Social Media Marketing

Malaysia – Social networking accounted for one third of all time spent online in Malaysia in August 2011, rating it as the top online activity for the market, a comScore report concluded.

In the past year, social networking has increased by five percentage points to 32.1% of all time spent online, comScore added.

Joe Nguyen, comScore vice president for Southeast Asia said “Social networking has become the central activity in Malaysians’ digital lives, accounting for 1 in every 3 minutes spent online.”

“Given its importance today, brands and marketers need to ensure that social media is addressed in their digital strategies – whether that means having a dedicated social media plan or simply monitoring consumer sentiment towards your brand.”

Other top categories by share of time spent online included Entertainment (11.5%) and Portals (11.0%). Instant messengers and email represented 5.3% and 4.2% of total time, respectively.

Online video viewing continued to be a growing activity in Malaysia with its audience growing to nearly 9.3 million viewers in August 2011, up 8% from the previous year. Growth in online video engagement was even more pronounced as average minutes per viewer increased 19% to 6.2 hours in the same period.

Google sites ranked as the top video property in Malaysia with 8.8 million viewers and 457 million videos during August 2011 driven largely by YouTube.com, which accounted for 99% of viewers.

Facebook.com ranked second with 4.1 million viewers watching a total of 30.5 million videos during the month, while Vevo saw nearly 3 million viewers watch 26.5 million videos ranking as the third largest online video property in Malaysia.

In August, more than 11 million people aged 15 and above accessed the Internet from a home or work location in Malaysia. Among this audience, 92.4% visited Google sites, which ranked as the top online property for the market with 10.4 million visitors.

Facebook.com ranked as the second most-visited property with nearly 9.9 million visitors, up 15% since the past year, as the social networking giant continues to attract more users.

Among local properties, Mudah.my ranked as the most visited site with 2.5 million visitors in August. Media Prima Group, which includes Hmetro.com.my (Harian Metro), Bharian.com.my (Berita Harian), Tonton.com.my and others, reached 2.2 million visitors.

Maybank Group drew nearly 1.9 million visitors in August 2011, growing 20% from the previous year with Malaysians continuing to adopt online banking.

By: Malati Siniah, Malaysia

source: nielsenwire

Consumers are spending more time than ever using social media, as demonstrated in the Social Media Report recently published by Nielsen and NM Incite, a Nielsen/McKinsey company. Building on this report, research by NM Incite helps uncover what impacts social media may have for marketers trying to build their brands and connect with their audience more directly.

Social media plays an important role in how consumers discover, research, and share information about brands and products. In fact 60 percent of consumers researching products through multiple online sources learned about a specific brand or retailer through social networking sites. Active social media users are more likely to read product reviews online, and 3 out of 5 create their own reviews of products and services. Women are more likely than men to tell others about products that they like (81% of females vs. 72% of males). Overall, consumer-generated reviews and product ratings are the most preferred sources of product information among social media users.

Research shows that social media is increasingly a platform consumers use to express their loyalty to their favorite brands and products, and many seek to reap benefits from brands for helping promote their products. Among those who share their brand experiences through social media, at least 41 percent say they do so to receive discounts. When researching products, social media users are likely to trust the recommendations of their friends and family most, and results from Nielsen’s Global Online Survey indicate that 2 out of 3 respondents said they were either highly or somewhat influenced by advertising with a social context.

Social Media also plays a key role in protecting brands: 58 percent of social media users say they write product reviews to protect others from bad experiences, and nearly 1 in 4 say they share their negative experiences to “punish companies”. Many customers also use social media to engage with brands on a customer service level, with 42 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds acknowledging that they expect customer support within 12 hours of a complaint.

On the flip side, another interesting trend is the interest of consumers to act as ambassadors and advocates for brands through social media. A majority of active social networkers (53%) follow brands. These brands are increasingly recruiting their fans and followers to spread word-of-mouth recommendations about their products and services, and among consumers who write product reviews online, a majority say their share their experiences to “give recognition for a job well done” by the company. Social media users are also interested in collaborating with their favorite brands, with 60 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds saying they want to give product improvement recommendations, and another 64 percent who want to customize their products.

Source: nielsenwire

Social media continues to influence how consumers interact with brands and share content every day. Increasingly, TV viewers leverage social media as a platform to talk about and engage with TV content. These conversations are not only opening new channels for consumer engagement with their favorite TV shows and fellow fans alike, but also are providing insight into which viewers are driving the conversations and when.  A recent analysis by NM Incite and Nielsen sheds light on which demographics are engaging with TV across social media and highlights some differences in composition between the general social media population and the population on social media sites talking about TV specifically.

The social media population overall, skews slightly higher among females (55%), than males (45%). However, when comparing this demographic split to that of the population on social media sites talking about TV, this split reverses skewing higher among males (55%), than females (45%). There are several interesting demographic shifts when comparing general social media users and the portion of the population talking about TV specifically on social media. Those under age 18 account for 34 percent of the overall social media population, yet make up only 12 percent of the population on social media sites talking about TV. The opposite shift happens when focusing on the 25 – 34 year-old demographic. This age break comprises 17 percent of the overall social media population, but jumps to 29 percent of the makeup of the population on sites talking about TV. Within these age groups it’s interesting to note that, the difference in percentages across ethnic backgrounds remains relatively unchanged for African Americans, Asian, Hispanic and Whites.

When are consumers discussing TV?
TV buzz closely mimics traditional ratings patterns as well as a show’s yearly cycle.

Buzz is highest on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday coinciding with days when a lot of major shows air. TV buzz drops off on the weekend and increases once again as the middle of the week approaches.

Research shows that TV buzz nears its high during September, right before a show premieres and during its initial month. Conversations taper off slightly over the ensuing months, but increase again in January with the introduction of new and returning shows. TV buzz then seems to peak during April and May as consumers respond to show finales, and then dips again during the summer.

What are consumers discussing?

Consumers use social media to talk about a number of key TV-related topics such as winning (14%), voting (6%) and judging (6%), which highlight the appeal of and engagement consumers have with reality-based TV. Top genres fueling the most buzz are funny (10%), romance (8%) and drama (6%). Entertaining (11%), physical attractiveness (9%), fans (9%) and writers/creators (6%) round out the rest of top topics driving consumer discussion across social media.

For more on TV viewers getting social, download research and watch video from Nielsen’s Advertising Week presentations.

Facebook’s f8 event last week will have lasting ramifications for the network’s 800 million users. It will also have implications for brands, but the biggest takeaway should that if you’re a marketer, Facebook was never about you, it’s not about you, and it will never be about you. I’m sorry to the handful of laptops and iPhones that were just hurled across the room, but the truth hurts.

In case you missed last week’s news, f8 effectively changed the company’s mission statement from “giving people the power to share and make the world more open and more connected” to “making it so easy to share stuff that your own mother will get tired of hearing from you.” My agency described a lot of the changes in a report that includes what matters for brands. Until all of Facebook’s changes roll out, it will be difficult to make definitive statements about which changes benefit marketers and which will make reaching consumers more difficult, but in the meantime marketers should be paying especially close attention to their Facebook page and campaign performance.

Whenever Facebook announces a change, marketers get in a tizzy reading every tea leaf, wondering what every change means for them. That’s a good thing. I cleared my schedule for f8 because these changes matter. Often, marketers feel neglected, as if Facebook is going ahead with all these changes and not considering what will happen to brands.

The problem for marketers is that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg does not lie awake at night thinking about what will happen to brands. f8 is a conference for developers. I remember going to f8 in 2008, before Facebook recorded billions in advertising revenue, and I was a complete outcast. Facebook’s user base and revenues have grown exponentially, but the attitude is largely the same. The point of f8 is “to bring together the developers, entrepreneurs and innovators who are building a more social web.” Yes, some marketers count among those groups, but they’re not the target, and they probably never will be.

Instead, Zuckerberg and his colleagues used their f8 stage time to talk about changes for the network’s users. These include changes to the homepage and profile layouts. Facebook even dared to change how users can post birthday greetings to their friends.

In the process, Facebook created a lot of speculation for what will happen to brands. Will it still matter for marketers to amass large numbers of Facebook fans? Will posting more often lead to more engagement? Will every brand need an app to stay relevant? Will Facebook users flock to new features like Friend Lists, and will they embrace the new Timeline? Will Sponsored Story ads be the only way for marketers to truly stand out?

There are lots of answers accordingly, but most of the answers depend on how consumer behavior changes on Facebook, what kind of brand and category you’re working with, and how your brand has built its social marketing program so far. The fact that there aren’t clear answers today underscores how these questions aren’t the first priority for Facebook’s executive team.

If you read through Facebook’s official four-page PDF called “f8 for Marketers,” most of the answers end with two words: Sponsored Stories. Even the section on building applications recommends that 20% of your budget goes to building an app and 80% on promoting it. The cynic in me wondered whether all of Facebook’s changes were designed to blunt the virality of branded content and require more of a reliance on advertising. That strikes me as too calculating for Zuckerberg. This is not someone who changes the interface in order to juice media spending. There are many easier and direct ways that he could do that.

Instead, we’re left with a lot of ambiguity, but a few things are perfectly clear. Facebook has more than 800 million users, and recently had half a billion people using the site in one day. The time spent on Facebook dwarfs the numbers for any other media property. The rate of Facebook’s mobile usage is accelerating quickly, and soon more than half of its audience will be using its mobile properties. There is no question that marketers need Facebook more than Facebook needs marketers.

What do you do about it? Be engaging. Be relevant. Figure out what’s social about your brand. Set objectives. Measure results. Budget accordingly. Zuckerberg may not care about what you do, but you still should.

by David Berkowitz

It turns out that social media marketers value certain types of user-generated content over others. What do they value most? Product reviews and ratings, revealed Beth Uyenco, director of research for Microsoft Digital, at OMMA Global this week.

Of the high-spending social marketers surveyed by Microsoft, 27% said word of mouth was the most important reason for their investment, followed closely by 26% favoring brand considerations.

Plus, direct response was most important for 21% and CRM for 18%; while ‘inbound’ or ‘listening’ was primary for only 6%.

“However, among the many challenges to social-media efforts are ensuring the right targets are reached and determining the ROI of such campaigns,” according to Uyenco.

What does word of mouth mean for marketers? For the purposes of Microsoft’s study, it means identifying and reaching influencers; generating word-of-mouth conversations about brand, products or deals, then rebroadcasting word of mouth to target audiences.

The challenge, says Uyenco: “Our study found that leading social media marketers believe that almost two-thirds of the word of mouth they work so hard to generate doesn’t reach their target audience.”

Microsoft also found that there are significant challenges to be solved in driving word of mouth and managing social communities. In particular, many social marketers face challenges in making sure their communities are target appropriate, in getting new fans and followers and preventing churn.

Going forward, Uyenco suggests that the industry focus less on social as a “siloed” platform, and start leveraging it as a tool to help accomplish specific marketing objectives.

Recent research published by Microsoft’s Natasha Hritzuk last month found nearly 50% of consumers are likely to purchase products as a result of word of mouth, while 90% of consumer conversations happen offline.

“This certainly backs up social marketers’ desire to reach the right social audience for their brand,” Uyenco said regarding Hritzuk’s findings. “After all, not all audiences are equal.”

By Gavin O’Malley