Customer Retention - Seafood

Two nights ago, a friend brought a couple of us to this little coffeeshop that sold seafood in Serangoon. The food was pretty good and to our surprise, the owner gave us a free dish (fish head curry, to be precise) for us to try. The owner made an intentional effort to come out twice during the night (although he also cooks the food) to make sure everything was fine.

Over dinner, I made the point to my friends (both business graduates) that this really is the way businesses should market themselves.

Why spend all that money on the bus ad or print ad that people see and forget in an instant, with the hope that it will serve as an acquisition strategy and bring in new customers? Instead why not delight your customers who have already voted with their wallets to buy from you and encourage to come back time and time again?

Needless to say, in the two days since then I’ve told four other people about it and will soon be bringing my family to check it out.

So what are you doing to get your customers to come back? Or are you letting your competition put in that little bit of extra effort to enhance the customer experience and win them over?

Ps: The idea of using retention isn’t new (nor mine) and you can read Joseph Jaffe’s new book Flip The Funnel to find out more, but I thought this was a great case study to practically illustrate how it can be done.

Pps: The address of said coffeeshop is Blk 153 Serangoon North Ave 1 #01-512 (and no, I was absolutely not incentivised by the store to share this with you.)

[image credit: jensen_chua on Flickr]

An ex-colleague sent me this last week and it’s probably the best example of augmented reality to date, demonstrated at TED in 2009 (though it never quite refers to itself in that way).

I think it addresses a really good point: we have all this meta data about everyday objects, companies, products and services hanging around online, but have yet to find a way to successfully merge that with what we do offline.

It’s important to think not just as a consumer, but as a business person for a minute: What if you could “see” the top (and bottom) rated items on a menu? Or who thought which starter went will with the steak? Perhaps a little more scarily, what if they’re checking out your printer at the store, but notice that a significant number of people feel a competitor’s brand prints better images?

We’ll probably only begin to see widespread adoption of such technology in the next 10-20 years, but the implications are going to be huge and it wouldn’t hurt to think about them now.

I got a call from an organisation, the details of which I won’t go into, but because I wasn’t terribly familiar with the company, I decided to Google their name. Usually I don’t notice, but this time the suggested search terms by Google caught my attention:

When you see that the word “scam” is highly associated with an organisation, it makes you think twice about doing business with them or working for them.  (On a side note, clearly brand managers don’t know how to Google their partner organisations because this particular organisation boasts pretty big partners).

What makes this worse is that many of the content creators are ex-employees of the company. While it isn’t surprising to have disgruntled employees, when so many of them around the globe band together to share similar negative experiences, readers tend to take it a little more seriously than one random guy ranting. Also, the company doesn’t seem to think that this negative publicity is hurting them because they haven’t commented on any of the blog sites to set the record straight.

While the actual name is blanked out, don’t kid yourself into thinking this will never happen to you. Think of how the suggested keywords Google throws up for Toyota changed overnight. It can happen to you and if it does you need to own it and be present to at least get your side of the story out there.

On a side note: Just as we’re doing our research on companies, they’re doing it on us as job applicants – all the more reason to be conscious of what you put out there.

I’ve been on an intentional hiatus the last week or so (yes, it was also Chinese New Year here in Singapore so it’s been busy with public holidays and visiting and all that), but also to take some down time to think.

Something that I keep thinking about (partially influenced by Seth Godin’s Linchpin) is wondering who matters.

Why do we chase digital business from the huge corporations who say they want digital but time and time again the end result is “go peddle your social media stuff somewhere else” and buy a TV ad.

Because the big organisations look better on a company portfolio than the mom and pop shop who really does want to embrace digital and probably will pay you less?

Why do we spend hours on decks and creative for an audience that isn’t receptive?

Aren’t they the equivalent of your whining customers that we always tell ourselves (or our clients) to sacrifice and go after those who love you, your business, your service instead?

So who matters?

[image credit: LINE architecture]

I’m currently reading Here Comes Everybody by the brilliant Clay Shirky and in one chapter he writes:

“The hallmark of revolution is that the goals of the revolution cannot be contained by the institutional structure of the existing society.

As a result, either the revolutionaries are put down, or some of those institutions are altered, replaced or destroyed.

The increase in the power of both individuals and groups, outside traditional structures is unprecedented. Many institutions we rely on today will not survive this change without significant alteration…”

Let’s make no mistake about it. We’re currently living in a time of revolution.

Perhaps it’s not the same kind of revolution as the printing press or the Industrial Revolution, but it is one that is more subtle and yet pervasive. It is one that is increasingly changing our perceptions of what is “normal”.

And existing organisations are not ready for that. Look at the Toyota fiasco this year or Dominos last year (or any other brand in between). They only reacted to the revolution when they needed to – and by then, arguably it could be too late. What if Toyota embraced the need for communication and transparency and had acted from the first defect instead of waiting for it to kill someone before acting? Would that have mitigated some of the PR nightmare that they’re facing now? I think so.

So here’s the question: Are you embracing the revolution or are you going to be caught unaware – and maybe destroyed – by it?

I don’t think there’s a middle ground. The way we live, interact and communicate as individuals and businesses is fundamentally changing and every day you delay the choice to embrace this new (and scary) way of life, is a day you’re heading towards extinction.

[image credits: Chris Corwin]

Gary Vaynerchuk - Crush It!

I remember the first time I watched a Gary Vee video – his website had been hacked and he was explaining what happened and how he was resolving it and his character and passion just jumped off the screen (you can watch the video at the end of this post).

That same character comes through right off the page in Crush It! as well. This book is not for those who are afraid of change. What Gary presents is a roadmap to understanding yourself, tapping in on your passion and building a brand around yourself to get the job done.

While the book is aimed at the entrepreneur, there’s a lot of takeaway for big and small businesses alike. The 13 step plan he highlights in the book can be applicable to anyone but one thing he emphasises is that while monetary cost may be low, this is going to require a heck of a lot of hours. “Just Do It” isn’t a strategy that’s going to work here unless you’re prepared to put in those hours.

Crush It! is as much about knowing yourself as knowing your audience. Gary Vee makes you think hard about what you think your “passion” is, whether you’re an audio, visual or text person and what medium is best for you and if you’re really going to make it work.

At the end of the day, what Gary Vee encourages is building your personal brand first (not pushing your product in front of people’s face!) and letting that passion energise your audience, grab their attention which then you can monetise later. If you’re willing to do this, for free – it can pay back big time later.

Who should read this book?

If I had to pass this book to someone, I’d pass it to someone still in school or a fresh grad. Never before has having a personal brand and standing for something been so important. Maybe it’ll work against you in some cases – but when you connect with the people who are genuinely interested in you for who you are and what you stand for, you’ll be Crushing It.

So you hear the good news that your boss/client wants to get started with a social media strategy. Before you start jumping for joy, does the conversation sound anything like this?

Boss: Let’s get on social media – let’s start with Twitter
You: Why? What’s the objective?
Boss: We’ll think about that later, just do it

If that’s what it sounds like, I can almost guarantee in 6 to 12 months that very person is going to be asking you “so how have we done on Twitter?” and you’re going to say “err but we didn’t specify any goals” and it’s going to be a one way ticket to hell. And you know what? In all likelihood if you’re doing it for the sake of “just doing it”, it’s probably not going to be work you’re going to be proud of anyway.

Instead, the conversation should go something like this:

Boss: Let’s get on social media – let’s start with Twitter
You: Why? What’s the objective?
Boss: I want to use it to improve customer service
You: So we’re going to monitor all mentions of our brand and respond to complaints and rectify them?
Boss: Yes

Replace “Twitter” with “Facebook” or “blog”, replace “improve customer service” with “increase lead generation” or “decrease costs’ and you get the gist.

Ideally it should go even further than this to identify whose time will be allocated to this, how much time and how the initiative will be measured.

You need to do this from the get go. Set the expectation early that social media efforts – while free/cheap – take time. Don’t let your desire to do some social media work/please your boss/please your client get in the way of this. It’ll save you a world of hurt later.

How do you deal with “just do it” requests? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

[image credits: themachobox]

Blog Birthdays

This past Wednesday was Pat’s third anniversary party for Blankanvas (we all need to have blog birthday parties) and needless to say, the woman knows how to throw a party!

I also belatedly realised that January is this blog’s birthday and looking back on my very first “serious” blog post that was posted the day of my first Digital Media Across Asia class and a lot of that wonder and excitement is still there. The unfortunate thing is there hasn’t been a whole lot of opportunities for me to put what I know into practice. That’s something I really hope to change in 2010.

I think 2009 was a great year for the blog. The focus on local content has been working out well and although my blogging frequency has gone down, I’m still pretty happy with the content I’m putting out. I’m very much experimenting with my writing style (you might have noticed some of my more recent posts are much shorter than usual) and it’s something I’ll continue to be doing in 2010.

So embarking on the third year of the blog, I really hope by the time it “turns three” there’ll be a lot more real world case studies and organisations that can be featured here (and in many company’s case study books) as successes we can take into 2011.

[image via Laughing Squid]

Ignore

Two days ago I posted about people being a big danger of social media marketing because of what they might say on various channels without thinking about the consequences.

But on a more personal (though it can be corporate) level, inaction is equally damning.

When someone adds you (the communication professional of the company) on, say, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, and you wait a week before replying – what does that say about you as an individual, and as a representative as a company?

They add you and you accept it two weeks later – they’re not important.

They ask a question and you never answer it - they’re beneath you.

You ask your community a question but then don’t respond to the answers – you’re disinterested and insincere.

In the above cases you’d be better off not being involved in the social space at all.

I have to admit this is something I struggle with personally. Sometimes people I meet once at conferences want to connect on Facebook and that might be a little too personal for me so I procrastinate and before long it’s a month and by then, accepting the invitation lets the other party know I metaphorically sat on it for a month, thus conveying the message they weren’t important enough to accept within a few days.

There’s no easy answer to this question. Some people will be comfortable accepting every invitation, others will be more selective. It’s not so much the style that matters, but being aware that whichever route you choose to take (or not take) communicates something to that person or group of people.

How do you deal with the many requests you get on social channels? Do you ignore some? Ask them to add you on a less personal channel like Twitter instead of Facebook? I’d love to hear from you.

[image from Spraytint]

Assuming you’ve got your product sorted out and implementing a social media programme won’t be a one way ticket to exposing all your product’s weaknesses, the next thing you need to worry about is the people who will be engaging in the social space.

Early this month there was an article in the Straits Times titled “Social networking at the workplace” where 2,008 employees were interviewed. Here’s a scan of the paper (click for larger image, pardon the poor quality, newspaper doesn’t keep very well).

Dangers of Social Media Marketing: Social Network Research

A quick glance at the statistics shows a few alarming statistics:

22% of companies have formal policies that dictate how social networking can be used – This means about 3 in 4 companies will invariably have an employee saying something inappropriate online because there are no guidelines to guard against it.

Only 40% of people “always” considers what their bosses might think when posting something online – So about 1 in 2 employees will run their mouth on channels like Facebook and Twitter to other members of your staff, your clients and maybe even your competition.

And to round it all off, only 17% of companies have a monitoring programme to manage social networking risks – 4 in 5 companies are letting these conversations go on unnoticed, and more importantly, unchecked. By the time they realise this, it will be too late.

The social space is not the place for untrained staff to “play” in. If no one is monitoring internal chatter about your brand and no one is actively educating staff how to behave on social channels, your biggest threats may ironically come from within – your own staff.

What measures would you put in place to prevent something nasty from happening?

Bad Usability Confuses

I’m not a usability person by training, but I am a consumer and bad user experiences frustrate me.

I love trying new things out. I download apps and signup for online accounts frequently, but very few manage to hold my attention for an extended period of time. Why? It almost always comes down to usability.

Last night I was telling my sister about two “to-do” apps on the iPhone: 2Do and Awesome Note. 2Do is intuitive, easily navigable and understood. Awesome Note was cluttered and a little difficult to understand (though it gets great reviews) – and was deleted in three minutes.

Her experience mirrored mine almost exactly and it really struck home the point that the average person doesn’t have more than a few minutes to figure out how to use your product. If you don’t make it worthwhile in those first five minutes, forget it.

Earlier today I was reading a blog that had a “31 day social media” plan. I entered the landing page for day 21 and spent a few minutes searching for day 1. The embedded search box didn’t work, there was no internal linking back to the beginning and the archive section didn’t seem to exist.

The instant before I was going to forego the whole 31 day plan, I saw a link to “older posts”, and after clicking through about a month of content, I landed back on day 1. But the point is I was this close to giving up on the content not because the content was bad, but because the usability was just so frustrating.

So think about this the next time you send out an email, choose a blog theme or design a website, and try not to frustrate your end users.

[image from deprogramminghour]

Cogs in a machine

Seth Godin has a great 14 page pdf on ChangeThis titled Brainwashed.

What brainwashing does he speak of?

..to teach you that you’re average. That compliant work is the best way to a reliable living. That creating average stuff for average people again and again is a safe and easy way to get what you want

Believe you me, no one understands and relates to this statement more than someone who grew up in the Singaporean education system. The system itself is great (I think I benefited from a stressful education) but the mentality of playing it safe is overwhelming.

And so generations of students turned into generations of cogs… We were brainwashed into fitting in, and then discovered that the economy wanted people who stood out instead

Too true isn’t it? That’s why the idea of personal branding resonates so much with Generation Y. We’re not here to fit into pigeon-holed roles. We love dealing with other people who stand out instead of people who blend into the background. It’s a delight to meet someone passionate about their beliefs, even if you don’t share them.

You were being trained to be a compliant cog, someone who could mindlessly follow instructions as opposed to seeking out innovation and surprise

Yes we were. No one is asking anyone to disregard instructions, but it doesn’t mean we should follow them blindly. Just because the your boss receives something that is different from her point of view, doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

The rest of the article is really good, and provides actionable tips on reinventing yourself, mostly using social media. Read it. And perhaps more importantly, put it into action. I know it’s something I’m going to be referring to every three months or so just to remind me that I shouldn’t be a cog in the machine.

At this point I want to congratulate my friend Ping from Pixel Pastry who arguably did not get brainwashed and has been unveiled as junior art director at Tribal DDB at the ripe old age of 23. Congrats!

[photo from Elsie Esq]

This isn’t new advice. I learned this just over a year ago from Keith Ferrazzi in his awesome book “Never Eat Alone“. And this doesn’t just apply to you as an individual when you need help with a problem, some advice, or in my case a job search – this applies to your organisation if you’re even thinking of engaging in social media.

Something that happens all too often is a company realises it has a new product launch coming up, doesn’t have bloggers to seed to (what a dirty word) and begins the “relationship” process at that point.

That’s too late.

If you do that, don’t be surprised that no “advocates” leap to the defense of your brand when a crisis happens and blame social media.

If you start a blog before you built relationships with other blogs and then get no traffic when you post something, don’t blame the blog.

If you want to push a press release and follow the “best practices” and tweet it at the magical hour on Friday afternoon but no one in your network retweets it because you never engaged with them, don’t blame Twitter.

You need to build that network and goodwill way in advance, so that when you need it, it’s there for you. If you’re thinking about building it because you need it – you’re already too late.

I’d love to hear from either side of the coin: great stories where you invested in a network/community and reaped the benefits or stories as a blogger/influencer where you knew the other party had its back against the wall and was grasping at straws to just get anyone possible for their press event/product launch. The comments are yours!

I came across this article titled Five questions every CMO should ask a prospective ad agency and want to draw attention to two specific questions.

Part of Q3 (What’s your criteria for hiring people?)

And find out for sure how many digital natives your agency’s hired recently. You definitely don’t want them playing catch up.

This I think is huge. And you know what? If the company says they’ve hired 10 new digital natives/Generation Y staff in the last year, ask them to show you a sample of their blogs/Twitter stream/etc to give you an idea of what these people are up to. This is a definite sign, trust me.

Q5

What are five recent creative ideas that aren’t ads?

This could be anything. An interesting use of social bookmarking for internal archiving purposes, running a new project entirely on Google Wave, using Facebook as the new company “intranet” to share information – something that demonstrates out of the box thinking which isn’t client driven – ie there’s some innovation from within.

The entire article is pretty good and definitely worth a read, and so are the comments. Once you’ve checked that out, what do you think? What questions do you need to ask your prospective ad agency?

There isn’t one.

If I follow you because you’re having personal conversations – that’s the right way to use it for you.

If I follow you because you’re telling me about where you’re eating and because of that I find new places to go – that’s the right way to use it for you.

If I follow you because you share social media links that help me learn something new – that’s the right way to use it for you.

If I follow you because you tweet about Lost and believe season six is going to be the television equivalent of the second coming – that’s the right way to use it for you.

And if I don’t follow you because of something you’re doing (or not doing) – then I’m just the not right follower for you. It’s like choosing clothes – just because I prefer skinny jeans over baggy ones doesn’t mean no one want to buy baggy jeans. Make sure your focus is on them.

It’s okay to have 100 followers who are right for you than 10,000 who aren’t.

I broke the news on Twitter today: I’ve handed in my resignation here at BLUE officially and have begun serving my notice period of two months. I’m blogging this now not to talk about the job or anything, but just to share my story and thoughts behind this, and serve as an FAQ oDeletef sorts.

1) Why? What happened?
Nothing happened. I didn’t get fired, there was no proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. It’s just one of those things where systemically it’s not a good fit and I felt I had to move on.

2) Do you have a job?
No. Leads exist but nothing is confirmed.

3) Why did you leave without a job?
Believe me I struggled with this for a long time. At the end of the day it came to this: I believe in the power of a network. The best job leads I had came from relationships, not the job portals or the papers. But there’s no way I could tap on my network and relationships without announcing I was leaving – at least not in any scalable way. Chalk it up to youthful delusion or naivety, but that’s how I feel about it.

I realise this isn’t the norm, I realise this doesn’t look as good “on paper” and I realise there will be future employers who may judge me for this, but it’s a risk I’ve decided to take and time will tell if it worked or not.

4) What’s next/what are you looking for?
Nothing has changed – my passion for all things digital continues, though realistically I’m looking at fitting in under the larger umbrella of marketing and/or communications. As much promise as 2010 brings for social media, I think we’re a long way from that being an industry by itself yet.

5) So what did you takeaway from the job?
I don’t think my time at BLUE has gone to waste at all. Managing an organisation’s social media presence was a good experience and I think whatever I did learn about SEO complements social media very well. These are definitely transferable skills to any digital job and I’m looking forward to utilising them.

I have two months to serve and hopefully a new place to go at the end of it. I won’t lie – it freaks the hell out of me that I have no idea what’s coming next, but I’ve made my choices and will have to live with it for better or worse.

In the meantime I’ll do what I always do and turn to the community. If you know someone who might need a digital marketer, corporate communicator or social media guy or know of any opportunities, I’d be grateful if you’d share them with me and I hope I’ll be able to return the favour some day.

Til then, thanks everyone who’s expressed your support on Twitter and if and when things happen, you’ll be the first to know.

I broke the news on Twitter today: I’ve handed in my resignation here at BLUE officially and have begun serving my notice period of two months. I’m blogging this now not to talk about the job or anything, but just to share my story and thoughts behind this, and serve as an FAQ of sorts.

1) Why? What happened?
Nothing happened. I didn’t get fired, there was no proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. It’s just one of those things where systemically it’s not a good fit and I felt I had to move on.

2) Do you have a job?
No. Leads exist but nothing is confirmed.

3) Why did you leave without a job?
Believe me I struggled with this for a long time. At the end of the day it came to this: I believe in the power of a network. The best job leads I had came from relationships, not the job portals or the papers. But there’s no way I could tap on my network and relationships without announcing I was leaving – at least not in any scalable way. Chalk it up to youthful delusion or naivety, but that’s how I feel about it.

I realise this isn’t the norm, I realise this doesn’t look as good “on paper” and I realise there will be future employers who may judge me for this, but it’s a risk I’ve decided to take and time will tell if it worked or not.

4) What’s next/what are you looking for?
Nothing has changed – my passion for all things digital continues, though realistically I’m looking at fitting in under the larger umbrella of marketing and/or communications. As much promise as 2010 brings for social media, I think we’re a long way from that being an industry by itself yet.

5) So what did you takeaway from the job?
I don’t think my time at BLUE has gone to waste at all. Managing an organisation’s social media presence was a good experience and I think whatever I did learn about SEO complements social media very well. These are definitely transferable skills to any digital job and I’m looking forward to utilising them.

I have two months to serve and hopefully a new place to go at the end of it. I won’t lie – it freaks the hell out of me that I have no idea what’s coming next, but I’ve made my choices and will have to live with it for better or worse.

In the meantime I’ll do what I always do and turn to the community. If you know someone who might need a digital marketer, corporate communicator or social media guy or know of any opportunities, I’d be grateful if you’d share them with me and I hope I’ll be able to return the favour some day.

Til then, thanks everyone who’s expressed your support on Twitter and if and when things happen, you’ll be the first to know.

Earlier this week Brian from Happyesque dropped me a private message on Twitter asking me to send him a Tweet on what would make me happy in 2010.

I took a few days to think this over – should it be social media focused? Or something personal? Could I write something smart? After all the options are endless – Companies finally start to wake up to social media, being happy, Arsenal winning the Premier League, the final season of Lost being the best ever….

Then in the few short days I was thinking about it, barely a week into 2010 we have bloggers wasting company time and resources for a prank , angst over postbox publicity, the whole fiasco in Malaysia and buses carrying soccer players getting shot at and I just thought to myself “jeez this is how we’re starting the year?”

And with that my answer formed: I just want people to be kinder to each other, both online and offline. If we can do this and not start new wars this year, I think I’d be pretty happy.

Head on to Happyesque to check out the responses from Tweeters and Bloggers and share what would make YOU happy in 2010 in the comments.

Sometimes, being involved in socia media, it seems everyone is talking about the same thing and that it’s being amplified over many people and over time.

It’s even scarier if you’re an organisation and you wake up to see 10, 20, 50, 100 tweets about you one morning and rush to come up with some sort of response by the afternoon.

But how “sticky” really are these conversations – or are they actually rather transient?

Let’s look at two relatively “big” occurences this year: United Breaks Guitars and the JK Wedding Dance and their search trends on Google (click for larger image):

JK Wedding Dance - United Breaks Guitars

Though there was certainly a surge, they both lasted for about six weeks each and given that they happened at about the same time, it could have been possible to miss one or the other due to noise.

Let’s add in two more events: Kanye West at the VMAs and Google Wave’s launch.

Google Wave - Kanye West

Three immediate observations:

1. Kanye’s search volume – while through the roof, is also shorter than any other story, lasting less than a month (looks like two weeks from the scale). And let’s face it, without the comment from President Obama, it would have been even shorter.
2. Kanye’s search volume immediately dwarfs that of JK Wedding Dance and United Breaks Guitars – again this comes back to noise. How long can your story (positive or negative) hold the attention of the social media sphere?
3. Google Wave doesn’t create a spike but does have the longest sustained interest over time – obviously good news for a product launch, bad news if this is a PR fiasco.

Finally, let’s add Tiger Woods to the fray:

Tiger Woods

It peaks as high as Kanye but has sustained itself pretty well. Bad news for Tiger – or any brand that finds itself in that unfortunate position.

So what’s the takeaway?

I generally wouldn’t encourage it, but there might be certain situations where it’s okay to keep quiet and not respond. Take Kanye for example. If he kept silent and didn’t go on numerous talk shows – it’d be over in a week or two. Erased (or at least embedded pretty deep) in our collective consciousness. To some extent same for Tiger. If another “Kanye” happened two days after Tiger, I think both stories would have fizzled out.

The social media eco system is fickle and riddled with attention-deficit disorder. Everyone want someone to bash but that could change from one day to the next. It’s easy to say that in retrospect of course, but the next time you get that feeling you absolutely need to reply or your company will lose millions – think about whether that story will really be around in two weeks, of if the pirahnas would have moved on to new meat.

The Lens Men

About a month ago, I noticed that an optical store here in Singapore called The Lens Men was active on Twitter (@thelensmen) and took the opportunity to ask them about contact lenses and prices. Unlike a few other shops, they were straightforward and transparent and told me that the prices for those particular lenses were set by the manufacturer and thus was the same no matter where I went. They also said they treated customers more like “patients” because eyes are important and should get proper examinations and care.

Based on no other factor other that I would support a local business using digital media in Singapore, I decided to check them out. By the time I had a free evening to head down to their store at Centrepoint it was two weeks later, and even though I didn’t let them know ahead of time I was going down, I was probably treated more carefully than any other optician I’d been to before and it was a good experience.

But let’s get back to the title. What’s the financial ROI here? I bought six boxes of contact lenses for $280. Strictly speaking even if they calculated my value over a year it’d probably hit $840. How many customers like me do they have to reach via social media in Singapore to justify adding “monitor Twitter” as an additional scope of work? Singapore’s too small for such an effort to scale with any noticeable impact.

But how about the non-financial ROI? My net promoter score just went way up, they’ll get a link (and numerous tweets) with this post, engagement with many other people online, more top of mind recall and brand awareness among a subset of digital users, and an authentic, transparent personality to add to their brand equity among other things. This is a great example of a company in Singapore using social media for small business use.

Does that matter? Some managers concerned only about the bottom line will probably say no. Can you put a monetary value to it? Probably not in any objective sense. Should you do it anyway? Probably.

I’ll be the first to admit I don’t have all the answers to ROI when it comes to social media. Tracking KPIs is easy, but it’s not the same as ROI. So do you think it matters to consider the non-financial, less tangible benefits, or do you think looking at cold hard ROI is the answer?

[note: I paid the full consumer price for my lenses and did not receive any form of compensation/discounts for this whatsoever. The Lens Men did not conduct any form of outreach towards this blog post at all]