Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Praesent feugiat dapibus felis id convallis. Donec tempor augue vitae lectus facilisis mollis. Suspendisse erat sem, viverra ut tempus sit amet, mollis sit amet ante. Cras non tellus augue. Suspendisse aliquam imperdiet pulvinar. Curabitur laoreet, lacus eu sagittis consequat, urna massa interdum enim, non congue est urna eget enim. Sed non pulvinar enim. Maecenas facilisis sapien sit amet nunc commodo eu tempus enim ullamcorper. Praesent eleifend commodo aliquet. Curabitur porttitor venenatis blandit. Nullam diam est, porta eu pulvinar sit amet, aliquet in urna. Donec fringilla suscipit hendrerit. Curabitur varius sem sed magna blandit sit amet auctor magna sollicitudin. Morbi tincidunt blandit mi. Suspendisse potenti. Fusce vel nunc id ante tempor scelerisque ut adipiscing neque. Etiam eu lorem lectus. Quisque nec sapien erat, non pharetra nisl. Morbi tristique adipiscing felis eget suscipit. Curabitur pretium varius velit, et cursus lectus porttitor vel.

Curabitur porttitor gravida sapien, in adipiscing elit dignissim ac. Donec ut tempor enim. Aenean porta mollis velit, a feugiat orci sollicitudin vitae. Morbi ut nisl felis. Morbi quis ligula non nisl egestas eleifend. Maecenas non euismod ante. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Sed semper mattis nibh, eu sagittis dolor consectetur ut. Sed lacus nisi, imperdiet id adipiscing et, pharetra a odio. Integer vel nunc sed tortor semper commodo. Aenean vel aliquam enim. Praesent quis magna dui. Etiam tincidunt sem at nisi dignissim viverra.

Suspendisse tincidunt sodales lacinia. Mauris semper neque id odio ultricies nec consectetur mi consectetur. Vestibulum eu dui semper tortor accumsan consectetur. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Aenean diam eros, fringilla ac ullamcorper eu, ornare commodo quam. Etiam iaculis lorem a tellus porta cursus. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Donec lectus massa, egestas eu pretium ac, aliquet et massa. Quisque at facilisis elit. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Nunc tincidunt commodo volutpat. Morbi tempor augue ac est ultrices pretium. Etiam ligula mi, dictum nec bibendum vitae, vehicula viverra velit. Sed semper, turpis at tincidunt faucibus, velit magna dignissim felis, sit amet euismod eros justo vitae orci. Nullam a risus eget est eleifend cursus. Praesent vulputate, ligula in pulvinar vehicula, mauris neque consequat justo, non aliquam libero erat et lacus. Aliquam eleifend ante vitae diam ornare sit amet cursus justo egestas. Proin ac blandit nisi. Vestibulum eu metus massa.

Donec et libero eu felis iaculis tincidunt. Pellentesque porttitor, dolor eget tristique consectetur, odio massa accumsan libero, ac fringilla elit nibh at purus. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Cras volutpat diam eu odio gravida tempor. Pellentesque elit massa, consequat ut mollis et, ultrices nec urna. Cras id quam velit, vitae scelerisque quam. Quisque convallis justo sed lorem iaculis non euismod ligula euismod. Maecenas non felis lorem, id laoreet lacus. Nulla magna mauris, suscipit ut dapibus nec, bibendum in magna. Ut orci elit, ultricies nec rutrum et, sollicitudin at mi. Morbi consectetur purus eu sem blandit quis vestibulum sem consectetur. Phasellus molestie ligula a justo tincidunt et pharetra nunc iaculis.

Aliquam ullamcorper euismod luctus. Sed bibendum massa ut dolor mollis id convallis ante molestie. Aliquam erat volutpat. Etiam posuere neque sit amet risus ullamcorper facilisis. Quisque gravida, sem id varius pretium, urna felis convallis ante, condimentum consequat est lacus at nisl. Ut feugiat volutpat urna venenatis hendrerit. Vestibulum sollicitudin elementum porttitor. Suspendisse nec nulla vitae nibh blandit ullamcorper nec interdum turpis. Donec mauris libero, molestie quis suscipit bibendum, eleifend in justo. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Nunc urna ligula, vulputate vel sollicitudin sed, vulputate nec neque. Etiam vel tincidunt nisi. Nam mattis felis vel mauris condimentum rhoncus. Phasellus lorem lorem, vestibulum in malesuada vitae, aliquam nec tellus. Vivamus nunc turpis, ultrices sit amet sagittis in, pulvinar vitae arcu. Sed nec libero mi, in ornare augue. Curabitur mauris libero, posuere ac fermentum et, rhoncus sit amet mi.

To get yourself set up with an account, you need a Google Local Business Ad account, which you can log into with your Google account. Once logged in you can add you business in, check back after 24 hours and you will be listed. The service is completely free, so I recommend jumping in and setting it up now. Once your set up remind your customers to visit the page and give you a review!

For publishers here’s how you can add that nice little tool functionality to your website if you’re using WordPress for your articles (like we do):

Sign up for an account at www.sharethis.com and configure your account to fit your information.

Get your button to put on your website and, again, configure it to fit your needs. You can select the services you want to share your content with and even change the text that’s accompanying the button.

Select the service you are going to use it for. You have 4 options to choose from: Any website, WordPress, TypePad and Blogger (for our how-to we’re going to continue with the WordPress option).

Press the button “Get the Code” and download the plugin for your WordPress installation. Put it in your “wp-content/plugins” directory and enable the plugin in the WordPress Admin panel “Plugins”.

After enabling the plugin go to the ShareThis control panel under “Settings > ShareThis”, copy the code you got on the ShareThis website, paste it into the box provided and click the Update button.

If you feel that only your blog posts need to have this button you can just go to your WordPress Admin panel > Settings > ShareThis and change the setting on “Automatically add ShareThis to your pages?” to “no”.

For the more experienced WordPress users, and for those with access to the sourcefiles of WordPress, you can also set both settings to “No”, get the ShareThis template tag (<?php if (function_exists('sharethis_button')) { sharethis_button(); } ?>) and put it anywhere you want it to appear on your pages. This way you can style it as you want according to the look and feel of your own theme.

Now all pages and posts you have made, and all other ones you are going to make in the future, will have this nifty little button attached to its tail. Readers can now share your content very easy by clicking the button, selecting their service and sending it to their beloved ones.

The main reason for this is that Baidu, China’s most popular search engine with a market share of more than 62 percent, is able to recognise the pinyin words in the URL and then link them to what they stand for in Chinese characters.

It is also worth remember to leave out any hyphenation, and just write the words out in a long string. Otherwise it may interfere with the search engines ability to connect the words meaning together.

Within WordPress there are two places to make the change to a permalink. Firstly on the posts or pages listing page, you can click on ‘Quickedit’ and then edit the ‘Slug’. Alternatively you can edit the post or page, and just below the title input box there is an editable Permalink.

The second option is only available if you have already turned on Permalinks, if you find you cannot edit it, then click on the button ‘Permalink’ that appears beside the URL and update your Permalink Settings (also located under Settings > Permalinks).

Finally, for the Permalink settings I always choose the 3rd setting ‘Month and name’ if I am doing a blog and if it is a website I use the custom setting and enter ‘/%category%/%postname%/’.

Hopefully these tips will help with your WordPress based Chinese langage websites.

Thanks to Duncan Leung for his support on SEO related questions in China!

The Problems With Online Voting Systems

Any online voting system cannot be 100% full proof, if the user really wants to vote mulitple times, there is no 100% bullet proof way we can stop them doing that. But, in order to make it as hard as possible to cheat we have 3 lines of defense.

The Voting Process

Defense Line 1) Stopping robots or programs spamming the voting form

The voter begins the process by choosing the category of award they want to vote in, after this they get the list of options for who they can vote for.

Below the list is an input box for their email address, a message for the user and a validation vote input field. In order to stop a someone writing a script that fills out the form multiple times as if it is a human, we added a ‘Captcha‘.

What is a Captha? A CAPTCHA is a program that can generate and grade tests that humans can pass but current computer programs cannot. For example, humans can read distorted text as the one shown below, but current computer programs cannot.

Defense Line 2) Stopping people voting multiple times

When the user votes, they are required to give their email address. When the system recieves the vote, it generates a special URL that is emailed to the user. The user then must click on that link in their email to process the vote. Until the user clicks on that link, the vote will not be counted.

Each vote is collected into a database, the system will only allow one vote per email address. So once the user has confirmed a vote via email, the user cannot then make another vote using the same email address.

Defense Line 3) Recording the IP address

Another form of security is that the system also records the IP address of the user. This helps us to check whether there have been multiple votes from a single IP address. This may happen under a few circumstances, firstly the same user has persistently voted multiple times by creating new email addresses from which to confirm the vote. The second senerio is that a network of computers in an office goes through the same IP address to access the internet. In this case we could guess that perhaps a whole company has voted for the same person from the same office building.

Not 100% Reliable

It is not very wise to use an online voting system where there is no other form of analysis. The reason it works here for us, is that the final analysis and decision for the winners is made by judges, who actually meet the finalists. The voting is set to be a supplementary way to show the popularity of the finalists with the public, but as there are still loop holes, it is not a full proof method for getting a fair vote.

Click here to learn more about the British Business Awards

Traditional Media Is A One Way Affair

TV, radio, cinema, advertising, billboards etc are about sending a message repeatedly to the viewer. In the past there was not much reason or way for viewers to get a message back to the original message creators! Of course there was a conversation that may occur after a message has been read, for example between friends or family. But it was fairly difficult with traditional media to tune into that discussion. For example after an advertisement has been shown on TV, who knows what the viewers said or thought about after that advertisement had aired?

Is Your Website Static?

So considering that traditional media is working in this one way setting, think about your own website? When was it last updated? When was the last time someone gave you feedback on it? When was the last time you checked how many visitors you have? Is your website using a traditional media method on a new media setting? If the answer is YES, then I think you could be in time for an update!

Here are 5 ways you can get more out of your website:

1) A website is not a static presentation of your company, it is powerful through point for a discussion with your customers!

If you cannot update your website, it is time to throw it out and get something you can update. A website is a tool and if you cannot update it then your tool is broken! Businesses cannot afford to sit on the by lines and not talk to their customers, you need to get yourself out into the discussion and your website is a great starting point.

2) Give Important People In Your Organisation Access To Editing & Writing Content For Your Website!

The knowledge and expertise of your business is in the people within your organistation. If you have been impressed or captivated by one of your employees, then why not let them speak more to your customers? Let them write up case studies, write a blog, send out newsletters or publish articles. All great ways to get more information about your company out there and give your employees a feeling of commitment and responsiblity to talk about your company.

3) Give your customers easy ways to contact you, write about you and show how they feel about you

Your heart rate may increase at the thought of letting your customers speak out about you or your product on your actual website, but the truth is without that information and discussion you are missing a valuable way to improve. Possible ways to get more feedback from your audience are company or product blogs, forums, contact forms, 24 hour online support.

4) Find out where your customers hang out online, and go hang out there too

In order to help move discussions to your website, think about where your potential customers are hanging out online. Perhaps it is on websites such as Linkedin, or forums connected to your product or services, or networking groups. Where ever it maybe, contributing to a discussion in those places and linking back to your website could help make useful new connections.

5) If you are not sure where to start, get some pro’s in to help

It can be a daunting task just to think about new technology or new concepts, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t act as soon as possible. The first steps can be the most difficult, but after you have the right tools and the direction, you will be on the path to having a website that serves your oragnisation better.

Simon Adriatico – CMO @ P1.cn

P1.cn is China’s elite social networking site for the very (very) good looking. Solely targeting China’s rising affluent class or to be more specific those who are making RMB 100,000 +¬¨‚Ć annually. P1.cn is an invite only site that has managed to get 500,000 subscribers of the biggest brand loving show offs China has to offer. In order to maintain a fixed focus on their core user group and to keep a sharply defined edge that resonates with their audience, P1.cn has come up with a list of top 10 laws social marketing that keeps the organisation inline.

1) Don’t Do One Night Stands

Social marketing is about building, refining and committing to a relationship with your users. Campaigns are unlikely to be successful overnight or even over a month period. It is the sustained effort to communicate back and forth with the user group that gets the results.

2) People In Social Networks ‘Do’ Things

It is important to be aware of what the members within a social network are actually doing. In this way, marketing efforts can be designed to facilitate members in what they enjoy. This is likely to make more impact on them and encourage the discussion to go outside the members network, bringing about greater brand awareness.

3) Be Nice

Within a social network with like minded people, manners are important. Talk in a way that will encourage people to talk back. This point reminds me of chat rooms in the late 90′s, it was always the guy who came in and started swearing at everyone, who got hurled with abuse and ultimately kicked out of the group.

4) Build Scalable Campaigns

Generally speaking a key idea of a social network is that it should grow. Obviously networks will come in different sizes, but the hope will always be that there are more users, more conversations, more interactions and more fun. Keeping in tune with this, marketers should think out their campaigns in order to make them scalable, so that they can grow with a network.

5) Have A Conversation

A conversation is a constant process of feedback and revision, it is not a one sided viewpoint. Marketers should be seeding conversations with what they want to say, but perhaps more than that, they should be listening to what feedback they are getting and making sure they revise the message to push the conversation along further.

6) Influence Not Interference

Social networks are about people using tools and doing things that they want to do. Anything that gets in their way becomes an interference that could potentially diminish opinions. It¬¨‚Ć comes down to this idea of seeding a campaign into a social network, rather than just planting it directly in front of the users face. Furthermore, if marketers can influence the ‘real’ influencer’s in a social network, then they could be onto something really successful.

7) Tit For Tat

A social network of ‘one’, would not be much fun. Having a profile on social network is only cool, when you know there are people who might look at it. Making sure campaigns are a two way approach where everyone benefits is important in providing an experience suitable for a social media.

Good Social Ideas Can Spread, Recruit & Multiply

Generally speaking there is more potential for social ideas to spread faster than with traditional media, however the strength of the idea will determine how far and how fast it will spread. If your idea sucks, then don’t expect much impact, throwing ideas around with those who have experience first is a good way to catch the bad ones before they go to far.

9) Be Measurable

There are many ways to measure what you do on the web, in fact you can have numbers coming out of your ears. But it is still hard to effectively measure ‘word of mouth’. P1.cn message here was to experiment and keep coming up with new ways to try to trace actions through the discussions.

10) It Is Social Mixing Not Direct Marketing

Throw out the idea of stepping into a network and directly marketing your product, you’ll be smelt out a mile away. The point is to offer something constructive to the group that facilitates the discussion. Try to mix into the network and be a constructive member, otherwise it is all to easy to be tuned out.

Are you good looking enough to get signed up to P1 Network?

Learn more about IABC

IABC held an interesting seminar yesterday with 3 guest speakers discussing their thoughts and experiences with Social Media in China. This post is about Allen Wang’s¬¨‚Ć speech profiling his social networking site babytree.com and what it means to do social media successfully in China.

Allen Wang @ babytree.com

Allen Wang is one of the founding members of babytree.com, a social networking site targeted at young Chinese mom’s. In China there is an expression for the generation of Chinese people born during the 1980′s (80√Ç√™√©), which refers to the generation of young people that grew up after the ‘single child policy’ was brought about. And who during the mid to late nineties, whilst in high school were among the first in China to start using the internet. So as this generation matures as a consumer group, they are now proving to be one of the key demographics to target through the internet.

80′s Generation Take Center Stage On The Internet

In his presentation, Allen enlightened us by explaining that the 80′s born women who are now mom’s are taking centre stage as consumers. The women who are without siblings, and therefore lacking in role models, support and experience in how to bring up their babies, are turning to the internet to find out more about raising a child or preferred products to buy for their children.

Give The People What They Need

Babytree.com enters by giving these young Chinese mom’s a platform to meet, discuss, share, recommend and more. Allen and his partners, in what appears almost obvious in retrospect, have realized that there is a unique opportunity to bring these mom’s together in an online environment, where they can feel ownership over the site and where they can find useful tools to communicate. In doing so Babytree has built a niche marketing platform for businesses to utilize to get their products targeted to this specific group.

In reality this gives a win – win situation to both the mom’s and the businesses that look to serve them products that ultimately should benefit them. The mom’s help to keep the products useful, by talking and discussing the good and bad points. Businesses get to learn what their consumers really think about their products, so from a marketing perspective it makes a lot of sense for a business to get involved with this kind of Social Network.

6 Pointers For The Brave Corporate / Brand Marketers

At the end of his presentation Allen gave 6 useful tips for marketers to think about when looking to use Social Media, here are the main points:

1. Be brave and experiment – This is ‘New Media’, it is not always gonna work out perfectly, but with the speed and responsiveness of the internet, there are certainly great possibilities for those who are brave enough to jump in and start communicating.
2. Dramatically shift budget mix to internet – The internet is here to stay, so as Allen suggests it is time to at least start considering splitting the marketing budget between more traditional marketing and internet marketing.
3. Leverage the latest technology РNew technology is changing the way consumers view media, products etc. For example in China the internet has become a media distribution system, with video / music websites taking a large portion of web goers time. The PC has¬† now become the new status symbol for wealth in many households, rather than the TV. Understanding how consumers use these technologies is crucial for finding ways to approach these consumers.
4. Internet is a great communication channel – China has done a great job at installing broadband networks across much of the country, so utilizing internet technology can allow businesses to communicate their products across 2nd, 3rd and 4th tier cities, where there is still incredible buying power. Unlike TV, the internet offers the potential to start dialogues with these consumers and influence buying decisions.
5. Get into a dialogue with consumers – businesses are typically used to talking about their products at consumers, as traditional media is mostly a one way affair. However with the internet the opportunity is to get a dialogue started, so that internet goers actually carry on the conversation. The conversation should not be thought of as two way either, but instead can be considered a multi-way conversation where some people will talk together or talk louder or not talk at all. It is no good for businesses to just stand by and monitor the dialogue, it is much better to try and get involved.
6. May need to change how you manage – Allen finished his 6 points, by saying that the next generation of 90′s born young people are now graduating and looking for jobs. This group is almost more internet savvy than the previous generation and will require businesses to adapt to new ways to manage and communicate with their employees. Social media may come more into play internally in having a dialogue with your employees and getting the most out of them.

Overall Allen Wang gave us a lot of food for thought and covered a lot of ground. Personally I came away understanding more about how finding a niche user group and providing them with interesting tools is a powerful way to build an interactive audience through which marketers can learn and push useful products.

Learn more about the IABC

Check out Babytree.com