Category Archives: Miscellaneous

Be Yourself! Because Everybody Else is Taken

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One of the challenges of being small-business companies in the social media race may be finding the marketing strategy that works and “making it yours”. What does “making it yours” mean?

Most often, small-business companies become so disadvantage in this social media race that companies begin to give over the power of social media to someone whom the company thinks knows best, such as social media interns, without truly equipping them with a “feel” of the company.

The tech website Mashable.com had an article titled Social Media for Small Businesses: 6 Effective Strategies which listed out six considerably simple yet helpful guidelines for small businesses; one of which I is to “get help without relinquishing your identity”. No matter how helpful social media interns or social consultants are, it’s not wise to give over the reins completely, yet business owners should still keep an eye on the content, messages and whatnots that goes in the marketing process.

This is especially crucial because with all the new and ‘hip’ social media tools that are popping out every day, companies often jump to the ‘in’ social media tools without re-evaluating their marketing strategies. Because of this, companies also have the tendencies to just follow whatever the leading companies in social media are doing.

Although I have mentioned big named companies in the past, I hope companies should use them as an inspiration, not imitation. It’s highly crucial for each companies to have its own image in its marketing strategy because the key goal of utilizing social media as a marketing platform is to present the different and unique sides of the company, unraveling the people behind the brand, thus breaking the barrier between the company and the customer. An effective marketing strategy should be circled around the company’s image or brand first, then the marketing tools can follow.

Microsoft’s Biggest Deal to Buy Skype at $8 Billion

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As reported by the Wall Street Journal earlier in May 10th 2011, Microsoft Corp. has been trying to close up a deal to buy Skype, the popularly used Internet phone company. The deal is noted to be Microsoft’s most aggressive move yet as Microsoft was willing to buy between $7 billion to $8 billion.

As a reasoning for the Microsoft biggest acquisition in its 36-year history, Chief Executive of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, sees the Internet to be a crucial element to Microsoft as Microsoft is trying to keep up with the investor’s demand in profits with the pressure from other rival technologies. To add, Ballmer also said that the deal will let Microsoft “be more ambitious, do more things” as reported by the Wall Street Journal in its update article in May 10, 2011. It was also reported on the same article that Microsoft reported to close its deal on Skype that was made last month with the price of $8.5 billion.

Although it was reported that Facebook, Google and Cisco Systems Inc. showed interest in purchasing Skype, people familiar with the issue commented that none were as determined as Microsoft in sealing the deal.

By purchasing Skype, Microsoft hopes to boost an area of technology where Microsoft is currently behind Apple Inc. and Google, with 7.5% of the smart phone market with Microsoft software: mobile phones. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft’s goals seem to be to “integrate Skype into everything from its Xboc videogame console to its Office software suite for businesses.”

Despite the falling off that eBay encountered with Skype when it was bought in 2005 for $3.1 billion then selling a 70% stake to a group of technology investors, Steve Ballmer commented that Microsoft and Skype have far more in common than Sky with eBay as both companies are in the “communications business”.

The former CEO of eBay who acquired Skype commented on Microsoft’s high bidding of Skype, “Is Skype worth $8.5 billion? I don’t know, but it depends on how big the platform grows.”

What do you think of Microsoft’s bid for Skype?

Facebook Shopping

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Just when I thought that Facebook could not get any bigger, it just did. Recently, Express, the retail company, expanded its Facebook marketing platform by adding a new application tab “Shop EXPRESS” that enables Facebook users to access its retail products and buy from the Facebook page.

While reviewing the application on Facebook, I have to say I was quite impressed. By adding these functions and app, EXPRESS is able to both promote their product and sell some products. One of the functions that I love is the ‘Like’ function. When a Facebook user click ‘Like’ on one of the products, that action will automatically be shown in the user’s news feed, thus promoting the brand to the user’s circle.  After researching more about shopping through Facebook, I discovered that a similar function that enables Facebook fans to shop in Facebook has actually been done by other retail companies such as DKNY and BANANA Republic before although each company seem to utilize it differently.  An interesting article titled “Would you go shopping on Facebook?” by theclosthingmenu.com discusses further the topic of online shopping through Facebook.

As for the matter of integrating Facebook for shopping, my opinion stands that I’m not really sure of what the future holds for shopping through Facebook, but I find the use of Facebook for marketing the brands is definitely effective. The ‘Like’ functions and the ability to comment on the product from the company’s Facebook page are quite brilliant. In a way, it’s like an upgraded version of the word of mouth marketing.

Is Social Media Marketing Killing The Print and Broadcasting Industry?

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A 2009 study by the King Fish Media revealed that over the past two years (2007-2009) 78% of the respondents of the study through the poll have increased the spending on Social Media marketing and 44% decreased their spending on print advertising. Moreover, another more recent study by BIA/Kelsey, a media consultancy, as reported by Mashable.com, also revealed a prediction that social media ad spending will hit $8.3 billion in 2015, most of which will belong to Facebook. With all these numbers rooting for social media, what does it mean for the print and broadcasting industry?

Despite the numbers, I don’t think that the print and broadcasting industry is going to die out soon. The question of whether social media marketing is killing the print and broadcasting industry is a similar question to the argument  of whether e-books are destroying the print publishing industry. For me, social media, or maybe even the internet in general, is simply a new media that allow companies to reach a target market even bigger and better than before. Both print, broadcast and social media are highly crucial in implementing a successful marketing strategy since each of those as effective marketing tools bring different things to the table.

The goals of each of these marketing tools are different. Through social media marketing, companies can benefit more in maintaining the relationship between company and customers. On the other hand, print and broadcast focus more on the goal of getting the name of the brand out there.

So, my take on the issue is simple. The print and broadcast advertising may be getting less attention than before, but I think that in the future, if not starting right now, these seemingly separate marketing tools will converge together as one form of medium. Therefore, instead of thinking that these marketing tools as separate entities, marketers should strive to view them as interdependent elements that works best when all are combined together, effectively.

What do you think? Are print and broadcast advertising still as effective and beneficial as social media marketing?

What are the four common mistakes of company blogs?

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Of all the many tips and tricks of how to maintain a company blog that I’ve read, this quite recent article that I found while browsing by detik.com, an Indonesian-based independent online news forum, is one of my personal favorite. It’s rudimentary and simple. Of course, each of us can have our personal preference to what tips and tricks work best, but personally, I think the article by detik.com should be highly helpful for smaller companies who are still in the beginning phase of their social media websites and blogging journey. Since the article is in Indonesian, I’ll try my best to translate and paraphrase the content on the article.

Basically, the article provided four mistakes that company blogs tend to make:

1)      Starting without a strategy

2)      Thinking that the blog should be all about your company

3)      Failure to create links

4)      Ignoring the social media

The number one rule that companies should stick to when starting a blog is: have a strategy. In a previous blog post, Relationship Marketing Through Facebook Ads, I’ve stressed highly the importance of strategizing before launching the blog itself. Even then, it’s still commonly the first mistake that companies tend to do. As stated in the 2nd company blogs’ mistake in the article, your blog is not a press forum. Just as Facebook markets to the consumer by relationship marketing, blogs market to the consumer by the process of information sharing. After all, ultimately, no one wants to know that they are marketed to.

What the 3rd mistake that the article refer to is the common failure for company blogs to cite their sources (Yes, I may sound like an English teacher here). Instead of thinking that linking your article with other articles will drive away traffic, think of it as building up your credentials, thus maintaining your image and relationship with the readers.

Lastly, many companies tend to forget to link up their company blogs to other social media sites, such as Twitter and Facebook. The Re-Tweet and Share function in Twitter and Facebook, respectively, are highly crucial and helpful in spreading your blog, thus driving more traffic to the blog. As you are constructing your strategy, make sure that your company blog is connected to other social networking sites so that it’s updated automatically.

As I’ve said before, these tips and tricks are relatively simple and easy, but I believe that to advance into more development, companies should strive to cover their bases first by making sure that at least, these four mistakes have been avoided. When all of these bases have been covered, then companies can proceed into the next step such as maintaining a blog content or theme and so on.

Going Back to the Infamous 5Ws and 1H

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Ever since the explosion of social medial networking and blogs, the marketing and PR world have been pushed to keep up with the Internet as a new platform for marketing. While researching about tips and tricks of creating and maintaining a blog, I’m suddenly reminded of one tool that has helped me in many ways from biology lab research to news articles that also can be applied to strategy-making in marketing: the 5 Ws and 1 H.

For most of us, the 5Ws and 1H has been thoroughly drilled into our process of thinking by our formal education system that it almost seems like an innate trait and well, common sense. In the business of blogging, although it may seem common sense, I propose for the need of companies to consult back to the 5Ws and 1H more thoroughly. The thing is that it’s not just about answering the right answer but also asking the right questions. The 5Ws and 1 H are who, what, where, when, why and how.

Before starting a blog, companies should start building a strategy that can be constructed by asking and answering through the 5Ws and 1 H. Some questions that should be asked are maybe:

  • Who is the company trying to reach with the blog?
  • What is the goal of the blog?
  • What are the resources needed to start the blog?
  • What image is the company trying to enforce through the blog?
  • What other social media tools can be used to strengthen the blog?
  • Why is the company starting the blog? What are the benefits?
  • And so on…

By asking these questions, the company should now have a strategy, or in other words, a blueprint of where the blog should go. One of the mistakes that companies tend to make is to ignore the strategy-making of the blog. Although it might seem like something that can be put off later, the failure for a company to establish clear goals of the blog through strategizing will seep through to the blog itself, making the blog seem unorganized and confusing. In a more blunt set of words, if you do not care about the blog, then why should the readers care?

The rise of the Twitter empire in Indonesia

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A research done by comscore which was released in August 2010 revealed that Indonesia is statistically proven to be one of the leaders of the Twitter surge around the world. With a market penetration percentage of 20.8 percent of the Twitter usage worldwide, it’s no more unbelievable that we, Indonesians, definitely like our Twitter. Although we’re no longer the number one Asian country for Twitter, since Japan has taken over that title now, the statistics are definitely still crucial facts for companies when constructing marketing strategies, especially those reaching out to Indonesia.

In addition to the obvious Twitter popularity, thus implying the effectiveness of Twitter usage as a tool of social media marketing, the statistics are also able to reveal the traits of the ideal target market in Indonesia, which are practicality and personalization. Through that basis, companies should be able to construct marketing strategies that are geared around those traits, thus creating a far more effective marketing strategy to reach the target market.

This utilization of Twitter is shown by one of Indonesia’s music promoter, Java Musikindo’s founder Adrie Subono (@AdrieSubono).With 423,687 Twitter followers currently, Adrie Subono’s use of Twitter – one of which is by the occasional free concert tickets to the Twitter followers – is highly efficient in both marketing of the concerts that it’s promoting, but also image of the company. More also with the fact that it is the Java Musikindo’s founder, Adrie Subono, who also is promoting by Twitter, the company is able to personalize and humanize the relation between the company and the target market.

Sky Soft Consulting Indonesia

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During my recent visit to Indonesia, I had the opportunity to establish a new branch office in a beautiful part of West Jakarta.

I thank God for His grace, faithfulness and blessings. We cannot do this without Him.

Sky Soft Consulting Indonesia
Business Park Kebon Jeruk
Blok D2, No: 1, 3rd Floor
Jln Meruya Ilir No: 88
Jakarta Barat 11620, Indonesia
Phone: 081-222-18000

Sky Soft Consulting provides a premier and custom web-based solutions as well as online marketing strategies. We help our clients to improve their bottom-line, improve business efficiency, increase their brand awareness and increase their online presences through our solutions.

Are Prescriptions Drugs Tax Deductible?

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You can deduct prescription drugs, but only if they exceed 7.5 percent of your income, so this is rare unless you have significant medical costs. If you make $40,000 a year, for example, your annual prescription drug costs would have to exceed $3,000. Also, these costs could not be reimbursed, such as through a health insurance plan.

Indeed.com officially became the largest jobs site in the US

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Job search engine Indeed.com officially became the largest jobs site in the U.S. by passing longtime leader Monster.com in October, according to the latest data from comScore.

A total of 12.3 million users visited Indeed in October, a monthly increase of 19.6 percent. Monster had 12.1 million visitors while CareerBuilder was third with 11.3 million. The numbers, however, reflect the sites’ main jobs sites only and not their entire networks – in which case larger properties Monster and CareerBuilder would still have the edge.

But Indeed has steadily built Web traffic by adding nearly one million new jobs to its index each week, and it could very well become the consistently popular choice for U.S. job-seekers. Indeed actually attracts more monthly pageviews devoted strictly to job searches than Monster, CareerBuilder and HotJobs combined, but the other sites offer additional content such as resume-building tips and career advice.

Monthly traffic to HotJobs, which was purchased by Monster from Yahoo! in early 2010, has fallen 67 percent in the past year.