Sometimes when I’m blogging about social media I start to feel that I am talking about some alternate reality where utopia’s actually happen! Wouldn’t it be great if companies did actually listen to their customers and made changes based on what they heard? Wouldn’t it be great if companies did trust all their employees to help build engagement about their company in an open and transparent way? Yes we have managed to find some great examples where such things are happening but they are the exception rather than the rule. That is why they are important stories. They give good pointers as to where we might go. However the trouble is that this culture shift is something of a step to far for many executives to hear. A recent survey found that many marketers are scared of using social media. Why these strong reactions ?

It has a lot to do with control. In the past PR was used to maintain a feeling that a company was in control of their “image”. And it is true most companies have been able to maintain a veneer of control up until now, but in truth many of the negative conversations were still happening offline they just rarely made it in to the press. They were easier to ignore but they were never actually good for the business concerned.

Since Web 2.0, just as a country like China can no longer control all the information about events in their country
(see my post about the china earthquake yesterday) so the same goes for a company. When I was editor of my student newspaper, a long time ago, we published a very negative article about Unilever. After a complaint from the company we were forced by the University Lawyers to publish a full apology in the next issue. Unilever would no longer consider doing this to every blogger worldwide. In the Web 2.0 world there are no longer gatekeepers. Anyone and everyone can publish online and share their story with others. So the bad news becomes much more public than ever before. And this bad news has the potential to really rock the boat.

However the stories from companies engaged out in the front line of social media tell us that if you are aware of the conversation, because you have been listening to it, then you will know how to step in and sort it out. This is not rocket science this is the basic social skills that you learnt in the playground at school. The key is that you are there, actively engaged in what is going on and have made your customers aware of this. No you can’t control the conversation but as I said above you never could – just as a teacher can’t really control what is happening in a playground. But you can set the ground rules, you can influence the games that are being played and you can respond quickly when things start to go pear shaped.

Monitoring conversations allows you to discover where the mismatches between you and your customers are and do something about it. It is simple to do and could really make a difference. SociaLNK could help your company take this first simple step into the social arena.

9 out 10 of the top twitter postings during that period were about the earthquake

I really enjoyed watching Clay Shirky’s TED talk about how social media can make history. He is a deep thinker and great speaker.

He makes some interesting points about this new technology of ours. Some of the concepts are fairly simple. Firstly that the phone was a 1 to 1 dialogue which facilitated conversation. Radio and Tv were 1 to many mediums where a message was broadcast out. The internet facilitates both groups and conversation. What he says is amazing about the internet is that we all become creators “it is like you have phone and it could turn into a radio as well”. So basically we are now dealing with a Many to Many medium where everyone is both receiver and producer.

As an aside I have always found it fascinating comparing the difference between conversations using a speaker phone with a one on one conversation. If you have ever tried a two way speaker phone voice conference the dynamics are seriously stretched. Telephone technology really does not facilitate this many to many group conversation in any comfortable way!

Clay’s argument is that the internet really transforms the power of what people are able to do. He uses the example of the earthquake in China in May 2008. People started texting, taking videos, pictures and using twitter. Many people uploaded visual images to QQ the popular chinese social networking site. People heard it first from the social networks. The BBC heard about the earthquake via twitter. The Chinese government have a reputation for acting as gatekeeper for information about what is going on in china but in this instance they had no choice. This was because the information was very different to traditional news stories – it was produced locally, by amateurs, very rapidly and in huge quantities.

Clay suggests that the days of professional production of information is over. Now the majority of information is produced by amateurs. Who talk to each other and connect with each other. This has huge implications for how organizations need to act. He uses as an example the MyBo website used in the Obama campaign. During the campaign Obama change direction on a policy decision to the great dismay of many supporters who complained vociferously on the website. Obama had to respond and did. However what was interesting was that the conversation then turned as people started to realise that they had been allowed to express their opinions and the Obama campaign had not tried to control what was being said. Clay argues that is the way to make really mature use of this new technology.

Clay’s point about control is one that many businesses still need to grasp. Businesses can no longer expect to control their “image” in the media (if they ever really could). Too many consumers now have the power to publicize their own take on what a company is doing. Instead we need to listen, learn, participate and change what we do.

There is another critical characteristic about this new medium that I’m sure Clay is aware of though he did not cover it here. That is the fact that there a time element. These media can be both synchronous and asynchronous. The asynchronous part means that there is a stored history. The great value to this is that people can catch up and join in a conversation at any point. The synchronous part means that there are also opportunities for spontaneous live dialogue. The combination of the two is extremely powerful.

SociaLNK supports organizations in listening to their audience and building better brand enagement. Contact us.

Use of Avatar's in QQ China's leading social network

Social Media is developing a huge variety of cultures in different parts of the world. Asia is a particularly fascinating market because the number of users is just so vast. I thought I’d list a few statistics to whet the appetite.

To make a comparison, the US has 225 million internet customers and 260 million mobile i.e. they are about even. However in China the mobile market far exceeds the internet market (340 MM internet users, 650 million mobile users). It is clearly worth studying how this market is evolving – with so many users there are great innovations occurring in this market. Western organizations are being slow to learn from their Aisian counterparts.

Internet speeds highlight one difference. In Korea 70% of the population has Internet speeds greater than 5mbps. They have a huge online gaming market (even bigger than Japan) despite the fact that they have a third of the population and are considerably smaller.

In Japan more than 90% of mobile subscribers are on 3G networks and more than 50% of these have mobile TVMobile game content revenue is higher than PC game content. A large percentage of revenue from online games is generated by selling virtual products. The market in avatars is huge. China’s top social network QQ does more than $1 billion in revenue which is about double what Facebook is forecast to make.

So social networking is alive and well in Asia. So how should organizations use this to their advantage? SociaLNK has been exploring the social media space in Asia. What we have noticed is that it is really growing up. Just as the demographic for Facebook shifted from University students to active workers the same is playing out in the Asian market. There are literally millions of working people out there who are used to using social media as part of their daily life. We have some great ideas for how to build a successful strategy to promote your business via social media marketing in Asia. This is a huge market with hundreds of opportunities – why don’t you contact us for a chat?

Social Media is growing in Asia just as it is in the rest of the world. However each country has their own social media culture. For instance in China, social media is dominated by local players. Western networks like Google and Facebook have not managed to adapt to Chinese user expectations. Facebook does not even rank among the top 15 social networks. Across the wider continent the story is more complex. In some regions western players such as Friendster and Facebook have made substantial in roads.

So who are the players in China? Ozonehttp China’s leading social network has 376 million users (more than Facebook) and is targeted at teenagers. It is probably the largest social media site in the world. It’s revenue was over $1 billion in 2008. 12% of its revenue comes from advertising the rest is from selling virtual items such as applications and avatars. The second player is 51.comhttp which targets working class adults from rural parts of china. It has 130 million users. Kaixin001http is a relatively new player which hit the big time last year with 30 million register users. It targets urban white collar workers and has become renown for employing controversial invitation techniques.

A big part of these networks success has been in copying applications directly from Facebook and other western social media applications. However they are now adapting these very well for their own markets. Gradually chinese social tools are adapting innovative new idea’s of their own. The first payment systems for social media applications are now fully functioning in China and making serious money.

Interestingly in many Asian countries the market is still clearly in a state of flux as change can happen very quickly when technology affords new solutions. In July it was reported that the import of cheap blackberries to Indonesia has resulted in a rush of users moving onto Facebook from Friendster. This was because it was very easy to do very cheap instant messaging via these blackberries. Suddenly many people who had not had access to the internet before have been able to use social media networks.

Social Media networking is clearly a way that companies in Asia can engage with their clients. Here at SociaLNK we monitor the Asian Social Media market on a daily basis and are keen to use our strategic analysis to support your company.

Rebecca MacKinnon

There is a fascinating talk taking place at the Oxford Internet Institute on Tuesday 24^th November. The talk is by Rebecca MacKinnon. The title “Cybertarianism: The future of freedom in the Internet Age“.

Rebecca MacKinnon is cofounder of Global Voices, a global citizen media network, and an assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Studies Centre. Rebbecca teaches online journalism and conducts research on the Internet, China, and censorship. As an Open Society Fellow, MacKinnon is writing a book, tentatively titled “Internet Freedom and Control: Lessons from China for the World.” Previously Rebecca worked for CNN.

Her talk at Oxford is a call to arms that we should all fight against authoritarianism and defend the liberty of the internet. As she puts it: “Since its creation 40 years ago, we have come to depend on the Internet to conduct our careers, our jobs, our politics, and the most intimate aspects of our lives. It has become a critical global resource. It can be a liberating force, but it can also be used as an opaque extension of incumbent power… The time has come for global ‘netizens’ to assert stewardship over the Internet as a shared global resource.”

It is interesting how social networks have become a valuable tool in conducting political campaigns. I noticed yesterday on the the Nobel Prize website how Deputy National Security Advisor, Mark Pfeifle had suggested that Twitter should be given the Nobel Peace Prize because of the way it had been used in the election campaign in Iran.

 As Marketers we should always take note of what works in politics! I and my colleagues at SociaLNK will be following MacKinnon’s campaign with interest!