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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If you are on a bootstrap budget, the first thing to try would be finding a freelance translator through sites like Upwork or Freelancer. It’s by far the cheapest option but could also be a hit and miss. Typically, we always suggest to have your site translated to both Simplified Chinese for Mainland China  audience and to Traditional Chinese used in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Even though, both Taiwanese and Hongkongneese  would have little problem reading content in Simplified Chinese, having those two choices would be seen as showing respect to millions of Traditional Chinese readers. Large number of corporate executives and managers of companies in China are from Taiwan and Hong Kong and it would certainly be a good idea to offer them proper translation as well.

Many freelance translators, who are native Chinese speakers, don’t have a good grasp of Traditional Chinese and would simply use machine translation program, like Baidu or Google Translate, that simply substitute Simplified to Traditional characters. As a result, Traditional Chinese translation would often look awkward and, sometimes, completely unreadable. If you use any of the freelance translators, make sure to test them first by asking them to translate a paragraph to both languages and have it verified with a native Taiwanese or Hongkongnese.

Never hire translators who are not native Chinese speakers, this would be a complete waste of your money. You should also make sure to verify the work before you release the payment.

Localization is not the same as translation of the content, although translation is the major part of it.

Another option is to hire a professional translation company but, unfortunately, many of them are simply a one-two man operation, regardless of what they say about themselves on their website. Large number of them would use machine translation software with some corrections afterwards. Be prepared to shop around for a while as, in our experience, 80% of such firms provide very low quality work.

Just like with the freelancers, you should test the quality first by asking them to translate one paragraph and, if you suspect that machine translation has been used for any of the languages (most likely Traditional Chinese), don’t hire them.

If you are prepared to spend anywhere around $1,000 or more, make sure to have a written contract with such company. The contract should stipulate that the company must correct the translation within 2-4 weeks after submitting it to you if you find any issues. There must be a legal recourse clause in the contract in case of substandard quality of the translation but it’s always time limited, so make sure to check their work carefully as soon as you receive it.

In the coming post, we will discuss other aspects of web presence localization specific to China market.

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In the second part we are going to look at each of the remaining communication channels:

Email

Email communication is one of the preferred ways to communicate with your customers in China, also being the most convenient method to maintain contact with your existing clients. While many Chinese may feel embarrassed of the low level of their oral English communication abilities, they would feel quite comfortable discussing the same issues in the written communication.

In fact, most business people in China today have a very decent level of written English making it preferable to direct phone calls. Email is a great way to follow up on meetings and provide more details after initial contact. Make sure to write your emails in plain language and avoid long sentences to keep it more readable.

Websites

Having a localized website is essential for promoting your business in China, a country with the estimated 400 million email users. Localization of your website requires a well planned effort with the most important aspect of it, translation, discussed in our previous post.

 92% of Chinese internet users use some sort of social media platform making it essential to maintain your presence there as well.

Having professionally designed, modern looking website may also set you apart from most Chinese based competitors that tend to have messy and cluttered sites. Remember, that your website is probably the first place an interested client will go to after meeting your for the first time.

Social Media

92% of Chinese internet users use some sort of social media platform making it essential to maintain your presence there as well. Sina Weibo, Chinese micro blogging platform and WeChat, mobile network, are by far the most popular of those services. The great thing about Weibo and WeChat is the ability to spread your message instantly and directly to your followers’ mobile devices.

Once you’ve setup your Weibo account, make sure to put its URL and QR code on your printed and digital marketing material and encourage your customers to connect (WeChat is different from Weibo in that way).

LinkedIn is currently not as popular in China as the alternative professional networks, we will review those services in subsequent posts.

Face-to-face meetings

Personal connection still rules in Chinese business environment. Taking time to personally visit your customers is one of the best investments you can make.

Insist on accompanying your sales people, your agent or distributor on their visits even if you don’t speak any Chinese. If you make a presentation, make sure that someone from your company, who knows the material, provides proper translation.

Phone calls

While phone calls can be of limited use if your clients have a difficulty understanding your English (or your accent) they still can be an efficient way to keep in touch with those who do speak it well enough. However, with the proliferation of instant messaging, where one can control his/her availability, calling someone’s cell phone directly may seem less considerate.

Great mobile instant messaging services, such as WeChat, could be a great way not only to communicate but also to spread your marketing message as well.

Post (Regular Mail)

Mailing printed material is one of the least efficient ways to communicate in modern times and China is no exception. In B2B marketing settings, mailing information by post is quickly losing its value and I’d advise to avoid it;

Relationship and Networking

Chinese guanxi remains important in Chinese business environment, although the whole concept can be alien to many foreigners. Guanxi refers to one’s network of personal relationships in a business context. The concept of guanxi also implies that business relationships can often transform into personal friendships, and indeed many Chinese business people consciously spend a great deal of time and energy nurturing such relationships. This can take the form of banqueting, evening entertainment or gift-giving – activities that can seem onerous and unnecessary to many Westerners.

As Matthew Harrison and Mark Hedley of B2B International write in their white paper: “Although such networking and relationship-building is clearly important to the sales process in China, there is a tendency among some commentators to overemphasize its importance when trying to penetrate the Chinese market.

As in any market, building strong relationships is extremely important to achieving market success, although guanxi is no substitute for a strong product offering or a trustworthy supplier. What Western companies sometimes have difficulty coming to terms with is the way in which this trust is gained, and the time it often takes to convince the customer that yours is the product or service that meets their needs. The overriding piece of advice for Western companies would be to understand the importance of establishing relationships when targeting Chinese companies, and to be prepared for the patience required for this.”

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Marketing on Douban offers some unique opportunities for brands targeting niche audiences and could present an interesting opportunity to explore. In this post we are going to have a closer look at the options.

Of course, compared to Weibo, WeChat, Renren or Qzone, those are fairly small numbers but what sets Douban apart is the unique culture created by a core of dedicated users. Unlike Weibo, it appeals to white collar, sophisticated Chinese urbanites. According to Doctor Yang Bo, the founder of Douban, most of the users live in major big cities of China. They are office workers, artists, freelancers and students who share common interests in arts, culture and lifestyle.

Douban is a truly unique Chinese social media phenomenon which can be loosely described as a sophisticated hybrid of Amazon’s book reviews, IMDB.com, Blogger, MySpace, Pandora and Pinterest wrapped up into one platform.

The main core of the site is its communities grouped into:

• Books section, where people review and discuss books and can buy them directly from Chinese version of Amazon. This is one of the revenue sources for Douban;
• Movies section. This one is similar to imdb.com (which is periodically blocked in China) and is the main forum for movie reviews and latest gossip. Here users can book tickets and even book seats in cinemas nearby;
• Music section is, perhaps, the most popular one and it provides a platform for young musicians to post and promote their works. It is somewhat similar to what MySpace is all about these days;

The other part of the site features Groups which are, in turn, categorized by interests such as fashion, entertainment, photography, technology or lifestyle.

Next section is called City which features various events nearby, such as festivals, exhibitions, film screenings, theater performances etc. There is a section for people willing to get together for games, group shopping, dating or any other other local activity.

Next one is Douban.FM which is a music streaming service. In its structure and functionality it is similar to Pandora. It streams music that matches listener’s taste based on his/her history of favoring  or skipping tracks.

In its latest attempt to generate more revenue, Douban has added a section simply called Stuff (东西) which is still in beta. It is all about discovering and shopping for cool things but it is quite unlike a bazaar style of Taobao. The closest Western equivalent would be Fancy.com which resembles Douban Stuff’s type of merchandise and presentation. Items can be reviewed by users, favored, added to wish list or a shopping card and purchased. The Stuff section is somewhat a fresher and more sophisticated version of an online shopping site targeting buyers looking for individual style and less focused on searching for the cheapest bargains.

In the past, Douban has been criticized for slow user base growth as well as for failing to properly monetize its service by restricting its ads. It is true that advertising options are somewhat limited on the community pages with very little screen real estate dedicated to ads. Also, those spots tend to be quite expensive selling between 15 to 20 RMB per CPM, an order of magnitude higher than on comparable sites.

With the addition of the new Stuff section, Douban seems to have found a potentially lucrative formula to keep its distinct and sophisticated character and yet take advantage of the desire of the urban elite, its main user base, to express their individuality through buying unique things.

Overall, in terms of marketing value, Douban seems to be one of the most underrated  Chinese social media sites with great potential. Besides of obvious option of promoting products thorough its new Stuff section, marketing on Douban could be an excellent option for a more sophisticated promotion campaign targeting upscale urban consumers through its communities and groups platform.

Several high brands have also established what is called a brand stations on Douban. One example is of Adidas that features its collections but also actively promoting the brand through completions and events.

For example, visitors and followers get engaged in viewing and commenting on user generated content that feature Adidas brands that is often unique and visually appealing. Below are just a few examples from Adidas brand station on Douban:

Marketing on Douban: Adidas

User generated content featuring Adidas brand:

Video stories on artists creating “Adidas inspired” art:

Corporate content featuring Adidas latest collection:

Contest by Adidas prompting users to submit their stockings and socks footwear matching design:

In conclusion, Douban, being a one of a kind social media site in China, is often overlooked by marketers as an alternative venue to appeal to increasingly sophisticated big city based users. It has recently developed more marketer-friendly platforms and tools that facilitate marketing on Douban and can be effectively used to target niche sectors of Chinese online community.

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The following conclusions are primarily based on our B2B marketing experience in China as well as the research by Matthew Harrison and Mark Hedley of B2B International.

Exhibitions and Conferences

Exhibitions and Conferences are one of the most efficient ways to establish the first contact and help maintaining brand awareness in the market. Largely seen as a waste of time and money by Westerners, trade shows enjoy huge popularity in China with their number growing every year.

Obviously, setting up a trade show presence is one of the most expensive marketing promotion events but it is essential at the introductory stage and is great to establish the first contact. Cost can also be kept lower if you decide to partner up with another company, your agent or distributor. You don’t need to have a grand booth with lots of square footage to make an impression but an attractive and memorable design is very important.

Your spending time and money on trade show presence also would help to convince potential buyers that you are committed to the local market and are here to stay.

Well designed posters, strategically positioned video monitors and nice gifts to your visitors can go a long way in bringing traffic to your booth which is, ultimately, what you want at a trade show.

As Matthew Harrison and Mark Hedley of B2B International noted in their white paper:

“Chinese visitors would feel much more comfortable dealing with a company that they have seen at the exhibition, even if it was just a first introduction. Your spending time and money on trade show presence also would help to convince potential buyers that you are committed to the local market and are here to stay.

It is also worthwhile remembering that exhibitions are an indirect form of marketing and seldom result in immediate sales leads in the short term. The benefits of attending such exhibitions can seem frustratingly intangible to Western companies, since there is no way to assess their true impact on sales. It may be the case that Chinese business people are culturally disposed to over-emphasize the importance of trade shows and exhibitions, although it is also the case that companies that fail to attend key exhibitions can create a negative impression with customers just by virtue of being absent.”

Vast majority of the trade shows take place in 1st tier cities: Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and Guangzhou but recently, more and more of them are getting organized in 2nd and 3rd tier cities as well.

Here is a great resource listing nearly all exhibitions, trade shows and conferences in China: http://www.eventseye.com/

If you are contemplating your first trade show in China, this is what I suggest to consider in advance:

1. Always go for the largest and the most attended show in the primary location of your customers;
2. Make a booking as early as possible as good spots are gone very quickly. Some organizers sell the spots by bidding which you, or someone from your staff, has to attend;
3. Visit the show a year earlier to get the feel of it. Look for the most interestingly looking booths and inquire about their building contractor who you contact later;
4. Quality of the booth building could be a major problem, so look for a reputable contractor in advance and monitor their progress during the actual construction by being on site all the time;
5. Make sure to have enough souvenirs for your visitors – some cheaper ones, like pens, as well as more expensive ones for selected customers who take their time to ask your questions and seem genuinely interested.
6. There is nothing more frustrating that running out of souvenirs and handouts before the show is over, on the other hand, if you still have a surplus – you can always use them next year or at another show;
7. Prepare your marketing material (brochures, datasheets etc.) in Chinese with smaller quantities in English for international visitors;
8. Choose a “featured product” and build the entire theme around it. Focus on one message you want to convey and avoid confusing your visitors (especially those who don’t know you yet) by being all over the place;
9. Instruct your staff to keep an eye on the competitors by not offering them your material and handouts. Eventually, they will probably get what they want anyway but why make it easy?

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First, let start with the definition of – a landing page (or LP) is where your potential customer “lands” first after clicking your link in the search results, social media or an email. Making sure that landing page design is clear, focused and the content is easy to understand is the key in converting visitors to customers.

Before we look at the specific guidelines that are relevant to building a Chinese landing page, let’s make sure that the general page structure follows best practices applicable to all types of landing pages.

Let’s start off with a quick rundown of those guidelines that are applicable to all types of landing pages:

• Having clear and concise headline up top
• Strategic placement of a large and distinctive CTA (call to action) button
• Using interesting and visually appealing images
• Making sure that the main text clearly explains the offer and is going from general to detailed description as the reader moves down the page

Now, let’s list the specific requirements for Chinese landing pages along with the common mistakes that companies often make in creating them:

Chinese landing page design: do’s and don’ts

#1 Use native translation

While using native translation should be the obvious rule, a surprising number of foreign companies still cut corners on this one. Re-purposing original landing pages for Chinese market by using machine translated text or simply relying on low-quality translations would make such landing pages completely useless and counterproductive.

Always use a professional translator to write proper copy for your Chinese landing pages and make sure that they are proofread by native Mandarin speakers.

#2 Remove links to blocked social media

While re-purposing landing pages for Chinese market, many companies forget to remove standard links to their social media accounts that are inaccessible in China anyway. Not only those Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Instagram links will appear broken and wouldn’t even display an icon, they will significantly slow down Chinese landing page loading time.

Ideally, a page loading time should not exceed 5 seconds, although that is often hard to achieve with overseas hosting (more on it below)

#3 Optimize your Chinese landing page loading time

Loading time is almost always an issue for sites hosted outside of China. As long as your company doesn’t have a local business registration – hosting in China is not permitted. The next best option would be to get a hosting in Hong Kong. Some Hong Kong based hosting providers would often advertise “fast China route” options without physically having to host on the Mainland’s servers.

Alibaba Cloud is a popular hosting solution that is cheap and easy to sign up for. However, make sure that you select Hong Kong based servers when buying their hosting package.

#4 Embed videos from local platforms

It is often a good choice to have embedded videos on a landing page, however, if it is a YouTube one – it won’t work in China (YouTube is one of the blocked sites).

The solution is to setup an account on YouKu, Chinese YouTube equivalent, upload your video there and link to it from your Chinese landing page. There is one caveat here however – the video will be preceded by an advertisement and those are notoriously long and can even run for up to 90 seconds. The only way to play videos without pre-roll ads is to sign up for a paid YouKu account. Although not cheap (currently RMB 5,000 per year), it would make sense to purchase if you are planning to host more videos on the platform in the future.

The last tip about the videos – if they are in English, make sure to either provide a Chinese voiceover or, at the very minimum, Chinese subtitles.

#5 Integrate share buttons and links to Chinese social media

If you already have Chinese social media presence on Weibo, YouKu, WeChat or other platforms, make sure to include links to those sites on your Chinese landing page or, in the case of WeChat, display official account’s QR code. This will not only demonstrate to your visitors that you have an established local presence but will also help in getting more followers to your Chinese social media channels.

In case you didn’t yet setup those social media account in China, at least include sharing buttons to Weibo and WeChat.

#6 Localize the contact form

If your Chinese landing page is designed for collecting users’ data, make sure that the contact form is properly translated to Chinese and don’t leave any English field names to avoid confusion.

Also, keep in mind that while your English form may have separate fields for first and last names, Chinese equivalent would typically use just one name field for both the surname (one character) and the given name (one or two characters).

#7 Optimize for mobile

Mobile optimization of a landing page is extremely important for Chinese market as most traffic will come from mobile devices. It’s essential to use responsive design for your Chinese landing page ensuring that it displays correctly on most type of mobile screens.

Once the landing page is displayed on a small mobile screen, it is critical to make sure that most relevant information such as the headline and CTA (call to action) shows up “above the fold” rather than relying on users to scroll down the page.

#8 Test, test, test

Finally, your Chinese landing page is ready to go live and now you can just sit back and relax. If only that was true… The fact is that you can never be 100% sure that your page works correctly unless you, or someone else on your behalf, would test it from within China.

Although, there are some online tools available to test loading speed and accessibility of sites in China, they cannot be relied on completely as they wouldn’t show common display problems, broken links or other errors. Therefore, it is best to have someone to test your Chinese landing page in China using inspector browser option (F12 hotkey in most browsers) to note and record any errors and loading time.

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Obviously, the content of an email marketing campaign in China is just as critical as its graphics and structure. Therefore, it is important to make sure that email’s content complies with the rules and regulations that may be different in China compared to other jurisdictions.

General rules about content for email marketing campaign in China

Headline is, by far, the most important part of an email. There is much better chance for a recipient to continue reading the email if the headline appears interesting or intriguing enough rather than generic and bland. Everything that follows afterwards should be presented in the order of decreasing level of importance.

When it comes to content of promotional emails, less is always more. Reducing the volume of text without sacrificing the impact is not something that is easily achievable. However, refining the content, simplifying the language and keeping the size to the minimum is well worth the effort.

The rules mentioned above are fairly universal and should be followed regardless of whether we are talking about email marketing campaign in China or for international audience. However, choosing the proper tone of the main text copy does require taking into account cultural specifics.

In the West, it is considered to be popular to use informal, light and often humorous language in many marketing emails. This does not often translate well for Chinese readers. Adopting a tone that is too informal may actually convey a message of low level of commitment or poor quality. Using a reasonably formal or neutral language is typically the best choice for most brands.

Straight translation of English copy into Chinese rarely works well. This is why it is recommended to use professional native copywriters for email marketing campaign in China. They will make sure that the language is appropriate, respectful and avoids cultural references that are not widely understood in China.

Subject line

Subject line is what email recipient sees the first. The general rule here is for the subject line not to appear “spammy”. Advertisers are constantly trying to come up with new ideas to “hook” the readers – from using intriguing questions to making outrageous claims in the subject lines.

Choosing the best performing subject line very much depends on the profile of both the business and the recipients. For example, a simple indication of what the message is about will do just fine for an existing mailing list of dedicated audience who are already familiar with the brand.

For new recipients of an unfamiliar message, making subject line appearing less generic typically works better.

There are different opinions of the effectiveness of using special characters and icons in the subject line – some find it catchy and interesting while others can be put off by them. On average, using icons in subject line increases open rate but, on the other hand, some email filters may classify it as spam.

Most EDM providers have an option to run A/B split tests on different versions of the subject line. This is an effective way to figure out whether using special characters is a good idea for a given audience.

Word “AD” in subject line

Chinese antispam regulation requires all promotional email to include word “AD” or equivalent in the subject line. Failure to do so may get you fined and/or cause your domain to get banned and become permanently inaccessible in China.

Here is an example of how it is supposed to appear in email marketing campaign in China:

Courtesy of Apple Inc.

Links to downloadable content

It is best to avoid links to downloadable content such as apps or software. If the email must have such links, advertisers should also include a disclaimer stating that the downloadable content does not include spyware, malware or any other unsafe content.

It is a good idea to have such written document ready to be presented upon request from China’s internet authorities.

What can and can’t be legally promoted in China

Before starting an email marketing campaign in China to promote a product or a service, it is critical to verify its local legal status. Currently, wide range of topics that are perfectly legal to advertise in other countries are either outright banned in China or fall into legal grey area. Of course, an experienced China focused EDM provider such as Mailigen, would be able to advise you on that, although it makes sense to check for any possible issues before investing in your Chinese marketing.

For example, promotion of gambling, including online type, is strictly prohibited in China (with the exception of special administrative region of Macau). Marketing of alcohol and tobacco products are also prohibited as well as any adult content.

One of the most recently banned items include so called cryptocurrency. Although, most bitcoins are presently mined in China, as of August 2016, Baidu, the largest Chinese search engine has recently stopped approving advertising of bitcoin. This is the first indication that bitcoin marketing is on the way to became illegal in China.

Finally, when promoting events, advertisers must be especially careful to make it very clear that those have nothing to do with politics or religion.

Blacklisted keywords

Including any of the blacklisted keywords in email marketing campaign can cause serious problems for advertisers. This is why it’s imperative to check the text against the list of currently blacklisted keywords which can be found in Wikipedia.

Politics is the most sensitive topic and, as mentioned before, should absolutely be avoided in any case. However, some “innocent” words could occasionally get blacklisted as well, especially if they inadvertently become euphemisms carrying a second meaning.

This is why the list of blacklisted keyword is fairly dynamic and grows over time, so what was all right yesterday, could get banned tomorrow.

Links to landing pages and social media

A promotional email can have a number of links. Most commonly, the primary link is the one of the CTA (call to action) that redirects readers to a landing page (LP). Considering the fact that most users in China use smartphones to read emails, it is very likely that they are also going to view LP inside their phone’s mobile browsers.

This is the reason to make sure that LP renders properly on a small mobile screen without the need for a visitor to zoom it out in order to read it. Responsive design for LPs is equally important as for the email template itself. Unfortunately this part is frequently overlooked by advertisers.

If the LP design is not suitable for a mobile browser due to poor rendering or slow loading time, click through rate (CTR) of the email campaign will be effectively wasted further down the sales funnel.

Social media links can provide an additional source of followers and should certainly be included at the footer of an email unless those links are the principal CTA. Keep in mind, however, the different nature of social media landscape in China: there is little point to include Facebook, Twitter or YouTube links as they won’t work in China anyway. Instead, consider including link to Weibo page and WeChat QR code.

When read on a desktop, a WeChat QR code can simply be scanned with a smartphone to follow a particular account. Unfortunately, it is not as straightforward for mobile users. In those cases, a reader has to be able to save QR code as a picture and then load it to WeChat in order to follow that particular account. This is quite cumbersome process for most users and unless they are really invested into finding your WeChat account, most would probably skip that step.

Hopefully, in the future, WeChat could offer an easier way to follow accounts directly from emails but, as of the time of this writing, we are not there yet.

The post Email Marketing Campaign in China, Part 2: Best Practices for Content Creation first appeared on Sampi.co.

The post Email Marketing Campaign in China, Part 2: Best Practices for Content Creation appeared first on Sampi.co.

Douyin, which literally means “shaking sound” (or “vibrato”) in Chinese, has, without a doubt, created some major shockwaves in Chinese digital world and has become the top success story, particularly in short videos space. In June 2018, the app reached 150 million daily active users and has established itself as the world’s fastest growing app, with the biggest music video community globally.

Zhang Yiming, founder of Toutiao – another hugely popular news aggregator with over 120 million active daily users – is the man behind Douyin success. The technology behind both platforms is underpinned by AI-based algorithms that are designed to learn user preferences in order to fine tune serving the most suitable content.

PHOTO: Zhang Yiming, founder of Beijing ByteDance Technology Co.(Photo by Giulia Marchi/Bloomberg)

Douyin is a deceptively simple app allowing users to do basically do these three things:

1. Watching 15 seconds long video clips that run as a never-ending feed;
2. Shooting and editing 15 seconds videos directly with the phone;
3. Adding filters and special effects to the videos and secretly hoping that they will go viral.

How does an app, which was virtually unknown a year ago, become such a sensation practically overnight? How did it manage to beat the earlier and already quite popular short video apps?

Here are the main reasons for Douyin success:

Technology is the key

Douyin main advantage lies in the technology under the hood. Although, it may seem ridiculously simple, there is a lot of intelligence packed into the platform. It uses sophisticated machine learning algorithms deciding which videos should be served to users, so no two feeds are ever the same. The goal is to hook the users serving them videos that they are most likely to enjoy.

Serving it straight

Rather than focusing on refining the search function, the app developers were betting on having a continuous stream of clips with minimal user control. Only watching the full video or skipping it advances you to the next one. Those choices themselves provide the necessary feedback to the app, which is, in turn, used to further refine the feed.

Tapping into the right demographics

Douyin has been marketing the app for just the right audience: young people in their early-to-mid-twenties, living in 1st and 2nd tier cities and primarily females. As the app popularity continued to rise, now about half of the users come from 3rd and 4th tier cities and the gender split is getting more even.

As it is often noted, with all the entertainment options around, the attention span of that particular demographics is notoriously short making bite-sized 15 seconds clips especially easy for consumption.

Unleashing creativity of common people

The vast majority of the clips are produced by ordinary people using their phones, most typically shot over a popular song’s background. The app makes it super easy for anyone to come up with original content – video editing function are easy to use and by adding special effects and applying original filters, the clips can be made ready for sharing within minutes.

In fact, most of the videos that went viral on Douyin were the dorkiest ones imaginable.

Moreover, in order to stimulate creativity, Douyin often runs contests asking users to shoot videos on a particular topic.

Nurturing early adopters

Douyin has understood the importance of getting creative early adopters on board as early as possible. It reached out to artists and internet celebrities generating the pool of loyal content creators who could produce high quality clips.

As the user base grew, more and more people saw the success of those early adopters. As a result, the prospect of stardom drove even more users to the app, creating a powerful network effect.

The post Behind Douyin Success Story: How Did It Pull It Off? first appeared on Sampi.co.

The post Behind Douyin Success Story: How Did It Pull It Off? appeared first on Sampi.co.