Welcome to Indonesia

Has anybody been to Indonesia before? It is an island country located in the South East Asian. The most popular island in Indonesia is Bali, and I think most Australian already been there before. It has very nice view and becomes a popular tourist destination in the world. Unfortunately, there are some nice place in Indonesia that are failed to expose themselves in the tourism world. As an island country, Indonesia has many beautiful places like Raja Ampat, Kepulauan Seribu (Thousand Island), Wakatobi Beach and many other unexplored beautiful places. Besides the islands, Indonesia has many other historical and exotic tourist destination. For example, Borobudur temple, which Richard Gere meditated in there, Yogyakarta, the mystical yet fascinating places, etc.

Indonesian government already tried to maximize this part to increasing country's income from tourist and "Visit Indonesia" program is borne. With this program, Indonesia government hoping to introduce the beautiful Indonesia throughout the world. But I think Indonesia could follow Canada's way to promote their tourist attraction. Let me show you how they operate.

Canada actually using Twitter as a media to promote their tourist attraction! And they improvising as most American are busy, so they made a mural in the middle of the street and starts promoting. This is one of many chances that could help tourism to actually marketing themselves not by old fashioned way but convenient ways adopt to the need of modern era. And i think one way that could help tourism is to promote their food. Many people are like to eat, including me, and Indonesia has many exotic foods that only belong to Indonesia. With making a catalogue of food and combining it with social media platforms such as Twitter, I think tourism in Indonesia could be popular. This also can be done with many countries not only Indonesia. What do all of you think?

To Ads or Not To Ads

Tuesday night, Wags told us about Facebook ads. After all this time, I didn't know that Facebook has a advertising. Every time I used Facebook, there is always ads in the right of my Facebook page, but I didn't know where it came from or how to do that, until Tuesday. Thanks Wags! Back in my country, me and my friend already has an online store that sold in Facebook. My Facebook store is selling secondhand comic books and novel in Indonesian language. My Facebook store called Hobby Box. If anyone interested in looking one can used the link I gave in the blog. LOL. I also have one more store that sold figures and some of it I post my items in the forum. The forum name is Kaskus. This is the most popular forum in Indonesia. With only posted in the forum, I can advertise my products and gain attention from the consumers, without I ads myself.

Is it needed to advertise your product in the online or just post it in Facebook? I thought it will create the same impact like when you post it in the post or advertise yourself and with advertising you must pay while when you post, its free! I know when you ads your product, your product will be seen by other strangers, but will see the ads? Because when I see Facebook or any other website that provide ads, I wouldn't want to click it. I prefer just to post my products in the forum instead of pay for advertise my products. How about you guys?

First Blood

Everyone who like games must've been known what DoTa is. But I will explain anyhow about DoTa. So basically, DoTa is a online games based on Warcraft III that allows player to pick one Hero and than battle it between players. The player win if he or she can beat the other player until their main base is destroyed. This game was popular ever since it was first introduced to public. And now there gonna be DoTa 2. Yayyyy!! I can show you the official video for DoTa 2.

How does DoTa 2 link with social media marketing? First, it is a popular game. If you look at the video on Youtube, there were many people are watching the video of a battle in DoTa 2. Next, this is nice timing for every company to sponsor this event. There are many company that willing to sponsor for their team in the DoTa 2 tournament. If someone interested in DoTa 2, you can access this link. Company like Gigabyte, Razer and other major electronic brands are willing to sponsored in a great amount of money. The prize for the winning team in the tournament equals to $ 1 million! Last, DoTa promote themselves only via video streaming and the great Youtube. It also has Facebook page and Twitter page. This prove that marketing is improvising through SM with games as their main core as games become a trend in this modern society. Many people are like to enter games as a market for their product. Gaming console, gaming keyboard, mouse and all other equipments that had been produced is the prove that gaming is becoming main attraction to marketing. Since online games related to social media, so it is a great aspect to be viewed. What do you think? Is online games will be connected to social media? Or it will be a stand alone? And what are the impact for marketing?

The Mighty Twitter

As a twitter user, at first I don't know how twitter works and the fun about it. It only has simple feature like tweet, retweet, follow and mention. At that time, I still haven't realized the fun thing about twitter until one day. I decided to get active in twitter because almost all my friends are using it. After a few weeks using it,I began to realized that twitter is FUN! You can follow anyone you want and then read the news from twitter, and knows any newest gossips from twitter (LOL).

Nowadays, many business people are using twitter to market their products and know the customers. Many brands are becaming well known via twitter because of huge markets and lot of twitter users. I follow one of the brands called Empire magazine to know about the latest issue of film. Empire magazine has created a nice two way communication with their followers. There are other issues that come up with twitter. It can be a media for measure the popularity of an artist. Therefore, it can be used by any company to recruit the appropriate artist for their persona. For example, most sport companies are using the service of Cristiano Ronaldo because he is the most popular football player in the world according to Twitter.

I know someone famous in my country because of twitter. It has 618,565 followers and follow none!! Can everyone wonder how can it be? If everyone curious about the person then I can give you the link @poconggg. It stated that he is an Indonesian ghost and became active in twitter. He became famous since then. Maybe in the future I would also want to make twitter for my media for channeling my business. LOL. This is the prove that twitter is mightier than Facebook. I know if I made this statement, someone will not agree with me. But as I personally use it, I think Twitter has more excitement than Facebook. Will everyone agree?

Game of (Facebook) Life

In the past few years, Facebook had became the part of our life. When the first I invited into Facebook by my friend, Facebook is not yet popular and my friends is only a few. So, when i check my Facebook I'm easily to get bored because there's nothing to do. Then suddenly, there was a game created by Zynga which called Mafia Wars and then I tried to play it (until now by the way). Then, when I logged in into Facebook, I always played the game. The game is simple but it became very addictive to me.

Zynga as the leader of the social network gaming that based on application widgets on Facebook. Some of the gam

e that Zynga already launched like FrontierVille, YoVille, CityVille and many others. When the first they launched, they only launched only a few games, but now they already made many games and create a big fortune. They make a fortune from two ways: direct payment via credit cards and partner business. Generally speaking, the player in Zynga needs some energy to play the games and if those energy are drained out, the player can buy some energy from Zynga itself or purchase any game cards. This is the picture of the game cards:

In 2010, Zynga announced that their revenue is above $500 million. This is a huge growth for a game based on Facebook. This means that everything can be made and promoted via Facebook. Zynga is one of many examples of successful developer that had made an agreement with Facebook and gaining a lot of revenue. The question is, is this still gonna be popular in a few more years? Because people are tend to be bored by these game. Do you think it's growth will be increased or decreased? As one of the people that still playing the game, I predicted it will decreased in the growth of games based on Facebook. What do you think?

Bad Reputation

Last Sunday, I was going to Mt. Buller for the first time. This is my first time I've seen snow - LOL. I was taking a travel agency to got there. I got there at Sunday, while my friends already been there since Saturday. We planned to go back together in Sunday using the same travel agency. The journey back home turned out to be a disaster. My friends was told to wait at the wrong place by the travel agency. And this caused them to spent more money for the taxi for nothing. They started to yelled and complained to the tour guide about this. Later after that, they told me that they planned to post in Facebook of this tragedy and want to make the negative of the travel agency to be publicly known.

After hearing this one, I began to wondering. Is it OK to post about the badness of a brand publicly in Facebook? I mean, everyone can have a public opinion about a brand in Facebook but on the other hand, the brand itself can sue back the customer based on the fact that the customers tried to make a bad reputation about the brand. For example, the Prita Mulyasari case in my country. This is the case that famous in Indonesia in 2009. This case already makes some group of supporters that support her against Omni International Hospital. How do you people think about this?