Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Below the Fold - Episode 1
Below the Fold is a talk show that Jeanne and I have been wanting to do for a while. We talk about a lot of things, marketing, expat life, challenges of living and working in India, management, and raising puppies. Not necessarily in any order. This was the pilot episode. Hope you enjoy it. Write in the comments below to suggest us topics or give us questions!
Sunday, October 24, 2010
How to Trick Your Dogs to Like Your Guests
Best trick, if you have dogs that don't like strangers, give your guest(s) doggie treats and have them give it to the dogs. Works like a charm. It's like, "Oh, you give me treats, you must be a friend, I won't bark and growl at you, we're cool. Now, can you give me more treats?"
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Rebranding Burma
If you're aware of the situation, you know that Burma is no longer Burma. It's called Myanmar now.
Yangon (formerly Rangoon) is no longer the capital. Nayphyidaw is.And this morning I learned that we have a new ugly flag:
No longer the red, white, and blue flag that I grew up with and am proud of:
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Walking Talking Positive Brand Image
How do you know if your team members or employees are walking and talking your brand image? In this highly networked, fast pace online world, the conduct of your employees can either help or destroy your company's brand image. It is assumed that we are all professionals, adults, and that our conduct does not need to be checked by HR or our superiors all the time, but what if things get out of hand?
I recently experienced such stark difference of two groups of employees and their conduct on a trip to Yangon. My favorite form of travel is with airplanes. On this trip, my friend happened to book me on my favorite airline -- Thai Airways. It's my favorite airline because my first childhood memory happened to be on a Thai Airways flight. I always thought of air travel as the best, most stylish way to get somewhere. It's like being in a posh moving restaurant with fancy waiters. On the way back to India to join my new marketing job, I thought of how being part of an airline is like being part of a big global brand. A brand image is upheld by people working across the world, people who are on the ground, in the kitchens, and are flying the airplanes.
This year, Thai Airways is celebrating their 50th year in service. As a result, they've been re-branding everything from uniforms, colorways, to their logo. I as a passenger felt the new vigor passed on by their air hosts and hostesses. They still have that royal "silk as smooth" touch that the old Thai Airways had but the people are still young, young-at-heart, and enthusiastic. I saw senior members of teams leading and showing the way for the newer members. I saw impeccable service that upheld that great brand image.
So it was with this image in mind that I boarded TG 315 to New Delhi. Little did I know that the positive marketing thoughts I was having was about to be destroyed as soon as the plane took off. Stay tuned for that story in my next post.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Measuring Results in Social Media
Online marketing is a bit different from other forms of traditional marketing because of analytics. The fun part is launching your campaign and watching what happens instantly. Within online marketing, email marketing is probably one of the most matured fields where parameters defined already. Deliverables are well defined, industry standards are pretty clear. And if you don't follow the rules, consequences are pretty clear, too.
Social media marketing on the other hand is still a new field. People are still trying to figure out what works and what really doesn't. Social media analytics not very clear yet but numbers matter a great deal. There are the easy ones that you can measure like retweets, forwards, mentions etc. Social rules which are generally "nice things to do" for someone which are easy to figure out but the technology still has to be perfected for tracking.
Just because social media is the new kid on the block doesn't mean old school ways of online marketing doesn't matter anymore either. SEO is still important, you should still take a look at unique visitors and click through rates, time spent on site etc. You need to get these things right because they are the foundation of your whole online marketing strategy. The tools for measuring your SMM campaign are out there but some things are still experimental, not defined like email marketing. Personally, I like GetClicky.com a lot -- it also integrates nicely with Wordpress. Trendrr is pretty cool and is worth a look. And I really like the stats that SocialMention gives out -- it's fantastic for monitoring reputation in the social media sphere.
I've been disappointed a bit with Google though. They just launched analytics for email marketing, which is integrated, but I have a sneaky feeling that it's still a bit experimental. I'm sure they're still developing social media analytics but who knows when they'd launch it. Analytics need to be in one complete package instead of having people run around looking at three or four different sites, tools and software. It's too time consuming, the main job for a social media strategist is to be able to analyse the numbers.
And of course, if you have funds, you should check out Omniture and Web Trends -- the two grand daddies of web analytics. Both of them have integrated their analytics software with real time social media tracking. But it will cost you a pretty penny. What are your favorite social monitoring tools? Which ones would you recommend?
