360DigitalInfluence

Most of the social media projects I deal with at Ogilvy are for global brands, it’s interesting to learn from local successful cases like this one. It’s a cafe in Mong Kok with a wide range of comic book collections called Ease House Cafe, where they target mainly to young comic lovers.
As a small cafe located on the 25th floor of a building, 21 year-old owner realized it would be hard to spread the message out if he used traditional marketing tactics, so he went digital.

They use Facebook as a channel to grow fan base and increase loyalty by keeping their fans updated on news and special deals, also partnered with a local cafe directory site up4cafe to offer readers coupons.
Recently, they are having this “Blog for free dinner” campaign, where they encourage bloggers to write about their Cafe, they will search on Google every month with keyword “Ease House Cafe” and pick a blog that’s index high enough on the search, sounds like a small scale blogger engagement, a very smart idea to get themselves quality organic search results, but personally I would also go for keywords like “comic books”, “hong kong” too. (in Eng & Chinese).

With limited resources, many local small & medium business owners in Hong Kong are afraid to invest time and money on this new media, but with all the recent success here in Hong Kong, I think business owners should really reconsider and make a move soon!

I am attending the Digital Marketing and Media Summit in Melbourne today and just attended a great session from Mark Higginson, Director of Analytics at Nielsen Online.

Mark shared some interesting new research from Nielsen Online today about Facebook and social media usage here in Australia:

• 8 hours/month:  Australians spend on average 8 hours/month on Facebook
• Australia Leads: Australians spend more time on average per month using social media (any social media site, not just Facebook) than any other country (7:12 hours/month per Australian on average)
• 8 million Aussies: the current number of facebook.com users is 8 million Australians/month
• 13.7 million overall: there are 13.7 million active monthly Internet users in Australia

I think these statistics are remarkable because they show that Australians are doing more than checking out sites like Facebook and Twitter, setting up an account, and then abandoning the sites after a short amount of time. That’s a common refrain of non-believers out there. We Australians are, as Mark correctly observed, addicted.

Here are some resources for anyone interested in learning more about the landscape of Facebook + social media here in Australia:

• Facebook for Business:  presentation created by myself and Thomas Crampton on business strategies for Facebook. This was tailored to Asia Pacific and delivered as part of our partnership with the Wall Street Journal Asia.
• Australian Social Networking Jumps:  link to a Digital Media news story about how Australian social networking jumped by 29% - from Comscore, Ausgust 2009.
• History of the Australian Social Web: much-Dugg interactive timeline of the Australian social media and digital evolution
• DMMS09 Twitter Stream: feed of Tweets from the 2009 Digital Media & Marketing Summit
• Asia Digital Map Australia + Social Media Posts: all of the Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence posts on Australia

It’s not easy being a foreign social media enthusiast in China. China blocks the social media sites that you take for granted. Life without Twitter I can deal with but can you imagine being denied Facebook and YouTube? They even blocked Vimeo and Last.fm. Try running a blog without being able to embed anything but videos from YouKu and Tudou (which is not necessarily a bad thing because they are less censored than YouTube - go figure).

I tried to get around with tools like Ping.fm which could simultaneously update my Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Delicious in one go but bugger it is banned now too.

Of course, none of this matters to China’s 360 million Netizens who think foreign social media is inferior anyway (and in many cases they are right). However there is one benefit to living on this side of the Great Firewall of China that you folks will never know; not even my friends in Hong Kong. For while I can use a VPN server to access YouTube when I really need need it, Google’s Music channel in China is something you will only experience on the mainland.

Each morning when I log on I point my browser to http://www.google.cn/music, search for music and decide whether to add to my evolving playlist (and sing along to the scrolling lyrics) or download and send to friend or iPod.

There are prompts to purchase the music although I don’t really know why anyone would, nor for that matter what Google’s business model is, other than a sink or swim retaliation to Baidu’s equally impressive music search, listen and download system.

We have all read about how, Facebook is growing in India. But it seems that now following Obama, even the Indian government is trying to make its presence felt in the social media. The most recent addition to the list of Indian political leaders trying to connect with the one billion populace of India, of whom only 5 per-cent can  be on internet, has been our Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh. After reading a Reuters article on how our PM has been spotted on Facebook, I could hardly contain my curiosity and ended up finding Dr Singhs’ profile on Facebook. What I found looked authentic enough, though I have a few questions.

Since  Government officials are barred from the use of social networks, how did Dr Singh actually get around to doing this? Also somehow the picture of our Prime Minister, updating his status on Facebook, while at work, just doesn’t quite ring the right bell in my mind. It would be interesting however, if he does come up with a “How well do you know Manmohan Singh quiz”

Also why isn’t the national portal being used for this? According to me, the Indian government could have taken inspiration from the White House and established a Government page on Facebook. Sooner or later this needs to happen as a lot of business decision makers and practically the entire urban youth is on these sites and this segment is quite important for the government to connect with.

A social media element which can be mashed up with the national portal to enable the citizens to make maximum use of the services can also play a very important role in promoting democracy in its true sense, in the world’s largest democracy.

However, to summarize, whether it is the Government’s PR machinery which has made this page or Dr Singh himself, what is heartening is that a change is happening and sooner or later, the day won’t be far when the government utlises social media more actively to communicate with the people.

As for now what next Dr Singh? A twitter account? Infact Shashi Tharoor recently tweeted that the PM had enquired about what was twitter. Which shows his interest in twitter as well.

In traditional Facebook style” I Like This”.

Join me, Josh Mehlman (Editor, NETT Magazine) and Suzi Dafnis (Community Director, Australian Businesswomen’s Network) and find out!

Next week Wednesday, we’ll be running a 1-hour session on Facebook for Business.  Here are the details:

Lunch+Learn Webinar
Title:    Using Facebook to Build Your Brand
Date:    Wednesday, 14 Oct 2009
Time:    12 noon Australian EDST

REGISTER HERE!

During the session, we’ll be giving practical tips and covering:

• 5 ways to a rapid-start strategy in Facebook
• How to engage your Facebook community
• Real-life examples of how businesses of all sizes use Facebook to build their brands
• And more…

Here are the slides from our highly successful partnership with The Wall Street Journal and GoToWebinar for the training on The Executives Guide to Facebook for Business.

We also have a full video version posted here and below.

Please enjoy and share!

Oct 7th Facebook for Business from 360 Digital Influence on Vimeo.

First in a series of free online Webinars on Social Media presented in partnership by The Wall Street Journal Asia, GoToWebinar and Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide. Join our next event! Next session announced on our blog: www.asiadigitalmap.com or email thomas.crampton@ogilvy.com

I have always wondered if we are “overdoing” social media, with everyone wanting to jump on the bandwagon without a proper strategy, and wanting to start a Facebook page for the sake of having one.

Hence, when I had the privilege of listening to Pete Teo, Malaysia’s very own multi-award winning singer/songwriter/film producer, at the Social Media Club (Malaysia chapter) inaugural event last week, I really wished I could put him in front of many people and hear it from him straight!

Teo, famous for his anti-racism music video Malaysian Artistes For Unity that became a popular national culture phenomenon last year, recently produced the 15Malaysia project, which also instantly became a hit. The 15Malaysia website, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were primary channels for publicity, in addition to print media.

15Malaysia is a short film project consisting of 15 short films made by 15 Malaysian filmmakers. These films deal with socio-political issues in Malaysia and feature some of actors, musicians and top political leaders.

When the project was launched on Facebook on 17 August 2009, it reached 10,000 fans within an hour. Today, it has 86,852 fans on Facebook, 1,488 followers on Twitter, and 366,363 video files downloaded from the 15Malaysia website … and still counting. (The tremendous amount of traffic has busted four servers and Teo has also received a lot of help from the public through his SOS tweets.)

While he has successfully made use of social media to promote the 15Malaysia project (which has just received an invitation to screen all 15 films at the Golden Horse Film Festival in Taipei this November), Teo said that it’s not about the tools. Social media is only a tool and is as good as it gets if you do not engage people in an emotional way. He aptly stated that, “You cannot ‘formulate’ your way into this (social media success).”

Think before you jump. The important questions: What are you trying to sell? What is your message? How does your project engage the public and what value are you offering to the community?

I’ve been thinking lately that we could potentially use social media monitoring tools to prevent suicides and mass murders. The idea struck me as I was working with some clients on a couple of issues / crisis management projects lately.

In the midst of the hurley burley of crisis mode, a news story caught my eye­. Killer George Sodini went berserk in a Pennsylvania gym and killed three, wounding nine before turning the gun on himself. The thing about it is, he blogged about doing it. That’s when the idea sparked.

So I did some digging

It’s not the first time, that social media was used by a killer or a suicide victim to declare their intentions. With a quick search, I found Paul Zolezzi, a model who declared he was going to kill himself on Facebook and did. More interestingly though, I found Hsu Yu-sheng.

Hsu Yu-sheng

Hsu is a gay and lesbian rights activist in Taiwan, who on August 6 wrote a farewell note on his blog in English. After seeing the note, readers of his blog, launched a full scale effort to save him. Friends and strangers alike, thousands of people banded together, to try to track him down and others posted kind comments to his blog.

Police arrived at Hsu’s place just in time and saved his life.

The idea

We use social media monitoring tools such as Radian6 to listen to conversations on the blogosphere and elsewhere to protect brands. It’s not a stretch to deploy these tools to protect people.

How it would work

1. Radian6 set up to listen for a list of keywords
2. Suspect posts are parsed through to a heuristic analysis engine to further determine the sentiment of the post. Radian6 is has a automatic Sentiment engine built in, but we need one that would be tuned to suicidal/homicidal sentiments
3. Results that come up positive there are alerted to the on duty psychiatrist for an assessment and to alert the relevant authorities

There would be many issues that would have to be dealt with to make the system viable, feasible and workable and even then it would never be a certainty. What it would be is another tool in kitbag to tackle an extremely complex and difficult problem.

These days in India, ordinary auto rickshaw drivers flaunt the latest cell phone, making you cringe and hide your own aging handset.

What started with cell phones is now creeping into the web. India is getting wired and “logging in” with unparalleled gusto.

Statistics, however, are sketchy.

According to AC Nielsen, there are about 50 million Internet users in India, out of which 20 million engage in social networking. Another report by the Internet Government Forum suggest that India has nearly 80 million odd Internet subscribers.

Some claim that by 2013 India will have the third largest Internet penetration in the world. Forrester reckons India’s Internet will grow by 10-20% every year for next 5 years.

Whatever the real number, a billion people are powering the Internet’s growth in India and it is already fascinating to look at comScore’s analysis of social networking in India.

While Orkut clearly leads the pack, Facebook’s 150 per-cent growth over the last one year is catching up fast. Facebook quizzes like “How well do you know Anand Sharma” have become a national obsession for Indians like Anand Sharma and his friends during office lunch times.

comScore further states that, “Orkut reigned as the most visited social networking site in December 2008 with more than 12.8 million visitors, an increase of 81 percent from the previous year. Orkut’s audience was three times the size of its nearest competitor in the category.

Facebook.com captured the #2 position with 4 million visitors, up 150 percent versus year ago, followed by local social networking site Bharatstudent.com with 3.3 million visitors (up 88 percent) and hi5.com with 2 million visitors (up 182 percent).”

So if we do a study in percentages, one will come to the conclusion that when it comes to India and social networking, all relevant stats are growing at over 100%! Mind boggling isn’t it?

So how do Indians spend their time on social networks? As per a survey done by Universal McCann the India DI team came up with a graphical interpretation of that study

Source- Universal McCann

      Even  A C Nielsen, observed the following facts  on the usage pattern of the social media websites in India.

   v  Top reasons for using the social networking sites

·          Keeping in touch with people they know:  82 %.

·          Reconnecting with old acquaintances they have lost touch with:  58%

·          Making New friends :   53%

·          Building professional network:      43%

v  Time spent on the social media sites

·  Three quarters of Indian respondents have been using social networking  websites for two or more years

·          Two-thirds spend more than half an hour on each session

v  Attitude towards using the social networking sites

All had a very positive attitude towards social networking websites.

·         The majority (71 per cent) consider social networking sites to be cool, but that is not to say that face-to-face interaction has become outdated or is on the decline

·         66 per cent believe that social networking sites are no substitute for actual face-to-face meetings with friends

·         43 per cent of respondents even consider it safe to meet people face-to-face whom they have met online

It is safe to predict that Social Media in India is starting to boom and organizations are waking up to its marketing opportunity. China is way ahead, but this gap will be lessening over a very short period of time.

Nate Cochrane pens his rules for social media etiquette on iTNews. And in a style true to the very fundamentals of social media which encourage active sharing and participation, he has made a point to list the rules he outlines as a work in progress and has opened it up for discussion on the site.

One of the rules that he points out is one that we tend to forget: ‘Quality NOT quantity’. Too often PRs get flack for doing a last minute dash to sign up as many people in their network to become friends/ fans on their clients’ Facebook groups and pages or on their Twitter handles.

As PRs, we need to continue to educate our clients that the real value does not lie in the sheer volume of people we sign up but rather in the quality of the people we engage (even if it’s only a handful!).

Consider who your target audience is, where do they frequent and how to reach them. Who is in your fans/ friends extended networks. Are they the right audience to target?

Using Twitter as an example, it’s important to do the analysis and drill down into who the person is that you want to connect with, get to know them, follow them for a while and find out what they write about. Also have a look into who follows that person, are they the appropriate person for your client to be reaching out to or is there someone in their Twitter network that is better?

This tool can help you determine the most appropriate people to follow:

If we want to get some real and long lasting results for our clients, the key is to make sure that we’re speaking to the right audiences!