PopCon: How To Stay Relevant In Today

PopCon is a platform that brings together Malaysian brands, marketers and online content creators to engage in learning, idea-sharing and project collaborations.

Founded in December 2017 by five friends with content-creation backgrounds, PopCon now hosts talks, workshops, and gatherings to help educate both businesses and content creators from all platforms on marketing strategies, content creating and social media tips & hacks, as well as providing the latest industry insights and trends.

A combination of content and social media is lethal.

Social Media marketing has increased business exposure and > 90% of marketers would agree to this!  

Over the past few years, brands are increasingly understanding the effectiveness of social media marketing and the need to cultivate a social presence and valuable content to connect with their audience and customers.

However, with social media ever changing, what works yesterday, may not work today! With algorithm changes, new features, new technologies and a constant stream of updates, it can be difficult for brands, marketers and content creators to stay up-to-date with the latest social trends especially when work can be overwhelming.

In Malaysia, this is no exception. Hoping to help Malaysian brands, businesses and local content creators up their game, five friends banded together to create PopCon, a platform founded on their desire to help the industry and connect with other like-minded individuals.

After attending multiple classes on social media and filmmaking, the friends sought to connect with other filmmakers and creators on the web but failed to find such a community in Malaysia. That was when she and a few other friends decided to start their own community and the rest was history.

“We’ve had 5 more talks in 2018 for our 2,000 people strong community,” said Nina Sharil Khan, CEO of PopCon. “And for 2019, we are excited to be extending these talks to cover Branding and Social Media Marketing for the business and corporate community as well.  One of the key demands from our clients was the latest social media trends and where the industry is moving forward to. The industry is moving so fast that it’s almost impossible to keep track of all the changes without spending a lot of time doing research.  Social Media marketing is like a big black box that everyone can’t seem to figure out so this is where we come in.“

Learn together, create together.

So far their events have seen influencers, filmmakers and industry players such as Vikarworld, Jared Lee (GrimFilm), Ernest Ng Bro (Macam Yes Studio) and Gushcloud all make appearances as contributors and speakers, with topics such as Influencer Marketing, Facebook Marketing, filmmaking and vlogging among those covered.

“These have been super insightful sessions where our attendees have picked up tips and hacks on how to create better content, learn about the industry, and social media branding,” Nina said.

“But we’ve also been getting more and more queries from brands and corporates about how we can connect them to more social media influencers, and help them with social media management, so this is definitely for them.”

What you don’t know may very well hurt you!

When asked about some of the issues plaguing Malaysia’s social media marketing scene, Nina shared her views that “while local brands and companies are experimenting more and more on social media, most, however, are still in the dark about how powerful video as a marketing tool is and are still plagued by past beliefs that it is expensive and difficult to create content.”  “The truth is, not many people are aware that technology has moved so fast that we now have the ability to produce videos right at the tip of our own fingers and that we are all potentially creators.  If people really understood this and knew the power of videos and social media, they’d be creating content non-stop.”

“Social Media and eCommerce are two permanent shifts that have happened.  We’ve officially shifted into a digital world and we’re never coming back,” Tai Lopez, Entrepreneur.

Nina could not agree more.  “Tai cites Kylie Jenner as an example – she is the world’s youngest billionaire by selling makeup off social media.  But before her, and without even having a reality show backing her up, there was Huda Kattan, who studied makeup, started a blog on makeup up before exploding into the social media scene and went on to build her beauty empire, the  Huda Beauty line. And locally, we can see this happening as well…. we have Breena Beauty which was started by a social media influencer, Sabrina Tajuddin, which now caters to an international clientele as well.”

“These girls took only a couple of years to build their brand leveraging on social media and video in what took massive brands like L’Oreal and Maybelline with thousands of employees and 50 years to accomplish.”   

“And this disruption,” according to Nina “is happening everywhere and in all industries.  As a business owner, even more so if you are a multinational, you need to be aware of it and take advantage of it.  With more than 100 brands getting out of business and closing stores, you need to ask yourself where do you want to be?”

Tackling the industry’s big gap.

Well aware of what needs to be done, the PopCon team’s current focus is to facilitate an unrestricted sharing of knowledge within the marketing and content creators community.

“My personal vision for PopCon is that we will be able to become the bridge to connect creatives and content creators to brands and help facilitate projects and collaboration between everyone.  With the PopCon Corporate Meet Up, we are quite confident of getting a bigger perspective on the industry as a whole, our role in it, and how we can impact it further.”

For PopCon’s Corporate Meet-Up happening this 27th March 2019, Nina will look into 2019’s social media trends and beyond, leveraging LinkedIn as a marketing and branding tool and influencer marketing for brands. It is a free event so do head over to https://popconcorpep1.peatix.com/ for more information or to get your tickets today.

To learn more about PopCon, follow Nina, PopCon or check out their website here, popcon.io