Asia Social Media Evolution

The social media phenomenon is very much global with populations worldwide using technology to communicate and build communities. Marketers are faced with evolving variances from market to market as audiences gravitate to media channels most effective at providing the content they need and want. The challenge to marketers is determining the best communications channel to reach any particular audience to ensure the message is accessible and in the best context. Nowhere is this more so than Asia, with its vast variety of peoples, languages and cultures and a dynamic social media scene.To provide those interested in Asia a guide to the current state of digital marketing, the Asia Digital Marketing Association offers a free 2009 Yearbook , providing an indispensable resource in understanding the regions emerging social media scene.For marketers trying to grasp the regional differences in the use of digital marketing techniques, the 80-page Yearbook is full of facts and figures such as these summarized by ADMA Chairman, David Ketchum, whose day job is as CEO of leading regional consultancy UpstreamAsia.“Facebook, Twitter, Friendster, Bebo, MySpace and LinkedIn have built large-scale user bases in Asia Pacific but these global players don't dominate in every market. New patterns of usage and local behavior are emerging across the region, with clear distinctions from country to country where consumers spend time online, and how they behave.”China is number one in search, with 12.8 million searches performed in a month by nearly 150,000 searchers - that's 85 searches per searcher. Japan is the second largest search market, with 5.9 million searchers. However, Korea's searchers are most prolific, with 109 searches per searcher, Singapore not far behind with 106. Mobile continues to gain, both as a text messaging and voice call channel, but also for Internet access. Asia Pacific (ex Japan) has 97.6 million mobile online gamers, and 50% of them are in in China. There is 60% mobile phone penetration in the Philippines. Filipinos send the highest number of SMS messages per subscriber in the world. Mobile site page views grew 1120% YOY. 2008 Asia Pacificwide mobile data revenues topped US$65 billion, and an estimated 473 million handsets were sold.”Clearly 2009 presents an opportunity for marketers to explore and create new methods of interacting with their customers globally, along with the challenge of navigating the local dynamics of each individual market. By doing their homework and utilizing these evolving methods, marketers have the opportunity to deliver well thought out messages in ways that resonate most with their customers. The ADMA 2009 Yearbook is a great place to start.