Business and Blogging

Good Tips on Doing Business in China

by Des Walsh on August 22nd, 2007

As I’m moderating a panel on Social Media at the interactive marketing event, ad:tech Beijing in November, I’m starting to be more alert than usual to blog posts that offer insight into social media in that vast country and complex, multi-layered culture.

I’m also taking greater interest in matters of business etiquette. A long time ago, at university, I was a committee member of a predominantly Chinese association and that was a significant time in my cultural education. And I know I have a lot to learn.

On the Xing (formerly OpenBC) blog, Angela Ritting has an interview with Melanie Wang from Shanghai, who is responsible for supporting European companies, especially German ones, doing business in China.

The blog post, Business Across Borders…in China, covers such items as the fairly well known practice of, when presenting your business card, holding it in both hands.

It has some other good tips, some of them common sense, but still potentially helpful, such as this tip on how to make small talk with Chinese businesspeople:

There is an ancient Chinese saying which roughly translates: A wise man will make tools with what comes to hand. In other words: Listen carefully to others at the table and the conservation should flow naturally.

Our precise topic for ad:tech Beijing is How to Develop a Corporate Social Media Platform. Fellow panelists are Debbie Weil, author of The Corporate Blogging Book (now in Mandarin as well as English), Philippe Borremans, author of Conversationblog and Jason Ge, National Sales GM at Sina. Our session is scheduled for Wednesday, October 17.

By then - and indeed much earlier than that - there will be a new blogger here at Business and Blogging. From September 1 on, I will be aiming to post more about the ad:tech Beijing - and BlogWorld Expo in Las Vegas, November, on my deswalsh.com site.

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