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Corporate Use of Social Media Across Asia [INFOGRAPHIC]

The Infographic of the Day series visually expresses important stories from Asia and the world of technology.

Using social media in Asia: BMW's official Sina Weibo account.

Burson Marsteller (BM) has just released its Asia-Pacific Corporate Social Media Study for 2011, giving insights – and infographics – that cover how companies are using social media in the region. This year’s study paints a picture of brands being ever more keen to engage with consumers via social media, yet still not doing some things very effectively – such as failing to use video on social video-sharing sites, and not maintaining corporate blogs where more complex issues can be covered.

Without further ado, here are the ten key points…

Number of social media channels with corporate activity - BM is heartened that 81 percent of top Asian companies have a branded social media presence this year, compared to 40 percent in 2010. It means that a great deal fewer are ignoring this useful form of communication: Corporate use of social media channels by market; 2010 compared to 2011 - In these two we see that South Korean and Malaysian companies are the most aggressive users of social media for corporate communications and marketing. South Korea remains the most adept at all this – but it’s clear that its neighbors are catching up. Taiwan is still lagging behind.

In terms of particular channels, microblogs are popular for their reach and share-ability. But there’s an element of superficiality to it, as it obviates the need for more detailed dialogue: Top social platforms used for corporate marketing and communications - That lack of deeper dialogue is shown by these platform stats. Microblogs – from Twitter to Weibo – are great for extending a brand’s reach, but there’s not too much more to it than that. Social networks such as Facebook or Renren give a bit more scope for this. But it seems to be coming at the expense of corporate blogs.

Video-sharing is strangely neglected in the region. Videos – especially informal ones that give insights – can be so useful, but Asian companies don’t seem to have figured out that magic: Top global social platforms used for corporate marketing and communications - Engagement is up across the board here. BM notes:

" Twitter is emerging as the predominant social media platform used by corporations, although corporate Facebook pages have more “likes” than Twitter accounts have “followers”"

Levels of corporate activity on company social media channels - Here again we see the dearth of video-oriented output from brands, with so many seemingly inactive – or too infrequently updated. Across the region, 62 percent of social channels surveyed were inactive:

Integration of social media channels with company website - In many countries in Asia, brands are keeping their social media efforts very separate from their other online presences. But why not bring them closer? There could well be some reticence on the part of companies around here, say, to embed tweets in corporate home-pages. BM speculates it could be about the risk of ‘losing face.’

South Korea is here doing the best in bringing the two entities closer together, followed by Malaysia and Australia: Use of company video-sharing channel - Getting back to the subject of visuals, we see here the average number of videos uploaded to the surveyed branded video channels, such as those on Youku (NYSE:YOKU) or YouTube:


Focus of corporate social media activity - Time for some more pie… So, what are all those corporate social tweets, wall posts, and fan pages about? The survey suggests that, to quote BM:

Asian companies are focused mostly on ‘pushing’ news to users, including journalists, bloggers and other opinion-formers.

Few Asian company CEOs or senior executives are actively using social media. Well, we can think of quite a few who do in China, such as DangDang‘s (NYSE:DANG) Li Guo-qing, or Xiaomi’s Lei Jun. But perhaps those are not great examples, considering that they’ve caused quite a few firestorms with their Weibo posts in recent years:


Corporate use of social media channels by industry - Financial service providers in Asia are found to be most behind in using the web socially. And, surprisingly, technology companies across Asia are not doing the best job of reaching out to the many consumers who might be using SNS on that company’s own gadgets:


For the full story, head to Burston Marsteller’s SlideShare page for both the highly-detailed study overview, or the summary presentation.