Currently one of the projects we are working on is about the commercial use of social media by Japanese companies. The study will be included in my presentation at the marketing conference in NZ where I will be track chairing “internet marketing” session. Although the numbers show a kind of a bleak and contrasting picture about the social media story here in Japan , the signs are definitely encouraging.
To understand how popular Japanese brands use Twitter and Facebook, we analyzed the top 100 Japanese companies` brand pages on these two networks. Apparently, Twitter is favored over Facebook by far. Despite the fact that, only a fraction of Japanese internet population uses Twitter (around 13% penetration), 22 Japanese brands already have profiles on Twitter. 9 out of the 22 companies have been actively engaging with the Japanese consumers (posted a message in the last 24 hours) and enjoy thousands of followers. The ratio of followers to following reflects a similar pattern to the US as most companies follow a rather small number of people. Softbank is the most followed brand, 52,444 followers, and Ajinomoto comes second with it’s Ajinomoto Panda account.
When it comes to Facebook, it is a totally different story. Only 2 out of top 100 Japanese companies have pages on Facebook: Nissan and ANA. Seemingly most of the companies are just testing the waters and not jumping on the bandwagon so quickly.
