New Media Philippines

So… Bench will donate 1 million pesos to a charity if their endorser, Dingdong Dantes, gets 1 million followers on Twitter. In all honesty I don’t think Dingdong needs a promo to reach 1M given his popularity. All he has to do is to ask help from his other celebrity friends to tweet to their [...]

Fundamentals of Social Media Talk at KBP I was invited by the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas (KBP) to give a quick talk and a forum about the basics of social media marketing. Since I’m currently with TV5 (a KBP member), I immediately said yes! It was also a first for me to talk [...]

I was invited to give a short 10-minute talk about social media at the PANA Foundation Youth Congress held at the Erwin Lee Theater in Ateneo. The audience was composed of students from different universities all over the country. It was definitely a fulfilling experience and I’m always thankful and honored each time I get [...]

PALEA tried to gain public sympathy by staging a strike on the day typhoon Pedring battered the Philippines. This effectively stranded thousands of passengers who were riding flights from the Philippines Air Lines (PAL). They definitely got media mileage since all of the major TV newscasts aired the story but I’m not too sure about [...]

I came across this very interesting article over at Technoodling. Remember how a lot of people’s eyebrows were raised when the Malaysian internet company known as MOL bought Friendster for $39M USD? Several analysts were saying that it was a bad buy and that the over-all value would continue to plummet. Well it looks like [...]

I was surprised when I got a call from Globe informing me that I was a finalist for their “Globe Tatt Awards for Social Media” under the Tech Junkie category. It’s a huge honor just to be considered a finalist so to Globe and to everyone who supported New Media PH, thank you! Anyway, starting [...]

Peter Juan shared this video on Facebook. Hilarious stuff. Watch the video first before reading my comments below. I think the biggest problem the marketing industry faces right now when it comes to the world of social media and digital marketing is education. Managers and CEO’s just hire whoever presents to them first without really [...]

People often think that the social media industry isn’t stressful and that it’s all fun because you get to handle social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. It’s completely the opposite. Regardless if you like it or not social networking sites become extensions of customer support because it’s a communication channel between you and your [...]

People have a tendency of saying “everyone on social media says…”. It’s funny because if you really think about it how can one say that indeed everyone is saying one thing? WIthout the proper monitoring and analytics in place everything is just conjecture and you might end up making wrong decisions because you’re misinformed. This [...]

The surge of easy-to-use photo, text, and video editing software and applications gives the phrase “out of context” more relevance and meaning to brands, especially public figures. How many times have we seen demeaning videos, photos, and quotes from celebrities and their primary defense is that the material released to the public was edited? Our [...]

The Facebook FBML application is one of the most used tools for brand pages. The ability to turn a specific customizable page as the landing page for users who aren’t fans yet opens a lot of opportunities for businesses push specific marketing messagers to their customers. It’s also a great way to convince non-fans to [...]

How should brands use Foursquare to reach out to more customers? Here’s a good example of a restaurant operating in the Philippines using Foursquare Specials. I went to Pancake House in Bonifacio High Street the other day for a lunch meeting. While waiting for my colleague to arrive for our meeting I decided to check-in [...]

Azkals, the Philippines football team, routed Mongolia yesterday in Bacolod 2-0. Phil Younghusband and Chieffy Caligdong scored a goal each to power the team to victory. I’m sure it also helped that we were playing with home court advantage. According to reports a little over 18,000 Filipinos were there to watch. I can’t imagine how [...]

I was invited by Janette Toral to do an episode of her online talk show, DigitalFilipino Talks. We were supposed to talk about social media and personal branding but bulk of the discussion really went into the Big Bad Blogger issue. It was an interesting exchange with Janette and we pretty much share the same [...]

One of the most annoying features of Facebook is unwanted tagging. A lot of people take advantage of this by tagging others to promote a product, event, or website without asking for permission. I personally find this rude, unprofessional, and just plain annoying. A company has been spamming me for the past few months now [...]

I just finished reading an article on the Inquirer which talked about how a “Big Bad Blogger” in coordination with a PR firm allegedly tried to extort a restaurant. The owner first declined the PR agency’s pitch to handle “buzz marketing” for them. Later on a blogger came in, ate, and wrote a rave review [...]

There are several properties in Facebook official pages that you can use as marketing billboards. One of the best spaces available is the profile picture. To maximize the space make a 540 x 180 pixels vertical banner. Don’t just grab a random photo and upload it as your picture. Make the most of the space [...]

I was having a conversation over e-mail with a friend who works with a digital marketing agency in Hong Kong. We were sharing with each other our experiences so that we could both get better at what we do. One thing we both agreed on is the biggest pitfall for a lot of businesses when [...]

One of the findings in the recent Social Media Wave 5 study by Universal McCann showed that brands that build communities on social networking sites stand to build stronger ties with their market which can lead to growth in sales. In fact according to the study 71% of people who join brand communities are more [...]

Curt Smith, founder and vocalist of the band Tears for Fears, tweeted that he liked the BiPolar album of Filipino band Up Dharma Down. The social media savvy alternative local band has been getting praises all over the country for their music and it was really only a matter of time before more international artists [...]