Good news for 2010: the business community is finally realizing the productivity potential of social media. As this trend continues, it will be interesting to see B2B companies explore, adopt, and integrate the technology—especially into e-commerce—often using B2C social media initiatives as a model. I’m certainly keeping an eye on these trends so that Juniper.net users [...]
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.
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?
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.
Part 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.
Nǐhǎo 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.
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