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Socialising your Brand online in China

ByDr Mathew McDougall

The founder & chief executive officer for Digital Jungle
https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/drmathewmcdougall?trk=pprof-feed

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As the largest internet population in the world, boasting 650 million and given almost all have some social media usage, there’s much brands can gain from being actively involved in China’s social media landscape – from building brand loyalty, providing a general education on wine, to acquiring new consumers and even showing your distributors you are supporting them in the Chinese market.

It is however is not as simple as kicking off a Facebook page as many brands have done in the West. China is a diverse, fragmented and in many respects a sophisticated social media landscape. What is the same however, is that using social media effectively takes time, dedicated resource, and long-term commitment and investment.

Before leaping in – Consider, what do you want social media to accomplish for your business?

Like any company entering a new market, knowing where to start is probably one of the biggest challenges. The same can be said for delving into China’s social media space. Implementing a social media campaign should be treated the same as if you were implementing any other digital marketing effort – the first step: answering some important internal strategy questions.

What is the key objectives you want to achieve with social media? Is it to broaden your brand’s awareness? Is it for PR purposes? Is it for consumer insights purposes, or for product development purposes?

Companies need to have clear reasons or strategies around why they want to engage in social media. Without knowing specifically what you want to accomplish, you’re not going to be able to pick the right platform, develop the right content and obtain the right outcomes.

Once you have a clear strategy and know what you want to accomplish, the next step is getting to know the main social media platforms in China.

The Social Media Platforms

Tencent Weibo:

This social media platform (much like twitter in West) that is open to all users from Governmental bodies, business entities and individuals to make their voices public. Has fallen behind Sina Weibo in terms of popularity and usage.

Sina Weibo:

The dominant micro-blogging platform (again similar to Twitter but way more) in China with over 500 million registered users. Over the course of 2013 saw some of it’s popularity lessen with the entry of WeChat

WeChat:

Wechat is a mobile-based text and voice messaging service with over 400 million registered users (100 million outside China). Now seen as the up and coming platform in China taking the shine away from other social channels.

Youku/Toudou:

These are both online video platforms similar to Youtube.

Renren:

A platform similar to Facebook, Renren’s popularity has diminished somewhat because of competition from Weibo and other social media distractions. Kaixin001 was once a popular choice in this category (around 2010/11) but is virtually off the radar of all social media campaigns.

Douban:

A group discussion platform with 45 million users. Main topics are literature, arts and music. This is used for social media programs looking for informal engagement

There are large numbers of social media sites in China and you need to undertake a review to ensure the platform(s) you include in your programs map to your target audience. Remember many Chinese social media users are highly transient and just because they used one platform a year ago does not mean that they are still frequenting that same platform today.

Social Media Analysis & Monitoring

A critical part of any social strategy is undertaking a broad scan across the different social media platforms and understanding how these platforms are used in China, remembering that many of the platforms are not simply replacements of Western equivalents like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter (of which are blocked in China).

Leveraging, listening tools or engaging an Agency to do this on your behalf is the right first step to gaining a solid understanding of the social environment.

From a brand’s perspective, this involves identifying who the main players are, how people are talking about your related topics on various social networking sites, what kind of content is being shared, what the current knowledge level toward a particular product is and what are some positive and negative perceptions towards that.

Critically important is listening to understand what your competitors are doing in the social media space.

When Digital Jungle undertook a social listening project for New Zealand Wine Growers, where we were able gain insights about what key attributes that Chinese thought about when considering New Zealand wine (compared to Australian and French wine), what were the main wine labels being most ‘talked’ about and even the geographical mapping between the location of online conversations and a particular type of wines. All very interesting data points for a wine business looking at engaging more with Chinese consumers.

For Fonterra, we undertook a fan and digital community analysis. This was a slightly different type of social media analysis as we were more interested in the actual make up of the individuals within the community, their topics and influence over the group conversations. All critical inputs for developing an outreach or influencer program.

Social Media Marketing

So with social media marketing programs, the key to success is directly related to your content. Finding a hook to get people interested, motivated to engage and gaining a level of value from your content. However, without a sound content strategy and value system that aligns to your goals you will end up spending a lot of time putting out information to a site or platforms that does not resonate and therefore has little value to that given community. The result – failed, ineffective and at worst a blight on your brand.

Some of our clients have been able to tap into the needs of their target audience through understanding the need to educate and provide more factual content and this has resulted in some great engagement over the longer term. Another of our clients ran a competition to solicit ideas about a new wine label being designed for the Chinese market. Of course, the prize allowed for a trip to the winery and this proved highly motivating for our given audience.

There are a lot of ideas being used in China with various brands; blogger outreach, trips to foreign countries, VIP and educational sessions. These are now being used so frequently that it is getting difficult to remember which brand actually undertook the campaign. For new brand entrants into China, look to leveraging mobile campaigns and take an innovative approach to content.

 

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