Michael Ong | On9 Systems » Marketing

Updates for 2007 … What’s up for 2008?

michael — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 13:06:41 +0000

It’s been a pretty crazy work schedule the past few months as we juggled projects at IconnectE and K.C DAT since August.

In October, we finally launched Broad-Cast.net as a full service providing email marketing to the SME market. We had been offering the service for customers without a proper name to it so its a good start that we were also engaged by Avocent International Pte Ltd for their “Avocent Hero” EDM campaigns as well as VivoCity Pte Ltd to assist with their recent 1st year party invites. Also on the email marketing platform, we’ve been hard at work creating a corporate eCard portal for Mapletree Investments Pte Ltd that would allow them to personalize each greeting card that gets sent by the company staff.

In November, Max Cole and On9 Systems got our heads together to plan how we could grow our businesses and in doing so, we migrated our servers to a proper rack with Viewqwest (great support from Boon Hian, Nathan and Thames). Doing this got us nice 2 x Linksys SRW2024 24-Port 10/100/1000 Gigabit Switch. It has some great features like bandwidth monitoring and throttling (a very neat feature!). Mike Veltman and Robert Roach are serious dudes into security and I’m glad to be working with them on this as we get serious about hosting. By offering Virtualization as an option to SMEs, this creates a great platform for us to create some serious applications for companies.

With December creeping into its second week and 2008 looming, our pipeline is full till the first quarter where we’ll be doing a major project utilizing Drupal as well as another project for a B2B Art Rental Store coming up too. I’m glad we’re getting a good start into 2008!

Are you ready for word-of-mouth marketing?

michael — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 14:46:28 +0000

Imagine an organization with a proven system for 24 years, over 100,000 members worldwide in more than 37 countries, who can assist you in growing your business and open new doors to global opportunities. Raffles Chapter would like to invite you to our Visitor’s Day on 21st Sept 2007. For more details, view the slideshow below or contact me today!

On9 Systems – Blogs for Business

michael — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 06:31:10 +0000

Received a SMS on Wednesday from a fellow BNI member that she couldn’t attend this morning’s breakfast meeting and if I minded switching over. I readily agreed before remembering that my slide desk was skewed towards customers to have an overview of the company. Spent about 3-4 hours last night improving a 4 slide version I had previously used in my flip-chart presentaton and here’s the results

Presented by 字 Concepts

Take action for your Business today!

michael — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 18:03:22 +0000

Attended my first meeting at BNI-Raffles as an official member today. Almost couldn’t wake up after working on the migration of SportsKaki’s site to our servers but in the end managed to get into Geek Terminal right on time. I’m usually not a morning person but somehow meeting up at BNI always give me a buzz that lasts right throughout the business day.

We had a great session today with our mentor Leonard Song from Business Oasis International giving a great motivational speech on the key elements to a successful chapter. He concentrated on 3 main points, 1) OWNERSHIP, 2) TEAMWORK and lastly 3) TAKING ACTION!

1) OWNERSHIP

Leonard reminded us that being business owners, we are truly the only people who can take control of how we want to grow our own company. This also applies to how we want to grow the chapter. Having this mindset will help to cultivate the right approach by showing commitment to the team

2) TEAMWORK

An example that was brought up that stuck particularly with me was that geese fly in a V-formation to reduce drag and fly more efficiently. Similarly in a team, by working together, we will grow faster and better. We were also reminded that the guy (top bird) in front has a tough job and showing support is always a good thing.

3) TAKING ACTION!

The last point was that we should all take action to improve or examine how we do things now and make sure each member knew what the other was doing. The power of word-of-mouth marketing and referrals is that by engaging our members on what we do and similarly learning what the other party offers, we can start connecting opportunities in our daily work.

A good example was how immediately after the meeting, Kelly from Power Laser International dropped me a mail titled “How to find the right referral for Power Laser?“. I was immediately intrigued and read through the details. Some key points about Power Laser that immediately gets stuck in my mind for customers with office supplies needs.

- cost saving on cartridges without compromising on the print quality
- enjoy unlimited on-site printer maintenance and servicing
- enjoy free part replacement for printer
- enjoy free temporary printer loan to tie over the downtime

I look forward to putting the 3 points into action and getting to know each member of Raffles Chapter better. Ang from Bio Life Marketing gave a great quote to end the meeting.

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. – Henry Ford

Finally joined BNI Singapore – Raffles Chapter

michael — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:19:25 +0000

It took me a longer route than usual, first a breakfast visit to Abundance in March 2005 where I got to know Glynis Koh (very friendly propety agent who found me my flat and whom I later introduced another deal) and Alex Siew (who helped me and another friend do our ROM and AD photography). Soon after, Asis-T Solutions joined/started BNI-Excellence through Aik Boon‘s participation and where I got to substitute and get to know more about “Word-of-mouth” Marketing from BNI members.

Since then, I’ve on-and-off participated but didn’t really get into the spirit of BNI since I’m usually on the project side of things. Moving forward with On9 Systems, I plan to be more active in the sales/marketing aspect of the business and have joined Raffles Chapter (got approval today from VP!). The aspect of getting up early (VERY hard for me but shall strive to change) and meeting at 7.30am each week without fail will probably make most people squirm at the commitment. You’ve gotta respect the folks at each chapter who commit to making their business their concern and work hard to make new friends and refer businesses each week.

I’m already looking forward to get to know more of the members with whom I’ve had the pleasure to know some of them before joining. Greets going out to Andrew, Ang, Ismadi, Daniel, Doris, Sally, Kuan Kuan, Ranny, Leonard, Ken, Steven, James, Thaufik, Kelly, Trecillia, Felix, Melinda and Adrian who did one of the better presentations I’ve seen on Life Protection today.

If you’re a small business owner or interested in the world of “Word-mouth-marketing”, we’ll be meeting at Geek Terminal each Friday at 7.30am, so do let me know if you’re interested to join us for a lively chat and breakfast session. (As it so happens, I just found out that Goh at Geek Terminal is my ex-school mate!)

Get invited to beta sites with Invite Share

michael — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 05:22:02 +0000

Guess with all the craze over private betas and web launches, it had to happen sooner or later. The team behind InviteShare aims to help get those invites lying in your beta account on popular sites out to the community. I logged on to see some familiar sites like Joost (which I had sent approximately 60) and Dopplr (sent 3 so far). Some of the sites like Pownce which I had recently only learnt about were also on. Unfortunately, Popfly and Google Mashup editor don’t have invites yet so they aren’t listed.

It would be interesting to see what are the plans for InviteShare. Since they are already aggregating invites in typical mashup style these days, offering an API that offers OpenID integration to truly open up the invite scene would be pretty interesting? Imagine just logging on to one place with a single identity to give you access to private betas that are running.

Link to Invite Share – Everyone is invited!

Wondering if blogging is a good way to market your company?

michael — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 01:49:44 +0000

If you’ve been wondering about whether to take the plunge into blogging as a medium for spreading the word about your business, take a quick read through the article below. Most useful for small businesses who might not have the financial muscle to engage a marketing guru but yet wants to kick something off. All you need is a website (preferably with your own domain) and a blog!

The best quote in an article is from your customer telling the world why they love your product. The worst is you telling the world why they should love your company. That is unless the quote is from your mother telling the world how hard you work, that you are such a nice boy/girl and that her greatest wish is for a grandchild.

Source: 10 Startup Marketing Commandments – Startupping Forums