August 30th, 2010
Global Online Intelligence Leader, Brandtology launches a new arm, Brandtology Academy to provide Social Media Analytics Courses for industry professionals.
30 AUGUST 2010 – Global online intelligence service provider, Brandtology, has launched a new initiative – Brandtology Academy which seeks to encourage retraining, education and ongoing research in the field of social media analytics. In order to raise the calibre of social media professionals, Brandtology Academy has launched Asia Pacific’s first certified Social Media Analytics Course to train a community of industry professionals and interest groups in this area.
From September 2010, Brandtology Academy will be offering a series of talks and workshops on Social Media Analytics. Through numerous case studies and hands-on workshops, participants will be able to understand the applications of Social Media in areas such as digital strategy, sales, marketing, PR, media planning, customer service and product development. The courses are targeted at industry professionals seeking a structured methodology to understanding the latest social media trends and leveraging its wide-ranging effects in their daily work. Moreover, the course also affords an invaluable chance to network with other like-minded professionals and facilitate knowledge sharing about this dynamic field.
Commenting on the new Brandtology Academy, Eddie Chau, CEO of Brandtology said: “The phenomenal speed at which Social Media is developing has resulted in many experienced industry professionals grappling to understand and leverage it in the best manner. The opportunities in Social Media are boundless and can be applied in every functional area. Hence, there is now an acute need to grasp a firm understanding in order to integrate it in traditional business process to stay ahead of the pack.”
Within the various courses offered by Brandtology, participants would be able to learn about the Social Media landscape in the Asia Pacific Region, with focus on the unique characteristics of each market. For instance, although Twitter is wildly popular in most countries, it is banned in China, which has its own version called Sina Weibo, while Taiwanese prefer a micro-blog with a timeline by the name of Plurk. More importantly, the courses would also touch on the measurement and evaluation of Social Media Success, and the use of data analysis tools and services for identifying what creates viral effects online, as well as determining top influencers and key engagement channels.
“Data without analysis is meaningless. What’s more important is to be able to go beyond simplistic statistics such as buzz, views and retweets to find out the driving factors of internet word of mouth, and the overarching concerns of netizens about a brand and its products,” Dorothy Poon, Programme Director of Brandtology Academy, opined. “Extracting actionable insights and using social media analytics to create an effective feedback loop is more important than merely finding out what’s being said and not doing anything about it.”
At the end of the course, participants will be required to undergo a rigorous certification process and demonstrate sound understanding of the key concepts taught in the course. The first two runs of the Social Media Analytics courses in September are already fully booked and the third run will commence in October. For enquiries, please email academy@brandtology.com or visit http://www.brandtology.com/academy
For more information, please contact:
About Brandtology
With more than 140 staff in 12 global locations, Brandtology’s business and brand online intelligence services enable global brands to manage and glean invaluable insights from consumers’ conversations. Using proprietary technology, processes and trained professionals, Brandtology is able to provide a high degree of accuracy and relevancy in multilingual analysis, unlike any other automated monitoring tools. Astute global organisations utilise Brandtology’s intelligence in multiple functional areas such as sales, marketing, PR, media planning, customer service and product development. For more information, please visit www.brandtology.com
About Brandtology Academy
To enable industry professionals to understand and integrate Social Media into their functional roles, Brandtology Academy offers a series of talks and workshops on the use of Social Media Analytics. Through numerous case studies and hands-on workshops, participants will be able to understand the applications of Social Media in areas such as digital strategy, sales, marketing, PR, media planning, customer service and product development. For more information, please visit www.brandtology.com/academy
Tags: Academy, Courses, Digital Strategy, social media intelligence
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August 26th, 2010
The 2-day conference held at M Hotel was highly enriching and we enjoyed mingling with the participants and other speakers. Some photos of the presentation by our Business Development Director, Kelly Choo, who presented on the applications of Social Media Analytics to business needs.
 Kelly Choo presenting 
Tags: Event, Insights, PR
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August 20th, 2010
The first ever Esteé Lauder Companies Digital Media Day was held today on the 19th of August 2010, at the Metropolitan Pavillion in New York, and it was a resounding success.
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 The Brandtology Booth
 Our Colleagues Dorothy and Jay at the Brandtology Booth Brandtology was honoured to be invited to showcase at the event. The event was exceedingly well planned, with thought provoking speeches from the likes of the Esteé Lauder Companies leadership (past and current CEOs), brand representatives from PepsiCo, Jetblue Airways, Eastman Kodak, social media companies like Google, Foursquare and Facebook, and BazaarVoice, Forrester and Resource Interactive on the consultancy and research side of things. There was even a Guru Bar where “experts” on various subject matter like search, social media or marketing were present to answer queries from the attendees.
One key thing was the fact that the leadership was very clear about the direction that Esteé Lauder was headed with digital. How can Esteé Lauder be different? By staying ahead of the digital game, according to Fabrizio Freda, CEO of The Esteé Lauder Companies Inc. The company will invest more in the digital space in the next 3 years, creating positions worldwide to address this evolving space.
 Estee Lauder staff at the event Great case studies were shared throughout the day from the various brands. Notably, it was highlighted to the audience to “look outside your industry” for best practices by players in other verticals, and try and marry the parts of what they have successfully implemented into their own digital strategies.
The discussion was very consumer centric, with the understanding that with digital, the consumer is now far reachable than before, and also wields the power to influence millions across the globe, truly exemplifying the phrase “global village”.
Closing with a particularly memorable quip – “Like I always say, fail fast…but fail cheap”, Fabrizio’s comment immediately elicited laughter from the audience. The significance of this is that Esteé Lauder understands that social media is not a spectator sport and is willing to take some risks, willing to put time and resources into moving the entire organization forward in the digital space, and this undoubtedly will propel the company further than those who adopt the wait and see mentality.
 William Lauder, Executive Chairman, The Estee Lauder Companies Inc
Tags: Corporate, Industry Study, Insights, social media intelligence
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August 13th, 2010
Asia Pacific Digital Brand Index (DBI) – Looking Back and Moving Forward
Looking back, Brandtology has reached a new milestone of having run the Asia Pacific Digital Brand Index with our partners at Edelman Digital APAC for a year now and I’m happy to say that it has been an astounding 4 releases of the DBI so far.
In summary we have so far covered:
- 8 million posts,
- representing the perspectives of millions of Netizens,
- talking about 350 technology brands,
- housed in 4,000 regional online channels,
- across 8 Asian markets.
The Top 10 most discussed technology brands in the 12 months (ending June 2010) across our eight Asian markets:
1. Google
2. Microsoft
3. Apple
4. Samsung
5. Intel
6. Nokia
7. Sony
8. Hewlett-Packard
9. Yahoo!
10. Research in Motion
Google consistently placed top in the past few studies even though we have removed keywords like “google it” to remove irrelevant mentions of the brand in the study. This shows that Google is indeed a brand name to be reckoned with and they should be exploiting it for other product extensions like Google Laptop, Google Tablet, Google Blender, etc (ok, I kid on the Blender part, but who knows what they will release next?).
Some of the macro-trends in the social media landscape across Asia are:
- Online chatter grows and the growth is startling: 800,000 posts in the first DBI and now up to 2,000,000. Can brands still afford not to be part of the conversation?
- The Twitter Phenomenon: Are we going from a web of pages to a web of streams and updates? However, in China, Sina microblog is gaining more prominence.
- Tech brands joining the conversation: Growth of creating local, regional and global fan pages in Facebook. More engagement opportunities rather than simply one way communication.
- Telcos and mobile chatter dominates: Local telcos are prominent in the Top 10 brands across all countries. On top of service, it is also driven by the hottest mobile phones they sell.
Moving forward, the DBI will continue to evolve and there will be more interesting angles to demonstrate how these top technology brands are leveraging on the growth of social media to build more content and engaging with the community.
Feel free to provide us your feedback/comments on the DBI!
The releases for the fourth Asia Pacific Digital Brand Index (10.3) for the various countries are as follows:
Information from the previous releases of DBI
Tags: Digital Brand Index, Digital Strategy, Industry Study, PR, Regional, social media intelligence, Social Media Monitoring
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August 3rd, 2010
Brandtology will be having a workshop and booth at the Social Media World Forum Asia – 22/23rd September 2010
With over 40 conference sessions and 50 leading speakers from the Asian social media market, the conference programme promises to educate, engage and inspire the audience.
Conference highlights include:
- Two days of interactive & engaging conference featuring leading key figure keynotes, brand case studies, topical Q&A and debates, exhibition hall, workshops and networking.
- The event will enabling attendees to become educated, discover, engage, network, share and collaborate in the world of social media. Ideal for those looking to embrace the latest in brand engagement, monitoring, ROI, advertising and building communities.
For more information on the event, please refer to their official site.
Do drop by our booth if you are attending, we would love to meet you!
Tags: Event
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July 29th, 2010
We will be speaking on Day 2 of the Conference, on 25th August 2010 at 1.45pm
Social Media Conversation Analytics – What you should know about Engagement, Influence, Reach and Sentiments
• Fundamental changes in communication creation and content distribution due to Social Media
• Why Online Conversations are important
• Insights from Conversation Analytics
• Technology and Trained Professionals to ensure high volume and accurate analysis
• Tying back insights to fundamental business goals
Main Conference: 24 – 25 August 2010
Venue : Anson III & IV, Level 2
Time : 9.00am – 6.00pm
The event will be held at the M Hotel, Singapore.
Other speakers at the conference include senior executives from Dow Jones, BBC, Barclays, Intercontinental, Vocanic, Burson Marsteller.
See you there!
Tags: Corporate, Event, social media intelligence
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July 28th, 2010
Corporate Voices must be Real to be effective
We might be living in a global village called the World Wide Web, but quite the contrary, the Internet gave us a place to embrace individuality, express ourselves and be free to be who we really are. Social media has become a repository of diverse opinions, interests and knowledge – a liberation of the mind that is impossible just a few decades ago.
This seemingly holy ground has been invaded by what Robert Paterson calls in his blog the “corporate voice”. It’s not the Internet’s conscience. Rather, it is the monotonous voice inside your head that tries to sell you products without variation in tone, approach and style. It is the conformist corporate voice that defies every law of online freedom by feeding you with structured press releases instead of creative, useful content. It is the same corporate voice that lacks personality to stand out in the crowd.
Let’s look at it this way. The corporate voice is actually afraid of showing its real self online because it does not want to be hated by others. Typical human behavior, isn’t it? But this typical behavior also has typical effects. It drives people away. At worst, it makes you go unnoticed. As a social media marketer, you don’t want that to happen to your brand.
This leads us to a possible dead-end. How can the corporate voice show it’s real self online without compromising its company image? But what kind of corporate image does the corporate voice really want to project? What is the corporate voice’s real self anyway?
First, the social media marketer should think how he wants the brand or the product to be perceived. Cool? Reliable? Definitely not boring. The corporate voice’s real self can be created through standards set by the company. Discuss with everyone how they want their brand to be perceived by people and plan how to better achieve this.
Give your corporate voice the personality overhaul. Enough with the press releases. Nobody reads them anyway. Instead, avoid being distant with the target audiences. Present your brand and product in a way that can be connected to their everyday lives. Don’t be afraid to have a fun or humorous corporate voice if you are selling a comedy show.
Take for example the Vans blog . They sell street shoes to teenagers right? They also have one of the most successful corporate blogs because their corporate voice is full of spunk, just like their shoes. That is what being one’s real self online is about –embodying what one’s product or brand is all about.
Sometimes, just being honest and sincere is enough, too. Listening and attending to consumer voices, being there when needed, and plainly showing that you care are the best qualities a corporate voice’s real self can have.
Tags: Branding, Digital Strategy, PR
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July 20th, 2010
By exclusive invitation, Brandtology will be presenting at the Estee Lauder Digital Media Day in New York on 19th August 2010. We are extremely honoured to be selected from thousands of digital service companies in the industry to share our expertise on conversation analytics with hundreds of executives in the Estee Lauder Companies Group.
We can’t wait for the day to be here! Will be posting up pictures of the event as soon as we can!
Tags: Digital Strategy, Event
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July 16th, 2010
According to a recent McKinsey & Company survey, online community members visited Web sites nine times as often, stayed five times as long, and represented 65% of sales. A 2006 survey of midsize and large companies suggested that 89% of them had adopted at least one of six community-building tools, such as blogs, wikis, social networking, or content-tagging. This is to say that the wide gap of social media reach between it and the consumers is getting slimmer. The fact that community management has played an undeniably significant role in attaining these figures stands strongly.
How does community management supplement the need of consumers for more reliable and accurate concepts? Community management isn’t just online issues management and discussion moderation anymore. It’s a far more fundamental business role, one that ties together responsibilities from a number of different places, both online and off.
Community management has evolved in its sense from basic online engagement where listening, monitoring, and getting involved in discussions online are the driving mechanisms, to touching and supporting many of the other areas of the organization to deliver content, provide insights and feedback, deliver subject matter expertise, and act as a bridge both inside and outside the organization.
This perpetuates the idea of making a community the central resource for information and intelligence that can help people do their jobs better as questions and topics that customers are interested in related to social media are tackled. Community management becomes a channel for sales, customer service and communication in that it functions as a hub for many different disciplines integrated with online and offline efforts such as customer/client service, PR, marketing, business development, building relationships, creating contents, responding to conversations about the brand and the content, ensuring input/feedback gets channeled to the appropriate internal functional group, managing tools – mostly social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc) and blogs, and planning and developing strategies for increasing engagement and conversion.
All these, however, sound hypothetical without guidelines tailored for people involved in achieving the goals for community management. So, to catch some relevant ideas, Michael Brito, VP for Edelman Digital, discussed the three lessons to consider when managing a community :
- Embed within your community – Spend time getting to know others in the community and engage in simple and personal conversations.
- Don’t just focus on monetizing – The most important strategy to drive revenue for a business is to build the community, earn members’ trust, and delicately ask for their permission to market your service.
- Don’t just listen, get the community involved – Building a strong loyalty is not just listening but also acting and embedding yourself within the community and becoming a trusted voice there.
The major goal here is to provide infrastructure and management that drives awareness and a sense of connection to the brand with tens of thousands or millions of customers. Customers benefit greatly by interacting and building relationships with other customers, as well as getting introduced to affiliated product and service providers who can help them maximize their value. To end this note, William Azaroff (who pioneered ChangeEverything.ca) aptly mentioned that social media, when executed well, engenders great trust among the users and participants. He added that the beauty of social media is that it spills over into people’s lives, because people are in the driver’s seat.
Tags: Digital Strategy, Insights, social media intelligence
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