Simon S. Tam's Blog, page 17

Facebook Pro tip: Birthdays

Birthday wishes on Facebook are kind of expected these days.

It’s nice that Facebook not only reminds you about your friends’ birthdays, but they also give you a chance to spend some money and send them a gift card right away. Of course, they’re happy to pocket some cash in the process in order to help their flailing stock.

However, if more than 3 people share the same birthday in your contacts, it can be rather annoying to wish them a happy birthday because a new set of ads/gift options will p...

New Changes to Facebook Event Pages

Just when you think you have thehangof creating a Facebook event page, it changes again.

Gone are the days of the “poster” image that you would see in the top left corner (event pages created prior to the change will still retain this). Now, event pages have a new “Event Photo” banner on the top. When displaying the event thumbnail on your page, it only takes an even smaller portion of this (you canre-positionthe image). The new image banner is 714 x 264. Anything taller will be cropped (much...

Why People Hate to Buy a New Car

From NPR’s story on Why Buying a Car Never Changes: http://n.pr/WOgOYJ

I guess you can say that I’ve been in the new car market for a while now. My current car has about a quarter million miles and has served my faithfully for well over a decade. In fact, I’ve probably been looking at new cars off-and-on again for about ten years but I hate the process so much that I’ve just been avoiding the ordeal.

Last week, NPR aired a story on Why Buying a Car Never Changes. It was interesting to hear how...

Avoid Using Auto-Reply Messages Like the Plague

These days, do you hear anyone complaining that they don’t receive enough email?

“I wish I had more pointless messages coming into my overcrowded email box,” said no one ever.

This is why I am against using auto-reply messages for any reason other than their intended use: as an away message (and even then, we know it’s a bit misleading because most people stay connected even on vacation).

To give you some perspective: Last week, I received approximately 4,200 messages. Of them, about 250 were au...

How to Improve Your Open Rates

I love this meme. I can still hear the AOL sound clip in my mind saying “You’ve Got Mail!” Back then, email was such aphenomenon (especially through AOL), that a film plot with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan was built around the concept. Not long after, email became so common and inundated with spam that most users end up ignoring most messages that come in.

Today, the average open rate for an email is 10%.The average click through rate for music is 2.5%(of the emails that are actually opened). With s...

The Death of the Telephone

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“Hello, this is Mr. Carson”

Last week, someone accused my work with social media marketing “irrelevant.” They claimed that organizations did not need an online marketing specialist, that it was a waste of resources. It reminded me something I saw on television.

During the first season of Downton Abbey, there was an amusing bit when the family decided to install a telephone. No one knew how to use one and several even questioned whether it was necessary at all.

It wasn’t long after its invention...

Putting All of Your Business Eggs in One Basket

There’s a saying that one shouldn’t put all of their eggs into one basket because of risk. The danger, however, is the other extreme: scattering and spreading oneself too thin.

Of course, there can be a happy balance.

My recommendation?

1) Have as many “baskets” as you can manage well.

2) Focus on the baskets that your customers enjoy the most (and bring you the most return).

3) If something one area isn’t producing, solve the problem or focus your efforts on areas that do provide that return on i...

What the Walking Dead Can Teach You About Marketing

I recently contributed toTHE WALKING DEAD MARKETING GUIDE TO KILLING IT IN 2013article. If you’re interested in knowing how you can spread your brand like a deadly outbreak of zombies, check it out.

Here are my top 3 thoughts on what businesses can learn from the acclaimed show:

1) They let their fans do the talking. The Walking Dead treats social media

as it should: like a telephone, not a megaphone. They create fun,

interesting, humorous, and easy to share content that is engaging. As such,

thei...

The New Year: It’s All in Your Head

Today, your Facebook and blog feed is probably not unlike my own:it is full of reflections, resolutions, and promises of a new start. However, remember that the new year is all in the mind. Time – and the calendar we use to measure it with – is all just perspective. Because the biggest time zone difference in the world is 26 hours, some people were ringing in the New Year while it was still December 29th for others.

You should be celebrating a “new year,” every day:

By reflecting on the past, l...

Lessons From the Nielsen Social Media Report

The world’s leading global communication and measurement company, Nielsen, just released their newest report,State of the Media: The Social Media Report 2012.While the continued growth of social media is no surprise, there are several new trends that you should be aware of.

First, there is the idea of “the global living room” or “social tv.” TV-watching has transformed into a new immediate and shared experience. Over 33% of Twitter users actively tweet about TV-related content, making it a sha...