Optimizing your social media presence in ASEAN

Social Media for ASEAN

Your company’s website and/or blog should be its center of gravity on Internet. Maintaining a strong presence on social media can however complete your digital marketing, if not spearhead it. Here’s a little presentation of how to optimize your social media reach with some extra tips for digital marketing in Southeast Asia.

Social media strategy

You shouldn’t engage on social media without  thinking about what you’re going to do there, just because “it’s cool” or because “everybody is doing it“. There are a few things to remember.

1. Social Media vs Search-Engine Marketing

in terms of ROI, Social Media Management is still lagging behind Search-Engine Marketing: making your website great in terms of design, technical and content quality as well as linked to and inked from your peers should make you rank higher in search engines. This is still is the number one way to obtain traffic to your website in most cases.

2. The right network for you

Even though creating a profile on the major social media creates a certain branding aura, and could also benefit your broader digital marketing, you should focus your effort on the networks that corresponds best to your target audience, especially for smaller companies with smaller resources available for it.

3. It’s not about you, it’s about them

Once you have selected the network or the few networks on which you’re going to focus your efforts, you should publish information that is relevant to your audience and engage a discussion with them. Even though, promoting your products and services through social media is your ultimate goal, you shouldn’t do it too hard and too often, otherwise you will never grow your fan base: no one likes to be spammed with advertising, whatever the medium.

4. Set clear goals

Social media is often best used not for selling but to enhance the conditions for selling later. Even though your final objective is to sell, you can use social media much better to create a community of brand advocates, build trust, receive feedback on customer experience, reach your peers, etc.

You should define achievable goals corresponding to the particularities of each media. Examples: get 1000 likes on your Facebook page, connect with the top 10 bloggers in your niche on Twitter, get 100 followers on LinkedIn and engage directly with them about their relation to your brand…

5. Designing and publishing

All this being said, achieving your goals will be easier on certain networks that appeal more to your market. Even though your presence should be consistent between the networks and with your website, blog and larger branding approach, you will have to publish images and register information on various formats across the different platforms.

To optimize your reach for new followers, increase engagement and maybe also augment the traffic to your website, certain contents will work better than other depending on the platform. Experiment, measure, repeat.

Social media tactics

Having gone quickly over the strategic approach to social media marketing, without waiting much let’s go over the tactical details of how to deploy your efforts on the main social media to optimize your branding and reach.

Research the social media habits of each ASEAN coutry

Like in the real world, on Internet people from each country have particular habits that also need to be taken into account. This is especially in the ASEAN region, where the uses vary a lot between countries, as Internet penetration is only in some countries (Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar), growing fast in others (Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines) while very advanced in a few (Singapore, Brunei).

The same happens for the reach of each network, so be careful to study the real demographic and weight of each network before engaging on it uselessly. For example:

  • People who use social networks tend to be younger that the global averages
  • Filipinos tend to use social networks with a little more activities towards “entertainment” (games, tabloid news…) with a somehow smaller penetration than Indonesia or Vietnam
  • The access to social network through mobile is relatively high in ASEAN countries, often larger than access through PC
  • Bangkok (Thailand) is one of the world most connected city to Facebook and Instagram, and Thailand in general has a strong social networking penetration
  • The use of chat application Line is relatively strong in all ASEAN countries compared to European or American ones
  • Pinterest use is still very low in Asia, consider it only if you have interests in reaching people in America or Europe
  • Even though Facebook dominates in all the ASEAN countries, its access is sometimes blocked in Vietnam.

For more information on some Internet, mobile and social media use and habits, check the following resources:

Facebook Logo

Facebook: user-friendly B2C

Profile images sizes (profiles and pages format)

  • Profile image: 160 x 160 pixels
  • Cover photo: 851 x 315 px

Posts publication tips

  • Posts with pictures or videos receive much more engagement (likes, comments, shares)
  • Try to post at the best times for your particular target audience, use posts management software to post at night and week ends if needed
  • The words used are key to provoke engagement, include questions and coll-to-action for more engagement
  • Note that Facebook has a history of decreasing the reach of business pages, so be careful about the long term objectives that might be severely restricted

Extra tip

  • Keep it friendly and personal, people are on Facebook for their friends: make your company friendly!

YouTube Logo

Youtube: Videos, videos, videos

Channel images sizes

  • Channel icon: 90 x 90 px
  • Chanel cover picture: 2560 x 1440 px

Video optimization tips

  • Fill all metadata information properly, titles, tags and description to make them more descriptive and engaging
  • Add transcriptions
  • Add call-to-action buttons at the end of the video and in your description to convert viewers in followers
  • Add your videos to relevant playlist with descriptive titles

Extra tips

  • Increase your community and connections, publish more videos, to increase the number of views
  • Use Youtube as a platform to broadcast videos, then embed them wherever needed: blog, website, social profiles…

Twitter Logo

Twitter: #Hot news

Profile images sizes (new profile)

  • Profile image: 400 x 400 px
  • Header photo: 1500 x 500 px

Tweets publication tips

  • Participate to discussions in real time thanks to #hashtags and @mentions
  • Add image to your tweets or even videos
  • More engagement on tweets with links and hashtags
  • Carefully crafted, witty, emotional, real wording is key for engagement

Extra tips

  • Great place to find good news publishers and bloggers, “influencers” of your particular market or niche
  • Some people that you follow will follow you back, which is great to initiate the building of your community

LinkedIn Logo

LinkedIn: B2B and B2Pro

Company page images sizes

  • Standard logo (for page and company badges): 100 x 60 px
  • Square logo (for publications profiles): 50 x 50 px
  • Cover photo: 646 x 220 px

Posts publication tips

  • Publish information frequently with pictures or videos or links
  • Link to a landing pages to your website or blog, to maximize conversion

Extra tips

  • Great place for recruiting and finding professional connections
  • Big activity in the “groups”

Google+ Logo

Google+: a bit more business than friends

Profile images sizes (new profile and pages format)

  • Profile image: 250 x 250 px
  • Cover photo:
    • Recommended size: 1080 x 608 px
    • Minimum size: 480 x 270 px
    • Maximum size: 2120 x 1192 px

Posts publication tips

  • Generally similar to facebook, but with a little more images, and easier for B2B
  • Add images and hashtags for more engagement and +mentions for direct conversation
  • Use text formatting: Bold: *word* / Italics: _word_ / Strikethrough: -word-

Extra tips

  • You can add links to your websites and blogs in your descriptions
  • Use “hangouts” for group conference

If you need some more help with your internet presence development and management, contact our sister digital communication agency, Fluorcom.

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