The PR Problems of China’s Social Media

Written by Tangos on June 18, 2008
Tags:, ,

Last week, I was honored to be invited to join a panel discussion, together with Sam Flemming, Isaac Mao, Steven Lin, Raymond Zhou and Adam Schokora, on China’s social media at Edelman’s annual leadership meeting in Shanghai. On the panel, moderated by Edelman Asia Pacific President Alan Vandermolen, we first try to define social media in China, most of us shared the similar opinion that BBS is the dominant form of social media in China, even though CNNIC said there are about 50 million bloggers in China already.

How to deal with the voice on social media in China, esp. on BBS, is an issue concerned by brands. Just in last week, BusinessWeek published an article “Inside the War Against China’s Blogs” which featured Daqi.com and other companies which try to manipulate voice online. Sam Flemming, Paul Denlinger, David Wolf and William Moss all have great posts to respond BusinessWeek’s story.

The article is titled “Inside War Against China’s Blogs”, however, in fact, it mainly talks about BBS. Since there is still no popular blog search and aggregation service in China, a post on a big BBS is likely to be more influential than a post on a blog. Most of the companies who work on Internet word of mouth mainly monitor online forums/BBS.

BBS is very important in China’s social media, but for PR purpose, blogs and even QQ groups are also important. Since BBS is moderated by someone, a post could be easily deleted by moderators, that’s why companies will urge forum leaders to delete negative posts for brands, as mentioned in BW article. Companies might be able to control some big BBS, but they cannot control numerous blogs and QQ groups. A blogger can have control over his blog, most of the bloggers will not delete a negative blog post per request by companies. Furthermore, If bloggers know a brand are trying to delete an article on BBS, they will have stronger interests to copy and paste the articles on their own blog, or distribute it on QQ groups.

Daqi.com has a dedicated team to draft and publish posts for clients on various BBS. There are also many other similar companies in the market. Many of them have BBS writers in whole country, who pretend to be users of a client’s product, and post positive comments online, or negative posts on competitors. Actually, many of the hot topics and issues on China’s BBS are created and controlled by PR firms intentionally. However, when more and more companies are doing so, consumers are becoming more skeptical on online product reviews, at the same time, the development of SNS makes it possible for consumers to rely on reviews by friends.

Many opinion leaders are bloggers, they want connections and respects. Brands should try to build relationship with influential bloggers, not regarding them as newspaper, and pitching them with news release. They should start conversation with bloggers. There is a copy&paste culture on China’s BBS, a post by an influential bloggers can easily be reposted onto numerous BBS. We see blog will play more important role in social media, to learn how to deal with PR issues with bloggers, not just BBS is required by each online PR firm.

For more about Internet word of mouth in China, you should closely track the blog by Sam Flemming, CEO of CICData.

5 Responses to “The PR Problems of China’s Social Media”

  1. The Net-Savvy Executive on June 18th, 2008 10:57 am

    Listening, engaging and ethics in China…

    An article in this week’s BusinessWeek is stirring up a good discussion about social media and ethics in China. People aren’t thrilled with the unfortunate choice of metaphor in the title, either: Inside the War Against China’s Blogs. Since I……

  2. Jason on June 18th, 2008 12:11 pm

    It seems that most Chinese bloggers did not use true name but hide under cool nicknames, so that they prefer BBS over blog, or they fear of exposure to authority?

  3. Tangos on June 19th, 2008 11:10 am

    @Jason, I think it is changing, the new SNS site has changed people’s habits, they are more comfortable to use real name online now.

  4. Paul Denlinger on June 22nd, 2008 8:49 pm

    The big problem with the “paid to post” model which some PR firms use for BBS postings is not just the ethics. It just doesn’t work.

    The best advocate for a product/service is a passionate user who believes in the product. Someone who really likes the product, and wants the rest of the world to know how good it is. And who is willing to show others how to use it. This is how the application of social media to business should work.

    This passion and knowledge of a product is something which cannot be faked.

    The sooner PR agencies and their clients realize this, the better. When that happens, most PR agency clients will say goodbye to the “pay to post” business model.

  5. Tangos on June 23rd, 2008 12:13 am

    @Paul, actually, I think the situation is more complicated. The “pay to post” model for Chinese BBS is not as simple as payperpost.com for bloggers in US.

    For BBS, they have a team which will be able to find an angle to copywrite a post or series posts, they will study the product and try to understand the product, and they pretend as ordinary consumers to post in BBS.

    For blogs, you cannot do so unless it is on your own blogs, so you need to pay for bloggers who will not really care about writing a paid post.

    So the situation is more complicated, I think we cannot just say it doesn’t work.

Post a comment