The Empowerment of Public Learning from Indonesia’s Case

1. Islamic Public Relations, Social Media and Marketing The Empowerment of Public Learning from Indonesia’s Case Syafiq Basri Assegaff Presented in the 2nd Global Congress for Muslim PR Professionals Teheran, Iran, 8-9 December 2012

2. Social Media: Powerful tool in Indonesia to gauge public opinion • Credited by President SBY, October 2012  Government has listened to people’s online aspirations • Facebook & Twitter Users  Demanded President to support the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) - in its investigation of the multibillion rupiah driving simulator graft case at the National Police’s Traffic Corps. • #SaveKPK (plead to support)  reached 9 million (October 2012, Jakarta Post) • #DimanaSBY (Where is the president)  Messages: Contemptuous comments; rally calls, Petition signing, demo. • Among the activists: former president daughters, university rector • Internet has changed everything  Similar with ‘The Arab Spring’ • Social Media has changed the communication between politicians/brands & publics

3. 208 RTs of Anies Baswedan’s Tweet , 3 Oct 2012 Save KPK – restart Indonesia Dare to be Honest. Great! Huge poster outside KPK Building – 25 Nov – long-lasting effect

5. Conversation and Sharing: The ‘New’ Way of Communicating • Social Media: two ways and horizontal communications. • Public perceptions over brand: determined experience sharing about you/the brands • Not by your promotion material and advertising. Indonesia’s case: • Social Media plays huge role • Publics share and discuss everything in Social Media. • New emerging markets: 230 million population • Netizen: 55 million (December 2011). • Internet penetration: 20,1 % of population (June 2012). • 210,391,300 Mobile subscribers or 89 % penetration; • 51 of Indonesian web users stream or downloaded online video content each month (Nielsen).

6. After the incident of #SaveKPK in October, recently (on 2 December), the Indonesian President Instructed all government officials in all levels to be actively using Social Media. (Metro TV News, 2-12-2012) http://www.metrotvnews.com/metronews/newsvideo/2012/12/02/165518/Presiden-Instruksikan-Kepala-Daerah-Aktif-Gunakan-Jejaring-Sosial/1

7. Conversation and Sharing: The ‘New’ Way of Communicating • Tweets per day: 1,293,131 = 15 tweets every second • 87 % tweets from mobile devices. • Linkedin users : 860,000 (Social bakers,Nov 2011). • Number of blogs : 5,270,658 (Saling Silang, July 2011). • Foursquare : 312,000 (Source: Penn Olson). • Oct 2012: • Facebook: almost 50 million, 4th (after USA, Brazil and India • Twitter: 30 million, 5th in the world (after USA, Brazil, Japan and UK) • Jakarta: is the most-active city in the world posting tweets.

8. Behaviour Types: 1. Outside ring: active Social Networks (million) 2. Pink: Messagers and Mailers 3. Blue: Content Shares 4. Green: Joiners and creators of groups Indonesia & the Philippines : 2 of the highest in Social Network Penetration: about 76 % of active online users (world : 53 %)

9. Democratization of Media • Hundreds of million netizens (incl. 500 million Twitter users): • share their experience with each others • ask • recommend your brands in Social Media. • We reach new era of democratization of media: • Here we observe and measures audiences’ perceptions upon brands • Social Media applications: • Enables everyone, including PR to go directly to the consumers. • Socmed Apps + many strategies on the Internet:  Powerful communication (conversation), with consumers who demand information and want to gather, organize, and share content with their online communities. • Internet foster for individualizationand interactivity • Gives power to Social Media users anywhere in the world. • Everyone individually able to say whatever they want any time/place. • Word of Mouth the powerful medium to promote or kill a brand  becomes ‘world of mouth’, or ‘world of mouse’.

10. Interactivity: • Enhancing that power, • Every individual is able to communicate with their old and new friends, • Socializing with people who stand for the same cause they care, • Sharing their ideas, • Influencing each others. • 9 M Indonesians tweets made the government reacted  Showed power of democracy, to curb the corruption. • Democratization of content: • Dictates “shareability” and • Dissemination of your story by revealing and refining it through public forums and channels. • Social Media let the community guide how you approach them • It’s now up to them, up to the ‘community’ and it can be YOU!. • It’s the users/customers markets • Not the producers or the brands’ markets.

11. Layering; Learning from Experience • 20 September 2012: Jakarta Election governor - 7 million electors • Fauzi ‘Foke’ Wibowo (incumbent) vsJokoWidodo • 18 September : shared a blog post on the collector (hub) Lintas.Me (www.lintas.me). • ‘11 Attacks by Media towards Foke’ (11 SeranganTerhadapFokedi Media). • It was a simple restoration of 11 media sites with negative tones towards the incumbent • Surprise: • - 19 Sept : 1,000 viewers (200 % usual) • - End of Sept : 2,500 viewers (hot topic). • - 29 Nov : 2,989 viewers. • Consequently blog viewers rocketed: • 18 September 2012: 1,421 visited the blog, 644 viewing the particular article. • Most viewers (529 and 249) referred from the hub (Lintas.Me) – which came from Facebook and Twitter users. (Because after linking the post into the hub, I had also shared its link to my Facebook page and Twitter account.) • The rest: referrals from Search Engines, Facebook and Twitter themselves. •  It showed shareability and influencing is very important in the Social Media.

12. On 25 Nov 2012 On 27 Nov 2012

13. Retweeted to: 12,152 followers

14. The Original post in the blog

15. 18 Sept 2012: 1,421 Pageviews From collector 34 in Facebook Twitter 644 views

16. Shareability and influencing is very important in the Social Media. • Layering Social Media channels -- to enhance a campaign = sharing with others. • More fruitful than only sending message or news to Twitter or Facebook. • Put content in a context. • Great content ?  only until somebody readsit, sharesit and linksto it. • It is not enough to only produce good quality contents. • We need to put them in context, to do things that draw attention and links to them. • Social Media participation is another layer; Perhaps one of the most effective for: • Enhancing your search engine optimization (SEO); • Drawing eyeballs and all-important inbound links to your content. •  Pick a good timing and necessity speed with the news, then we could disseminate our story in the most effective way by revealing and refining it through public channels and forums.

17. What people do with layering • Make a good simple plan: how, when to hit cyber world and across channels. • Write a brief story in the blog or site, enrich with pictures or graphics. • No details, use links to different sites to be accessed later by the readers • Users are busy, don’t like to read fuzzy articles, the simpler the better. • In my case, around 200 words, to guide the readers, and a list of 11 media stories. • Send the post’s link (URL) to the collector (hub): eg. Lintas.Me site.  This is Most important component of layering. Foundation of amplifying. After uploaded: promote the story into Twitter, YouTube, etc. • Support with retweets, likes, etc  essential to share your content. • Take care of it in all media channels. • Remember: relationships aren’t built by copying and pasting content. • Social Media is about conversation. • Say thanks to people who made respond, retweeted or liked your messages.

18. What does it mean for PR? • Lessons from the case: • to facilitate social distribution (of PR or marketing) messages, practitioners can become accessible resources. • Audiences have unparalleled reach and access to information • So practitioners can help social media publics analyze and scrutinize the clutter (uncertainty).  Thus, information sharing and interaction = cultivate relationship. • Provide online discussions for useful insights that fulfill user needs • Lead to further interaction: may be expressed as a user’s decision to “follow” or “friend” the organization or practitioner. (Brian G Smith). • Participate as an individual, not as a marketer or producer.

19. Need a new depth of understanding, expertise, knowledge in order to establish a meaningful relationship between: • Customers, Influencers -- and the company (your brands).  Now we learn through listening and participating. • No more Web 1.0.  Now: complete transparency, proliferation of the Social Web, called Web 2.0 • PR also transformed into PR 2.0 era. • Transparency, expansiveness and overwhelming potential  alarming and inspiring for PR. • Minimum: it’s sparking • New dialogue, • Questions, • Education, • Innovation, and • forcing the renaissance of PR business (Brian Solis).

20. Meet the Connected Customers -- Marketing Aspect • Net & Web 2.0 changed how consumers engage with brands. • Transforming the economics of marketing • Making obsolete many of the function’s traditional strategies and structures. • Social Media: • Is not only about chatting and sharing blog posts or pictures. • it is about how to create an effective incorporated marketing approach as a platform – which appropriate tool should be used in a given situation. • For marketers, Social Media is bringing back humanity to all digital life. • We are no longer users, or shoppers. • We are people again. For marketers, the old way of doing business is obsolete.

22. Consumers: • More relax in their relationship with brands -- They are self-indulged. • Connect with numerous brands through new media channels • Beyond manufacturer’s or retailer’s control or knowledge • They Evaluate a shifting array of them, • Often expanding the pool before narrowing it. (David C.Edelman). • After purchase, consumers: • May remain aggressively engaged, • Publicly promoting or assailing the products they’ve bought, • Collaborating in the brands’ development, and • Challenging and shaping their meaning. • Social networking shifts power: in business = shifting power from producers  to consumers. • Businesses (Brands): • Have to practice engaging customers in deep and meaningful ways in every stage of the product lifecycle. • Change the way they conduct business and look for opportunities, • Change the way they embrace it and understand the new phenomenon in relations with Netizens and Social Networkers. • Must be able to better connect with consumers and push out to more people through those connections.  These days people are more conscious of the connection they make.

23. Social Networks: Medium for people to talk about the people behind companies. • If people trust the executives, probably will trust the brand. (Breakenridge) • Two questions a brand has to answer : • What do you stand for? • Can I trust you?  Both Qs applied to the above case of Indonesia’s Twitter users. • They eventually shared, encouraged with others who stand for the same anti corruption movement. • They made conversations, and influencing each others. • They lifted up the Social Media empowering potentials. • In other time they will interact on other issues or products

24. Consumers: still want a clear brand promise and good values. • Now, they have much more information and choices • They can: • Consult search engines like Google anytime • Compare prices at real-time, • Ask other customers they never met for advices freely and fast. • Thus, Internet shifts ‘balance of power’ toward customers • Creates the need for a ‘pull’ strategy, not push. • Buyers decide the purchase in their own rules, • Not the brands or sellers rules. • They would say: ”Don’t push me. Just tell me where you are and I will come to visit you (or your website) whenever I want, wherever I want and in the way I want it.”

25. Consumer Decision Journey • Based on study of the purchase decisions of nearly 20,000 consumers across five industries (automobiles, skin care, insurance, consumer electronics, and mobile). • Consider – Evaluate -- Buy and Enjoy – Advocate and -- Bond. • Consumers’ perception during the decision journey always important • But , the most essential is brand experience: • Reach, • Speed, • Interactivity of digital touch points thus, it requires an executive-level steward. (David Court and his colleagues in David C.Edelman, HBR) • Going social is no longer an experiment for marketers; it is a reality. • Connect people who share same interests, however niche • Niche market  now make sense (previously inaccessible) • Social networks give individuals a voice  it empowersthem.

26. Segmentation in online marketing become more important. • internet eliminates boundaries in geography, • firms can communicate and reach segments previously difficult to access. • Internet users grow, change and become more heterogeneous  there will be an increasing number of marketing opportunities. • Segment becomes narrower but finer – we will have more niches. • These niches can be pretty vocal. • Result: individualsas important asbrands. • From the Indonesian case : one activist or even a young girl in a small city can have more friends >> than a big billion dollar brand in any one social network site. • This is the power of niches. • Marketing aspect: all niches being aggregated = can make up a very significant market for business. If we combine: • Wisdom of the crowds • Social Media • Democratization of content  They all now become important factors for a new and better marketing and PR activities.

27. Tastemaker, The Influential Word of Mouth. • Million people becoming the new tastemakers(Chris Anderson, Long Tail). • They act and share interests as: • Individuals • Groups, and • Other group with unclear behavior (watched by businesses). • Can be anyone: not super-elite of people; they are us. • When tastemakers say something, they bring influential WOM. • Amplified WOM is the manifestation of: • the 3rd force of the Long Tail: tapping consumer sentiment to connect supply to demand. • 1st force: democratizing production, populates the Tail. • 2nd force, democratizing distribution, makes it all available. • But those two are not enough.  • Only after the 3rd force, which helps people find what they want in this new superabundance of variety, really brings up the potential of the Long Tail of marketplace.

28. Tastemakers, The Influential Word of Mouth. • They are simply people whose opinions are respected. • Influence the behavior of others, • Encouraging them to try things they wouldn’t otherwise pursue. • Some are the traditional professionals: music critics, editors, or product testers. • And our interest expand with the exploding availability of wide variety of things • Thus, demand for such informed and trusted advice now extending to the narrowest niches. • Our culture and economy are increasingly shifting away: • From a focus on a relatively small number of hits (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve,  and moving toward a huge number of niches in the tail.

29. 518, 142 followers This writer account becomes an ambassador for domestic products

30. Tastemakers, The Influential Word of Mouth. • In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare. • Social networking: • Not only shifts power from producer to consumer • But it radically enhances the consumer power. • The advent of Web 2.0, its being pushed beyond the formal boundaries of the organization to consumers. • Thus, businesses have to engage customers in deep and meaningful ways in every stage of the product lifecycle.

31. Communication Flow General Account of a Digital Corporate Communication Strategy (Sample ) Twitter Customer Relations Account Regional Account Corporate Strategy Marketing Communication • Be Human • Listen Closely • Engage Openly • Act Genuinely • Be Social to others • Connect the Dots Evangelist Account Corporate Communication Digital Channel Facebook One and Only Facebook Page • Develop ToR • Treat Facebook as a Webpage • Engagement: eg. Create games • Show that You Care • Show that You’re company is also Human-based Organization • Information • Media Relations • Issue Management • Customer Relations • Social Responsibility • Community Relations Corporate Communication Activity & Events Thank you to Mr Aditya Rahmana Sani, Paramadina University Post Graduate Student.

32. Keep moving on. Always Promote Good News. React fast on Problems. Keep the focus on customers. Encourage and let the Customers build the program (With your Key Messages) An example of a Telecom Provider Customer-for-Customer Program Thank you to Mr Aditya Rahmana Sani, Paramadina University Post Graduate Student.

33. The Future: What Does Matter? • Only God knows. It can be much more than what we see now. • Our job: make sure that communication are done: • For the right reasons, • at the right time • To reach our stakeholders with information, • in a manner that gets their attention. • We need to: • interact with them where they thrive the most – in their communities – and • always remember that marketing is one big online conversation. • New PR (PR 2.0 or 3.0, etc) is not just about good communication; • It is about finding the path to the conversation.

34. The Future: What Does Matter? • PR 2.0 is about finding a new channel to connect with people and get back to basics, which was all about cultivating relationship. • PR has and always will be about relationship. • Social Media changed everything at the mass level. • “New PR” will really helps companies connect with people through their channels of influence and conversation. • It is no longer about messages or audiences; • It’s about discovering: • the ‘people’ that matter, • where they go for information, and • why what you represent matters to them specifically. • Critical requirement: executive level to participate.

35. Some recommendations for Muslim PR • Are encouraged to be active in Social Media. • Share, get involve and be interactive. • Islam taught us to always giving generously. Also share things other PR professionals would not do such as: • sharing information about the high values of Islamic teaching. • Maintain trust, for reputation: • Muslim PR professionals -- more than others (of honorable profession) -- ought to nurture consistent professional conduct and ethical principles. • Not only broadcast messages • Always listen, create conversation and engage with the best Islamic manner. • Forge themselves and their brands reputation and relationships as a as truly Muslim professionals.

36. Syafiq Basri Assegaff , MA,MD • Blog: www.syafiqb.com. • Email: syafiqb@gmail.com • Cell – Mob: +62 811 821 036. • Linkedin: id.linkedin.com/pub/syafiq-basri-assegaff/a/813/608 • Twitter: @sbasria • Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sbasria