Oh no, don’t get me wrong this definitely not another Star War movie review. I am referring to the consequences behind the all mighty web and what everyone should take note of.

With the start of the world wide web, there are many wonderful thing that had came along like the social media, the influence economy as well as the internet of thing (IOT). But did you know , all thing great come with a consequences.

Social media are technically any websites and applications that are designed to allow people to share content quickly, efficiently, and in real-time. For many, the influence of social media has strongly impacted and has become an essential part of their daily life in just over a decade. Now even my grandmother has a Facebook account!

However, it has also become a platform for ill-intentions people to spread fake news or even scamming. Taking the current pandemic as an example, the Singapore Ministry of Health have since take on to the internet to debunk several fake new related to COVID-19, in effort to prevents its citizens from panicking.

On the other hand, with the increasing popularity of social media it has eventually revamped the advertising industry and people’s perception on status. People of higher status are defined by the number of follower or “friend” they have.

Thus, creating the influence economy where people with high follower counts known as “Influencers” get paid for making interesting contents or posts for brands. These influencers often get paid based on the amount of followers they have, some even charge at least $100 per 10,000 followers. Some even get paid more than what they could even if they were to pursue a career in medicine.

Hence, resulting in people buying fake followers just to boost their instagram profile to gain sponsors or advertisment listing. Fake followers are essentially just bots’ created fake account, not real people. This issues was actually covered by Singapore renowned blogger/ influencer back in 2017. She is known for her provocative style of writing and comments making her one of the top influencers in Singapore. In her discussion with fellow influencer Deekosh, they utilized a software known as Social Blade to expose influencers who are buying fake followers. It is quite an interesting discussion, you guys could watch it down below and let me know on your thoughts.

Last but not least, the most important issue will be on personal privacy. Privacy is a fundamental rights, essential for liberty and preserve human dignity, serving as the foundation upon which many other human rights are founded. Despite, identity thieves has also become a common problem on the web.

Personal information are often stolen to commit fraud, tarnishing your name and credit status. To restore your name, it often cost time and money to fully correct the lingering effects. Therefore, it is our responsibility to be more cautious when surfing the web and avoid clicking into links from unknown sources.

All in all, it is our responsibility to carefully believe what is true or false on the web, not everything you see is the fact. Only with cautious, we will be able to protect ourselves from fraud and enjoy the perks from the world wide web.

Have you ever thought of starting up a business? If yes, this blog is definitely meant for you.

To be the next successful entrepreneur, you don’t need to have a degree, big capital or even business experience. All you need is to have a strong plan and the drive to execute it. Within that plan , there should be integrated marketing communication (IMC) plan.

IMC is the process for an organisation to manage its customer relationship in return for driving its brand value. It integrates all promotional tools and ensure they work together harmoniously. Thus, marketing the organisation and reaching new customers.

So now, are you worried about how you would carry out a successful IMC plan? Fear not, I am here to help.

All you need to do is to follow these simple steps:

1. Identify Target Audience

The target audience is a set of individuals sharing a common need or characteristics that your organisation hope to serve. They are the one that will most likely purchase your service or product. It is important that an organisation identify them and understand their needs. Allowing organisation to develop specific messages to reach the potential market effectively without wasting resources. This can be done so through market research like conducting focus group, market survey and scanning market review etc.

2. Select suitable channels

After the identification of your target audience, it is essential that you identify and utilize a suitable communication channel that your target audience commonly use. The strength and weakness of each channel should be evaluated to ensure the selected channels are able to deliver the desired message effectively.

3. Keep it consistent

Keeping it consistent, why is it important to have brand consistency? It is due to the psychological aspect of the consumers and gaining their trust. Look at it this way, before you could trust someone, you will have to feel like you know them. And for you to know them, you will have to be able to recognize and remember them. To do that, that person have to be consistent in their behavior, etc. Hence, putting it into marketing aspect, a consumer will have to go through all that before you gain their trust. Thus, when trust is gained you will naturally be in their top-of-mind when purchasing.

4. Clear and consistent content

This is fairly straight forward, you must give a clear and consistent message across all communication channels. Especially in this digital era, it has become incredibly easy for an unsatisfied consumer to publicize their dissatisfaction on the web. You will not want to risk ruining your reputation just like that. The negative publicity might even lead to loss of potential consumers. Leading to higher cost in reconstructing your reputation.

5. Ensure message is integrated across communication channels.

6. Ensure marketing team work in sync.

7. Track campaigns and evaluate effectiveness.

In conclusion, I have simplified the keys to a successful IMC . Remember to identify your target audiences and engage them through the suitable channels. Keep your engagement with your consumers consistent. And last but not least, always make sure your messages are clear and concise, leaving no room for misinterpretation and constantly measure its effectiveness.

What do you guys think? Did i make it clear enough for you? Do leave your comments below and tell me what you think!

Remember those days where we flips through those thick and bulky encyclopedia? Oh wait, guys are probably way to young for that. Some of you might even ask what the hack is an encyclopedia!

Encyclopedia is basically an old school version of Google but not as almighty and convenient.

Google. Who doesn’t know Google? But does everyone actually know how does it work? Let me fill you in.

Google is a search engine company that was founded in 1997 by two Ph.D student, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, of Standford University. A search engine is a tool used to search the world wide web for specific information. It all started when Standford’s existing search engine “BackRub” clogged up the bandwidth. Hence, leading them to eventually set up their own search engine, Google.

Google started off solely as a search engine but have since progress into online advertising, cloud computing, software, and hardware solutions. It have since been heavily incorporated into our life that we would not go a day without using it.

With that Google seize the opportunity to gain revenue by introducing Search Engine Marketing (SEM). It is a type of digital marketing strategy used to increase the appearance rate of a website in search engine results pages.

SEM consist of two main techniques, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Paid Search Marketing.

SEO is the process of optimizing a website, to increase traffic by obtaining a high-ranking placement on results page of a search engine through an organic search. Optimization are commonly done so through analysis of keywords, content marketing, internal and external links.

The most common form of Paid Search Marketing , will be the Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign. Organisation bids for an optimal placement in search engine result when their keywords were searched and then pay a small fee for each time a user click through. Usually, the first few websites that appears in search results are those whom participate in PPC.

Now with the understanding of the two type of SEM, which one do you think is the most effective?

I will say it is definitely the PPC campaign for the following simple reasons!

1. Cost Effective
   When managed professionally, it requires low-cost to generate desirable lead for the organisation. In a long term, it can be further optimized, driving down cost while increasing returns. On top of that, a daily fixed limit can also be set to ensure control of budget.
   
2. Fastest Results
   With its precision in targeting, it ensure Ads to be presented to the correct audience at the right time. Hence, generating only real and relevant leads. It is requires little time to set up, making results almost instantly.

All in all that is my take on SEM. What do you think? Do you agree with me? Feel free to leave a comment below and tell me what is on your mind.

With technology continuously improving, consumers and businesses have to update themselves with the newest trends and inventions. Hence, it is important for marketers to keep up, integrate and develop latest technology trends into marketing strategies in order to gain a competitive advantage against rivals. Big data would be a major technology trend affecting marketing and consumerism. We will be discussing how marketers can convert big data into values.

BIG DATA

Firstly, what even is big data and how can it help improve marketing strategies? Big data is a term applied to data sets whereby its size or type is beyond the ability of traditional relational databases to capture, manage, and process the data with low-latency. Its characteristics include high volume, high velocity, or high variety. Big data comes from sensors, devices, video/audio, networks, log files, transactional applications, web, and social media – mostly generated in real time and in a very large scale.

Capturing and integrating data:

Organisations will have to deploy new storage, computing and analytic technologies and techniques. Data can also be accessed through publicly-accessible big data on platforms such as Google Trends, Google Public Data, Gapminder and more. With so much data available for organisations to refer to and collect, it increases the marketing team’s reach to a large number of users.

Now that relevant data has been collected, organisations will be able to target desired groups of users through their interests. For example, shopping platforms such as Zalora, Lazada and Shopee are likely to utilise product recommendation engines as a marketing tool. Recommendation engines basically are data filtering tools that make use of algorithms and data to recommend the most relevant items to a particular user. Thus, you may find many advertisements and sales promotions on the internet and social media on various items or services that you have searched for previously.

Analysing and strategising:

It is also important to analyse the data collected in order to understand the market better, and to check if the strategies are working correctly. Using advanced analytics techniques such as text analytics, machine learning, predictive analytics, data mining, statistics, businesses can analyze previously untapped data sources independent or together with their existing enterprise data to gain new insights resulting in better and faster decisions. Managements are equipped with sufficient knowledge to make rational decisions and to implement organisational goals.

In conclusion, marketers are expected to adapt and utilise important trends such as big data, which can further bring the target audience closer to the organisation. With access to data which are collected globally, marketers should identify the consumers and know what to sell to them.

The ultimate app. What is the ultimate app? What are the key features of the ultimate app?

To made it as the ultimate app, it is of upmost importance to be able to solve user problems. In order to be successful, an app should consist of key features like simple, up-to-date, profitable, battery saving and free . That is quite a list of features isn’t it? So now you may ask who is the ultimate app?

The answer is none other than Grab.

1. Solve a problem
   According to Mark McDonald from Appster, “Most successful products are very efficient painkillers. Big customer pain is a big opportunity. No pain or problem equals no opportunity as nobody’s going to pay you to solve a non-problem. To have a great business idea, you first need to find a problem worth solving.”  Grab is a great example, where they analyse and try to solves every aspects of our lives, aiming to become an essential.

2. Simple
Why will anyone be willing to take up a lecture just to use an app? Everyone is too busy or lazy to go through that . A good app should be made for dummies that even a 10 year old could navigate his way without assistance, Which perfectly fit the description of Grab!

3. Up-to-date
In this competitive industry, everyone is competing to come out with the best service to be the creme of the top. Same goes for any apps, any little flaws like bugs, breach of security or lack in performance will risk loss of users and lose out from the herd. Holding the position as the market leader, Grab often updates its apps to strengthen security and enhance in-app feature to ensure user or driver safety as their top priority.

4. Profitable
Grab basically created an app to carry its business, just like Uber and AirBNB. They establish a billion-dollar platform that provided livelihood to million of people. Hence, generating dozen of business in industry like transportation, delivery, payment and even insurance.

5. Battery saving

As the saying goes “If your phone doesn’t have battery life, that’s an everyday issue that you confront”. Battery life has been increasing seen as the most important feature of a smart phone. In this era, everyone has been heavily relying on their smartphones, creating a phenomena where it is the end of the world for an individual if their battery runs flat. Hence, it is essential that an daily application like Grab should not consume battery life heavily.

6. Free

It is not surprising that free apps are the most successful one. Who doesn’t love free apps? We probably has plenty in our smartphone right now. There is plenty of ways to make money instead of getting users to pay for the app. Grab has its own monetization plan from the wide range of in-app services that they offers. While keeping in mind to only offer services that solves user’s problem, calling itself the ” Your Everyday Everything App”.

To prove Grab’s success, they have currently has a total of 130 millions downloads across South East Asia, answering to the needs of people and building an empire out of it. Since its launch, Grab has grown tremendously and with its market dominance in South East Asia will likely lead it to economies of scale, driving profitability in future.

What do you guys feel about Grab? Do you agree with me? or otherwise? Do leave your comments below so that we could discuss.

Memes have been around waaaay before the internet existed. Now, with widespread access to the internet and various social media platforms, these internet sensations are thoroughly enjoyed by internet users all around the world, especially through sites such as 9GAG, Reddit and 4Chan. Memes are comedic ideas mimicking relatable real life situations, which have the ability to influence many.

Various companies have been trying to ride the meme wave to go viral and raise brand awareness. To analyse why organisations are beginning to value and capitalise on the virality of meme culture, I will utilise the Jonah Berger’s STEPPS model.

Social Currency:

People enjoy sharing their thoughts, opinions and ideas to look good in others’ eyes. When users come across relatable meme content, they feel less alone and may relate themselves to the brand or product. They then share the message on their social media to “get approval” from friends, and the process goes on, till the post becomes viral.

Emotion:

Emotions are greatly involved with how a viral story can spread. People are more likely to share messages and causes that they care about. Non-profit organisations are more likely to attempt to touch people’s hearts through stimulating peoples’ emotions. For example, Smile Train is an international children’s charity focusing on helping children with cleft lips and palate repair. To catch the attention of the online public, they used humorous memes to encourage users to donate and contribute.

Public:

Memes are generally public, hence they are extremely susceptible to imitation. In fact, a single meme can have many different variations to adapt to the idea created by the individual. Using this, the marketing departments from various organisations are able to tweak and use viral meme formats to market their brand and/ or product online.

With meme popularity, more organisations are trying to adjust their marketing methods and content to create memes that are relatable, encouraging users to share and spread awareness. Thank you for reading my post, do let me know in the comments below what what other factors of the Jonah Berger’s STEPPS model does the virality of memes apply to?

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.