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Engaging with Social Media in Japan, Korea, and China

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

Japan photo

Though the Asian countries I recently visited are at different stages of B2B adoption, they’re all acutely aware of how much social media is changing communication—making it more about engagement and less about broadcast.

And in response to these new market demands, organizations that use social media most effectively are those who see social media for what it really is: a tool for building community.

For instance, we’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about Twitter recently, but we shouldn’t forget that it’s not the brand name that’s important; it’s the activity that the tool makes possible that is important. It’s the social and business networking—the sense of community engagement—that is the key difference.

Social media pioneer Gary Vaynerchuk recently made this point well in a keynote address for Mediabistro. The first 15 minutes or so alone is highly quotable. Consider the following: “Twitter is a frickin’ marker. Facebook is Scotch tape.” How true is that?

Another lesson is that, despite different adoption curves, global B2B enterprises are beginning to use social media everywhere, so if the existing solutions don’t offer in-language versions or support, copycats and local alternatives are quickly emerging—some with even better features and functionality. Below is a quick comparison of the services available in Asia and the U.S.:

Chart

At Juniper Networks, one of my continuing goals is to nurture an understanding about the potential and variety of social media available. It’s easy to get excited about new technology when it appears, but I never let that overshadow the engagement opportunities it creates. After all, “Facebook is just Scotch tape.”

*There is no clear leader in B2B SNS at this time, since being anonymous is a part of the online culture in Japan. I suspect this is because many Japanese people are concerned that their “Internet personality” will be discovered by friends or colleagues. According to my Japanese counterparts in Juniper Networks, some anonymous power users, using “screen names,” have quite a bit of influence in the Japanese social media culture. In addition, many believe being anonymous will protect them from identity theft and potentially even some levels of online harassment. My prediction, however, given that there are over 25 million users reported as of November 19, 2009, is that Mixi may eventually transition to that B2B SNS leader.

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Japan: The Changing Perceptions of Social Media

Friday, November 20th, 2009

Twitter has been a huge success in Japan as an entertainment medium. In fact, @shimmage visited a bookstore that had devoted an entire shelf to books originally having appeared as tweets! But when I met with the Japan marketing team two months ago, I was told that social media such as Twitter was rarely used in a B2B context. How can a medium so popular with the general public be underused in the business community? Is Twitter a victim of its own success?

Japanese bookstore, Twitter books from @shimmage

Japanese bookstore, Twitter books from @shimmage

One of the biggest hurdles of B2B adoption is that over 50% of Japanese companies block social media sites outright, such as the popular Japanese Facebook variant Mixi and Twitter. The popular conception is that such technology saps, rather than contributes to, productivity. In other words, it’s just for entertainment. It’s understandable, then, if this attitude might dissuade companies from establishing a social media presence.

Of course, we’ve seen this in the U.S., too. One of the most powerful productivity tools we now use—the almighty e-mail—was itself thought to be simply a distraction in the beginning. More recently, instant messaging was a victim of the same misunderstanding. If Twitter has been so easily adopted, it’s only been because of such historical trial and error.

We all agreed that the only thing that would change the cultural assumptions about business uses of social media is case studies of it being used in productive ways. And there are such examples. Cisco is using it in a minimal way—as a PR mouthpiece—and Oracle is taking it a big step further and adding personality, linking to blog posts, and generally being more dynamic. As a result, Oracle’s followers are growing rapidly, while Cisco is receiving a tepid response.

Social media adoption is on the rise, and Juniper Networks has jumped into the game with both feet. Who wants to miss out on the benefits of a productivity tool? But certainly, more companies need to step up and prove its use. It’s still a greenfield opportunity. What other Japanese B2Bs are using it well? I’d love to hear from you.

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Korea: Seeing Opportunities in High Def

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

Korea's LinknowPart of my job is to create strategies for driving Junos certification. Korea was the first country in the world to meet their certification target in 09, so I was understandably eager to meet this industrious group in person.

As I exited my plane in Seoul I was met with a long series of beautiful HD LED flat-screens from Samsung—a brand giving the mighty Sony a run for its money. This is a country with no shortage of technological innovation or social media adoption.

In fact, the Korean marketing team I spent time with was incredibly eager to embrace social media prior to our meetings; they’d already taken themselves to social media classes, and expressed a keen interest in breaking ground with new marketing opportunities and social media tools.

A core inhibitor of immediate adoption for some of the social networking tools coming out of Silicon Valley aren’t in language, so there’s a need to create analogues. The result has been a wave of parallelisms similar to what I found in China:  for search they’ve got NAVER instead of Google—a product that made slight adjustments to the model to suit the Korean market. For youth Social Networking Sites (SNS) they’ve got Cyworld instead of Facebook, and for professional SNS they have Linknow is, instead of, you guessed it, LinkedIn.

Because of a cultural divide between personal and professional life, SNS hasn’t made the leap as quickly from personal uses to commercial uses, and that represents a huge opportunity. With the industriousness I saw in our Juniper Korean office, however, I predict that this time next year it will be a different story entirely.

Case in point: within 24 hours of our visit, the first Korean Juniper Twitter account made its debut:  http://twitter.com/juniper_korea. Juniper is in good company, as both Oracle and IBM also have new and reasonably active Twitter accounts in Korea as well.

Is there other social media use within the Korean B2B market I’ve missed? I’d love to hear your experience and opinions.

And please follow our new friends in Korea as well. Way to go Korea Juniper team!

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Inside the “Great Firewall” – Innovation thrives

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Hotel entrance - BeijingNǐhǎo from Beijing! As part of our 2010 planning, I’m visiting internal teams and vendors in Southeast Asia to share planning information and to gather perspectives on social media adoption and use in local markets. It’s been a whirlwind so far, and I have two more stops to go!

My first stop was Beijing. I landed at 3:15 p.m. on November 16—9 hours before President Obama flew in on Air Force One. Obama has been met with a lot of enthusiasm, and I must say that there’s no shortage of enthusiasm here in general. In fact, people seem to be embracing new technology with the spirit of Silicon Valley in its heyday.

Part of what’s driving the development of online media in China is what even locals refer to as the “Great Firewall.” Though it’s not impossible to reach outside sites like Facebook—all you need is a VPN tunnel—Chinese entrepreneurs are developing their own parallel solutions for every popular site you can think of: they can “Google,” but Baidu is the leading search engine. They may use Pandora, but Kuwo is a more popular way to discover new music.

Chinese Internet usage is quickly growing—44.7% of users spend between three and eight hours online—but the average user’s age is still only 18 to 24. Within the next decade, as these young adults enter the workforce, this represents a tremendous opportunity.

Kuwo CEO Huai Qi, a Stanford graduate who turned down a high-paying job stateside to start her company in China, is ready. “We rented a flat close to Tsinghua University and hired part-time students, learning from the US model of starting a business in a garage,” Huai says.

It’s that kind of resourcefulness that’s going to make Chinese Internet companies a force to be reckoned with in the years to come. But this is no secret: Obama certainly seemed eager to sit down and speak as equals.

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The myths of social media and what it takes to be successful

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

I just ran across this insightful article about the myths of social media at BusinessWeek, and it got me thinking. Ochman lists six myths, but they’re easily broken into two categories: ease and cost. It’s true that people tend to think that a social media campaign will be easy and inexpensive to operate, but why? 

The answer is because they’re looking at it from the perspective of traditional build-and-blast marketing, where you create your message, buy your media vehicle, and distribute. The costs in this model are all up front: you have the creative development, of course, and the media buy. And then you wait. (Well, honestly, there’s always something to do, but you get my point.)

From this perspective, it’s “easier” to create a Facebook page instead of, say, a microsite, and “cheap” because there’s virtually no media buy. But there’s something missing. If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know that one of my mantras has been “Participate!” And though I’m simplifying a bit, this is the crux of the issue: social media keeps up-front costs down, but it puts more weight on sustained, continual involvement and on leveraging the assets in all distribution media.

So the maxim “measure twice and cut once” is key, and planning how you intend to distribute is absolutely necessary. For example, Juniper Networks recently announced the new Juniper Networks by leveraging and promoting marketing assets and press content via manyl the Social Channels including: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Juniper  Community, Flicker,  and the Juniper.net and a microsite - TheNewNetworkisHere.com. Oh yeah, and don’t forget the normal press release translated around the world and a few e-mails and Google to boot.

As you can see, in addition to expertise, this involvement requires time, great planning, and yes, money. The fact is, there is nothing simple or automated about a social media campaign because the premise is about engagement, authenticity, and integrity. An effective social media program or campaign requires strategic planning, launching, monitoring, integration, optimization, and foremost, participation.

Now, this isn’t to say that money can’t be saved (e.g., print advertising was removed from the equation so not a big placement cost). There are as many, if not more, opportunities as there are challenges. But I think, first and foremost, companies should enter into a social media strategy with a realistic perspective on what it takes to be effective—I’d narrow it down to three critical things: planning experience, resources, and knowing what targets you want to reach.

What do you think it takes? Keep me honest :-)

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