facebook timeline

When I was assigned the task to come up with a Social Media 101 walkthrough to show a colleague my process in handing the various channels for the company, I responded instantly in a nonchalant manner thinking that this would be simple. With the many tools that I use day-in-day-out and with lot’s of information available on the web regarding the subject, coming up with a succinct dosier on my alleged field of expertise. The result and reality of the matter is, I don’t exactly know what my process is. But in the next hour, I’m about to find out.

To begin, I think it appropriate that I’m presenting this in the form of a blog post. The rise of the “Blog” or weblog as news and as journalism was the foundation for the subsequent boom of Social Networking and Social Media at large. This new way of communicating ideas in a fast and social manner eventually spawned variations of the format (microblogs – Twitter/Weibo) (miniblogs – Tumblr/Posterous/DianDian) that caters to a different segment of influencers and pundits as well as regular people such as you and I.

As time ran out and random tasks got in the way, I’ll have to summarize this session into the following points:

Content – product reviews/write-ups, PR releases, news, editorials, advertorials, featured articles…

Platforms – social networks, microblogs, forums, Q&A sites, social bookmarking, mobile apps…

Objectives – expertise sharing, word-of-mouth, customer service, informational, community building, frictionless integration…

Daily activities: channel monitoring, content production, content curating, active response/commenting

In the next installment, I’ll try to cover the intricacies of communicating through social media, writing styles and personifying the brand and enterprise to connect and engage the masses and targeted groups alike.

you must remember this...

If you guys are new to my blog, welcome.

Haven’t written a new post for over a year now. Feeling very rusty and a bit nervous. Unlike when I’m tweeting, I suppose I actually have to make sense on a “real” blog post.

As I’ve remarked on a recent update to my “last post” from early 2010, life had gotten in the way of my previous attempt in being a responsible blogger.

After a brief stint in the finance industry and yet another failed attempt to resurrect my startup, I’ve landed a job in a media company.

It’s nice to have resources and working with real brands is far more rewarding than digging in the couch for loose change just to make ends meet.

Things on the personal front are also much calmer in comparison with the past period of absolute insanity. In fact, I quite enjoy the fact that I don’t have time for much of a personal life since I started at the new company.

Not sure how long the honeymoon period with this company will last, but as I’m passionate about finally being able to do real work, I think I’ll actually be staying for the long haul. But life, as I’ve experienced it, is always full of surprises.

And to all my friends and acquaintances in the startup community, I WILL BE BACK!

But for now, let’s see if I can create some opportunities for y’all.

Oh, and I’m getting fat again! Need to lose weight.

As you can see, my company’s domain have now been redirected to this blog. For the time being, this will be the base of operation for any Metamorphosis Multimedia related news and announcements. In time, all the company blog posts from 2008 will also be migrated over and combined with existing entries.

The general direction of M3 is to focus on social media as a distribution channel for all sorts of content including but not limited to videos, blog articles, promotions, product features, tutorials, and various other useful resources.

The idea is to post at least once a day. Somehow I need to dicipline myself in such a way that allow for a sustainable content stream that keeps people coming back to check out my latest boring antics.

The goal is to be somewhat entertaining. Hopefully I’ll be able to offer up some advise or insights into social media, financial planning, and life in general.

If you don’t see a new blog from me here on any given day, go check on my Chinese blog (if you read Chinese). Alternatively you could go to my new setup at Posterous where I’ll be aggregating both of my blogs into one place at some point. I still love WordPress. It will always be my base. But I’m also exploring other services that can cater to my other needs, such as autoposting to Xanga. Please follow me on twitter as well if want to know the instant I’m taking a crap.

Nah! Just a bad joke, I know. Sorry.

For someone who claims to be a social media specialist, the amount of inactivity I manage to accumulate is staggering. Sure, I’ve been busy with meetings, setting up blogs for clients, exploring various channels of income, advocating the importance of financial health, and immersing myself in my new company, etc…

If I were here to come up with excuses, I could go on all day long. But what I want to emphasize more is the simple truth that traffic comes from a sustained presence in multiple channels. In other words, if you show up enough, eventually someone is going to take a look and maybe you’ll have something they want.

People such as myself often over think things. I try to come up with cleaver ideas for posts and spend days thinking about what and how to write what I want to say rather than actually sitting down and writing. In the end, the ideas fizzles out and the opportunity to connect was lost.

Inspiration is like raw passionate sex, once the moment of unfiltered emotions is gone, no amount of stimulus can recreate quite the same experience.

One of my worst habit as far as counter-productiveness goes is my tendency to pace around contemplating, formulating and planning what to write, say or do. What ends up happening is I construct these elaborate internal monologues that are in my mind pretty ground breaking and revolutionary, but unfortunately no one will ever know about them.

Being conscious of this behavior is my first step towards recovery. Now, whenever I think of something to say, I try to sit down at my computer and put my hand to the keyboard. No matter how silly the idea, it’s better to have some record of it for future reference than to have nothing when I want to turn that idea into some sort of an action plan.

But going back to the numbers, as you can see, traffic to my blog have been steadily declining due to long periods of absence on my part. However, I can be slightly encouraged that with my activities being interlinked and pushed out to so many channels, I still get some random discovery here and there stemming from my network.

Relying on original content to generate traffic is always a long and laborious process, but if I can some how find ways to turn people onto other interesting resources and provide value to my readers that way, then my life could get a lot easier. For the time being, however, I’m on a crusade to build up my own presence with my bare hands. Which means you guys will have to deal with my monologuing for just a bit longer, and perhaps even more frequently.

I’m not against the idea of content recycling or auto-content for that matter, but I believe that I could have enough to share if I just stick to the idea of writing down most of my coherent thoughts into publishable blog posts. Hopefully I’ll be able to cultivate enough business through my recent efforts to allow me the opportunity to spend more time in doing so.

We shall see. Now it’s your turn to think about what’s in the numbers for you. What are the stats and figures that’s so intertwined with your lives that you might not have thought about previously? Now is a good time to give that some careful consideration. Feel free to share your experiences in the comments.

photo by James Cridland

No, seriously. I mean, seriously!

So what exactly is an IFA?

IFA stands for independent financial adviser, feel free to read up on it here. Financial planning, asset management, investment, all that Jazz.

I’ve been approached numerous times by the insurance industry urging me to join their ranks. While I’m flattered by their confidence in my ability to peddle policies, I know better. I’ve never been too keen on being a salesman and I know I’m bound for greater things.

No, I’m not a stock broker, nor do I work for a bank. Clearly I do not sell insurance.

So what’s the difference with the IFA field? Isn’t it basically glorified sales anyways?

Well, no.

As an IFA, I’m whoever you want me to be. I can do your laundry, clean your house, watch your kids, coach their little league team, cook a mean turkey for Christmas, and most of all, take extremely good care of your mula. The key is choice and neutrality. I don’t have to sell you products from a single provider, but rather, I’m able to pick from just about 80-90% of all available financial products the ones that best suit your needs and you can decide to buy or not to buy.

Yes, if your money is your kids, then I’m sort of a super nanny. They maybe naughty and bashful at times, but in my good hands, we can together watch them grow to be quite obese. That’s what asset management is all about, raising fat kids.

Best of all, I don’t take a cent of your money. My dough comes directly from the nice people from those product providers. What I do for you folks I do for free, out of the goodness of my heart, of course.

Sure, I can do pretty well.

You might be thinking to yourself, “Gee, that sounds like a load of hot air, Lehman Brothers!”

Objectively speaking, your logic is sound, but soon, I’ll explain to you why I’m your best bet when it comes to investment and how the entire finance industry can benefit from my presence.

In the mean time, be afraid, be very afraid.

I’m here to help!

Yeah, every motherfucking last one of ya!

*Special thanks to James Cridland for the flickr photo*

photo by jimw

Just kidding. April fools!

Wait… did I get the dates mixed up again?

No… just putting off the inevitable once again.

Sorry boss, I know you told me not to tell people I’m new at this but I just can’t help myself.

*Special thanks to jimw for the flickr photo*

photo by petesimon

Some people find me hilarious, or maybe I just think they do. Regardless of which, I think I’m capable of bringing joy and laughter to the masses if given the right viechle, the right opportunity, the right stage.

(Something tells me this isn’t it, blogging that is.)

I may not be a comedian, but I can say rather funny things to entertain those around me. Those who know me well may have experienced this. Those who haven’t yet can expect it tomorrow. Those who read this blog may find yourselves giggling at times for no apparent reason.

Entertainment is my life’s purpose, the movies especially. To entertain is to give people something to think about, laugh about, cry about.

If my words here don’t touch you in one way or another, then I’m not doing it right.

If you don’t care, no one can make you.

Life is full of drama, full of surprises. Sometimes they may scare you, sometimes they can upset you, but if you look carefully enough, they may often time be darn funny. The key is to notice the joy in those experiences and laugh out load (LOL).

I hope that you’re satisfied with this performance. I hereby bid you adieu and many pleasant dreams. Please come again, or better yet, subscribe to my RSS feed so you can stay constantly updated with my many a wise cracks.

*Special thanks to petesimon for the flickr photo*

For those who don’t already know, you guessed right. For the past year or so, I’ve been working for myself in my own company. (yeah, the pictures don’t show up.) I’ve managed to squander a good sum of my dad’s hard earned money, not to mention some of my own. I’ve made a mess of both my personal and professional life and learned a great deal about humility.

This is, however not a letter of surrender.

I haven’t given up on my dream. I haven’t even given up on my company. I’m just looking for a better way to get to where I want to be while avoiding certain things from impeding my progress.

In hindsight, I think I rushed into entrepreneurship without fully understanding how a business should be ran. Ultimately it was my lack of experience and not my lack of ability that was my undoing. I will not be caught so unprepared again.

As I set aside this chapter of my career, I can say that I do not regret the decision to go out on my own. If you don’t try, you never know. Now that I know, I’ll be sure to do better with any opportunities that come along.

As we speak, my company is in a rebounding path and from the looks of it, I’ll be able to generate some on-going business for the short to medium term. There are also some longer term prospects and goals that are in the works but I’ll be taking a wait-and-see attitude towards those far fetched leads. Well, patient but proactive anyways.

In the mean time, since I no longer have staff at my company, I’ll be looking to enlist my friends and colleague’s help with these projects. So you iPhone developer buddies of mine out there, take notice. I’ll be calling you soon. (I hope that one day our beautiful website will be reborn as well.)

At the same time, I’m going full steam ahead with my new adventure into what was previously an unknown territory for me. (Yes, I’m still putting off writing about this.)

With great passion, hard work and belief in myself, I’m confident that fortune will smile upon me in glorious fashion someday very soon.

Stay tuned if you care.

Or I’ll make you pay attention, one way or another.

*Special thanks to njharman for the flickr photo*

photo by Mykl Roventine

So, it’s funny that my last post was about being productive. With that said, I’ve been putting off writing this post about my new adventure into a new career for quite a few weeks now. Mostly I was still coming to terms with this reality not really sure I was going through with it, but also, I want to figure out how exactly to explain the reasons behind such a drastic change.

Those of you who’ve been following my other blog in Chinese might know that I’ve been in quite a melodramatic mood as of late. This is partly to do with the state of my current relationship, which is tumultuous to say the least. But it’s also because of the uncertain state of my work situation as I’ve mentioned. Panhandling at the entire world seemed like a good idea at the time when I had no real prospects of making money.

Things have changed.

I’ve taken some steps towards the right direction. I’m currently in training for a new position at a fairly reputable company in Hong Kong. It is also in one of the major fields wildly popular here. For those who know me, this may come as a shock. But soon you’ll all know what this is all about.

Those who follow me on twitter will have an idea, but I’m sure the suspense is killing those of you who don’t.

Oh and by the way, you better run and hide when you see me coming around the corner.

Why?

You’ll see.

Crap! This isn’t a post about my new job! This is more like a post about that post, which is forthcoming, I promise.

Then again, I’ve made such promises before. Let’s see if I come through this time.

I’m getting the feeling that I just might.

Timeline: tell all post by Christmas as a present to you all! Ho! Ho! Ho!

(believe it when you see it)

*Special thanks to Mykl Roventine for the flickr photo*

It’s not that I’m unproductive, but in the past, I’ve found myself with a lot of idle time. When you get things done, you’re left with a sense of emptiness. Like in Memento, once you’re gotten your revenge, what else is there to strive for?

Sometimes, this can drive you mad. You find every excuse possible to delay completing the tasks at hand; you wait for the last possible moment to minimize that loss; you act busy rather than getting busy.

When procrastination rears its ugly head, it’s just like looking into a mirror, because ultimately, there’s only yourself to blame.

Lately that haven’t been the problem with me since, clearly, I’m in the poor house. Desperation and necessity are great motivators, even if their sources are self-inflicted conditions that no one else could begin to understand. But also, I’ve discovered that when I sit around and twiddle my thumbs, nothing good ever comes of it.

I’m not saying that I never put things off now, but I think I’ve gotten smarter about putting in the right amount of effort to produce the results I need. Cutting corners have been a bad habit of mine over the past years and self-rationalization have been an even greater affliction, I can now conclude.

Spending time thinking about doing things, rather than doing the things you’re thinking about doing is a waste of time. That’s not to say that planning is bad. But until you take action, any plan is exactly the same as no plan.

Everyone wants to be productive, the trick is to overcome your own excuses and fears. It is important to understand the conditions and hurdles that gets in the way of your progress. More crucial than clearing them one by one is to do so while not creating others to take their place in the process.

I’ve learned my lesson the hard way and it’s taken an incredible amount of effort to extract myself from the self-destructive pattern that resulted in countless unimaginable pains I still suffer from to this day.

In the end, productivity is a choice. Let yours be the one that sets you free.

*Special thanks to Aaron (asalexander) for the flickr photo*