Infographic of Social Media Equivalents in China

Our China Social Media team put together this infographic to explain some of China’s Social Media equivalents. Any major categories or companies missing? Put your suggestions below in comments.

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Technorati Tags: China, infographic, social media

WoZai: China Twitter Clone, Built 1 Celebrity At A Time

Twitter clones are all the rage these days in China, but operating a Social Media platform can be tough in the country that blocks Twitter along with YouTube, Facebook, Slideshare and others.

David Liu runs one of the China-based, Twitter-like platforms, WoZai, so I asked him how he will break out from the pack of clones to set himself apart in the world’s largest Internet market.

David emphasized that he is taking a different route to getting early adopters. Instead of focusing on general users, WoZai’s strategy is to help celebrities and businesses set up communities and followings. Celebrities and businesses in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong will build virtual mailing lists to increase awareness and engagement.

Similar to Twitter, WoZai’s homepage will be available in traditional and simplified Chinese to attract the largest audience. For all his ambition, however, David does not expect WoZai to become a central platform for users, so has built in functionality for cross-posting from Twitter and other third party applications.

As with Twitter, WoZai has a 140 character limit, but because Chinese characters represent single words, much more can be expressed in 140 characters. WoZai is pushing for a mobile audience as well and is being designed to integrate with current Twitter mobile apps on Blackberry, iPhone and other platforms.

In targeting the mainland, WoZai is making the service as “China Friendly” as possible and clean enough for Beijing authorities.

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Technorati Tags: China, David Liu, twitter

Foursquare China Clone: Jie Pang

Like many other foreign Social Media platforms, Foursquare is blocked in China. (Check out Herdict to see what is blocked.)

The result is that people visiting with a non-China phone, such as me, can easily become mayor of many locations. That said, there are locally created options for people in China who are eager to Check In.

Among the current Foursquare clones in China are: Wan Zhan, Si Wang, Zai Nar, Bedo, Jie Pang, Da Zhong Dian Ping. In addition, similar services are coming online from: China Mobile, Tencent, Sina.com, Baidu.com. Renren.com, Kaixin001.com and Kong.net

A few days ago Jie Pang sent over some slides about their service and Jeremy Webb, a colleague at Ogilvy, did an interview with Jie Pang’s founder, David Liu (All below)

h/t to Tim Ho for creating the Foursquare China badge.
(more…)

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Technorati Tags: China, Foursquare, Jeremy Webb

Social Media: Chinese Love To Engage

 
My colleagues in OgilvyOne China recently released OgilvyOne Connected, a report that may surprise those not aware of the incredible levels of engagement within China’s Social Media.

The intention was to look at how Chinese consumers use Social Media to interact, both with each other and with brands.

The report assigns percentages to the different ways in which consumers in China interact online.

OgilvyOne’s research found a large number of Chinese social media users are Initiators, with 26% of all Chinese social media users regularly starting conversations, creating content and publishing their opinions online. These users are also a common starting point for new ideas, services and products.

A further 29% of Chinese social media users are “Commenters” — people who may not initiate, but who do react and comment on other people’s views. They are also the “accelerators” of new ideas, giving them momentum and wider acceptance.

The largest group, comprising 45% of social media users, are “Gawkers” — those who quietly browse, observe and look for entertaining ideas and brands that are already popular.

These findings of high engagement in China mirror Forrester Research’s Social Media Technographics from several years ago that found 13% Creators and 19% Critics within Social Media in the US, compared with 40% Creators and 44% Critics in China. (Forrester’s Creators and Critics map roughly to OgilvyOne’s Initiators and Commenters).

OgilvyOne’s Research methodology: From February to April 2010, China Polling administered online, self-completed questionnaires to Chinese social media website across 71 sites in different categories. Over 5,000 people completed the survey, of which, 1,519 were qualified samples (anyone who used social media sites the day before and those who completed the questionnaire in its entirety). Panelists were also drawn from random samplings on 12 major social media websites such as Kaixin, RenRen and others via advertising and from China Polling‟s national panel of 400,000+ participants.

h/t to my colleague at Ogilvy, Jeremy Webb who wrote about this first on our Ogilvy team blog, Asia Digital Map.

OgilvyOne Connected (Original Report)

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Technorati Tags: China, Frands, Jeremy Webb, Ogilvy, OgilvyOne, social media

China: Rules for Social Media Marketing

WARNING: This posting will likely interest only people working within Social Media in China.

The China International Public Relations Association produced a set of rules and recommendations that has been trickling through China’s media and Internet in various reports. We decided to do a full translation of the guidelines (Below).

Some highlights relating to what they call “Digital PR”:

• Digital PR is the fastest growing business model within the PR industry
• Accounted for 6.3% of PR in China, with a total turnover of 880 million RMB in 2008.
• Companies “should not provide any form of attack or defamation towards a competitor” 

The point about attacking competitors is an interesting one and an ongoing problem in China, as this article in the China Daily points out:

An underground business, that charges companies high fees to delete negative news or posts against them, has been flourishing in the run-up to World Consumer Rights Day today, normally regarded as the most important day to highlight a company’s good reputation.

An operator surnamed Wu with Han De Kai Si Crisis Dealing Experts Company, told METRO on Sunday they normally charge 600 to 800 yuan per post deleted. He revealed there were usually two ways to deal with such business crises, including paying insiders within websites to delete online information and hiring people to release positive posts with the same titles as negative posts.

The association itself is run by a former China ambassador to the US and has the stated objective “to let the world know China and to let China orient itself to the world”

Anyone have thoughts/comments on these recommendations?

Guidelines for the Online PR business in China
Preface
Following the rise and expansion of the Internet and of social media like forums and blogs, traditional media and communication patterns have undergone a profound transformation. At the same time, marketing and public relation disciplines have also undergone a radical transformation. Digital PR has already become an extension of traditional PR that cannot be ignored, and it is the fastest growing business model within the PR industry. As shown in a survey of the CIPRA, in 2008 the PR market in China has exceeded 14 billion RMB, with a growing rate of 29.6%. Digital PR accounts for 6.3% of this market, with a total turnover of 880 million RMB.

The use of online news, forum conversations, online activities, word-of-mouth marketing, group marketing, sentiment marketing and online crisis management has become the main services provided in the PR market, and fast consumption, automobile, IT, Internet and communication companies have become the main clients of PR. Following the normalization and the expansion of e-commerce and online sales, companies have raised higher and higher voices calling for the standardization and regulation of online public relations. At the same time, given the continuous innovation of means of communication and of communication technologies, the concept of online public relation is also in continuous evolution.
The expansion of the market calls for regulation, and in the case of online public relation, this is even more important. We believe we should take example from the Regulations for public relation services, in order to control and regulate this market, continuously raise the standards of technology and the level of qualification of the people working in the field, in order to ensure the sustainability and the growth of the market. For this reason, as a result of thorough research and thought from the CIPRA, we have developed this document that attests the standards of services in online public relations.
The specific content is as follows:

Chapter 1 Definition of digital public relations
1.1 Digital public relations aims at making use of the practice of traditional public relations to communicate, build relations and manage brands on online platforms like social media and online media. Compared with traditional public relations, online PR has the advantages of being faster, more interactive, more precise, more long-term and having a bigger scope.
1.2 Differently from other online marketing techniques, online PR does not only have the objective of increasing sales, or influencing the purchasing behavior of single individuals or groups. Digital PR aims at delivering strategic and long-term messages to the online public, and therefore serves the creation and the management of the brand. For the client, the practical value of digital PR is: increase the image of a brand; affect the opinion of consumers towards the brand and their purchasing behavior; protect the companys reputation and image.
1.3 Digital PR agencies and any company providing online PR service should satisfy their clients online PR needs. The ten main services provided in online PR are: customer service; online news; online activities; brand promotion; interactive marketing; public opinion monitoring; crisis management; online media management; specialized training.
1.4 Online PR services can be divided in two main groups: concept products and channel products. Concept products are consultancy and announcement products like online news, online customer services; experience/activity products like online activities, word-of-mouth marketing, community marketing; monitoring/alert products like public opinion monitoring, crisis management, criticism protection; and protection/optimization products like website optimization, SEO, traffic optimization. Channel products are news distribution, forum and blog seeding, SNS seeding, IM seeding, video distribution.

Chapter 2 Technology utilization and media attitude of digital PR agencies
2.1 Online PR agencies mainly utilize Internet technologies for their work. Internet media tools have qualities that traditional media do not have such as immediateness, personal approach, interactivity, openness. They can be one-to-many, many-to-many or many-to-one. Online media have overturned the elitism of traditional media, slightly moving the right to express opinions from the elites to the grassroots.
2.2 According to the main means of communication of online public relations, it is possible to divide the online PR media in five kinds: general portal websites, vertical portal websites, forums, blogs, streaming websites. The most used channels of communication are news, forum threads, blog posts, streaming videos.
2.3 The technology support systems of online PR can be divided into five main platforms according to the different functions: news publishing platforms, sentiment monitoring platforms, media resource platforms, media communication platforms and control platforms.

Chapter 3 The workflow of digital PR agencies
3.1 Digital public relations are a consultancy service, and the effectiveness of this service is attested through regulated and organized procedures, and developed through stages such as project discussion, project research, project planning, project confirmation, project execution and project evaluation.
3.2 The core aim of digital PR is to solve the online reputation issues of a client, and digital PR agencies should carry out research on the online brand of the client, evaluation of the online PR strategies already carried out by the client, analysis of the competition, definition of the challenges faced by the client, and the opportunities ahead, and finally define an online strategy for the client.
3.3 Because it makes use of advanced technologies, the effectiveness of online PR is more easily assessable. Nowadays, there are three main assessment systems: qualitative assessment of the project (online traffic changes, attention from traditional media, level of satisfaction of users, level of reputation of the brand); quantitative assessment of the project (number of posts, number of views, number of participations and recommendations); ROI.
3.4 The assessment reports of digital PR projects must include a project summary, project research, project strategy, project implementation, project assessment.

Chapter 4 The payment procedures for digital PR
4.1 Digital PR is a personalized service, that should be rewarded in the form of service fee, and the amount of this fee is established in light of the level and the expertise of those providing the service. The service fee is normally established in light of the number of people participating in the project and the time spent on the project.
4.2 Payment should follow these international procedures:
Payment item: project operative cost; consultancy service fee; project management fee, management taxes.
Payment procedure: project service fee; consultancy fee; project management fee.
4.3 Nowadays there are four main payment procedures: payment at the moment of the completion of the project; payment according to the quantity of work in the project; payment according to the time spent on the project; payment according to the results of the project.

Chapter 5 The service management of digital PR agencies
5.1 Digital PR agencies must all comply with the rules and the regulations of the national corporate law. These include: companies should register before operating; they should organize and define the higher organs of management (such as the shareholder, the board of administration, etc.) and their responsibilities; keep the accountancy books; settle taxes; mismanagements or failure to comply with these regulation can result in criminal act.
5.2 Digital PR agencies should respect the following conditions: have a solid initial capital (not less than 100k RMB); have a fixed company address; have good office and communication conditions; feature two PR consultants with at least five years of experience in PR; a definite number of clients or potential clients.
5.3 Digital PR agencies must set up their organizational structure according to the management objectives, and should be divided into: market department; client service department; creative department; media management department; activity management department and administration department. Alternatively, they can be divided according to industries into: IT client department; financial client department; consumption goods department; public affairs department. Finally, it could be divided into regions of activity into: international affairs department and local affairs department.

Chapter 6 The development of the profession of online PR
6.1 Online public relations practitioners should have a variety of professional skills, expertise and professional experience. Strategic thinking, innovation, organizational sense, interpersonal skills, analytic spirit and problem solving skills should be the common features of successful online PR professionals.
6.2 Business operations of online public relations generally involve seven main teams: management team; project management and customer service teams; strategic planning team; media relations and media executive team; creative design and art production team; R & D and technology team and administrative support team.
6.3 Generally speaking, the online public relations professional ladder is mainly composed of the following levels: junior positions (Customer Assistant, Account Executive); intermediate positions (Account Manager, Senior Account Manager); senior positions (Assistant Account Director, Account Director, Senior Account Director, Vice President, Senior Vice President). In order to be promoted from the junior level to senior positions most of the professionals need 8-10 years of experience in the field.
6.4 Training programs should be organized for every level of professionals working in online PR. Content of training should include: online communication means, online interaction strategy, public relations, introduction to research methods, project proposal writing, proposal and bidding, event planning and management, online media analysis and research, online media relations program, marketing, brand management, crisis management, case studies and analysis, project management, customer management, impact assessment and strategic consulting. Junior professionals should be given 100 hours of training each year; mid-level professionals should be given 60 hours of training each year; senior professionals should be given 30 hours of training each year.

Chapter 7 Professional ethics of the online public relations practitioners
7.1 Public relations businesses should abide by the Internet Self-discipline Convention. In specific: they should ensure that the content and means of dissemination of information are consistent with the relevant provisions of the national law; they should ensure content integrity, authenticity and accuracy, and that content disseminated on the Internet is not inconsistent with objective reality; they should ensure that the content of information does not involve politically sensitive topics or state-sensitive issues; they should not conceal the truth or deceive the public; they should not engage in any immoral or dishonest activity, or damage the dignity or the reputation of others; they should not provide any form of attack or defamation towards a competitor; they should not use any copyrighted material without lawfully clearing the rights.

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Technorati Tags: China, cipra, Rules, social media

Asia Social Media Stats: The Video!

This video on Social Media in APAC was created for a recent internal meeting of our regional Digital Influence team. Below is a transcript of the statistics. Enjoy!

Asia is a diverse continent with different cultures, different languages, and different levels of economic development. One of the most exciting differences today, however, is the difference in digital ecosystems.

Countries with a similar level of development can have extremely different ways of approaching the Internet. In Korea, broadband connections are available virtually everywhere, while Japan’s Internet population is highly reliant on mobile.

Strong digital ecosystems are not only present in the most developed countries in Asia. In fact, Indonesia will soon overtake the United Kingdom as the second largest Facebook population in the world.

The average youth in China has more friends online than offline, while Australia has one of the highest levels of social media engagement in the world. Australians spend an average of 6 hours and 52 minutes a month on Social Media.

Most of China’s social media users are spread across three main social media Websites: Kaixin (30 million accounts), Renren (40 million accounts), and QQ (376 million accounts).

Chinese netizens use domestic social media rather than international versions like Facebook primarily due to government blockage of foreign social media, but also cultural preferences.

In Asia, Internet life is highly mobile:

· Vietnam had an 846 percent growth of mobile Internet users in 2009.
· In Japan, 84.3 percent of the population goes on the Internet with a mobile phone.
· In Taiwan, 73.3 percent of mobile Internet users have 3G.
· The population of smartphone owners in Hong Kong is 48.6 percent.

Asia’s social media sites also have diverse source of revenue. In contrast to Facebook, the primary revenue source for many Asia social media sites is the sale of virtual items online.

Facebook, QQ, Mixi, and Cyworld collectively generate $392 million (USD) in revenue a year from the sale of virtual goods in the Asian online market.

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Technorati Tags: China, social media, Stats

Social Media Affects Awareness and Purchasing in China

The consultancy Roland Berger and CIC have put together an interesting report on how Social Media affects Chinese consumers.

They looked at the impact on Chinese consumers of information gathered about brands and products through Social Media channels such as online message boards, blogs and video sites, etc.

As mentioned many times on this blog, their findings show that proportionally, Chinese consumers rely on the Internet in making purchase decisions much more than their counterparts in the West.

While 58 percent of Chinese Internet users have their purchase decisions influenced by consumer reviews, ratings sites, forums and discussion boards, the study found that just 19 percent US Internet users are influenced by these online channels. (I agree with the thrust of their argument, but that number seems quite low for the US)

Interestingly, as this chart below shows, the research also found that Chinese consumers are often made aware of a brand for the first time through Social Media platforms.

In other words, Chinese netizens are affected by Social Media for the initial part of brand awareness and the final stage before purchase.

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Technorati Tags: China, CIC, Roland Berger

China: Internet kills TV, papers and radio

Synovate released an interesting study that shows how much time Chinese youth spend on the Internet vs TV vs newspapers. Not surprisingly TV, Internet and Mobile dominate.

The Internet beats wins in all cities from tier 1 to tier 5, losing out to TV and mobile in rural China.

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Technorati Tags: China, Internet, Synovate

Demographics of China’s Wealthy

Interesting research report from McKinsey & Company about the wealthy consumers of China.

In addition to concluding that 80 percent of China’s wealthy are below the age of 45 – think about that for a second! – they also demarcated seven kinds of wealthy Chinese consumers.

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Technorati Tags: China, Mckinsey, Vinay Dixit, Wealthy

Demographics of China’s Twitter Users

In China, Twitter has taken an exceptional turn relative to other sites blocked by the government.

Properties like Facebook, YouTube and Flickr have languished when blocked by Beijing, but Twitter has continued to gain in popularity.

Since being blocked, Facebook usage in China has plunged from hundreds of thousands of users in mainland China to tens of thousands. Based on anecdotal evidence Twitter, on the other hand, remains a lively source of news, information and discussion from within China. (If anyone can provide reliable numbers on the growth Twitter usage in China, I will add them here.)

Microblogging itself is an interesting phenomenon in China, due to the nature of the written Chinese language: A Tweet in Chinese is almost a short blog post.

But the case of Twitter raises the question of why it has remained popular even as the inevitable government-compliant copycats proliferate.

In terms of why, for one thing Chinese users have found relatively painless ways around the Great Firewall. Having worked around the blockage, users may have developed an even stronger loyalty to the service. Some cross post using the Chinese services, while others have rigged up sites using Twitter’s API.

As to who is using it, that has been hard to say until a recent survey done by Kenengba that was picked up and translated by Oi Wan Lam in a post on Global Voices.

Sent out over Twitter, the 1,000 respondents to the survey were

…overwhelmingly male…
13% female
87% male

…in their 20s…
70% between 21-29
Youngest Twitterer 12 and oldest 55

…highly educated with interesting bump among High School students…
The majority have a bachelor’s degree and the second largest group is master degree holders followed by Twitters with tertiary education background. Interesting to note there is a bump among users in High School. If this is due to university authorities being more successful at blocking Twitter, what will happen when those High School students go to campus?

…based in wealthier Chinese regions, such as the capital and coastal regions…
More than half of the respondents come from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong followed by Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Fujian… The 6 regions constitute 67% of the respondents. They are located along the coastal line and economically more well off.

…mainly students and techies…
The data shows that about 30% of the respondents are students followed by computer software and hardware sector (15%) and then Internet related production sector (12.5%). If we group the two into I.T industry, then we can see that students and I.T professionals are the key player in Twitter community as they together constitute more than 50% of the respondents.

…why do they Tweet?
1. To know the truth and open the horizon
2. To record and share my life
3. To get information and show my concern about democracy
4. Because Fanfou has been shut down
5. To get all the gossips in order to clear information for my colleagues who live in Mars
6. Follow the planet that I like and later fall in love with everything in Twitter
7. The exchange in Twitter is very interesting
8. No censor here and we can preserve the primary mode of communication here
9. To kill time
10. To follow uncle leg (@kcome)
11. I learn about twitter from kenengba and feel that as a party member I should learn more about this world
12. I can say what I want here without considering whether I should say this or how I should say this. Whether or not I would violate any law. This is the taste of freedom that I enjoy.
13. In an army school where ideological control is very strict, Twitter allows me to keep my independent citizen conscious.
14. University teacher introduces me here
15. Less liars here
16. Job requirement
17. An inevitableness choice for journalist student
18. Passion for new technology
19. At first I come here because I have a crush with a girl who is using Twitter…
20. Why not?

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Technorati Tags: China, Kenengba, Oiwan Lam, twitter

Europe’s Sharpened Stance on China

China can expect some pushback from Europe in coming months, warns Mark Leonard of the European Council of Foreign Relations in this video. His data points leading to the coming sharp shift in the EU-China relations:

1- French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s meeting the Dalai Lama caused China to cancel the EU Summit.

2- At the Climate Summit in Copenhagen, both Europe and China blamed each other for the absence of a deal.

3- The Google vs. China conflict.

4- The execution of the British citizen Akmal Shaikh in China.

The Economist this week has a similar take:

There is, however, a new self-confidence these days in China’s familiar harangues about anything it deems sovereign. That is the second trend: China, after its successful passage through the financial crisis of late 2008, is more assertive and less tolerant of being thwarted—and not just over its “internal affairs”. From its perceived position of growing economic strength, China has been throwing its weight around. It played a central and largely unhelpful role at the climate-change talks in Copenhagen; it looks as if it will wreck a big-power consensus over Iran’s nuclear programme; it has picked fights in territorial disputes with India, Japan and Vietnam. At gatherings of all sorts, Chinese officials now want to have their say, and expect to be heeded.

These events and attitudes on the part of Beijing have caused a shift in Europe’s view of China, so Beijing should expect a pushback from Europe over the next years, Leonard said. This could mean a hardening of Europe’s approach to various issues like Iran, climate and currency.

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Technorati Tags: China, Mark Leonard

McKinsey: Rising power of Social Media in China

An annual survey of Chinese consumers by McKinsey took time to highlight the power of Social Media in China.

China really is a global-standard country in terms of involvement in Social Media by consumers. The landscape is, of course, radically different from other countries due to government censorship policies, but Chinese are incredibly involved in Social Media as a trusted source of information on many topics.

Samples vs Word of Mouth

The McKinsey study points to the influence of Social Media in terms beauty products in China, which is  we at Ogilvy have found to be totally true.

McKinsey found: 66 percent of Chinese consumers would be influence in the purchase of a moisturizer by recommendations of friends and family, while just 38 percent would be in the US and UK. By contrast 66 percent of UK and British consumers say that free samples could sway them, compared with 20 percent in China.

Excerpt from the McKinsey report:

The Internet is an increasingly important marketing tool. All the online media vehicles we tracked in our survey, including online advertisements, product articles, blogs, and forums, have significantly increased their impact (SEE CHART ONE). Consumers even rate the credibility of blogs and online forums higher than traditional TV ads.

This had an enormously positive impact for the company: word of mouth combined with 19,000 blogs encouraged drinkers to switch to Wang Laoji. One blogger developed the slogan: “If you’re going to donate, donate 100 million. If you’re going to drink, drink Wang Laoji.” This consumer-created ad was distributed widely online. The sales volume of Wang Laoji increased by 25 percent at one supermarket chain the month after the earthquake, and by 35 percent at one restaurant chain.

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Technorati Tags: China, Mckinsey, social media