Technology As Innovator

Assignment 1: promotion and expectation management using social media

Requirements

Chan Than San is a Vietnamese model working in East & South East Asia region. He has a Xanga site, a Yahoo! 360 site, a MySpace account and at least 2 Facebook accounts which he maintains manually himself. In 2010, his modeling career is rocketing it consumes most of his time and his manager wants him to fully focus on his main task as a model.

Suppose you are hired to be the Social Media Manager for Chan Than San.

1. How will you get to know him both professionally and personally? Detail all assumptions made.
2. How do you plan for the transition from he to you on the current accounts? Also clarify the legal and ethics issues relating to account management.
3. How do you manage expectation in communities in which the language used is not comprehensible to you? For example, you speak English and Vietnamese and want to see what Indonesian fans say about him - of course they use Indonesian.
4. Which media will you use to promote him? Why?
5. How do you manage the community? Detail all assumptions made.
6. How do you deal with criticism, negative responses, flaming, spamming, trolling from the communities both within and out of your management? Detail all assumptions made.
7. How do you collaborate with his manager, stylists, event manager, photographers and fan club coordinator?
8. How will you do SEO on his fansite (if any)?
9. Who do you expect to report to? Detail all assumptions made.
10. Think of a case when conflict of interest arise. Detail that case. Propose solutions you want to take in order to tackle the conflict.
11. Where do you see yourself in the next 3 years in your career?

What the…?

What is this joke about?

No this is not a joke. I’m serious.

This is a piece of career orientation I’m giving for the enthusiasts in the social media industry - if you care enough.

Social Media gives a platform on which new business opportunities are built. What businesses? Every single kind of business you can name.

In social media, there are not only the product implementers (creators), the advertisers (trader), the analysts (observers), the investors (angels), the users (clients). There is also the role of the consultant.

Consultants are ones who utilize knowledge and reputation influence to assist the business growth. Financially, this role helps generate revenues, and adds another link in the cashflow of this industry. These are also people who spread the words, standardize the concepts, educate users and businesses.

Where are these people in Vietnam? I can see Nguyen Viet Hai from i360 and Do Quang Tu. I know some others who are doing jobs very close to this role.

Are you interested? Think about it. And I hope you have been inspired.

Trivia

Do you wonder why I chose this particular person to write about, not another more well-known Vietnamese celeb? The reason is that he is not known only within Vietnam, but in other adjacent countries as well. The regional opportunities and challenges if working with this person are interesting to raise. The second thing is that he is using some social media properties including Xanga & Slides, apart from the default-in-Vietnamese Yahoo! 360 + Flickr, which should intrigue/interest the social media experts. This is similar to the buzz in the social media world about Britney Spears on Twitter.

I’ve heard about a fansite for Hoang Thuy Linh being developed by several young social media initiators. This could be a great opportunity for experiment with new media interactions. It will be interesting to see how a fansite built by the 2.0 people will differentiate itself from other sites.

What do you think?

How are you with the new design so far?

Tech-savvy users, needless to say, you must have loved Facebook’s new design.

My non-tech Facebook friends, have you familiarized yourself with the new design? Do you still think Facebook makes it hard for you to navigate and locate things you like? Do you miss the old design? Well you know, I have seen the expected results from the new design already. Let me show you:

Have you noticed the change improvement of Facebook Ad?

First thing is in the Ad. I call new Facebook Ad Relationship-based Semantic.

There are two elements: Relationship-based and Semantic.

Relationship-based

The old ad is exactly a same-old vertical banner. No thing new.

The new add is in the form of “Friend A is a fan of Product P”. Wow! Facebook recognizes you and displays ads that feature your friends!

Semantic

Semantic is a little bit more abstract.

Facebook ad caters for relevance of information to you. Information they care about:

• Relationship: ads show faces of your friends
• Location: ads show products/services in your location
• Background: if you are doing or did your tertiary education in an Australian university, the ad might display a Master degree from Australia
• Interest: are you into Rock? ads show Rock performances

Do you have the impression that Facebook starts to understand you?

Why is this a result of the new design?

First thing first, I have to admit that saying “the new smart ad is a result from the new design” is an over-simplified statement.

Can Facebook ad be smart with the old design? Yes!

But it was much harder and would take longer with the old design.

Take a look at the new design:

1. You can comment right on your friends’ statuses
2. You have more spaces on the homepage as well as in your profile. Your profile is no longer crowded with all the applications but applications are separated thus create more spaces
3. Your friends’ Walls are thrown up first so it’s much quicker for you to leave your message
4. Your friend list is now more organized, increases the will to send them messages
5. Photos are displayed in different views, you want to comment more as you see more photos
6. In short, you write a lot more on Facebook’s new design
7. In short, you create a lot more contents on Facebook’s new design

As you create more contents, Facebook understands you more, thus displays more relevant ads to you.

You may argue: ads benefit them (Facebook and its sponsors), not you. Well, to be honest, would you prefer to see a totally non-relevant ad or an ad that might interest you?

What do you think about this? Do you love it or hate it?

Other considerations

Of course, a service provider is a business. Many may have concern of privacy. Google has known MUCH about me, now Facebook does. There’s a chill in the air that there are always people who want to make money keep an eye on every step I take online.

Conclusion

The ad might be beneficial to all three parties: you, Facebook and sponsors. Like it or not, inter-dependence is the driving force that strengthen consumption.

Online advertising in Vietnam has long been in its first step when banner was the dominating method. Interstitial were used in some tech-savvy sites.

The market of 20 million Internet users has been regarded as very potential. We have seen the emergence of many sites on various areas such as blog platform, portal, social networking, C2C trading, online media, news sharing. Further down for each area many niches have been spotted. Each player does have her own strategy of monetization.

Out of all these movements, I’ve wondered if an advertising system like one of Google AdSense would ever be introduced in Vietnam.

When looking around, I spotted this site: XpressMedia of VinaForce.

From the first glance, the product-naming Game endorses CPM Advertising.

This model’s potential

Let’s see the potential of the market here in Vietnam:

• 20 million internet users
• Approximately 2.5 blogs
• Growing product-savvy

These factors form firm foundation for the development of this model.

One important thing to remember at the Vietnam market is not hasten to introduce ‘advanced’ functionalities. Simple and easy to understand is the way to go. We’ll see whether this model will make it here.

What do you think of XpressMedia first Game?