaps I missed out some… and I’m sure there will have! So go discover it yourself ya! Tell me what I’ve missed and I’ll add them in!

Updates
Private Pong is now possible!

Great work U-zyn! Keep on coding and bring back THE space for bloggers soon!

A group of bloggers whom I meet often at gatherings and events, most of us have our own personal namecards. Usually there will be our name (of course!), our email, our blog url and some customised stuff that is much like the real person themselves. Such as photos, illustrations, tags, designs and stuff. Some of us also have our contact numbers on the cards.

Some of the many namecards I’d collected from Bloggers

But why should we, bloggers, get a namecard? We’re just a bunch of people who likes to write on our blog and people around started calling us bloggers. Bloggers need namecard for what??

Personally I’d owned many versions and types of namecards over the past couple of years. Each served a different purpose. But when I started taking a more serious passion for my blog, I decided I needed one that I can give to my friends and people I may meet so they can find me online or for them to remember that they’d met me after our meeting.

Of course there’s always the search engines, blog aggregators and what not, but having a namecard that you can give or exchange with someone makes things more… hmm… what word should I use to describe it? More professional or more personal? Or perhaps, more real? Business people are always represented with their own company namecards isn’t it? I’m not saying that you’ve to be a professional or full-time blogger before you can have your own namecards. It’s just nice to have a card that you can give out when you meet someone new isn’t it?

Questions to ask before you get those cards printed
(1) Will I ever be making use of these cards?
(2) Who are the people whom will be getting these cards?
(3) What do I want to tell them about me and my blog through this card?
(4) Do I want to remain anonymous or do I want to start giving a face to the blog(s) I write on?

If you are able to answer the above questions pretty easily, than you should start thinking of a design and get those cards printed soon.

10 reasons why you should/ you want to have a personal (blogger) namecard
(1) You want to start revealing yourself and your blog.
(2) You want to create credibility to the things you blog about.
(3) You want to create an identity or a ‘branding’ for yourself.
(4) You want to represent yourself instead of your company during networking events or gatherings.
(5) You are starting to receive invitation to events/ functions where you’ll meet people but you do not have any namecards to exchange when you meet them.
(6) You want to start forming relationship with fellow bloggers, new friends, partners or potential sponsors or even future employer.
(7) You are spending too much time blogging, plurking, facebooking and whatever -ing online. It’s time you get out and start meeting people in real life!
(8) You are interested, learning, sharing and participating in social media or anything social online.
(9) You’ve attended couple of networking/ social events and by the end of the day, you’ve forgotten some of the people you’d met but didn’t get a card from. (This happened to me couple of times. I always try to exchange cards with someone new at an event so that I will remember them after the event. Guess I’m getting old and memory is failing me.)
(10) You just feel like having something that spells You to give away.

And finally, you’ll never know who you might bump into at the next gathering or social event. So always be sure to have some cards on you for an exchange!

Some other bloggers who blogged about their namecards too… nadnut, jayden, krisandro and rinaz.

If you’re new to SMB|SG and is scratching your head wondering if you should join us, don’t have to scratch anymore! Just come! Everyone is very friendly and most of us are crazy people too! We talked about almost everything and anything under the sun! Yes! Not just on Social Media, New Media or any other media. And please don’t expect an invitation from us k! Cause there’s none! Just come! EVERYONE is welcome!

Please also note that we’ll be starting to collect a nominal fee at registration from SMB4 onwards. You are free to drop in any amount of money you think its worth giving for a SMB session. Suggesting about $2/pax. We will be keeping an open ledger on SMB|SG website to show where these money are used and all money collected goes to the organising of SMB sessions. Such as catering of food, buying of stationery, rental for venue, covering the cost of any necessary materials needed for SMB sessions. We hope you will give generously but within your means of course.

Details of SMB4 here! See you on Saturday!

I’m going to split this post up into sections as logical as possible…
1. Planning an online blogging related contest.
2. Marketing these contest.
3. Executing and monitoring these contest.
4. Initial objectives Vs the final end product at end of contest.

Planning an online blogging related contest

I’m referring to contests that are targeting the bloggers and readers of blogs. Be it a contest that requires people to write post on blogs, post comments on blogs, emailing the bloggers to take part or any form of engagement that uses blog/blogging as a tool for the contest.

For most of the people out there, these contest seem the easiest to plan and execute. But in actual fact, there are many things to consider too before announcing of such contest. Just to list a few common points to consider…

>> The type of quality and quantity of responses one is going to get for a contest like this.
>> How will the responses affect the branding and status of your company?
>> The bait (prizes) to attract more participants.
>> What if someone out there write bad things about the company or the contest?
>> What will the reactions of bloggers and readers going to be for the contest?
>> Steps to take to counter any possible problems or situations.
>> Will the end product for the contest be what was initially planned for?

There are many more things to think through during the planning of such contests. Especially the target audiences are free to voice their thoughts and opinions freely on their blog. And with it being openly available for anyone to search about such cases, it takes some courage for a brand to embark on the campaign. Especially if the company/brand is big and established. Unlike the traditional media where it used to be a one-way conversation from the publication to the audience, the new media now allows multi-directional conversation! One person blogs, 100 people reads, 15 people comments, 3 people pick up the story and reblog on their blog and another 300 people reads, 45 people comments… and the conversation may just get out of control! Imagine the damage control the PR folks has to manage!

So when you’re planning for a contest like this, it’s very important to have all the terms and conditions laid out as detail as possible and has to cover all angles that may take place. The planner has to be able to view the contests from the bloggers, readers and company’s point of view.

When you think you’ve got everything covered, someone, somehow will still be able to find a tinniest cut to dig out the unexpected sides of things. When that happen, be prepared to fight the fire!

Back to content

Marketing contests to target audience

With so many tools available for free online, departments will try to save on the marketing budget and try to get the contest out to as many people as possible through all these channels. But one big problem is that not everyone online are using these channels on a regular basis. Hence you’ve to either apply all to the campaign or you select those with the largest reach and stick to it.

Some of the channels commonly used:
>> Facebook groups – inviting their friends to the group and hoping for friends to invite more friends to create awareness. But often after awhile, the group become a spamming arena for members. The group lacks update and the team didn’t make full use of it. Facebook group also needs constant monitoring and one can use it as a marketing tool especially when you can send message to everyone in the group. But please do it moderately. Spamming too many messages out will just pissed members away and they’ll quit the group.

>> Facebook pages – these a little trickier as you aren’t able to invite friends to become a fan of the page. Hence you need to promote it on facebook groups or messaging personal friends to inform them about it. But everytime there’s an update on your page, fans get notified about them. This feature not applicable to the FB groups. And on FB pages, there’re also more things that you can do, like running a paid ad on facebook to promote the page, adding RSS of the official blog and adding applications to enhance the users experience and discussions.

>> Blogs and microblogs – You can either start a blog and use that to spread the words out or your engage bloggers to help talk about the contest on their blog. There’s also microblogging tools such as twitter and plurk where you can publicize the contest. But these channels take more time and effort as you’ve to first build your readership and followers of your blogs or updates. And in order to get bloggers to blog about the contest for you, you either have to be super good friend with them, or you set aside some budget to pay them as an advertorial post. Or entice them with fantastic prizes that make them want to blog about it for the contest.

And if there’s budget, one can always publicize the contest in the papers, on Tv and radio etc. Or go the online way, buy banner ads on high traffic sites, run ads on blogs and forums etc. But seriously, how many readers pay attention to ads these days? So why waste the money?

No matter which channel you use, there’ll be pros and cons. Especially with the new media tools, the team has to manage the campaign every minute and take action almost immediately should anything goes wrong. And this is a very tedious task. Imagine the number of hours spent checking and replying emails, reading blogs, twits and plurks and monitoring activities on facebook and forums!

Like in my case, I try to be online with all the sites I’m monitoring open in many many tabs in multiple browsers. And when I’ve to be afk, my mind will keep thinking about the things that might be happening while I’m gone. I constantly want to check back the sites and emails. It’s disturbing but I just can’t help it. If I can be online and watching them 24-7, I would! LOL!

So don’t just think about which channel you want to use for marketing, but do take note of the monitoring and usability of these tools too. Don’t use it because your competitor is using it.

Back to content

Executing and monitoring online contests

I remember long long ago I used to cut out coupons and forms from magazines to send out for contests. There wasn’t any website to visit or blogs to comments on then. There’s not as much monitoring needed at the agency side who’s running the contest. Its pretty direct and straight forward. And almost 99% of the forms and contest you take part, you’ll either forgot about it or don’t know the ends of it. Although I’m always interested to know who won that condo or car or that 40″ LCD Tv at the lucky draws. But how many of us really bother to look out for the results? If we don’t hear from them means we didn’t win. Simple.

But things has changed. With blogs, forums, plurk, emails and IM, anyone can just do a quick search online for contest results and details of winners etc! This make having a contest online rather intimidating. If there’s a lack of monitoring and something goes wrong during execution, someone somewhere just have to mention about it anywhere online, and soon tens and thousands of people might get to hear about it. Imagine the damage that might already have caused to your brand if its not handled in time!

For online contests involving bloggers and their blogs, I suggest you have someone to monitor it 24-7 and to react to any situation immediately when it happens.

And the scariest thing is, for the world online, there’s no rules. And ANYTHING can happen. Even right from the second you announced the contest online to the very last second of the end of it. Even some to the extend of months/years after the contest, someone may still dig it up to discuss. Headache right?

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Initial objectives Vs the final end product of the contest

What is the objective of your contest? Do you want the bloggers to find out more about your products and share their thoughts and feedback with you so that you can improve? Or do you want them to help you spread the words out for the product so more people can find you when they search or read blogs?

The objective of a contest or bloggers outreach campaign is very important. It’ll determine the direction of the campaign. But no matter what you plan, you still won’t have full control of what might happen during the execution. And often the end product might not be what you’d wanted. It may be better or worst. So is your brand ready for this? Many friends shared that this is the uncertainty that’s blocking their brand from taking the step to engage New Media.

In my opinion, if there’s a right team of people who’s dedicated to execute and monitor the campaign, there outcome of it could be pretty powerful and good. But if you’re going to leave the campaign to some agency or your team is not going to get their hands into the dirty work, than perhaps you’re not ready for it yet.

And do you know what is the scariest thing that may happen? Nobody takes part in the contest! Or the number of participants is too little to justify the cost of the campaign. When that happens, what will you do?

Back to content

Claud’s Disclaimer

I am a very hands-on and practical person, and is not good with expressing my thoughts cohesively at times. I try hard to make sense of my own thoughts and writing on my blog, but if some points doesn’t make sense, please pardon me. I wish I can write beautiful posts like many of you out there, but my english and writing skill is limited. I hope my sharing has not confused you more.

The above thoughts are all personal and does not reflect any comments or thoughts for any party I am or may be working for. If you disagree or have other thoughts on my above post, please feel free to contact me or leave a comment here.

Thank you for your time spent reading my thoughts. Hope it had been useful for you.

First my take on the differences of a media event and a blogger only event…

{-} A media event is held during office hours, as journalists are there as part of their job. Hence not every blogger is able to attend such media event unless they take leave to go. But a blogger only event is usually held after office hours as bloggers mostly have to work or attend classes in the day.

{-} Journalists attending media events come and go on the dot because they’re on official working hours. While the bloggers, whom have slightly more time, usually hang around a little more to check out the launched products or to interact with the people around. This is also the best time for companies and PR folks to get to know the bloggers better. Cause we run our own “magazines”! And we write whatever we want to write about your product, company or event! (More on this later…)

At blogger only events, usually it’ll overrun and ends too late. Why? Hmm… cause there’s too much to talk about! Be it the product or social media stuff!

{-} Media event usually attended by big group of people and the interaction is somehow restricted. Bloggers event are for smaller group of people and hence better bonding and interaction is easier between people.

{-} A media event is more “serious” and sometimes “boring” as compared to a blogger only event. (Ok! I know I’m going to be killed or blacklisted from future media events but I still have to say this.) Firstly because the companies want to feed as much information to the journalists as possible during that short few hours. There is also this feel of “unhappiness” from the journalists when bloggers are around. Yes! I do feel it. And I’m sure some other bloggers felt it too. Perhaps due to the “noise” created by bloggers at the event or the non-stop camwhoring that irritated the journalists who are there for serious work.

At a blogger only event, usually everyone there already have met before or are friends. Hence the atmosphere is less stressful and friendly. The companies take a more casual approach and the setting usually informal. Bloggers can make all the noise they need without having to worry about stares. When I said noise, it’s not unrelated kind of noise. Its the “Ooohs!” and “Ahhhs!” and the “I want this!!” “I like this!!” kind of noise. Yes, bloggers do get excited easily! We’re humans who simply adore new gadgets and toys!

I’ve learned how to behave and what to do and what not to do at both types of events. Have you?

I’m very honored and happy to be invited to these events. I can’t remember how I got started receiving these invitations. (I think this was the first I attended.) But the numbers seem to be increasing – good and bad. I don’t know if I’m right at the bottom of their contact list and get invited only when those above me couldn’t make it, or am I one of the few that they send invitation to only. Whichever it is, its good that I get to preview first hand the latest gadgets (my favorite toys!) by the various brands. Its also good cause it helps provide me with content to blog about. Especially when the product is something close to the blogger’s heart. If the blogger is interested in photography, attending camera launches help expand his/her knowledge of the various features and also allow him/her to make better recommendations when asked which camera to purchase by his/her followers in his/her micro-community.

The bad comes when you’ve attended too many in a week and is lacking behind the blog posts. Yes, we’re not obligated to blog about it. But when we do blog about it, we decide which aspect of the event we want to write about. As Van Tan mentioned, we do not want to be a photocopier by duplicating the press releases on our blog. If the product has nothing that fascinated me, I’ll probably not blog about it or talk more about the event itself than the product that was launched. But is this what the company wants? I guess they’re also still confused as to how they should approach the bloggers at such events. Many are afraid that they might say the wrong thing and get quoted on our blogs.

The other bad is when you see so many new toys, you want to own all of them! If only we had all the money in the world! But it does make decision making for future purchase a little harder. A way to overcome this is to try get a review set of the product to try it out for awhile and than eliminate the ones that failed to meet your needs. Having a review set also makes your blogging more tedious as you’ve to review the product in greater aspects! This can be very time consuming!

In order to have more time to do this for my personal passion and interests, I had to switched my full-time job so that I can attend media events and have more time reviewing the gadgets given/loaned to me! Crazy I know! But I just enjoy doing it! I wonder if this make me a “professional blogger”? Now to find a way to earn some money from it. Anyone wants to sponsor me?

If you are trying to reach out to bloggers in your next media launch, here are some feedbacks and suggestions based on my personal experiences, expectations and thoughts.

{+} Getting in touch with me
I don’t mind receiving the same email you send out to everyone on your contact list if I’ve worked with your or your company before. If you’re getting in touch with me for the first time, please tell me a little more about your company and why you think I should attend your event. Unless the product you’re launching is a camera, new mobile phone or the latest invention that everyone should have!

And very importantly, give me sufficient time to respond to your invitation! At least 1 week in advance is good.

{+} Let me play with your toys
As mentioned, I don’t want to retyped your press release on my blog. I want to be able to share my personal experience with the gadget with my readers. I want to show them what your product can do. I want to be able to write an entry like this or this and this on a product that I like. So let me play with that gadget and give me time to experience it. Having the gadgets on display for trial at the event itself is not enough. I need more time.

{+} Talk to me
The last thing I want to do at an event is to enter the room and not know a single person in the room. And no one seem to be interested in talking to me. Then told to sit and listen.

I want to be able to interact with the people marketing the products. Don’t just tell me how good your product is, I’m not there to buy it. Instead, tell me how you plan to market it. Who are your target audience. Why I should give that product a second look. I want to be able to share my thoughts with the product manager so that he/she will get direct feedback from their users (me!). If I were to just sit and listen and then leave, I might as well stay at home, wait for HWZ or other sites to announce your product and read from there instead.

{+} Get connected
This I’ve to say some of the PR folks are doing a very very good job. They connect thought MSN, facebook, plurk and read my blog! They don’t need you to send an email to them when you blog about their product. They know it when you do! Cause they subscribe to your RSS or they spend time reading and searching for their brands on your blog.

When you’re connected, you’ll come to realise that I’m not just into cameras and mobile phones. But I do visit interesting places, likes art and craft, into good movies, loves beauty treats, likes taking photos of toys and enjoys traveling too.

{+} Don’t expect me to just write about your product and ignore the other brands
As I’d mentioned above, I see my blog as my own “publication” or magazine. I am the editor, the writer, the photographer, the designer and the publisher. I write about things I want to write or things that I think my readers want to read. And I know what topics will drive more traffic to my site from search engines (thanks to google analytics and statcounter). Although I may not have the 100k/day kind of traffic, but at least my reviews and posts are read by those who are searching for related topics.

Since it is my own magazine, I want to be as neutral as possible in my reviews and posts. So don’t expect me to only blog about the good things and not the bad. And don’t expect me to only blog about your brand and not your competitors’. If you want to get more attention on my blog, why not sponsor it with a banner ad or request for your post to be on the featured story for a longer period of time?

After an hour of rumbling in this post, I hope I’ve not written incoherently. I’ve to admit I’m not a good writer. I find it hard to write my thoughts and reflections in words too many times. If only there’s a device for me to record my thinking than it arranges and translate it into coherent paragraphs out for me! If there’s ever such creation, contact me! I’ll review it!

Its sleek, sexy, cool, slim, beautiful and intelligent! She’s a beauty in her own league. And she simply loves to be touched. You can be gentle with it, and yet she can take it if you’re rough too. Come, let’s touch her together with me…

HP had an exclusive preview of their latest product HP TouchSmart IQ500 to a group of famous and popular Singapore bloggers on Tuesday, 24 June 2008.

We got the first hand experience with the second generation of HP TouchSmart PCs. First look at it and wow! Loving it. But it’s not quite my type of PC, but still loving it if I can have one at home. This beauty is more suitable for family use and entertainment purposes. Suitable for the very young, and the very young at heart, to the grandmas and grandpas.

Will do a more detail review when I’ve the time, but for now, here’s a quick look at what happened at the event and who was touching what!

Thanks to the lovely people at Waggener Edstrom and HP for hosting this wonderful event. And thanks Daryl for the invitation! The event was great! People from Waggener and HP were very friendly and smiley! Looking forward to future events.

For official press release please click here.

(Wonder what’s going to be announced next week! Hmmm…)

UPDATED
Check out HP TouchSmart Singapore Blog for updates and links to all bloggers who attended the event.

I’d wanted to leave this as a comment in his blog, but felt more appropriate posting it since it seems more like a thought than a comment. Hmm… anyway, my immediate thoughts that came to mind…

Am I the face for Yebber already?
Am I suitable to be the one in the front line of such organisation?
So what if I leave Yebber one day?
Would the community that I’ve build leave too?
Would the community change or even disappear?
So if the community moves together with the Community Manager/the blogger behind the organisation’s blog, does that mean that they’re the important element that cannot be taken lightly for?

Will elaborate on the points and thoughts later tonight or tomorrow.

While typing this post, I’ve also started a group in facebook! Talk about multi-tasking! (Yes! We GEN-Y people are great multi-taskers! Ha!) So if you’re a CM of any businesses or organisations too, why not join the group? Or tell your friends if you know any in the same line. :)

Also going to consolidate some links for reference. If you know of any interesting reads, share with me too ya. :)

• Benefits of Having a Community Manager by Connie Bensen
• On Managing A Community by Chris Brogan
• Community: From Little Things, Big Things Grow by George Oates

They’re running a contests to giveaway 2 tickets to champagne brunch this Sunday in line with the World Gourmet Summit. Each ticket is worth $188. Participants are supposed to answer a giveaway question in their forum and post their full name and contact number so that the organisers can contact them should they be the lucky winner.

More than 110 people submitted their answers and particulars in the forum so far. Some who were more alert left out their particulars and just posted their answers. But would they be forfeited from the contests as they weren’t following the instructions? One also posted “Are we to disclose our private mobile phone number to the public?”

This contests thou tempting to many but is it worth exposing your name and contact number in public like that? Telemarketers or anyone can simply copy the entire calling list and use it for their purpose.

What the organisers could have done to prevent this from happening? Simply hide the entire forum to public and allow only postings. Or they could have just sent the winners a private message through the forum right?

If you’re reading this and going to submit your particulars for the contest, please think twice.

Updated

Wow! I’m amazed! Did they find out their mistake before or after I posted my entry? Now all the last 4-digits of the mobile number is censored.