What do you think? Should brands continue pushing regular content on their social channels during a natural disaster or crisis? Well, I took some examples of what brands on Twitter were sharing when the tsunami hit Japan on Friday, March 11. While many brands continued on their day-to-day cadence of editorial content, some were quick to realize the trending topic and shift their focus accordingly. Keen to hear your thoughts or other examples you've seen.
The most glaring result from the recent Edelman Asia PacificDigital Brand Index (DBI) is how fast Twitter has grown in Asia. In most of the markets surveyed, Twitter was the buzziest channel, including Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. In China, where Twitter is not available, Sina Weibo (the local microblogging platform) topped the charts.
This is consistent with many of the other studies on twitter's growth. One by Semiocast, done in July 2010, found that "Asia is now the first and fastest growing region" for Twitter with Japan, Indonesia and South Korea leading the way.
For brands this presents an opportunity and a challenge. While Twitter allows brands another platform to engage with stakeholders, the conversation needs to be very local. Community managers will require deep knowledge in local trends, understanding in how to trigger local buzz and the ability to communicate in local languages to really leverage the opportunity Twitter presents. For some companies, the brand communication has to be done consistently, while differently, across multiple markets.
Yesterday, Ganesh Kumar Bangah, CEO of MOL (which acquired Friendster and recently signed a partnership with Facebook to become a payment provider for Facebook Credits), paid a visit to the OffGamers Facebook community page and:
(1) made an unwelcomed remark that its gaming service was better than the competitor's
(2) indicated that people who didn't agree that MOL's product was better, were... un-intelligent. To him, it should be plain to all, since his brand is BIGGER
(3) after the page admin kindly offered to carry MOL's game credit products, said "no thank you, you are of no value to us"
But what baffled me the most were Ganesh's final words: "I understand that you may be upset that we are gate crashing, but this is social media".
"...but this is social media"??? What does that mean?
I hope he isn't of the opinion that social media is the wild wild west, and no rules apply. That is a huge myth. The misconception that you can do and say what you want on social media without consequences is a major mistake. Social media is made up of people and communities, and the same rules of engaging with people offline apply online. What is rude offline, is rude online. What is considered shameless promoting offline, is still shameless promoting online. But unlike offline, where communication is one-to-one or one-to-a-few, what you do online is laid bare for all to see. Hence, adhering to the rules and etiquettes become even more important.
In my opinion, the most important rule isrespect the community. It isn't hard. e.g.:
Don't be rude
Don't say what you wouldn't want to see on your own page
If you're unfamiliar with this slideshow series, view the rest here.
Facts that stuck:
500 BILLION minutes spent on Facebook per month.
25 BILLIONweb links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc. shared on Facebook each month
2 BILLION YouTube videos viewed per day
4 BILLION images hosted on Flickr - 13 times more than the U.S. Library of Congress
ONE-THIRD of women aged 18-34 check Facebook when they first wake up - even before going to the bathroom (!!)
1 in 6 marriages last year occurred between people who met through social media. That's twice more than the number of people who met at bats, clubs, and other social events combined (!!)
27 MILLION average “tweets” per day on Twitter
16,000 followers for BP's official Twitter account; @bpglobalpr, the satirical BP Twitter account, has 180,000 followers
For the benefit of those that don't follow tennis, Rafael Nadal just won the French Open 2010; his fifth Roland Garros title. Yes, I am a fan. And, as he was lifting the trophy, I was engaged with a few others on a Twitter discussion about Nadal's game. Most, even the Federer fans, agree that Nadal is one of the best movers in the game. Often seen dashing back and forth the court to recover a point that others would have considered hopeless. Opponents can never be sure whether a point is won, or whether Nadal would scramble back from the baseline to retrieve yet another impossible ball from the net.
I attribute this success to his remarkable footwork, which is one of the basic and essential skills in the professional game of tennis. Sure, casual players can live without it and run around like a headless chicken across the courts at the club. But to excel in the game, footwork is fundamental. In fact to excel in any area of skill or art, fundamentals are crucial. Footwork in tennis (and boxing - remember Ali?), scales in music, breathing techniques in singing, grammar in writing, ... you get the point. None of these are terribly sexy on its own, but nonetheless important.
So as I was thinking about this, I asked myself: "what are the fundamentals for those of us who work in this relatively new area of social media?" - consultants, in-house executives, client servicing executives, trainers, community managers, etc. What are the basic skills set one must have to succeed in this business? What are the footwork, scales, breathing techniques, and grammar of the social media industry? Well, the two that I find important are: (1) communication skills, which I define as not the ability to speak, but the genius of being heard. There are many organisations, companies and brands out there that are competing for the little attention span that people have left. The ones that succeed knows how to engage and interact "real" people with relevance, authenticity and value-added conversations. (2) ethics, and not just don't lie, steal and cheat, but also being transparent in each aspect of your social media interaction. Be transparent with your sponsored content, ads, links, privacy policies, and engagement activities. What other fundamentals do you find important to have in this business?
