LinkedIn launches in Hong Kong to capitalise on 500,000 local members

“A recent social-media survey showed that 63 per cent of marketing executives worldwide are planning on using social media to connect with consumers, and 50 per cent of respondents will be using LinkedIn as part of that mix,” said Arvind Rajan, vice-president and managing director of LinkedIn Asia-Pacific and Japan, in his opening speech at the launch yesterday.

“With more than 2,400 regional company offices and over 1,300 regional headquarters, Hong Kong's skilled talent base and reputation as a leading international centre of finance and business make it an important market for LinkedIn, given our aim is to connect the world’s talent with opportunity," said Rajan.

Rajan added that LinkedIn’s users tend to be high-net-worth consumers that marketers often find hard to reach. “Because users view LinkedIn as a professional site, they are in a work-friendly frame of mind when they’re using it," he said. "This makes them more receptive to approaches from B2B firms, and we’re increasingly finding that B2C brands targeting this consumer group are getting results." 

Cathay Pacific, for example, has found great success at reaching frequent business travellers on LinkedIn. “You won’t find first-class or business passengers by advertising on Facebook, you find them on Linkedin,” said Ali Bullock, Cathay Pacific’s global online and social marketing manager, who was a speaker at the launch.

LinkedIn’s new office in Hong Kong is the network’s 25th office globally and ninth in Asia-Pacific. Last May, the social platform launched its regional headquarters in Singapore and opened offices in Bengaluru, Melbourne, Perth and Tokyo. The company also introduced local-language sites in Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Malaysia, Japanese and Korean in 2011. In total, the site has 25 million members in Asia-Pacific.

The Hong Kong office aims to drive local growth, with its half-a dozen staff providing support for LinkedIn’s three key revenue streams: hiring solutions, marketing solutions (such as its recently launched targeted updates) and premium subscriptions.

Companies that use LinkedIn’s hiring solutions locally include Standard Chartered Bank, RGF Excutive Search and Walmart, which recruited and hired its Asian e-commerce leadership team in only six weeks. “In Hong Kong, we’ve just filled a couple of senior executive roles recently using LinkedIn, including a senior legal person who’ll be starting work in about two weeks,” said Simon Heaton, managing director, global executive recruiting, Walmart.

“We are thrilled to be expanding our footprint in the region at a time when professionals in Hong Kong are placing a growing emphasis on social media," said Rajan, adding that while Greater China is of considerable interest to LinkedIn, the company has no immediate plans to establish an office there.

“We have about 2 million members in Greater China using LinkedIn in English but it’s such a challenging, competitive and complex market that we want to be thoughtful about how we enter it—it’s a lot harder than merely translating the site into Chinese,” added Rajan after confirming that LinkedIn had not yet applied for a license to operate in China.