Social for business, ROI and China were main themes for SMM Asia 2012

The event, hosted by Ogilvy Hong Kong in partnership with Branded, set the stage with its first two sessions by Ipsos’ executive director of business insights Steve Garton and Google’s chief evangelist, Google Social for Brands, Gopi Kallayil.

Brands are sadly under-investing in social, pointed out Garton, with 60 per cent of Asia-Pacific’s marketers spending 5 per cent or less on social media. Many are also unprepared to handle trouble. “Nearly a quarter have had a social media crisis, but 48 per cent don’t have a crisis plan,” said Garton.

This is chilling when you consider that “Planet Social” has 1.5 billion citizens, as Google’s Kallayil pointed out. If US President Barack Obama is using Google Hangouts to connect with his citizens, brand leaders should be asking themselves why they’re not doing likewise, he said.

One reason so few brand leaders are embracing social, said WPP’s Sir Martin Sorrell during a “hangout session” at the conference, is fear. “It’s too open, social has become too open... I think the future of closed networks (such as LinkedIn) is more assured,” he told the room.

Using social for business, above and beyond building brand identity, continued to be a major theme throughout the conference. Prudential’s regional director of brand and corporate affairs Sean Rach discussed the insurance firm’s tactic to recruit new customers by offering the value of financial education via its Cha-Ching programme on Cartoon Network.

“To approach social media, brands should ask themselves, why would someone want to talk to us?” explained Rach during a panel discussion on Brands Going Social. “For us, a practical example is financial literacy, because our consumers are concerned about it and it relates to our business.”

Peter Dingle, interactive marketing manager, Asia-Pacific marketing and consumer sales at Intel, phrased it as “adding real value to real people by doing real things.”

When leveraged properly, social can be used to build corporate CRM, aid in R&D and also to bolster human resources and talent management, pointed out Sandy Catner, vice-president of social business evangelism at IBM. “Hilton in the US has created a network community for its guests who are looking to join groups for meals or dinner, and they’ve seen a 15 per cent increase in customer satisfaction in hotels with that network,” she said.

Carter also pointed to US-based TD Bank, which has created a social-media community, WOW Moments, to increase employee satisfaction. Out of 80,000 employees 55,000 have contributed to this community, sharing great customer-care stories.

Cisco has managed to save money and increase customer satisfaction by supporting a community of volunteer experts who help address issues faced by customers on Cisco’s help forums, shared Sabrina Lin, the company's vice-president of marketing for Asia-Pacific. “Now, only 20 per cent of problems on this community are addressed by our own people, the rest are by our volunteer support.”

ROI for brands looking to invest in social was unsurprisingly a hot topic of the conference, and Carter pointed out that if companies have no other means of measurement, measure the impact. “Measure before and after social media,” she suggested.

Measuring likes and followers is “quantitative fiction”, not ROI, pointed out Walter Carl, chief research officer at research company ChatThreads. “The reality is you have to focus on business goals so ROI are actions that increase revenue and deflect cost.”

Even for an audience familiar with social, China continues to remain a fascinating market. Speakers from Douban, Sina Weibo, JingDong and RenRen all held the audience riveted with their insights into social media in China.

“Comparing Twitter and Sina Weibo is like comparing America with China,” pointed out Ken Hong, general manager of weibo marketing strategy at Sina. “It straddles Twitter, Facebook and blogging.”

The sheer size and potential of the Chinese social-media market was driven home by CIC’s Sam Flemming. “During the Olympic opening ceremony, Twitter had 10 million tweets, and Weibo had 119 million,” he shared.

Social in China is definitely headed mobile-wards, said Joseph Chen, chairman and CEO of RenRen. “My goal is to shift 50 per cent of my workforce to focus on mobile," he said. "We’re about a third at present. We have to monetise mobile—there is no choice.”

Chen also believes that mobile voice and text programmes like Tencent’s WeiXin (WeChat) will be a major gateway into monetising mobile in China. “Next year we will be talking about WeChat as much as we’re talking about Weibo today.”

Campaign Asia-Pacific's Emily Tan live-Tweeted Social Media Matters on Friday: Check out our Twitter feed to read her real-time coverage.