About bloggers and brands

Most bloggers are not journalists. They maintain their own publishing style, their own crowd, their own channels and their own methods. The following are three good articles written in Indonesian about how corporations and brands should deal with bloggers. 

Unfortunately for some, they are in Indonesian, but the gist of these pieces is this, do not treat most bloggers as you would the press. 

Bloggers are rarely in it for the news, they post things that matter to them. If they don’t have a personal interest in the subject, they’l likely not attend a press conference or attend just to meet people, often to catch up with friends who happen to be invited as well.

There is no central command for bloggers. Unlike the press, bloggers do not have an association, they do not have  an office representing bloggers. They are individuals out for their own interest and no one else’s. To approach bloggers for your campaign, you need a different method. 

You need to get personal, you need to get into the conversation and discussions. Let them tell their own stories, do not editorialize their work. The more you try to control how bloggers express their views, the worse the publicity you will get, that is if they care to complain at all. At worst, your brand will be left out of the conversation, it will be ignored to oblivion. Bad publicity at least will get other people curious. Lack of publicity will be your worst nightmare.

Of course, these guidelines don’t all apply when the blog you’re approaching is more similar in style and purpose to TechCrunch, or Engadget than personal blogs. Those are the kind of blogs you should go after but keep in mind that in Indonesia, personal blogs still rule the blogosphere.

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How to trend a topic on Twitter

Apparently at any given time, to ensure a trending topic on Twitter you would need about 2000 tweets at once. More if you want it to be on top and maintain that position for a lengthy period.

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Twitter going mainstream

Was just discussing about Twitter going mainstream the last couple of days and how Sony Ericsson is now promoting phones with Facebook as a feature (I’ll take a photo of the ad some other time). @feilisa said they’ll start doing it with twitter soon, just wait.
Well, today I saw a high circulation tabloid about the cellphone market with this headline:

Use Facebook and Twitter together

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Pandji: Don’t deny change

As said by @pandji Pragiwaksono,
  • “Stop complaining bout sceptical people. Coz we’re all sceptical on sumthin in 1 way or another” 26 minutes ago from UberTwitter
  • Mreka salah ktika berkata para tweeters belum melakukan “real action”. Kita sudah melakukan aksi. Hanya saja aksi kita memang lebih elegan:) 15 minutes ago from UberTwitter 
  • Kelak Indonesia akan sadar, blo’on rasanya menggunakan cara cara lama di dunia yg baru. Don’t deny change. Welcome it with open arms 🙂 10 minutes ago from UberTwitter 

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Death of Mbah Surip Trending on Twitter

Mbah Surip, the 70 something street reggae musician who shot to fame and ridiculous amount of fortune this past several months from obscurity thanks to his 20 year old song, “Tak Gendong,” passed away at 10:30 this morning before they could get him to the hospital after a possible heart attack.  With thousands of Indonesians embracing Twitter this year, news of his death spread throughout the social networking service and by midday, Mbah Surip began trending on Twitter.

 Love him or hate him, he will be missed.

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Skype may have to shut down?

Sydney Morning Herald: Shock threat to shut Skype
“[eBay] bought Skype from entrepreneurs Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis for $US2.6 billion in 2005, but this did not include a core piece of peer-to-peer communications technology that powers the software.
eBay has since been licensing the technology from the founders’ new company, Joltid, but the pair recently decided to revoke the licensing agreement.”
Damn. Who ran eBay’s negotiations back then?

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Pretty good deals on Macs

iMacs are being pushed like crazy. 3 million rupiahs off an iMac is almost 25% off.  Ads from business section on Kompas

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Sent from my iPhone

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Apple launches iPhone 3GI

Tested it last week. Brilliant see through screen, light as air, very fast, runs multiple apps at once, exchangeable case. Beats any other gadget I’ve ever used. Most Awesome.

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IndonesiaUnite paper toys (

Spirit of nationalism comes in various forms. For this artist, making paper toys is a passion. Love how cute they look.

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Waratah = Lotus? Only in New South Wales


I can’t tell which is funnier, the fact that the New South Wales state government spent thousands of dollars for a redrawn state logo only to change it from an Australian to an Indian flower or the title that the Telegraph put up for the story out of spite.

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