In the December 2010 issue of Asian e-Marketing I introduced in detail 3digitalminds in the article 3digitalminds Power your Online Business in Greater China where the three experts decided to bundle their expertise to increase their range of services.

Presented as a specialist in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), I want to point out this time that social media has also been part of their portfolio from the beginning. 3digitalminds have actually been running social media projects for more than three years now for different industries such as consumer electronics, finance, software, and B2B. They design the strategy, execute the project and do the reporting, while the scope of their social media services comprises blog marketing, Facebook and SNS marketing, online PR, Twitter and more.

The consumer insight reports are another important tool they generate for their clients that provides loads of detailed information about how consumers talk, evaluate, review, and recommend products and services - not only at the brand level but also by digging down into detail specifications of products.

To achieve all this, 3digitalminds developed a sophisticated five-step social media strategy to fully leverage the potential of social media:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  1. Understand your target group. Listen and learn and collect consumer insights. Find out where your target group likes to stay online;
  2. Your target group consists of different kinds of online contributors. Define the right channel for the respective user group;
  3. Execute the channels;
  4. Make sure that channel managers communicate with each other to leverage content and create links;
  5. Track, collect more consumer insights, learn more and use this information to refine your approach.

The main benefits of social media marketing that the three experts name from a marketer’s perspective is gaining consumer insights and the possibility to learn about consumers’ way of thinking and decision making; from a user’s point of view certainly the way to interact, to instantly collect information, and to spread words and thoughts in real-time.

One of the most common mistakes made when planning and running a social media marketing campaign, the experts mentioned, is a lack of patience and good execution. “Starting social media projects and not maintaining them is the biggest one. It’s about conversations with your peer group and many people just expect results too quickly and give up too early. Great content and products/services are the best basis for successful social media campaigns”, they sum up.

Asked what they think gives them the edge over their competition, the group of three confidently stated:

  1. We have bits and bytes in our blood and a pure passion for the digital business;
  2. We have deep and rich expertise in different industries and different online business models;
  3. We operate online portals by ourselves (e.g. financial review site, group buying site) and by doing this we generate detailed insights about the online business which flows into our agency business. Thus clients always receive state-of-the-art knowledge and consulting which is based on practical experience.

According to 3digitalminds, however, doing online marketing in Asia and getting paid for online marketing consulting is still a difficult task, especially if SMEs are the target group. The awareness for marketing and branding is still lacking behind other markets, they note, and therefore they still have to invest a lot into the education of their clients before seeing any revenue. As social media already plays a more important role in Asia than in other regions of the world, they expect a strong move to mobile social media services and location based services in the future.

By Daniela La Marca