Just wrote this welcome message for new members joining our China group on XING. Hoping it will grow as fast as our China Business group on LinkedIn does (over 2000 members and counting):
Welcome to our group on XING, an extension of www.chinasuccessstories.com and following our mission statement aiming to “help you get that extra leverage doing business in or with China, and prevent you from making mistakes that cost others, who found out the hard way, dearly.”
What you can do to help make the China Business Lounge Group a success: simply being a member and responding to fellow associates if they ask a question, is all it should take to benefit from the combined knowledge of the members. If you want to add more value please consider inviting friends, coworkers, employees, associates, relatives, family members, colleagues: anybody with a professional link to China to become a member as well. It is quite easy, forward this message, or simply email this link:
http://www.xing.com/net/chinalounge / http://www.xing.com/group-17865.9f20cb/7874904
Also, if you are on LinkedIn, you are welcome to join us here as well: http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/36656/50377703F693 It does not offer the functionality XING does, it is a lot more basic. But it might just help you find even more kindred spirits.
In the weeks to come, we will be building the China Business Lounge Group. Adding more tools for members and making sure it will prove to be of added value for you. Meantime: if you want to help out, have an idea, a question for other members, or hold any thoughts you'd like to share, do not hesitate! Just let me know, I'd be happy to help you out!
Michiel
PS If you want to add me to your professional network on XING, please see www.xing.com/profile/Michiel_deBoer3.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Chinese fortune
LinkedIn, Plaxo, Spock, Facebook... and then some. New addition? -> http://www.fcclub.com/profiles/chinabusiness The fortune connection club. Look me up, let's stay connected!
M
M
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
How many times a year do you go to China?
As we are currently getting our website ready for advertisers, sponsors, affiliates and other partners, we started conducting some additional research on our demographics. The results of which I am happy to share here. First up we asked, How many times a year do you go to China? The results are:
I haven't been yet: 25%
1 - 2 times: 23%
3 - 5 times: 18%
6 - 9 times: 4%
10 times or more: 4%
I live in China: 27%
Next question to the 50% of our visitors that fly quite regularly to China, and the 25% that seems to be planning to do so in the future? Fly over to our China site to find out!
I haven't been yet: 25%
1 - 2 times: 23%
3 - 5 times: 18%
6 - 9 times: 4%
10 times or more: 4%
I live in China: 27%
Next question to the 50% of our visitors that fly quite regularly to China, and the 25% that seems to be planning to do so in the future? Fly over to our China site to find out!
Thursday, March 6, 2008
From China with love
I have been rather quiet on this blog, because of some other time consuming hobbies. One of which being my China Business site www.chinasuccessstories.com The good news is that it has been worth the wait though, as I found something that you will love. If you love getting traffic to your site from Google that is, and if you love to get some traffic from the biggest Chinese Search Engine: Baidu.
The key to unlocking lots of love from Google and Baidu is called Taragana. It is a plugin for your (Wordpress) blog, that translates your pages into numerous other languages. What makes this plugin different from others is the fact that it caches translated pages for instant access, and for indexing by, yep you guessed it, Google and other search engines.
Within a couple of weeks this is what happens. If your site consists of say 1500 pages, in no time Google thinks it consists of well over 10.000. Have a look: http://www.google.nl/search?sourceid=navclient&hl=nl&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLJ,GGLJ:2006-29,GGLJ:nl&q=site:chinasuccessstories%2ecom
The number of inlinks increases similarly. Making Google believe your are bigger and better then you actually are. A essential tool in courtship in any relationship, right?
Also people from around the Globe – Brazil, Russia, Spain, France, Germany, Italy – start to find your site.
And to make things even better: Baidu is suddenly interested. Because Baidu predominantly feels like indexing Chinese sites, in your log files you will find a serious effort by their spider to find out what you are about.
The plugin isn’t free, but priced at 30$ it sure is a bargain for making the prettiest two websites in the world love you right back!
The key to unlocking lots of love from Google and Baidu is called Taragana. It is a plugin for your (Wordpress) blog, that translates your pages into numerous other languages. What makes this plugin different from others is the fact that it caches translated pages for instant access, and for indexing by, yep you guessed it, Google and other search engines.
Within a couple of weeks this is what happens. If your site consists of say 1500 pages, in no time Google thinks it consists of well over 10.000. Have a look: http://www.google.nl/search?sourceid=navclient&hl=nl&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLJ,GGLJ:2006-29,GGLJ:nl&q=site:chinasuccessstories%2ecom
The number of inlinks increases similarly. Making Google believe your are bigger and better then you actually are. A essential tool in courtship in any relationship, right?
Also people from around the Globe – Brazil, Russia, Spain, France, Germany, Italy – start to find your site.
And to make things even better: Baidu is suddenly interested. Because Baidu predominantly feels like indexing Chinese sites, in your log files you will find a serious effort by their spider to find out what you are about.
The plugin isn’t free, but priced at 30$ it sure is a bargain for making the prettiest two websites in the world love you right back!
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder?
While Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama were busy splitting the votes these past few weeks, our electoral college on www.chinasuccessstories.com was faced with a much easier choice to make. After redesigning our China Business site we asked: what do you think of our new design? Now some say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If there is some truth in that, we are faced with a problem…
Here are the results:
Excellent job: 42%
Nice: 34%
Better than before: 8%
Poor: 3%
Ugly: 14%
Now that is a big – huge! – compliment to the designer, isn’t it? We will make sure to let him know!
The problem, as far as beauty is in the eye of the beholder is concerned, is this. With well over 75% of our visitors liking the looks, we either have:
...an extremely homogenous demographic (with people from all over the world visiting?)
...made an award winning design (we take pride in what we do, but we simply cannot be the world’s most beautiful website; our budget doesn’t allow for it)
...an easy to manipulate poll system (try it yourself on www.chinasuccessstories.com, it is impossible)
...have fans that vote, many others that don’t (actually this is plausible)
So what is it? I’ll go for the last option. Thanking everybody who bothered to express their view!
M
And to the strikingly small minority that sees room for improvement: please tell me what you think www.chinasuccessstories.com needs to do to get you over to the 75% side?
Here are the results:
Excellent job: 42%
Nice: 34%
Better than before: 8%
Poor: 3%
Ugly: 14%
Now that is a big – huge! – compliment to the designer, isn’t it? We will make sure to let him know!
The problem, as far as beauty is in the eye of the beholder is concerned, is this. With well over 75% of our visitors liking the looks, we either have:
...an extremely homogenous demographic (with people from all over the world visiting?)
...made an award winning design (we take pride in what we do, but we simply cannot be the world’s most beautiful website; our budget doesn’t allow for it)
...an easy to manipulate poll system (try it yourself on www.chinasuccessstories.com, it is impossible)
...have fans that vote, many others that don’t (actually this is plausible)
So what is it? I’ll go for the last option. Thanking everybody who bothered to express their view!
M
And to the strikingly small minority that sees room for improvement: please tell me what you think www.chinasuccessstories.com needs to do to get you over to the 75% side?
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Starting a business in China
"This article is among the most helpful I’ve ever seen if you are considering starting a business." And... "This post ought to be subtitled “The Fantasy Edition” as it has virtually no connection to reality." What are they talking about? And who's right or wrong? You be the judge: http://www.chinasuccessstories.com/2008/01/09/starting-business-china/
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Social networking for China Success Stories
Thanks to my activity on LinkedIn, I keep getting introduced for Spock and Plaxo. So I decided to give them both a go. From now on you can meet me here as well:
http://www.spock.com/Michiel-de-Boer-TrrD1uS (check out my 'Spock Power')
On Plaxo I don't know if I have a unique URL yet. But you will find me through the China Business group I started on:
http://china-business.plaxogroups.com/
What I like about Plaxo is the fact that it is easy to import feeds from other platforms. But I do not completely trust them (yet?). What I like about Spock is the simplicity. In both cases, I doubt if they will mean more to my business then LinkedIn has so far.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/mmcdeboer
Hope to meet up with you anytime soon!
M
PS Almost forgot, I'm here as well: http://community.globeforum.com/profile/michiel_deboer
http://www.spock.com/Michiel-de-Boer-TrrD1uS (check out my 'Spock Power')
On Plaxo I don't know if I have a unique URL yet. But you will find me through the China Business group I started on:
http://china-business.plaxogroups.com/
What I like about Plaxo is the fact that it is easy to import feeds from other platforms. But I do not completely trust them (yet?). What I like about Spock is the simplicity. In both cases, I doubt if they will mean more to my business then LinkedIn has so far.
If you want to connect without using Spock or Plaxo, you can still find me here:
www.xing.com/profile/Michiel_deBoer3http://www.linkedin.com/in/mmcdeboer
Hope to meet up with you anytime soon!
M
PS Almost forgot, I'm here as well: http://community.globeforum.com/profile/michiel_deboer
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