About PR people dealing with bloggers

Sometime ago, Text 100 (that's the name of the agency I work for...there, it's out) conducted a survey in Asia Pacific amongst bloggers. Today, the survey results are out and if you're interested in reading the results, click on here.

I'm going to cop out, be a bit lazy, and post the below points taken from the Text 100 Social Media Release (click to see videos, pictures etc.) that's going out along with the survey:

• In what is believed to be the first survey of its kind conducted in Asia Pacific, this survey highlights the similarities and differences between bloggers across APAC and their preferences for working with corporations and PR agencies.

• In a positive sign for the communications industry, 84% of respondents welcome contact from public relations practitioners and the corporations they represent.

• Electronic communication is king for APAC bloggers: 58% preferred email, followed by online comments on their blogs, as the preferred means of contacting them.

• Similarly, emailing of press releases and interviews or discussions ranked in the top two as the preferred formats for receiving content (67% and 60% respectively).

• APAC bloggers are not particular about who they engage with, but prefer to talk with active bloggers and whoever is closest to the story – not necessarily the traditional spokespeople.

• Two thirds (67%) of respondents spend less than 8 hours of their working week on blogging.

• Bloggers concerns included receiving unsolicited spam from PR agencies, and were frequently critical of the content they received, feeling it was inappropriate and unusable.

• While most bloggers ignore traditional press releases, 88% were aware of so-called Social Media Releases and indicated they were in favour of using elements such as videos, quotes, pictures and links from these releases in their posts.

• Text 100 surveyed bloggers it knew and those referred by friendly bloggers, not wanting to spam people it didn’t have a relationship with. Text 100 feels the views of the survey’s sample pool are a fair reflection of influential news, technology and bloggers across Asia Pacific.

My personal two cents on the survey and its findings goes like this:

• The survey is not conclusive and it doesn't claim to be. But it provides a useful and interesting perspective on communicating with the blogosphere. Personal experience tells me that personal experience is still king. Different bloggers vary vastly in how they'd like to have you communicate with them - if you're a PR person like me, its your job to figure what's the best way.
  
• There are a lot of the opinions in the survey shared verbatim - they could be from one, two or ten bloggers. You cannot generalise these opinions, but you should make note of them as there will be bloggers you meet who may share or disagree with these opinions. Again, I personally think the fact that the blogosphere is vast, varied and plural means that there's definitely going to be difference of opinion, and often, a very sharp difference.
  
• What Shaolintiger said is useful. Above all, bloggers are human beings and the best way to treat a blogger (like myself and yourself) is to ensure you do so with a good dose of respect.
  

Happiness is...

... when boss tells you that you can go home at 2 p.m. for Chinese New Year!
Happy Chinese New Year everyone!



Ps. Technically, I can't win. But I just wanted to post a Happy Moment anyway. :) LoLz!

Thoughts on India

About 10 days ago I was in India for a company offsite which I returned from with a "Delhi Belly". Thought I'd get back and straight up to posting about India, but because of recurring lethargy and the sheer amount of work that had piled up whilst I was gone meant it was delayed until now. But good stuff is always worth the wait, right?

I think it's been said before that Delhi's a land of extremes, but I don't think you'd ever realise how extreme it is until you've set foot there. From landing in the Delhi International Airport, the bus ride to the hotel was perhap's the best was to tell the story: Stately old Buicks driving right next to sleek BMWs. Dirt roads giving way to tar-covered highways. Shanty towns neighbouring modern complexes.

You can see a grand old shopping complex like KLCC surrounded with armed guards situated right opposite a very,very poor settlement. By opposite, I mean, right across the road!


Traffic in india. Notice the all-kinds-of-transport.

And the traffic. If you thought Malaysian roads were hazardous (a generalisation, perhaps) then Delhi roads would be enough to make you mad. For starters:
1. Everyone drives as if they are in some terrible hurry trying to rush a relative to the hospital.
2. Drivers believe in the optimisation of space, thus cars are driving as close as they can to each other and every obscure angle, nook and cranny is filled with a part of someone elses car - e.g. the front right corner of the car's nose.
3. Nobody waits at roundabouts. It's a game of who dares wins.
4. Honk please! Seriously! Almost every car has that at its back end. The streets are filled with loud honking.


We stayed in a plush hotel. The Intercontinental Eros. It's a world of difference from what's outside the Hotel. That's my colleague Corina in the picture.


Meet Ashish, my room mate. He's smart and very intelligent. He also taught me how to dance like a Bollywood superstar.

The water's supposed to be unfit for drinking, but after talking to my Indian colleagues, i think it isn't as bad as people make it out to be. Tap water is drinkable if you boil or filter it first - gee...that's just like Malaysia. The food, though... wow...if you thought the Indian food in Malaysia was spicy...wait till you check out what Delhi food is like! I must've had so much Tandoori that my stomach was flaming and paining by the time it was time to go home. And, I noticed (at the hotel at least) the eating utensils provided are usually fork and knife - even if you're eating rice. I had to request for a spoon on more than one occassion.


The Bahai Temple is one of the picturesque landmarks. You have to keep silent in the temple.

If you're thinking of visiting Delhi for the sights, then expect a very authentic historical and spiritual journey. In Delhi alone, I think I counted four or five spiritual sites including the Bahai Temple (one of Six around the world), a Muslim Spinarret and temples to other Indo religions.


The marketplaces are colourful. We went to this place called Janpath market on the second night.


Semi-precious stones are some of the best buys in India.


The streets of Delhi town. It's really a colourful place, full of culture and a unique ethnic identity you don't find in Malaysia.


America's most famous export has special burgers in India. Like the Chicken Aloo burger.

The shopping was quite the experience too and tourists should normally look out for cloth items (clothing, bags etc.) or semi-precious stones. I think I spent more than RM 300 on semi-precious stones for my mom and Lydia. But you have to bargain (goes without saying). I think a good benchmark is to get at least 50% off and be prepared to walk away. I'm told the bargaining threshholds for locals and foreigners are different, so if you're a foreigner, expect that you'll still be paying more than a local for what you buy.

Just to conclude this post, my regret was we didn't get to see the Taj Mahal on this trip as there weren't enough people signing up for the trip. Maybe one day I'll make another trip: Back to India!

I LoLed today!

So it's nearing the end of the day, and then these two people sitting adjacent to my desk are developing questions for a movie trivia game for a blogger event we have to run next week.

There was one question that made me laugh:

Eevon: Okay, okay, I got a good one.
Vicky: What?
Eevon: What kind of fish was Nemo in Finding Nemo?
Vicky: Tilapia!

At that point, everyone sitting around started guffawing.

100th post - Opening Christmas presents

Yesterday night was the very successful second annual Text 100 Malaysia Christmas party. Congrats to Eevon and Libby for making it such a blast (so now I don't have to do the chicken dance right?)

Anyway, this is my 100th post on this blog and I wanted to post about something special. So, what could be more special than presents? I'll post the first part here.



About 4:30 p.m. yesterday, we were all kinda too gatal already and wanted to open our presents. Vicky could be seen crouching by the Christmas tree and shaking each present to see if she could get a clue on what's inside. So, giving into the gatalness we went ahead and opened the presents way too early. To my delight, I got some great, really relevant stuff!

First Present:
This one is from Mei Ling... looks big and hard. Also, shaped suspiciously like a photo album...which.... ta-da! it was...



It's a really cool, high quality photo album that can last for 200 years! From Wilhelm Imaging Research. Don't play play ok?



2. Second Present
This present really surprised everyone. It was from Lee and he took a lot of effort to make each of us a really personalised fridge magnet --> containing all the phrases we most often use in the office and a short description of what the word means, plus even a Queerometer rating!

For example, Mandy got "O! K!" because that's how she always responds when people pass her stuff to do and Mei Ling got her infamous "This is not acceptable!". Guess what was mine?



3. Third Present
After all the excitement over Lee's present, the next present was a bit mysterious. Shaped like a box, it's really hard to tell what was inside:



Guess? It was on my Christmas wishlist and so I did get 2 bottles of Listerine! Wah... to which Corina promptly responded "Can I please have my box back?"



4. Fourth and last present
From beatrice, something that felt like a T-Shirt...but...turned out to be...Gym Shorts! Also on my Christmas Wishlist. Now I can be more fit and healthy because I can go Gym more often.



Of course, we opened more presents later at the dinner, but I'll save that for part 2. LoL!

Nice Hamper or not?

Today, what a pleasant surprise!

So, the story goes I was out for the better part of this afternoon for meetings and helping to manage a TV interview (actually pitched and setup by Vicky). Not really in the mood for work because of yesterday's long night, then when, just 15 minutes after I stepped into the office, a nice yellow hamper came in.

Vicky actually picked up the buzzer first and muttered to me over the divider "Some package for you..."

The delivery guy stepped through the door, and Libby rushed to sign the delivery order. We were all working quite a bit (I was drafting some email) and then Beatrice decided to rush over and check it out...

She yelped.

"David! It's from Nokia!"

"Uh, phone?"

Okay, that wasn't how I responded. I checked out the package and the cool card attached to it and it made me think - "Wah....first present from client liao..."

So, check out these pics:



Yup, there was Famous Amos, Esprit (fruit drink), some Macademian chocolate and oooh... Coffex Turkist coffee.

I was actually a bit puzzled, because clients always tell me to lay off the coffee...so....coffex? Anyway, just wanted to say a big THANK YOU! You really know my taste.

We're training.... seriously

So we had our Text 100 training yesterday, and unlike Suan's training-to-the-death, I figured ours was pretty fun in comparison.

Okay, the location wasn'tthe best - Bukit Tinggi is a bit too wannabe for my liking - but hey, it's the content and the people that really matter right? We had a fantastic time learning (throught presentation) but the killer was going out for orienteering.

Here's some excerpts:

Bukit Tinggi has this French-Wannabe theme which I found to be a bit..er.. muak. (Malay for 'Overly- Satiated')

Guess what these icons represent? It took me a while. Maybe my IQ just not as high as I thought.

Local wildlife in their natural habitat abound in Bukit Tinggi - like this leaf insect.

One day, someone is gonna give me one of these for my Birthday present... (shameless hint)

Finally, picture with some people. We were all pretty happy to be going outdoors for orienteering.

Until the guide dumped us here...

Gave us a compass...

And told us to find our way out.

Of course, Lee did extremely well...I might say. :)

See more here.