Researching.

Back in the saddle again! On to week 7 and raring to go. This week I continued working hard on the prezi about the Greater China market. Considering I just spent the week prior researching social media, it seemed apropos that that would be my VP's topic of choice to include in the prezi -- social media and it's prominent role in Chinese culture. There's no doubt it is a small world, but the differences between countries' (and companies') online behavior still make it feel incredibly vast at times; i.e. a large number of companies don't see the ROI in social media. Seriously? Come on now!
I'll just outline a brief history of what I've learned these past few days researching the rise of social media; including protests, grassroots campaigns affect on businesses and government practices, as well as stakeholders. Researching these has been very interesting and rewarding to say the least. Of course, given my tight deadline, I was only able to skim the surface of this subject matter, but it is eye-opening and encourages me to continue to learn more about social media and the differences it makes in companies around the globe, not just between the U.S. and China. Especially considering we're not even the top users! Shocking is right.

Top ten most engaged countries for social networking	Average Hours Per Month
Israel	11.1
Argentina	10.7
Russia	10.4
Turkey	10.2
Chile	9.8
The Philippines	8.7
Colombia	8.5
Peru	8.3
Venezuela	7.9
Canada	7.7
United States	7.6

As you may be aware, facebook is banned in China. However, they do have their facebook equivalent, RenRen.com, which reached 31 million active users in 2011, and is now up to 120 million (source: www.chinasocialgames.com/). Facebook had 500 million at that same time, but now that number has reached 900 million (source: finance.yahoo.com/). Not even in the same ballpark, but still impressive considering RenRen is only in China.

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Throughout my experience working in the PR industry in China, I am very curious to learn more about Sina Weibo, the twitter equivalent. It is by far the most popular microblogging service in China, claiming nearly 60 percent of the microblogging market and reeling in 250 million registered users as of October 2011. Each day, 25 million messages are sent on the platform. By comparison, in 2011 Twitter had more than 200 million users and 50 million messages sent per day. (Twitter now has 500 million active, with 340 million tweets daily, (http://en.wikipedia.org/) while Sina Weibo has 300 million users with 100 million messages posted per day (http://en.wikipedia.org/)).

My company is well aware that consumers' behaviors need to shift as the population moves online and we advise our clients to do the same. Since social media has become a regular and popular platform for consumers to exchange opinions, share advice, and discuss brands, ignoring the Internet would be devastating to corporations. It may have been considered merely a lost opportunity in the past, but in China today, ignoring social media is a serious business risk.

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One of the areas I need to improve upon is my Twitter usage and activity. I personally don't tweet as much as I should, but have promised myself I would do better now. It's apparent how crucial it is for a PR professional to understand all aspects of media and to be up-to-date on the latest happenings locally and globally as well. By continuing to follow prominent people and companies on Twitter, as well as more aggressively retweeting and posting original content, I am confident that I will begin to see an increase in my followers, along with greater knowledge about the industry I am interested in. Next lesson: Twitter kred and klout. What are they? And how do you get it? But that will have to wait for a future post :-)

Now it's time for meetings, more Prezi, media monitoring and writing media alerts. 7 weeks down, 1 to go...