Politicians: Twittering Their Way to Fame

@beradadisini — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 02:03:34 +0000

It might have something to do with Obama’s success in utilizing different channels of social media tools. During last General Election, Indonesian politicians–especially the presidential candidates, were eager to hold casual dialogue with bloggers; and even formed their own social media team to twitter away.

Tifatul Sembiring, the recently elected Minister of Communications and Informatics, took this approach further. He’s been constantly twittering, personally, with the account @tifsembiring. The Minister is quite tech-savvy and likeable; he responded and acknowledged criticism by saying: “Thanks for the input, I will try to do better.”

The Minister’s effort to be a part of Indonesia’s social media scene in Twitter resulted in 24K followers so far. He’s been twittering his way to fame for about a month or two, and keep reminding Tweeps to give him inputs, suggestions, or even criticism.

Tifatul, the minister from Partai Keadilan Sejahtera, also ‘surprisingly’ attended Indonesia’s largest bloggers’ gathering Pesta Blogger 2009 last October. Bloggers were free to come up to him and took pictures of him posing with Storm Trooper. His humble appearance soon make him a popular figure.

Even in Twitter, he’s not only twittering about the meetings and government programs he’s been involved in. This morning, he tweeted about the latest trending topics from Indonesia #TebakBandTranslate–an unimportant mass-riddle to guess the name of a band; but you need to “translate” the clue from Indonesian language to English. For instance, “tidak bernada” means beat-less. So the answer to the riddle is The Beatles.

Below is Tifatul’s. He’s surely trying hard to be a part of Indonesian Twitterverse.

To be discussed: What kind of information would you want to get from a minister who blogs/tweets? How do their appearance in social media can be meaningful to you?

Brands: The Trend of Creating Fictitious Characters

@beradadisini — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:02:57 +0000

Lately, Indonesian brands were crazy over inventing “fictitious characters” for their marketing campaigns. Brands perceived it as an easy way to create buzz over the Net–as an answer to the rapid development of social media usage in Indonesia. Even Citra Pariwara, the most prestigious awarding event in the country’s advertising industry, launched a new category this year, called “Daun Muda Award”. They challenged advertising people to create “fictitious character” and nurture it in such a way to generate buzz from social media users.

However, brands should come up with a solid and integrated communications strategy if they’d like to use this approach for their marketing campaigns. Some brands have failed miserably when trying to adopt this strategy. A production house for a horror movie The Real Pocong, for instance, got lots of criticism for spreading a ‘viral’ about a missing little girl named Laura. The public were angry when they found out that the missing little girl was a made-up; a “fictitious character” created for promoting the movie.

Brands must remember the fact that buzz is not enough. You have to create meaning, not buzz. What’s the relevancy of this “fictitious character” to your brand and to the whole campaign? What about ethical considerations? Do you think people will get angry when they found out that you have created a “fictitious character”? How does your “fictitious character” help you in getting your messages across?

To be discussed: Do you think it’s a good idea for brands to create “fictitious character”? Or is it a bad idea? Why? How does a “fictitious character” can be fun and entertaining instead of making you feel like you’ve been conned?”

TweetLevel: Curious Result on ‘Influence Rating’

@beradadisini — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:34:45 +0000

Edelman recently launched the beta version of TweetLevel, a tool to measure an individual’s importance on Twitter.

This tool is still in beta. Even though we believe that it goes a great way to understand and quantify the varying importance of different people’s usage of Twitter, by no means whatsoever do we believe we have fully solved the ‘influence’ problem. What we would appreciate is your views, your feedback, advice and criticism is crucial in helping us understand social media measurement. (TweetLevel’s site)

I tried to measure my influence rating on Twitter, and came up with a very curious result. According to TweetLevel, I (@beradadisini) am more influential than Matt Mullenweg (@photomatt) the founder of WordPress.

I guess TweetLevel still has a long way to go…