This article includes the following topics and has a regional focus on China, South Korea, Japan and partly India:

1. Demographics on social media use in Asia (China, South Korea, Japan, India)
2. Developing a social media strategy that pays into SEO and includes PR activities
3. Explanation of social media channels

1. Demographics on social media use in Asia (China, South Korea, Japan, India)

The following graphs and tables show information about the use and penetration of social media in China, Japan, South Korea and India.

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Channel usage per country:

Every market is different:

Still, different markets show different user behavior. A reason for this could be the maturity and the development of a country in general. In the following table the item “research / find products to buy” gives an indication: The more developed the country the higher this shopping and comparison related behavior is listed. That’s no proof of course, but an indicator.

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2. Developing a social media strategy that pays into SEO and includes PR activities

You need to have a strategy to fully leverage the potential of social media for SEO. All activities should be coordinated by one person/department. It’s possible that different departments participate in the social media execution, e.g. PR, sales, customer support, but one coordinator needs to remain the helm.

Steps of a social media strategy:

1. Understand your target group. Listen and learn and collect consumer insights. Find out where your target group likes to stay online.
2. Your target group consists of different kind of online contributors. Define the right channel for the respective user group.
3. Execute the channels.
4. Make sure that channel manager communicate with each other to leverage content and create links
5. Track, collect more consumer insights, learn more and use this information to refine your approach.

3. Explanation of social media channels

SEO/search engine results:
All content created in the channels will finally be picked up by search engines and add to your visibility especially for brand and product related keywords. It’s important that good and high-quality content is available in the search engine result pages to create upmost influence. If you do a search for your product or brand you will notice that search engine results are consumer dictated.

Just test yourself for your brand name or product name. How many results do you find among the first 20 results that are user-generated content, i.e. blog posts, forum discussions, video uploads, product reviews, Q&A sites? And how many results are based on your own distributed content, i.e. own website, press releases,etc.?

Blogs:
The majority of blogs in the blogosphere are personal blogs and niche blogs which generally don’t have many views. But they are observed by peers and category specialists or found in the search engines. A good story from a small blog can create some good buzz. On the other hand, a negative product or brand comment/experience can spark the flame. The mega-blogs with million of readers certainly have a strong impact when you get some coverage there. Blog marketing is an essential part of your online marketing communication strategy and goes hand-in-hand with online PR.

Forums:
In China, traditional forums and BBS are still the leading channel of user-generated content. More users contribute to a
forum than to a social network or than write a blog. But also for other countries, forums are an equally important channel.  Forums are mostly expert communities that focus around a certain topic or category. There are always a couple of power contributors who are responsible for most of the content. But for the normal consumer, forums are a powerful and very influencing source of information. Moreover, forums have the characteristic that very few people participate, but many, may people read. Also, for marketers forums are a valuable source of consumer insights.

Reviews:
Reviews should be divided into editorial reviews and consumer reviews. Editorial reviews are often based on product samples that a marketer sends out to a blog or review site to write a profound but independent review. Oftentimes this is part of the PR strategy of a marketer. These editorial reviews oftentimes are also extremely detailed and critical. Reviewers have a high standard and lots of professional experience and see things and specs from a different point of view.

Consumer reviews on the other hand are not as detailed and deep. Often they consist just of a few sentences. But they are an extremely important influencing factor. Web pages of products listed on shopping portals or price-comparison sites which have no consumer reviews normally look very boring: Product image, specs, price. That’s it. Totally exchangable, nothing convincing. A web shop which has consumer reviews and star ratings for the products listed has a much higher conversion rates than shops that have only product data. Products with many reviews and ratings are considered popular and worth buying than products without any user experience comments.

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Social networks:
Facebook and social networks are a big hype, but when it comes to your online marketing mix you should priorize what can have a big impact and what not. Social networks should certainly be part of your online activity but expectations should be realistc. Remember that only a low percentage of Facebook pages have more than a thousand fans. And to get in the area of 100,000 fans you already must have a strong brand awareness in public life. Before you engage in Facebook be sure where your fans are and what content you can provide to them. Be sure that you have the resources to communicate with them on a daily basis.

Source: The pictures are taken from a globalwebindex presentation and  you can find them on slideshare.

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According to China sources, Twitter became inaccessible in the country at 5pm on Tuesday, widely noticed to be blocked after access of popular external programmes Tweet Deck and Twhirl also became patchy or non-existent.

“We started to notice an even more random and broader approach to website filtering in Beijing over the long weekend just passed. Those of us in the China marketing community are accustomed to heavy-handed filtering of blameless as well as politically sensitive websites, but this week, with the 20th anniversary on Thursday, has largely rendered the web unusable for us,” said Simon Cousins, chief executive of PR agency Illuminant Partners, describing the internet’s performance as “off kilter” all week.

“This latest block of Twitter and Flickr really hurts us, and our ability to service our clients in the mainland. They’re both important business tools.”

Cousins added that access to Tweetie, an iPhone application, via China Mobile was also blocked.

A Beijing-based agency source added that the 2 June blockage was “particularly bad” because his company’s external server based in San Francisco was also unable to process requests for Twitter and Flickr URLs.

The block is a setback for Bing, which only debuted its Chinese-language site this week.

The event followed reports that users on social networking sites also experienced difficulty as pages either stalled or had delayed loading times.

A representative from Yahoo, owner of Flickr, could not be reached in time for press.

Source: http://www.brandrepublic.asia/Media/newsarticle/2009_06/China-blocks-social-media-ahead-of-Tiananmen-anniversary/35783

By Brian Asmus, Special to the China Post
Stefan Schneider, Managing Director of 3digitalminds, spoke to the American Chamber of Commerce Marketing & Distribution Committee June 12 during a luncheon held at the Howard Plaza Hotel in Taipei. Schneider pointed out that Internet Penetration in Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea is approximately 70 percent, while it is only 12 percent in China and 5 percent in India.In China, Schneider explained, 90 percent of consumers do research online but purchase offline when shopping for mobile phones. Similarly, 70 percent do so for purchases of consumer electronics and 50 percent each for financial and automotive.

Chinese consumers begin by searching e-commerce sites such as eBay and taobao, said Schneider, before going to search engines like Google and Baidu. Finally, they may look to word-of-mouth sources such as BBS and blogs.

Schneider recommended that companies that wish to market online first conduct Web-site analysis, including keyword research, structure, linking and duplicate content to optimize the Web site.

Christopher Fay, Co-Chairman of the AmCham Marketing & Distribution Committee and Stefan Schneider, 3digitalminds

In Phase 2, he suggested that they look at Web-site enlargement, adding fresh content, developing blogs and setting up forums. This involves linkbait and reputation buildup, and requires constant tracking and optimization, he said.

According to Schneider blogs are “everybody’s own newspaper.” In South Korea, he said, 92 percent of Internet users read blogs with 72 percent writing them. In China, the figures are 88 percent and 70 percent; in Taiwan, there are 86 percent and 71 percent and; in Japan, they are 84 percent and 47 percent.

When it comes to topics, said Schneider, 64 percent write about their private lives, and 34 percent write their opinion about brands and products.

“How should companies use blogs to further their business objectives?” asked Schneider. “These,” he said, “can be used to advertise, establish relationships within your company’s niche and market products.”

There are several important dos and don’ts when setting up blogs, he stressed. “The consumer is smarter than you think; alternative marketing tactics must be genuine and, in today’s world, transparent.” That means companies should forget about setting up fake blogs. “You will always be found out,” said Schneider.

Blogs, he added, should not contradict, but rather explain the company, its products and services. “It has to live the concept,” emphasized Schneider. “That is why blogs are not suitable for every kind of business.”

Finally, Schneider examined branded communities. The purpose of branded communities,” he said, “is to engage in a conversation with stakeholders and customers.
This enhances product development, while enabling designers to hear consumer voices, particularly creative consumers, while develop brand ambassadors, fans and influencers.

“These individuals,” he continued, “create trust around a brand for new site visitors by the quality of the comments that they make. They act like a host rather than a policeman.”

The incentive is to propel mouth-to-mouth marketing. Schneider cited the Dell Ideastorm campaign by way of an example. “The target group was its customers. Dell executives wanted to come up with new idea. The branded community ended up delivering 8,000 suggestions, 600,000 votes and 64,000 comments.”

In Asian countries, social media is a very important parts of the online marketing mix and many brands use blogs and communities to create brand awareness. This post offers some numbers and reasons about the social media phenomenon.

What is social media?

Actually we just need to split the term into social and media. Social stands for interaction of Internet users and for sharing content, basically characteristics that give technology a human touch. Media is the content that is shared and can be any kind of online media like videos, pictures, text or sound.

So, put together social media is about reading and writing blogs, posting opinions in blogs or BBS, creating accounts in online communities, uploading pictures, videos or music, make friends by connecting to other online profiles and share content with them.

Social media use in Asia

Universal McCann conducts a yearly study about worldwide use of social media. This study has really some great numbers and I summarized some of them with a focus on Asian countries. Asian countries covered are Japan, South Korea, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Philippines, India.

The key facts:

• Asian countries have worldwide the highest penetration of blogs and communities. Numbers are the same with video upload, photo sharing, etc.
• The inventors of the social media business models (esp. the US and to some extent the European countries) lag clearly behind.
• Use-generated content has become a mainstream online medium in Asia.

I wonder about one thing: You can quite often hear the opinion that Chinese like to use social media because through blogs they can the first time freely express their opinion. This study contradicts that idea because other Asian countries like Japan and South Korea with freedom of opinion embrace blogs and communities in the same way. The inversion of the argument is that it must somewhere lie in the Asian culture and nature of the people.

Maybe a sociologist could help in this matter. Anyway, any kind of idea or comment is welcome!

Why is social media so popular among users?

The use of blogs and online communities has a great stimulation for persons. It allows them to communicate and interact on a very private basis, sharing personal information that one would maybe not so openly and easily share in real life. This “open your soul online” phenomenon is supported by the fact that many people who are online in social media live under a pseudonym, basically being able to be themselves but not showing others their real identity. This allows pushing the border much further than in real life as you’re real identity can’t be tracked back.

Example 1: Opinions in blogs, forums or bbs show very clearly what a person thinks. And people tend to be very open and frank when their real name will not be shown. One can assume that in a face-to-face discussions many opinions that are posted online would be worded more carefully – or maybe not at all.

Example 2: A profile in a social network like myspace. Many people basically expose themselves. It would be like these people place their family picture album in front of a supermarket, so everybody can take a look. Nobody would do that. But online it’s no big deal.

The importance of social media for brands and businesses

1. Social media has become a mass-media in Asia that can’t be neglected due to it’s mere reach.

2. Blogs and communities offer insight about consumer opinions which have never been available before because they are real and true. I.e. businesses and brands can not only find out what consumers really think, but if done wisely they can use the willingness of people to create own content for product development (creative consumer).

3. The word-of-mouth (viral) potential of social media campaigns can create great buzz.

4. Brand management must adopt and create a culture within the company to profit from the social media development.

5. Opinions and reported experiences about companies, products and services are one of the most important influencing factors for decision building prior to the purchase of a product, no matter if the purchase happens online or offline.