So, what happened at Facebook Studio Live? Hundreds of agency heads, clients and industry professionals gathered together on a rainy Wednesday afternoon at the trendy space at Carriageworks in Eveleigh. There has always been a cloud of mystery and secrecy that surrounds the Facebook brand, which was evident upon arrival. Small Facebook branded moleskins were handed out and guests not knowing what to expect were ushered into dark auditorium with microkitchens on either side of the room that included unlimited refreshments and snacks, we later learned a staple feature of every Facebook office. The crowd got to hear from superb speakers about the Facebook hacker culture, the evolution of Facebook over the past decade, creative solutions for advertising, and the deepest level of Facebook insights and metrics available to brands with additional ad spend (of course.) My top four key takeaways I took from the day are summarised below:

1) The most successful social campaigns have impact through ALL of the following: connections, engagement, influence, and integration. The best social marketers in the world don’t create campaigns that just have the BIG idea any more, they create social programs that scale in all four categories. How do you do this? It all starts with the standard creative brief and asking two key questions a) What is the key engagement insight? b) What is the social insight?

2) Don’t underestimate the power of the conversation calendar. More and more marketers are fighting for the same short-attention span on Facebook. So, what does this mean for brand pages? Facebook is about creating authentic relationships and creating a community management strategy and conversation calendar that demonstrates the following:

• Understand what motivates social behavior
• Have a clear purpose and authentic voice
• Create many meaningful and light-weight experiences
• Posting is like a dinner party, be a brilliant conversationalist
• Creative is both an art and a science

3) Facebook Studio online offers a fantastic wealth of global information and resources available to all marketers, brands, and agencies. The site aims to celebrate the great work of agencies and marketers and inspire others, while sharing resources to help strengthen existing Facebook campaigns. Take for example the Flair Fashion Tag campaign. This highly innovative and creative Facebook app developed by Belgian agency Duval Guillaume Modem allowed people to easily tag pieces of clothing in photos and share them with friends. All “fashion tags” were then displayed on the Flair Facebook Page and the top submissions were also featured in a magazine, a nice integration between Flair’s offline and online presence. This campaign was one of the first ever to be featured on the site and even earned a Media Lion at Cannes last year.

4) The possibilities for brands on Facebook are boundless. Facebook allows brands to connect with consumers in a digital world with the same authenticity as the real world. According to Mark D’Arcy, Director of Creative Solutions at Facebook, successful Facebook campaigns for brands focus on utility, relevance, caring/sharing, and light-weight design, rather than disruption. If used smartly and strategically, a Facebook brand page is one of the most amazing devices for storytelling and understanding consumer insights.

There are just a few of the takeaways I took away from Sydney’s first ever Facebook Studio Live. I will be sharing more content and key learnings over the next few weeks!

RSVP via a Facebook Event

Announcements on Facebook and Twitter aside, I created a Facebook Event to invite my guests. With a simple message and a few clicks, I reached out to almost all my friends on FB. That saved me tonnes of time when it comes to finalizing the number of attendees and finding out if my guests were bringing their +1s or not. When planning a wedding, especially when the date draws closer, time is a luxury piece and you don’t get to waste much. So this alone saved me much time.

A mini teaser for the wedding via a Wedding Teaser Photo Album

We took some beautiful wedding portraits to be shown during the wedding. If you knew about it and remember, the photography session caused me to miss the Social Media Summit in HK earlier this year! Aaarrrrgggghhhhh!

Anyway, to create anticipation and excitement a few days before the wedding, we released a few of these pictures on Facebook. It was fun, friends were glued on and excited to view the next picture to be uploaded.

A video to tell our little story

They say a picture is stronger than a thousand words, while I disagree SEO wise, we took it one step further and hired a videographer to make us a video instead, and we loved it. The attendees found it entertaining and we get to keep our sweet sweet memories foerever (unless the video file somehow got lost or corrupted, I hope not!). We then uploaded the video on YouTube for all those who missed it and those who would like to see it again, my wife and I especially.

(The video is the one at the top by the way)

IT ALL REALLY STARTED WITH FACEBOOK

So there you have it, 3 ways I’ve used social media for my wedding. If I can only quote ONE SINGLE example on using social media for a wedding, how about this….. I met my wife on Facebook, how’s that for a social media case study!

Hope you’ve enjoyed this. Have you got similar stories to share? How have you used social media for your wedding? Looking forward to hearing your stories, cheers!

The slides introduced here try to answer a simple question: Is content the fuel of social web? The authors here make no mystery and provide a positive answer right after the title page, 23% of social media messages include links to content, which represents no less than 27,000,000 piece of content shared across the social web every day.

Reading this report we also learn that email is decidedly not a dying technology with 93% of content sharing occurring via this way (versus 89% for social networks). With no surprise, we read that people overwhelmingly share “trusted” contents mainly with friends and family.

Aol & Nielsen content sharing study

View more presentations from Dmitry Voskresensky

Don’t you realize that only around 15% (or less) of your Twitter followers actually respond and pay attention to your tweets? The reason is simple, Twitter is very much like your offline social life, you can meet as many people as you want but you only communicate more often with a certain crowd after all. I have done some testings and successfully increased followers’ engagement, it’s all about ♡!

Be your own Follower

Like many other things in life, it’s always good to try and see things from another angle. In twitter, if you start to wonder why some of your followers never respond to your tweets, be your own Follower. Subconsciously, you do ignore some certain Tweets, and so do your followers. You have to understand your followers and give them what they need. If a person realizes that 3-4 Tweets that interests him/her are from you, this person would start paying attention to ALL your tweets.

The Avatar Game

Never change your avatar. Avatars in Twitter is not like Profile Pictures of Facebook. As I said above, people subconciously decide what tweets are important/ interesting to them. Once you’ve successfully engaged with followers, if you change your avatar, you might lose people’s attention again. If you REALLY have to change your avatar, it’s better to mention about it a few times before you do, or/and tweet about it after you change it. For example…

• Hey tweeps, I’m changing my avatar soon! Or should I?
• I just changed my avatar and I love it

Try something different

There’s always a reason for everything, if you think that many people are still ignoring your tweets, you should try writing tweets in other style. For example, turn (:) into (-), Retweet into (RT). If most of your tweets talk about your personal life, start directing people to your favorite news and articles. If you direct too much links, talk about something personal, something funny, and twitpic more images to make your tweets personal.

The visual trick

Twitter doesn’t have the function to see “Mutual Friends” like Facebook, but most of us (unless you are Aston Kutcher) actually have many mutual friends with your followers because of similar interests. Try to do something different from what your followers do, then you might get special attentions. For example, if most of your active followings are directing links with long tweets (110-140 chars), try to make yourself unique by writing a very short tweet, that way your tweet might stand out from others’.

Now, show me your ♡!

What can be learnt from this ongoing case?  News and gossip, both accurate and erroneous, can spread through the internet like wildfire. How people write to friends via email may be vastly different than if they write a letter to the editor.  And the internet can be a hotbed for support to those who have been deemed to be “wronged”.
Just take a look at the Facebook groups that sprung up for Prita’s defense.  Over 30,000 supporters in one group alone.  30,000 intelligent, opinionated, wired and angry people.  In short, any business’ potential customers.
It should be remembered that Indonesia has one of the most independent media within the region and its readers are getting used to such freedoms.  The ability to voice opinions is becoming engrained, both online and off, and is vital for the development of the nation.  No one wants to go back to the days of repression.  Any perception of taking away such freedoms will be met with fierce resistance.
So what can businesses do if they are at the receiving end of a negative communications campaign online?

Engage the conversation. Learn the issues, find out from your side the exact details of the case and respond as appropriate.  As some companies have media monitoring for print media, it is becoming equally important to have an online monitoring component to learn what the internet is saying about their business.  It would be easier to douse a small flame than allow it to fester and become a full fledged three alarm fire because your side remained quiet.

Be Transparent. Like any business that depends on customers, resolve the issue.  If mistakes were made, rectifying the situation would be in order.  If the writer is in the wrong, posting the business’ side of the situation would allow the online readership to judge for themselves who is in the wrong and who is being unreasonable (make no mistake, netizens don’t like to be fooled and used)
Use the same medium. There are many ways to communicate on the internet such as using email, message boards, social networks or blog posts.  Engaging them on these mediums allows future users, who may bump into this case, to also find your side of the story, quickly resolving any potential repeat flare ups.  It can also be indexed by search engines and be close on hand when people are searching your business online.
Treat others as you wish to be treated.  The golden rule of Isadore Sharp, Founder and CEO of the Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts Hotel Chain.  Legal court cases should be the absolute last venue (according to this Public Relations consultant) and only after deciding the merits of the case (Is it winnable? Is it worth the publicity?).  Once in court, it all becomes public record: the cause of conflict, escalation and the attempt for mediation (if any).

Have all attempts been made for mediation?  Is the writer really unreasonable? Is going to court something shareholders or future investors would support?
For online issues, with both sides of the arguments in the open, logic usually prevails.  Attempts for mediation in good faith would always be appreciated as many Indonesians still believe in resolving things secara kekeluargaan (within the family).  But if you believe your brand continues to be under assault, then by all means defend it, not just in the courts, but also in the realm of public opinion, to explain your side of the story.
Once all the facts are in, people can easily decide for themselves who to believe and support.  In this era of the internet, transparency trumps all else as now everyone can easily search for the truth.  And you don’t want to anger the internet Gods, for they are not infallible yet can be swift and brutal to your brand.

1 ) No Bio

I really don’t get it. Are people too lazy for a 160 (or less) characters bio, or they just don’t know how to describe themselves? Would you follow someone on the street without any reason?

2 ) No followers

Number of followers is like the first impression you give others. If the ratio between your “followers” and your “followings” doesn’t look right (e.g. 1203 following, 15 followers), people would most likely see your tweets as invaluable.

3 )Ugly profile

And yes, many people judge a book by it’s cover. Like the number of followers, look and feel of your twitter profile can change what followers, or potential followers think about you/ your tweets.

4 ) Ugly avatar

When I say ugly avatar I don’t mean that you have to be good looking to tweet. If you don’t feel like putting your own picture, at least put something special, something that is not directly from Google Images. Ugly avatars can get you unfollowed, or ignored.

5 ) Get followers Quick twitterers

Although some people would fall for those “Get Followers Quick” products/ ebooks twitterers, they are the ones that I never follow. The quality of audience is more important than quantity.

6 ) Bio that doesn’t mean anything

It takes me 5 seconds to close the browser when I see a profile that has no bio, and it takes me 15 seconds to do the same when I see meaningless bio.

7 ) No engagement

Social Networking is to engage, to interact with followers. No reply, no RTs, no recommandations, or no thx for RTs can get you unfollowed. Tools like Twitterfeed shouldn’t be used if you want to engage.

8 ) 10 tweets within a miniute

Although people have the choice to follow, it doesn’t mean that 10 tweets within a minute isn’t annoying.

9 ) Make money online affiliates

The best way to get yourself unfollowed.

10 ) Tweet to your vegetarian audience about steak

When people follow your tweets, it means that they expect something that will interest them. Tweeting something that is not relevant to your crowd all the time will eventually get your unfollowed.

Thanks for reading my first blog post on AsiaDigitalMap. Feel free to visit my Personal Blog.