Boost brand engagement on social media: Webinar

According to Nielsen, Australians spent over 23 hours a week in 2013 engaged with digital media: smartphone penetration there is near 90 per cent. In China, there are some 600 to 700 million active mobile devices depending on whose numbers you want to quote and while 3G subscriptions stood at about 400 million in 2013, IHS Technology forecasts 4G could claim nearly 20 per cent of the mobile market in the country by the end of 2014. And for all the countries in-between the story shows similar growth or saturation patterns. [See Campaign’s Country Reports in our Top 1000 Brands coverage for more individual market information.]

The point is, Asia’s consumers are on or moving online in mobile droves and brands need to be there with them. But that presence demands something more meaningful than little ads in the corners of mobile screens. TV, once the fire hose of brand messaging, is a passive medium and its approach is an ill fit with mobile, social platforms.

From its humblest ‘MySpace’ beginnings, the social web has grown from a hipster curiosity to close to 2 billion mainstream users. Lots of brands have figured out the promotional potential but much of it is still largely passive. To take social media to the next level, companies might need to shift brand thinking from one of getting (coverage, interest, ad views) to one of giving (options, entertainment, utility). It’s just like grandma used to say about Christmas: Better to give than receive.

Easier said than done, right? Yes for sure. That’s why I’ll be asking some experts, people who work with the medium and brand image every day. Learn what Thomas Crampton, global managing director at Social@Ogilvy; Jamshed Wadia, head of social media, APAC & Japan for Intel; and Ken Mandel, managing director, APAC at Hootsuite see as best practices and effective ways to push social media past the ‘telling’ stage and into conversational territories where social selling, recruiting and even internal communications can build brand recognition and loyalty inside and outside a company.

Campaign’s webcast conversation will be live on 26 August (7:30am India; 10:00am Singapore/Hong Kong; 12:00pm Sydney). To get the most out of the session, I recommend tuning into the live event where you’ll be able to pose questions to the panel. But the webcast will also be available on demand after the live event to all who register. 

Every consumer touchpoint offers an opportunity to reinforce brand positioning; social media lets you have a conversation via those touchpoints instead of just telling consumers a story. I’ll be asking our panelists how to bring it all together.