Author Archives: Andrew Wee

About Andrew Wee

My name is Andrew Wee. I'm 32 years old, live in Singapore and am happily married with a 2 month old daughter. I've gone through a list of various occupations including: * journalist (for a business newspaper) * Internet content developer (for one of Asia's largest media group's Singapore Press Holdings) * trainer in entrepreneurship, business building, life skills * photographer/photojournalist * real estate agent * consultant * entrepreneur (I think that's enough for now...more later!) This is a personal space to express my goals, dreams and aspirations.

When A Blog Isn’t A Blog…

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With the multitude of functions that blogging platforms are currently being appropriated for (especially  WordPress software), is blogging in danger of losing its identity.

It’s no surprise that blogs are highly optimized for search engines, tend to be the weapon of choice for linkbait campaigns and are usually the chosen weapon when a single individual (or marketer) decides to take on an airline, supermarket chain, or budget airline.

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Add to that the fact that affiliate marketers are also employing it’s flexible architecture to construct landing pages, opt-in forms, affiliate content sites, shopping/shopping comparison sites, coupon sites, customer loyalty sites (plus the occasional or maybe not so occasional affiliate cookie stuffing site) and you’d realize that it’s not just a diarying platform anymore.

In a tweet yesterday, Top Ranking Marketing CEO Lee Odden fired Continue reading →

Friday Podcast: Article Marketing Traffic Strategies With Rachel Rofe

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Rachel RofeI’d invited return guest Rachel Rofe on the Friday Podcast to talk one of her most effective traffic sources – article marketing.

Besides covering the basics of article marketing, Rachel also talked about some of the intricasies of:

  • How you can use the “useful, but incomplete” strategy to get high clickthroughs on your resource links
  • An update on her weight loss membership site which had received publicity as the cover story of Woman’s World magazine (more popular than Rolling Stone, The New Yorker and Forbes)
  • The benefits of article marketing and how you can get more bang for your buck for each article you publish
  • Recommended article directories, article submission services, article analytics and social bookmarking strategies to enhance your profits
  • Incorporating press release strategies into your marketing campaigns
  • Going the multimedia route to further boost your traffic generation efforts
  • Her new meditation niche site
  • Her new article-based traffic generation service

Check out the podcast below:

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Links:

Will Twitter Search Change The Search Engine Landscape?

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At the sidelines of an entrepreneur conference, TiEcon, yesterday, CNet Webware editor Rafe Needleman reported on Twitter’s ambition to power up its usefulness as a search engine contender. But will this be enough to give Google or one of its competitors a run for it’s money.

On the looks of things, Twitter is doing the right thing like bringing Google’s former manager of search quality operations Santosh Jayaram over to Twitter as its new vice president of operations.

In the works:

  • Introducing indexing and crawling capabilities to spider links contained within users tweets
  • A reputation ranking system to give weightage/priority according to a Twitter users authority

As an example, Santosh cited examples of the Twitter.com sidebar would containing “trending” hot topics, which already appear in Twitter users web profile pages now.

To be viable as a search engine alternative, not just against the big 3, but also sites like YouTube, Facebook and MySpace which feature their own search engines, Twitter will need to leverage on its immediate nature and use this advantage to provide real-time updates like Twitter API-powered site TwitterFall.

As hot upstart Twitter continues to introduce unique and creative values for its users, we might see the internet users expectations to demand real time updates from search results, with a corresponding change in user behavior.

Overcoming Blogging’s Style Versus Substance Challenge

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The answer to an old question whether it’s more important to focus on style or content (also sometimes refered to as “form or function”) when it comes to content publishing on the internet will have most listeners responding “You need both quality content and an interesting way to generate traffic and monetize it.”

Easier said than done though.

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From my research, most podcasters and video bloggers who generate “interesting” (ie not boring) content tend to be clever/witty, use cool background music, broadcast/guerilla-style video effects and transitions, to the point of being Seinfeld-ish (ie being about nothing) in nature.

If anything, the message is Continue reading →

Dealing With Web 2.0’s Demographic Battlelines and Social Media Fatigue

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According to a recent research report, social media users appear to have segmented themselves primarily along demographic criteria. Additionally, as social media channels grow in sophistication, it appears that the sheer amount of information flowing through these channels may be exerting a hefty time and psychological cost on users.

In a recent Pew Internet & American Life Project report, internet users in the 18-53 year old age bracket (as at 2009) represent a higher proportion of internet users, compared to their numerical percentage in the general population.

“Older boomers” aged 54-63, make up 13% of the general population and are on par, constituing 13% of internet users.

The “Silent generation” aged 64-72, who make up 9% of the general population, amount to 7% of internet users.

The “GI generation” aged 73 and older and are 9% of the population, only represent 4% of internet users.

twitter users

Likewise, when it comes to media consumption, Twitter users Continue reading →

Are Soft Marketing Tactics The Wave Of The Future?

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The world of marketing provides an interesting, insightful and sometimes bizzare look into the world of consumer behavior.

There’re marketing tactics which some will consider hard selling, while others consider amusing and engaging like TV informercial-based tactics of pitchmen Billy Mays who’s recently frontlining his own reality series Pitchmen.

And then there’s Israel-born Vince Shlomi, better known as Vince Offer, who’s gain some fame promoting the ShamWow cleaning product. What may not be as well known is that Vince got a foothold in direct marketing with promoting his movie The Underground Comedy Movie (Vince also initiated a lawsuit against the Farrelly Brothers and 20th Century Fox for alleged similarities between his movie and There’s Something About Mary – which Vince subsequently lost).

So it appears that consumers are ok with being marketed with as long as they are entertained – giving rise to the golden commandment of marketing – Don’t be boring.

What I’ve been seeing is a rise in “soft marketing” where the promotion of products and services are less “in your face” and while it might not elicit the type of instant buy response that direct marketing might get, it can be more effective and possibly insidious in the long term.

wcg

Take the recent Syfy (SciFi) reality series WCG Ultimate Gamer – ostensibly about the World Cyber Games competitive gaming event.

Originating in South Korea where Continue reading →