Are you adventurous enough?

Singapore Management University's Micheal Netzley was at Menara Star today to talk about
Adventures with Social Media – Lessons from Asia’s Internet.

Netzley's presentation was further proof that social media is not just a leisure activity. It is now the new media which can be used to disseminate news and market your product and services instantly. It is something to be strongly considered as a networking tool by PR agencies as means to address challenges.

He shared some case studies which showed why Facebook, Twitter and blogs should now be considered an important tool in the marketer's toolkit.

One example is the growth and success of KFC Australia Facebook campaign for Cayan Grill in June 2009.

In 48 hours KFC enlisted more than 17,500 fans to its Facebook page, which was launched on 13 June. Now they have 86 174 fans and growing.

To drive participation in the Cayan O’Clock events KFC placed advertisements specifically targeting 18 – 24 year old Facebook users who live in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane - and directed them to the fan page.

"If Facebook has more the 2 million people on it wouldn’t you want to market your product there," Netzley said. In a nutshell, he asks marketers to tap into what channel works best for your part of the globe.

"Take the best from the West but make sure you adapt to the rest," he said.

His other examples were Lenovo’s marketing strategy which answered the question – How do you position Lenovo as solution provider? And how do you keep people engaged?

The answer – "Voices of the Olympic Games 2008" campaign where 100 athletes from 25 different countries blogged to share their experience with the world. Check out the video:



Over the course of the Games, Lenovo’s Athlete Bloggers published more than 1,500 posts and received over 8,000 comments from fans around the world. “Voices” was a huge success and demonstrated the value of amplifying Olympic athletes’ real, unfiltered voices.

From here we can see the full networking power of social media to create a network or your own community, social media. Another example, when there was the 5th H1N1 case in Singapore, Netzley was shocked that it was someone from his campus. He had received the SMS at about noon while Google search had the news in the evening BUT it was Twitter which had spread the message as early as 9.30am!

And that is how you too can get the otherwise would-not-have-known news.

“If you wait for the paper, you will be the last to know,” he said However, he disagrees that traditional media is becoming irrelevant though the trend is definitely changing.

To emphasis the impact of social media, Netzley talked about his Twitter friend that he added sometime ago. Siok Siok is a filmmaker based in Singapore, and she promotes her movies using Twitter. Her recent work is called Twittamentary – a documentary where Twitter determines what goes in the documentary. How? She uses Twitter as a crowd-sourcing tool.

Excerpt from her website: What is the project about?
Siok Siok’s new film,”Twittamentary” looks at how lives connect and intersect within the Twitter community. Her new film is to be created in the open spirit of the Web. Twitter users will be invited to contribute story ideas, rich media and videos to the film. When the film is completed, it will be shared online with the Twitter community and the world at large under a Creative Commons license.

And finally I leave you with this video.

The world is changing - The funniest videos are a click away