Business people have no choice whether or not to join social media; the only question is how they should do it.
In the vernacular, he quipped: “Umiikot ang mundo, hindi puwedeng nakatayo lang tayo.”
This, in a nutshell, was the message put across by Carlo Ople, Multi-Media Head of TV 5, at the symposium on “Entrepreneurship Advocacy and Business Development through Social Networking” conducted by the Small Enterprises Research and Development Foundation (SERDEF) at the UP ISSI Building at Diliman Campus, Quezon City last March 3.
He cited latest local statistics to show why digital marketing is crucial: 30 million Filipinos using the Internet as of last year expected to increase to 41 million this year; 15 thousand internet cafes in the country; 11 million Filipinos going online everyday; 27 million Pinoys on Facebook; 10 million on Twitter.
While worldwide, 93 percent of marketers are using social media in business, local counterparts, Ople deplores, have been laggards in adopting the technology.
He uses blunt words to rationalize going social among entrepreneurs: “Not only to engage, not only to connect, not only to reach out. But to earn money and give good value to customers.”
Ople’s talk focused on a three-point strategy to use social media for business leverage: (1) Put up a website, “a really good one.” The website serves as perpetual salesman. (2) Use Facebook, Twitter, etc. to drive traffic to the website, while making sure you are getting the right kind of traffic. (3) Listen (to) and engage (the people going to your sites).
Ople also underscored the importance of setting up a monitoring system to gauge how many people are looking for your product and to be alerted every time someone mentions a word related to your product or refers to your business or product whether on Tweeter, Facebook or another social media site.
He also confirmed what SERDEF Trustee Nida Lavador said in her opening remarks – that social media should be integrated into the existing marketing mix of the business rather than undertaken as a stand-alone. It should be, according to Lavador, the old and traditional happily melding with the new and high-tech.
In his own presentation addressed to bloggers and New Media practitioners, J. Randell Tiongson, Director, Registered Financial Planners Philippines, encouraged online small business advocacy. “We must have more entrepreneurism, less consumerism,” he said, citing that among Asian countries the Philippines have the lowest savings rate at 16 per cent, compared with Singapore (50 per cent), Indonesia (28 per cent) and Vietnam (26 per cent).
It is regrettable, he said, that only one of 10 Filipinos prepare for their retirement, that most young people prefer salaried employment, that 90 per cent of our countrymen want to go out and work abroad, that there are P3 trillion in the banking system with a lack of taker-borrowers from businessmen or would-be businessmen.
“This generation should do what it can to make the next better, with better values and aspirations. That’s what keeps me going – to do things that will have impact on other people.”
He asked the audience what their vision was and reminded them that social media could be about making change happen, about plugging for the right values like hard work, delaying gratification, going easy on consumerism.
In her closing message, Dr. Herminia Fajardo, SERDEF Trustee, thanked the speakers, entrepreneurs and bloggers present for taking part in “this small splendid step in the building of an enterprising Philippine society.”
At the end of the forum, the SERDEF website at www.serdef.org was shown as a model of the online small business advocacy that the Foundation wanted to propagate. In her presentation, SERDEF Media Consultant Myrna R. Co encouraged the audience of entrepreneurs and bloggers to contribute articles to its various sections and suggest improvements to make the site truly a resource hub for micro and small businesses.
Celia R. Pascual, Project Manager, emceed the program, while Gloria D. Canela, SERDEF Assistant Treasurer, delivered the invocation. Noemi Lardizabal Dado served as Digital Media Consultant to the event.
