taiwan busines s

taiwan busines s

Using Social Media in Business

Some companies are seizing the opportunity to have more direct communication with their customers.

BY AIMEE WONG

eve all heard the buzz: Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, Google+. But what is social media anyway? In the absence of a clear dictionary definition, many people arent sure what it encompasses. Everybody has a different idea of what social media is and its continually evolving, notes Albert Wang, New Business Manager at PR firm Veda International. He labels social media as any type of user-generated content: information sharing websites such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs; collaboration websites like social bookmarks, Wikipedia, Digg; multimedia websites such as F l i c k r a n d Yo u Tu b e ; r e v i e w a n d opinion websites like Yahoo Answers or Epinions; and even online games such as World of Warcraft. One of the latest trends is social commerce, or e-commerce that makes use of social networks. Many mainstream e-commerce websites have already been incorporating aspects of social commerce, such as Amazon's customer ratings, reviews, and rec-

ommendations. But with the recent explosion in popularity of social networking websites, social commerce has risen to a whole new level. Amazon for example, has long offered the ability to purchase gift cards to be used on their website. But now you can connect your Amazon account with your Facebook account, and not only make product recommendations based on your Facebook friends interests, but also purchase an Amazon Gift Card and post it to his Facebook wall, complete with a personalized message. Another example of social commerce is Groupon (group + coupon), an international deal-of-the-day website that allows users to purchase discounted gift certificates to be used at various shops and restaurants. The catch is that the deal only becomes available if a certain number of people sign up for the offer, thus reducing the risk for retailers. At the same time, this makes social media the perfect platform for spreading the word. To call 100 friends one by one and ask them to join you in purchasing gift certificates would be

time consuming, potentially awkward, and possibly ineffectual your friends may not be in a place easily accessible to a computer. But if you post it on your blog, link to it on your Facebook wall, and send out a tweet about it, you automatically reach your entire target audience friends who care enough about you to receive your updates and, most importantly, are already online and all in less than the time it takes to make a single phone call. Then there are virtual events, online gatherings of people in virtual locations, for purposes such as tradeshows, job fairs, and meetings. These can include live or pre-recorded webcasts followed by Q&A sessions, as well as virtual booths, forums, and designated meeting places where participants can interact via online video and voice chat. Virtual events offer a convenient and economical way to bring large numbers of people together, perfect for greenconscious companies or those with reduced travel budgets. Moreover, its great from a marketing point of view as each participants activities and interac-

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tions can be easily tracked and recorded for later analysis. Social medias entrance into the business world is a natural extension of its widespread personal use, and companies cannot afford to avoid plunging into the fray. For most people its already a fact, not a fad, says Albert Wang. Among the top 30 websites in Taiwan, 12 are pure social media websites Facebook is number two. Thats close to half of the top websites in Taiwan, and if you include hybrid websites like Yahoo with social media functions, its actually closer to two-thirds. Although Yahoo itself is not a pure social media website, its impossible to ignore its influence as the islands largest web portal, with a 98% market penetration rate. Its a primary social networking provider, having purchased Wretch, the leading blogging platform in Taiwan, in 2007. (Taiwan is, in fact, the only market in which Yahoo! has a blogospheric presence.) But its also connected through global agreements with Facebook, Twitter, and Zynga. You can post Yahoo news to your Facebook wall and view Facebook friends on your Yahoo! Messenger contacts list, giving users the ability to link Yahoo with their Facebook, Twitter, and Zynga accounts. You can also view your Facebook friends on their Yahoo homepages and in Yahoo! Mail. (Yahoos integration with Twitter and Zyngas popular social games will be launched later this year.) What accounts for Yahoo!s overw h e l m i n g s u c c e s s i n t h e Ta i w a n market? Yahoo! can mobilize a large

global network of resources, and we cater to users with extensive, in-depth localization, says Joann Chen, the vice president of Audience & Business Management Yahoo! APAC. We aim to distribute, aggregate, and drive engagement of social activities in whatever way possible.

Google+
Another Internet giant, Google, launched the Google+ social network platform in a limited trial phase on June 28 this year (Google Taiwan representatives said they did not know when the service would be available in a Chinese format.) But will the new venture catch on? Though Google+ provides some options beyond Face-

books offerings, such as the ability to easily group contacts into social circles based on the nature of your relationship, what it boils down to may be a simple matter of numbers. S o ci al m ed ia i s a n in te re st in g thing, notes Albert Wang. People tend to go where their friends are on, so the bigger it is in the world, the faster it continues to grow. That is, unless a whole new type of social media comes out for a specific demographic, such as Linkedin, which is for professional interaction, or Flickr for photo sharing. In addition, social media is highly related to cultural preferences, and websites or platforms that are popular in one market may be nonexistent or do poorly in another. With her regional managerial role, Joann Chen

HOT IN TAIWAN Over 40% of Plurk's traffic comes from this market, while the highly popular Yahoo portal serves social media in addition to its other functions.

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NEW WAYS TO COMMUNICATE AMD uses YouTube and Flickr to post videos and photos of its events, such as these shots of its press conference and booth at Taipei's Computex show in June..
photos:amd

has observed the varied formats social media has taken on throughout the Asia Pacific: QQzone and Renren in China, Cyworld in Korea, Mixi in Japan, Orkut in Brazil and India, and Wretch in Taiwan. In the United States, Facebook and Twitter are dominant, while in Taiwan Twitter is far outclassed by Plurk, a similar micro-blogging platform. In fact, according to tracking agency Alexa, over 40% of Plurks traffic comes from Taiwan, where it is the 30th most popular website, coming in ahead of MSN. What accounts for the differences in usage and popularity? Ruu Wu, manager of Public Relations & Communication at Yahoo! Taiwan, explains it this way: Lets say you try to broadcast the same three messages on both Twitter and Plurk I ate an apple, I drank some coffee, and I picked up a stray cat. When your friend responds Me too! on Twitter, you have no way to know whether she ate an apple, drank coffee, or picked up a cat. Its more like a messaging system that creates a unique ID for each response. Plurk puts updates on a timeline so you can track what you posted when, and followers can start a discussion and reply to specific posts. The Taiwanese preference for dia-

logue-based information sharing also manifests itself in the continued popularity of the National Taiwan University student-founded PTT, an online bulletin board system (BBS). It may be the most popular in the world, with more than 1.5 million registered users, along with 40,000 articles and 1 million comments posted every day. In terms of general usage tendencies, Wu explains that Taiwanese Facebook users are more open to using the website to make friends, whereas Westerners prefer to add friends with whom they already have an established connection. Pointing out another difference, Wu says: In the United States you have a lot of expert bloggers, people who are authorities in their fields. But in Asia its all about my life situation I bought an iPhone, Im playing this game the ordinary person becoming a celebrity. Another reason for Yahoo!s tremendous popularity in Taiwan may be its preset-content homepage. Taiwanese generally like to get told the contents rather than personalizing it themselves, so that is a difference in culture, Albert Wang explains. Google has this service called iGoogle where you can custommake your own homepage, but in Taiwan it hasn't gotten any traction. If you can build your own homepage, why

not do it? In Taiwan people still prefer those types of homepages like Yahoo! where the news is preselected, contents are pre-populated, and you might not get everything you want but a lot of things are there. Taiwanese are probably less selective in content and don't prefer to customize. So most of those products that you see in Taiwan are very clean, and those that allow users to fill in their own needs for the most part havent caught on.

For business use

Developing social media is a longterm investment with challenges such as finding expert consultants, training staff, finding the optimal balance between online and offline marketing budgets, and developing quantifiable goals and expectations. Even non-Internet-based companies can find ways to successfully integrate social media into their marketing strategies. Semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is a prime example. A major finding from our market analysis was that most of our customers will go on the Internet to check out our products before buying, says Neal Wang, marketing director at AMD Taiwan. The company therefore

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developed an online marketing plan, including social media, to target this buying behavior. Five or six years ago, TV commercials were the most popular form of promotion in Taiwan, because of their directness, but even then online advertising was a close second. In terms of cost, television commercials are five to ten times more expensive than online advertising. AMD decided to pursue a two-pronged approach to social media: forums (where 80% of its target audience goes for information) and other social network platforms. Ta c t i c a l l y y o u c a n w o r k w i t h forum owners to open some more discussion space for specific products related to your category, Neal Wang says. You could say, lets have an opinion about APU [the companys Accelerated Processing Unit]. It may be good or bad, but its still positive promotion because people start talking about APU and thats the exclusive product of my company. As for utilizing Facebook, AMDs strategy is to keep it casual. Social media requires casual marketing, he explains. You are not educating, youre building relationships, getting people to know you and get familiar with your company. AMD Taiwan hired Andrea Wei to serve as spokesperson for their AMD Green biking initiative, which has now evolved into a comprehensive social media experience, complete with biking gatherings and competitions, as well as lucky draw, trivia contests, and other giveaways and activities all posted on Facebook. The company also uses Youtube and Flickr to post, for example, a video comparison of the operating speed of two computer processors, or photos from one of their events. Intel and Nvidia are both large companies in our industry, but neither of their Facebook pages can compete with ours, Neal boasts. If you take a look at our AMD Facebook fan club, youre expecting something there thats interesting and related to your life instead of let me tell you how my product is better. Then its not fun. The social media effect, Neal Wang

points out, extends even to those who do not participate in social media themselves. Mom-and-pop shops may not engage in social media, but they still buy computers. If they lack much experience with technology, they may ask a friend who knows more and that friend, in turn, is likely to be someone who engages in social media. Another social media success story involves the Indian comedy 3 Idiots. A YouTube video created by a user compares AMDs new APU technology with a competing processor, both installed on the same type of laptop. The battery-life test used both computers simultaneously to run the Bollywood-produced 3 Idiots film. The result? The competing machine could only show about two hours of the film, while the AMDpowered machine was able to show the entire three-hour video as well as another short clip. A whole new market also brings about a new range of concerns and problems. How can companies manage negative feedback when the medium moves faster than the time it takes to schedule a press conference, or even to return a phone call? Sometimes you just have to let go, Neal Wang says. Some people will say, I dont like AMD, my experience using AMD was bad, but then maybe some others will respond with positive experiences, too. If the response comes officially from AMD, its going to get ugly, so we never do that. You have to be careful because its not an advertising activity. Ill use the term manage instead of control or advertising. You dont want people to feel this is AMD talking about the product; you cant do things too obviously or too commercially. All we can do is create the environment for people to discuss my product, which Im proud of. A lot of corporations participate in social media using the old media mindset, agrees Albert Wang. For example, you can go into Facebook and start a page for your brand, but all you do is promote your content all you do is advertising and buy me. Its the old television advertising complex: I build my commercial, and you only

hear what I say. But with social media, even if all you do is post good things about your ABC Company, eventually someone will make an I Hate ABC Company page. And if you think about it, its actually more dangerous that way because you never know where the negative things are going to come from. Why not open the doors to negative communication at your place, on your own page, so that when they give you that feedback you let them know youre listening to it, and when really bad things happen you really have that trust. But if you never talk to people, you never build that trust. When a crisis happens and you come in to talk to them, people dont know who you are. They just think youre trying to brainwash them. Another advantage offered by social media is that companies can look up prospective employees Facebook pages to get an idea of their interests. On the flip side, prospective employees can ask their social network contacts for job leads or run a search on Linkedin. Jean-Franois Amadei, Social Media Strategist at Era Ogilvy, actually learned about the job he is now holding through Twitter. Harnessing the power of social media is a great way to break down barriers and provide channels for direct interaction and communication between employees and prospective employers, he says. Instead of simply posting resums online, individuals should also build up their level of influence on social networks through engaging in discussions and forums related to their field of expertise, as it is not uncommon for high-level executives to also be active on these platforms. At this stage, the question is not whether businesses and professionals should get involved in social media, but how should they get involved. Albert Wang stresses the need to make social media part of an overall corporate strategy. Its not just a one-time event, how much exposure can I get, he says. If you do that, you lose the whole point of social media. Its a great chance to cut out all the middlemen, the TV and radio, and reach the people directly.

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