The 2-day conference held at M Hotel was highly enriching and we enjoyed mingling with the participants and other speakers. Some photos of the presentation by our Business Development Director, Kelly Choo, who presented on the applications of Social Media Analytics to business needs.
Asia Pacific Digital Brand Index (DBI) – Looking Back and Moving Forward
Looking back, Brandtology has reached a new milestone of having run the Asia Pacific Digital Brand Index with our partners at Edelman Digital APAC for a year now and I’m happy to say that it has been an astounding 4 releases of the DBI so far.
In summary we have so far covered:
8 million posts,
representing the perspectives of millions of Netizens,
talking about 350 technology brands,
housed in 4,000 regional online channels,
across 8 Asian markets.
The Top 10 most discussed technology brands in the 12 months (ending June 2010) across our eight Asian markets:
1. Google
2. Microsoft
3. Apple
4. Samsung
5. Intel
6. Nokia
7. Sony
8. Hewlett-Packard
9. Yahoo!
10. Research in Motion
Google consistently placed top in the past few studies even though we have removed keywords like “google it” to remove irrelevant mentions of the brand in the study. This shows that Google is indeed a brand name to be reckoned with and they should be exploiting it for other product extensions like Google Laptop, Google Tablet, Google Blender, etc (ok, I kid on the Blender part, but who knows what they will release next?).
Some of the macro-trends in the social media landscape across Asia are:
Online chatter grows and the growth is startling: 800,000 posts in the first DBI and now up to 2,000,000. Can brands still afford not to be part of the conversation?
The Twitter Phenomenon: Are we going from a web of pages to a web of streams and updates? However, in China, Sina microblog is gaining more prominence.
Tech brands joining the conversation: Growth of creating local, regional and global fan pages in Facebook. More engagement opportunities rather than simply one way communication.
Telcos and mobile chatter dominates: Local telcos are prominent in the Top 10 brands across all countries. On top of service, it is also driven by the hottest mobile phones they sell.
Moving forward, the DBI will continue to evolve and there will be more interesting angles to demonstrate how these top technology brands are leveraging on the growth of social media to build more content and engaging with the community.
Feel free to provide us your feedback/comments on the DBI!
The releases for the fourth Asia Pacific Digital Brand Index (10.3) for the various countries are as follows:
We might be living in a global village called the World Wide Web, but quite the contrary, the Internet gave us a place to embrace individuality, express ourselves and be free to be who we really are. Social media has become a repository of diverse opinions, interests and knowledge – a liberation of the mind that is impossible just a few decades ago.
This seemingly holy ground has been invaded by what Robert Paterson calls in his blog the “corporate voice”. It’s not the Internet’s conscience. Rather, it is the monotonous voice inside your head that tries to sell you products without variation in tone, approach and style. It is the conformist corporate voice that defies every law of online freedom by feeding you with structured press releases instead of creative, useful content. It is the same corporate voice that lacks personality to stand out in the crowd.
Let’s look at it this way. The corporate voice is actually afraid of showing its real self online because it does not want to be hated by others. Typical human behavior, isn’t it? But this typical behavior also has typical effects. It drives people away. At worst, it makes you go unnoticed. As a social media marketer, you don’t want that to happen to your brand.
This leads us to a possible dead-end. How can the corporate voice show it’s real self online without compromising its company image? But what kind of corporate image does the corporate voice really want to project? What is the corporate voice’s real self anyway?
First, the social media marketer should think how he wants the brand or the product to be perceived. Cool? Reliable? Definitely not boring. The corporate voice’s real self can be created through standards set by the company. Discuss with everyone how they want their brand to be perceived by people and plan how to better achieve this.
Give your corporate voice the personality overhaul. Enough with the press releases. Nobody reads them anyway. Instead, avoid being distant with the target audiences. Present your brand and product in a way that can be connected to their everyday lives. Don’t be afraid to have a fun or humorous corporate voice if you are selling a comedy show.
Take for example the Vans blog . They sell street shoes to teenagers right? They also have one of the most successful corporate blogs because their corporate voice is full of spunk, just like their shoes. That is what being one’s real self online is about –embodying what one’s product or brand is all about.
Sometimes, just being honest and sincere is enough, too. Listening and attending to consumer voices, being there when needed, and plainly showing that you care are the best qualities a corporate voice’s real self can have.
Global Online Intelligence Leader, Brandtology releases Digital Conversation Management System v2.5 with enhanced measurement and tracking capabilities
24 JUNE 2010 – Brandtology, a global online intelligence service provider has rolled out the latest version of its Digital Conversation Management System (DCMS). The DCMS v2.5 comes with a comprehensive set of metrics to aid global brands and agencies in measuring key aspects of social media involvement, such as engagement, reach, influence and sentiments.
The various social media metrics newly introduced in the system will enable brand managers and consumer insight teams to grasp an overview of all subjects being monitored (be it their brand, competing brands or their various product lines) in the social media space and discover market leaders and laggards.
For instance, the ‘Engagement’ metric quantifies the content creation and response level of a particular subject. The number of conversations unilaterally initiated, as well as the number of relevant comments and responses are taken into account in determining their relative engagement as compared to other subjects in the entire category. Thus, a brand that pushes out boring articles methodically without garnering responses will fare very poorly on the engagement front.
Similarly, the ‘Influence’ metric measures whether conversations being made are by key opinion leaders online, thus translating to response generation and consequently readership. On the other hand, when measuring ‘Reach’, we look at how deep and wide the conversations relating to a particular subject ‘travel’ among influential channels online. A high reach score indicate the ability of a subject to spread related conversations far and wide. Last but not least, the ‘Sentiment’ index looks at the average net sentiment score of all conversations within the subject. More details on each metric can be found in Appendix A.
Commenting on the new DCMS v2.5, Eddie Chau, CEO of Brandtology said: “As brands divert their focus to social media marketing and consequently their budgets, there is a need to seek a more quantifiable manner of measuring the ROI of their activities on the social media platform. In response to feedback from our clients and partners, we have developed this new metric system for the purpose of such analysis.”
Besides the social media metrics section, the new system features five other new components such as an account profiling statistical overview, enhanced Social Media Equity charts to enable comparisons over time, conversation thread trend charts, a bookmarking feature to allow efficient workflow management and last but not least, a new chart sampling function unique to Brandtology.
By combining proprietary crawler technology to extract high volumes of relevant conversations from influential channels with trained social media analysts who recheck a portion of these conversations Brandtology is able to provide highly relevant and accurate insights. The new chart sampling feature leverages on this unique model to provide clients the option to toggle between the entire raw data set and rechecked conversations to show share of voice charts with near 100% accuracy.
“Due to the high volumes of conversations in countries with a large netizen base, such as USA and China, this chart sampling feature will allow clients the flexibility to manage and draw insights from large volumes of data but still be able to produce highly accurate charts for key categories for management reporting,” Eden Lau, Managing Director of North Asia, Brandtology, opined.
Apart from new feature, menus in the new DCMS v2.5 have also been reorganised into more intuitive sections to facilitate navigation and extraction of vital data required – namely Trends, Insights, Channels, Influencers and Social Media Equity. In addition, an FAQ section and tooltips have been added to explain the various data sections.
“With the new DCMS v2.5, we are confident of going beyond simple data collation to providing analytical insights that can integrate with strategic business processes and directly contribute to our clients’ bottom line,” added Kelly Choo, Business Development Director of Brandtology.
For more information and a demo of the new DCMS v2.5, please contact:
About Brandtology
With more than 140 staff in 12 global locations, Brandtology’s business and brand online intelligence services enable global brands to manage and glean invaluable insights from consumers’ conversations. Using proprietary technology, processes and trained professionals, Brandtology is able to provide a high degree of accuracy and relevancy in multilingual analysis, unlike any other automated monitoring tools. Astute global organisations utilise Brandtology’s intelligence in multiple functional areas such as sales, marketing, PR, media planning, customer service and product development. For more information, please visit www.brandtology.com
Appendix A – Detailed explanation of Social Media Metrics
The engagement metric quantifies the content creation and response level of a particular subject. The number of conversations unilaterally initiated, as well as the number of relevant comments and responses are taken into account in determining their relative engagement as compared to other subjects in the entire category. Thus, a brand that pushes out boring articles methodically without garnering responses will fare very poorly on the engagement front. Likewise for a brand that has low activity levels and relies on spill-over buzz from other articles which primary focus is not on them.
b) Influence ( 0 – 100)
Conversations by key opinion leaders online or what we term as influencers are gauged on their influence level. Their influence score is derived based on various parameters such as the total number of posts made and replies to their posts. The median of all influencers discussing a particular subject is then presented as the influence of that subject.
The higher the influence score, the more powerful the conversations relating to a particular subject is in terms of generating comments and consequently readership levels.
c) Reach ( 0% – 100%)
The voice of a brand may be concentrated within a few key sites or virally discussed across various influential channels online. When measuring reach, we look at how deep and wide the conversations relating to a particular subject ‘travel’ among influential channels online. A high reach score indicate the ability of a subject to spread related conversations far and wide.
d) Sentiment Index for the Subject ( -100% – 100%)
Sentiment index looks at the average net sentiment score of all conversations within the subject. This index denotes whether the average sentiment of all buzz relating to a subject is more positive or more negative.
The third quarterly Asia Pacific Digital Brand Index (DBI 10.2) shows Twitter has now established itself as the dominant online channel for news about technology brands across Asia. In October 2009, Twitter was only the number one online channel in India. Since then netizens in Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan have also made the micro-blog service their favorite venue for sharing news and views about technology brands and products. This leaves Hong Kong and China (where the service is banned), in the eight-market study, as the only Twitter hold-outs.
After nine months, tracking six million conversations, across eight Asia-Pacific markets, about 300 technology brands, across 4000 online channels – the relative consistency of our findings about the Top 10 most-discussed tech brands and online channels where these conversations were taking place is really exciting. Consistency provides a strong signal that social media could be a predictable channel planning and measurement tool – people across the region seem to be engaging each other on an ongoing basis – rather than turning up and disappearing on a whim as some people believe.
Further, three cycles of the DBI has shown a strong link between traditional marketing efforts (esp. new product introductions) and online conversations, which offers a clue as to the extent that online conversations can support/drive marketing. However, despite the success of Twitter, our experience with the data and with clients shows that brands shouldn’t rely on one particular channel (no sighs of relief just because you’ve got a Facebook page…), but rather should take a multi-channel, multi-message approach. This requires deep online insight to ensure that paid, owned, earned and social media are efficiently integrated online.
Conducted in partnership with public relations firm, Edelman, the DBI identifies the ‘buzziest’ brands, channels and topics driving online and digital trends and create insights for technology companies and marketers.
While the Asia-Pacific roll-up is interesting, the fascinating insights come at a local market level. The individual country reports are listed below.
Brandtology CEO, Eddie Chau will be speaking at ARF Re:Think 2010 Conference in New York on 24 March in Key Issue Forum Session #1. Details are as follows:
Key Issue Forum Session #1
BUILDING AND MANAGING BRANDS GLOBALLY
Wilder Room, 4th Floor
MODERATOR: Eddie Chau – Founder & CEO, Brandtology
Local is the New Global
Discover some of the challenges faced by brand owners to build a global brand, including language, culture and geo-political considerations in the new media era where the consumer is king.
Eddie Chau – Founder & CEO, Brandtology
From Local to Global Branding: A Coca-Cola Case Study
Learn how a sports beverage brand defined a unifying global position.
Anne McAllester – Director – Knowledge and Insights, The Coca-Cola Company
Eric Hogue – Vice President, Millward Brown
Neil Mathis – Account Group Director, Millward Brown
Redefining Retail Promotion Allocation
Learn how to properly allocate media resources against behaviorally identified customer groups with known media preferences.
Martin Block – Professor, Northwestern University
Social Media is not an up and coming fad, it has already become an integral part of the new way businesses are being run and brands are being managed. Information, reviews, grouses are now broadcasted globally with a few mouseclicks, especially on Web 2.0 platforms. And these written comments do not go away unlike verbal grumblings from your best pal, they stay online forever and are seen again and again by would-be customers searching for product/service reviews. The infinite volume of conversations (think twitter) and gazillion sites on the Internet makes it impossible for anyone to track such comments efficiently in a timely manner.
That’s why its increasingly important to enlist the help of social media monitoring and measurement services to monitor, analyse and inform you of online brand threats and opportunities in a timely manner. However, data/intelligence by itself is of little use unless something is done with it.
We have put together a table on some actionable insights you can derive from listening online:
We would love your comments on our list and we welcome new suggestions.
Conducted across eight Asia-Pacific markets (Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan), the second quarterly Digital Brand Index (DBI 2.0) continues to unveil insights about; the most discussed brands online, the most active channels and the subject areas that spark the most vibrant debate.
Researched during the last three months of 2009, DBI 2.0 found almost 1.5 million online technology brand mentions – double the level tracked in DBI 1.0, conducted July to September 2009. Other key findings from DBI 2.0 include:
Mentions of large technology brands online doubled in the last quarter of 2009, reaching 1.5 million across Asia Pacific’s top 300 large technology brands, covering almost 3,800 channels and online sites.
Twitter’s massive growth trajectory has seen it become the dominant channel for sharing news about technology brands across Asia, except in China where it is banned. For example, in India, Twitter represents over three-quarters of all online conversations tracked.
Despite massive online buzz generated by Microsoft around Windows 7, Google continued to be the most discussed brand across the region, generating significant mentions in areas such as its Chrome and Android operating systems, and the Nexus One smart phone.
For marketers, the DBI can show a direct link between traditional marketing efforts and online conversations, and benchmark the extent to which online conversations drive marketing results. In terms of channels, the DBI shows that brands should not rely on a particular channel, but rather should engage a multi-channel, multi-message approach, that is defined by deep online intelligence insight.
Often, companies jump onto the social media bandwagon excitedly and look around eagerly to see what they can do to be ‘in the game’.
The result? Twitter accounts and Facebook pages with unexciting contents that gradually fail to interest its followers after they follow/become a fan. Their so-called social media strategy has become yet another method to pump out advertising messages, sales and promotional information and an impersonal one way communication conduit.
This is definitely not wrong, but it is not a true social media strategy. Such an approach shows how a company has failed to understand the essence of social media and leverage on its power.
Social Media is about communication within a social network, and the most powerful aspect of it is the ability to spread viral messages and to enhance the trustworthiness of messages via word-of-mouth. It turns monologues into interactive dialogues and advertisements into conversations.
As with any successful initiative, planning is essential before an effective action plan can be crafted. Social Media is still a relatively new domain and consumer social media consumption habits are extremely fluid and fickle, hence it is of utmost importance to first research and listen to what’s being said online. If a strategy is based on wild guesses, or even calculated guesses, there is still a high chance (competitively disadvantageous) that there are blind spots that have been missed out. Look at the number of marketers with inactive twitter and facebook pages, as well as those who invested heavily in online advertising purely based on click rates.
To craft a successful Social Media Strategy, companies should at least incorporate the following elements:
1) Research and understand the social media interests of your target market.
This can be done through engaging social media monitoring/analytical services (like us) that provide analytical insights derived from genuine conversations online. Guesstimates are just not good enough. Companies may also complement this research with surveys, focus groups or their CRM analysis.
2) Find out where the conversations are taking place.
Gear your strategy to either be part of the community they are involved in, or provide a platform for your target market. Be seen in the right place at the right time. Establish a presence to cultivate a top of mind awareness when purchase decisions are being made.
3) Create content, organize activities and generate conversations that align with your target market’s interests Based on observations of key conversation topics, create content and start conversations that genuinely value add to your prospects. Be a friend to them and provide them support and advice. Allow them to be the first to hear about breaking news and see how it quickly spreads in a viral manner. The quickest way to lose their trust and cause them to screen out your messages is to blindly push ‘buy-me-now’ messages. Engage and interest them, not alienate them.
4) Measure the effectiveness of your campaigns and refine them Social Media campaigns are visible and much more measurable than PR/mass media strategies that rely on recall ability/no. of news clippings as ROI metrics. Measure and prove the ROI of your strategies to the stakeholders who control the purse strings. Make feedback a continuous, reinforcing loop that constantly enhances your strategies.
Well, I could easily go on and on about each point above and many other pointers, but I wanted to keep it succinct and digestible. To reiterate, planning is key in creating an effective social media strategy and listening is the cornerstone, the essential step that needs to be taken. As the saying goes, ‘if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail’.
