Chinese Marketing Practices

Collection: Lei YANG

1. set ’/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html’ as permalink

2. install plug-in SEO Slugs

3. install plug-in All in One SEO Pack

4. create a file ‘robots.txt’ and upload to root of wordpress, to avoid useless recording.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-
Disallow: /feed/
Disallow: /comments/feed
Disallow: /trackback/

5. install plug-in Sitemap Generator

6. active or install plug-in Akismet

7. write tag when post any articles

8. dont change randomly blog name, link structure, link url, and domain name

9. update more often your blog, and post some high quality contents.

Author: Lei YANG

6.  a page named ’have a look around’

The senario of a new user in SNS will always has not much buddies and activites, what they can do then? Chinese SNS will always have a page with the link on top banner, which is ‘have a look around’. Administrator can set the contents in control panel, like show the latest album, blogs, profiles, votes, manually recommended members, groups, etc. for new users can get some interesting contents more easily.

7. Group

It’s hard to accumulate popularity for a new SNS at the beginning, Group is a way, but how can make users come into the same group instead of setting up different groups with the same topic. Some Chinese SNS administrator will setup some fixed group according to location, constellation, sports (like basketball, tennis, etc.), which will help new users to come into the same group before setting up any new one.

8. email alerting

Besides the usual ways that users can choose which kind of feeds that they would like to receive by emails on daily or weekly base. Admin can also setup email alerting for users that have not come back within a certain number of days.

9. Leverage Forum

Because Forum came firstly before SNS in the market, some sites has already good Forum when they build up SNS. So, there are several ways to active SNS leveraging Forum.
 1) setup specific area for SNS discussion
 2) scrolling head icons of SNS ‘star’ users on the top of forum
 3) show list of photo of latest updated profile, wall/comments/mood, feeds of game application on the left of forum
 4) change the link of ‘add forum buddy’ to ‘add SNS buddy’
 5) add SNS ads (image, or wording) into Moderator’s signature
 6) raise some activities/tasks in forum to encourage users to try SNS

10. enable and encourage more ‘DIY’ work

It works better in young Chinese generation who like very much decorate their space. SNS owner could provide more attractive templates, or enable users to upload their own pictures with certain requirement as the background of profile. They also can provides some decoration items that users can change by scores.
This features need more technical and contents operation support.

Author: Lei YANG

1. Upload photo

There are 2 normal ways to encourage users to upload his personal photo right after registration.
 1) Forced upload
 In control panel, administrator has an option to force the new registration to upload his photo. Then, users will get tips to upload photo firstly before any action on the SNS. But this will raise new entrants’ barrier.
 2) Use a urgly picture as default avatar
 Example: on http://home.ebrun.com, the new register will have Pigsy as the default photo, with the wording: why not change your photo quickly?

2. Default buddies

When a new user comes to the SNS website, he will already have some default buddies, and their messages, which is setted by adminstrator in the control panel also.

3. Rich taskes

The tasks also play a role of user guide, which encourages users to fulfill the profile, and try some basic features. Also the daily task like ‘get scores for everyday’ will help to build the user behavior to come back everyday. The administrator can also setup new tasks or re-set the scores for tasks at control panel. Users will get the task tips on the top right corner of the SNS homepage.

4. Leverage ‘gifts’ to encourage the interaction

After ‘gifts’ application added, users will get some items recommendation at top right corner of homepage, sometimes you will really find this recommended item is suitable for somebody that u want to keep in touch. Also the most often ways is to present recent buddies birthday at right column.

5.  Desktop icon

Some company that has client product, will combine a desktop icon setup during the client installation as an option of course. Like taobao’s SNS, when you install taobao’s IM, you will have an option whether install the SNS as well. If you keep the default check, you will get a desktop icon, which will lead to the SNS website in the browser. It’s convenient for the loyal users, and a good way to occupy users desktop.