Transcription
Yuka Nakasone 0:08
So thank you very much for coming, everybody. And let me introduce this panel discussion, my motivation to create this panel discussion, social selling session was a conversation was Tim, about the increasing influence on social social media, in our professional life? Or maybe overall? Welcome again. And thank you very much for joining Team. Here we have Tim Hughes. He's a pioneer of social selling and no worldwide. One of his co authored book is called social selling techniques to influence buyers and change makers. He's based in London, UK. Yes, it's his book. I have it. And currently, He's ranked number one by influencer marketing software. Or not deca, is it correctly, Analytica? Yeah, Analytica at the most influential social selling person in the world. As well, in 2021, LinkedIn said he was one of the top eight sales experts globally to follow. Oh my God. He is a Co Co Founder and CEO of de la Ignite, helping people market and sell well, whatever it is from big to small,
Kate Vostokova 1:50
I guess. You got I'm very sorry. I just want to check if he's sharing the correct slide. What I see now was takeaways and QA. Is it what you want to share? Or is it some others? Okay. Okay, great.
Yuka Nakasone 2:04
Just for a moment, I'm going to go back.
Kate Vostokova 2:10
Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I think that's the right thing. Is
Yuka Nakasone 2:14
Lhasa here. No, not yet.
Kate Vostokova 2:17
We're still looking for him. Okay.
Tim Hughes 2:21
Let's go with Bernie.
Yuka Nakasone 2:22
Yeah. Hi, Bernie. Thank you for coming. He's based in Hong Kong. And Bernie is a creative digital and social media marketing professional, working with Fortune 500 brands, through social stand the social stamp limited, social stun limited. This is a company he founded? Yes, yeah. And he's also a radio show presenter and newspaper columnist, and a lecturer at several academic Institute's including universities. On top of everything else. He is pursuing his Doctor of Business Administration in marketing at Polytechnic University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. And I came across Bernie through my network with Chinese marketers, and I really wanted somebody who can speak about Asia. So we have a little more holistic view for the global situation of social media and social selling and in the presentation, I got to know him and in the preparation, I got to know him and I know this is just the beginning of our relationship and thank you very much for for coming. And now we are looking for lesson
is he here? No no right. Yeah, just
Kate Vostokova 3:56
no he's not yet
Yuka Nakasone 3:58
a moment please. Wow. So anyways, I think we need to go ahead and present the situation
Tim Hughes 4:13
I see. I see that he's in chat.
Kate Vostokova 4:17
Okay, the host
Tim Hughes 4:19
and panelist is just said hello in the chat
Yuka Nakasone 4:26
so can you make him Kincaid
Kate Vostokova 4:31
um, I can find him by his name. So maybe he's using some Oh, now I see him Yes, sure. He will be in a second.
Yuka Nakasone 4:39
But he's taking a picture. That's a good idea. Great. Cheese
Lahcène Guerrouj 5:11
Hello, can you hear me? Hello? Yes. Can you see me?
Yuka Nakasone 5:16
Yes. Thank you very much for coming Lahcène. Okay, so yeah, let me introduce Lahcène Guerrouj Lahcène is that e m e a region content marketing strategist and manager at Salesforce. He's also based in London, UK, but originally from France and a native French speaker. He comes with a strong content management marketing, product management analytic skills. On a day to day basis, he manages international cross cross functional teams and projects. He says he's a multidisciplinary international online expert. I think it is coming from his daily work as a hub for a variety of internal functions, agencies and technologies and systems. Is that right?
Lahcène Guerrouj 6:18
Yeah, that's correct. When when when when we talk about content strategy, one of the thing which is very important is that we've not focusing on the on the strategy itself on what we need to do. But the how, which is very important. A lot of the content, people will tell you that. And there was a lot of reports out there that share a big percentage of the content that you produced never see light. So successful content strategy. It's about making sure that it drive impact. And it gets the content out. Once you set up your content strategy needs to be aligned with your operations, your backbone, which is very important, and making sure that it translates into your analytics, which is a whole generic from ideations, SEO, analysis, research from your audience's content production projections, optimizations, and then release management and analytics. And that feeds the loop for your next content strategy. Wow, what you've learned from your content that you put together what you learned from your, so you have to work with a lot of systems, you have to luck with a lot of operations. And you have to put your hands on on some of the system and say, That's work. That doesn't work. I like it, I don't like it. Spreadsheets, a lot of people use it for very long times, and what content to content free content, that's okay. But when you scale, you need to have automations and AI in a lot of tools. And there is always a I'm going to finish with that. There is a moment when you create content. And there is a moment, the moment when you localized or transcripts. But your audience don't see that your customers, your prospects, your viewers never see that what they see it is your brand communicating in one voice. But you have to integrate all those different processes into one gigantic plan to make it compelling and working for them. So what's your conversation you're seeing? And there was all those diverse and different groups and agencies behind that? So yes, cool. Optional teams, digital everyone, you have to make sure that they are organized to other they renew your content planning. They did.
Yuka Nakasone 8:27
Thank you great insight, and welcome. And he's one of my peers, I think global form retail Europe, and definitely my go to person in terms of digital, and marketing. Now you so right. So welcome lesson. And thank you for joining today. So let's ask the audience. We have a great panel talking about global social media. But do you feel that we use more social media after the pandemic hit? Let's see how everybody answers. I don't see the chat, though. Oh, yeah, here. Yes, indeed. Yes, yes. Yes.
Tim Hughes 9:24
Yes. Yes. Not really. Of course. Absolutely. Yeah. No,
Yuka Nakasone 9:29
no, no, no. Wow. It's interesting. Let's see later. No. So let me take you through a little bit of data to talk about it because the overall feeling is there was a surge of social media use, right. And now we want to see the data. This is coming from Sam Okay, our friend. He's a data person. And he, he creates some great reports. I don't know, every week, every month, every quarter, every year, every quarter, every quarter, yes. And then I'm going to put the link to his site if anybody's interested in. But there's, there's there are very good reports on his site. So let's go through it. As you see here, there are now foreign hub billion social media users around the world, equal to more than 57% of the world where our total population, yes, the number of social media users is still increasing at an average rate of more than 1 million per day, that 30 new users every single second, okay? The typical global user spent an average of almost two and half hours per day using social platforms. At current rates, that word was spent a combined total of more than 4 trillion hours using social media in 2022. At a global level, the average working a social media user now spent 15% of their work wake life. So waking life when we awake, using social media. Around the world, social media users make active use of 6.7 different social platform per month. These platforms include social networks, chat ads, video platforms, collaborative pimples, and even q&a services. So social media is much more than a single homogeneous opportunity. Yeah, more than seven intent internet users age 60 to 64 says that they research brands, products and services on social platforms, know Google social platforms. When looking for information about brands, global internet users aged 16 to 24, and now more likely to turn to social media than they use to search engines like Google. So young people using social platform rather than search engines. Yeah, more though, one in three internet users a 60s to six four sets, that they rely on social media for news. I don't know if this is good or not. But this is the tendency for in five. working age internet users says that they they use social media platforms to communicate with colleagues, partners and suppliers, meaning that social media is just as relevant in the b2b world as it is in b2c environment. So, the source is from KBOs and DWI. And now we have to kind of Thank you, Simon camp, he did all this, he does all this work. And here's the kip, KPS founder and CEO, and all all other organizations like GWI, Hootsuite, we are social, thank you very much for this data. And they allowed me to use all these presentations here. And the links to the to the report is here. Data report report.com data reporter.com. So let's dive in. So, from all of this, I like to see your opinion team. What was the pandemic's same phrase for social media? Thank you and
Tim Hughes 14:54
thank you for inviting me on the on the panel. Really appreciate it. I think You know, social media has changed the world. It's changed the way that we was changed the way that society works. And it's changed the way that we do business. And the pandemic has just accelerated that. I mean, we've all probably got examples, you know, before, before the pandemic, trying to get people on Zoom, to have some sort of conference would have been impossible. And now it's just seen as a natural thing. My mother, my mother, who's 83, you know, she runs Wine groups on, on Zoom, where they send the bottles around, and they drink it. And but before the pandemic, they wouldn't have done that they said, it was impossible. And social media has changed so much, so many things from the Arab Spring to, you know, to what's going on geopolitically in all different parts of the world, and from the way that we buy as well. Because we, because of the pandemic, we've been forced to sit at home and, and and spend our money somehow.
Yuka Nakasone 15:53
Yeah, yeah. And you wrote this book, social selling, is this a new word, or you invent it, or there was the term but they, we didn't use this term a lot.
Tim Hughes 16:08
The term actually comes from, I think it's when there was a, according to Wikipedia, I think the term was invented about 2014 20 2015. Or maybe even earlier than that, there was a discussion about this thing called sales 2.0, which is a term that's kind of disappeared, which is about the change that was taking place in in sales, and really, you know, social selling, even though there's been through a number of forms to digital selling, remote selling, modern selling, and that but social selling seems to be the term that kind of bubbles up to the top where which everyone seems to either understand, or at least grab hold of and see that as the the definition for the whole of this.
Yuka Nakasone 16:48
Yes, so in a few words, was the definition of social selling.
Tim Hughes 16:55
So I have a definition, which I'm going to read out. Yeah, I'll read it slowly. In case there's people that don't have English as their first language. So we see that's our business, we see social selling as using your presence on social media, and behavior, to build influence, make connections, grow relationships, which lead to conversations and commercial interaction. Now, some of that sometimes on social selling, it can happen a lot faster. And I think we'll go into those details into some of that those examples. Sometimes it may take a lot slower, especially in the b2b environment. But ultimately, what we're doing is we're using our presence on social media to sell stuff, which is what I mean by commercial interactions. But ultimately, there's a way that you can do that. And we need to remember that nobody likes being sold to so there's a dichotomy there, in terms of how do we sell to people when people don't like being sold to?
Yuka Nakasone 17:54
So just marketing on the social media is not social selling? Or is it a part of social selling?
Tim Hughes 18:02
I think that I think that the terms kind of get merged into into one, I think, you know, there is some people may call it some of the prospecting elements of, of selling marketing. And other and I just think that the terms do just get merged in, and I'm, I don't really get into the details, because I'm really not
Yuka Nakasone 18:24
bothered. Yeah, sorry. Okay. No, no, no, it's okay. I think, from what I see, and what I read, that this marketing and sales are becoming very close, and this sales process is getting shorter and shorter, and marketing's merging into sales process. And this is, I think this is what's happening on social media more, and it's kind of obvious. That's my observation. But does anybody have any comment?
Tim Hughes 19:04
I think that the sales process is speeding up. And certainly I've seen that, from my experience in corporate life through to the work that we're doing at the moment. And I agree with you that there's a merger going on between sales and marketing. And and I don't think we've actually defined what that word for that yet. But I think that there's that that's taking place we're seeing, we're seeing salespeople are successful when they're doing marketing, a marketers are being successful when they're doing sales. So there's a there's a, there's a, there's a there's a merger, and I think, you know, as a, as a society and as organizations, what we need to do is, is recognize that and, you know, I've worked for corporate companies where we threw rocks at marketing, on email, and they threw rocks at us. And what we need to do is actually make sure that we're coming together have a common language and a common framework. and work together.
Bernie Wong 20:01
Right? Yeah, pretty agree that actually we do two word is the social selling words, including quite the both part of marketing and sales, what we also use the term called social commerce. And we have a lot of audience here, just giving us some feedback like nine or and Nicholas pretty shared about say, having said when we're defining social selling really hard to say just about the sales part, but including the marketing part as well.
Yuka Nakasone 20:31
Yeah, great. And so what's the benefits of using social commerce social selling?
Tim Hughes 20:41
I think it's, for us, it's it's just seems to be a very natural process to follow. The thing about social is that it's about relationships in conversations. So think about it as if we were walking into a room at a networking event and you walk up to someone and have a conversation. You don't immediately walk into the room and say, buy my product, because we're great. And I think also what's happened is that all of us have got really tired of, of brand messages. You know, Oracle say that, you know, we're we're hit by at least 10,000 brand messages a day. So even if you have the best photography, the best marketing agency, the best copy, and you've gone to the Atlas Mountains and photographed all the supermodels. And did you are just another message? And I think that we're all kind of bored with that.
Yuka Nakasone 21:37
Yeah. So you're saying that, that just putting out that advertisement, or just putting that brand message on the social media is not it's social selling, but not taking advantage of the power of social selling? Because you said, we have to do like what we, we do in the networking event, build a relationship and sell. So this is the digital version of, let's say, networking, and why people buy? I mean, that's what we have to think. Right? I mean, you said people buy maybe because the product is great, but from the people who, you know, you trust or something like that. So people it's kind of people buying from people based on the relationship. So that's, that's something like casual definition of social setting. For you.
Tim Hughes 23:00
I think, you know, we've dealt with all these corporate messages, it's just seen as basically corporate propaganda. And I think, you know, there's certain certain brands that we love, you know, you know, it may be Nike or Adidas, which we would, we would maybe associate ourselves with, but for the vast majority of people, we're not big brands, you know, we sell guttering nor we were a plumber or we were small, medium to enterprise, and we just don't have that clout. But if you look at you know, look at Nike, when Nike want to sell tennis equipment, they go to Serena Williams, when Nike want to sell baseball equipment, they go to LeBron James, you know, if they want to sell football or soccer equipment, they go the Christian Ronaldo. And that's because we actually associate ourselves on social with the people that we like. And generally what happens is that we start buying from people that we know like, and trust.
Yuka Nakasone 24:01
Yeah, yeah. I hear you. So lesson. Oh,
Kate Vostokova 24:06
you can you can sorry. People are complaining that they barely can hear you. So if you please can speak louder. Okay. Thanks.
Yuka Nakasone 24:17
Can you can you hear me well now? Yes.
Kate Vostokova 24:21
Well, I can hear you well, but yeah, let's see what's chat is saying having Hi says no.
Lahcène Guerrouj 24:26
Maybe if you put your microphone Yeah, maybe it is your scarf now. That little white stuff. And you
Yuka Nakasone 24:34
put Yeah. Okay. Sorry about that. I'm not. I know. I can't see the chat right now. So I hope I can. You can hear me well now. So let's then Tim was talking about big brands, and you're coming from the big brands but you you're you're also dealing with lots of other brands that are on your The platform as well. So what would be the tactics? Or what would be the ways to, for us to take advantage of this kind of social selling opportunities?
Lahcène Guerrouj 25:18
So, thank you very much. I think it's a great question. So maybe there is a need to differentiate one thing. There is a b2c social selling and b2b social selling. Yes, that approach would be slightly or drastically different. Really. balls have come in Grant. But I'm going to say a few words, briefly on one of the benefits on the b2b one, and then I'm going to focus on the b2c is what we want to focus how many I understand, but on the b2b one, what you need to take into consideration is that social selling will help you eliminate and reduce the cold calls that just assume your sales team needs to do. And you're going to build a stronger relationship and integrate it further. When your prospect is deeper into the process, and engagement rates on the stage of the funnel, and you engage with them in social sharing, you're going to have a deeper engagement. And a better engagement on the b2b front is very key that this is something you need to do. Because you reduce your cost to market technically called cold, you don't need that anymore. And when you talk to a prospect, which is more deeper into the into the funnel, you have a higher engagement rate. Now, on the b2c side, the biggest trend we've seen with social media is about human relations of relationship with brands, and companies. It is what it is the most important. So as Tim was sharing brand news, big celebrities that provide a humanization in relationship to sell their own product. The fundamental what we see why we do it is because of trust. I trust Cristiano Ronaldo, I trust Serena Williams. But the beauty with social media, you don't need to hire oops, you're not going to hire one of the stops celebrate is you can be your own celebrity, you can build up your own relationship directly with your audience, because suddenly, you're visible, you're the one behind that brand, and you bring trust. And people know that it is not a big corporate tactic. As Tim was saying, it is really human behind that who suffer, who knows what I'm talking about. They go through what I'm talking about, I want to connect with that person better, better. And it's the same trend that we've seen with influencers, who do some placement of products, that sometime it's bring trust, damage, trust, because we know it is basically a hidden form of ads. But with social selling what you do, you come clean with your audience and say, Hey, here's what we do. Here's our values, and here's our products. But one of the things you can do social sharing is that you don't need necessarily to focus on your product, you can as well engage directly with your audience, and share your values.
Yuka Nakasone 28:06
And how do you do that? I mean, where do we start? Or what kind of because we, we, when we, when we think about this, we start to think like a mountain and maybe it's, it's a little bit big. I mean, it's,
Lahcène Guerrouj 28:28
it's, it's fantastic. So the first thing, first and foremost, let's get with something, be present, the visible, just start make yourself available on Windows platform, start promoting some things. And I know brands have done we think about contents, and about graphics and design too much. We don't want to promote something with a lower quality because of some get ready and sometimes good work. And sometimes it's not going to be working and you know, what does it do your human add content that has a terrible score sometimes. And some of them goes to to saving, and you're learning like that, but be present and visible for your audience. One of the feedback you've seen with some certain influencer, that they raise and certain brands, they had the quality of burn out, because they felt compelled to promote content every day. Whether they had anything to say or whether they don't have anything to say, which is kind of a pitfall of that trends because he really wants to play that rules of being visible and presents have a cadence is it on Monday? Is it on Wednesday? Is it once a week it is it is every month, Bill your audience and set the expectation on when you're going to communicate with them. But you fall on that trend, there is a lot of different trends that we can talk about it. We know that the features and the nutrients that we see on social media, one of the things that I I know we talk about ephemeral content, content that disappears Right. It's kind of new, new. For us marketers like we want content to stay that we will be optimized that we create a huge ROI. Because we spend a lot of time on graphics, we spend a lot of money on certain things. But technically, some of this content visit is going to last only for 24 hours and get that so much impression rate. The video is becoming more and more prominent, and all of us needs to be kind of comfortable on how we create video today. Short video, the long video, the medium video, it is important, this is the way how people consumes the attention span of your audience is reduced. So get your contents in such a manner that your message can come across very nicely. And tech sometimes could be too big, too complicated. And the wording is good. So what I teach it is takes actually a video, attention span is short. So make it sweet and entertaining. Another one that you want to Yeah, so I want to finish with two points, if I may Yuka. Another part is about live streaming. It's huge. And you need to have on your content plan, some live streaming sessions. And the other one is out of my mind. I'll come back into checker.
Yuka Nakasone 31:14
Yeah, yeah, you always talk about snackable content. So yeah, so maybe that's something that we have to think about it and talking about snackable content. Bernie, I think you'd have something in Asia. That was, you know, like snackable content.
Bernie Wong 31:36
Yeah, I love the term dead. lands are raised about say snackable content is so delicious. It sounds so delicious. Bite Size. By sight, it is kind of similar things, right? There's a case during the pandemic, say I'm working with Ken on Hong Kong, they used to sell some camera like over three or $4,000 camera we in regarding the consumer behavior. In Hong Kong, we used to buy those price level of camera on site in the store. So they can talk with the salesman, the ambassador or try on trial and error of instead of doing it online. But during the pandemic, Canada, Hong Kong have a little bit rich of what they are doing. They produce a lot of these bite sized short video by those Ambassador actually did is what actually is actually echoing what our lens mentioned about recent presidents and visible but also what we mentioned about of building the trust. So if Why won't that be present and visible. I love to add one more term. You authentic expansionary when we are doing something like what lens mentioned about live streaming things, is a big hit in China years ago. For the past two years, Hong Kong is running the live streaming show quite hot. And I see that super popular among the whole world. And I will see I will say the biggest trend and biggest tips, I will say that is being authentic instead of just hot selling something bring value to the audience.
Yuka Nakasone 33:19
So you're saying that live streaming is big. Do people sell on the streaming? In nature? Yeah.
Bernie Wong 33:32
Yeah, they do. They just like, I will say that is actually old fashioned things used to watch a lot of TV show, selling things on a TV show. And then COVID Yeah, yeah. And get you keep telling you to call and order the product that we're showing on as seen on TV, right, something like that. But it's just putting on online nowadays. But I see the trend is transforming a little bit. Instead of just hustling the things the audience is more demand, the more demanding they are expecting something more authentic art and just how selling with the price wars.
Yuka Nakasone 34:17
Yeah, so it's a little different from a TV TV show that sold stuff, right? I mean, they don't they don't really deeply sell the product but they are selling right. So that's
Bernie Wong 34:36
Yeah, at the very beginning that is kind of similar but I see the transformation but of course for the TV show you need to call and then to do the order, but you see the live streaming things we can we can direct your order over the platform.
Yuka Nakasone 34:53
Yeah, so integrated directly order from the I mean Would you mind explaining what kind of platforms do you use in Hong Kong?
Bernie Wong 35:09
In in Hong Kong, we're using main for social media platform. We are mainly using Facebook and Instagram, I would say. But of course, there are some marketplace like Amazon. In Hong Kong, we have Hong Kong TV more. But in China, we may use the Timo or Taobao. And then the Taobao is kind of develop quite advanced that during the live streaming show, you can already click on the button, and then you can order to things.
Yuka Nakasone 35:37
Yes. It's your ordering. Yeah. So I think that's the difference of the platforms, right. So platform. I mean, from Facebook, on Instagram, if you click the button, you go to the size to buy. And, and Taobao, maybe you can just click and just buy it there.
Bernie Wong 36:09
Yes or no, because we know, we all know that Facebook and Instagram already integrated, or half the function of the Facebook and Instagram shop is. And if you are comparing the Taobao, I would say that you can treat it as a China version of the Amazon. But they, they're doing a lot of live streaming show. So you are emerging, emerging that Amazon has the live streaming show, and then you can during the show, you can order it directly on on Amazon. That is something similar.
Yuka Nakasone 36:38
I still didn't see that here, though. Wow. Let's see. So I like to walk through a little bit of social media use in the world with the data that Simon created. So please bear with me. I'm going to show the presentation again. Are you seeing this?
Tim Hughes 37:11
Yeah, we can see.
Yuka Nakasone 37:12
Yeah. So the world's most used social platforms. Can you see the names Facebook, YouTube? Yes. I mean, YouTube is social media. WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger. WeChat. Tik Tok. douyin, QQ. Sina Weibo, Telegram, Snapchat, qui Shu, Pinterest, Twitter, Reddit cola. So that's the reason why. In his explanation, there's some QA forum as well. It's considered and YouTube is considered as social media. Right? So that's the tendency of social platform in the world. But if you ask people, the same people, what is your favorite social media platforms? It changes a little bit. The first is WhatsApp. Then Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tik Tok, Facebook Messenger in line, first time diagram, Pinterest Snapchat VK cup Kakao Talk. I message discord, LinkedIn, Reddit. So from this, I wanted to have escaped one. I wanted to present a wanted to explain that. In the world. The dominant platforms are different. This is messenger. I couldn't find the map with the platform platform. So I came up with this messenger apps, for example. In Europe, we think that WhatsApp is something common that we always use. But in the States, it's the No, no, I mean, I have to ask to the US people. Are you using WhatsApp? Because it's not like default. And if we go to, to Asia, it's more complicated. For example, 90 something percent of Japanese people use line. And if I say line here in Europe, some people don't even know, you know, so it's it's a little interesting phenomenon here. And as we're localizing localization and globalization professionals, we have to know what kinds of things Your target audiences are using when you think of taking your product, or your services in the world, and talking about social media and social selling. So that's what I wanted to show. And from here, I'm going to open the mic. And we want to talk about what's the do's and don'ts of social media with the audience. So, Bernie, do you have anything about do's and don'ts?
Bernie Wong 40:39
I just loved what you share about, say, knowing the culture in case you're going global. Say, in Hong Kong, we use whatsapp and in China, definitely WeChat. WeChat is combining social social purpose, combining the payment, social media, never a messenger or all in one this kind of so knowing the culture is definitely something and live streaming is what we all know that is the big trend. But when we are in Hong Kong, we experienced already two years of the heat of the live streaming, we see the in China is that kind of still a big hit. But it's it goes to a price war, it is actually those merchants providing the product like 80% off, and then to the live streaming platform. And then just in media 50% of kind of things. But the most important things that I want to say to the marketers that when you're thinking about live streaming commerce, social commerce, things, remember to bring fellow and not hustling. Yeah, and then follow up with that live streaming. Catch all those audience just like what we're doing, we definitely want to build a community, instead, just treating it as a one off show. So there is important things.
Yuka Nakasone 42:10
Okay, thank you very much. How about you lesson?
Lahcène Guerrouj 42:15
Right. So when we see this map is very interesting, because we see WhatsApp is number one. So I'm going to go full on on on WhatsApp, I'm going to go full on messengers, my first recommendations on actually the do's and don'ts altogether, do not alienate your audience, be equal to everyone. Think long term, the world keep changing very rapidly. What is true today will be different tomorrow. So if you suddenly be present only on WhatsApp, and do not do anything on on, let's say on Viber, or on WeChat. On Skype, we can talk about Skype, actually, I used to work for Skype at a time where I had Skype used to be very prominent. Since changed very rapidly, and then you're going to lose your advantages that you have there. Think don't envision we know that a lot of the generations, the millennials on a different platform. So even though Facebook is dominant today, they struggle to get the millennials and the younger generation going into Facebook. That's a trend that we've seen. So when we see that map at the moment is kind of okay, that's great. I'm gonna go full on on what's on whatsapp on my countries. That's not what you need to do. You need to serve everyone equally with the same volume of content, try to make sure that you have a strategy that even though the or the return on investment, is likely to be the one set and platform in which you have the long term vision. We've seen with COVID sanctions, in six months, our platform will be number one and will be broke down and will disappear Wizzy easily and you have a new platform coming up and take over the whole market. Very if we take the example of Skype. They used to be the leader, they used to be dominant, they have all the platform the infrastructure, from a brand perspective, they used to be very in the top 10 and zoom to cover and how come scheduled and do what Zoom is doing today. They had all the infrastructure so I really want to make sure that he won't understand don't focus on one platform be equal and 71 equally
Yuka Nakasone 44:21
diverse. Your
Tim Hughes 44:22
Oh, I totally agree with that. I have a I have a friend who put everything into Google Plus a million million followers on
Yuka Nakasone 44:34
Wow. So how about YouTube do's and don'ts for
Tim Hughes 44:39
I backup everything that the rest of the panel have said Get Started? is the first thing you know there's a There's an old Chinese saying isn't that the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today. Really just get started. And the next thing is to experiment with To go where your where you think your your customers are, but if it doesn't work, and, and don't be afraid of making mistakes, we're doing a lot of work with live streaming, because it's really popular at the moment. And if the thing falls over, and if zoom fault falls over, now we just laugh at this, just laugh about it, it happens. You're working with technology. I love the comment there about community, I think community is so important. And for people to get started, you need to understand this is about your audience is not about you. And the more that people tend to use the word value, I, I'm not sure people know what adding value means. Because it can mean so many things to different people. But this is about treating your audience as, as, as the people in effect as extended family, and giving them insight and educating them and helping them. And, you know, I use the term it's community before commerce, actually, you need to be thinking about using community before you start selling stuff. And if you do that, you'll sell more, it's disingenuous to say don't sell, but you'll sell more by doing that. And then really, I think it's about the stories that you tell, and the way that you tell it. And, and, and making sure that you're, you're empathetic to your audience. And if you show that empathy, you'll find that people will actually walk towards you. It's like witchcraft is quite strange the way that you can get people to walk towards you, rather than most most people without the salesperson I'm not going near them.
Yuka Nakasone 46:29
So thank you very much for three of you. For your insightful intervention. I like to see if there's any interesting question coming up, Kate.
Tim Hughes 46:54
Isn't it interesting about how different countries and different geographical areas use different messengers? It's just, it's just it's interesting in the chat, how, you know, someone's you know, someone saying, Oh, we use vibrant, someone else saying they've never heard of it. Yeah. It's just amazing.
Yuka Nakasone 47:11
Yeah. It's not just chat chat. app, for example. I can't use LinkedIn with my colleagues in Japan, because they don't use it for professional use. I mean, yes, but not many people use their LinkedIn. It's obvious cultural differences. They can't really put what you do well, in front of people, it's kind of
Tim Hughes 47:40
Yeah, it's like Twitter. Twitter isn't used a lot in Australia, where it's, it's used in, you know, North America and, and Europe. It's a it's amazing how different platforms are used in different different places differently. So
Lahcène Guerrouj 47:53
if you want to you can I put up all the q&a that will come up into into the chat. Would you like me to read them for you? Yeah, go for it. Okay, so we have a question. Sanford, how do you think social sharing shoe transform to get more benefits during a pandemic for b2b side?
Yuka Nakasone 48:12
Who would like to take that?
Tim Hughes 48:15
I think that in the pandemic, most most people have had to switch over to to using social because they were having to work remotely. And we'll see how much the pendulum swings back the other way. But certainly in the UK, and in Europe, where I'm working, we're not seeing much change, even though we've opened up, we're not seeing much change in terms of the way that we were working during the pandemic, you can't see people face to face and have meetings. So you have to find a different way of, of building relationships and having conversations and the obvious place to go is to go to social.
Lahcène Guerrouj 48:55
Yep, so I can share the fewer than that. A b2b side, the buying process is longer. So invest a lot in your brand and your value. This is a condition that we want is not necessarily about the product, it is about who I'm going to partner with because I want to have a strategic partner who will be willing to be agile, and work with me in the long run. We know that 39% of the b2b professionals said that they were able to reduce our content contact research time with social selling tools, which is the blog I've just shared with you on the chat that has those insights. For b2b, really the main platform you need to be presenting is thinking really is very important that you start there, but not only you need to make sure that you have your own channels and your own relationship with them. In other platform as well. On the b2b Front work, don't stop at 5pm. So make sure you have as well kind of communication to engage with your audience over the We can schedule content and the type of things on evenings share your values. For me, there was one thing that I realized a lot of frenemies, they talked a lot about our product and how busy they are and how they can help their audience talked about your venue, access. First, we believe a lot about on equities. And if you go to our channels and your handles, we're not putting any we're not saying hey, we are the best what we say sometimes, but when I say we have the best content, the best platform in the world, we talked about sustainability equalities, and there is deeper issue in different country, we try to get a position on that. We talked about empathy, it's very important that value or share, then you have some brands BraunAbility messaging that helps you address that. That will be my two cents. On the b2b side.
Yuka Nakasone 50:49
Bernie, do you have anything for b2b side?
Bernie Wong 50:53
If if there's focus mainly on b2b, I will say the economy marketing is the key because, yeah, we mentioned all mentioned about building trust and then providing value. And I see the content marketing to say, like a building, authentic blog, providing a lot of relevant information to your target audience is actually maybe this is not exactly the sales stage things, but it's definitely the pre sales stage that when the when the target audience reach out or searching certain information, they have your, your brand awareness, so they trust you more is kind of quite important to the b2b commerce.
Yuka Nakasone 51:42
Lesson talked about empathy. And now I have a question here from Harvey, who is talking about empathy all the time. And he's asking about generation gaps. Here's a question for the panelists. I am a social seller. Yes, big time. I love it. It's a way of life, a way of getting to know people. I never thought I'd met even a way of traveling and discovering the world. But here's the difficulty I find I get to older generations. He is a millennial. What's your advice to get to all generations? How do we bridge the gap? Great question. Okay, perfect question. Thank you, Harvey. would go for this.
Tim Hughes 52:42
I think one of the things that you need to look at I mean, whether it's on the b2b or b2c side is that yes, there may not be certain people of an older age on social media or active on social media. It depends what your work you're doing on a b2c perspective, but in certain b2c So for example, a car, a BMW, for example, is a considered purchase, there will probably be more than one person, actually, that are part of that buying process. And you certainly get that in in b2b. Gartner says there's usually about 10 to people involved in a buying process. I'm working with a supply chain software company where they say there's 100 people. And so what you need to be doing is a you need to be working with other people as part of that buying process. Microsoft observe, for example, what they do is that they actually find a particular type of person within the organization, which they call a change maker. And they actually use that person, target that person and give them content. And that person actually goes and shares that content with other people internally. So there's different ways of doing I know that that isn't necessarily something where it's b2c, where you're selling something online, maybe through a live stream, and it's 10. You need to get something purchase really quickly. But there are ways around it.
Yuka Nakasone 54:03
Okay, thank you very much. It's it's very interesting. Bernie, do you have any?
Bernie Wong 54:10
I remember you mentioned about storytelling. And I read a book from Alex Osterwalder core value proposition, simply speaking dementia. He mentioned a point that I actually every customer have the pain point that you should be the one who are providing the pain reliever. So why on goes back to Java question is that I don't think we kind of say getting close to get to all the different customers instead, maybe the same product towards the different target customers. You may need to tell a different story to close that you just like to I'm not sure if everyone heard about the Medano milkshake. Story, the case, maybe four or five you to think about buying a milkshake maybe for just for kids. But you know, the truck driver love the milkshake because it helps to keep them awake. So every user, customer might use the product in different way to resolve the different ping pong. So maybe we need to study what the ping pong of them. One of my tips for studying Ping Pong is that I love reading the reveal of the products from different marketplace. And I love to read one star or two star reviews. Because those those reviews are really giving us some insight of the ping pong, often from the target customers.
Yuka Nakasone 55:41
Okay, thank you very much. So to lesson. So have you DS is really social seller, he creates relationships with lots of people. And really, I don't know how he sells but he sounds like Yes. His question was, he does social selling well, but his struggle is to to appeal to the to all the generations at one at once. How can he bridge the generation gaps? How can he use the Show social to to appeal to all these generations? That was his question.
Lahcène Guerrouj 56:27
It's I think, a common issue that everyone has. You can't please everyone is very difficult.
Tim Hughes 56:33
You can't Yeah, I don't think it's possible.
Bernie Wong 56:38
Water is a product that please everyone. Right? Oxygen is one that presumably is essential needs. So you might want you to cut the Maslow Pyramid and see where your product is. And then you need to segment so one of the do. One of the thing we do as marketer, one of the first thing we do in any tactic, we segment all markets, what's our audience look like? As 2017? What's their pain point? What do they want? And how do I turn on my messaging to them? Is my product working for them or not? Is very important. How do you make everyone working together and being I need to know more about the product? I need to know more about your market. Pizza is a good one, because I please everyone and they managed to bridge the gap. He started with a young guy. And now it's back to everyone.
Tim Hughes 57:26
I think I think what happens is if you try and please everybody, you please nobody, and you create content that's too bland. You know, you need to be we talked about snackable content, you need to be really focused about the particular person that you're you're looking for and you're trying to appeal to.
Bernie Wong 57:41
And you'll go back to the community, you talk with your community first you have the founders, they love you, they're with you, and they are the one that will help you expand to reach a wider audience, then I will probably start with them. Would you say talk to them, make sure that they help you they engage with you. They make you grow. And you need to start somewhere. But it depends on the product.
Yuka Nakasone 58:01
Really? Yeah. Okay. So thank you very much. And with this, I like to wrap up. And thank you very much for today. Today's discussion, I certainly learned a lot. And let's continue. If anybody has any question in the audience, please let us know. We're going to keep talking about this. Okay. Yes,
Kate Vostokova 58:28
yes. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Don't worry, I see that you have a lot of questions left unanswered, but I will post them on LinkedIn and I will invite our panelists to answer live and LinkedIn. So don't worry. Thanks again for joining us. I will start a short poll to see how many like this discussion. Thanks, everybody and have a nice day to all of you. Thank you. Bye bye bye bye.
