Web Wednesday Guangzhou Presentation

Is there a rule of the universe that, when you are doing a presentation on a tech-related subject and/or to a group with lots of techies present, the technology will let you down, wholly or in part?

Last night’s presentation to the Web Wednesday event in Guangzhou, via Skype video, on social media and advertising, was looking somewhat threatened for a while. In spite of the system testing perfectly before the event got underway, once it was time for me to be on we had – from memory – three or four dropouts before we were able to settle into the presentation.

Eventually everything worked and I’ve been told today that the feedback from the event was good. I certainly enjoyed the experience!

The attendees were spared my slides, because it was not feasible at the venue to be able to show the slides and have me talking at the same time. I’m posting the slideshow here for the sake of anyone who might have liked to see them.

As with all my slide presentations these days, the aim is to provide some shared talking points, a few graphic illustrations and contact info for anyone who wants to follow up.

I hope the implicit narrative is clear enough. If there was one key point I wanted to make, it was Think Conversation (not “campaign”).

I’m Speaking at Web Wednesday, Guangzhou

Web Wednesday GuangzhouI’m speaking tomorrow night at the Web Wednesday mixer in Guangzhou, China. As I’ll be several thousand miles/kilometres from Guangzhou, my presence will be virtual.

No drinks for me.

The Web Wednesday events, informal monthly gatherings of interested digerati, were started in Hong Kong by Internet entrepreneur and Sinologist Napoleon Biggs,  who has been 20 years in China and Hong Kong.

There is also a Web Wednesday group in Singapore.

Web Wednesday Guangzhou is organized by my friend and colleague Professor Lonnie B. Hodge, CEO of CFM Ltd, another long term Asia hand and a very persuasive man: which goes some way to explaining how I could agree to do a presentation in a country and city so far away, without working out at the time just how this was to be achieved!

The topic for tomorrow night in Guangzhou is Advertising Alchemy.

The other speaker is Peter Burton, who is based in Hong Kong and has been in China for 12 years. He knows a lot about advertising.

Peter is currently Operations Director at digital marketing and adserving company Oriented Media and is a veteran of the internet. He is a co-founder of Activ8 (now Oriented Media). Before that he was a member of the start-up team for SpaceAsia Media, Asia’s first adserving network.

So just what’s my role expected to be in this forum on how to create gold via advertising? Well, I understand I’m going to be allowed to talk about how blogging and social media generally fit into or relate to the advertising mix.

Which is fine.

As the friends I still have will attest, I can talk about blogging and social media under ten feet of wet cement.

Fortunately the communication medium will be the more speaker-friendly Skype video. I’ve put some slides together but have no idea yet whether they can be shown as I speak. What I’m more interested in is engaging with issues that are important or simply of interest for the people attending the event.

There are thirty people confirmed already and I’m hoping to get some challenging questions, whether in the comments here, or on the event Facebook page or from the floor on the night.

Should be fun.

Keeping the Advertising Noise Down with Yovia

What do the the television remote and the social media site Yovia have in common?

For me, it’s the ability to shut out the unwelcome noise of advertisements.

tv remote

Photo by plasti20

The tv remote with its mute button has to be one of the best inventions of all time, giving us the ability to watch programs without having our ears and peace of mind battered by noisy ads. It’s not the advertisements as such that I mind – I don’t have a problem with companies promoting their products. What I mind is the SHOUTING! Because the sound of the advertisements on television is often significantly louder than the sound of the news or other program I’m watching.

I just have to remember to un-mute when the advertisement is over and the program resumes.

Given my love of the TV remote for its ability to spare my eardrums and general peace of mind, when one of the people at the Yovia stand at BlogWorld Expo last year told me that customers are tired of being “yelled at” by advertisers, I knew exactly what she was talking about.

So what does Yovia offer advertisers instead of “yelling”?

Going by the website, what I was told at BlogWorld Expo, and the message on the very nice T-shirts being handed out (yes, I scored one but my price is higher than one T-shirt :) ), the Yovia solution is to “Spread the Word”. Which seems to mean word of mouth marketing online.

Get truly engaged with your audience and watch as your business grows – naturally.

Yovia provides a powerful global network of individuals and content, and helps you get your message out

Start spreading the word about your business, product or event….

So essentially, as I understand it, whereas the TV remote can provide a defensive tool for an audience sick of noisy advertising, Yovia enables the product or service provider to take the initiative and spare the audience the need to be defensive in the first place.

In other words, Yovia eschews traditional advertising and offers companies an alternative, social networking way of connecting with the market.

What Yovia offers, in lieu of traditional “yelling” is:

A community and infrastructure that intersects with millions of conversations each day, and gets involved in those discussions – for you.

yovia logo

Part of the strategy is Yovia’s commitment to building a network of spam-free websites, including blogs. A prominent link button on the web site invites visitors to “Join our Free Network”. When you click on that you are informed that:

The Yovia Network is a group of websites committed to keeping free of SPAM. Each website is linked to the others, but not in a fake or contrived way.

The message is accompanied by an impressive array of logos and text links for a battery of leading companies/sites in the social media space.

Those who join the network are promised promotion of their site on the Buzz Yovia site.

Joining the network is a very simple process. You provide an email address and the address (URL) of your blog or other website and you are in.

Yovia signup

I don’t know what screening system is in place to keep the spammers out, but having met and spoken with Yovia CEO Jalali Hartman, I have total confidence that there is a system and that it will be applied rigorously to keep the network genuinely spam-free.

I’m in. Are you?