360DigitalInfluence

Hurry! Space is limited for this 30-minute webinar and registration is required.

Join the award-winning Social Media team from Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide for a free 30-minute online seminar powered by Citrix GoToWebinar and done in partnership with The Wall Street Journal Asia.

This webinar will provide concrete examples, action plans and case studies, including:

· 5 key steps for a business-to-business strategy;
· How to build and engage a community of potential and current customers;
· Real-life case studies from successful business-to-business strategies;
· The highly popular – and now extended – Question and Answer section;
· Much, much more…

The seminar will be led by Brian Giesen a senior regional strategist in Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence team and moderated by Graham White, Managing Director of Howorth Communications in Sydney.

Join us Wednesday, 3 March at 11:00am (Hong Kong time):

http://bit.ly/aWsvrI

Across Asia, social media tools like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and blogs have redefined how businesses operate. While the focus is often on Social Media strategies for reaching consumers, companies operating in the B2B space – consultancies, wholesalers and manufacturers – can sometimes benefit even more than consumer-focused companies.

Shouldn’t you learn how to leverage social media?

Join the award-winning Social Media team from Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide for a free 30-minute online seminar powered by Citrix GoToWebinar and done in partnership with The Wall Street Journal Asia.

This webinar will provide concrete examples, action plans and case studies, including:

· 5 key steps for a business-to-business strategy;
· How to build and engage a community of potential and current customers;
· Real-life case studies from successful business-to-business strategies;
· The highly popular – and now extended – Question and Answer section;
· Much, much more…

The seminar will be led by Brian Giesen a senior regional strategist in Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence team and moderated by Thomas Crampton, the team’s Asia-Pacific director.

Hurry! Space is limited for this 30-minute webinar* and registration is required.

Join us Wednesday, 3 March at 11:00am (Hong Kong time)

To register go to wsj-asia.com/webinar

Brian Giesen, Regional Director of Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence APAC, and Tim Ho, Regional Digital Strategist will be holding a “lepak” (malaysian slang: casual hang out) session in Kuala Lumpur to share their views on Social Media in Asia.

If you are in KL and would like to have some interesting conversations with our regional experts, please join them in La Bodega in Bangsar Mall at 7pm local time on Thursday 10th Dec.

Below is the address for the venue:

Please sign up here:

I am attending the Digital Marketing and Media Summit in Melbourne today and just attended a great session from Mark Higginson, Director of Analytics at Nielsen Online.

Mark shared some interesting new research from Nielsen Online today about Facebook and social media usage here in Australia:

• 8 hours/month:  Australians spend on average 8 hours/month on Facebook
• Australia Leads: Australians spend more time on average per month using social media (any social media site, not just Facebook) than any other country (7:12 hours/month per Australian on average)
• 8 million Aussies: the current number of facebook.com users is 8 million Australians/month
• 13.7 million overall: there are 13.7 million active monthly Internet users in Australia

I think these statistics are remarkable because they show that Australians are doing more than checking out sites like Facebook and Twitter, setting up an account, and then abandoning the sites after a short amount of time. That’s a common refrain of non-believers out there. We Australians are, as Mark correctly observed, addicted.

Here are some resources for anyone interested in learning more about the landscape of Facebook + social media here in Australia:

• Facebook for Business:  presentation created by myself and Thomas Crampton on business strategies for Facebook. This was tailored to Asia Pacific and delivered as part of our partnership with the Wall Street Journal Asia.
• Australian Social Networking Jumps:  link to a Digital Media news story about how Australian social networking jumped by 29% - from Comscore, Ausgust 2009.
• History of the Australian Social Web: much-Dugg interactive timeline of the Australian social media and digital evolution
• DMMS09 Twitter Stream: feed of Tweets from the 2009 Digital Media & Marketing Summit
• Asia Digital Map Australia + Social Media Posts: all of the Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence posts on Australia

We are very pleased to have Brian Giesen, a leader of our Digital Influence APAC team, joining Pesta Blogger this year in Indonesia.

Coming under sponsorship of the US Embasssy (Press release below) Brian will be talking about Obama’s campaign and social media, among other topics.

If you are in Indonesia, be sure to attend!

PRESS RELEASE FROM US EMBASSY, JAKARTA:

U.S. Embassy Supports Freedom of Expression in Indonesia by Sponsoring Pesta Blogger 2009

Jakarta – For the second consecutive year, the U.S. Embassy is sponsoring Pesta Blogger 2009, Indonesia’s only national-level bloggers’ gathering. The event will take place on Saturday October 24, 2009 in the exhibition hall of the SMESCO building. Four U.S. bloggers, including Arsalan Iftikhar, a prominent American Muslim blogger and Mark Frauenfelder, founder of a leading technology blog, will participate.

U.S. Ambassador Cameron R. Hume said: “The Embassy is proud to support and sponsor Pesta Blogger for the second year running. Freedom of expression is an integral part of any sustainable democratic system. Indonesia has a strong, vibrant democracy, and the robust growth of its blogging community indicates this.” Ambassador Hume blogged for the first time himself shortly after Secretary Hillary Clinton’s visit to Indonesia in February of this year on the State Department’s official blog.

The U.S. Embassy also sponsored a series of blogging workshops in 10 cities across Indonesia over the past three months, in order to encourage more Indonesians to blog and to impart the principles of citizen journalism. Over one thousand people participated in the programs, which were held in Malang, Semarang, Balikpapan, Samarinda, Makassar, Medan, Bandung, Surabaya, Palembang and Yogyakarta.

The U.S. Embassy has recently embraced technology and social media to conduct public diplomacy in Indonesia. The U.S. Embassy now has its own YouTube channel, featuring over nearly 200 short videos covering a wide range of topics about the United States, including American culture, society, education, religious practice, politics, tourism and English-language education. Located at www.youtube.com/pasjakartaindonesia, videos featured on the video-sharing website are in Indonesian or have Indonesian subtitles.

In January, the Embassy was the first diplomatic Mission in Indonesia to create a Facebook fan page, www.facebook.com/jakarta.usembassy. It now has nearly 15,000 fans. The page features unique content, including photos, videos and contests. All U.S. visa appointments are now made using an online application system, and recently, American citizens living in Indonesia wishing to renew their passports are now required to make online appointments. For further information on Embassy activities visit http://jakarta.usembassy.gov or follow on Twitter at www.twitter.com/usembassyjkt.

American Blogger Bios for Pesta Blogger 2009

Brian Giesen is a Digital Influence Specialist with over five years of experience with Ogilvy PR and is an Interactive Marketing Manager in Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide. He specializes in developing online marketing programs, including search engine optimization, email marketing, online PSA campaigns, content syndication, media outreach, and more. Previously, Brian was a legislative assistant for Congressman Jay Johnson (WI-8), where he Brian tracked healthcare-related legislation, and organized special events in the Congressman’s district.

Mark Frauenfelder is a writer and illustrator living in Los Angeles. He co-founded the technology blog BoingBoing.net and was an editor at Wired Magazine from 1993-1998. He is currently the design columnist for Mobile PC magazine, and has authored several books, includeing a science experiment book called The Mad Professor. BoingBoing started as a underground magazine in 1988 and it covers technology, futurism, science fiction, gadgets, intellectual property, and politics. It became a website in 1995 and was relaunched as a blog in 2000, and has been described as a “directory of wonderful things.”

Arsalan Ikhtifar

Iftikhar is an international human rights lawyer, founder of TheMuslimGuy.com blog, and a contributing editor for Islamica magazine in Washington DC. Arsalan is a weekly contributing commentator for National Public Radio (NPR) and a regularly featured contributor for CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360. His interviews, commentaries and analyses regularly appear on CNN, BBC World News, NPR, FOX News, MSNBC, Al-Jazeera, USA TODAY, NBC, The Washington Post, ABC World News Tonight, Los Angeles Times, CBS News, and The New York Times, among others. TheMuslimGuy.com is a blog that attempts to shed light about Islam to an American audience, and was launched on the seventh anniversary of 9/11.

Corvida Raven is the author of SheGeeks.net, co-author of EverythingTwitter and TheSocialGeeks Podcast and provides consultation on strategies for social media and community management services to technology companies and consumers. She previously produced content and managed the communities of the Blog of Mr. Tweet, ReadWriteWeb, The Industry Standard, and Guidewire Group. Her work has been published and referenced on several major websites such as TechCrunch, Mashable, AllThingsDigital, LifeHacker, and Fast Company Magazine. SheGeeks.net is a social media blog covering a host of topics including, social media tools, web services and applications, mobile applications and community management.

For further information on Embassy activities, visit http://jakarta.usembassy.gov

Join me, Josh Mehlman (Editor, NETT Magazine) and Suzi Dafnis (Community Director, Australian Businesswomen’s Network) and find out!

Next week Wednesday, we’ll be running a 1-hour session on Facebook for Business.  Here are the details:

Lunch+Learn Webinar
Title:    Using Facebook to Build Your Brand
Date:    Wednesday, 14 Oct 2009
Time:    12 noon Australian EDST

REGISTER HERE!

During the session, we’ll be giving practical tips and covering:

• 5 ways to a rapid-start strategy in Facebook
• How to engage your Facebook community
• Real-life examples of how businesses of all sizes use Facebook to build their brands
• And more…

Earlier today I had the opportunity to be part of a Webinar that covered how IT managers could use Twitter to help solve some of their day-to-day challenges. The Webinar was sponsored by our client Citrix Online and featured some great speakers, including Leslie Nassar of Fake Stephen Conroy fame, Richard Binhammer from Dell, Glenn Dobson of Citrix, and Nate Cochrane of Haymarket Media.

I kicked off the presentation with a quick 101 of Twitter, how to use it to achieve a specific business or communications objective, and how to get started in Twitter in a strategic way using a 3-step methodology:

1. Follow:  First start off by following people who are relevant to whatever it is you’re talking about on Twitter (e.g., IT staff, your customers, etc.)
2. Create:  Tweet on a regular basis and share things that are going to be of interest to the people you’re talking to and, equally importantly, on-topic (or at least of interest).
3. Engage: Once you are following people and listening to what they’re saying, are Tweeting on a regular basis (creating content), then engage by replying to others by asking questions, re-tweeting people who are saying interesting things, etc.

Based on a quick audience poll that we did early on into the Webinar, it seems that nearly 3/4 of IT managers here in Australia are considering using Twitter to address IT issues - but not currently using it for that purpose.  What was most interesting to me and the other panelists, however, was that 6 percent of the audience were using Twitter “unofficially” - in other words going out and solving IT issues that customers are having on a personal basis.

Here are some interesting discussions and take-aways from today’s session:

• @ksantolin: #twitter4it @richardatdell believes that existing code of conduct and employment contracts should cover social media confidentiality
• @ksantolin: #twitter4it dedicate certain personnel to answer queries on twitter (eg helpdesk) as part of their usual helpdesk duties @glenndobson
• @MartyAtDell: @bdgiesen said in #twitter4it webinar that the Australian growth rate of Twitter outpaces other countries
• @adriankhall: #twitter4it - follow; create; engage - customer service
• Dell’s @DellOutlet Twitter account is driving sales and revenue on new product at Dell.com according to @richardatdell
• IT departments should skill up staff on handling issues, the same way they deal with people by phone and email

And for all who are interested, you can download the full Twitter for IT Managers presentation deck over on Slideshare.

Rohit Bhargava and I teamed up with Senator Kate Lundy to present a half-day government Web 2.0 workshop last Friday in Canberra, Australia. The Gov 2.0 workshop was sponsored by Frocomm Communications and drew more than 50 government and non-profit communications and marketing professionals.  You can download our presentations here:

Brian Giesen |  Rohit Bhargava |  Senator Kate Lundy

If you’re someone who looks after communications for a federal or state government agency here in Australia or across Asia Pacific, here are 15 reasons why you should be moving toward including social media into your communications programmes starting now and for 2010. Here they are, in no particular order:

1 .Citizens Trust Each Other:  Today, Australians are trusting each other more than what they read in a newspaper or see in an advertisement. Faith in a trusted “citizen stranger” is on the rise.

2. The Postal Rule. Joanne McGovern of GovGab once said at a Government Web 2.0 event in Washington that agencies should be active in social media for the same reason that the Post Office builds post offices in city centres - because that’s where the people are. That’s true here in Australia, with 84% of online adults having visited a social network in the past month.

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Here is a copy of a column that I recently wrote for the Australian Financial Review on ways that marketing and public relations managers can tell a real “expert” from someone who’s not quite there yet. This was written slightly in jest, so feel free to leave a comment if you have other suggestions.

Do a quick Google search on “social media expert” and you come across a plethora of sites with comments such as this: ”Half the people on Twitter claim to be ’social media experts’. Where did they all come from and what is the criteria for expertise?”

It is a fair question, particularly as so many companies are seeing (and being told by a growing army of “social media experts”) that social media is the shiny new toy for strategic communications. So what are the criteria for expertise? How do you pick the real expert from the person who has just decided that his pastime should be his profession?

Here’s a checklist that might help:

1. The person must be able to show demonstrable results that involve real metrics, not just the number of followers they may or may not have on Twitter or friends on Facebook. Hint: Kyle and Jackie O have a lot of Twitter followers. Do you want to let them loose on your marketing?
2. They should be able to point not only to other people’s success - Obama’s election, Telstra, Dell, JetBlue and so on - but some of their own. Hint: ask them if they have ever been faced with a campaign that was not working and how they turned that around.
3. They must have a methodology and strategy tailored for your company. Hint: if their plan solely consists of setting up a Twitter account, a Facebook page and a blog, then be very, very scared.
4. They must have been active in the social media community for a long time. Six months on Twitter makes you a beginner, not an expert. Hint: check how often their blog is updated and how active they are at responding to posts.
5. They must have a system for measuring the effectiveness of any campaign - and followers or friends or hits isn’t it - and the ability to change strategy if things are not working. Hint: if they look blank when you ask them about Plan B, ask them to shut the door on the way out.
6. There needs to be a support team to monitor your brand and your program. Hint: if your “expert” is doing it all, then you are either paying too much or your expert is a one-man band living on hope.
7. They must be able to define social media. Hint: talking about Twitter, YouTube and blogs is not the correct answer.
8. They need to tell you just how much work is required by you and/or your staff to ensure that social media contact is effective. Hint: everyone will talk about conversations; the real expert will talk about the necessity for frequent, meaningful conversation that rarely involves promoting your business or your product. Yes, it is time-consuming and that is costly, but done properly it is close to being the best research you will get.
9. Make sure they know the strengths and weaknesses of the major tools that are available. They should know when to use Buzz Numbers versus Radian6 versus Kaava and not be wedded to a particular technology. Hint: ask them about Nielsen, Buzz Numbers, Radian6 and Kaava. If they look blank, do the door trick again. \
10. Be wary if they extensively quote the Cluetrain Manifesto (the equivalent of the Old Testament) or Seth Godin or give you 50 complicated slides running on about tribes. Hint: this means they are still learning about social media, which is good for them but bad for your campaign. 
11. You constantly see their names in the comments section of marketing blogs bashing other people’s campaigns, or other people in general. Is that the type of person you would feel comfortable representing your brand in public?
12. If the answer to your question about what to start in social media is anything other than “Listen“, keep looking.
13. They must not call themselves a social media expert/ninja/jedi/guru. The social media landscape changes so quickly that the term social media expert is something of an oxymoron. The space is continually changing. Expertise in one area may be valuable one month and totally outdated and useless the next. Hint: not so long ago people were raving about - and paying $US580 million - for MySpace and now it is sooo last year.