A selection of infographics about Indonesia and South East Asia

A selection of infographics about Indonesia and the surrounding region.

This wasn't meant to be a blog post; I have been trying to put together an infographic for an event I work on in Indonesia (infographic to be mainly about economics, investment and infrastructure) and as part of that did a search for other infographics about Indonesia and the region so I didn't repeat anything and maybe get some top tips. I was making notes as I went and thought that it would make quite a good blog post. So here you go!

I guess the digital marketing nature of infographics meant most of the ones I have found are about 'Digital Marketing'. (click on links for complete infographics):

INDONESIA – GENERAL INFORMATION (undated)

Beautifully designed infographic giving top-line information on Indonesia – population, area, history, economy - from a US graphic designer. No source or date though, so I probably wouldn’t quote it!

Pros: Beautifully designed infographic with what looks like quite extensive information
Cons: No date or source, so difficult to be sure of accuracy
Interesting stat: "Indonesia is made up of 17,508 islands"

Annalise Ogle | Indonesia

INDONESIA - THE NEXT BIG THING IN DIGITAL MEDIA (March 2011)

Although 2 years out of date, provides some nice simple stats on digital usage in Indonesia from the Singapore Management University (SMU).

Pros: Some interesting (albeit old) trends for anyone looking at marketing (especially digital) in Indonesia
Cons: 2 years out of date now. Best used as ‘trends’ rather than solid facts
Interesting stat: "Indonesia has more Facebook users than the population of Canada"

Indonesia: The Next Big Thing In Digital Media

DIGITAL MEDIA IN INDONESIA (Nov 2011)

Well, it’s more about social media than ‘digital media’ but goes into depth about Twitter and Facebook. Again, a little old (Nov 2011), but some nice graphics. Also from SMU.

Pros: In-depth information on social media, especially Facebook and Twitter
Cons: A little out of date now and some of the comments don’t actually make sense
Interesting stat: "Thursday is the busiest Twitter day in Indonesia" (in Nov 2011)

Indonesia To Become A Leading Nation For Tech Start-ups? - Tech in Asia

BURSON-MARSTELLER ASIA-PACIFIC SOCIAL MEDIA (April 2011)

I was hoping there may be a more recent edition of this by now, but it seems like this was a bit of a one off (this company did publish a Global Social Media Check-Up in 2012 which is also worth a look). Anyway this is still an extensive (22 pages) analysis of social media in Asia Pacific.

Pros: Loads of information here split by country if you’re looking at social media across this whole region
Cons: Sorry, it’s also a year and a half old.
Interesting stat: "16.5% of Indonesians use the Internet" (think of the potential to grow!)

 

Asia Internet Insights from Burson-Marsteller

INDONESIA MARKET OVERVIEW – MOBILE (Jun 2012)

This overview of the Indonesian mobile market is compiled by mobile company InMobi and gives a nice top level view on growth and use of different mobile handset brands.

Pros: Good info on handset usage
Cons: Not hugely helpful with regard to mobile marketing trends (beyond ad impressions)
Interesting stat: The prominence of Nokia and Samsung is interesting especially if you are used to the dominance of iPhones in some European and North American countries.

Indonesia Mobile Ad Market Doubles in a Year, Android Growing Fastest - Tech in Asia

TOP FACEBOOK PAGES IN INDONESIA (updated monthly)

This infographic seems to be published monthly by SocialBakers on We Are Social. Does what it says on the tin, gives you the top performing Facebook pages in Indonesia.

Pros: Gives you the current Facebook zeitgeist of brands and very up to date
Cons: Not much other Facebook analysis
Interesting stat: The two most prominent fan pages are Blackberry and Blackberry – showing the importance of this brand in Indonesia. Apple who?!

Top Facebook Pages in Asia, Feb 2013 [Part 1] | We Are Social Singapore

And finally...

IS INDONESIA MORE ENTREPRENEURIAL THAN THE US? (June 2012)

This insightful blog post calls into question the content of a recent infographic that looked at entrepreneurship and innovation around the world. 

Whether you agree or not, he does make a good point – don’t believe everything you see – by infographics making data easily digestible they can sometimes mask the information behind them, or even be entirely erroneous. So check your sources, and do your own research where possible! 

Beware of infographics, especially if the findings are too good to be true

Related posts
Monitor the online buzz around your brand (May, 2009)

Globalisation within construction - CIM PGDip Emerging Themes

Below is a short paper looking at the future of the construction industry specifically the impact of globalisation.

• Globalisation in the Construction Industry - CIM PG Dip Emerging Theme Assignment (PDF, 249KB)

I thought this may be useful for construction industry bods interested in this particular theme that may well effect businesses in the next 5 - 10 years.

This paper was written as an assignment for the Emerging Themes unit of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) Postgraduate Diploma in Marketing, June 2011.

So I also thought it may be useful for anyone taking their CIM PG Dip Emerging Themes unit. I have emailed the CIM and checked that I could publish this on my blog to which they replied that as long as the document was correctly referenced, didn't contain any copywrited content etc then that was fine.

This is my own work so please reference if using it, or even better go back to the source content referenced in my bibliography for more information (that may be more accurate too!).

Related posts
Why do companies use illegal advertising? - uni dissertation (Dec 2008)

Is the Google Keyword Tool any use for SEO?

The title of this post is a question I was asked by a colleague recently. I realise that for most people working on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) I’m teaching you to suck eggs, in which case stop reading, or read it and tell me what I’ve missed! But for any beginners (which is what this is aimed at), read on for my answer:

Yes the “Google Keyword Tool” is very useful to anyone doing SEO.

What it does is analyse actual search traffic for certain keywords in Google as well as suggest other keywords. The current keyword tool is a combination of two previous keyword tools and despite initial problems with accuracy of the search figures it seems to be fairly trustworthy now. That said I wouldn't base your company strategy on the figures they quote, just use them as a handy tool, backed up by your own site analytics.

For example type the word ‘property’ in there it will tell you how many times people searched for that keyword on Google worldwide and in the UK. You can search for many words at the same time and it will also give you related keywords, again with search quantity.

Now there are loads of uses for this but some examples include:

• When you’re looking to optimise a page about a specific subject, for example “Architect jobs”. I can type this in to the keyword tool and find out how many times it’s been searched for. However I can also type in “architects” and find out related topics people are searching for which may help me extend my website reach, such as “the role of an architect” and “architect salary”. In this particular example I added these two subjects to my job website and so increased the traffic to the site.

• Another example is when someone comes along and says “I’ve a great idea, why don’t we change all our title tags to ‘Real estate’ from ‘property’ to grab the American market”. I can go to Keyword tool and prove that it’s not a good idea because the word isn't used much in the UK or that maybe we should create an entirely new section targeted at the American market that discusses real estate.

You probably already know the top keywords people use to reach your site, but by using this you can gain a better understanding of the search universe for different keywords. It can confirm what you’re doing is right, maybe clarify keywords you should use or suggest other areas of development.

Oh and you can also now put in a website address and it will use all the keywords on that site to feed its keyword ideas.

The original purpose of this is for people to find keywords to put against their AdWords but it works for what I’ve suggested too.

PS: There are two versions of the tool one 'external' and one built in to Adwords. There are numerous posts about the accuracy of the external tool so suggest you use the one in AdWords. You just need a FREE AdWords account to access it - you don't even need to use AdWords itself.

Related posts
Finding keywords for Google Adwords (Jul 2007)
Growing strange cacti (Feb 2009)

The year 2010 so far in search and digital marketing

Structured data and social media are the two major trends (in my humble opinion) to impact upon search and digital marketing so far this year.

I've posted just the once this year, I'm not proud about it, so i thought, 'what have i missed in online marketing and SEO this year?' and was it anything important?

So I've had a look, and put together my highlights of the first six months of 2010, this is in NO way comprehensive.

22nd Jan - 'Event' markup in Google's Rich Snippets. This was also followed by 'microdata' in March and 'recipes' in April. My only blog post this year explains what rich snippets are - and although these three updates are not mind-blowing the continued use and expansion of structured data in search is my first trend of 2010 and a big change that websites need to embrace.

28th Feb - Facebook was added to Google's real-time search. This relates to the second major trend of 2010, not real-time search but the rise of social media in digital marketing. Originally launched using Twitter (of course) amongst others, Google's and Bing's real-time search pushes social media further to the forefront of digital marketing. Watch a good video about real-time search and the history of SEO on SEOmoz.

8th April - Digital Economy Act 2010. Hastily whizzed through parliament before government was dissolved for the general election, this is about regulating digital media. Specifically this covers how internet service providers (ISPs) must provide a list of people believed to have infringed copyright seemingly based on self certification by the copyright owner and ISP. There is no clear indication of checking the validity of evidence against these infringements so leaving the act open to potential abuse and limitation of civil liberty.

Do you feel represented?
(img source - bitter wallet)

7th May - New look Google. On a lighter note, Google has had a spring clean. Amongst other things what this may do is expose the extent of universal search to more people, making it all the more important to sort out those blogs, news articles, images, products. Like with the rise of social media, digital marketers have just been given more reasons why they should have their search fingers (that's the index on the left hand) in many pies.

11th June - Caffeine indexing system. Caffeine is Google's new search index. This is what it looks at when you type a keyword in and press 'search'. Caffeine apparently searches everything quicker through it's novel structure including real-time web, video, images, news. It will be a few months before we see if there's any direct impact on SEO but it does seem to back up the importance of the trends I mentioned earlier of structured data and social media.

15th July - iPad released. Could this reinvent the world as we know it? No. But i thought I'd mention it as websites race to get themselves iPad ready and EVERY competition at the moment offers one as a prize.

Soon - Google image search update. This doesn't seem to have taken effect yet for me, but apparently was launched recently and is "more intuitive and gets the user the answer a lot quicker". I know a number of sites where images are as important to their users as the text, but this has never been reflected in search. I hope this changes that, but we'll have to wait and see.

And let's not forget - The mobile web. Everyone i know (apart from me) has an iPhone or an Android powered phone. The mobile web is coming of age (sorry for the oft-repeated cliche but i honestly think it's justified this time) and those sites that cater for mobile users are going to have the edge. Especially sites which provide content relevant to those of us on the move - like sport results, restaurant listings, pub quiz answers etc.

With all this excitement and technological invention it sounds like SEO just got complicated. But i don't think it has, all these things are just important to bear in mind. A firm SEO footing is still good content, quality and quantity of links, relevance to your users and then you can look at reaching your audience in as many ways as possible.

Is structured data the future of search?

Rich snippets are increasingly used by Google to present searchers with information above and beyond the site title and meta description - such as reviews, prices, addresses - any data that is 'structured'.

This is nothing new, which is why it's such an appropriate subject for a cutting edge blog such as this to write about after over 4 months of total silence.

An example would be review and price range information for a restaurant. Something Google currently provides on Yelp search results - one of their partners when they initially embarked on rich snippets.

How this works is Yelp.co.uk presents the review and price information on each restaurant page in a format that Google can understand using 'microformats' or RDFa markup.

In English that last sentence translates as; Google knows that the two dollar signs refer to the 'pricerange' and the 15 reviews refers to the amount of reviews (or 'count').

By defining the content of a website into principle parts (such as 'pricerange' and 'count') it allows for easy comparison across websites.

Instead of having to go into a website to see that Yelp has 15 reviews and Toptable has 20 reviews you can see this in the search results, such as in the screenshot above.

This could potentially work for any data. Imagine searching on Google and instead of just titles and descriptions you get a summary of a site page - so if it's a product, you see the price, if it's a restaurant it gives a rating, if it's an event, it gives a date.

This would make it easier for you to know the content of a website and quicker for you to search and surf.

Personally i think this is a direction the web could take IF websites catch on to this method of coding and agree specific microformats - for example everyone uses 'price' for prices as opposed to 'cost', 'amount', 'payment' etc.

The well established Google product search (previously Froogle) is making good use of microformats and Wolfram Alpha had a good bash at it last year (what happened to them?!*) - i definitely think it's an area to keep an eye on.

*Update: They are providing factual answers to Apple's Siri software amongst other things...

The only thing standing in the way would be cleverer search algorithms that can figure out which part of web page is the price, the review, the date without the need for it to be hard coded as such. I'm sure the magical web boffins are thinking about this as we speak. Shh, they can't be disturbed...

Related posts
Search images by the colours within them (Feb 09)
What content types can Google Search? (Dec 08)