XMA Cross Media Awards 2012
Best community engagement
   
  Singapore Social Media Fiesta, Singapore
(Singapore Press Holdings Ltd, Singapore).


 
 
 
  Project name  
  Singapore Social Media Fiesta
 
  General Publication Info  
  The Singapore Social Media Fiesta (http://project.omy.sg/social-media-fiesta) is an umbrella of events focused on social media to reach out to the Singapore online community. The Social Media Fiesta (SGSMF) brand was introduced in 2011. The first Singapore Social Media Fiesta consisted three events – 4th Singapore Blog Awards (http://sgblogaward.omy.sg/2011), First Singapore Social Media Day (http://project.omy.sg/sgsmd/) and First Singapore 4Sq Day (http://project.omy.sg/sg4sqday).
It has since expanded to include another Twitter event, venturing into more social media platforms and reaching out to the respective social media communities. The 4Sq Day event, initially focused on location-based mobile social app, Foursquare, had grown in scale and reach into the first “Check-In Bonanza” in 2012, allowing users on other social sites with location-based services like Facebook to take part.
The second SGSMF currently consists of four flagship events from April to July in 2012 – 5th Singapore Blog Awards (http://sgblogawards.omy.sg), First Check-In Bonanza (http://project.omy.sg/check-in-bonanza/), First Twitter Frenzy (http://project.omy.sg/sg-twitter-frenzy/) and 2nd Singapore Social Media Day (http://project.omy.sg/sg-social-media-day/).
SGSMF is organized by omy.sg, the leading bilingual-friendly (Chinese and English) web portal in Singapore under the Singapore Press Holdings media group. The portal receives an average of 10 million page views a month and over 550,000 unique visitors in a country with a population of 4.8 million.
omy.sg’s is known in Singapore to both the public and trade partners for its local news, Asian entertainment news, blogs and social media content and community engagement. It was first launched in September 2007 and is currently five years old.
 
  Implementation  
  The idea for SGSMF came from an extension to the very successful Singapore Blog Awards (SBA). Since it was launched by omy.sg in 2008, SBA has been built and branded into the most anticipated social media event annually for Singapore’s online community. It is also one of the main revenue earners for omy.sg, with sponsors and advertisers booked a year in advance and many repeat customers. Annually, the blog awards reaches out to over 3,000 bloggers in Singapore, with over 60,000 votes cast by the online community to vote for their favourite bloggers.
There is strong barrier to entry for other media or Internet companies to venture into hosting social media events in Singapore, in view of omy.sg’s established leadership position with the online blogging community, built via hosting the Singapore Blog Awards for the past five years, before social media was even big in Singapore.
There are many international social media events for major social media brands that are celebrated globally by online communities worldwide, particularly in the United States. Examples include the World Social Media Day on 30 June (by social sharing site, Mashable.com); World Foursquare Day on 16 April (by location-based mobile app, Foursquare.com) and World Twitter Day on the 140th day of the year (by social messaging site, Twitter.com).
In Singapore, no one took the initiative to organise or coordinate such events. Hence omy.sg saw the opportunity to “hijack” these events and assume leadership and ownership for all future social media events in Singapore.
The first project conceived and launched was the Singapore 4Sq Day, in conjunction with the World Foursquare Day in 2011. This was met with good responses from trade partners who chipped to offer deals and promotions for users who “checked-in” on Foursquare at their respective venues.
Riding on the success of the first project, Singapore Social Media Day (SGSMD) was up next in 2011, with the theme of “Social Media for a Social Cause”. A group of 11 volunteer bloggers and social media enthusiasts stepped forward to formed the core organising committee for the whole SGSMD campaign (http://blog.omy.sg/sgsmd/about). Together with omy.sg, they planned and executed a one-day carnival revolving around social media to raise money for charity. The one-day event utilised the power of Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare in its publicity efforts prior to the event, as well as generated hype during and after the event. The ground event saw the direct involvement of over 350 participants throughout the day and thousands of onlookers at Orchard Road. The event was an excellent platform for the Singapore online community to meet up and establish contact in-person.
With the success of the two new social media events in 2011, omy.sg proceed to expand these two projects in 2012 and incorporated a third social media event on the Twitter platform.
The list of events may further expand in the years ahead to further strengthen omy.sg’s leadership position and branding with the online community in Singapore.
It may sound like a lofty ambition, but the main objective of launching the Singapore Social Media Fiesta is to allow omy.sg to “conquer the online media community” in Singapore, “one social media at a time”.
Globally, social media and Internet giants like Facebook, Google and Twitter may take the lead in reaching out to the worldwide online community as a whole; locally, media owners like omy.sg is still able to leverage on our local networks and contacts and assume leadership position in reaching out to the Singapore online communities.
 
  Project results  
  SGSMF was launched in 2011 and was profitable from the beginning, with advertisers like HTC coming in to sponsor the first Singapore Social Media Day.
In 2012, the brand was further expanded with Panasonic coming in as the presenting sponsor for the Singapore Blog Awards 2012 (the first time in SBA’s five years operational history whereby a single, large advertiser came in as a presenting sponsor) and one of Singapore top’s leisure site, Sentosa, coming in as the presenting sponsor for the first Twitter Frenzy and first Check-In Bonanza for their 40th Anniversary.
All events hosted under both SGSMF 2011 and SGSMF 2012 were also successful in their respective community outreach, targeting eyeballs unique to each social media services or cross platform.
Key highlights:
- Singapore Blog Awards: Over 60,000 votes cast on average and over 1,000 blog registration annually
- Singapore Social Media Day 2011: More than 300 volunteers stepped forward to volunteer their time for the project with thousands reached via various social media platforms
- Singapore Twitter Frenzy 2012: Campaign trended on Twitter in Singapore, generating much hype and excitement among the local Twitter community. A crowd of 100 avid Twitter users attended the first Twitter Frenzy award ceremony.
- Singapore Check-In Bonanza 2012: Check-in more than doubled from the previous Singapore 4Sq Day event with the inclusion of Facebook check-ins on top of Foursquare check-ins.
- Singapore Social Media Day 2012 (in progress): Campaign to reach to Instagram community in view of the growing number of Singaporean users who uses the app.
 
  Additional comments  
  The Singapore Blog Awards 2010 campaign won two Excellence Awards at the Asian Publishing Awards 2011 in Bangkok for Best in Advertising Delivery and Best Use of User-Generated-Content; a Gold Award at the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers’ Asian Digital Media Awards 2010, for Innovation Use of Social Media in the Best in Social Media category.
 
  LINKS  
  Singapore Social Media Fiesta video:
http://project.omy.sg/omy/xma/social-media-fiesta. ...
Singapore Social Media Fiesta
http://project.omy.sg/social-media-fiesta/2012/
– campaign still in progress
http://project.omy.sg/social-media-fiesta/2011/
Singapore Blog Awards
http://sgblogawards.omy.sg/2012
– campaign still in progress
http://sgblogawards.omy.sg/2011
http://sgblogawards.omy.sg/2010
http://sgblogawards.omy.sg/2009
http://sgblogawards.omy.sg/2008
http://blog.omy.sg/sgblogawards
Singapore Social Media Day
http://project.omy.sg/sg-social-media-day/
(2012) – campaign still in progress
http://project.omy.sg/sgsmd
(2011)
Singapore 4q Day
http://project.omy.sg/sg4sqday
(2011)
 
Uploads:
introduction-to-omy.pdf  (1401 KB)   
social-media-fiesta-2011.pdf  (2474 KB)   
  General contact and feedback address:

Ms. Raquel Meikle
Programme Manager Events
WAN-IFRA
Darmstadt, Germany

Phone: +49-6151-733.927
E-Mail: raquel.meikle@wan-ifra.org
 
   
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