4 Social Media Predictions for Malaysia 2012

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January 6, 2012

2011 has been an amazing year in the digital realm. From the major Google Panda update somewhere in February 2011, to the design overhauls with major social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and even StumbleUpon, the introduction of Google+, the beta launch of Kred and the list goes on.

What excites me most is that more and more businesses are seen to be adopting and experimenting on social media, leading towards exciting times for both marketers and consumers alike in 2012 – a concrete indication that social networking is indeed changing the way we communicate, do business and definitely not a trend.

Having seen all that, have you wondered what 2012 would be like for social media? Here are my four (4) predictions of social media in Malaysia for 2012:

Prediction #1: Increased social media adoption among small business owners

Why: Social media campaigns have been prevalent in larger corporations throughout 2011. However, small businesses (known as Small-Medium Enterprises) makes up the largest business establishment in Malaysia with 99.2%, equivalent to 518,996 businesses in which the huge majority (86.5%) are in the services sector which includes retail, restaurant and wholesale businesses. (source: Census of Establishments and Enterprises 2005)

What does this mean: With larger corporations leading the way in 2011, the SMEs in Malaysia have tangibly seen the implementation and results of different online marketing campaigns and may emulate the success. On top of that, the nature of businesses in the services sector (especially B2C) can greatly reap the potential of social media networks.

If you’re a small business owner, here’s a bonus article on why your business benefits best on social media.

Prediction #2: Rise of social commerce

Why: Malaysians spent MYR 1.8 billion on online purchases back in 2010 . In 2011, there was a rise of e-commerce enabled websites (putting behind the usual blog layouts), electronic marketplaces (e.g. Mudah.my, AsiaAsiaMegastore.com), digital services (in government and private sectors alike), group buying sites such as Groupon and the recent opening of PayPal’s Global Operation Centre in Malaysia. To top it off, these businesses have been promoting their sites across social networking platforms using various methods with 94% of Malaysian online consumers using social networks as a guide to shopping (source: Nielsen Company).

Before and After E-Commerce Integration: Online Fashion Entrepreneur – Soul Chic (from the MOFEW community)

What does this mean: Businesses in Malaysia are beginning to recognize the importance of using electronic mediums while consumers are experiencing the convenience of online purchasing. Having that said, consumers may grow and continuously seek social proof or recognition from their peers and businesses when making a purchasing decision.

Prediction #3: Increased importance of social media integration in marketing campaigns

Why: Existing local business pages on Facebook have been using similar strategies in building their presence using various promotional campaigns such as sweepstakes or contests in which will continue to grow. Having said that, competition will increase having to attract the consumers’ attention which may lead to the need for more innovative or integrated social marketing campaigns to break out from the norm.

Local businesses such as the above video are already innovating to be different from their competitors.

What does this mean: As business competition increases across platforms, the demand and expectations among consumers also increases. This demand may act as a requirement benchmark in which businesses have to keep up (or surpass) with, whether it is the level of engagement, method of engagement or even the tools of engagement.

Prediction #4: The growth of mobile

Why: The growth of smart phone users in Malaysia is scary. A recent report by Nielsen’s online consumer survey in Malaysia revealed that the number of smart phone users are expected to rise from 48% to 89% within a year.

Thousands of people queuing at the launch of the iPhone 4s. Image source: www.yogaretnam.com

What’s even more interesting is that 83% of existing smart phone users are using free apps while 37% are on paid versions.

What does this mean: This suggests that the penetration rate of smart phone users are not as low we thought it has been and people with such devices ARE using mobile apps. We may be able to see a rise in the adoption of mobile driven / optimized websites, apps, mobile games or a wider use of quick response (QR) codes.

What do you think?

My 1000 Awesome Things: Goodbye 2011, Hello 2012

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January 1, 2012

| Jan Wong

In case you’re wondering – this site also reveals part of my happenings in life, injecting a little bit more flavour to the site as a whole; something lighter than the usual information dosage, especially for the weekend :)

2011 was a very challenging year for me. Don’t get me wrong – it was great, but challenges abound and I’m happy to say that I’ve managed to rise above the challenges. I’m sure you have, too! Here are some of the highlights (and reflections) of my life throughout the year 2011:

#1: (Still am) a part time lecturer

I was a little skeptical whether I am capable at first but I actually really enjoy teaching and working with young people. The opportunity to share my experiences with my students and to learn from them in return really is priceless.

#2: The evolution (and growth) of OpenMinds Resources

OpenMinds Resources started off as a tech based start-up company but took a turn in 2011, now focusing on assisting brands and businesses establish their web presence using various tools with social media being one of them. With the recent additions to the founding team, the company is now positioned to grow even more in 2012.

#3: The opportunity to represent Malaysia at the International Greentech Eco Products Exhibition / Conference

This came as a surprise as I was invited to speak on the potential and benefits of utilizing social media in the green industry at the conference among international delegates that were representing their country’s green tech ministries.

#4: Having launched two major consumer events in Malaysia

The Lelong.my E-Commerce Fair was Malaysia’s first ever offline e-commerce event which drew more than 60,000 visitors in August 2011. I also had a simple social experiment done throughout the event. The Malaysia’s Online Fashion Entrepreneurs’ Weekend (MOFEW) successfully featured more than 100 online entrepreneurs nationwide having received tremendous support from industry leaders such as PayPal and over 30,000 visitors.

#5: The opportunity to present my academic research paper at the Global Communications Conference

This was quite an experience. Never in my life I was given the opportunity to stand in front hundreds of academicians from all over the world to present a piece of academic research. The experience was amazing and to my surprise, it was very well received!

#6: Published my first academic research paper

The presentation wasn’t all! The paper entitled: Social Media Integration Framework will be published somewhere in 2012. This will be my first academic publication yet! I’ve also made available a copy of the research paper here if you’re interested.

#7: Meeting the Deputy Minister of Higher Education in person

Another exciting experience having to step into the parliament to have a meeting with the deputy minister himself at his office. It wasn’t a long meeting but it was great to have the opportunity to sit down and share what MOFEW is all about and to know of his support towards young entrepreneurs in Malaysia.

#8: Involvement with youth movements and projects

It’s been an honor and privilege to be able to work alongside Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) in putting together activities and events to grow and nurture up and coming entrepreneurs. Just recently I’ve also been invited to be part of a panel of speakers for an entrepreneurship campaign in which I had to create a series of video sessions before the actual talk. The introduction video of myself was just released a week ago (this is also my very first video recording)!

#9: I am still alive!

Yes, I am! I’m grateful and it’s true because it is also in this year that a truck decided to drive into the back of my car on the road. Now I don’t drive a big car so the lorry was huge in contrast to what I was in. Amazingly the damage wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be and no one was injured. Thank God for safety.

2012

I’ve no doubt 2012 will be an awesome year with great challenges ahead but really, challenges only allows you to be better positioned for the future. One wouldn’t be able to grow without challenges so brace them and brace them proud. Never give up. Keep moving forward.

Here’s to an awesome 2012!

and all these are possible because I’ve got an awesome God!

1000 Awesome Things is initiated by Neil Pasricha and I’m simply sharing my own 1000 awesome things to remind myself of how awesome life can be if we pay attention to the small yet awesome things in life.
What is that awesome thing that happened in your life today?

My 1000 Awesome Things: My First Publication

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December 4, 2011

| Jan Wong

In case you’re wondering – this site also reveals part of my happenings in life, injecting a little bit more flavour to the site as a whole; something lighter than the usual information dosage, especially for the weekend :)

A couple of months back I was offered with the opportunity to submit a research paper on social media and I thought to myself “this could be fun!”. I submitted an abstract with the title “Social Media Integration Framework – Preliminary Stage” and it got accepted by the Global Communications Conference (GCA).

The framework speaks about the importance (and the process) of creating a social media strategy in organizations today and will be split into two different papers.

With that, I presented the proposed Social Media Integration Framework to academicians / professors from different countries and to my surprise, it was very well received and the paper will be published in 2012!

This will be my first academic publication yet.

Awesome!

My 1000 Awesome Things: Hard Work Paid Off

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November 27, 2011

| Jan Wong

In case you’re wondering – this site also reveals part of my happenings in life, injecting a little bit more flavour to the site as a whole; something lighter than the usual information dosage, especially for the weekend :)

Opening Ceremony of MOFEW 2011

After months of preparation, the largest gathering of online fashion entrepreneurs (MOFEW) was launched on the 11.11.11 and attracted about 30,000 visitors over 3 days at the Mid Valley Exhibition Centre.

Though the turnout wasn’t what we expected to be but working together with PayPal, Amber Chia Academy, Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) and the Deputy Minister of Higher Education was an invaluable experience.

Not to forget the project team members that made everything possible. I’m greatly indebted to all of them :)

Awesome!

14 Attributes for Your Entrepreneurial Success from Silicon Valley Icons

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October 22, 2011

| Jan Wong

What makes a great entrepreneur? Is it the skills, the mindset, or perhaps the money? So I had a golden opportunity to attend a 2-day conference – Silicon Valley Comes to Malaysia and this conference brought together many great entrepreneurs including Shawn Fanning (co-founder of Napster), Jawed Karim (co-founder of YouTube), Jeff Hoffman (co-founder of Priceline.com), Konstantin Guricke (co-founder of LinkedIn), Naval Ravikant (founder of AngelList), Jonas Kjellberg, Paul Bragiel and many more to encourage and assist local entrepreneurs here in their endeavors.

Silicon Valley Comes to Malaysia

The two-day conference was filled with power packed sessions and the opportunity to network and build relationships with other entrepreneurs was amazing. I even bumped into Krystle (@mskrys) from Twylah for the first time beyond the avatar.

Okay, enough talking. Let’s (finally) dive into the 14 attributes of how you can make it as an entrepreneur I took home from the Silicon Valley icons themselves:

#1: Codes are the new literacy.

You cannot afford to be technologically illiterate when the world is now built on codes. Learn to code!

#2: Do something that can accelerate and you like.

Start something that is scale-able. Not because of the money, but because it is your passion.

#3: Know what your customers want.

Never get your friend to test your product. Go to the customers.

#4: Given a choice and a limited budget, spend on marketing, NOT an office.

You want to have an office like Google but that can wait. Focus on growing your business first.

#5: You cannot do this alone. Get a co-founder.

You’ll definitely need help. If not for extra hands, you’ll need him / her for morale support.

#6: You’re not as smart as you think you are.

The day you think you’re smart, that’s when you grow otherwise. Listen to what others have to say.

#7: Surround yourself with people smarter than you.

Don’t get intimidated by smarter people. You WANT smarter people to work with you.

#8: Play the role you play best and let others do theirs.

Never designate a role that others can’t play their “A” game in.

#9: Build your team around their goals. Not yours.

Have your team know what they want to achieve and work towards their goal. Support is important.

#10: Document your failure.

Never brush a failure aside thinking you’ve learnt from it. Get to it and examine the cause of the failure.

#11: Don’t hire resumes. Hire character and integrity.

Past experiences do not matter. Hire based on who they are and their contribution.

#12: Don’t change the work to fit the people. Your people should fit a specific business objective.

Don’t change your objectives because of your team. Have your team fit into your objectives.

#13: You will fail. More than once. Get over it!

Failure is a part of life. What makes you think you wouldn’t?

#14: Compile data, connect the dots and ask the big question – “What can I do today that I couldn’t yesterday?”

Be aware of what’s happening outside your comfort zone. Look out for opportunities that wasn’t made available yesterday.

My favorite – Q: “What is the secret to success?” A: “When you’re busy looking for that, I was busy working for it”.

Which of the above resonates with you the most?

My 1000 Awesome Things: Representing Your Country

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September 18, 2011

| Jan Wong

In case you’re wondering – this site also reveals part of my happenings in life, injecting a little bit more flavour to the site as a whole; something lighter than the usual information dosage, especially for the weekend :)

A week ago I was given the privilege to represent my country Malaysia as a delegate to the International Greentech & Eco Products Exhibition to share about how social media can be used to increase the level of awareness and participation among consumers in the green industry held at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre hosted by the Ministry of Energy, Green Technology and Water of Malaysia.

It was an awesome (yet scary) opportunity as the sharing session was done among international delegates all over Asia, representing their country’s green ministry including Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, Cambodia, Vietnam, Pakistan, Japan, Fiji, India and more.

What can I say about this but awesome?

AWESOME!

1000 Awesome Things is initiated by Neil Pasricha and I’m simply sharing my own 1000 awesome things to remind myself of how awesome life can be if we pay attention to the small yet awesome things in life.
What is that awesome thing that happened in your life today?

The Lelong.my E-Commerce Fair 2011 and A Social Media Experiment

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September 1, 2011

| Jan Wong

The last couple of weeks has been nothing but busy, followed by a major downtime of my site caused by some rather irritating server problems but I’m glad that they are all sorted out now and I can finally go back to my blogging routine.

I recently launched an event for a client (Lelong.my) which is also Malaysia’s first E-Commerce Fair held at one of the busiest exhibition centres in Malaysia – the Mid Valley Exhibition Centre. The event lasted for 3 days over the weekend with the main objective to highlight the E-Commerce industry in Malaysia and to educate consumers on the convenience of E-Commerce.

Before you go about wondering why an event of such nature is required, consumers in Malaysia generally are not very comfortable with online purchases and the limitation of payment services makes things worse. However the E-Commerce scene in Malaysia is slowly picking up over the recent years which led to Lelong.my’s decision in bringing the online experience offline for all to see.

The event brought online retail businesses from electronics, books, gadgets, fashion apparels, home appliances and etc together along with various support industries such as payment gateway giant – PayPal, web hosting providers, shopping cart solutions and more. By doing so, consumers are now able to find out more about such services and get started right there and then, ultimately mass educating many who were clueless about e-commerce.

As a whole, the event attracted over 60,000 visitors throughout the 3-day event with over a million impressions online across various platforms including blogs, Facebook updates and tweets plus complementary press write-ups on several local newspapers.

A Social Experiment at the Event

Being myself, I thought it would be great to put to see if social media is effective for a corporate consumer event in Malaysia. A part from the usual online promotional campaigns using Facebook (which was well received), I tested the usage of Twitter and Foursquare, two platforms that aren’t as big as Facebook in Malaysia.

The experiment is simple and it comes in 2 different parts:

Part 1: Using Foursquare to target existing Foursquare users.

A new venue is created on Foursquare prior to the event (without any specials) just to test the popularity of checking in. The results?

It didn’t cook up a storm but the results are rather interesting. The newly created venue managed to bring in 24 check-ins (with a mayor crowned) and 1 tip from a visitor within the 3-days as compared to the venue’s other check-ins (Hall 1, Hall 2 and Hall 3) which have been created at least a year ago.

This suggests that visitors are more inclined to check-in to an event compared to a location (like the exhibition centre) even when there are no specials to be given away.

Part 2: Using Twitter’s location based search to target tweeps within the area.

We closely monitored users that were checking in to the Mid Valley Megamall and those that are tweeting within the vicinity of the venue and sent them an invitation to check out the e-commerce fair at the exhibition centre.

While the temporary Twitter handle only received a handful of followers, the invitation sparked conversations among interested tweeps and we were able to share the event with many others.

What does this mean for other corporate consumer events in Malaysia?

Facebook reaches the consumers at a larger scale in Malaysia as compared to other social platforms
Foursquare specials have the potential to be an attraction or incentive for visitors to come by (or just to check-in)
Twitter is a good tool to create conversations, create interest and responding to feedbacks
Twitter’s location based search allows you to capitalize on the crowd that is already in the vicinity. You just need to give them a reason to come by.
You should not rely on one social platform alone. Consider other platforms to reach out to other pockets of consumers as each tool have their individual strengths and audiences.

What are your thoughts on utilizing social media as part of an event’s marketing mix? Any ideas to spice things up?

Note that the experiments were done on an as-it-is basis with its conclusions drawn from a personal perspective only.

My 1000 Awesome Things: Launching Something

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August 28, 2011

| Jan Wong

In case you’re wondering – this site also reveals part of my happenings in life, injecting a little bit more flavour to the site as a whole; something lighter than the usual information dosage, especially for the weekend :)

Do you remember the last time you launched something publicly by your own? How did that feel? Last Friday was the launch of an event I’ve been working on for the past 8 months – the Lelong.my E-Commerce Fair at one of Malaysia’s largest shopping mall / exhibition centre – the Mid Valley Exhibition Centre.

It definitely felt good to see how the event came together especially on the day before the event where all the setup is done, witnessing the transformation from nothing to life, from plans on paper to the actual thing itself.

Awesome!

My 1000 Awesome Things: Getting a Free Drink from @StarbucksMY

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August 14, 2011

| Jan Wong

In case you’re wondering – this site also reveals part of my happenings in life, injecting a little bit more flavour to the site as a whole; something lighter than the usual information dosage, especially for the weekend :)

How often do you get a free drink on the house? I know I haven’t got one in a while. It was a normal visit to a nearby Starbucks outlet to purchase some gift certificates. While I was waiting one of the barista came and offered me a drink and apologized for making me wait. I definitely wasn’t expecting something like that so it was a very pleasant surprise!

Awesome!

My 1000 Awesome Things: Receiving a Job Offer Out of the Blue

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August 7, 2011

| Jan Wong

In case you’re wondering – this site also reveals part of my happenings in life, injecting a little bit more flavour to the site as a whole; something lighter than the usual information dosage, especially for the weekend :)

Ring ring! I looked over to my cell phone to find a call coming in from an unknown number. I answered hesitantly as unknown numbers are known for telemarketers. I was wrong. The lady was calling from a respected airlines company in Malaysia and was offering a job position that requires the management of their company’s online presence and 30 existing employees.

Wow! That definitely caught me by surprise.

Awesome!