Forrester report on social media marketing and engagement: Data Defines The Future Of Social Relationship Platforms (PDF courtesy of Social Flow).

Key findings from the report:

1. Can’t measure effectively. Measurement remains social marketers’ biggest challenge. More than one-half of the marketers said they struggle to gauge the value of their Facebook and Twitter accounts.
2. Don’t know what content to post, or when. Finding and selecting good social content is hard. Social relationship marketers list both deciding what to publish and sourcing content among their top three challenges.
3. Don’t have the human resources they need to succeed. Managing branded profiles can be resource intensive and requires a well-drilled team. But more than one-quarter of social marketers say they don’t have the budget to hire enough social staff.
4. Aren’t getting the help they need from vendors. Marketers’ commitment to social plus their difficulties and disappointments equals an opportunity for vendors.

A reminder, each team will have a maximum of 10 minutes to present on their status, challenges and next steps – based around the deliverable due, via e-mail to the course account, by start of class. We will be in 2 parallel rooms for this, three teams per room. We will then have a short discussion followed by work-time for teams with instructor input. We will then return to the large class setting to debrief on key learnings for the process and tips for moving forward in the last month.

The last hour of the class will be given over to our guest from China. Chunhua Wu, a Marketing Professor in the Sauder School of Business, has kindly provided this background briefing. You are asked to peruse this before class to improve your ability to ask meaningful questions.

The market has changed tremendously in the past few years. Simply put, the corresponding relations are as follows:

Google -> Baidu

Youtube -> Youku

Facebook -> Renren

Twitter -> Weibo

Whatsapp -> Wechat

Amazon -> Taobao

How Chinese journalists use Weibo microblogging for investigative reporting, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism

Technology, transparency and traditional media: How Weibo and Wechat are breaking the information monopoly, Nieman Reports

http://www.seeisee.com/sam/2013/04/02/p3682

http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2288982/search-in-china-how-baidu-is-different-from-google

http://live.wsj.com/video/chinas-wechat-gaining-global-attention/C6A709FF-CAE3-4504-A149-82FEF46DEECA.html#!C6A709FF-CAE3-4504-A149-82FEF46DEECA

http://thenextweb.com/asia/2013/12/11/wechat-is-going-international-in-a-different-way-to-whatsapp-using-games-and-commerce-interview/#!wvGuY

http://thenextweb.com/asia/2013/08/06/heres-why-a-war-has-started-between-chinese-internet-giants-tencent-and-alibaba/#!wvHJl

http://www.scmp.com/news/china-insider/article/1430262/price-war-escalates-between-taxi-hailing-apps-backed-internet

http://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/1408024/chinas-online-giants-alibaba-and-tencent-go-head-head

http://www.forbes.com/sites/hengshao/2013/12/20/internet-companies-encroach-on-chinas-banking-sector/

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/tech/2014-02/17/content_17286062.htm

1) Your self assessment on your social media profile (due start of c3 – tomorrow) is only required in soft copy to DSM.course@ubc.ca

2) Hootsuite Pro access – at the time of writing, only 16 of you have provided your e-mails – the rest of you are very late. Please supply asap to DSM.course@ubc.ca  This has held up the access for everyone as the arrangement with HS is normally to supply the full class e-mail list in one batch. We have now  arranged to split this into two lists, and so the initial student group should hear from HS shortly.

Decoding Social Media is a pioneering course that partners students from the UBC Sauder School of Business and the Graduate School of Journalism to research and develop strategic social media plans for major news outlets like the Vancouver Sun and CBC Music.

One of the groups from last year’s course received an Excellence in New Communication Award from the Society for New Communication Research, a global non-profit research and education foundation and think tank. The awards honour excellence in new communications, digital, mobile, social media and information and communications technology developments.

The students took the Social Media Marketing award in the academic category for a campaign created for Vancouver Magazine as part of the course.

The social media project was also a finalist in the Canadian Online Publishing Award (COPA) for Best Use of Social Media.