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Companies must use social media marketing in 2010, or risk being left behind by their competitors. But this comes with a note of caution. According to results of a global survey covering 1068 marketing professionals worldwide, 66 percent of respondents will be investing in Social Media Marketing (SMM) in the next 12 months. These were figures released by marketing analytics company Alterian by its Singapore office. Of those investing in SMM, 40 percent said they would be shifting more than a fifth of their traditional direct marketing budget towards funding their SMM activities. This supports other statistics from the survey which found the majority of respondents (67 percent) feel social media is either ‘increasingly important’ or ‘critical to success’. Alterian Senior Vice President Asia Pacific, Chris Tew, said 2010 marked the start of the digital decade for marketing. He said: “Untargeted and irrelevant marketing techniques are now redundant and the results of this survey show many in the industry recognise this.” The survey found more than a third (36 percent) of respondents was investing in social media monitoring and analysis tools, a significant percentage considering the maturity of the channel.

Banking jobs will be in hot demand, but healthcare is still lousy; find out which jobs offer the best prospects and the highest pay.

DBS will be the first bank to open a branch at Resorts World Sentosa.

Keppel’s telecommunications and transportation arm attributed the 13.3 percent drop to poor investments and costs from restructuring.

With the new deal, MSN users will now have direct access to Singapore’s popular Hungrygowhere.com food website.

Temasek Holdings rejects the $2.6 billion Hong Kong IPO of the world's biggest aluminum maker.

Ezra, one of the oil & gas industry's integrated offshore support solutions provider, plans to bid for over $1 billion worth of deals from West Africa.

The 17 Tbps link will connect Singapore,Indonesia, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Japan.

The acquisition will double the company’s China property portfolio from 1.4m sqm to 2.8m sqm.  

The close of the Tiger Airways public offer had an overwhelming 27,072 valid applications for 260.1 million shares in, resulting in an oversubscribing by 21 times. A total of approximately S$247.7 million in gross proceeds have been raised from the IPO, of which approximately S$233.3 million will go to Tiger Airways. Based on the Offering Price of S$1.50, Tiger Airways will have a market capitalisation of S$781.3 million at listing. Commenting on the response to the IPO, President and Chief Executive Officer of Tiger Airways, Tony Davis said, “We are absolutely delighted with the response to this IPO from both the retail investors in Singapore and major global institutional investors. We believe that the significant demand for shares in Tiger Airways from investors around the world is a strong vote of confidence in our low-cost business model and the growth potential of Tiger Airways." With respect to the international offering or placement tranche, the indications of interest received amounted to approximately 683.6 million Offering Shares, resulting in the placement tranche being approximately 4.5 times subscribed. The Shares will be traded in Singapore Dollars and are expected to commence trading on the Main Board of the SGX-ST at 9:00 a.m. on Friday, 22 January 2010. More details are expected via SGX announcements.  

Businesses can now look forward to even faster internet connection with Singtel’s new fibre optic service at lower prices. Ms Chan Yim Leng, SingTel’s Vice President of Business Products, said: “In the market today, businesses typically pay about $500 per month for a 10 Mbps copper connection to their private office network. They can now enjoy up to ten times the speed at around the same price with this new fibre-based service. Singtel expects the new high-speed service will benefit businesses greatly in using cloud computing and other bandwidth hungry infocomm applications such as high-definition video conferencing. The service is called Meg@POP eLite and offers symmetrical speeds of up to 100 Mbps, with the capability of scaling up to 1 Gbps in the future. “With Meg@POP eLite, SMEs can enjoy powerful ICT solutions and business software that only large companies could afford in the past. These solutions allow them to avoid heavy upfront investments in ICT infrastructure and maintenance costs, while improving productivity and simplifying business operations,” Ms Chan added.  

Singapore exports, surging the most in four years, are improving as strength is seen in electronics and pharmaceutical demand.

With concern over the outlook for 2010, Singaporeans listed their top 3 financial concerns: cost of living expenses, job security and changes in salary. According to a recent Visa survey, 20 percent of Singaporean respondents said they were more confident about their personal financial situation compared with six months ago. This was lower than the survey average of 27 percent taken across 10 other countries across the Asia Pacific. 61% responded that the top concern was cost of living expenses, 58% job security and 57% change in salary. This was mostly consistent with the results retrieved from the other 10 source markets surveyed:Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand and Taiwan. 48 percent of respondents said they were very or extremely concerned about living expense, 44 per cent listed increasing savings and another 44 percent brought up job security as top concern. percent) and job security (44 percent). Singaporean respondents were less concerned about the interest rates for mortgages/loans (36 percent of respondents were very or extremely concerned), payment card debt (35 percent) and fluctuating exchange rates (24 percent). Meranda Chan, Visa’s Country Manager in Singapore said: “What we can see from these findings is that Singaporeans are being very pragmatic when it comes to looking ahead to 2010 and are focused on the financial concerns they can manage. “Across the region and in Singapore, consumers are looking at their expenses, their savings and their job security to see how they can manage these rather than focusing on longer-term or more macro-economic conditions such as exchange rates, interest rates or investment portfolios,” said Chan. One way in which consumers are driving more value out of their money is to find the most economical way to spend it. According to the Visa eCommerce Consumer Monitor2, 84 percent of Singapore respondents said they had shopped online in the last 12 months. The top reasons for using the internet to make purchases were because the could shop anytime (79 percent), compare prices and save money (78 percent), find and compare products easily (77 percent) and search for bargains (77 percent). “Making purchases online is one way that consumers can really get the most out of their spending power. Another way consumers can get more value out of every dollar they spend is to use a payment card, where every dollar spent can be used to build up rewards points which in turn can be redeemed for other items,” Chan said.  

Shopping malls may have been springing up all over Singapore, but the new malls may not be enough to save the suffering retail sector.

Beginning 28 March 2010, Singapore Airlines customers will get to fly on the Airbus A380 when they fly from Singapore to Zurich.

Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. has yet to proceed with a partial float as it awaits what's in store for its Optus unit.