Last week, IIAR Board Member and APJ Chapter Lead – Dave Noble – presented his findings from the latest Intelligen annual survey* on what analysts are looking for from AR in APJ. Discussion focused on social media and what this means for the AR professional.
According to analysts in APJ the number one social media channel is LinkedIn. On average, 61% of APJ analysts use LinkedIn for research “often” or “sometimes”. This echoes sentiments expressed by a panel of analysts at the IIAR’s UK Forum last September. It seems that while analysts have mixed opinions over the real value of LinkedIn, most use it for some form of research and to a lesser extent, for promotion.
In India, LinkedIn is a particularly popular platform with 90% usage, for a mix of both research and promotion. You may be interested to read this article about what recruiters look at when reviewing LinkedIn profiles.
The second most popular social media platform for analysts in APJ is blogs. Of those surveyed 60% said they used blogs for research and 41% for promotion; a result that was particularly high among analysts in ASEAN. This again echoes thoughts shared by analysts in Europe who favoured blogs because it allowed them to have a greater share of voice than company size would allow, offered more literary freedom, an opportunity to express personal opinion and chance for self-promotion.
The overarching message was social media is here to stay and important to understand. It is a widely used communication channel with 93% of those surveyed using social media for research and 86% for promotion.
However, the survey also provided reassurance that we should not feel compelled to understand the plethora of social media platforms currently available. Analysts rely on LinkedIn, blogs and twitter to help them in their work and these we should be familiar with. Some analysts may use other channels, particularly in Greater China and Japan, but these are the exception and not the norm. Our job as an AR professional has evolved and we must utilise these new outlets but be careful not to get too drawn into them and to the detriment of what’s really valuable in our mission to develop strong and positive relationships with the analysts.
Some 20 AR professionals from Australia, Asia and Europe participated in the APJ Forum via webex and in person, with a lively discussion following the presentation of the survey findings. Discussions continued over networking drinks at The Treehouse nearby, where the AR folks were joined by several analysts from Forrester, Gartner, IDC and Ideas International.
Our thanks to Dave Noble for his time and use of survey findings.
Members can download the full presentation and listen to the discussion again via huddle.
*Survey based on 136 responses from analysts across 19 firms in 12 different countries across Asia-Pacific / Japan. The survey was conducted in November/December 2011 by Intelligen Analyst Relations.
What does “AR” and “APJ” mean?
Steve – AR means analyst relations and APJ means Asia-Pacific and Japan. Hope that helps.