“If You Are the One”-Success Comes from Social Media

 

     In the resent years, the average ages of people getting married are getting older in China. Some of  reasons maybe people are tending to have career foundation first and then consider about marriage thing, as Masculinity society( societies in which gender roles are clearly distinct and men and women are assertive, tough and focused on material success. People live to work.) Financial foundation is truly an important necessary element for marriage. That’s very understandable, and also there are other reasons in the modern cities, people are too rush everyday, and social circle are too imitated. You really want to have a relationship or you really want to get married, but you don’t think you can meet someone special in your current social circle. You can consider participating in the blind date television show-If You Are the One.

If You Are the One—Chinese means if you aren’t seriously, then don’t come. It as the most famous date television show is such popular in China, it has been a fixed habit for each family to watch, even I’m abroad, I still catch that show from time to time. I think it’s popular because it’s focusing on the popular social issue. People are actually meet their goals in the show, but I think one of the most important reason is it provide lots of channels for audience to participate the date show, even you are not appeared on the TV.

First, there are 24 female guests in the stage are waiting and choosing for the five male guests (the female guests are more stable, they wont leave until they find someone or they quit), if the male guest is really popular, the right to reserve, the male guest can choose the female gussets. Interesting part is if the male guest is fail, they will provide his email address, twitter address for the female audiences to consider contacting him. On the other hand if you are a male audience you want to know more about the 24 female you can edit payable text to the column group to get more information of female address. And lady gustes will also provide personal information like twitter, blog, photos and videos and etc. so it seems that everyone has more than one channel to get the chance to get rid of being single.

Second, male guests will have a video tape to present himself both to the 24 ladies and the female audiences. This is the most important information in the short 5mins you can get the general pictures in work, personality, habits about the male guest.

Third, the column group presents the hosts twitter to communicate audience to get commons and advices. At the end of year, they will provide online voting area for audiences to pick up their favorite guests to have the other change to come back to the show for dating.

Forth, the ways of registration most are from social media. You may log on the office website, official twitter address, or Google the current respiration places.

Fifth, if people missed the show, you can also find it in the official website, and it is available for free in almost every video web in China, well organized and easily find. 

This is a part of the show, no English captions but you can have general idea about the show

Sixth,"if you are the one" has become the popular social web topic, some audiences wrote some guidelines for male gustes to teach them how to sucess find a date in that show. also there are the dates of the success rate of different area the male gusts from, the suceess rate of different careers. and that caused lots of intersting talk.

No doubt, “If You Are the One” has a great success in China, it concerns the social issue, and most important it’s smart to bring all people together for the show. Their success is on social media.    

No Matter If You Care or Not, Viral Marketing Is There

No Matter If You Care or Not, Viral Marketing Is There

I have taken a marketing course before, and most of the detail knowledge and definition have already fad out of my head; but viral marketing is one exception. Before I read it again in the 7^th chapter of Groundswell, I can hardly summarize the accurate meaning of it, but I remember its amazing spread speed be used in market, it’s kind of description of one advertising champion strategy, or a propaganda to promote the products selling through the word of mouth marketing.

This kind of marketing is almost internet-based, and it’s one level of groundswell marketing, “energizing marketing” is actually based on the first level listening to the groundswell and talking with the groundswell. When people are really be affected by the groundswell and participate in groundswell world, the function could be used. It takes an energized customer “as a viral marketer, spreading brand benefits to his contacts without any costs of the company.” (p130)Hotmail’s success at the beginning of the establishment is they use this word month marketing, lots of viral marketer to spread their brand and products, in a very short time; hotmail is popular with little cost.

Viral marketing is popular and common in newer days; people can see its big potential-less cost big marketing receive. Companies provide some ways for customers to spread for them, very popular way is to “tap into customers’ enthusiasm with ratings and reviews.”(p134) And people like to join because they like feeling valuable, their thoughts and comments could be taken seriously by company and get reward occasionally, most important they write reviews for others and someday, before they purchase something, they will read other people’s review either. It’s kind of honest tips from customers’ world. It’s believable, “testimonials from customers are far more credible than any media source.” (p130)

Less cost both in time and money, powerful spread speed, and it seems like people are having will to do reviews as a viral marketer. But it’s risky too. If you provide a place for people to share their opinions, you can’t control their months already, and people won’t have same feelings as you do, sometimes it may be wrong, but this “wrong viral review” may affect other customers.

That’s why, companies care so much about these reviews. In China, we have the biggest online shopping website, like Amazon, and eBay, called Taobao. It’s a wonderful place to see all the reviews of almost all products written by the customers. So some brand owners will tell you ahead of time “if you have any thoughts or complain please tell us, we will happy to help you, please give us a high star evaluation.” Sometimes they may give you a key chain or a Handkerchief as a gift to make you happy. I don’t want judge its good or not, but we can see business people can also get pressure from viral marketing.

Viral marketing may bring you the amazing advertising effect without any costs, and it can also hurt you when you’re unconscious. Opportunities on the other side are challenges. Take the viral marketing seriously and use it well. And no matter if you care or not, viral marketing is there.  

original post 2:Can you believe Penguin is Chinese favorite pet?

Can you believe Penguin is Chinese favorite pet?

It’s not dog, not cat, and not snow sculpture. China’s most popular “pet” is penguin. How strange it is! But, yes that’s true. By 2011, there are more than 900 million people have their penguin number. What I’m talking about is QQ，their logo is a cute penguin. QQ is China’s most popular communication social tool. Like msn, but there are more other functions. It’s like msn plus twitter plus face book, and they also provide email service, QQ game center, QQ show to dress up yourself in QQ image, and QQ pet, you can adopt a penguin, a bear or a pig virtually. It’s like a mini three dimensional world.

                                                                                                        QQ chat

QQ is most successful social tools product, at the very beginning, they only provided communication service like MSN, at that time QQ didn’t have today’s absolute leader position. It had competitors, but QQ stood out because of its amazing fast access speed. Easy and stable accessed could attract lots of users. After QQ had a large number of stable users, they start to provide email, QQ game, QQ music, QQ show, QQ pet to keep old users and attract new customers. Some of its services are free, but some of them like QQ show or QQ pet require electronic money, but that electronic money equals real money, you have to buy electronic money and then you can enjoy the game. I think QQ made lots of profits by these services. These games and services were really popular during that time.

                                                                                            QQ show: choose your favorate dress style

                                                                                                QQ zone like blog

                                                                                                           QQ game

When blog wasn’t that popular in China, QQ company already have QQ zone, very much like blog, people can decorate their QQ zone by electronic money and it cost you. People posted their thoughts and feelings about their lives. And cute designs attracted lots of people. And now twitter is more popular, QQ Company presents QQ weibo, just like American twitter. And QQ’s advantages are all of their products and services are all in one account, maybe you don’t need one of their offer, but you must need something, when you log on your QQ, that’s a big market opportunity, because all the logo of QQ products are showed on the same menu, it’s little so it’s not annoy, and it’s obvious to find, how smart. I think the vast majority of QQ users log on QQ everyday. It’s inertial big market.

QQ also provide all kinds of membership services. QQ show membership, QQ pet membership, QQ music membership and QQ zone membership. If you own the membership in particular item, you will spend fixed number money each month but you can enjoy everything on that item, no more costs. So I think QQ is a good sample in both social services area and marketing area.

Here are Benefits to “Goundswell Approach-Avoidance Syndrome”

Before I actually read Groundswell, I thought it mainly belongs to the typical kind of technology book which introduce some social media’s powerful features, more like guide book or resource book. After six chapters reading, it does have the foundation like introduce new trends and provide many ways to get involved in groundswell and supported by statistic and informatics. But more unique and important are the Charlenen Li and Josh Bernoff creatively explain “why”: why more and more people are involved in groundswell and why groundswell is powerful.

For me, I specially attracted by the strategies of how to make people who have pressure to move forward in new technologies, called “groundswell approach-avoidance syndrome” could stand out and get involved in groundswell. This is present in chapter 4.

In my friends circle, I’m the one who belongs to “groundswell approach-avoidance syndrome”. I think everyone may have a type of friends like me, we know we need to get involved in new trends. And we actually could and maybe could a nice job, but we feel nervous to move forward and change. The jumping out new technologies is a kind of scaring, because it seems like we can never be an expert in this area. We will always be led to somewhere instead of we decide to go somewhere. This thought limited us to get more benefits from web world.

This problem is more notable in business world. Just like the example, a business owner thought he must be involved in groundswell, because the competitors are, but he didn’t know why. The authors list these “symptoms” like “checking the websites multiple times per day to make sure you are up to date as possible on all social media..as if you have run a half marathon while never getting anywhere at all” (66) or like you ask your teenage child about twitter. And explain with four steps to deal with the problem. To regard business as people, “business won’t response, but people will.” (70) four steps planning progress focus on “people” to know what your customer ready for; “objectives” to have goals; “strategy” concern about customers and goals to work out the relationship between you and customers; the last one “technology” with the first three elements, this step is clear, just focus on the particular one. and Li and Bernoff provide suggestion of how to make strategies to get start.

Authors provide quite clear tips for “groundswell approach-avoidance syndrome” to deal with their business with clear sense of direction and more relax to reach goals through groundswell. In China, most companies have the particular information department and work with customer serves department to develop website project to get customers involved in their marketing strategy, let people vote, leave reviews. And open up some social media belong with business brand like twitter, blog. And the “groundswell approach-avoidance syndrome” is exist in middle age boss, they have a career, know little about social media, and afraid of failure of information strategy. So I think this chapter is very helpful with specific solution, and explain why they need to get involve.