Singapore’s Social Media Landscape

Singspore is one of the most advanced digital markets in Asia Pacific and Singporeans are so much interested in exploring new gadgets and staying abreast of the latest technologies. The country is a perfect location for local and overseas digital marketers to develop their digital marketing strategies, for both local and nearby markets. The combination of high broadband penetration, heavy online engagement and the overall tech savvy of Internet users in Singapore make it an ideal market for the adoption of valuable existing and emerging digital technologies, including search, social media and online video. The growing opportunities in digital market, especially in social media, are clearly shown in recent findings about new media consumption of comapies and citizens on this island

Business Consumption

Last fall, the government invited proposals to shape new media landscape by encouraging established industry players to collaborate, and tap the burgeoning sectors of online publishing and virtual worlds. Companies in Singapore are also gearing up fo the future of media in a rapidly-transforming media landscape to exploit the opportunities in initiatives that seed the development and delivery of next-generation consumer applications, services and experiences. In order to move into markets faster than the competition, companies are embracing new technologies for innovation and growth, rather than to reap cost savings, to help people do their job more positive, efficient and productive.

According to a recent finding by Avanade, it was found that Singapore companies are in high demand of digital marketing solutions, especially in social media, illustrated by:

• Singapore businesses turned to social networks over three times more than their global counterparts as a source of general business news and information.
• One in five Singapore companies already have in place a fully implemented strategy for integrating social media technologies in the workplace, almost three times higher than the world average proportion
• More than half of organisations, which haven’t had a social media strategy, expressed an interest to explore its use to enhance business outcomes.
• Three in five Singapore firm see embracing social networking as a crucial factor in attracting top talent.

Individual Consumption

According to ComScore, a leader in measuring the digital world, more than 2.5 million people in Singapore age 15 and older accessed the Internet from home and work locations. Online communication, entertainment, and social networking are topping the list of how users were most likely to spend their time. Sinapore netizens spends more than half of their online time for Social and Entertainment Sites, in which: 

• 24 percent online time for instant messaging, capturing the largest 
• 14 percent for entertainment sites (e.g.: Youtube, MediaCorp)
• 8 percent for social networking
• 6 percent for Web-based email

According to Alexa.com, Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Facebook and YouTube are the most visited sites in Singpore. Search engines are still in top listings. However, social networking sites, aside from YouTube and Facebook, also made an impressive appearance in the ranking with Blogger, Twitter, Wordpress listed in the top ten. Online video is an integral part of consumers with more than 80 percenr of Singapore’s Internet population viewed video online, displaying the strongest online video engagement among young people. 

The Internet filtering in Singapore is found to be minimal in comparison with nearby countries like Vietnam or China. However, Singapore netizens are generally critical in nature. Netizens might welcome business marketing or communication efforts via social media, especially for early adopters. The increase of celebrity bloggers and specialised bloggers offer opportunities for business to use celebs as representatives or to focus on niche target audience.

From all the findings, it is found that a large percentage of Singapore online users are heavy consumers of social media, even those above 30 or older are trying to catch up with young people on social platforms. Therefore, social media is surely a recommended investing area in companies' marketing strategy in order to enhance online performance and reach more audience effectively. If you are not engaging in this area now, you may lose the advantage to your competitors soon.

From all the considered aspects, it is undeniable that the digital market in general, and social media in particular, is growing at a rapid pace in Singapore and Singapore companies can leverage the opportunity in this emerging sub-sector to be part of the value chain. The digital “pie” is currently so delicous and everyone want to get the share, thus, the competition between not only companies but digital solution providers becomes harder than ever. It requires organizations to have a smarter strategy, focusing more on the “depth” and the “inside” of the online/digital media nature itself to fit the organization’s objective than only chasing to the glamorous “outside” or simply  following common pratices.

(Sources: ComScore, Avanade, Alexa, MDA)

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Tips for Building Your Online Personal Brand: SEO on Social Networks

Nowadays, online reputation management has become a very important aspect of winning projects, getting more clients or being recruited. To investigate one person, the first common place people will mostly pass by is Google. Then it would be useful if you can control as many of the top listings about yourself as possible. These listings should be ideally the professional profile, company pages, media mentions or similarities. To do that, a good SEO strategy will definitely help to optimize your “brand” in a positive way and to help ensure the ranking as highly as possible in search engines

By starting the SEO strategy from identifying your strengths and capitalizing on them, people can get their online personal brand highlighted by utilizing every media available to spread the word about the “brand”. Nowadays, small businesses and individuals can expand its horizons drastically and effectively by taking advantage of social social media networking websites, which are mostly free of charge, such as YouTube, Twitter, Blogger, Flikr, My Space and Facebook. Here is an illustration on which and how popular social networking sites can contribute to your personal branding strategy:

Keeping that in mind, it is agreed that social networking sites, are valuable resources and tools for online brand building at an extremely low cost. Nevertheless, the issue is how to take advantage of their power to benefit your brand. Here are the tips:

• Blogging and Guest Blogging

A blog is an excellent way to generate positive personal content that will turn up in searches. A professional and trusted blog can strengthen your company, attract customers, build reputation within an industry and, through your profile page, show who you are. If hundreds or even thousands of people are subscribing to read your content and expert opinions, then this is clearly something you want searchers to find when they come looking for you online.

However, having your personal blog may not be enough, even if you update the content regularly and keep it fresh. Posting additional articles on similar and related websites can be even more beneficial. You can reach a wider audience and enhance your online reputation.

• Twitter

Based on similar concepts to blogging, Twitter is also a great way to improve your SEO. By following relevant users and providing valuable tweets, your trusted profile page will be highly regarded in the search engines. If potential clients are looking for more information about you, then a Twitter profile containing expert advice and related conversations is going to help strengthen your reputation in the eyes of the searcher.

• Linkedin

It has become popular and effective to build your personal brand on business social media networking sites such as Linkedin and Plaxo, where people can show a professional profile containing career history, skills and networks of employers, colleages and industry professionals. From being largely used to reconnect with past co-workers and trusted colleagues in the past, LinkedIn now has extended its capabilities to serve as a brand building platform for professionals looking to network, engage, and communicate with like-minded peers. Visible public profile, editable URLs and ‘inbound links’ (links to Linkedin profile from other websites) can help to optimize your profile and improve the SEO easily.

• Online Presentations

Workshops, seminars, and conferences are a great way to impress potential business partners and clients. Uploading your presentations on sites, such as SlideShare and Scribd will allow viewers to download and review your speeches and supporting documents. It will also give them a chance to share it with others, which is a great way to continue optimizing you and your company’s name. Using a headline of “Presentation name by Author name” helps to increase your SEO effectiveness.

• Online Videos

Although not much different from seminar speech uploads, video uploads can highlight a variety of life presentations and increase your online exposure, especially if you use targeted headlines, specific keywords and title tags. If someone is searching for more information about you and can find an online video presentation on familiar websites such as Youtube or Vimeo, this could go a long way towards enhancing your reputation to the searcher.

• Social Networking

Social networking is one of the fastest and easiest ways to generate a lot of personal content, in both the good and bad ways, depending on how you control and monitor them. As social networking sites tend to be ranked high on search engines; thus, professional and consistent profiles on Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc will definitely help to spread out your online brand performance effectively. The more exposure you have, the quicker your personal brand will become a major hit on all key search engine ranking pages and lift your profit margin to new heights.

In order to success in your personal branding strategy, it requires a consistent brand image on various online platforms with a professional and trusted web presence. On-site SEO and social activities are keys to promote your personal brand to wider public. However, more importantly, defining your target audience and goal clearly from the beginning will direct your online branding strategy more relevant and effective. Last but not lease, you should remember that the ultimate purpose of online activities is to support your true life, thus, make your online information real and trustworthy so that your personal true life, when needed, can totally back up your online brand.

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Colgate Wisp’s “Kissovation” Viral Campaign

Colgate Palmolive is quite a big name in marketing. Its recent launch of Colgate Wisp, a mini disposable toothbrush, has been a successful case of actracting audiences across social networks and video sharing sites to deliver millions of engagements in just a few short months.

Mission and Challenge

Targeting 18 to 25-year-old men and women, Colgate Wisp’s mission is finding a way to talk to and engage young and urban people about a brand new product category. These comsumers are known as active daters who care about their initial appearance to the opposite sex or among a group of other people. It believes that the convenience of Colgate Wisp can meet this group’s need and demand. So the challenge is how to introduce the product and transfer its message to these young people in an interesting and engaging way or into relevant conversations and contexts.

Strategies and Solutions

Positioning Colgate Wisp as a kind of technology advancement, the Colgate’s social media agency, Big Fuel, came up with the “Be More Kissable” creative platform, featuring the tangential theme of self-confidence. The “Kissovation” concept signifies the correlation of feeling kissable and strong emotional confidence.

Social media, popular channels of the product’s target consumers, were chosen to deliver the concept. The campaign featured a unique viral video outreach program as the heart of the strategy, along with a photo contest with and a Facebook application.

Online Video Sharing

Partnering with famous YouTube stars, such as KipKay, CollegeHumor, Michelle Phan, YourTango, etc.; a series of eight wacky viral videos, contextually integrating the Wisp, was released and syndicated through YouTube, Vimeo and other hubs. Topics covered a vast range of niche interests such as comedy, dating, relationships, and kooky how-to instructional. These videos were expected to introduce the Wisp to its target consumer in a friendly and entertaining way, without heavy advertising. 

Some of the videos in this series include:

• “Twitter in Real Life ” by CollegeHumor 
• “New Year’s Eve” CollegeHumor 
• “Quick-Draw Gadget” by KipKay
• “Kissable Lips DIY” Michelle Phan 

“Be the Face of Wisp” Photo Contest and Widget

Colgate ran a wildly popular photo contest to find the most kissable person in America, called “The Face of Wisp”. Participants submitted their photo to Colgate Wisp’s website and received a photo sharing widget that enabled friends to vote for them. This widget could be shared on leading social network sites, e.g. Facebook, Myspace, and other microsites. The contest was even spread through relationship magazines such as Elle and Cosmopolitan. And the winner will be in future advertising campaign for Wisp. 

“Spin The Wisp” Facebook Application

To enhance the engagement, a social media appliccations on Facebook, called “Spin The Wisp”, was created to collect Facebook friends’s name and then land on various flavors and locations. So Facebook users can send virtual kisses to random friends or selected ones. 

Results

Until the end of June, the series of “Be More Kissable” videos attracted more than four million views on YouTube and totally more on other video-sharing sites. The click-through rate for the “Spin The Wisp” Facebook app, according to eMarketer, was ten percent based on the number of engagements via notifications, which is quite solid. Until May 2010, the campaigns received more than six million toal engagement based on widget installs, video views, app plays and pass-alongs (eMarketer). At the bottom line, the Wisp generated an “impressive” $44 million in sales after only seven months in the marketplace.

For a summary of The Wisp viral campaign, enjoy the campaign recapture from Big Fuel, the agency behind!

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Internet TV – The Battlefield of Google, Apple and… Advertisers

Did you hear the news? The Internet is coming to your TV. Internet television has been a minefield for the most developing and creative technology leaders in the world. With the recent unveiling of Google TV and rumours about Apple TV, it believes that there will be soon a revolution in the industry, which is pushing a new generation of Internet-connected televisions and home entertainment devices

Viewers are much excited about the launch of Internet TV products from these two giants. A large number of consumers said they wanted to connect their computers to their televisions to watch online video. Judging from the initial marketing impact, Google TV has a slight edge at this point, in comparison with Apple TV, although this can change with the fluctuations of the market.

What are the concepts and differences?

Conceps and Strategies

For Google, it tends to be searching and information. Google is attempting to aggregate all of the content from a wide range of places into one simple list of search results. From that view, Google TV is all about giving users the ability to find the content they want across a wide variety of mediums including broadcast TV, YouTube and anywhere on the Internet. With a built-in web browser, Google TV is also pushing the concept of web browsing on your television, that would enable viewers to quickly pull up Web content on their TVs, including photos, video and music, using an on-screen search box like the one on its website, from anywhere.

For Apple, it tends to be entertainment. Apple’s strategy has been to provide content that people want, but holding that content to a high-standard quality mixed with a simple interface usage. Apple TV doesn’t support interfacing at all with broadcast TV, nor full Internet access. Nevertheless, it still offers similarities such as acessing YouTube or photos from sources like Flickr or MobileMe. Its best-selling approach is maybe the power of the connection to the iTunes Store and the App Store, that’s something Google cannot compete with at the moment.

Technologies

Google TV is backed by Sony, Intel, Logitech, Best Buy and Dish Network, and built on Android, featuring their Chrome browser with a full version of Flash Player 10.1. Its primary goal is to integrate the web into the home TV viewing experience as seamlessly as possible. It is a platform that is expected to run on many products, from TVs to Blu-ray players to set-top boxes and provides additional content and allow users to access content from the Internet and various other pay and non-pay sources.

Apple TV, based on iPhone OS, seems to be an entirely closed system, directing users into interaction with Apple formats in movies and music through iTunes. Only Apple is able to modify its software. 

The difference between the two devices is that the Apple TV is both a hardware device and a piece of software, while Google TV is essentially a platform that you can build on. This means that Google TV will potentially allow users to add on various other products to the basic feature set

What are implications for advertisers?

Google or Apple has been succesful with its advertising strategy in terms of shifting significantly ad spending from traditional medidum to the Internet and mobile phones. However, television advertising is still dominating the market. That’s why these giants are planning to expand their market by digging more in this goldmine.

Keeping the strategy of “making TV ads more relevant to viewers and delivering more value to advertisers” in mind, Google TV may hold a key advantage due to their dominance in the advertising space, targetting more on behaviours and demographics. Its model will allow TV advertisers to target specific keyword searches as well as the demographics of the audience. 

Google's advertising business is all about targeting and delivering at low cost. Google could now offer advertisers better flexibility in integrating ad campaigns across media categories. With the Internet TV device, Google now has ambition in delivering search and advertising to mobile phones, PCs and TVs. It is similar to Apple in terms of advertising.

Internet TV also creates other advertising opportunities including:

- Redirecting traffic towards internet-based video

- Enabling intelligent advertising inserted around the television program

- Developing the marketplace for TV applications

- Building up a more detailed picture of user preferences for the benefit of advertisers

At the end, there is still a long way ahead the marriage of a 50 year-old technology and a pretty much “teenaging” technology. The contrast is that web surfers have never left their desktops for the living room and television watchers have kept their remotes pointed toward familiar territory for years. Could they come closer and sit together in a “two become one” magic? The answer is still openning. In any case, this fall is going to be an interesting time for web-savvy consumers who are looking a new way to watch TV, movies and other entertainments.

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Is It Time for Social Email Marketing?

Email marketing has been developing for a long time. However, its biggest threats, spamming issue and poor out-of-date list, lead it to low open rates. So does email have a future? Is it on the way out? Or is it just getting smarter?

Email isn't dying. It’s still "the glue" of an integrated campaign. It has its own place in generating mass interest and mass distribution of messages and offers to a target audience. According to eMarketer’s survey, 69% of respondents plan to increase spending on email marketing efforts – more than any other marketing strategy in 2010.

Nowadays, people are exposed to around 5,000 ads a day. With flooding inboxes and increasing number of companies sending email, email-marketing strategy is required to gain a new positioning in order to cope with the intense competition. In order to convey a consistent and personalized experience, integrated marketing solution with the combination of multi-channels such as email, landing pages and social media, make it easy to spread the message, but still keep it focused.

A lot of email marketers are still hesitant about using social media. In fact, the integration of email and social media help to achieve a better reach, offer people more choice and provide them content and value in function of their needs. What’s more?

• Social media improves email response rates. According to a recent report from GetResponse, it is found that email with social media button generated significantly higher click-through rates than email with no sharing option.
• Social media has its huge sharing power thanks to its large base of users. Its multi-level effect can spread the message not only people in your network but also their friends’ networks and so on
• The cost of inserting social media function is almost zero. So it’s pure ROI
• Active social networkers check their email inboxes far more regularly than those who spend less time on social networks, according to a recent finding
• Social marketing and email marketing are sharing some common characteristics. First, they are all about dealing with people, creating connections and relationships, based on sharing, listening and engaging abilities to build trust and respect. Second, in order to do that, it requires both social marketing and email marketing to provide good and relevant content to create the “right” personalization in the “right” context in order to receive value. Finally, Both of them are considered parts of an overall marketing strategy. 

Social networks and email can feed each other, but just knowing that isn't enough. Much like successful email marketing requires more effort than blasting away at your customer list, getting your recipients to share your emails on social sites requires more effort than just dropping icons into your message template. So you have to know how to do it correctly to make it work. Some tactical ideas for integrating the two strategies include:

Testing and Educating

• Experiment the placement position of social network links in your messages (top, middle or bottom), what social networks you link to and how many social network links you should include in your messages
• Educate your readers about how and why they should share your content. Give them a good reason to share your promotional emails with their friends. Feature your social-sharing option in your welcome messages. Devote prime space in your regular mailings to highlight the location and use of your sharing icons or links.

Content

• Encourage consumer-generated content and peer reviews on your different social media platforms, and then add this as a section in newsletters. People seem to be more interested in these content than the traditional information.
• Set up an automated trigger that sends a message requesting a product review after a purchase to build up your database of user-generated reviews. You can then populate personalized emails with these reviews according to each recipient’s interests or purchase history, resulting in messages that are more targeted and engaging to recipients
• Create your own corporation network. Site visitors can discuss about products and industry topics. These discussions create good fodder for e-newsletters, and forming ideas for specific articles from new e-mail newsletters
• Use the search functions. You can follow your company and product names via Google e-mail alerts, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to gain market knowledge and good ammunition for e-mail marketing.

Distribution

• Include a sharing button to other social networks on your emails.
• Use the email service provider (ESP)’s social marketing capabilities. Most major ESPs and e-mail software providers can send your e-mails directly to your social networks
• Use your status to publicize the e-mail newsletter on social media, probably a day before sending the newsletter to remind people it’s coming, and get them excited about it
• Using a blog to highlight content from an e-newsletter once or twice a month, and inviting readers to download the full content via a landing page
• Conduct a timely poll on social networks and creating a visual representation of the results, in an e-newsletter
• Leverage social media channels to offer email subscribers customized options 
• Set your company up as a resource and an expert by responding to questions or getting involved in discussions on Facebook or Linkedin. 
• Make sure the people, who were sent from social media sites, can easily find the content you want them to see on your landing page. So you should have a clear and clean design with good navigation.

Today, many marketers believe that if your messages are relevant, timely and interesting with a great integration with social media, your audience will gladly help your brand message ripple across the Internet. How’re about you? Are you confident enough to say so? Is there anything left in the list above? Waiting for your thoughts! In the mean time, have a look on this interesting video, explaining the  convergence between email and social media. Enjoy!

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Online Search - Latest Trends and Innovations

Online market is growing rapidly and it will continue to grow in much more better way. According to Forrester’s report on interactive marketing tactics, the top three areas where marketers feel most potential over the next three years are social media, online video and SEO. Companies will focus more of their marketing budget on SEO. However, trends and techniques in search marketing tend to fluctuate over the years regarding to the fact that search engine market is developing in a very fast pace. It’s been time to watch out these changes and trends in online search for appropriate corporate marketing strategies

Currently, Google still rule the world’s search engine market, following by Yahoo and Microsoft’s Bing. After the Microsoft- Yahoo partnership at the beginning of this year, it's now going to be a Two-Engine, 80/20 world. The end users will be the beneficiaries of this highly competitive landscape. What the numbers need to show in the future is not so much the percentage of total searches each engine has but more so the influence of each engine as they compare to all the other ways that people are getting their information these days. So the question is: What is happening out there? 

1. Search engines keep its traffic 

Traditionally search engines wanted to send traffic to the most relevant web pages based on search terms. But today players like Google and Bing are both doing more to make their visitors stickier and get their queries answered without ever having to leave the engine to keep more traffic. Anytime when you “google” the weather forecasts, the currency exchanges, the soccer scores or the travel information, the results are right there on the search page, no need to go anywhere. More of this type of information is expected to be available.

2. Mobile search by location, voices and sights

• Searching by location on mobile shows that the geo craze now has come to search engine on mobile devices. Google optimizes mobile search suggestions based on location to make its its search suggestions on mobile devices even easier.. Now you have the option “Near me now” on Google page in iPhone or Android cell phone to bring up search results close to your immediate location. Let's take a look, comparing the desktop search suggestions to the mobile suggestions.

• Searching by voices, which was launched a year ago, enables millions of users to speak to Google. The combination between voice searching and language translation is expected to spread the search power to a larger base of users and new markets.

• Searching by sights is rather new but expected to gain more notice and increasing usage. Now with only a mobile phone’s camera, you can send your picture to search engines like Google to know what you are seeing. It’s extremely helpful when going travel, exploring new places and studying. It is just so convenient and practical!

3. Search teams up with social media 

Social media has proven itself to be a productive and effective way to get the word out there and it seems like search engines are picking up on it. Social sites within the search engine results pages are here to stay. If brands do not control their Twitter page, they risk losing control of their brand’s message on Twitter and in search. So, search matters in social media marketing. So it’s time to include social media optimization as one of the SEO strategies for SEO companies.

4. Real-time search 

Microsoft and Google are racing on the real-time search integration in a response to the increasing power of social media and networks. Being partnership with leading social networks like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi. Now, immediately after conducting a search, you can see live updates from people on popular social sites, as well as headlines from news and blog posts published just seconds before. So basically, the real-time search enables you to discover breaking news the moment it's happening, even if it's not the popular news of the day, and even if you didn't know about it beforehand. And, as part of the launch of real-time, Google also added "hot topics" to Google Trends to show the most common topics people are publishing to the web in real-time. 

5. Personalized search

Personalized search is here to stay. Both Google and Bing have released their "permanent" personalization of results. Search engines are now storing information about what you’re searching for even if you’re not signed in. So basically, personalized search helps you to get more relevant, useful search results, recommendations, and other personalized features

Personalized search does present some new challenges for SEO. It is difficult to explain to clients how personalized search results appear at various positions depending upon who is carrying out the search. So changes in SEO tactics such as providing fresh, relevant, engaging and updated content, making it easy to bookmark but still not overlooking the universal search are necessary.

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The Underwater Iceberg of Location-Based Mobile Services

Last time I have mentioned about the concept of location and geo-fence as one of the expected trends in mobile marketing this year. It becomes hotter with more competitors, including established services, emerging businesses and big online companies. All of them are joining the geo-location battle.

Currently there are two most popular location-based mobile apps, Foursquare and Gowalla, working as both a social network and a game, built on GPS function and user-generated contents. Basically, they two all allow users to share their location with friends. So, when you walk into a bar or restaurant or mall, you probably "check-in" on your cell phone, and your friends will see where you are. You get rewarded for frequent check-in activities. That’s quite simple!

Just in case you really still have no idea about what they are, or for further information, here are the summaries of FourSquare and Gowalla on CrunchBase

What are their differences?

Here is a brief comparison done by Mashable:

What do users get? 

• Connecting with friends, knowing where they were and getting tips from other people for each location

• The fun of earning badges and various perks from the places where they check in.

• Accessibily to your check-in history, giving you a snapshot of “What, Where, When, Who”

Let’s talk business!

The clever part here is that you get points for checking-in. But the really cleverer part is more about business. These geo-social networks are certainly capturing marketers’ attention. Through smartphones that signal someone’s location, stores and brands like Starbucks, Tasti-D-Lite, Macy’s and Pepsi are getting live information about when and where people are shopping. Some companies are turning Foursquare or Gowalla into a virtual loyalty-card program, while others are creating their own location applications, customers discounts or other rewards for shopping.

So basically, Foursquare and Gowalla are rolling out free analytics programs that will give participating businesses detailed information on who is checking-in to their locations, and give them the ability to communicate with the visitors. That’s what set these services apart.

The risky side

While some may find interested in sharing their location, the concept of automatic geo-location a little hard to accept, especially in terms of privacy concerns, Are people ready to share their personal locative information? Probaly. Or not really.

A recent poll on some reasons more people aren’t using check-in services revealed privacy and security concerns as a number-one reason.

The future

• Giants get into the game with motivation of the true value which comes from targeted advertising based on locality. The only question for these businesses to answer now is whether or not location-based rewards are the killer feature or if location can stand alone.

1. Facebook has been actively testing multiple location products and considering various implementations of some form of location feature.
2. Twitter has announced their official plans for location. “Twitter Places”, the product enables users to “tag Tweets with specific places Additionally, the product integrates with Foursquare and Gowalla. However, Twitter isn’t implementing a badges service right now. 

• Database of consumer behaviors and lifestyle can be built from location-based services. For instance, insurance companies can start tracking this data to have a more accurate way of determining risk and rates.

• Companies and retailers will have more creative approaches, incentives and campaigns to encourage consumers using these check-in services.

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Social Games – No More Playing Around!

If you have a Facebook account, you're probably familiar with games like Farmville, Mafia Wars or Texas Hold’em Poker. The world of social network gaming is seen as a comparatively gentle one. Players are more likely to be growing crops and cooking dinners than slaying monsters and killing bad guys. These games might seem like a good way to entertain with no entrance condition. However, anyone who is involved deeply into it will find that it’s only the surface of the iceberg. So what’s more?

1. What are Social Games?

Social Games = Casual Games (user engagement) + Social Networking (viral distribution)

Basic types of social games include:

• Multiplayer games that utilize the social graph as part of the game. (Parking Wars, PackRat,..)

• Games which mainly involves socializing or social activities like chatting, trading, or flirting. (Farm Ville, Pet Society, Friends For Sale…)

• Turn-based games that are played within a social context or with friends. (Texas Hold'em Poker, Scrabble,…)

• Competitive casual games with friends-only leaderboards. (Who Has the Biggest Brain?, Word Challenge,…)

2. Working Principles

Most of social games work on four basic principles:

• Simple gameplay, which does not require much tactical or strategical thought. Just simply click on something and get the reward, then make it to other higher rewards in similar steps 

• Real-time based element, which require you to wait for sometime when starting a process and doing activities. It doesn’t take much time for each visit but requires you to come back everyday, or even several times per day.

• Microtransactions, which are the solution for the dilemma of real time elements. To advance faster, game players need to buy more clicks or more rewards per time unit. For those who don’t want to spend money, they can do something like signing-up or taking a survey with the game company’s commercial partners

• Network connections, which means using the power of social networks. Friends can help or recruit each other in a social game even if you aren't online at the same time. 

So basically, the common rule is to get people hooked with easy rewards, then block them from gaining those rewards as fast as they want, make them pay you money directly or via another company, and encourage them to invite all their friends to participate. In fact all of these games can be played without spending any real money, and without signing up for shady offers to receive more in-game currency. But in-game earnings will never be enough to keep things interesting. That’s the story!

3. Top Games

4. Top Companies

Most of social-game companies have built their entire business model around relatively tiny micro-transactions. Because the games are free, what companies are trying to do is get as many people engaged in the game as possible. Then they try to maximise the number of those players that we can offer something interesting to - that they would be willing to pay money for. Furthermore, the companies also try to maintain players’ interest through constant updates. 

Current big players include:

• Zynga - 700 employees and $200 mil revenues in 2009, the developer of Facebook.

• Playfish - 250 employees and $75 mil revenues in 2009 

• Playdom - 300 employees and $50 mil revenues in 2009, the leader on MySpace

Even these companies have made huge revenue, their reputation is going down. Last year, Tech Crunch revealed a video featuring Zynga CEO Mark Pincus saying the company "did every horrible thing in the book" to make money off of player. It was a hit to the company and players at that time

5. Security and Social Risks

• To accumulate significant amounts of currency, players can either purchase some with their credit card or sign up for an account or do some surveys with a third-party service. But it found that these surveys contain risks with its request to get your mobile phone number and end up at subscription for an unknown service at a specific cost.

• Being targeted by hackers and viruses is another possibility of playing social games. Some bugs can destroy all of your game progress.

• Spamming friends by numerous updates, requests or invitations might cause inconveniences and may lead to losing some “real” friends

6. Future of Social Games

• The expansion of social networks in terms of size and popularity will bring social games to more users. Furthermore, social networks are widely seen as the new email and the new SMS diving rich, shared content that capitalizes on mass interaction

• The development of smartphone market, app market and social networking usage on smart phones will enhance the popularity of social games.

• Game companies are planning to build up their own social networks

• Current social game players are aged between 18 and 34 but the 40+ market and the “mass market” are also present and potential.

• The upcoming social games will be more targeted and diverse in categories in order to cope with the increasing competition. 

• The second generation of social games will be more developed in terms of gameplay and graphics. With Flash 10's 3D capabilities, 3D games may be coming to social networking sites soon.

• More channels and methods of trading virtual goods will be established. More online platforms to support game players will become popular.

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IKEA's Brilliant "Tagging" Campaign on Facebook

One of the most clever digital campaign last year should belong to IKEA. They set up a profile for the store manager and launched a simple message: "Tag yourself on the furniture that you want to win (in each image). Then write a statement about why you should win in the comment field below the photo. Then hope you were the first to tag that item and had the best justification. Winners will be contacted directly through Facebook. Good luck!" 

Some of the best campaign strategies are simple, and none simpler than using the default “tagging” tool on Facebook to help create a buzz for an online competition. With the way tagging works on Facebook, the moment you tagged anything, everyone in your network instantly knew what was up for grabs. Subsequently, thousands and thousands of people were flooding the Facebook page in search of freebies. A very clever approach for small budget campaigns. 

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The Latest Hits in Mobile Marketing

The mobile market is exploding. Cell phone penetration has been surpassing cable TVs and home PCs in many countries. Mobile marketing expenditures are expected to exceed $2 billion in 2010. Thirty-eight percent of youth already claim that mobile is more important to them than their wallet! Click-through rates on mobile ads are even higher than online. Mobile advertising is beginning to show a track record of results, both on click-through and in leading to purchase.

So marketers surely see the potential of mobile marketing. But what are the latest hits and take-aways for them to get on the current market? Here come four highlighted trends to think of

1. Smartphone market's growth

Smartphone ownership increased to 17% of mobile users in 2009, according to Comscore. Smartphone penetration is estimated to reach 50% of the market by the middle of 2011

• Smartphones change mobile users behaviours, leading to more entertaining usage (music, games) and mobile web activities (internet, email). As a result, mobile web will reach more people and mobile sites will be significantly invested in the upcoming years. 
• Smartphone owners continue to be predominantly male, most likely between the ages of 25 and 34
• Mobile platforms for smartphones are enhanced with social media apps, such as Twitter and Facebook, which just announced a 54% increase in mobile use in the past six months. 

2. Change in SMS campaign tactics

There is a lot of potential with SMS campaigns and a number of companies have shown real success with them. 

• Previous SMS campaigns shown that the key to success is to integrate the SMS campaign into the rest of the marketing campaign; highlight the shortcode across other forms of advertising. SMS is highly measurable, so the results should be tracked and campaigns should be modified over time
• SMS campaigns are now built not simply based on one-way messaging but consumer-created content and active participation. 
• CRM databases tend to be linked into mobile marketing. Retailers can apply this into their SMS campaigns.
• Mobile coupons through SMS become popular

3. Increasing mobile apps

Mobile apps differ from standard WAP banner ads, location-based text ads and mobile video by engaging consumers and immersing them into a branded environment in which users will be more receptive to brand messages in a far more interactive and viral platform. Mobile app downloads across all handsets are estimated to climb from over 7 billion downloads in 2009 to almost 50 billion in 2012. Advertising contributed almost 12% of the overall apps revenue in 2009 and is expected to more than double to over 28%. Games are most downloaded apps, coming next Entertainment and Social Networking

• Supply will exceed demand in mobile apps. Discovery of apps is now an issue with the massive increasing number of apps. Launching a new app becomes a challenge and requires more innovations and investment. Apps markets are evolving differently worldwide, indicating a need for creating different apps business models instead of a "one size fits all" approach.
• The battle of the app stores becomes more intense. In 2009 the number of app stores leapt from 8 to 38 and is expected to further increase in 2010. It signifies a battle for survival of the fittest among app stores worldwide, with app revenue and growth opportunities growing significantly.
• Apple still dominates the app market. Though Blackberry has a huge number of handsets,  low awareness of the app store and complicated app installation are a pain for them. 
• Most of the current mobile marketing campaigns request a mobile app development.

4. Geographic and behavioral targeting

Targeting people based on location and using behaviours is the biggest opportunity for marketers in mobile. Location and behaviour data will begin to be mined as a rich new source of insights that marketers can harness to improve the effectiveness of their efforts. By knowing the location of the phone, SMS campaigns can be directly targeted. 

• Foursquare, a geo-social network, allowing people to share location with friend, is capturing marketer’s attention. 
• Geo-fence, a virtual field around any location that is used to trigger a mobile marketing message to a user when they enter or exit the area, is forecasted to become part of marketers' vocabulary.
• Retailers and businesses are offering coupons, promotions and sales for consumers checking in through location-triggered application on their mobile phones.
• The evolution of search is also moving to mobile platforms with more emphasis on the local and social, as well as behavioral targeting. Mobile search will continue to grow in 2010 and beyond. More localization and businesses will be expected to relate to mobile search. 

All in all, three key drivers of mobile marketing in 2010 and perhaps in upcoming years have been predicted as Location, Relevancy and Immediacy. Advertisers will be increasingly drawn to mobile's unique opportunity to reach and engage consumers with immediate and location-specific content at the most relevant content to different consumer groups. And privacy is another critical issue for advertisers to consider in order to protect personal identification information.

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