In general, the reason Baidu PPC advertising can be highly effective is the fact that users who are actively searching for something already have a buying intent. It means that they are more likely to convert, in other words to become the actual customers compared to those who are passively looking at ads or are still in the process of discovery of a specific product or service.

Baidu PPC advertising is, in principal, identical to Google’s equivalent, although there are several important differences to keep in mind. First of all, due to the fact that Chinese internet is tightly controlled and regulated by the government, opening a PPC account is, by far, more complicated process than with Google.

In contrast to Google AdWords account which is free and only asks for a Gmail account and a credit card, Baidu requires some serious paperwork, a fee and a deposit to get it going.

Currently, only legally registered companies, domestic or foreign, can advertise with Baidu. Obviously, opening Baidu PPC advertising account for a Chinese company is much easier than for a foreign one, it is also cheaper and faster. Overseas business entities are required to provide business registration certificate at the minimum and are often asked to submit additional documentation. This is why it is recommended to enlist a help of professionals who are experienced in dealing with Baidu on behalf of a foreign company.

Once the account has been registered and activated, it operates in a similar way with Google, although the back end interface is entirely in Chinese. In addition, the structure is significantly more confusing and takes some time getting used to. Once again, even if you are fluent in Chinese, it is always a good idea to outsource Baidu account management to someone who is well familiar with it instead of attempting to do it yourself.

Baidu PPC advertising with search ads

On the most basic level, there are two sections in Baidu account: search ads and display ads. Search ads are those that are displayed on search results pages in response to user query. In Baidu, they come in a few different formats.

The most basic format is a text ad complete with a title, two lines of description and URL at the bottom – quite similar to Google. There is also a verification level assigned to an ad which is designed to inform users on trustworthiness of a particular website and an advertiser.

Some text ads can also include additional links to separate landing pages. By offering several options, such arrangement increases likelihood of that ad being clicked, although this format is more expensive.

Baidu brand zone

Baidu Brand Zone is another option that is most suitable for businesses looking to build brand awareness rather than achieve direct conversions. This type of ads typically include images, text and multiple links. Such ads are CPM (cost per mille/1000 impressions) based and therefore harder to measure. The price for such ads depends on their size and the position making the advertising in Baidu Brand Zone to be the most expensive type of Baidu marketing.

Using images with Baidu PPC advertising

In general, in order to increase the CTR (click through rate) advertisers would try to include images in the ads whenever possible as well pack more links into an ad. Carefully designed text that fits well with dynamic keywords (those that show up in response to the relevant query) is another important factor to consider. This is where A/B split tests come handy and, fortunately, Baidu offers unlimited ways to test and fine tune the best performing combinations.

Another good reason to include images with the ads is the fact that more users, especially on mobile, use pictures to search for products. Baidu’s picture matching algorithms continue improving offering more opportunities to display matching ads.

Baidu PPC advertising for mobile

Mobile search is another major area of Baidu strength where it holds even larger market share than on desktops. Optimizing ads for mobile involves setting up a call button that dials the number automatically by user simply tapping it from their phones. It works in both mobile browser and Baidu app.

If the business is particularly interested in reaching mobile users, it is worth investing in creating mobile friendly ads with suitable images and shorter, more concise text.

Baidu display ads

Display ads is the second major method to advertise with Baidu. It involves placing image ads (banners) at the most relevant sites that are part of vast Baidu ads display network. This is what is often called remarketing (or retargeting) – the ads are displayed based on a specific user’s history of visiting sites or searching for a particular term.

Technically, it is identical to a much larger Google’s ads display network, which, like many other things, has been copied by Baidu.
Both search ads and display ads are managed within the same Baidu PPC account sharing advertising budget that can be split between the two methods.

Typically, it is hard to predict in advance which PPC method would bring better results, therefore you should expect it to take some time to determine how to best allocate the budget between search and display ads.

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What is Baidu Zhidao

Baidu Zhidao (百度知道) literally means Baidu Knows is a Chinese language collaborative Web-based collective intelligence by question and answer which is built and run by Baidu. Like Baidu itself, it relies on self-censorship in order to keep in line with government regulations. It uses user-generated content and is moderated by platform administrators. Any content related to pornography, commercial advertisements, or direct personal attacks are routinely removed.

The test version was launched on June 21, 2005, and turned into release version on November 8, 2005. In essence, Baidu Zhidao is a question-and-answer-based platform, similar to Quora or it’s ugly cousin – Yahoo answers.

A registered user asks a question in which other members are promoted to give answers using credits as a reward. In the meantime, these answers focus on the search result of the same or relevant questions. That is how knowledge is collected and shared.

Question and answer together with the search engine makes it possible for a member to be a producer and a consumer of knowledge, which is often referred to collective intelligence.

Unlike Baidu Baike, the entries in Baidu Zhidao can be manipulated much easier. Large number of entries are questions and answers often created by the same person using multiple accounts. The platform also often turns to a battleground between brands. It is often too easy to damage competitors’ reputation by posting negative content about their specific brand or product.

Baidu Zhidao Marketing Options

First step in marketing with Baidu Zhidao is to research what type questions, that are relevant to your company, have already been asked or answered on the platform. Then you should try to provide the most objective and informative answer with the goal to get upvoted and ranked higher.

Needless to say, it is never a good idea to disclose the fact that the answerer may be associated with that particular company. Obviously, answers from non-biased participants would enjoy greater degree of trust compared to “corporate” ones.

Just like with Baidu Baike, marketing with Baidu Zhidao can also involve Baidu display ads. While there is no guarantee that your ad will show up for relevant search terms, it is still important to update the setting in Baidu Tuiguang (Baidu Adwords) account and adjust the bidding to maximize those chances.

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As China’s largest search engine, Baidu handles approximately 3.3 billion queries per day. In comparison, Google is only slightly ahead with 3.5 billion queries per day globally. Unlike Google, vast majority of Baidu searches come from China.

While Google’s top search results often feature links to Wikipedia, the top results of Baidu searches are very likely to show links to Chinese equivalents of Wikipedia – Baidu Baike along with another high authority site, Baidu Zhidao. Both of them also happen to be Baidu properties.

Considering how the search results on Baidu are structured, it becomes important for brands to have content published on those platforms. If relevant, such content has a good chance of getting some exposure in Baidu top search results.

Let’s have a closer look on those platforms and marketing opportunities with Baidu Baike.

What is Baidu Baike

Baidu Baike (百度百科), which literally means “Baidu Encyclopedia” is a Chinese language, collaboratively-built, web-based encyclopedia that is owned and produced by the Chinese search engine Baidu. The test version was released on April 20, 2006 and within three weeks the encyclopedia had grown to more than 90,000 articles and surpassed the number in Chinese Wikipedia. From January 2018 Baidu Baike has more than 15.1 million articles.

Baidu Baike also contains food recipes, film products, internet programs and video games, as well as their encyclopedic content. However, unlike Chinese Wikipedia, Baidu Baike never gives a strict definition of the difference between an encyclopedia entry and a dictionary entry, which is why there are many explanations about diction and common phrases.

When it comes to locally registered companies, a lot of information is generated by Baidu automatically. There are some data that can be updated manually but the company must first claim the ownership of that page in order to edit it. All updates are subject to approval by platform’s administrators.

All editors need to register an account before editing, and administrators filter all but the simplest edits before they go public. A phone number registered in mainland China is needed to register a new account.

Baidu Baike Marketing Options

There are two main routes for marketing with Baidu Baike. First, the company should claim their page to get editor access to it. This will offer an opportunity to make such page more informative. However, the editor must first register with the real name and local phone number and provide company’s authorization to the platform.

The second method of Baidu Baike marketing involves using Baidu display advertising to increase chances that the company ad would be shown with the relevant search entry. This route requires a company to register Baidu advertiser’s account.

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Here is our guide Baidu Baike.

Baidu Baike (百度 百科 in Chinese, translated as “Baidu Encyclopedia”) is a collaborative, web-based encyclopedia that is owned and produced by the Chinese search engine Baidu. The test version was released on April 20, 2006 and within three weeks the encyclopedia had grown to more than 90,000 articles and surpassing Chinese Wikipedia. In January 2018 Baidu Baike had more than 15.1 million articles.

Baidu officially declares that Baidu Baike serves as an online encyclopedia, as well as information storage for netizens. Baidu Baike claims “equality”, “cooperation”, “sharing” and “freedom” as the platform’s core values. It is connected with search engines in order to meet information needs of the users.

Baidu Baike Concept

At World Wide Web Consortium 2018, Baidu’s William Chang said that “there is actually no reason for China to use Wikipedia … It is very natural for China to make its own products.”

While using Baidu search engine, the link of the corresponding entry in Baidu Baike, if present, is placed as the first result or one of the first results.

Content restrictions

Articles or comments that contain the following types of content are not allowed:

• Pornographic, violent and “uncivilized” content
• Advertisement
• Personal attacks
• Content against morality and ethics
• Malicious, trivial or spam-like content
• Personal facts

Since Baidu falls under the jurisdiction of the Chinese government, it is mandatory to censor the contents of their encyclopedia in accordance with relevant government regulations. All editors must register accounts with their real names before they can create or edit articles. The administrators filter the edits before they become public.

As a result, Baidu Baike has an advantage over its competitors by complying with Chinese censorship laws. Since Chinese version of Wikipedia does not censor its own content, the government can block it while Baidu Baike remains accessible.

Structure: front page

The current front page of Baidu Baike was put into operation in 6 September 2012. At the top of the page displays the official Baidu Baike slogan “Let all humankind learn about the world”, as well as up-to-date information about the number of users and mentions. The selected content is presented at the bottom left of the front page.

The bottom right contains announcements, plans and projects. The information on the front page usually contains current hot topics, often related to featured news. In addition to these popular topics, there are also one-sentence summaries of the news. Baidu Baike also includes other channels such as nature, culture, geography and special topics such as core users, digital museums, etc.

Submissions

The access pages of Baidu Baike include telephone cards, texts and other supporting information. An earlier version allowed users to respond to pages, but this feature was removed after September 2008, coinciding with time when other major Western social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) became inaccessible in China. The main language of Baidu Baike is Chinese, written with the simplified script, messages written in traditional Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese or Japanese are automatically translated.

Calling cards and texts

Baike telephone cards contain two parts: the description of an item and the basic information. The first is similar to the preface of an article, which provides a general introduction to the whole text. The latter uses a table to summarize basic information and statistics. Both are processed separately from the main part of the article. The main text is limited to 40 thousand bits, which corresponds to 20 thousand Chinese characters.

The earlier versions could only contain one image, but now 20 images and 20 albums can be included in an article. The item may also contain a link to a Baidu card, dynamic screenshots and videos. The information cited is below the main text, which does not distinguish footnotes from other details. However, the quoted images do not specify the source.

Supporting information

Most pieces of supporting information are located at the bottom or the right of the page, except for scientific terms, which are pushed upwards. Usually supporting information is automatically generated by the system, with some manual editing. Supporting information on the right side of the page contains personal information, statistics, today in history, honor contribution and current trends. Statistics include the number of page views, the number of editors, the latest updates, information about makers, etc. Editors who contribute complex articles are also mentioned and honored.

A user can see a database, the Baidu dictionary and related items at the bottom of each article. The celebrity articles have added databases with their individual songs, albums and videos. The user recommendations section is used to collect feedback about the article.

Editing Encyclopedia entries

When an editor makes an edit that has been approved, the editor’s account receives a certain number of experience points based on the complexity of the operation (1 for the simplest operations, 5 for a complex operation). When an editor successfully completes the requested job, the editor receives experience points and a predetermined number of welfare points that can be used to make purchases on Baidu. Editors are divided into 15 levels with corresponding ‘Encyclopedia titles’ (百科 头衔) based on their accumulated experience points. In 2012, the names of the titles were changed from modern business-sounding titles to titles that resembled the Chinese imperial exam and the Confucian scholarship.

Content and categories

In contrast with a traditional encyclopedia, the information in Baidu Baike is somewhat broader. Baidu Baike also contains food recipes, film products, internet programs and video games, as well as their encyclopedic content. However, unlike Chinese Wikipedia, Baidu Baike never gives a strict definition of the difference between an encyclopedia entry and a dictionary entry. There are also many statements about diction and common phrases.

In addition to articles, Baidu Baike contains several special pages:

• A Sandbox entry (编辑 实验), giving users the opportunity to practice editing;
• Help, which offers terminologies, basic settings, prescriptions, user titles, etc.
• User page, called “Baidu Authorized ID” which is similar to that of Wikipedia. However, these are considered an encouragement for advanced users – very few editors receive the privilege to create their own page;
• Baidu Baike has an open policy for adding entries and supports categorized search functions. The classification is based on the characteristics of an item, but not on the quality, and there is no limit to categorization. Baidu Baike now has an elementary categorized page and tree. Part of the open layout can be set at levels, but catalogs with similar meanings cannot be merged or redirected.

Source: Wikipedia

Read more on how you can take advantage of marketing on Baidu Baike.

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Just one year after its launch in China in 2013, Evernote was already claiming 4 million users. Last year, China has become its second largest market with reported 20 million users. Yinxiang Biji, it’s Chinese company, has recently announced its plans to go public in China.

In fact, Evernote has succeeded where many famous Western tech giants, such as Google or Facebook, have failed miserably. So, what was it that they were doing right? Let us break down main factors of Evernote’s remarkable success in China.

Navigating around Chinese censorship

Evernote has always stressed its main functionality as a private data storage for individuals, not a social platform and broadcasting service. Although, the original version does include some social functions such as note sharing, they have been either removed or played down in the Chinese product. This enabled Evernote to stay away from troubles with China’s powerful internet censors.

Speed and functionality

The company has realized that the key to good usability in China is the speed of synchronization and access – the core of its functionality. Keeping data centers in US would severely impact connection speed and turn away potential users, making it impossible to acquire critical mass of local early adopters. Hence the decision to setup local data center, which was also its first one outside of US.

Privacy assurance

Company’s CEO, Phil Libin, has published a letter assuring subscribers that Evernote takes securing the privacy of user data in China very seriously. The letter emphasized Evernote’s adherence to its three laws of handling user data by making it personal, protected, and portable.

Employing social media

Evernote quickly embraced Weibo and WeChat, two most popular Chinese social media platforms. The company has also been publishing its own blog filled with useful tips about efficient usage of its services while tailoring the message for the local audience. The blog was encouraging users to write about their personal travel experience with connection to Evernote apps – another good example of user engagement.

Localized customer service

When it comes to Chinese users, Evernote quickly understood the importance of speedy and high quality customer service . The company has been recognized for its efficient response to issues and complaints, both through social media, like WeChat channel, as well via chat on their website.

Successful choice of brand name

Evernote has made a smart choice in picking its Chinese brand name that proved to be an excellent fit on many levels. Evernote’s Chinese name is Yinxiang Biji (印象笔记) and can be translated as “memory notes”. Incidentally, the name also incorporates character 象, an elephant, that is used as Evernote’s logo. The name is both memorable and descriptive of the core functionality of the service.

Integration with local services

Part of Evernote’s China localization strategy was releasing API for integration with local apps. As a result, along with its support for traditional services like IFTTT and Pocket, its Chinese product integrates local services such as WeChat, Weibo, Duoguo (a restaurant guide website) UC browsers and others.

Localized Evernote Market

Most recently, Yinxiang Biji has launched its local version of Evernote Market store with products specifically selected and marketed for Chinese customers. Evernote’s fully functional web-based outlet was noted for its good user experience and original offers. It also itegrates Alipay as its online payment solution.

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As of now, China’s e-commerce sector is more than three times the size of the US market, which currently ranks distant second.

China has has been the largest ecommerce economy in the world since 2015. In 2019, it reached 1.94 trillion USD, representing an addition of 27% year over year and a quarter of China’s total retail sales volume.

Currently, the majority of Chinese are online shoppers which representing about 60% of China’s internet user base. When we compare this figure to US, where 88% of internet users shop online, it is evident why China still has plenty of room to grow in absolute terms. Needless to say, that the sooner your company taps into this vast market, the better off it will be.

Now, to the more practical aspect of China’s ecommerce. Generally speaking, there are two choices of selling online: opening a virtual store in one of the large online stores, or setting up your own internet store as an extension of your main website or as a stand alone site.

Plugging into China’s existing ecommerce ecosystem

The largest C2C ecommerce site in China is Taobao.com which as an equivalent to Ebay. Although, it is an entire universe in and of itself, selling on Taobao is more suitable to small retailers or individuals. It is a very competitive space and is notorious for fakes and pirated stuff. If your goal is building a trustworthy brand image you should stay away from Taobao.

Luckily, there is an alternative from the same Alibaba group that owns Taobao, called Tmall. The company goes to great extend to make sure that the product sold on Tmall are genuine. Sellers on that site have to abide by strict procedures which are even tougher for overseas companies. Read our earlier post for more details on how to establish a Tmall store and whether it’s a good fit for you.

While Tmall holds about 50% of B2C ecommerce market in China, Jingdong Mall (JD.com) is the second in size at about 22% market share as of 2013. The idea is similar to Tmall – Jingdong Mall is for branded products only and you will be expected to prove that you either own the brand or are authorized to sell it.
There are a few more such “online shopping malls” in China: Suning that focuses mostly on electronics and Amazon.cn – scaled down Chinese version of Amazon.com.

The pros of working with the existing ecommerce site can be summarized as follows:

• Traffic that goes through those sites is enormous and you are almost guaranteed to get some of it;
• Setup is not very complex, although it could be a bit tricky for a non-Chinese company. If everything is done right, your store can be up and running within 2-3 weeks;
• You can also benefit from marketing programs within the platform, although it would cost extra;

Of course, there are some cons too:

• It isn’t cheap. There are setup and running costs and a deposit, in case you are found in violation of the terms of the agreement (by selling counterfeited products for example). I discuss the cost of setting up Tmall store in more details here;
• Fierce competition from other sellers, pretty much like what you have in a traditional brick and mortar shopping mall but with more ads from every direction;
• Limited opportunity for differentiation by expressing your unique style or brand experience;

Setting up a stand alone online store

If you have a technical expertise to setup your own functional internet store than this could be an alternative route for your Chinese ecommerce strategy.

The obvious advantages of that approach are:

• You are in full control of your own store as there is no need to comply with anyone’s policies;
• Your store can provide a unique brand experience for a shopper that may not be available in Tmall or JD.com;
• There is no commissions on your sales to a 3rd party and no maintenance fees;

Disadvantages of building your own store could be as follows:

• You don’t benefit from the online mall’s traffic and acquiring it through marketing campaigns may become more expensive than paying to Tmall or JD.com for their marketing programs;
• Building your customers’ trust takes time. In the existing online mall like Tmall, trust level is high – shoppers know what to expect, fairly familiar with how it works and are quite sure that they’ll get what they pay for (and if they don’t there is proven recourse). Your customers have to be just as confident that they won’t be ripped off;
• The technical challenges can be substantial: you have to have the right payment system such as Alipay, Tenpay or Baidu wallet setup; take care of all the technical challenges related to traffic and transactions; having live support through chat; manage inventories; get a delivery system in place, just to mention a few.

As most of the examples show, and considering your marketing budget allows that, the best strategy is the combination of both approaches. Setting up Tmall or JD store for building brand recognition and attracting new customers in addition to having your own internet store for more immersive brand experience targeted at existing customers and brand followers.

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The number of surveys indicate that Chinese are increasingly looking toward foreign brands at the expense of Chinese brands for everything from food and cosmetics to airlines and hotels. This means more opportunities for foreign companies considering increasing their foothold in Chinese market and winning more customers at the expense of the local competition.

According to the surveys, China’s food and entertainment industries are at the bottom of the “brand trust scale” while local technology firms are perceived as the most trustworthy brands. In retail, Western companies Nike and Zara enjoy the best reputation, however in grocery market, consumers show more price sensitivity. For instance, Taiwanese grocery chain RT Mart is doing well on the brand trust and overall value while British Tesco is leading among Western grocers in China.

Remarkably, large number of Chinese brands in retail are still perceived as not delivering enough value, even at throwaway prices. As a result, consumers are willing to pay premium for Western branded products as long as the price difference is reasonable.

Companies should learn to engage with their customer from the senior level. A company’s president or a CEO should be able to come out and address important issues head on.

Apart from the food safety scandals, social media has been playing increasing role in shaping brand perception of local products and companies. Chinese netizens are typically more likely to leave negative comments in social media following disappointing experience as opposed to writing raving reviews if the experience was positive. This situation often leads to brands falling out favor very quickly, especially if a company fails to address its social media crisis fast enough.

In one of the episodes of Thoughtful China program, Chinese consumers’ trust was the topic of discussion between several participants across number of industries. The interviewer was asking questions about the best ways of building brand trust, manage brand reputation and respond to crises. Below is the summary of the answers that made the most sense to me:

Companies should learn to engage with their customer from the senior level. A company’s president or a CEO should be able to come out and address important issues head on. Communication by senior level management would build trust and put such company on a different level of engagement with its customers.

China is still largely a relationship based society which explains the phenomenon of KOL (key opinion leaders) in the social media – individuals whose opinions are held in high regard by the large number, sometimes hundreds of thousand, of followers. Building relationship with KOL in the area of company’s operation is extremely important for brand reputation management.

Company should consider cultivating internal KOLs, the process that takes time and requires close engagement in social media. Once again, company’s CEO with enough charisma could be the best candidate for KOL. Chinese customers are very likely to appreciate such company’s efforts to build direct relationship with consumers from the highest level.

Chinese consumers tend to put more trust in large companies that are viewed as more reliable. In the West, on the other hand, people are more likely to distrust big corporations. Communicating the size, global reach and long history of a particular company will actually be beneficial in China in terms of brand perception.

Consumers in China are becoming increasingly demanding for greater social responsibility from companies they deal with. Issuing periodic social responsibility reports by such companies, as it is common in the West, will also help in building better reputation and, ultimately, solid and sustainable brand trust.

Overall, local brand trust situation in China shows signs of improvement, partly due to increased pressure from the government on corporations to become more transparent. Also, China’s market is still young and, since building trust takes time, foreign brands with established history and track record are likely to still stay ahead of local competitors for some time in the area of brand trust .

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In this post, we are going to review the primary routes for promotion and advertising on Sina Weibo. There are three basic ways to promote a brand on Weibo:

• Weibo Fans headlines (粉丝头条)
• Weibo Fans pass (粉丝通)
• Weibo Micro task (微任务)

Weibo Fans Headlines

This is the simplest way to promote a post by pushing it to the top of followers’ feed. At present, Weibo charges 2.37 RMB per post to be displayed above others in the feed for 24 hours. There is 40% discount for any posts that mention anything related to Weibo itself.

Making a post more prominently displayed can be an effective way to attract clicks from brand followers by having them notice the content as soon as they log in. The obvious disadvantage is the fact that it only improves your content’s visibility with your existing followers and does little to acquire new ones. On the other hand, the price for this type of promotion is fairly affordable.

Fans Pass

This type of promotion involves an ad campaign and can be initiated and managed with an ad account. The ad account opening process requires local ID and usually takes about 3 days to complete the approval process.

There are two pricing models: CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and CPE (cost per engagement) which are determined by automated bidding process, similar to the familiar Google Adwords.

CPM prices start at 5 RMB per CPM and can be increased by bidding up with 0.1 RMB increments.

“E” in CPE type of Weibo advertising stands for “engagement” that can be either click, a forward, a like or a follow. The initial price is set to minimum 0.5 RMB per CPE and can be increased at 0.01 RMB increment. The final price will be ultimately determined by quality of the content and competitive offers. If the price is set too low and the content is not engaging enough, the ad may not receive enough exposure, so setting the right bid and making adjustment to the content takes a bit of tweaking.

Weibo ad account provides some analytics tool to judge the effectiveness of an ad campaign but finding the right combination of all the parameters takes some skills and experience.

Micro task

The third type of promotion, which is also unique to Weibo, is called Micro Task and involves engaging KOLs, or Key Opinion Leaders.

KOLs are basically people with a lot of followers and are considered to be authority figures in their areas of expertise. Some KOLs have millions of followers which enables them to broadcast a targeted message to a very large audiences.

Depending on a specific industry, Weibo offers a range of KOLs to choose from. Typically, those with the largest following are more expensive to engage.

Working with KOLs requires opening an account and paying a deposit that is currently set to 2,000 RMB for companies. Once a suitable KOL is chosen, you can set a task (hence the name of this feature – “micro-task”) that normally involves posting your content in KOLs account that should appear at the time of your choosing and remain visible for a set period.

Depending on a specific KOL and the type of promotion task he/she receives, the price is set by Weibo automatically.

Individuals (as opposed to companies) can also use micro-task to promote posts. There is no deposit for individual account and you pay as you go per each task. On the other hand, individuals can’t pick KOLs that will be assigned by Weibo automatically.

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In this post, we attempt to summarize various pros and cons of having your site hosted in China.

The pros of hosting in China

Loading speed

Having a site hosted abroad, especially on the servers that are geographically remote, often affects loading speed. This, in turn, will most definitely hurt the ranking on Baidu, the main Chinese search engine. In addition, slow loading tends to turn off users resulting in increased bounce rate. By hosting a site in China, the loading speed will definitely improve.

Another reason for sites that are hosted overseas to load slower has most likely something to do with various filters related to censoring. An easiest way to see it is to load the same site with and without VPN, thus bypassing the Great Firewall. In most cases, the difference would be fairly apparent.

Geo-targeting

Although, most search engines like Google  assign less weight to a physical location of a site these days, one should keep in mind that Baidu is always a couple of years behind with their search algorithms. It is very likely that all other factors being equal, a site with the local domain (.cn or .com.cn) and with the local IP will be ranked higher than a foreign one.

The jury is still out on how much server location and .cn domain affect Baidu search results but, in my opinion, it still does quite a bit.

Minimizing risk of being blocked

It is often said that even if your site is hosted overseas but you are making sure to steer away from politically sensitive or illegal topics, you should be fine. However, there is always a risk of being unlucky enough to share a server with a site that gets banned by the government. There were instances in the past when some “innocent” sites got blocked just because they happened to be on a blacklisted server. It is, however, much less likely to end up on such server in China due to much stricter oversight over local ISPs.

The cons of hosting in China

Hassle of obtaining ICP license

Every site that is hosted on a Chinese server is legally obligated to obtain ICP license (Internet Content Provider or ICP备案 in Chinese). It is a little number that is usually displayed in the footer of every Chinese site. All websites with their own domain name that operate within Chinese borders are required to obtain that license, and China-based Internet service providers are required to block the site if a license is not acquired within a grace period. ICP licenses are issued at the provincial level and the application period may take up to 3 weeks.

Substandard local ISPs customer service

If you are used to customary high level of tech support by Western hosting services, you may be quite disappointed in China. HostGator type of support is quite few and far between, not to mention language problems. I’m sure that the situation will continue improving but, in the meantime, prepare  to lower your expectations.

Questionable value of .cn domains

Search ranking apart, having a .cn or .com.cn extension may not improve a click-through rate as some might expect. In fact, it is often noted that .com domains still command higher authority than the local ones. It may be especially true for the Chinese who may even distrust .cn site in favor of .com or .net one.

Ideally, you could own both .com and .cn domains and, incidentally, Chinese government now allows foreigners to register and own them, which was not the case until most recently.

In conclusion, my advice would be to focus on your site performance, most importantly, loading speed. Then, based on that, decide on the optimal hosting location. If you conclude that the loading speed difference is too large to ignore, than consider hosting in China. Alternatively, you may want to explore a possibility to host your site in Hong Kong or Singapore which are geographically closer to the Mainland and have plenty of excellent ISPs with English support.

The post Pros and Cons of Hosting a Site in China first appeared on Sampi.co.

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In China, Sina Weibo and WeChat are two most popular platforms. Sina Weibo has evolved around desktop use while WeChat only works with mobile. I have already those platforms in much more details in this blog. For now, suffice it to say that, for the purpose of market research, Weibo is much more suitable and this is what I will be focusing on.

Using Chinese Social Media Channels for market research

First of all, searching for something like “sunglasses” on Weibo is unlikely to be a very useful exercise – most results would probably quite irrelevant returning mostly some news or pictures of people wearing sunglasses.

While searching Chinese social media channels, it is much better to make a more focused searches such for specific brand names of competitors for example.

In any case, when it comes to searches for social mentions Weibo is fairly similar to Twitter with the difference that instead of preceding a term with #, it should be enclosed with # like this: #太阳眼镜#.

One useful aspect of a search for a broad term is finding out who is advertising with that keyword. Here is the screenshot of a sample search results with the ads shown on the right panel:

The best way to use social media search is to find out about the competition and how they are using this channel. For example, let’s search for one of the famous brands for sunglasses – Oakley (the brand name searches don’t require #):

The first result would usually be the official brand account followed by news and social mentions which also can be quite useful.
While browsing competitors accounts it is a good idea to note how many followers they have, how frequent they post and whether they receive engagement on their tweets.

In the above example, Oakley’s account reveals a fairly active channel with over 80K followers and 5.5K tweets (as of November 2015). The company seems to be engaging in promotions via sponsored sports events and many tweets feature new designs and product launches:

In summary, social media searches on Weibo are best for researching competitors and their ways of using this highly effective marketing channel. It can help you to figure out how much emphasis on social media your marketing campaign should include and what you should be tweeting about to keep your targeted audience engaged.

The post Competitive Research in China, Part III: Chinese Social Media Channels first appeared on Sampi.co.

The post Competitive Research in China, Part III: Chinese Social Media Channels appeared first on Sampi.co.