Chinese Social Media Australia
Bill Gates, Tom Cruise, Emma Watson and Hugh Jackman have opened their accounts on Sina Weibo, and have got millions of fans now.
What is Weibo?
Labeled as “Chinese Twitter”, Weibo has reached the milestone of 300 million (that is more than Twitter itself) users since it was launched in 2009, and most of the users are educated and white collars.
Users can simply post photos and videos, and comment on other users’ page. They share news, gossip.
If you want to know what is happening in China, open an Weibo account, that’s what people say in China nowadays.
I would say, if you want Chinese to know your company, open a Weibo account.
Western Social Media Banned in China
As Twitter, Facebook and other western social media are blocked in China, Chinese social media platforms such as Sina Weibo, Tencent Weibo, Renren and Kaixin have taken the opportunity to promote and have expanded a large amount of audience.
In terms of scale, Chinese Social Media are among the most significant platforms in the world.
Chinese Social Media Marketing is Growing
Meanwhile, a sophisticated social media strategy has become increasingly important for Western companies. It is actually the quickest way to communicate with Chinese audience and let them know your brands.
Multinational corporations (MNCs) to Small Businesses can quickly target and position their markets, fix prices and promote their business by gathering information, data from social media platforms.
My Own Experience
The number of tourist and students from China in Australia is growing quickly. On the Gold Coast, most Chinese are students from Griffith University, CQU and Gold Coast TAFE etc. When I was studying at Griffith University, almost every Chinese school mate of mine had a Renren or Weibo account. They were all very keen on posting pictures of life on the Gold Coast or in Australia. And they were expecting to be able to search more information of Australia through these Chinese social media platforms.
For Australian businesses, it is a great opportunity to market to a high-volume and high-engaged online audience.
Mustard Integrates POS and OnLine Store
Client Problem: The client operated a physical retail shop but needed to have an online store to expand sales.
But with sales now coming from either online or in store, how can you keep:
- Updates of Product Information Simple? No body wants to add/ delete or update products in both the POS and then the Webstore – its time consuming and subject to error.
- Accurate tracking of stock levels? As stock is sold in store or on line, the stock on hand is automatically adjusted.
- Generating More Web Traffic? Webstores are notriously bare of the tools required to generate effective web traffic.
Mustard solved the problem by integrating a POS and Webstore software solution with a fully functional website, with inbuilt self management, SEO, analytics and social media integration.
Chinese Marketing Services
The Chinese speaking market is our fastest growing tourist segment. Even better they are the biggest spenders, according to the latest research, spending over $3.2 billion.
And they love Australia! With a recent survey showing Australia is their preferred destination!
But how do they find you?
The Chinese speaking market goes beyond China to include Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. BUT as research shows from the USA, Chinese speaking market searches for holiday ideas in through Chinese websites not English. So if you don’t have a presence in Chinese – well are you missing out?
So does your business have Chinese marketing collateral?
Does it make sense? Does it appeal to the Chinese market? Can the Chinese find your material? Is it in Mandarin? Does your slogan work or is it lost in translation.
Everyone has seen comical Chinese translations to English, but are you doing the same in Chinese? You probably are if you are using web or literal translations.
We can help you – here are a list of our Chinese Marketing Services
SEO or Social Media – Which One?
Which should your business invest its effort in – SEO or Social Media?
Many of our clients often ask the same question, which will give me the best results?
The Answer Lies in How You Generate Sales?
For most businesses you already know the answer that best suits you.
Do you get most of your sales from word of mouth or advertising?
Think of it this way – pre-internet. Did you get most of your business from the yellow pages (SEO) or from Word of Mouth.
SEO
SEO (search engine optimisation) is used where you need to get your brand at the top of the search engine results, such as Google or Yahoo, Bing etc.
For businesses, SEO is ideal when you are targeting customers who rely on search. As we all did with yellow pages years ago. I need a plumber, so I looked up the yellow pages and usually picked one from the first few listed. SEO is the same principal it is designed to get you on the first page of results for a given set of search terms.
Social Media
Social Media on the other hand is far more akin to networking and word of mouth. For most businesses this accounts for around 70% of all sales.
Social Media enables you to directly engage not only with existing customers but also other key people and influences in your target market. Through the process of social media, you can build a relationship with people ( networking).
So Which One SEO or Social Media?
If you can afford it you should have both. They actually compliment each other. Good Social Media marketing practises can certainly assist you in raising your search engine results and most definitely your web traffic. In fact Google and other search engines now index social media as part of their search results, this includes Twitter and Facebook Business pages.
Like Social Media, SEO gets more people to your site, which if it contains links to your social media, has the benefit of potentially gaining you more followers. Once they become a social media follower you have the advantage of retaining them and building a prospective relationship with them. In essence you have a permission marketing database.
Beware Dodgy SEO Companies
Don’t use dodgy SEO companies, the techniques they may use could risk your site being banned. Or they could humiliate your brand on the web with misspelt, irrelevant and quite frankly stupid comments on blog sites in order to create backlinks to your site. In a social media world, these comments could be made on existing client sites or worse still influential people sites in your target market. Before you know it, your brand could be being “bagged” publicly in your market. Stay with reputable companies – on the Gold Coast that includes businesses like Sixth Sense Marketing.
At best, a link spammer might spend hours doing spammy linkdrops which would count for little or nothing because Google is pretty good at devaluing these types of links. (source Google Web Master)
Secondly DONT spam sell on Social Media. Think about how you network at a business function. Yes your there to ideally get a sale. But you do it subtly, by engaging in conversation with the person your talking too. You dont give a sales pitch then block your ears when they want to talk about themselves. Social Media marketing is brilliant if it is done properly.
If your still not sure or would like to talk about how it can be used for your business, please contact us, we will be happy to help. Email Mustard Marketing
Impact of Chinese Social Media in Driving Traffic
Part of our service offering is helping clients to promote their businesses into the Chinese speaking market.
Recently we isolated as much as possible all traffic generation sources to our chinese lanuage website.
Then just using chinese social media, we tracked what effect it had on web traffic. The result speaks for itself – chinese social media can really generate web traffic.
The trial was conducting just using one chinese social media platform. Over the next few weeks we are going to try different platforms to measure and compare the results.
Why Australian Tour Operators Need a Chinese Website
Chinese Tourists are the fastest growing inbound tourist group. Currently they are fourth behind NZ, UK and USA. However they are expected to be the second largest group within 3 years.
Importantly it was recently reported that the Chinese tourists are the biggest spenders – spending in excess of $3b per annum.
BUT – How do the Chinese actually find what they want in a tour holiday.
The USA is similar to Australia in so far as Chinese tourism. Both are approved destinations and both have similar holiday product offerings, geographic and cultural differences aside.
According to an article in the Chinese Tourists in America, the affluent Chinese search the web in Chinese to find holiday products they like. They then reference check with friends or other Chinese tourists to get feedback on the tour groups.
Because according to the article the majority don’t trust them!
So What do Australian Tour Operators Need to do to Attract the Chinese Market?
It means that if the Chinese are searching the web for tour ideas in Chinese – then tour operators need a Chinese web presence.
This does not have to be expensive, but relying on literal translation from websites is risky to say the least. As it can make your site comical. For example, reverse the situation we have all seen promotions in English from people who don’t speak English, and you get the hysterical translations. Like one we saw recently – “we quarantine our products” – when what they meant to say was “guarantee our products”.
And when you do literal translations into Chinese from English you are risking the same thing.
So here are some steps:
- Have your promotional material reviewed by a Chinese Marketer, to ensure it really resonates with your Chinese target audience. Just because your messaging works for your English audience doesn’t mean it will work for a Chinese audience.
- Secondly have the content written as marketing material in Chinese.
- Ensure it contains your Chinese keywords and is optimised for Baidu the Chinese search engine.
- Also make sure your graphics are appropriate for the Chinese market.
Next your need to help ensure people find your site and also help encourage word of mouth in China
The best way to do that is to use Chinese Social Media, many Western Social Media sites are not allowed in China. Chinese social media is incredible in its growth rates and usage.
Chinese social media, like western social media allows you to build your brand awareness. As people become engaged with you, they acquire a sense of knoiwing you (in effect a relationship), even though you may never have met. This is important in western culture for word of mouth, but it is even more important in China where relationships really matter.
How We Can Help
We can help review your current chinese marketing material and provide advice, even reassurance to you. We can also create a Chinese marketing plan for you, write professional chinese marketing collateral for your website or brochures etc, or build a Chinese website and social media presence for you.
To find out more, simply contact us – we would love to help!
Australians over whelmingly prefer PC to Mobile web surfing
Despite the growing market penetration and even increased use of smart phones to connect to the web, a recent poll conducted across Australia by hispeed at its 150 locations found that overwhelming Australians still prefer to web surf using a PC.
Question: How to you prefer to surf the net?
Answers:
Computer/ Monitor (votes 2420) 88%
Mobile Device (votes 301) 11%
What are your thoughts?
Do you prefer to surf the net on a PC or a Mobile device, make your comments below.
Cost Effective Market Research
Do you need to know the answer to a market research questions?
Every business has a market research question it wants answered. The problem is that paying market research companies to get that answer can be slow and extremely expensive.
On line polls often give biased answers as people from anywhere in the world can respond, and in some cases multiple times, giving you effectively the wrong answer. Paid email polling has its own inherent bias. And its bias you want to avoid, because in business you need to know what your market really thinks.
Cost Effective Market Research
If you want answers to your question then contact us. We can poll across 150 locations in Australia, City and Regional, getting answers from people local to that area.
It’s brilliant, cost effective and extremely quick.
The demographics of our respondents are:
- 80% are locals.
- 12% own businesses
- 58% aged between 18 to 35
- Only 7% aged less than 18
In fact we can ask this morning for you and by this afternoon you will know the answer. A statistically valid answer too, with most polls generating between 1000 and 2000 responses within the day.
So has your business got a question?
Then contact us below for more information
On Line Retailing – don’t forget the basics – free ebook
If you want to be a successful digital retailer then do what you do in the store!
The biggest mistake businesses make is to forget the basics of retailing when they go online.
SO WHAT ARE THE BASICS OF RETAILING?
Take a moment to think about the basics of retailing, as you download our free ebook
