Recently I’ve been traveling for business a whole lot, while busy working on a business development pipeline that’s healthier than we’ve ever seen, and at the same time building budgets and business plans for next year. So I’ve been guilty of the blogger’s sin: neglecting my blog. Still, it was a jolt to hear a job candidate say, in her diplomatic way, “You haven’t been updating your blog lately, have you?”
It’s gratifying that many candidates nowadays, especially those that are ambitious and smart, routinely check out our blogs and twitter feeds before they come in for an interview. It’s partly the reputation that we’ve gained, partly our stated intention to make digital an integral part of our offering rather than a separate function. I personally have said on Twitter that if you are social media savvy my estimation of you instantly goes up a notch.
However, we do need to distinguish between people that think like social media users versus marketers. Just because you have a blog, a Facebook account and tweet regularly, doesn’t automatically make you a social media savvy marketer. It just means you spend a lot of time in front of your PC. It’s how you can creatively blend all the communication tools at your disposal, including “traditional” PR, that matters.
I have a few questions that I like to ask, rather than the bog standard “Do you use Facebook, MySpace or Twitter?”
- What in your mind makes a social media expert? Would you consider yourself one? Why?
- Describe 1-2 recent marketing campaigns conducted mainly online that you like.
- How would you integrate digital marketing ideas with offline PR and advertising programs?
- Are you familiar with [recent high profile social media marketing faux pas by well known brand]? How would you remedy the situation? What mistakes did they make originally?
- If you were to design a creative, out-of-the box social media campaign to market yourself as a job candidate, what would it look like?
Rather than just having accounts at all the right sites, it’s the ability to think that matters the most.
The first question is particularly illuminating; the ones who claim not to know enough about social media usually turn out to be the best digital marketing thinkers. A benefit of being in constant learning mode, perhaps.
I had the privilege recently of attending this year’s first annual committee meeting of CIPRA (China International Public Relations Association) on behalf of Waggener Edstrom. In attendance were the leaders of almost all the major PR agencies in China, which also made it an opportunity to reconnect with a few old friends.
One of the most interesting parts of the proceedings was listening to the results of the 2008 PR agency survey, comprising responses from 90 agencies operating in China. While the actual results will be announced later by CIPRA, I found some tidbits quite interesting, for example:
Business
- 61 agencies out of 90 have offices in two cities or more. Beijing remains most dominant, with Shanghai second, and Guangzhou and Chengdu at third and fourth.
- The two largest sectors by market share were Automobile and Technology, at 15% and 14% respectively. Other sectors include FMCG (13%), Healthcare (8%), and Manufacturing (7%).
- Emerging sectors were Digital, PA, CSR/Corporate, and Event Marketing. Olympics-related PR also accounted for a large slice of the market in 2008, understandably.
Staffing
- Women outnumber men in the industry, at around 70%.
- Local agencies are by far the most numerous, as well as the largest. The average number of staff in local agencies is 254, versus 125 for international firms.
Digital
- Out of 90 agencies surveyed, 66 have established digital teams. Since 2005, every year over 10 agencies report establishing a digital practice.
- Most common digital deliverables include: Strategic counsel, forum seeding, online news distribution, online features, blogger relations, online promotion, sentiment monitoring, SEO.
Outlook for 2009
- Only 37% of agencies surveyed rated 2009 prospects as “good”, versus 71% in the previous year’s survey. Of the remainder, 38% say “average”, 20% say “not very good”, 2% say “bad”.
Obviously digital is on everyone’s minds, with the emergence of mobile computing (3G etc.) being closely watched for how that can be used as a PR channel.
Remember the “Make Money Fast” spam that used to clutter your inbox? We’ve sniggered at the gullibility of Internet neophytes that believe you can make money at home doing nothing but sit in front of your computer. In China, however, being an online “pusher” or a “hitter” can indeed bring in a steady income.
According to an 26 March article in the Southern Weekend, “forum seeding”, or “BBS flooding” (“guan xui” in Mandarin) is big business nowadays.
Internet personalities, some using their real names but most adopting alternate personas, specialize in the black art of fomenting active, often heated discussions about any particular topic. Many initially did it for their personal enjoyment, but in recent years some have become guns-for-hire employed by companies with products or a viewpoint to push, hence the name “pushers” (“tui shou”). With one-off fees ranging up to several hundreds of thousands in renminbi for the most well-known pushers, their success has given rise to the guan xui industry, where housewives or students with time on their hands are hired to masquerade as ordinary users and flood forums with postings with an agenda. Over time, remunerating such work has evolved to a fine art, with each posting earning its owner one cent or more (down from five cents during the early days). More prominent postings command more money, especially those that generate lots of follow-on discussions. For folks with nothing better to do than linger in Internet cafes, a steady income of several hundred renminbi per month is nothing to sneeze at.
The latest fad is “hitters” (“da shou”)–hired guns that intentionally post negative comments about their client’s competitors. While some companies draw the line at hiring hitters, restricting their BBS flooding activities to just pushers, at the end of the day the difference is purely academic.
Many PR agencies in China, especially local boutiques, have started to offer forum seeding as a part of their digital service offerings. While the ethics are questionable, the profits are clear.
If you can read Chinese, this article is well worth a read.
