The National Matriculation Test (NMT), or college entrance exam, is a national test that is taken by millions of netizens across the country. It is the culmination of many years of hard study and will determine the students’ future.

In this IWOM watch, we see that netizens are no longer content with just mainstream media reporting of the event, they report their experiences themselves on BBS, blogs and online video sites. More than just reporting, this sharing via IWOM serves as a communal pressure release. Also, interesting to note regarding IWOM is that in the new test guidelines released this year, netizens were “strongly discouraged” from using net language in their essays which created extensive debate online, suggesting net language has a significant impact on Chinese culture.

For more on net language, see our previous blog articles here (EN) and here for CN.

Case Study

National Matriculation Test: Netizens connect and share experience online
(高考，与网络同步)

Summary

Video sharing sites become the reporting platform 网络视频成为高考报道平台

Although the 2008 National Matriculation Test (NMT) is over, the test is still a hot topic among netizens. Netizens have created and uploaded thousands of videos about the NMT on video sharing websites, like Youku and Tudou. Video creators used their own creativity to express their thoughts, experiences and feelings towards “the nation’s big issue”. Some are made just for fun, while others are made from real-life footage of the students, teachers and parents during the days surrounding the exam. This type of content has been widely viewed and shared by users and more netizens are beginning to act as “grassroots reporters” during important events like the NMT.

Composition and net language 高考作文慎用网络语言再成争议

The composition of the NMT is one of the hottest topics discussed by netizens. In particular, the new guideline includes a warning against the use of net language and asks that students “use net language carefully.” This new guideline created controversial buzz online. People questioned the rule and debated whether or not net language should be reconsidered and included in test guideline, as net language has become part of mainstream culture and netizens’ daily life.

CIC View

The fact that the NMT addressed the use of net language on the national exam shows the influence and widespread use of net language. As the Internet becomes part of daily life in China, and new “net” words emerge, such as Ding (顶), Jiong (囧), ORZ, brands need to understand the importance of net language and find ways to integrate and build these new terms into campaigns or marketing communications issues in order to relate to and draw the attention of young consumers.

Screen shot of the index for the full IWOM watch report:

See below for other related posts that may be of interest:

- IWOM Watch Apr 16-30: Netizens find new channels for self expression
- IWOM Watch Apr 1-15: Understanding the Local Online Community Landscape
- 3 pathways to net culture
- Hey DX, hope you like this post on net language for auto industry

Below are just a few of the recent articles on Seeisee Chinese blog.

Strategic steps for online marketing: Show,Communicate and Interact (May 16th)
（在线营销的展示、沟通和互动）

Although for many, online marketing is not new, some companies are just beginning to explore ways to integrate online marketing into their overall campaigns. In James’ new post, he lists 3 steps to help brands engage in online marketing:
1.) “Show” — brands should “show” or make themselves known among key online communities in order to raise brand awareness among target consumers.
2.) “Communicate” — brands should find strategic ways to communicate with their customers in order to better understand their customers’ needs and interests.
3.) “Interact” — brands should interact with online consumers to increase their understanding of and improve their relationship with their customers.

To read the full article in Chinese, please see here.

The Whole World is Waiting for the iPhone 3G (June 13th)
(满城尽待 iPhone 3G)

On June 10th, at the 2008 WWDC Apple unveiled the new iPhone 3G. News of the iPhone’s impending release immediately generated buzz among Chinese netizens and iPhone fan communities on BBS were key drivers of the buzz. For example, more than 9,000 messages about the iPhone 3G were posted in just one day on WeiPhone, a popular mobile phone BBS forum with over 150,000 members.

To read the full article in Chinese, please see here.

Go back to Douban (June 16th)
(回豆瓣看看)

Morgan’s recent experience at a bar inspired him to go to Douban to write a review of the venue. While writing his review on the site, he found that communities like Douban offer valuable information by allowing members to critique and review books, music, movies and venues even though this is not the explicit purpose of Douban.

Douban was originally set up for people to share ideas and find people with similar interests. However, the community naturally began to write reviews and critiques of their favorite songs, movies and books. Morgan believes sites like this are effective because you are more likely to trust a friend or a member from a trusted community, such as Douban, than an advertisement or mass email. He also suggests that brands may want to consider creating their own account on sites like Douban to attract fans, understand their needs and establish credibility within active consumer communities.

To read the full article in Chinese, see here.

Last week I was honored to join an "all star" panel on Chinese social media for Edelman’s annual leadership meeting held in Shanghai. The panel included Raymond Zhou, Isaac Mao, Steven Lin, Tangos Chan, and Adam Schokora (twitter handles: Isaac Mao, Steven Lin, Tangos Chan, Sam Flemming and Adam Schokora).

Richard Edelman provides a summary of the event here.

CIC recently hosted our first CIC IWOM Classroom events at Shanghai International Studies University (SISU). As I mentioned before, the purpose of the CIC IWOM Classroom Series is to educate students on the power of IWOM and how they can leverage their understanding and experience with IWOM to work with brands and agencies in the future. Of course most of the students already have experienced the power of IWOM...almost everyone raised their hands when I asked if they had blogs, written on BBS or use SNS. But what they may not realize is the interest brands and agencies have in IWOM and how some of the skills they have learned could be assets for their future employers.

It was great to see more than 80 students in the audience and we look forward to organizing future events at SISU and other universities in the Shanghai area this coming fall.

Below is a picture of my speech on IWOM and its impact on marketing communications.

I was also joined by Robin, Project Manager at CIC, who gave a great talk on Sports IWOM with compelling case studies from our recent white paper Tuning into Sports IWOM Q4 2007. Denis, our Technical Director, followed Robin with an introduction to CIC Tech using accessible examples of our data collection and keyword and sentiment segmentation.

The event closed with an active Q&A session led by Violet, our Client Service Director, with over 10 students asking some pretty good and challenging questions.

We are excited by the success of our first IWOM Classroom event. I also recently gave a lecture at Fudan on new media in China. I am looking forward to continuing down the path to building a healthy industry and spreading positive WOM about IWOM.

Recently, Business Week published an article about Chinese Internet Word of Mouth (IWOM) titled "Inside the War Against China's Blogs".

Anyone who is a regular reader of this blog or who follows the Chinese Internet, including net culture and IWOM, knows that it would be quite a challenge to fully capture in a relatively brief magazine article the dynamics and complexity at play in this ecosystem and equally challenging to capture the emerging Internet Word of Mouth industry in China that has developed to help companies understand and participate in this new world.

With that in mind, I would like to provide a bit more information related to our view of IWOM and the IWOM industry and clarify some points that could possibly be misunderstood from the article.

The "power" of IWOM can be positive, not just negative: Take a look at our report on the recent Sichuan earthquake here to see how netizens came together in massive numbers and impact to share information, grieve as a nation and donate millions of dollars to the earthquake victims.

Loud consumer voices are NOT necessarily a bad thing: As I wrote on Consumer Day on March 15, more and more netizens are cutting out Better Business Bureau-type organizations (which are not particularly strong anyway) and going to the Internet when they can't get the help they need from brands. Brands being more accountable can be a good thing, especially in a country that has a long history for poor customer service. Yes, consumers can and do go to extremes, but this happens in other markets too, for example, in the US as we Business Week reported earlier this year in their story "Consumer Vigilantes".

Of course, not all cases are so extreme, and in fact, BBS is simply a natural place where consumers seek help and advice. For example, you can find PCAuto has set up a platform for auto owners to ask questions directly to auto manufacturers, with answers being rated for helpfulness. Like it or not, the Internet is a new arena for customer service--customer service is the new marketing. Brands need to be more vigilant to listening to online conversations.

CIC does not seed messages for clients: As I wrote in January, CIC is a member of The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), and we follow WOMMA's code of ethics, which, in short says:
* Honesty of Relationship: You say who you're speaking for
* Honesty of Opinion: You say what you believe
* Honesty of Identity: You never obscure your identity

Making sense of IWOM is more than reputation management. In fact, only about 20% of our work with clients like Nike, Pepsi and L’Oreal comes from reputation management. When you consider that every quarter, Chinese auto forums have almost 500,000 people writing over 15 million messages about their experiences (see here and here) and consider that 80% of netizens go to BBS to research purchases, and 61.7% ask other BBS users for purchasing advice (see here) you can understand why our auto clients want to track IWOM for a deeper understanding of what consumers like and don't like about their cars.

We provide IWOM driven insights to R&D departments, to pre-campaign strategy, post campaign measurement, to community development strategy, and product launch strategy. Examples of using IWOM for product feedback, digital PR and marketing insights can be found in our white papers on notebooks, mobile phones, automobile and sports here.

Bloggers want connections, not "pampering": CIC uses its technology and deep understanding of online community to identify bloggers and efluencers who would have the most interest in developing a meaningful relationship with our clients. CIC does not believe bloggers or efluencers need or should be "pampered," nor does CIC pamper then. Identifying efluencers is part of CIC's Listen-Know-Participate (L-K-P™) framework which we have outlined many places including here and here.

"War" is the wrong metaphor for IWOM: While we certainly understand there are cases where companies are attacked online, and this behavior is often the focus on media articles, we do not believe "war" is an appropriate or accurate metaphor to view IWOM. As we have outlined here and here, we prefer the concept of the "connected agency," which Forrester defines as an agency that has "a deep understanding of consumer communities, helping brands create and nurture connections, deliver targeted, on-demand messages, and network for talent and insights."

By tracking and analyzing IWOM, brands can tune into and connect with the most informed, active and influential consumers in the market. Brands can learn consumers' language, learn that they watch the NBA online and virtually cheer in BBS conversations, learn how they meet up offline, and learn how they research products online. In the end, we see that for brands, tracking and analyzing IWOM is not a threat, but an opportunity.

Update: Below are more reactions to the article:

- David Wolf, China's war for the soul of online corporate communications
(if blocked for China readers, try here)

- Will Moss, Is it "war" against Chinese blogs?

- Paul Denlinger, The PR Problem for Chinese Online Public Relations Firms

- China Web2.0 Review, The PR Problems of China’s Social Media

A few weeks ago CIC released our latest IWOM white paper, Tuning into Sports IWOM 2007 Q4 (download here or get off of slideshare here). Unfortunately, I never really had a chance to write up a follow up post about the paper because of the earthquake, but after reviewing the paper again, I really do think it has some good case studies worth mentioning, especially the one about NBA "group reporting/watching"

Case Study: 'Group Reporting/Watching' on Twitter and Chinese BBS

During game 2 of the NBA finals between the Laker-Celtics, I noticed that one of the people I follow on Twitter, social media guru Shel Israel, was "live tweeting" the game with some fellow Celtic fans. See example of a typical tweet here.

Shel kept up with other Celtic fans by using 'hashtag' markers #beatla. If you do a search on Twitter search engine Summize for #beatla, you can find others commenting. See here.

A quick analysis looking at Summize shows about 90 messages over the course of the game written by about 15 people.

This phenomena of "group twittering" among fans is something that has gained momentum this year in the US. I first saw it happening around the Super Bowl and American National Public Radio recently did a feature on Boston Redsox twittering fans here.

What's interesting is that this phenomena of "group watching" or "group reporting" has actually been going on for years on BBS, especially around the NBA and football (aka soccer).

In our white paper we outlined how it works (see screen shot from the white paper below): a fan will set up a special topic within a popular BBS forum, inviting other fans to join the conversation to discuss the game as it happens. After the game, the conversation will continue with further analysis.

If we take a look at Game 2 of the NBA finals on June 9, we see that on the popular basketball community , Hoopchina, two "group watching" conversations were set up in the Lakers fan forum and Celtics fan forum. Within the few days surrounding Game 2 of the NBA finals, the conversation in the Lakers fan forum received 87,430 page views, 4,974 replies by an estimated 600 unique posters and the conversation in the Celtics fan forum received 28,966 page views and 1,926 replies by approximately 200 unique posters.

Prior to the match, fans upload pictures, audio and videos supporting their favorite teams and players. (see below)

Pictures:

Audio:
Netizens uploaded the Italian pop song "In the Name of Love" and dedicated the tune to the Lakers to show their support for the team. (Link)

Video:

Title: Let's go Celtics

During the match, fans actively uploaded instant reports and updates. Below are some sample quotes from the Lakers and Celtics forums:

"What the hell are you doing? There are only 22 seconds left. Why don’t you pass the ball to Kobe? 搞什么，22秒，为什么球不到kb手里" Link

"Great steal! Celtics’ defense is really strong! 抢断不错，防守果然强悍" Link

Keep in mind, these are just two conversations on two forums. There are countless fan clubs, fan sites and sports verticals hosting conversations and generally serving as platforms of love for the NBA, its teams and players.

Following the match, fans continued to discuss game highlights and key statistics and cheer for their favorite team in new conversations such as "Let's Go Lakers!!" (Link) which received 18,689 page views and 689 replies.

Chinese NBA fans gather and cheer virtually

To be fair, I don't think comparing Twitter to Chinese BBS is an apples to apples comparison in terms of users. Twitter users are a very vocal minority who are social media geeks (that is a compliment, by the way), and some of them happen to be sports fans. Hoopchina is an example of a basketball vertical with very active basketball fans.

It's not a fair comparison, but it does underline a key principle that we believe: Chinese IWOM and social media are more "mainstream" than in the US. Chinese netizens are passionate about their sports and have been going to the Internet to express this passion for years. In addition to vertical communities like Hoopchina, you can find active "amateur analysts" on blog groups on BSP's like Sina, Sohu and Netease. Even the NBA is now inviting such analysts to write commentary on its site. In the US, however, it seems only recently that such fan driven sites have been popping up in the US (see Bleacher Report as one example here). There are other sites like FanNation, but they do not seem to have as active a community as Chinese sites. I could be wrong about the US market, but after checking around with people who would likely know, I found no comparable site, at least in terms of such activities as "group watching" live games.

This case also demonstrates the overall passion of NBA fans in China. It is not surprising then that the NBA has big ambitions for China, raising US $253 million for NBA China (giving away only 11% of the company). The Internet is already a big part of the NBA experience for Chinese fans:

The NBA's Chinese language website makes up one third of the NBA's total web traffic, according to the report. Sohu (Nasdaq: SOHU) is an official partner of the NBA's Chinese website operated by Chinese broadband sports portal Nusports.cn. Sohu and Nusports.cn are expected to continue offering live online broadcasts of NBA games in 2008. KongZhong Corporation's (Nasdaq: KONG) Kong.net is the official WAP site partner of the NBA. Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) users searched for "NBA" more than 61 million times in November, 2007.

It seems that instead of going to sports bars or a friend's house to gather around a TV, Chinese netizens prefer to virtually gather around the live video stream and virtually cheer. Other sports franchises looking to enter China may want to take heed.

I am pleased to announce the recent launch of our CIC Tech blog, which is initiated and maintained by our CIC Tech team.

CIC Tech builds and supports the proprietary and patent pending technology supporting everything we do here. CIC Tech uses massive data storage, distributed computing, natural language analysis, data warehousing, business intelligence, and many other technologies to store, analyze and process the information to facilitate understanding and make IWOM data accessible for quantitative and qualitative analysis.

The CIC Tech blog will be the platform to discuss the challenges and practices particularly relevant to the IWOM industry.

Below are a few examples of recent articles.

Difficulties in Sentiment Analysis (情感分析(Sentiment Analysis)的难题)

Data Mining at CIC (文本挖掘技术在CIC的应用)

The principle and application of Lucene Lucene的原理和应用 收藏

For more articles, please see here.

Here's my latest article for Imediaconnection on "Connecting the connected agency in China."

How agencies can connect with consumer communities

In my previous article, I discussed Forrester's "connected agency" which is defined as an agency with "a deep understanding of consumer communities, helping brands create and nurture connections, deliver targeted, on-demand messages, and network for talent and insights." In the article, I also laid out the unique elements of the Chinese internet community landscape that should be at the foundation for such a "connected agency".

In this article, I will take it one step further and explore meaningful ways to actually connect with communities.

Community audit: Where is the talk and what are they talking about?

The first step in building connections is to perform a "community audit", which if you must put it in traditional agency terms, is akin to a media audit. This is a systematic mapping out of the key blogs, BBS forums, QQ groups and other community channels for the brand and its industry. For some industries, this is no small task. For example, for the notebook industry, we have mapped out more than 200 notebook related forums/ sub-forums which generate 500,000 messages a month from 50,000 unique user names. In knowing the communities, you will also come to know the culture and overall nature of the communities: What kind of topics does each talk about? Which topics are the most sticky? Which ones create the most buzz? Even if the communities talk about the same topic, this does not mean they talk about it in the same way. For example, in one computer hardware community, we found that 24 percent of the hottest topics discussed were newbie or very basic enquiries, while in another community, 44 percent involve more advanced netizens showing off their cool hardware with videos and pictures.

Based on such careful content analysis, connecting with different communities calls for a nuanced strategy.

Community support: contributing value

In understanding the culture of different communities, you can begin to offer support in ways that actually bring value to the communities. For some financially-strapped communities, you can simply pay for hosting, as some of our clients have done for fledgling fan communities.

Supporting communities can also include providing products for sampling or providing privileged access to events for forum members, as is often done in the cosmetics industry. Healthy communities often have "fubai" or offline meet-ups, which can be sponsored. We recently blogged about a successful example where Crocs and other brands sponsored a fubai of the Shanghainese community KDS. Of course, explicit advertising or sponsorship is an option for some communities as well, especially for commercially driven communities on portals or industry verticals. Advertising on commercially driven communities can bring the added benefit of getting easier access to the forum administrators from the site's marketing department, which can be helpful.

"Efluencer" relations: connecting with the connectors

Thanks to Malcolm Gladwell, "efluencer" or influencer relations are one of the most well-known and, at the same time, most misunderstood approaches to community marketing. All readers have probably seen case studies in which influential bloggers or forum administrators were spammed by a brand with a press release. The misguided assumption in such approaches is that these efluencers are the gatekeepers of the buzz -- if you pass them your information, then these super nodes will spread the buzz to those within their influence network. The problem we find in this approach is that information such as notification of yet another campaign, asking consumers to upload their pictures, is usually of interest to the brand much more than the efluencer.

In the end, the core of an efluencer campaign is to make a movement, not just a one-off campaign. Such a movement, or platform, recognises that efluencers are a great proxy for understanding the underlying needs and concerns of overall consumers. Such learning comes not from a one-way conversation or push of an agenda, but from an actual give and take relationship.

Finding your voice: talking the talk

According to our Q3 2007 white paper on Chinese notebook Internet Word of Mouth (IWOM), there are 411,445 BBS messages from leading notebook forums which mention a notebook brand or product name. With literally hundreds of thousands of mentions related to notebooks, including praises, complaints and other customer service queries every month, the challenge for brands like Dell and Lenovo is to find an authentic voice to talk back and participate in the conversation.

We are already seeing this happen with brands like Dell. Dell has various blogs, including the original Direct2Dell blog in Chinese and a copy on the uber popular Sina blog platform. In times of crisis, Dell blogger Jacqui Zhou will use the blog to speak about the situation. Dell also has microblogging accounts on Twitter and the Chinese Fanfou.

Other examples of finding a voice include auto brands offering customer service advice on a special PCauto service centre: KFC talking about nutrition on Baidu, and Lancôme encouraging talks about cosmetics on its Rose Beauty forum. With such a voice, brands can not only react to conversations, they look to contribute to the conversation and ultimately be a part of the community.

Parting words: It's the connections, not the content

The name "connected agency" emphasises connecting or understanding. The latter also means forming relationships with communities. The name also poses a nice contrast to traditional agencies, or content agencies, which are more likely to view communities as new media, where they can place their content and messaging. A community is a media, but it is also a source of consumer insight, and it is an opportunity to connect. Most importantly, communities are not necessarily interested in what a brand's "messaging" is. They want to know what they want to know, not necessarily what the brand wants to tell them. Knowing which communities are relevant, what these communities are interested in, supporting the communities and connecting with the leaders, and finally, finding the voice that both resonates with these communities and reflects the brand is ultimately what conversational marketing, as opposed to broadcast marketing, is all about.