Facebook Pages Manager now available on iTunes in Singapore and select countries

The Facebook Pages Manager is now available for free to iPhone and iPad users through the Apps Store. The app by the world’s largest social network lets users manage their company’s Facebook Pages using their phone.

While the official Facebook app allows for some basic Facebook Page management, it lacks a lot of key features. This new app has the ability to let social media managers post new updates and photos on their Pages, get push notifications about Page activity, view Page insights, and more. Read more

Facebook Offers rolls out in Asia, gives daily deal sites a run for their money

Facebook has launched a feature that allows users to get special deals from merchants within the social network.

The deals will appear on their news feeds, and after claiming a deal, an email will be sent to the user. The deal can then be redeemed by flashing the email at a store.

Facebook Offers is currently in beta and is being rolled out to selected businesses in Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, US, and Turkey, according to The Verge. Read more

The fastest growing Facebook nations in Asia (first quarter 2012)

A version of this article was first published on Grey Review.

Facebook has over 850 million users worldwide. Out of that, a total of 194 million users are from Asia at the end of March 2012. Most of these users from the Southeast Asia region – 97 million or 54% of the total Facebook users in Asia. Some other observations on the latest Facebook in Asia statistics: Read more

Gushcloud pays you to tweet, but will people find it spammy?

You can be sure that whenever a social network becomes successful, people will try to make money off it. Twitter is a very good example.

Of late, all sorts of people have been gaming the social network. For instance, using Twitter bots to artificially boost the number of Twitter followers, as what US Presidential nominee Newt Gingrich allegedly did.

Which was why I approached Gushcloud with some skepticism.

Gushcloud is a Singapore-based startup that, in a nutshell, rewards its users to perform certain tasks promoted by marketers: Tweeting or sharing on Facebook about a product, writing a blog post, or completing a survey. In this way, it’s similar to ChurpChurp. Read more

SoLoMo Thursday: How to succeed in F&B in 2012

Meet Joel Choo at SoLoMo Thursday on 29th March. The sales and marketing director of food community portal, HungryGoWhere.com will share his first-hand insights on techniques to boost your restaurant’s or bar’s visibility.

Topics include:

a. Use Search
b. Manage your social media presence
c. Integrate traditional with digital marketing
d. Use cloud to manage reservations

Read more

That thing you (forget to) do part 2: Product marketing

Recently, I was invited by the incubator JFDI.Asia to deliver a talk entitled “That Thing You (Forget to) Do” (inspired loosely from Tom Hanks’ movie “That Thing You Do”) on best practices of product development, management & marketing. Following up from part one, this article focuses on two fundamental aspects of product marketing: distribution and public relations. Read more

What are the minimum social media assets businesses should have?

In the modern world, in whatever business you are running, social media presence has become part and parcel of life. Most start-ups and some major corporations that have experimented with social media and now reaping benefits in customers engagement, management of PR crisis and announcing new initiatives.

So if you want to enter the new world of social media, what are the social media assets you really need?

The good news is that most of these assets are free and setting up is relatively easy, the real challenge is the management of these assets.

In this post, I will provide a list of minimum viable social media assets you can’t do without. Read more

Life is just one big game at Demo Asia

There were two major themes in DEMO Asia’s pitch session on social media startups (live blog): gamification and modernizing customer loyalty programs. It’s the battle between start-ups —  those that encourage you to have have fun in your daily life verses those that help you make money.

Keith Ng at GameMaki brought a Angry Bird plushy on stage and challenged the audience to put away their mobile games for real world challenges. He asked the audience to join the game by taking a picture with a DEMO friend and put it up on the GameMaki app, which allows people to see what interesting challenges are taking place around them and easily join in by snapping a picture of the completed activity.

Read more

Eight global social media trends for 2011

Recently, comScore, a leader in digital business analytics, has released a report documenting the key social media trends for 2011. What is clear is that social networking sites have become one of the main channels for businesses to engage existing customers and win over new ones. So, it’s important that entrepreneurs keep abreast about the current state of social networking, adopt their online strategies to suit the current environment, and anticipate future trends.

Here are several key points summarized from the full report.

1) Social networking has emerged globally as the activity which Internet users spend the most time on.

Social networking sites are reaching 82 percent of the global Internet population, or 1.2 billion users. The activity now accounts for 19 percent of time spent online, making it the most popular activity on the Internet. That’s a huge jump from a mere six percent in 2007. Social networking is followed closely behind by search/navigation, retail, and communication. Read more

Singaporeans spend the most time on Facebook: Survey

Singaporeans may only be second-most irritable office workers around, but they are number one when it comes to time spent on Facebook, clocking in at 38 minutes 46 seconds per session. Read more