I must say this is a great article. It manages to explore many areas which con’t to dog not only SM, PR and communications & marketing etc. IMHO its a big mistake to put across the archetypal image of XX and Mr Brown as the only Singaporean Icons. For firms looking for opportunities to project online this means they are likely to give Singapore amiss.

I believe media saint when you mentioned the BP, you are referring to their travelogues. They generally score high hits over 40K to 50K at one swipe, so it make alot of sense for principals to partner with them. However, I understand they dont want to deal with local reps for some reason as it has something to do with having to transact in real money or paying taxes, that is the gist of it, those ppl only deal exclusively with monopoly money. I do however feel in the case of the BP there could be some ethical issues, as we are never really certain whether they are genuine users or simply carriers, so if one reads many of their travelogues where these products and services are mentioned, its usually couched in ambigious terms, this I feel would benefit from some online regulation.

God Bless +

MSM, if you send in an email to disagree, it might not even have a respond or gets published in print.

I have been working with some PR folks on engaging social media and it has been hard getting the clients to get a sign off on some projects.

But that’s the challenge. However, most of them haven’t asked me to show them the data yet. The usual questions I get are:

Q1: Are they credible?
A: Some are and some aren’t. @ the same time, some are influential, some arn’t. Its our job as the social media to recommend the bloggers they should be engaging.

Q2: What if these bloggers write a bad review?
A: Respond and respond accordingly. Case in point, Nike. When Nike launched an online campaign where customers can design their own shoes, a Noah Peretti decided to put the word SWEATSHOP. Nike said no, but the argument went on and forth on why the word is a slang not a word..

Noah exchanged this emails with 10 friends and so did they.

Nike has the right to say no to Noah, but what Nike should have focused on was explaining to Noah about its stand on sweatshops.

There are also a lot of things that some PR are doing wrong with social media. Most of the slides I have seen on new media last only one slide. Yes, they can create blogs, podcast, etc, but what’s next? In fact, for some clients I have suggested to them not to start a blog as it is time consuming, but to use different approaches that engages the bloggers.

And this goes beyond just sending them a press release or bring them to an event..

The example of Xiaxue’s post will do almost nothing to demonstrate to business leaders the power of social media. The business standards for making a wise media investment are very different from the standards you are promoting. As I continue my research at SMU, the business response to social media seemshighly consistent across countries. I would describe the response as, “Don’t ask me to fund your on-line experiment.”

Business leaders are spot on.

While personal and societal adoption may be impacted by governmental oversight and policy, as today’s Straits Times argued, business adoption is an entirely different issue. Until social media early adopters and advocates learn to think and speak the language of business–which in an economic downturn means measurement and ROI–then business will continue to reject our advances.

If we are serious about 2.0 for business, then we need to move away from these popularized myths such honesty pushing business decision makers away. I would love to see reliable data to support such assertions. And that really gets at the heart of the matter….Until social media advocates begin to make data-driven recommendations aimed at improving the strategy execution of a specific business, then all this talk will simply prove to the business community that we have little to offer them.

Ironic, when we pause to think about it, isn’t it?

By the way I also meant businesses using blogs as in having a blog themselves, not necessarily purely blogger outreach.

And again, I agree with you entirely that the democratisation of media allows someone like Xiaxue helps globalise Singapore (and our social media). That’s one of the fantastic benefits of the new web2.0 world. All I’m saying is that there’s 2 components to it: the actual event or execution of spreading the word and the message itself. First part’s great, second part (in this specific case)…. probably not.