theAsianparent is the leading* parent site in Singapore!

Feb 28, 2011 // by Roshni // Our Thoughts // No Comments

Using Alexa, we compared theAsianparent.com with the other Singapore parenting portals – singaporemotherhood.com, kiasuparents.com and mumcentre.com, across the span of 7 days (Feb 21 2011 – Feb 27th 2011). theAsianparent clearly was in the lead in terms of overall traffic, pageviews and pageviews per user.

We also compared the size of theAsianparent fanpage to the above three parenting players. theAsianparent also came out tops.

Congratulations to theAsianparent team! A great job done!

* Leading in terms of Facebook fanpage count and traffic according to Alexa.com.

Participatory Marketing

Feb 27, 2011 // by Roshni // Our Thoughts // No Comments

Why Create a Fanpage? It all boils down to one thing….

Participatory Marketing

. Participatory marketing is based not on passive consumption, but active audience participation
. It’s all about marketing with people, rather than at people
. It’s customer focused
. Harnesses a powerful concept called the Hawthorne effect

Hawthorne Effect

Before we explain what is the Hawthorne effect, you need to go back to 1924 to a company called Wester Electric.

At Wester Electric, researchers from MIT and Harvard decided to investigate working conditions and worker productivity. They asked workers to participate in a series of tests designed to measure their productivity and capture their feedback.

Some of the test included worker productivity while working under brighter lighting conditions…or softer lighting conditions. Working longer hours…or working shorter hours.

What baffled the researches was that no matter what test they conducted, workers productivity increased! What was even more odd was that Hawthorne workers became advocates of whatever it was that their participation involved!

The confounded researches even got workers to work in the dark – and even then, productivity and advocacy went up! The startling results made them wonder if it was something in the Hawthorne water?

No. The positive result had NOTHING to do with what was being tested, and everything to do with getting people to PARTICIPATE. The researchers thus coined the term “The Hawthorne Effect” to denote the positive effect of participation. In a nutshell, people just like participating!

Facebook Fail!

Feb 26, 2011 // by Roshni // Our Thoughts // No Comments

I logged in this morning to Facebook and boy was I shocked to see it in Arabic! Not sure why or how that happened. Initially I thought it was a phishing scam, but upon closer inspection (and googling), I realised it was just a bug that redirected me to the Arabic translated site.

If you ever find yourself in the same situation, fret not! All you have to do is click the link that is directly next to your name. This brings you to settings. Click the 5th tab. (There are 6 in total). Find the word English in the list and you should be good to go.

So now that my Facebook is back in English, I am off for some hummus and pita bread!