LOL! Sorry, I just noticed Joanne and Vkcloong are husband and wife. Anyway, good team effort to keep this thread alive by you guys. And, congrats.

Vck, new question for you then.

Since you mentioned about keeping Facebook users within Facebook using Social Ads. What strategy is used then to get Facebook users out of the group to a targeted website? event?

Besides the usage of rewards - if such thing, exists. LOL!

Hi etsuko,

Thanks for noticing that Joanne and I are spouses who is constantly learning from each other, and most of our communication is done online, as she is pregnant and is not mobile, and I am always away when I am meeting clients outside.

Again, this goes to show the user behaviour of the current Generation X and Generation Y, in which, even when they are seated right beside each other, they would actually MSN Messenger each other (as how I normally comunicate with my wife and colleagues or business partners). This really ties in with what we call as Social Technographics profiling (created by Forrester Research), in which there are 6 kinds of users online behaviour, namely:

1. Creators - people who create audio, video or article content and upload to websites
2. Critics - people who like to criticize, condemn or compliment in forums due to different reasons of human emotions and opinions
3. Joiners - people who join and observe a social network
4. Collectors - people who download content for self consumption
5. Spectators - people who dont even join, but just read news sites
6. InActives - people who are not even online

For my wife and myself, we are both Creators and Critics, which is highly expressive online, and that is why we have created NextGenParenting, targetted to new generation parents. As long as a marketer continually give value, it does not matter what their background or what the critics are saying, but what is being received and valued by the Spectators, Joiners and Collectors.

We have also asked all the Malaysian Business Network group members (all 3000 of them) to come and check out this thread to add value to them, and my wife (which most Facebook members in Malaysia already know as we are really active in Facebook as husband and wife) is playing the Devil's Advocate in asking all the questions who have been asked by them directly to me through Facebook messaging. With this excercise, we are also adding value to the Malaysian Business Network group members who wants to learn more about Facebook Marketing, which ties in to the answer to your question of keeping Facebook users within Facebook using Social Ads, and also out of the group to a targetted website or event.

In Malaysian Business Network, and I hope that you MBN members are reading this, as part of a way to give back value to you guys who supported me and my team in the Malaysian Business Network Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=60937662428 , we MBN management team actually take time to send out periodical newsletters on Online Marketing for Facebook Malaysian Business Owners, every week, twice, with the help of Hilson Yeap, which is my business associate and co-trainer and consultant on Facebook Marketing.

Further to that, after gaining trust by giving valuable content, you will then be able to recommend websites and online destinations to the group members. Remember, you can only get the group members out of the Facebook group to a online destination, ONLY and after ONLY you have invested time and effort in giving value to them to gain their trust. Once you have gain the trust, as a Social Online Friend and Value Giver, only you will be able to recommend them out of the group over and over again without spamming them.

It is pretty much like dating a girl or starting a new friendship. Most people would just want "One Night Stand" and not have the "Commitment". The same is happening to most marketers. They just wanna send an email to a huge list and get returns instantly. If these marketers does not change their approach, or build a relationship and online conversations consistently, they will be losing the members in the Facebook group, and chances are this group will be dead.

That is why, when I see that this thread is not generating enough interest, or maybe the users are more on the Spectators and Collectors or Joiners Social Technographics profile, I would ask my wife, joanneqpk, to ask some relevant question on behalf of them so that I can answer and allow them to receive value. In fact, there are some in this thread who are our graduates of our Facebook marketing seminar at http://www.sales2marketing2.com/facebookRevolution.

Again, thank you etsuko, for noticing this and bringing this to light. As my wife is 8 and a half months pregnant now, this is the best way she can support her husband, which is through online questions to give value to the readers, and in so doing, gather interest for consultation and also in attendance to our seminars to provide for our soon to be born baby daughter, Victoria Cheng. Thank you also for your question on how to manage the groups in Facebook so that they will be able to trust you enough to bring them out of Facebook. I must admit that it is a highly relevant question.

Please keep the questions coming so that I can share my humble opinions more to add value to the Malaysian Business Network readers of this thread as well as also for our graduates from http://www.sales2marketing2.com

Looking forward for any furhter questions on Facebook marketing from any of you to add value to this thread and in your online ventures yeah.

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Added on June 11, 2009, 8:10 am

Hi my dear wife and Joanne,

While you are sleeping, I will be answering you this question before I go out to work later so that you can continue to consult our clients when they call up for any consultation or support.

When a client needs to have an application developed, the first thing to do is to discover or get the requirements and story board of the application. This means, to understand the client's business and their target market with these 4 angles.

1. Demographics - what is the clients' prospects age, gender and income level
2. Geographics - what is the clients' prospects location, is it in Malaysia or overseas, or city or rural?
3. Psychographics - what does the client think, and behave? Do they log in to Facebook after work or during work and etc.

After establishing this, we will engage a creative director to come out with a storyboarding to create the application. If it is a survey based application, then the questions need to be nailed down with the client so that it will be relevant for the client's prospect target market. If it is a game, then a more complete storyboard is needed so that the game is relevant and engaging enough for the client's prospects.

As you may already know, we already built a simple application to great success, with a quiz for parents as a Facebook application at
http://apps.facebook.com/coolparents/ and it has garnered some results for us to have a survey and have gathered some attention from MamyPoko to be interested in joining us as a partner to engage parents as their Facebook strategy.

Of course, there are programmers all over Malaysia which we can engage for Facebook application, but due to the fact that currently Facebook Application Programming is in its infancy stage in Malaysia, many programmers does not have the skill of Facebook Markup Language and Facebook Structured Query Language or AJAX programming, whic his needed to build the FB application.

If any of you out there needs Facebook Application development, we at JeVince Solutions, has the expertise to develop the FB Application and you can check out http://www.jevince.com for more information.

Thanks Joanne.

This post has been edited by vckloong: Jun 11 2009, 08:10 AM

That's a good question.

In a facebook group, people there behave differently and the moment you try to sell them something, they will leave the group. Here are the steps you can use to promote your website through Facebook group however, you need to consider giving value first in the group. For example by giving them weekely newsletter or organize a mini seminar to show them what you are doing and how they can benefit from it.


STEP 1
Start a group and invite your friends to this group

INVITE ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS BY CLICKING 'INVITE PEOPLE TO JOIN' ON THE RIGHT.

STEP 2
Follow the 2 first step on this page, this takes only 5 minutes..

STEP 3
Create your own group to market your new personalized affiliate link and invite ALL your friends on the list. In turn your friends will join your group and send invites to all their friends.

STEP 4
Your friends are now marketing your affiliate link and group for you on facebook.

STEP 5
You can advertise your link on the marketplace and add listing like that to make sales and lots of money everyday:

Notice that this is just a simple steps to but the secret behind it is engagement and communication. The moment you have a group, you are the president of that group which I call it as a "virtual association". Naturally when you are the president, people will look up to you for advise. However, you need to earn your respect through giving good values. The best way is through education such as newsletter, links to great website and video clips which you think it's good to share with all the members.

---

Added on June 11, 2009, 12:25 pmTo summarize what we have been discussing so far about Facebook Marketing. They are:

1. Social meida (Facebook) marketing has started to take over search engine optimization
2. Social media marketing is the core to web 2.0 where it focus on 2 way communication
3. Facebook is a great marketing tool because it allow you to engage, communicate and socialize with members online. Conventional website can't do that
4. Social media (Facebook) marketing is word of MOUTH. Search engine optimization is word of MOUSE. One focus on MAN the other focus on MACHINE
5. Facebook allows different internet behaviour (Creator, critics, collectors, Joiners & Spectators) to interact with each other.

What do you all think?

This post has been edited by hilsonyeap: Jun 11 2009, 12:25 PM

Hi Hilson,

Spot on answer on the Facebook marketing, with a new buzzword called "virtual association" and another thought that I am in agreement with is engagement and conversations.

Many marketers in the the position of marketing is only caught up with getting immediate ROI, such as, "If I blast out a promotional commercial email to this group, how fast can I get returns?"

The above thought is really old school as humans and consumers are social beings, and with a highly distractive media like the Internet, they can just choose to delete the email or block that person who appears to be spammy.

The only way to promote effectively is to establish a "virtual association" and may I add "virtual continuous relationship" with great "virtual valuable content" before we even pitch them by sending to our websites or push out a commercial email down their throats.

Many would argue, "but Vince, this will take a long time..." I must agree with that, but then again, the effects of that long terms engagement and conversations establish over time will yield continuous returns and returning customers over and over again. Marketers with short term perspective will ultimately lose out to these new generation of recommending and value giving marketers, and in itself, these new generation of marketers would have created their own Blue Ocean, by using engagement, online conversation and relationship marketing through effective use of Facebook and other social media.

Hope you guys can give your feedback on my humble opinion yeah.

good info there guys ! keep it up !

Thanks Sandwich, are you Kumaresh, dude?

Vckloong,

How do you feel Fan Pages and Groups compare for marketing potential?

So in other words, you disguise the true intent of your email to trick people into reading what they would normally have deleted?

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Added on June 13, 2009, 9:29 pm

Not boring actually. Ever seen deaf/mute people sign? do they look bored to you? actually even in a silent party, there are a lot of things that can be done to make it interesting. In fact, why don't people have silent parties? can you communicate without speech? it would make for an interesting party, a party where you are not allowed to speak

I think that might be more fun than a party in which everyone talks

This post has been edited by wodenus: Jun 13 2009, 09:30 PM

Hahaha.. Wodenus.. seems like you are a funny bloke... Always good to have a sense of humour.

As founder of Malaysian Business Network in Facebook who is in Joint Venture with University Sedaya College, Malaysian Chinese Association ICT Resource Center, Branding Association of Malaysia, Institute of Marketing Malaysia, MPH Bookstores and also Golden Screen Cinemas, as well as recently Norton Symantec, I have observed quite a bit in terms of business and marketing.

Using the term trick may be an overkill in the sense of Social Media Marketing. The question here is, would you like your email subject headers to be labelled "SHOE PROMOTION!!!" or are you more likely to open an email with the subject header, "Shoes great for the Casual Malaysian" ? It is more of a copywriting skill, versus writing to be commercial (or sometimes offensive) to throw people off their peace, and become aggressive.

Having partnered with ExaBytes in delivering Online marketing courses, and big names like ActionCoach and Shinjiru, another thing which I notice with business owners and techies is that, they are highly centred on their own brand when doing promotional emails. They are also very self centered and shoot out comments which is not centered to the needs of the crowds, but more of self elevating their own brands or themselves, rendering many to be pushed away, and never come back to purchase from them.

You also must understand, sending an email is not a spurt of the moment thing, but a constant series of tips to engage the group members or the email recipient to make them realize that you are providing value. Its like dating a girl, right? You don't try to kiss her every time.. cause that would put her off.. sending commercial email all the time is like trying to kiss her all the time, making her dislike you. In dating a girl, you should be consistent in looking out for the best of her, and she will fall into your arms, very much like customers. When prospects or targetted leads recipient see that you have been putting effort in giving them tips via email or Facebook Messages, they will remain loyal to you and ultimately purchase from you. If you would like to learn more about this, you can check out my interview with Business FM 89.9 - the Business Station podcasts and also the weekly Online Marketing tips I send out to Malaysian Business Network group at my blog at http://www.jevince.com/blog

I have also expressed my intent to partner with LowYat.Net in delivering free courses on Online Marketing, and if you are interested, you may want to join us in this high level collaboration.

In terms of a Silent Party, I am not quite sure whether your message is meant to be a humour excercise or was it mean to be an aggressive tone to be condescending. Nevertheless, giving you the benefit of the doubt, that you may be new in the line of Online Marketing or inexperienced in this field, I would like to clarify that, in Social Media, a Silent Party in a Group may not be the best thing for the marketing efforts for your products and services. According to Forrester Research's Social Technographics, to market well means, we need to be able to pick out the Creators and Critics to spread Online Word of Mouse for your products or services.

The fact that I am offering so much in forums and Facebook, as well as the background and experience, is a testimonial in itself of our passion in continuous improvement in learning and sharing about Online Marketing, and at present, Facebook marketing. Even political parties such as MCA, Gerakan, Pemuda MIC has approached us to help them in their online marketing efforts.

Hope my humble 2 cents is sufficient to clarify your cheeky and curious presentation of your point of view, wodenus.

This post has been edited by vckloong: Jun 13 2009, 11:38 PM

I wouldn't open either. Anyway, how would you stop people from labeling your email as "spam" ? then they'd never see another email you sent.



I see. But the point is, who would actually open and read a promotional email? are there people who do that? you can have a catchy header but with Gmail you can see part of the message. If the header doesn't match the message then it won't get opened.



Interesting opinion. For me, if a girl (or a customer) is not interested the first time, she's not interested, whether or not you look out for the best of her (or the best of them.) If you keep trying, you'll just end up being pushy and annoying and possibly be arrested or have a restraining order taken out on you. I'll have to ask the girls in Girl's Club whether this is true.

Anyway, why would you have to make someone realize that you are providing value? wouldn't they see it the first time?



You mean you don't find it annoying and irritating that someone you consider a friend is always trying to sell you something? I removed someone from my Facebook list because he was always doing that -- he kept saying "I'm inviting you to dinner at my restaurant..." - to my mind, if you invite a friend for dinner, you don't make him pay for it. I'm sorry, but I don't see how someone would not be irritated and annoyed and eventually take you off his list.



People do that all the time. Well it is funny to try and describe something without speaking, that's the point of it. I used to play this game - you had two teams, each team would have a set of words, and then one person would have to try and describe the word without speaking. I've done it before and it is fun and not boring at all. As for the marketing prospects of such a game, I'll leave it to you. I can see a few possibilities inherent in it that you might want to exploit.

Personally though, my private life is my private life. My professional life is my professional life. My friends are part of my private life. I don't sell stuff to them, and they don't sell stuff to me. If anything happens to them, they can stay at my place, and I'm sure I can say the same for them. Worse comes to worst, if I have to offer my life to save them, I will. Those are the people I call my friends. I don't have many friends because this place isn't big, and I have only one life

I find the idea of selling my friends (or family) something (or them selling something to me) as somewhat offensive.



So that's where our tax money goes



Thanks. I find your ideas as strange and curious as I'm sure you find mine

Actually, I don't see why people need to sell a product at all. Suppose (just suppose) I had a good product at a good price, all I'd have to do is give out a few free samples. If they liked it, really liked it, wouldn't they be back for more? soon word would spread, and you'd have a steady customer base. As long as you give them what they want, you'll always have customers, right?


As for :



Why don't we do it here? that's what forums are for, we can have free giving and taking of ideas. I don't see a need to express an intent at all, if you want to do it just do it. I'm curious about a lot of things so I'm going to ask you here.

I guess at this point, it is no more about sharing, it is about conflicting opinions on whether to market or not, it is not the methods, but mindsets.

By the way, may I know your background in terms of marketing or business? Further to that, may I know why are you expressing your opinions without adding value to this thread? Please be reminded this thread is to share about Facebook marketing and not your personal opinion on topics not related to Facebook marketing which I believe in this case should be kept to yourself yeah.

From the way you are expressing your opinions, I would guess that you may not be a business owner of any kind (correct me if I am wrong or apologies if I appear offensive in any of my previous posts, apologies in advance yeah). As your perception of things MAY (and again, I am just guessing yeah) be coming from an employee mindset, that is where all these venting out of your own opinions is causing distress and misdirection among the forum members. I hope that you will understand the heart of business people and also try and relate to people within that domain yeah.

Either way, I would still be answering your questions, as the more the differences in opinion, the more conversations are generated, thus gathering more readers, and that in itself is the answer that may prove that Silent Party, may not bode well in Online Marketing (and here, we are not discussing about your experience in your offline, private parties which you attended yeah, I really hope you understand the context here, before expressing and leading the forum readers in a different direction, as I fully agree with your personal views as you are entitled to it, but about a volume of conversation posted online, such as this forum) I am sorry, if you feel strongly that people should not market their products, and I guess that's where the differences really lies. Marketing is a complete integrated process of modifying a user's behaviour from a prospect to become a buying customer. In fact, it is very true, what you said in terms of passing out samples, is in fact, a MARKETING tactic! Bravo to you, Wodenus! By sharing about marketing in forums like this, is also actually passing out samples like you said! I guess we have at least found a common ground of agreement! Cheers, dude!

By the way, when I was talking about the expression of intent, is that, we are already getting the right people to talk to the management, to do a course, face to face in a meeting room, not the online version kind, as we see the need to have a face to face meetup to assist the forumer's better unless you beg to differ from the founder of this forum, or are you the founder himself?

In fact, thanks for not remaining SILENT... cause you are making this thread more colorful... All your questions are welcome and thanks for helping us keep this thread alive yeah.

Pleasure to meet you online with a VIBRANT PARTY!

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Added on June 14, 2009, 10:51 amHi Wodenus,

Am really greatful to have your questions. Here are my humble opinions yeah.



You are entitled to your own fact, and the principle which was supposed to be conveyed is that a promotional email will not be as well done through a more social copywriting approach yeah. You may beg to differ and I respect your opinion, as all humans have different personality and tolerance in their communications. As to how to stop people from labelling your emails as spam, is to build trust over a period of time without sending commercial emails, but more on giving value and giving them the tips or education about a particular industry that you are in. If you are not a business owner, but from employee domain, you may want to send out tips on how to become a better employee to make more friends, rather than sell them anything, as you have expressed that selling or marketing may not be the domain you want to be in. I guess making friends would be something you want, so send them good stuff, like a viral funny video or something yeah.


Sadly to say, people would not see it the first time, especially if you don't have a huge budget as a Small business. What i mean here is, big companies have lots of budget to advertise in Radio, TV and Newspaper, and gather masses from the crowds. Small businesses, like most who are from Malaysian Business Network, has limited budget to even have the "first time" engagement that you are discussing about, therefore, it is imminent for the small businesses to establish value in a community like this one, LowYat and Facebook, so that, they can use it as a platform to educate people, and give value before you even get to pitch the sales to get the "first time" yeah.


Again, you are entitled to your opinion. According to a book called Grown Up Digital, many Net Geners now prefer to mix business with pleasure. Don't get me wrong here, what the book simply says is that, they want fun and interaction in social means within their jobs, and sometimes they overlap, so that work does not feel as a boring routine, but also inject some friends and relationship, making it seem like play more than work, but still with the same amount of performance and production. I cannot say it represents all job, like lawyers and doctors needs to be in constant seriousness and appear professional. If you are a web developer, or a marketer, it will involve social interaction, and sometimes you may MSN and log in to Facebook. This is how I find myself to be working in my tiptop condition, and may not be for you. I respect your opinion.



Again, I respect your opinion on this, and may be you may have understood it from a wrong perspective. What Facebook provides is a platform for connecting millions of people, and in our case, Malaysians, which is at present 1.8 million of Malaysian citizens are the users of Facebook. Facebook itself was created to perform a professional task, which is to finish up the founder's (Mark Zuckerberg) assigment in Harvard, not created for socializing. And because of its' great numbers of members, corporate companies have begin to see that there should be a new way of marketing, which is not by pumping a lot of commercial message, but shift the methodology to what we call Engagement marketing or Interactive Marketing. Facebook Application, which contains games, but built with a marketing purpose is injected into Facebook to engage participation of the masses to subtly market to them. This is more of a psychological thing. As most of us are not the TV Generation, but the Internet Generation, using interactive platforms like Facebook Applications to market is better than putting an Advertisement on TV, Radio or Newspaper.


Careful with your words dude... cause you may be inviting trouble with the implying tone of this statement yeah. Just being a good friend to shield you from being viewed as defaming the Malaysian government. I am just a marketer doing my job to make living, not a politician myself. Cheers, dude.


Correct, and I agree with you. Having a good product is also Marketing, giving out a few samples is also Marketing. Marketing is not limited to Advertising. To further understand the definition of marketing, let's take Wikipedia's definition,

"Marketing is an integrated communications-based process through which individuals and communities discover that existing and newly-identified needs and wants may be satisfied by the products and services of others.

Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. [1] The term developed from the original meaning which referred literally to going to market, as in shopping, or going to a market to buy or sell goods or services.

The Chartered Institute of Marketing, which is the world's largest marketing body, defines marketing as "The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably."[2]

Marketing practice tended to be seen as a creative industry in the past, which included advertising, distribution and selling. However, because marketing makes extensive use of social sciences, psychology, sociology, mathematics, economics, anthropology and neuroscience, the profession is now widely recognised a science, allowing numerous universities to offer Master-of-Science (MSc) programmes. The overall process starts with marketing research and goes through market segmentation, business planning and execution, ending with pre and post-sales promotional activities. It is also related to many of the creative arts. The marketing literature is also infamous for re-inventing itself and its vocabulary according to the times and the culture."

I totally agree with you, that some marketers have become more of an advertising people or sales people who send out promotional emails, and that they have forgotten their roles. As marketers, we are not supposed to SELL or ADVERTISE only. We need to identify the needs of the markets. Like when you said passing out a few samples, not matter how small, is an act of marketing, as you see the consumer's need to TRY OUt the product first before they would want to spread the word. Thus, you are already Marketing yeah.




Oh again, to reiterate, we are actually going to organize conference or seminar, and my apologies if you have gotten my explanation wrong. Through partnership with Shinjiru, we will be commencing talks with LowYat.net founders to create more value, extending the forum to an offline meeting to have like you said, a "PARTY" of tech enthusiasts who is not only active in Forums, but also in the real world yeah. Hope you can join us, dude!

Hope that my 2 cents have not offended anyone or conflicted your personal opinions. If you find the good stuff and in agreement, please receive in good spirit, if you found some of the statements above offensive to you, please discard it yeah.

Thanks again for not letting this be a SILENT PARTY thread, dude!


This post has been edited by vckloong: Jun 14 2009, 10:51 AM

Because this was about Facebook Marketing, maybe vckloong forgot to mention a Facebook group member won't be spammed unless they're part of the group being sent these messages.

Said that, there are 2 things I foresee here:

1. Leaving the group.
2. Seeing the "friend" in a different light.

Leaving the group
We did discuss about this about if the group member wasn't pleased with the information being received, they'd most likely just leave the group. It's the same when you run a healthy email marketing campaign. The unsubscribe option should be made very clear and not hidden or worst, not available to the recipient.

Also, I remember we discussed the extreme action a group member might take. The person might remove the "Friend" from their friends list.

Seeing the "friend" in a different light
I do agree with woodenus when he said it's not nice to hard-sell to your friends and family just because they're close to you. It's like suddenly finding an old friend from high school again, then you get the surprise of your life because he starts inviting you to some MLM thing - I'd hate him/her.

But I guess it's the approach which matters. I now know a few friends in MLM companies like Nuskin, Amway and etc. They're not bad because they don't hard-sell. They've tried the products before actually recommending them to you which is why they're still my friends. It's because they're in the front line of experimentation before only coming towards me to sell.

So yeah, I'd say it's the approach of a person/group/company.

Anyway, what I'd like to see change for online marketing education in Malaysia are:
1. Not promote email spamming
2. Not promote email list buying
3. Not upsell their services but focus on what would help the listeners/readers even without using their services
4. Not tell listeners/readers to know more, you pay this much for the extended education (if they felt they've already paid so much)

It'll be interesting to see how LowYat plans to co-organize something with you guys. Though as woodenus have mentioned, it could be right here in the forum in some way. Which'll cost members nothing.

Hi etsuko,

Spot on observation, and I have to acknowledge that I have overlooked some angles in my humble explanations.

In fact, we are trying to actually organize a free seminar, not a paid one, so that there will be less spammers out there, like the friends you said, which is not being a hard sell, but just offering value until they are comfortable to purchase, no matter what product they are offering.

If you have any friends in LowYat who may get us in touch with the management so that we can organize this free session with any blogger or internet business marketer, we are more than happy to collaborate and discuss further.

Thanks for the feedback, and again, I apologize for any lack on my part, whether in explanation or in opinions yeah.

Keep the questions coming and keep this thread alive yeah!

Wodenus,

My previous post is referring to SILENT PARTY online. Not sure what are you trying to say in your reply but if you enjoy SILENT PARTY so much, why not just join this forum and not post anything at all?

Somehow you like to be mute on the offline world but online you post so much up to almost 10,000 post on this forum yet you say SILENT PARTY is not boring, aren't you contradicting yourself?

I hope you are clear about what people are talking about before commenting on other people's views and opinions as it might back fire on you.




Interested to know how you are going to play this game ONLINE on FB group with other group members.

This post has been edited by joanneqpk: Jun 15 2009, 02:47 PM

Sorry, this misunderstanding is just because you and I don't speak the same language. When you say "party" I'm thinking of food and drinks and people. Obviously when you say "silent party" I'm thinking of a party where people don't speak



That's because my offline life and my online life are two different things. I've been here for almost ten years I think (not sure how many, because the dates reset some time in the past.) 10,000 over ten years is not that great a number



Where there's a will, there's a way. It's not nearly as fun though, because facebook doesn't really facilitate the instantaneous feedback that you need for a game like this. Also, you really need to see people's expressions when the time is running out and people still can't guess

I am loathe to contribute to the growing commercialization of the web though, but there are tons of examples of games that have been successfully monetized.

This post has been edited by wodenus: Jun 15 2009, 05:41 PM

Hi Wodenus,

Cool that we have ironed out the miscommunication.

By the way, what do you do for a living?

what you said is too theoretical to be applied in the real world, first of all Facebook do not have such programme that enable people to chat out there online and even if the conversation were done in terms of posting reply there but however we must not forget that majorities of facebook user in Malaysia are Youngster and Youngster are more interested in playing games in facebook rather than checking on groups outline.

Relying on Facebook alone to do marketing is a fantasy for Malaysia as of now, however i suggest the use of blogs. But however the base of the company need to be strong enough so that consumer will go and search for information regarding the product or services, in Malaysia people still prefer brick and mortal shopping so marketing on facebook Alone is not enough to bring real effect in the market

Hi omniknight,

I am really glad that you dropped in to this thread and contributed your thoughts. I would beg to disagree with your first part of your opinion, and to agree on the second part. Here are my humble opinions.



I am not too sure whether you have read my previous posts with Malaysian case studies before you present your opinion in this thread. You may want to check out our Malaysian Business Network Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=60937662428 which has 3000 Malaysian Business Owners who range from small business owners right up to owners of International Brands like San Francisco Coffee and University Sedaya College and MPH. You may also want to check on the Malaysian Success Case Studies on Marketing in Facebook implemented by our company, JeVince Solutions with Malaysian brands at http://www.sales2marketing2.com/facebookRevolution yeah.


First and foremost, I would hope to dispel the thoughts and myths of people saying the Facebook is for youngsters and kids. As you may not have examined, there are actually 1.9 million Malaysian Facebook users as of this writing. You can obtain this figures in the Advertising section of Facebook when you create a Facebook Social Ad. And to disagree with your thought and perception of Facebook users being youngsters, I have done a quick check on the demographic tool, and 1 million of them is actually above 25 years old, and 700,000 of Facebook Malaysian users is actually above 30 years old.

Therefore, to conclude, we are looking at half the Facebook Malaysian population being above 25, and these demographic naturally shows that they range from senior level executives in companies, if they graduated at 21 years of age after college. That makes half of the Malaysian Facebook population is already having a few years of experience under their belts. Many people I talk to still see that Facebook is for kids, but after sharing this facts, corporates like MPH and GSC have come in to subscribe to our services in marketing and engaging the Facebook crowd.

My purpose is not to prove you wrong, but to shed some light for your goodself to make a more informed decision before offering your opinions, which may not be based on facts and figures. Again, to find out the Malaysian Facebook demographic statistics, kindly use the Advertising tool in Facebook, create and Ad, and look at the Malaysian Facebook population to counter check on my, hopefully correct, opinions.

Nevertheless, moving on, I would like to agree to the second part of your observation and opinion.



I perfectly agree that using Facebook alone is not enough. It has to be coupled by blogs, podcasts and videos to increase the credibility of the company to have a strong impression on the web visitor and user. The more informaiton you provide through different kinds of multimedia content will give the consumer a 360 view of your company, and as the Net Generation like to scrutinize and check on a company's integrity before any purchase, having multichannel multicontent approach towards online marketing is a smart strategic move, both for Multinational, and also for corporates. This clearly works in Malaysia, or anywhere in the world.

I would like to compliment you for your spot on observation on this point.

Hope to have more of your views in this thread yeah.

Cheers.

This post has been edited by vckloong: Jun 15 2009, 10:09 PM

Hi Wodenus,

Looks like it's just miscommunication. Oh well, it happens...... All is good.

Hi Joanne,

Well... if you are talking about Fan Pages, you would be looking at people to join your Page because they are a FAN of the BRAND.

For Groups, its more like Interest, not really a Brand. For example, a group name can be Internet Marketing Malaysia, ad Fan Page could be JeVince Solutions. People join a group for Internet Marketing and most people won't join a group called JeVince Solutions. So Group names choosing is important, meaning, you need to sell the benefits of the group through the name. Fan Page on the other hand is to sell the Brand.

Its just a different way of using it. Of course, Fan Page, like you said, can send to particular segments, and that is a useful feature.

In fact, if you are setting a group for Internet Marketing for different countries, you can segregate it into the segments like Internet Marketing Malaysia, Internet Marketing UK and Internet Marketing Australia. With this in mind, you would know where your members are coming from. Another thing is, by segregating it into different niche groups, the affinity and proximity or near-ness to each other is stronger, thus making people more comfortable to share their opinions as they know they can meet up if all of the members are from malaysia.

All in all, its a matter of your own preference.

Hope this not only answers your questions, but other readers who are having the same question as well yeah.