China Digital Strategy: Got One?Social Media Camp May 23, 2015 – 11:00 am

Scott McDonald - @ScottinVictoria

About me

Digital strategist at The Butchart Gardens

Coordinate the English, Chinese and Japanese digital efforts at The Gardens

@ScottinVictoria – Twitter, Pinterest, Weibo

scottmcdonald@butchartgardens.com

Golden Shield Project The political and ideological background of the Golden Shield

Project is considered to be one of Deng Xiaoping’s favorite sayings in the early 1980s: "If you open the window for fresh air, you have to expect some flies to blow in.” 打开窗户，新鲜空气和苍蝇就会一起进来。 Surveillance and censoring 1993-2006 – mostly using Cisco Systems architecture.

IP blocking, DNS filtering – VPNs etc can be used to get around blocking

Great Firewall Project ( 防火長城 ; fáng huŏ cháng chéng), is different, coined in an article in Wired magazine in 1997.

Communist Party blocked CDN Edgecast last year, Akamai, Sony, Drupal, etc completely down/VPN/DNS routing on a routine basis

Google blocked almost completely last June

Blocked in China?

Censorship

Sensitive words and phrases often censored

http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2012/06/sensitive-words-the-tiananmen-edition/

Jianada fayu (Canadian French) – code for Falun Gong, mao larou (hair bacon), Victoria – weiduoliya – HK’s Victoria Park commemorates 1989 Tiananmen Square. Victoria Park ( 维园 )

While sensational and antithetical to us in N. America, it doesn’t present major marketing issues with creativity

Website: hosted here or in China?

CNNIC Chinese Internet Network Information Centre http://ewhois.cnnic.cn/

ICP license (abbreviation for Internet Content Provider; Chinese: ICP 备案 : ICP bèi'àn; literally: "ICP record") is a permit issued by the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to permit China-based websites to operate in China

What you need: .cn domain, ICP compliance, behind the Firewall, Chinese local content/language, Baidu optimisation, and mobile friendly

Mobile is key in China – KFC – order and pay, as it detects your location within a certain number of meters, prepares and bags your order for pick up

www.butchartgardens.cn

Butchart Chinese Site

Google or Baidu 百度 ? Google barred from internet in China (won’t play ball)

PPC campaigns Baidu http://www.baidu.com/

Operates like Google

Baidu Analytics, also known as Baidu Tongji or 百度统计 (but put Google Analytics on your site too!)

Integration with Baidu Tuiguang (Baidu pay per click marketing)

Baidu tracks each individual user, allowing you to see all the pages they visited

Heat maps

Social Media in China Correspond to the West’s

Sina Weibo is a Chinese microblogging service, similar to Twitter, but with a much richer set of features for end users and brand marketers – http://www.weibo.com/

Tencent Weibo - http://t.qq.com/

Huaban – Chinese Pinterest - http://huaban.com/

RenRen – Social networking platform for students - http://www.renren.com/

Youku - http://www.youku.com/ - the Chinese answer to YouTube

WeChat | Weixin is a mobile text and voice messaging service. It is like a Chinese version of Line or WhatsApp, with more social features - http://weixin.qq.com/

Sina Weibo www.weibo.com

500 million active users

Here’s a specific section of the Sina Weibo platform called Huati – which literally means topic – to monitor the most popular hashtags and follow conversations based on topic- or people-related hashtags

#hashtag# driven, can ‘own’ a hashtag – each hashtag as a page – you can become the host

Badge system – how long, how active | Get a verified account

KOLs – key opinion leaders – entice them to follow/comment on your content

http://blog.reach7.com/why-all-global-marketers-should-be-using-sina-weibo/

The Butchart Gardens on Sina Weibo: http://www.weibo.com/ButchartGardens

Note: up to 20% of users are outside of mainland China

Add it to HooteSuite http://socialmediaaok.com.au/blog/hootsuite-and-weibo/

Butchart Weibo Page

Weibo Post – Late Spring

Alipay (and China Union Pay – CUP)

Alipay global payment system - http://global.alipay.com/ospay/home.htm

E-commerce – payment gateway – transaction happens outside of China in Renminbi

In concert with China Union Pay, a billion users

Tourism Notes

What do Chinese tourists look for? (Destinations, destination attractions, maps, travel guides, tickets to attractions, reviews, local products, food and restaurants, hotels)

Make sure they can access these in Mandarin

DaoDao - http://www.tripadvisor.cn/

CTrip - http://www.ctrip.com/

Engage your local, provincial and the CTC on their Chinese platforms

Canadian Tourism Comission in Chinahttp://zh-keepexploring.canada.travel

Third Party Management

Don’t read/write or speak Mandarin?

KAWO - http://kawo.com/

Dragontrail Interactive - http://dragontrail.com/

Attract China - http://www.attractchina.com/