I remember a time when word of mouth used to be this highly esoteric thing everybody feared and nobody could really describe.

Not any longer.

According to this new version of the “Did you know” video, social media is the connection between word of mouth and real money.

25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content. 34% of consumers trust peer recommendations, while only 14% trust advertising!

In the future we will no longer search for products and services…. they will find us through social media, similarly to what is already happening to news.

And if you still have doubts about the power of online word of mouth… check out this wisdom from the # 1 internet content creator in the world (China!).

Is it for real or not?

Every time I discuss the interactive web with fellow communicators, one of the first questions on people’s mind is “how are we going to convince senior management of the importance of introducing social media”.

I had a great time last week talking to IABC Belgium about International Communications Strategy and the different case studies contained in the book.

My advice to Cheryl who asked me the famous question is to use the information and data available to make the business case for Web 2.0.

While in the West we are still desperately trying to measure the ROI of social media, China has been able to figure out a way to track online conversations and link them to purchase decisions.

According to CiC, the Chinese internet community supports the “most expansive and developed participation architecture in the world”.

The influence of user-generated content (blogs, discussions on bulletin boards, etc.) on the decisions of Chinese consumers has been estimated at 58% while it is less than 20% in the US. 

There are lessons to be learned for communicators.

For example, the same method could be used in internal communications to track employees’ interactions on online forums and assess their attitude towards different corporate initiatives.

(in the photo with me from left to right, Sung-Joo Kim, CEO of MCM Holdings and PAWA Founder & President, Betty Yao MBE, PAWA Co-Founder & Chair of the Management Committee, Mei Sim Lai OBE, Diane Morris, TIAW President and Yang-May) 

Did you know that 2/3 of the world population live in Asia and half of them are women?

Yang-May and I attended the launch of the Pan Asian Women’s Association (PAWA) last night at Asia House.

PAWA is creating a platform for women from across Asia – from Japan to Iran – to share ideas, talk about common concerns and mentor the next generation.

A number of highly accomplished female business leaders these days come from Asia. Thirty five per cent of the 50 top women in world business featured on Saturday in the Financial Times come from the region.

At the launch, I enjoyed listening to Sonia Lo. Sonia was born in Korea and has worked in international finance for Google and United News and Media. She is the founder of London-based Chalsys Capital Partners.

Her advice to professional women is that “pushing a closed door sometimes is not the answer”. Sonia uses self-esteem as her strongest motivator.

I was watching the comedian Lee Evans over the weekend (I am a great fan and … we were born on the same day!).

He was saying how he always prepares tons of notes for his shows only to realise later that they don’t make sense.

I know how he feels…

No matter how often I give a presentation… the Germanic part of my upbringing  always forces me to spend hours at my desk rehearsing again and again…  

When I’ve had enough, I switch off and start thinking of my audience. I once heard that the secret of presenting is loving your audience.

I know it sounds corny…. But it works!

It’s not difficult to look forward to my audience this week.

On Thursday, I will be giving a presentation about International Communications Strategy for the Belgian chapter of IABC.

It was in Brussels that I joined IABC 12 years ago. I served on the local board for a long time. So I am really looking forward to seeing my former fellow board members Lyndon, Sam, Ilze and all the others.

I have started to discuss ICS’s main points on IABC Belgium’s Ning.

As usual, I was asked about the development of internet marketing in Asia. Part of my talk will be about the interactive web in China and how its communities are changing the relationship between people and brands.

You can read more about what Yang-May and I think of internet marketing at DMI online.

The  WB expects the global economy to contract for the first time since WWII in 2009 and world trade is to decline to the lowest level in 80 years.

A trade dispute  has just exploded between Washington and Beijing following the imposition of tariffs on Chinese tires imported into the US.

China’s internet community has gone viral on the topic. And many in the West are thinking. “Isn’t this type of reaction a bit out of date? Given China’s economic power, if they want to sell tires in another country, they can just go ahead and buy a tire manufacturer there. The West has enough broke businesses.”

With the G20 summit opening tomorrow in Pittsburgh, people are wondering what kind of world the aftermath of the financial crisis is likely to produce in the years to come.

The tendency, as we have seen, is to go tribal.

Forbes  is heralding the end of Thomas Friedman’s  ”Flat World” and the beginning of a new “era of decreasing trade”.

I can’t help sensing a strong feeling of hysteria around the whole thing.

Yes, the world is changing. May be much faster than Friedman or anybody else had predicted. But the answer is not to find refuge in protectionism.

Times call for much more creative solutions. Let’s see what comes out of  tomorrow and Friday.

Diversity is no longer a pet project on the sidelines of corporate life.

A number of trends indicate that companies with a diverse workforce are likely to perform better in the years to come.

According to official data, the amount of mutual fund assets under management (AuM) is shifting from the Global North to emerging markets. AuM decreased by 10% in Europe in the past three years, while it increased by 37.6% in Brazil and Chile and by 19.2% in Asia including China, India  and Korea.

Multinationals from emerging economies are engaging more and more with businesses in Europe and the US. Companies with a diverse staff will find it easier to understand these new business partners. A diverse  workforce brings a mixture of experiences and resources that employers will be able to turn into a powerful competitive advantage when dealing with other parts of the world.

And let’s not forget that Generation Y is coming into the workforce and is looking for jobs that resonate with their values. Inclusion ranks high among them. Gen Y is used to being in contact with people from other cultures. Social networking and online games have turned their world into a digital orange.

Annette Verschuren, President and CEO of The Home Depot for Canada and Asia, believes that the business secret of the future will be about including and inspiring people who in the past we thought did not belong.

Bieneosa Ebite and I will be talking about Cross Cultural PR and Diversity at the CIPR in October. Bienosa is the managing director of Bright Star Public Relations and a founding member of the UK Black and Asian PR Networking Group, which aims to encourage diversity in the PR industry.

Click here to join us on 12 October.

I had my first Twinterview the other day.

Angelo Fernando of Hoi Polloi interviewed me and Yang-May on Twitter about the book.

What an interesting experience…. You feel suspended in cyberspace. You know there are people out there following you… but all you can see are your interviewer’s Tweets.

The fact that you have to limit your answers to 140 characters is a great discipline. It helps to organise your thoughts.

I have been converted…. I believe Twinterviews are great training for podcast and video interviews. Think of a 140-character answer first and then elaborate on that.

The toughest question, as ever, was about the reasons that lead me to write the book: “Was there a book inside your head?”

In order to answer that, you need to put your life in perspective.

Luckily, I am reading a book that has helped me to do just that.

If you began your career in journalism, you have to read Oracle Bones by Peter Hessler.

It’s a wonderful example of how journalism and writing helps you to understand complex realities and relate to people in cultures so different from your own.

It was a sentence in the book that brought it all home to me. Hessler describes his years in Beijing like a “floating life in a floating city”.

When I lived in Prague in the early 1990s, I often had the feeling of floating…. Oracle Bones made me realise that I wasn’t  lost… Prague was floating towards a new future and was taking me along. While doing this, it was also writing my future book in my head.

Never underestimate the power of floating…

“China knocks the ego out of you.”

I love this quote by Christine Lu.

Her talk last week was very inspiring. Christine is not only the founder of The China Business Show. She is also involved in a number of exciting internet ventures in China.

Recently she took a group of venture capitalists and internet entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley to China to meet their local counterparts. She named the tour Geeks on a Plane.

Although she worked in Shanghai and has travelled many times to China, Christine  doesn’t want to be called a “China expert”.

She believes that “the more you deal with China, the humbler you become”. She says that the longer you stay in China, the more you begin to recognise just how huge and diverse the country is.

Christine gets a charge out of those people who spend a couple of years in the country and call themselves China experts. She calls it the “Marco Polo complex”.

I can certainly relate to this phenomenon from my days in Eastern Europe. And something else Christine mentioned made me laugh and took me back to my first months in Prague. She said that she doesn’t do second-tier cities in China because she doesn’t “thrive by carrying around her own toilet paper”.

There was a time in the autumn of 1990, when shops in Prague were out of toilet paper. So… (and here I have a confession to make…) we would go to international hotels…and stock up on toilet paper!

Amazing …  how adventures seem to be about the smallest things!

I used to find index charts soothing.  

You might think I’m strange. But when I worked as a financial journalist, they would stimulate my thinking….

Like a mandala, I would look at them and they would give me a sense of clarity…. After a while, sentences would start flowing in my mind.

I haven’t found financial charts soothing lately.

But yesterday, I was glad to hear at a seminar that markets are showing signs of normalisation. Which doesn’t mean that the recession is over. But markets have at least stopped to be out of control and are experiencing some sort of stabilisation.

 However, analysts believe that the UK and Europe will not be able to attract significant investment for a while.  

The spotlight has moved to the East.

Most Asian countries already had their financial crisis in 1998.  It enabled them to clean house and left their banks with strong balance sheets. On top of this, they were able to create high levels of self-generating demand.

China and India are continuing to grow, and most importantly, their middle-classes are growing. International capital is being lured by the prospect of huge sales volumes.

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Communications  and marketing are right at the core of this trend.

With little growth to be expected in the West, many of the companies we are working for are increasingly looking at China and India.

One of the first tasks they will have to master is reaching out to audiences and engaging with consumers in these markets.

I’ve always believed that passions make people bond beyond cultural and ideological barriers.

The story I tell in our book  about my encounter with a Kazakh immigration officer only a few years after the end of the Cold War is an example.

Last weekend, I found another one.

I was reading an article  in The New York Times about the anniversary of Isaac Stern’s  trip to China.

The famous violinist toured the country in 1979 giving concerts. People travelled miles by train to see him perform. This happened at a crucial time. China was emerging from a long period of isolation from the rest of the world.

Stern  is credited not only with spreading the love for classical music but also with enabling cultural exchanges between the West and a country everybody had learned to fear.

You have to watch the video  about Stern teaching young Ho Hongying to play the violin. It contains one of the best lessons in cross-cultural communications I have ever come across.

Without knowing a word of Mandarin, Stern manages to tap into Hongying’s passion for music and, instantly, her performance improves.

What would be the equivalent of this in corporate communication?