Engaging with Social Media in Japan, Korea, and China

POSTED: November 25th, 2009

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.

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Japan: The Changing Perceptions of Social Media

POSTED: 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?

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.

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Korea: Seeing Opportunities in High Def

POSTED: November 19th, 2009

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.

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Inside the “Great Firewall” – Innovation thrives

POSTED: November 18th, 2009

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

POSTED: 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.)

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