WPIC and Other Digi-marketing Experts Agree, for China Online B2B or B2C, Search Beats Social Media

Beijing, China, March 22, 2012 --(PR.com)-- A CEBEX seminar and panel discussion entitled “The Secrets of Web 2.0: Developing Online B2B Revenue Growth Models” yielded unexpected news: both Chinese online B2B and B2C efforts are best focused on search excellence, as opposed to the social media tactics espoused by current Facebook-oriented thinking.

The event attracted China Digital Entry experts such as Jacob T. Cooke, CEO of Web Presence in China, Alan Qu, founder of Net Concepts, Bill Zhou, founder of C, and Danny Lavinson, creator of a number of successful Chinese web-businesses.

Both Lavinson and Qu, in their presentations stressed the limits of social media for lead generation when it came to B2B business models. They also recommended starting any serious drive for Chinese clients, businesses or customers, with a commitment to Baidu search engine results. They also described the Chinese online market as a historic boom, ripe with opportunity.

“More than half a billion Chinese Internet users and a quarter of a billion microblog users, growing by the million each day, means a market that no western organization should ignore,” said Qu, who is helping major Chinese websites such as Dianping.com reach these users profitably. “While planning strategic social media reach, both scope and messaging, is of great importance, it comes only after ensuring you have the best search results possible.”

During the panel discussion digital expert Jacob Cooke made it plain that, from a business stand point, search was not only the most efficient business-generation, but also a key focus for one’s social media efforts. “Given the amount of pressure to start social media accounts and gain followers, it’s helpful for a company to get back to basics and think of cost per acquisition,” said Cooke. Since a search engine is where business people and customers both begin their online investigation, not Facebook or Sina, then of course getting top ten results for your keywords is job one, digitally.”

Cooke acknowledged that competitive terms such as “car rental” or “real estate” are very competitive and call for significant pay-per-click investment, usually. “Baidu search results can actually return a whole first page of sponsored results,” Cooke said. “Fortunately, Chinese viewers have the same disinclination for sponsored results that westerners do, and eighty percent of the time look for the first natural results.” The message: concentrating on quality content and quality links will save money and draw more eyes, mid to long term.

No one at the CEBEX event downplayed the importance of social media, however Cooke added a proviso that fellow-experts Lavinson, Qu, and Zhou were quick to agree with, that for Chinese social media, the search concept is still the focal point.

“The reason Sina is huge, firstly, is that it is impossible to spam people with business messages,” Cooke said of Sina Weibo, a microblogging platform doing hundred-percent-growth yearly, a system that marries elements of Facebook and Twitter. “Secondly, it provides a nice corollary to Baidu (China’s number one search engine) in that it is search dominated, but ranks results according to recent relevance and number of re-tweets, as opposed to traditional search engine ranking algorithms, in which the time a website has been in existence and the amount of content are key figures.

“So Chinese will go to a search engine first to look for something, but for reviews and recommendations, as well as to gauge the credibility of an organization, they will go to Sina, or perhaps Tencent (Sina-rival),” Cooke said. “That means you have to be getting your messaging out there all day, and looking for key influencers to spread your message. It’s a full-time job, but can yield great results, if approached from a ‘search’ rather than ‘social’ philosophy.”

Web Presence in China provides complete China Digital Entry platforms based on customized websites, SEO services, and integrated online marketing, including social media and affiliate marketing, all to bring Chinese customers to your business.