Yep so I’ve been working on developing this event as attendance has been dwindling lately. That, and the fact that it now has potential to net me some money in the long run. I’ve been learning a lot the past several months promoting through various avenues. Little things like… not to take for granted how easily someone can get lost even with clear directions in picture, text, and video format – as well as bigger things like the general relative ineffectiveness of impersonal invitations and mass marketed ad’s.

The more I’ve been using online means to generate traffic and eventually warm bodies to different events in the area the more I’ve felt a connection to the appeals of social media in the Chinese marketplace. As I’ve mentioned before mass marketing, at least initially, for anyone results in far less returns here than it would in western countries. People here need to know your brand name well, gaining a consumers trust is an incredibly challenging task in a world where business law, customs, and infrastructure are based on non-trust.

Using social media you can interact with your target customer’s on a human level. This may not get you sales right away but it will grant you access to people that you can then make further contact with face-to-face. Without making those phone calls and meetings where you meet potential clients, partners, etc. you wouldn’t get anything done through the internet here in China. Not on any reasonable time line anyway. The appeals I’m talking about are even more useful in western countries – however I find their effectiveness particularly attractive in this market where so many other tactics that work well in the west fail miserably.

Seems I’ve drifted off away from the subject of my Chinese corner event but hopefully it will be beneficial for some of you that take the time to read it. If not, you can forgive me right? Hope to see you guys reading this from the Shenzhen area at my event this weekend I promise the wine will be good, the cheese fresh and the fruit sweet and ripe as always. Plus if its not you can always try to convince me to cook something for you instead .

It’s no mystery in this day and age that instant messenger’s and instant messeging are an essential part of running many businesses – whether it’s connecting with clients to straighten out terms of an agreement or casually chatting with a supplier to warm them up to the idea of having you over for a visit instant messanging continues to show its usefulness in the professional world. Anyone that’s poked their nose around the internet for a reasonable amount of time could tell you there are plenty of options when it comes to IM’ing. So how do you figure out which one(s) are best for you? Well don’t look at me! Well I’ll tell you what I use below in hopes that you might find it useful in deciding

Miranda IM is an open source instant messaging system that allows you to use the MSN, AIM, ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, and a few other protocols through one interface. Some of you might also be familiar with another multi-protocol platform known as Trillian. I used to use that. More recently I’ve come to find it too bulky and unnecessarily complex – not to mention you have to pay for the super spiffy pro version. I don’t like paying for stuff . That’s where Miranda came in and saved the day. It’s extremly lightweight has very comprehensive functionality – it is a bit of a challenge to get everything tweeked just the way you want but I can promise you it’s worth it in the end. If your looking for a one stop solution to most of your IM’ing needs this puppy comes the closest in my opinion.

Tencent Messenger is an English speaking persons godsend. It’s basically QQ for the western world. Without it I would be hopeless to engage with the some 280+ million QQ users all over the world (ok so mostly China) In the not so distant future their will be more QQ users than US citizens – QQ has actually been referenced in passing as a country entity – giggle inspiring but also true. If you have any interest in doing business in China online you are hopeless without QQ. Get it or get left behind

Google Talkis actually one of the messengers I use the least. “Why!?” you might ask? “Don’t you love everything google?” you might say – well hold on hold on. I do have butterflies in my stomach about most things Google and though the interface is in line with what I’ve come to expect from google I’m in a unique position. By that I mean I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-15 e-mail accounts that are using google apps so that means I have numerous Google talk identities. The standalone application is fine but only allows for a single google user account to be logged into it at once (you would need to manually add e-mails of other gmail users that are not associated with the account your logged in under). There probably is a solution floating around out there in cyberland but it’s been too small of a problem up to now to put any energy behind fixing. For now Gtalk is on the bottom of my usefulness. Don’t worry I still load it up every time I start my computer – <3 Google.

Skype has been one of my favorites for quite some time – and by that I mean before version 4.0. I used to love the simplicity and the familiarity I had with the interface and the simple flow of windows as I chatted and placed phone calls. By the way that is the most useful feature of Skype, and its primary differentiator from all the other chat interfaces I’ve mentioned. You can open an account insert funds and call anywhere in the world for a fraction of the cost of picking up a landline and doing the same. I also have a Skype number in the US meaning people in the states can call me on a US number and that call will be forwarded to me online or my China cell if I’m not online. I simply need to pay the normal low rate skype fee I would pay for calling internationally from skype on my computer + the normal rate I would pay on my cell phone for a local call in China to my cell phone carrier. Setup’s a snap

Now about version 4.0 – I’m not sure what the big boys were thinking when they put it together but I can assure you from a users standpoint I was and continue to be frustrated by the new interface and other changes. I’ve been on calls before where I could not get the number pad to pop up so I could input numbers in an automated system I was calling into. When on multi person calls it is impossible to get bring the number pad back up.. then there is the o so annoying copy/paste issue. All you lovers of ctrl+c / ctrl+v know what I’m talking about. It used to be simple – select the text in chat you’d like to duplicate ctrl+c select the location you’d like to copy ctrl+v walla! Now when you try to do this simple task you get stuck with the senders name and time stamp if not some other code junk that comes along with the text message. To the best of my knowledge you cannot simply copy paste out of skype any more. I’m reduced to copying and pasting into notepad, removing unwanted code, and copy/pasting the final message to the destination location. *ugh* it may seem like small thing but in my world copy and pasting is right up there with having a good water supply handy. Despite it’s aggrevations skype continues to be a great value to international businessman and the computer savvy wallet-oriented people that talk alot on the phone the world over

My Take Aways

The statistics pertaining to the industry in the last year are all fine and dandy – if not only moderately useful in that the probably pertain to the US/European SEM industry. The most useful bit I learned pertains to managing untracked revenue gaps. I think this has been my first exposure to micro conversions and the idea of having assists integrated into your valuation of keywords. I mean sure the problem is readily acknowledged by most anyone in the industry – how do you manage situations where the true path to purchase involves offline events or online event streams that cannot be linked – but monetizing the valuation of a keyword not involved in the purchasing click stream is something that has escaped me until now. I need to get my hands involved in clarifying the nuts and bolts of how to handle valuations of assists and I think I’m going to have to play this puppy back a couple times to jot down some other suggestions for closing the gap. Going to toss in a link to Omniture for the great video. Not in a position to buy their precious Search product but I certainly will soak up every bit of info I can and recommend it to parties that may be able to use it. That’s what a self-respecting marketer ought to do I suppose

An interesting piece with Ross Dunn from Stepforth – I don’t know about you but I found it terribly interesting . Still working on SolidRank site-wise, and biz-wise, hoping to have some content up and a rough biz plan within a month. We’ll see if the pieces come together that way . Sorry for the short entry too busy as usual! Stay Tuned!

I’ve been thinking as I’ve been encountering more and more customers in the market for SEO work in China. The voice of the customer can be summed up in a short sentance “I want it to look this way!” Why is that a problem you might ask? Well I’m not in the business of web design – I’m in the business of online marketing. Not to say that a flashy user interface and eye-catching graphics and imagery are going to harm the impression on your customers.. but your not going to have any eyeballs on your site if it’s not properly marketed. It’s much like having an attractive storefront without any windows for people to see your work through. The Chinese seo marketplace seems, to say the least, underdeveloped.

People don’t care about marketing aspects of their site, actually it’s worse – they are completely unaware that aspect of site development even exists. Educating a customer to a place where they are comfortable enough to sign a contract for that service takes quite a bit of time. *Cute the light bulb!* Why not create an informative site, commodified for this market that isn’t selling anything. A site designed to bring in people who have a website or who are interested in one that know very little to nothing about the wonderful world of websites. A site to build GuanXi and network amongst the reputable sites and key figures in the local SEO industry. Not selling something directly on the site would be a huge differentiator.. however monetizing that arrangement is something I need to consider more fully.

There is also the issue of very similar to “scope creep” in the programming world which seems to be effecting some of our web design projects. Communication is key and that is obviously something that always needs to be worked on when we’re dealing with people who speak English as a 2nd language or worse yet those that we have to speak to through a translator. We try, but there always ends up being miscommunication that results in us having to do more work. Manage Expectations I always say. We’ll have to keep working on the clarity of our work proposals. We also need to properly advise when we run into ambiguity and idealists. Many are looking so far down range they can’t see what they need to focus on now to get to where they want to go later. It’s all our responsibility, a challenge, something I dread and look forward to everyday – there’s money to be made if we can get our formula right.

So the earth is beginning to shake over here – at least in Chinese cyberland. The country, according to this press release today, has accused Google of “spreading pornography and breaking Chinese law.” Some of Google’s services have been popping on and off over the past couple days. Yesterday back at my apartment I was unable to access g-mail. Today search engine access began to get chopped off. Unbelievable – if you take the time to read the article you’ll also note that China is vying for mandatory installation of software to screen out pornographic sites. This software would need to be installed on all new computers after July 1 – its called “Green Dam Youth Escort.” I wouldn’t be at all surprised if a spoof porn site pops up in the near future bearing a randition of that name.

On the lighter side of things the article references China as the worlds current largest internet user base. Nice, makes me feel just that much better about uprooting myself and moving here. All the same, being in the IT industry makes me particularly sensitive to issues of blocking. Recently I’ve been contemplating the future of China concerning pornography and whether or not the Chinese people have a sexual revolution to look forward to, makes me curious about the history leading up to our own back in the States. What were the major contributing factors? Are their signs of such a radical change brewing in China? I’ll have to access that train of thought again sometime – could you imagine – can you even fathom the impact an event like that would have on China, I can promise you one thing, I would be as far from the focus of the government as possible if something like that begins to happen.

This is old news at this point but for those of you that are unaware blogger has been being blocked in China for somewhere in the neighborhood of a month. Proxies are allowing me to access and post at this point. I have plans to relocate this blog to my own domain using wordpress to circumvent this unfortunate mishap. I hope my posting of some “controversial” material pertaining to Tibet and Tian’an’ men square hasn’t provided justification for their blocking. Anything is possible – perhaps I should change my locks and adopt a disguise *chuckle*

A handy tunneling/proxy tool that I’ve heard was developed by an MIT engineer specifically for Chinese netizens is called Freegate it provides the fastest secure proxied connection I’ve seen. Even if your not located in China it may be useful to you for its ease of use. Opening the program automatically updates your network settings in IE/Google to utilize the proxy – closing it restores the original settings (thats usually just “Automatically find settings” in my Lan settings) Give it a go if your curious I’ve already passed it off to anyone I thought could make use of it.

My Apologies! Hot Hot Hot

So sorry for the long absence of posts, I promise to make up for it in the coming weeks! It’s really beginning to get hot over here – time for the body to adjust to the stand and sweat climate. I was out the other night with my American buddies and our discussions revolved around the appeal of saunas in this climate. There was a moment of agreement on how unnecessary they were and then Brent commented a collegue of his jested that he prefered sauna’s because their were no poor people in them (beggers etc.) Some mild-mannered chuckling followed – its true that even I have grown to lack any and all sympathy for beggers.

I suppose its not fair to say that on an individual level – the people who are on the street begging are truly unfortunate. However the sad fact of the matter is that they are most often employees of an inhumane enterprise that preys on the humanity of their fellow human beings. Taking children from birth and dismembering/burning/disfiguring them so as to increase returns when they ship them out to beg on the streets. I guess the correct thing to say would be that I will never give them money – perhaps food if I happen to be carrying any (O! we did give an elderly begger a bottle of beer several weeks ago) – there is very little righteousness in supporting an organization profiteering off of pity.

Here are some pictures illustrating some of the tactics, unfortuantely I’ve seen worse – I believe a man with a gaping wound on his leg, no skin at all covering 1/4 of his shin, you could visibly make out the difference in thickness of flesh covering his leg from the wound to undamaged level of skin – sad, sad, sad.

According to my very limited research and experience there are beggers who are legitimate, those of the organized type (often the most disgustingly disfigured) and those who really have no reason to beg save to make a little extra money on the side. It’s an ugly part of life that I hope will disintegrate with China’s rise out of poverty. P.S.- don’t buy flowers from the underaged salesboy who frequents the hooker bars, he will always find you again… 2nd hand experience of course, come now am I that sort of fellow! *chuckle*

After some searching I managed to find this video which may very well be the same video that got Youtube banned in China. You can read more about the worlds view on China’s reaction on Time magazine’s China blog.

After a hard days work Mike and I returned back to my home a mere 3 mintues walk from the office to get a little R&R… well the thought is what counts I suppose. My newly acquired internet effectively turned all of my time at home and at the office into productive working time. The workaholic in me sings cheers of praise. Last night I ended up in bed around 6am,  well done sir well done!