Event Report | AmCham China: Under the digital influence (2nd panel transcript)

+8*Published September 23, 2007 at 2:00 am 2 Comments

Panel: The Business of Blogging (AmCham China event)
Four top English-language bloggers in China who cover the legal, tax, PR and media sectors discuss the pros and cons of blogging, how it has helped and/or hurt their careers and companies, and what to be aware of before venturing online.

Panelists

• Dan Harris of legal site chinalawblog.com, founding member of Harris & Moure plc
• Chris Devonshire-Ellis of business sites china-briefing.com and 2point6billion.com, senior partner of Dezan Shira & Associates
• Will Moss of PR site imagethief.com, a director of Burson-Marsteller
• Jeremy Goldkorn of media site danwei.org, founder of The Standards Group (moderator)

(1)    Why do you blog?DH | When I started I did not know really what I would get from it, but it gets our name out there, connect to the media, and lots of good contacts in the blogging community.
CDE | You need to be able to determine usefulness. For me, it’s a form of marketing with pros and cons. Blogging should be part of the marketing strategy of a firm and results should be looked at for effectiveness. How many times somebody has to go to my blog before I get a dollar in my bank account? So usefulness depends on its management and monitoring.
WM | My blog does not mention my company name. I blog because I am a compulsive writer and exhibitionist (in a writing kind of way), so it is helping me going through the things that catch my own attention. It’s been a great way for me to get to know people, and get integrated in a very interesting professional community in Beijing and in China.

(2)    How do you measure the money spent vs. return

CDE | We haven’t started doing that yet (laughs). We use blogs to do research in Chinese second tiers cities (China Expats blogs). Three years ago there was 18 English language blogs on China specific cities. A year later there were 106, now about 200. We now approach blogs with chinaexpats.com other blogs, sending direct links to each of these blogs, who link back. Also publish a magazine linking to all those local blogs. It is also possible to use blogs to reach out to Western business communities as a form of research tool.

(3)    What are the risks of keeping your blog?

DH | Not so much risk in Seattle due to what I write. But “are you worried about offending existing and potential clients?” was worrying us for us. But we are a small law firm so even if we offend half of the potential clients, the other half is enough for us. The biggest risk is to my marriage because it takes so much of my time (laughs).
CDE | Every time you put an opinion in front of people you have a risk. My company has to live with the consequences of what I say to some extent. I do not worry about being censored, but making a given impression – maybe a big firm I might meet later on.

(4)    How do you think about comment sections?

CDE | It is important to have a fairly strict moderation. We have zero tolerance on that.
DH | I love having comments, it is fairly time consuming and I learn a lot from them. I believe in free speech but we get some strange comments. You can sometimes get tied to comments that are made (“I cannot believe you let those comments”).
WM | I take a somewhat looser approach, but I set a policy “no ad hominen attacks, no comments about my wife ;-)”. Encouraging discussion, and building community is very enriching. A troll intends to provocate other readers, and have a talent to bring out the worst in people and lead to degenerate.

(5)    Should larger companies blog? CEOs?

DH | Big law firms blogs try to avoid saying anything, so their blogs end up being really boring. The question is more about what companies aim to achieve.
CDE | It’s inexpensive, but you have to have a strategy and follow through.
WM | “Should we be blogging?” – Not automatic yes, ask yourself why you are doing it? Who’s going to do it? Who’s going to read it? The most successful blogs are the ones who take the risk to reflect individual’s personalities or the personality of the company.

(6)    If someone wants to start a blog what would you suggest?

JG | Service in HK, register my own domain name, would use Movable Type, and get a company to design the whole thing.
DH | Spend a couple of months reading other blogs and decide what the blog is going to say. What should I blog about?
WM | At the end of the day, people blog, and the best blogs are often written by identifiable people or groups of people that show their personality.
CDE | Two sides to blogging: conduct search engine on your business name, or your blog name. Downside: people can and do comment on your business and individuals, sometimes in a negative way.
DH | Before deciding to blog, you have to see how committed you are, as the time commitment is huge. Having people help is also a good way.
WM | You have to pick somebody who
•    Likes to write
•    Can do it
•    Is interested and engaged in what you company is doing
•    Has something interesting to say!
DH | You need to have a certain personality about blogging – cannot be a perfectionist as it is about getting something out there fast. Also, cannot be too thin-skinned because people will point out imperfections.

(7)    Blogging etiquette

WM | On the Internet, everything is forever. If you delete things, someone might call you on it. You can write follow-up, update on old posts with new thinking. You can take if off your blog, but cannot make it not have existed.

(8)    When did you think “it was really worth it”?

DH | I criticized a company that contacted me a week later to hire us.
WM | Generate discussions, get PR and contacts from journalists

(9)    How about business models with blogging?

CDE | We can sell more “China Briefing” books. Now I created a blog on China + India to educate myself, and that was immensely useful thanks to content and user contributions. That’s free education
DH | Big groups of bloggers have asked us to join: they bring in a lot of blogs, and help market them, and sell ads on your site. They’ll manage your site and help you design it, and give you some revenues. Amounts they are getting are very small. For a blog like mine, whatever money we might make is not worth it as it would drive away readers.

(10)     Are there any surveys about Chinese blogs topics?

JG | Entertainment is a very big thing, personal diaries, cutish / daily life. Rise of a professional journalists and IT professionals who are affecting the mainstream media.

(11)     Do you have a local Chinese readership? What are their comments like?

WM | Fairly small due to language issue but generally positive
DH | Quite large readership among the Chinese law schools, who like a foreigner’s perspective on what’s going on in China.
CDE | We target foreign direct investors.

(12)     How about blogging affecting mainstream media, and the rise of citizen journalism?

WM | Mainstream media feeds blogosphere. In the long term they will coexist. Citizen journalism does not undermine the mainstream media.
CDE | Some dangers: Chinabounder issue. Had a backlash in Shanghai – some foreigners in Shanghai had to hire bodyguards. Large degree of immaturity and lack of understanding in China. Freedom of speech goes with the responsibility of truth that goes with it.
DH | Mainstream and bloggers are looking at each other on content. Blogging has overall a very positive impact on the media, forcing them to step out a bit and research more thoroughly, showing that there is a lot more to China than the routine stories.
WM | In China, the relationship between blogging and mainstream is evolving a great deal, as many topics cannot be carried in the mainstream media.
JG | Many foreign correspondents rely on easy topics and “taxi drivers journalisms”. But many interesting stories have been broke out on blogs.

(13)     Examples of failures of corporate blogs

DH | Main source of failure is lack of purpose, driving force. There would be a lot of posts, no comments and then disappear.
WM | Marketing blogs being caught out to be PR (e.g. Sony, Wal-Mart…). At an executive level, Boeing talks only about business/marketing, no insight. Other are those sounding like ‘essays’, gone through PR, legal, and ripped off their personality.
(14)     Future of blogging? Technology, tone, audience, web 2.0? How do you bring people?

DH | In the end, the thing driving readers to the site and keeping them is content.
CDE | At the beginning the blog was to drive traffic to our business site, sell books and consulting. Now you have to have consistency. Blog is written daily and traffic has gone up.
WM | Mechanisms to publish has become much easier, integrating videos, audio, etc. In terms of success, you can put great content. So start linking and communicating with other blogs, encourage comments. The secret to long term success is to have something interesting.
JG | Focus is important
DH | There is this idea of a blogging community, “help others and they will help you”. The more you get into the community by linking to others, the more you will get other bloggers doing it for you, and grow your contacts. A lot of the China bloggers know each other.
WM | Blogs are linked as clusters, so you need to break into relevant clusters – the problem is not to become echo chambers.