AsiaPac Social Data: Why Covering the USA and Europe Just Isn’t Enough

The world’s largest internet population isn’t in the United States.

The world’s fastest growing social networks aren’t based in Europe.

Yet, most social listening vendors who claim to provide global coverage collect most of their mentions from western sites.

In fact, we were guilty of doing just that. For years, Brandwatch and others focused social data collection in western regions. Why? Because it was easy, it was where the customers were, and it was what we thought they wanted.

But, times have changed.

The case for AsiaPac social data

Over the last seven years, we’ve grown from 10 to 1,300 customers and from 100 to 40,000 users.

In tandem with our growth, our customers have become more mature with social data. The way they use and activate social data has diversified.

Specifically, the desire for global data – especially non-western, international sites, not just global Twitter or Facebook data – has skyrocketed.

Our customers use this data to unravel mysteries about their customers, their competitors and more. Here are just a few examples. 

Global data for researchers

One of our clients uses Brandwatch Analytics to track where conversations about new hairstyles start and grow throughout the globe.

We’re not talking about when an A-list celebrity wears a specific style at the Oscars, we’re talking about the early innovators who create and champion new styles.

They thought, ‘if we could figure out where new hairstyles are more likely to start, then we could monitor that region and learn about new trends before anyone else’.

Cool right, but you can’t do it with just American social data.

With Brandwatch’s global data sources, they scoured the web and found consistently that conversation about new hairstyles often started in Asia before spreading to other parts of the globe.

Using Brandwatch to monitor the region to discover new trends – like dip dye or hair chalk – they were able to get a head start updating their product portfolio to accommodate for the increase in consumer desire.

Global data for marketers

While effective marketing isn’t always associated with social networks, there are definitely moments worth shouting about.

User generated content that happens to go viral is certainly one of them.

However, focusing on English language mentions alone means global brands can miss these moments.

Unilever – who own the Wall’s ice cream brand – used Brandwatch to find viral brand related mentions from Thailand.

The social team can reuse these posts for other marketing purposes, create social ads to boost it’s reach, or simply add it to their own metrics.

Without comprehensive global social data coverage, these posts would never be found.

Global data for proactive monitoring

Reputation is everything when you’re the best airline on social.

Long-term Brandwatch customers, Cathay Pacific, have used Brandwatch over the last three years to help monitor their reputation across the globe.

Using Alerts and Signals, Cathay Pacific were notified about changes in their global data.

So, when a Cathay Pacific aircraft was diverted while en route to Los Angeles, Brandwatch spotted an increase in mentions from countries across Asia and notified their social teams via email.

The allowed the team members to quickly work with their communications department to formulate an appropriate response strategy. This alert provided them with a few extra critical minutes to manage the reaction online.