WHEN DEVELOPING A CHINESE SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING PROGRAM

20 USEFUL TIPS

Dr. Mathew McDougall Founder & CEO, Digital Jungle matt@digitaljungle.com.cn

REALLY

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1. TELL STORIES Marketing is no longer about ads. Storytelling is the most powerful tool we have to develop a relationship with customers and prospective customers. The communication is not any more about the message calling for action, but more a story that immerses customers in the brand experience.

2. BE USEFUL Help people with your content. Provide tips, advice, apps to solve problems and answer questions. Even if the solution isn't your product or service. If they're people you'd like to do business with, help them however you can and you will establish trust.   To be useful means first really listening to your consumers to find out what problems they have. You might think you know, but you won't really know until you talk to them.

3. Not everyone in China likes rice. Know your audience, their likes/dislikes, interests and what they do digitally.

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

4. BE ENTERTAINING This is especially true if you're marketing to a consumer audience. If you want great word of mouth recommendations and shareable content, make your audience smile. Try a #Fun Friday or #Monday Madness topic

5. So how are you going to know when you reach your goal? What are you tracking, how are you tracking? Does this make sense? Is a Like, Share or Engagement the right metric?

MEASURE SUCSESS

INTERESTING FACT 68% of respondents claimed to share content as a way to give people a better picture of who they are and what they care about.

6. BE EDUCATIONAL Be a teacher and provide your audience with content that makes them excited because they’ve learned something new that will help them be better in business or in their lives. What's quality content? The moment that someone reads it and goes 'ah, now I get it'. That's quality content.”

7. BE PROVOCATIVE Provide true thought leadership for your sector by challenging people's assumptions. Inspire debate, provoke discussions, and use research to support your arguments and make people think differently.

  Challenge the status quo that's in your customer's minds. Every customer thinks 'everything's fine, I don't need that new product'. The most successful salespeople help to challenge the customer's thinking - that there's a problem or need that they didn't know about. Identify trends. Look into the future and show where they are now and where it's going to go, and here are the things you need to change.”

8. BE VISUAL Humans process images 60,000 times faster than text. Visual content is a powerful way to tell stories. Images in social media, infographics, video, Slideshare and Pinterest are all great examples of ways that visual content has exploded around the world.  

Chinese love visual content – Over 90% of Chinese netizens watch videos online, surpassing the amount of traditional TV users.

INTERESTING FACT 67% of Chinese take photos and post them on Weibo before eating

9. BE STRATEGIC Content marketing used to be about generating awareness and raising your brand's profile. It's still about that ... and more. Unless you set strategic objectives that lead to sales, you'll have a hard time convincing your managers (or your clients) to keep spending money on the content you produce.  

  Content marketing has six main goals: build your brand profile, attract new prospects, increase lead generation, build thought leadership, drive sales and increase customer loyalty.”

10. BE SCIENTIFIC Test your calls to action. Measure against your KPIs and success metrics. Analyze the behavior of your audience to gain insights. Utilize technology to help you.   People can't tell you what they think of your brand. You have to look at their behavior. Behavioral data tells you what's really happening, not traditional surveys.

11. DISTRIBUTE PURPOSELY Outside the top four apps, the next most popular social apps individually have a limited following, with none reaching over 9% of mobile netizens.

12. LEARN TO ITERATE It's not about having the biggest budgets (although that helps!). Make the best use of the budget you have. Every time you produce a piece of content, create iterations of it: an article, a video, a webinar, a whitepaper all on the same topic or from the same interview.

13. Speak to your audience in their language about what's in their heart. Jonathan Lister, VP North American Sales for LinkedIn

“ REMEMBER IT’S ABOUT PEOPLE

14. PEOPLE LIVE IN TRIBES Your target audience maybe using a specific platform now but over time tribes may move. Just like nomadic people of the past our digital tribes can quickly get up and leave – remember Renren, Kaixin, P1.com Regular testing your tribal assumptions will ensure you are not investing in areas that no longer make sense.

15. TAKE RISKS Be willing to fail sometimes. Not every story or piece of content will work, but sometimes the most engaging content comes from being brave.   “ “ If you don't have room to fail, you don't have room to grow.” Jonathan Mildenhall   Keep trying to get the thing right and eventually you will.” William Shatner, Actor, Author and Film Maker

16. GO MOBILE While the vast majority of netizens still access social platforms via desktop and laptop, they have significantly shifted their use onto mobile devices.

17. QR MANIA QR codes are an inevitable gateway to branded digital and social events. They now serve as an entry to the digital experience.  

Insights: •  Use QR codes as an entrance and bridge between online and offline •  Leverage a users’ curiosity and playfulness when putting your QR codes on

different locations with different end purposes. •  Use the 4Ps of your product to provide consumer solutions for users who

will scan your QR codes

18. LEVERAGE KOLs When it comes to purchase decision, Chinese social media users are highly influenced by their friends and colleagues, esp. the younger demos

19. INTRODUCE GAMIFICATION Brands are leveraging “time” as an element in the experience design, getting users to explore and shaping behavior for engagement as well as purchase. .  

Adding on timed mechanics is a common method adopted by many game designers to create and increase the challenge, so as to immediately draw a player in. For Example, At a specific time, users have a chance in taking part in the lucky draw on their mini site, in addition to the voting campaign on what type of flavor and man would win the princess’ heart.

20. KEEP GOING

Greatest social media failing for a Brand is to run out of social steam. Either under resourced, under estimated, under financed. Consider being invited to a party and finding out that the host left ½ way through and the venue was closing without notice. Impressions will drive perception.

For more information about Digital Jungle, please visit our Linkedin page, and follow us on Twitter.

www.digitaljungle.com.au

www.digitaljungle.com.au  

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