- The Arab Spring raised awareness of the mobilizing power of Facebook and other social media.
Companies and governments have struggled to get to grips with social media over the past few years. Some—notably governments—have treated social media as an existential threat. Others view it essentially as a branding or marketing tool for pushing messages at constituents or customers.
Charlene Li, founder of strategy firm Altimeter Group and an expert on leadership and social media, believes those approaches are missing the point. On the sidelines of consultant AT Kearney’s recent CEO Retreat in Cartagena, Colombia, WSJ Frontiers caught up with Ms. Li to discuss the impact of social media in frontier- and emerging-countries and the implications for leaders, both corporate and political, of its rapid and unpredictable evolution.
WSJ Frontiers: How have social media changed the environment in which leaders in emerging countries operate?
Li: Social media enable continuous touch-points between the leader and their followers. Whatever the leader is saying, the followers hear, and vice versa. That is where the relationship—and the credibility—can be built. If you don’t have a functioning press or media, just simple text, email postings in social media channels can work. Social media enable that communication.
WSJ Frontiers: So leaders have to be comfortable with more of a dialogue?
Li: That has always been the case. If leadership is going to be successful, it’s based on relationships, it’s about communication and dialogue. Relationships don’t pop out of nowhere. In developed economies, with well-developed media, it tends to be pretty one-way. Candidates put out a message and it drives people to the polls. In a very fragmented media market, you have to create your own medium. One of the easiest ways to do that is to use social media.
WSJ Frontiers: In the wake of the Arab Spring and in light of recent events in Turkey, for example, don’t leaders view social media as a threat?
Li: This goes back a long way. People have been arranging revolutions with all sorts of new technologies. In Iran, it was the fax machine. In the Philippines, it was text messaging on feature phones, in the Arab Spring it was Facebook. New media have been pressed into service to help revolutionaries communicate and organize.
[Video: How Facebook was uniquely positioned to facilitate the Arab Spring.]
WSJ Frontiers: Which countries stand out in terms of social media adoption?
Li: Latin America, Indonesia and the Philippines are off the charts in terms of social usage—in sharing stories and connections. But there are more similarities than differences between the people who are using these channels. In the end, the thing that unites us all is our human need to connect and our propensity to tell stories to each other and to share them.
WSJ Frontiers: How do countries in the emerging world differ in their use of social media?
Li: With social media you have leaders and followers, but some countries have a higher level of engagement. In frontier countries there tends to be a higher level of engagement: people are much more likely to create their own stories, to comment, to forward, to do active things rather than just read the content.
[Video: “This is our channel!”]
WSJ Frontiers: What implications does that have for companies looking to establish themselves in developing markets?
Li: Companies that want to try out something new often say, let’s go to the US because that’s a developed market. But engagement levels in the US are relatively low compared to many emerging markets so companies will be better off testing ideas in those countries.
Using social media is a very low-cost way to test ideas. You have your built-in focus group, and you can control which countries or areas you’re in.
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(via WSJ Blogs)
