Practical Blog Marketing Workshop

Today I attended a workshop run by an up and coming professional blogger in Singapore : Tan Kian Ann. To say he is up and coming is perhaps an under-statement. Kian Ann has actually arrived. His blog, Blogopreneur.com is ranked No. 1 in Google under the search term : “Blog marketing Singapore”, among 1,400,000 listings in Google. It is even more remarkable when you considered that his blog is only six month old.

The workshop was titled Practical Blog Marketing. Blogs have become a very powerful marketing tools on the internet. Blogs were originally used by individuals to record their personal thoughts, a kind of journal. But blogs have evolved into such a powerful media that even big guns working in big corporations are making use of blogs to reach out to their stakeholders, customers and potential customers. One of the most high profile blogs in Singapore is the one written by Mr Tan Kin Lian, CEO and Director of NTUC Income Insurance Coorperative Limited. His blog name is www.TanKinLian.com.

Practical Blog Marketing was a very comprehensive workshop. It covered wide range of topics including the history of blogs, anatomy of a blog, blog as content management systems, monitoring and tapping of blogosphere, blog optimization, finding blog content, blog marketing and monetizing blogs. All participants were given the opportunity to set up their own blogs, with quite a few plug-ins thrown in to give their blogs professional looks.

Kian Ann has left no stone untrue. Though this was his first workshop, he had given a very good account of himself. I believe Singapore and the world will hear more of this enterprising blogopreneur soon. Check him out!

Home Brew in Singapore

February started very hectically and interestingly. The first day saw me in somehow panic mood as I realised first month of the new year was gone and with little achievement. To make up for the lost time, I started the day very early and was at the office by 7:15 am. I managed to get through quite a lot and made up some ground lost in January.

Our company has recently launched a website to market British made home brew kits in Singapore (www.HomeBrewEmpire.com) and I was looking for ways to market the kits. Through the grapevine I came to know of a gathering at The Pump Room on Thursday night (February 1, 2007). There was a talk organised by a group of home brew enthusiasts. The speaker on the night was Chris White, President of White Labs based in San Diego, California. White Labs Inc. is a leader in pure yeast and fermentation services. Chris gave a talk on the use of yeast in beer brewing and answered some very interesting questions raised by some of the home brewers present. White Labs has a very good website : www.whitelabs.com/beer/homebrew_FAQ.html which covers most of the basic terms and questions on home brew. Our company website, www.HomeBrewEmpire.com, is a good place to start learning about home brewing. One of the home brew enthusiast I met in the meeting was Bill Brehm, his website (www.BillBrehm.com) has some interesting and authentic photos of home brew setting.

This is the first time I met the group and I really enjoyed myself. The setting was superb, the people were friendly and enthusiatic about home brew. I am looking forward to the next gathering with this group of home brew enthusiasts in the near future.

Matt Bacak Training in Singapore

Matt Bacak was in Singapore the last week to train a few fortunate internet entrepreneurs. I was among the lucky ones. The MIT Training last for three days from 4th to 6th January. I have been looking forward to this training since October 2006 when I met Matt in Atlanta. The training was awesome. Over the years I have attended quite a few internet trainings, no one came as close as this one in term of quality and “applicability”.

All MIT participants will have been equipped with enough knowledge and tools to run a successful internet business. Actually we got something better : we got a site up and running by the end of the day. And we got opportunities to network with serious like-minded people who paid S$6288 to attend this seminar. But let tell you that it is worth every single cent.

Briefly, the training covered Internet Millionaire Mindset, a system that Matt personally uses in his day to day running of the his internet business, an insight in how the gurus work. Many tips and references to some of the most pristine websites, and a lot confidential (attendees only) information. Matt even bring his technical support team to ensure all technical issues encountered by the attendees were resolved on the spot, right at the seminar – no fluke, websites were completed there and then, no sometime in the future. I know how invaluable this is as I have attended quite a few seminars before these. The percentage of people that would really do something about what they learnt is very close to nought.

We even had Jo Han Mok as a guest to share some of his well guarded secrets with us.

My website is up and running now and already I have managed quite a few subscribers in a few hours. I was never able to do this previously. Well done Matt, See you at the top!