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Social Media and Digital Marketing in China

China’s current Internet population is 485 million. It is estimated that by 2015, there will be more than 650 million Internet users in China. This is particularly important for the travel industry, as more than 80% of Chinese travellers would look for information and exchange opinions online about destinations, travel services and products.

The Internet is also often used for on-line reservations for domestic hotels (FIT travellers, although in conjunction with offline forms of payment). Fees for Internet media advertising are relatively low and enjoy a large, professional and young audience. Payment is normally in the form of page space rental rather than pay-per-click as in the West.

The main Internet portals to have attracted large traffic volumes and subsequent formidable advertising revenue include: sina.com, sohu.com, 163.com, online.sh.cn, tom.com, 21cn.com, QQ.com. Social Media is very popular and powerful in China as an engine of word of mouth marketing (IWOM) and trend-setting. The roots lie in the Bulletin Board System (BBS), which started across China on 1994 and heralded a new generation of UGC practitioners that evolved to bloggers and market influencers.

Censorship has led to a complete block on Western social media sites and other content deemed undesirable such as Twitter and Facebook, and the search engine Google. Domestic Chinese services have picked up the slack and provide a similar experience to Chinese net surfers, albeit with Chinese characteristics.

Our services:

  • Localising your website to Chinese audiences through translation, editing and custom writing.
  • Submission of press releases and travel articles to online media and travel trade publications
  • Online training for the travel trade
    • Our software allows for destinations to provide knowledge and planning training to travel agents through an online tutorial program
  • Building and maintaining social media profiles in China
    • Sina Weibo (Western equivalent = Twitter)
    • Renren / Kaixin001 (Western equivalent = Facebook)
    • Ushi / Tianji (Western equivalent = LinkedIn)
    • Youku (Western equivalent = Youtube)