Welcome to the Digital Marketing Inner Circle

I n the current economic downturn, many advertisers have proactively pursued change. They have pursued social media and shifted investment from traditional to digital media. According to SY, half of US advertisers are prepared to pay more for social media marketing. Forrester predicts social will become the 3rd largest spending category in 3 years. This is good news for Qzone.qq.com, which has over 300 million active users. There are enormous opportunities for those with the courage to pioneer.

SY lau highlighted 3 key concepts regarding social media:

• “Small is the new big”
• “Riding the big new wave”
• “Beyond social media”

Attendant to the social media revolution is the fact that we are not only consuming the content, we are providing the content. On QQ, there are 1.67bn conversations every day and 2 billion photos uploaded every month. The Internet is an entertainment destination, and for some in China it is a platform for self expression. Chinese netizens are highly active; 92% contribute regularly to social media. They regard the Internet as a virtual world and consider social media a way to build and maintain relationships. As such, SNS is changing Internet usage patterns, and redefining WOM.

In the absence of any definitive ROI formulas, Tencent has 5 guiding principles in managing social media mktg:

• Secure the important few
• Activate the internet advocates
• Capitalize not create
• Think quality not just quantity
• Social interaction is King

In this regard, SY’s presentation echoed that of Phillipe Lamy of L’Oreal, who stressed the importance of listening to the consumer and facilitating a social media dialogue driven mainly by the community.