Asian markets top global social engagement league table
China leads with Indonesia and India next; mature markets such as the US, the UK and Japan trail, according to the study by GlobalWebIndex
BestMediaInfo Bureau | Delhi | October 25, 2012
Asian markets have topped a new global league table that measures how often and how much consumers use social media platforms. Created by GlobalWebIndex, which has been tracking social media usage among Internet users around the world since 2009, the Social Engagement Benchmark shows that consumers in fast-growing economies are more likely to use a social network or a microblog, upload a photo or video or review a product or brand than consumers in more mature countries.
The most socially engaged group was high income (top 25 per cent) in China while the least active are 55-64 year olds in Japan.
Strikingly, the countries lagging behind the Asian social powerhouses are those such as the US, Japan, Sweden, France and the UK that are traditionally viewed as mature and technologically advanced.
The league table has been calculated using GlobalWebIndex data from 31 countries detailing how much consumers participate in social media, whether they create or upload content and whether they get engage with brands via these platforms either to review products, like a brand or upload content to brand sites.
Source: GlobalWebIndex, GWI.7 Q2 2012. Social Engagement Benchmark
To count towards the Social Engagement Benchmark rankings, consumers have to have carried out each task in the last month. Each key area – participation, creation and brand involvement – is scored out of 400 and the marks are added together and then converted to a percentage of the maximum 1,200 score, which is then weighted to a 100-point measure.
The Benchmark is platform neutral and measures total active use of social media rather than usage of specific global, regional or local platforms such as Facebook, Twitter or Weibo.
The new Social Engagement Benchmark rankings highlight a number of key findings:
In emerging markets where millions of people are coming online every year, social media is a natural part of the Internet experience. In markets where online activity grew dramatically before social became mainstream, such as the UK, the US and Japan, it is less integrated into everyday use.
While specific demographic groups may exhibit a higher or lower SEB than the market as a whole, market differences are consistent regardless of age. While younger, higher income and those with a higher educational attainment all have a higher SEB in all markets, the gaps between markets remain the same.
Brands need to recalibrate where they invest in digital and where they invest in social media in particular. With emerging markets demonstrating a higher level of engagement, the target audiences that can be reached via social media in emerging markets are often larger than those in more mature markets.
Despite significantly lower Internet penetration India, Brazil and Russia, for example, all have larger numbers of socially engaged consumers than Germany, the UK or Japan, for example.
“What this report reveals is that we need to rethink how we classify countries when it comes to social media. Emerging markets like China, India and Brazil have consumers who are far more active than those in so-called mature markets like the US, the UK and Sweden. Thanks to this high engagement, social media reaches more of the total population. There is a huge opportunity for brands to connect via these channels but it's not always in the markets where they think it is,” said Tom Smith, Founder of GlobalWebIndex.
The GlobalWebIndex is the most detailed on-going global study into the Internet consumers' attitudes, motivation and multi-platform Internet behaviour, enabling clients to understand how their target audience is behaving across PC, mobile and tablets.
The study was initiated in July 2009 and has since delivered seven waves of research, covering more than 152,000 Internet users in 31 countries.