TUESDAY 23 OCT 2012 2:10 PM

BRAND ENGAGEMENT VIA SOCIAL MEDIA STRONGEST IN ASIA

The Asian market is booming in terms of social media engagement, with a huge emphasis on the top 25% income group.

GlobalWebIndex surveyed social media activity in 31 countries to determine how consumers engage with social media particularly with branded content. The findings proved heavy brand engagement in Asian countries, particularly china and Indonesia, though Turkey came in at sixth overall. Other highly engaged users emerged in Latin America. The most notable finding was that markets in which online outlets developed with social media integrated social more naturally than in markets such as the UK and US in which the internet was established before the widespread use of social media.

Tom Smith, founder of GlobalWebIndex, says brands should change the way in which they engage via social media.

“What this report reveals is that we need to rethink how we classify countries when it comes to social media,” he says. “Emerging markets like China, India and Brazil have consumers who are far active than those in so-called mature markets like the US, UK and Sweden.”

A YouGov survey released today found that social media is used by 64% of marketers to promote brand awareness. However, a mere 355 use social media for demand generation activities. Additionally, eMarketer has reported that the Asia-Pacific advertising market is worth £125 billion to North America’s £195 billion.

Based on these factors, the GlobalWebIndex suggestion that brand marketing should focus its efforts on Asian social media users may yield high results for companies.

For related news, please see the following links:

http://www.communicatemagazine.co.uk/news/4144-social-media-monitoring-remains-difficult-in-uk-spain

http://www.communicatemagazine.co.uk/news/4140-agencies-continue-expansion-into-asia-pacific-region