Talking about people, I would like to propose the same question? Are you scalable?

Tips to be a scalable person
1) You are not alone, just persuade others to help you;
2) Focus on one thing, and think big;
3) Taking more resources to support you;

Where I accomodated, it’s a small, quiet and peaceful village.

This is one of the most beautiful lakes (I’d like to call it a ‘pool’, coz’ it’s small.).

Lots of fishes here.

This is Huanglong, amazing water terraces!

If you meet the VC for 30 seconds in an elevator, you certainly aren’t going hand her a 30 page business plan. Although it sounds like overkill (because you won’t need all of these for every VC), a well-prepared entrepreneur will have all of the following, to be used at the appropriate times:

Written

• A one sentence (or sentence fragment) tag line
• A professional business card
• A one or two paragraph email introduction to the business
• A ‘one-pager’ overview
• A 2-3 page executive summary
• A 20-30 page business plan

Live

• A one sentence description
• A 30 second elevator pitch
• A 5 minute ‘quick pitch’
• A 15-20 minute angel/VC PowerPoint/Keynote pitch

Online

• A functional public web site
• A short video pitch
• A dedicated, controlled access, investor-relations web site

If you have all the above, you’ll be fully prepared for any sequence of events as you interact with prospective investors.

What is social commerce?
Buying where people connected, and connected where they buy.

Why commerce social?
Commerce become e-commerce, because people are searching and discovering information online.

Commerce become social commerce, because people arediscovering information via social media. (Features, social circle, individualized, user centered, interest based)

How to?
Be connected via social circles, be individualized, user centered and interest based.

1. Social circles. you don’t really need to building a social circle yourself. Someone is building the social circles for you, e.g. Facebook, Weibo, QQ, Kaixin001 etc.

2. Products and service must be cool, be personalized. Everyone wants to be different, be cool. Let people help themselves to personalized their own products or service.

3. All decisions are made based on your users. Do you need it? Do they love it? Give the power to users.

4. Interest graph. There are also some interest graphs already exist, what we can do is leveraging the interest graphs with commerce.

to be continued

Offline small business still don’t get the essence of social media marketing. However, the IT and internet develop so fast. So the gap between social media marketing and offline business become wider and wider. How to bridging the gap? It shows a huge market for social media marketers.

What Business What?
For any business, revenue and long-term ROI are what they want, in short, growth and profitability.
How to grow the revenue? Gain more customers.
How to gain more cunstomers? Marketing campaigns.

Marketing campaigns could be promoted by lots of channels, traditional channels are more expensive and less effective. Online banners, SEM cost too much for small local business. Social media is the best choice. It’s cost effective and much more appealing to young people.

New Era New Challenges
Small local business needs to be educated. Social Media agencies take themselves as expertise and educators, but business wants everything, much more than education.

It’s a new era, yet with new challenges. It’s a big market, but lots of work to do. I wrote a few tips here:
Customers First;
Data Mining;
SOP.

“Buyer information discovery, consumption and sharing habits have changed with the influence of social technology and search.”

Consumers are increasingly using both search and social to discover content. In a recent study by GroupM and comScore, only 1% of consumers were led to a purchase via Social Media but 51% were channeled via search and 48% through a combination of search and social media.

QR Code Example

I’ve been reading a few articles about QR code on Brand Engagement. QR Codes, short for “Quick Response Code”, could be the next wave of the future along with mobile internet, LBS etc. Share some  articles that might inspire your thoughts and ideas on Marketing Potential of QR Code.

QR Code and 2d Barcode Readers

(For mobile devices, your customers/audience may get it installed in their mobile devices)
Mobile device manufacturers are increasingly supplying their products with barcode readers pre-installed. For example Nokia Barcode Reader is pre-installed on the N82, N93, N93i, N95, E66, E71 and E90. If this is not the case for your mobile device check the readers below for your model and download the appropriate application version via the links.

The best of the available readers in alphabetical order are:

BeeTagg supports a wide range of mobile devices and reads QR-Code, Datamatrix and the proprietary code BeeTagg.
Compatability Download Instructions

i-nigma is pre-installed by all of Japan’s major mobile manufacturers and reads QR-Code and Datamatrix.
Compatability Download Instructions

Kaywa supports a range of mobile devices and reads QR Code and Datamatrix.
Compatability Download Instructions

Mobiletag scans 1D barcodes EAN 13 and UPC as well as the 2D barcodes Datamatrix, QR Code, Flashcode and Fotokody.
Compatability and download instructions

NeoReader supports a range of mobile devices and reads QR codes, Datamatrix, Aztec Codes, EAN, UPC and Code 128.
Compatability Download Instructions

QuickMark supports a range of mobile devices and reads QR Code, Datamatrix and the proprietary code QuickMark.
Compatability and download instructions

ScanLife supports a wide range of mobile devices and reads and the proprietary code EZcode.
Compatability and download instructions

UpCode supports a range of mobile devices and reads the proprietary code UpCode, and in Symbian phones QR Code and DataMatrix.
Compatability Download Instructions

Zxing has clients for Android, Java, and iPhone but not Windows mobile devices and reads QR Code, Code 39, Code 128, UPC-A, UPC-E, EAN-8 and EAN-13.
Compatability and download instructions

Decoder/Encoder
Stand alone Encoder and Decoder

For the iPhone Optiscan is very good and also try QuickMark.

Source: http://2d-code.co.uk/qr-code-readers/

QR Code and 2D Barcode Generator

QR Code and 2D Code Generator
Kerem Erkan has produced an excellent QR Code, Micro QR Code, Datamatrix and Aztec Code
generator with many interesting features including URL shortening.

Maestro
Create QR Codes for telephone, SMS, Maps, URL, MeCards and Raw data.

Jason Delport’s Create QR Code
User interface for the Google Chart API with 500px x 500px maximum size.

BeQRious
50px x 50px images can be inserted in the code and output can be saved as gif or pdf.

i-nigma
Foreign language versions available in Espa?ol, Português and Italiano.

Invx
One size but generates a QR Code and a Datamarix Code simultaneously.

Jaxo
Select encoding mode, multiple colors and upload background graphic.

Goqr.me
Any color background or modules and many other options.

Nokia
Includes full VCARD implementation.

QReate & Track
Includes iCalendar and vCard formats and an option for real-time reporting.

QR Stuff
Lots of options here including color, batch printing with Avery label compatibility and send by email.

Raco
Can specify error correction levels.

SnapMaze
One size but choice of six colors.

Winksite
PNG and JPG in standard sizes.

ZXing
Includes encoding in MECARD format.

Decoder/Encoder
Stand alone Decoder and Encoder

ScanLife: In each and every edition of Website Magazine, you’ll see two-dimensional QR barcodes on a few of our editorial and advertising pages. There are a few reasons that we use ScanLife over their open source competitors – namely that it covers the broadest number of mobile phones/smartphones and that some very valuable analytics come with it. If you have anything to do with advertising you know how important that is to the bottom line. Creating barcodes (for non-commercial purposes) is free and the rates are reasonable for commercial enterprises.

Top 5 Creative Ways to Use QR Codes
Source: http://www.foxypropaganda.com/qr-codes-top-reasons-to-use-qrcodes/

Chevy Case Study: Using Mobile, Location and QR Codes to Inspire Brand Engagement
Source: http://www.emarketer.com/blog/index.php/chevy-case-study-qr-codes-mobile-location-inspire-brand-engagement/

1. Brand character matters.
If you are going to do social media marketing, make sure your ID is a kinda real person rather than a robot. So the character of your ID is important. Generally it comes from your company’s brand. It might be serious, humorous, lovely or whatever. I take IDP as a professional, official, kind, easy-going and sometimes a little bit lovely.

2. Plan of the publish of your content.
Don’t rush into the publish of your tweets. I made a plan of the content, including the frequency, category of my tweets, focus of your tweets.
Frequency: 5-10 tweets per day.
Category: #news, #staffs, #specialoffer, #reviews, #onlineevents, #retweets of excellent tweet.

3. Decoration of your account.

1.Make sure you have filled all the blanks of your profile;
2.Choose a official avatar for your account, this will make your account alive. Don’t forget to write your bio, keep it simple & accurate.
3.Tag yourself. I tagged IDP “education, AUS, USA, study abroad” etc. The tags will help 4.your fans to identify the content of your ID.

4.Target your audience.
How to find your audience?

1, search your brand. People who mentioned your brand may interested in your brand & business;
2, Search the keywords of your business, People who mentioned your business might be your potential customers;
3, Search your competitors. People who mentioned your competitor might be your potential customers, too.

5. Interaction of your audience.

1, Follow your audience;
2, Conversation with your audience;
3, Retweet your aduience’s tweet.
4, DM your aduience.

Mar 22, 2010, Google official blog updated a new approach to China to stop censoring its search services—Google Search, Google News, and Google Images—on Google.cn. Google.cn is redirected to Google.com.hk.

There are two voices in China now.

1. Support google’s decision.
However, it’s only a small part of people in mainland China. They have their onw ways to visit the websites which are blocked in China. I belive that they are indeed well informed with different opinions in home and abroad. This group of people are more familiar with internet so they are able to learn some technics and find a way out to approach a different world outside.

2. Follow the national media in China.
Google China is a banned topic in China mainland now. No news and discussion are allowed, especially the supportive articles. Google China is described as a evil company in China by the natinal media news reports. I’ve been talking to some friends, they belived that google’s pull-out would not affect their life, google obviously made the worst choice in this matter.

For my company, we have our potential market overseas. Without google and its service we are using, our business will greatly affected. Anyway, I really appreciate the suggestion from google for using VPN and proxies. If your business is in the same circumstance, read it here.

I am a Chinese, I love my country and my people. But sometimes I wish I could live in a place without a wall or restriction. Well, things make me frustrated and disappointed.

I’ve spent lots of time on the internet without thinking too much and too deep. I find it become a really anxiety. Because I just let all information flow into my mind; however it’s seems a little bit hard to think them clearly. I’d like to take it as a downside.

How to avoid information overload? I figure out some tips here:

1. Filter according to profession & hobbies.
I have to know, my profession and my hobbies may decide what kind of information I would like to flow into my mind. So I set up a filter according to my profession & hobbies.

2. One hour per day for all headlines.
Before I apply my filter, I’d like to read all kinds of information to know what is happening around this world. Since there are too many good information, I cannot take them all. I decide to spend one hour perday for the browsing of the headlines generally, and mark some of the best.

3. One or two hours to think and analyze the most useful information for me.
Of course, the best way is taking some notes here, I think. Learn from the source information and be critical, what is right, what is wrong. After reorganizing my ideas, I’ll write a outline here.