Global Opportunities in PR, Social Media & Mobile

Moderator:
Adaline Lau, Asia Editor, ClickZ

Speakers:
Anne F. Kennedy, SES Advisory Board, International Search Strategist, Beyond Ink USA
Kristjan Mar Hauksson, Founder, Search & Online Comm., Nordic eMarketing

Anne will share her research on media and mobile outside the U.S. Kristjan will share PR opportunities around the world.

Anne asks if Facebook marketing all you need around the world? To help your SEO efforts and to reach your market, you need to know it may not always be Facebook. But Facebook is a juggernaut. 1 in 10 people in the world is on Facebook, and 70% of the user base is outside the U.S. Facebook is anticipating an IPO in 2010 and it’s currently estimated to be $100 billion. LinkedIn is big, Twitter is active, but Facebook is huge. Check out this visualization of Facebook connections around the world.

Mobile Internet is ramping faster than desktop Internet did. Apple is leading the charge.

Social networks in Europe where Facebook isn’t the most popular:

• Germany: StudiVz
• Netherlands: Hyves and Twitter
• Portugal: Nearly 90% social networking Hi5 is the most visited site in 2009, Facebook and Twitter are growing fast, however.

While mobile appears to be growing in opportunities outside the U.S., it’s not all smart phones. You can’t count on full mobile browsers and have to account for feature phones as well.

Facebook in Asia:

• South Korea: Facebok has 15 million users to local site Cyworld’s 20 million. Daum launched its own social network similar to Twitter.
• India: Facebook just surpassed long-time leader Orkut 20 million to 19 million, with more growth anticipated. Facebook opened office in India
• Japan: Facebook has 4 million users, compared to 6 million Gree, 12 million Mixi, and Mobage is a popular mobile only site. The culture leans toward anonymous social networks. Facebook carves a niche for professionals.

Facebook in South America:

• Mexico: Facebook has 20 million users, 2/3 of total internet population, and 6th in the world. Twitter as well. Hi5 and YouTube are popular for photo and video sharing.
• Brazil: Facebook trails Orkut, 30 million to 20 million visitors this June, 23% of Brazil’s Internet population use Twitter, more than anywhere else. And Brazilians love video, with more than 85% having viewed video.

If you look at world wide average compared to Latin America use, search and navigation is about the same for both, but social networking is 70% compared to 88% in Latin America. In Latin America, they watch 8 hours of online video a month.

We’ve Learned:

• 70% of Facebook use is beyond U.S.
• Facebook is not #1 everywhere
• And to be in all these markets, you need local help.

Kristjan is going to talk about the impact of channels and research they’ve done over the last 3 years on how stakeholders use resources like journalists. The disaster of banks and volcanoes gave them lessons on how stakeholders use the Internet to research on a global scale and info on how media outlets use info on the Internet.

After having gone through online crisis management dealing with:

• 2008 crash of banking system
• 2010 volcano and 2011 volcano

They could see how journalists respond to online content and PR. Since 2008 they filtered through more than 3 million individual visits on a prominent news/ePR network. When breaking news happens, things go crazy.

Mobile or not? The combined iPhone, iPad, Android, iPod, Android and iPod are just under 9% of the traffic. People weren’t getting the info on mobile devices.

Who drives the traffic? Various versions of Google had some 40% of the overall referring traffic. Facebook drove 2.6% of traffic. Reddit had 2% and Twitter only had .44% of referrals.

Volcano Number 2 Speaks Up

19:36 the news about the second eruption goes out. Delta comes in total 8x first 20 minutes after news goes live. They always used Google as part of their travel path to find news. As news goes around the world media and other stakeholders rise.

Core findings:

Google News picks up within 2 to 5 minutes, even less in some cases
Those with comprehensive Google alert services and want them as they come get their alert within a few minutes from the pr /news being visible
Over 70% of trackbacks happened within the same day, some 27% within two days and the rest take longer.

When breaking news happens, the media goes online to find out about it. This is a very dynamic environment with response time down to 2 hours. More than 80% of reads happen within the first 24 hours.

• Google News returns around 25% of referrals
• Google Web other 52%
• The rest is direct access and other referrals

You can create a digital cloud as a means of sharing your news/message. Draw a circle around yourself of your connections, and their connections around them, with every layer further out from you being where you message can reach. Feed that knowledge into your strategy, to help you decide headlines to write, language to use, images to include, etc.

Create a matrix containing info about your target markets. How does the targeted stakeholder behave online? What keywords do they use? What channel do they use? Test them and in the end you’ll have a set of distribution channels you can use to get to your target market.

How you write content will effect visibility and engagement.

Facebook and Twitter are not the answer to all your problems. Mobile is still not as strong as you might expect. Google is still the strongest referrer orf traffic. Adapt your strategy to the market. Don’t expect the market to adapt to you. Use languages of countries you’re targeting, and find channels that are Google.local friendly. Don’t forget Google Universal.

Channels you can use:

• Marketwire: English only but international
• Pressport: Scandinavia/Nordic focused
• eNewsPR: all languages, international
• NewsCertain: all languages, international

Virginia Nussey is the director of content marketing at MobileMonkey. Prior to joining this startup in 2018, Virginia was the operations and content manager at Bruce Clay Inc., having joined the company in 2008 as a writer and blogger.

See Virginia's author page for links to connect on social media.