Social Machinery

Social media is growing big time in the world and Malaysia is not the exception. Three main key drivers can explain this flourishing digital lifestyle in Malaysia society: consumer internet behavior, broadband growth and content digitalization. More interesting is that this trend is reaching the business segment and creating new opportunities for companies to share, communicate and build bond with their customers.  

About 80% of Malaysian’s most valuable brands according to Interbrand, already have a social media channel in the form of blog, community, Twitter account, Facebook site, MySpace community fans club page or other social inventory.

Just as a good example is how AirAsia is engaging their online community via a wide range selections of channels like corporate blog,  Tony Fernandes CEO Blog , AirAsia Travel Wish List application on Facebook Application, AirAsia Facebook Fan Page , AirAsia employees Facebook Group, AirAsiaGroup Channel on YouTube among others.

Let’s take a look to Malaysia Social media phenomenon….

Consumer trends – Multimedia is exploding!

Is not news that Social networking is spreading like wildfire across the Globe. Facebook already hit 300 Million subscribers,  Twitter is reaching about 20 Million users and growing at a rate of 1000% year to year according to Nielsen and social networking becoming more relevant than email at least for 68%  of  internet users. According to analysts,  more than 500 Million people are registered to social networking sites across the globe.

The fundamental paradigm change here is the new user internet behavior. Internet has changed our way of interacting with people, brands, services and the world; we don’t want to passively absorb broadcast content, we don’t want more one way communication. People want to be in the driver seat; we want to communicate with creativity, interact in multiple channels, create our own contents and be permanently connected. “We create the tool and then the tool shape us”.

More interesting is that this phenomenon is already mainstream in Malaysia. According to Comscore Social networking Index, Malaysia social networking activity has exhibited high level of engagement. Malaysia is second in the Asia Pacific region in terms of penetration, with more than 66% of its online population visiting a social networking site in December 2008. Social networking visitors in Malaysia also ranked fourth on visits per visitor to social networking sites with an average of 14 during the month.

According to Nielsen, currenlty in Malaysia more than 12 Million online users belong to some community. In terms of social networking sites, Friendster claims to have about 3.1 Million users, Facebook more than 1 Million but growing astonishing at 296% per month and Myspace in the range of 800.000 subscribers. Twitter situation is unclear  in terms of users, but doing so quick filtering you can guess that the number should be higher than 20.000 users. Besides, Social networking sites are the most visited online site in Malaysia. According to Comscore during June 2009, Friendster received 3 Million unique visitors, Facebook 2Million unique visitors and blogging site WordPress more than 1.5 Million visitors. 10 out of 15 most visited online sites in Malaysia are related to social networking or user generated content.

Is also exciting to see what is happening with Youtube. During 2008, it was the most searched keyword by more than 51% of all malaysians online users.

Finally, there is a booming local social networking and user generated ecosystem, which is not comparable in terms of size and traffic to global sites, but already accounts for hundred of thousands visits every month. Goeatout is a good example of a local flavor community that adds a great value to more than 30.000 visitors that they attract every month.

Malaysian Brands understand the value of social media

Social media can bring new ways for company to reach their audience, even do this is a complicated landscape, where they need to establish a conversational approach compared to the traditional one way speech they have been using for the past 50 years.

Social media is a different ball game in terms of marketing strategy, PR and sales. Honesty, trustworthy is crucial values that brands need to embrace. Just to give you one example, according to recent studies One in Five Tweets is Brand-Related. In the social media space you cannot fool people, maybe some of them, but not everyone all the time.  

In US, companies are in the forefront of using Social media as a brand builder tool. Just looking their retail industry: 86% of companies in this area already have Facebook fan page, 65% are using Twitter corporate accounts and more than half of them have blogs for sharing their thought with their audience.

Interestingly, Malaysia is moving very fast in this area. About 80% of most valuable brands are using site like Youtube, Twitter and blogs to reach the masses. An interesting trend is the irruption of user generated content and crowd-sourcing tools for engaging the digital audience. The Star news launched some time back a citizen report section, similar to CNN and Airsia allows customers to post in their blog about their travel experiences.

If you don’t like this you can always send a virtual cake using Secret’s recipe Facebook application to your best friend.

Our life is becoming digital, so Malaysian brands.