Three Lessons of LinkedIn's Approach to China

Just last week, LinkedIn announced the availability of its site in Traditional Chinese. This follows the much-publicized February release of its China-specific site in Simplified Chines, Lingying.com — making the professional networking platform available in 23 languages in total, 8 of which are Asian.

LinkedIn clearly believes the investment in translation/localization is money well spent to secure global market share in the race to own social media's professional users. What lessons can we learn from LinkedIn's focus on China?

Place your money on multilingual.
The NSA-rocked U.S. is not the only country struggling with the dual impacts of privacy and censorship in the social media space. China's policies have long shut out giants like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, a factor that has been a boon to domestic players like Sina Weibo and Baidu. China's microblogging giant Sina Weibo has more than 500 million registered users; search engine Baidu is also number one in the market. Market exclusivity has assured their explosive growth, but it has come at a considerable price: namely, a largely monocultural and monolingual user base.

LinkedIn's multicultural and multilingual approach has already proven itself. As reported by TechNode, since its formal launch in February LinkedIn has reportedly drawn in 1 million additional users, raising the in-country total to over 5 million. Many of them are managers (42 percent), living in China's first tier cities (60 percent), and, significantly, working in international businesses (34 percent).

That select profile is not lost on investors. While the company's 5 million users is dwarfed by those of major domestically grown competitor Zhaopin (77 million), LinkedIn China is enjoying the buzz that it is a premiere portal for Chinese nationals who are multilingual and experienced in multinational workforces. According to Ad Age, a research note from BMO Capital Markets "which predicted a 'formal launch' in China in 2014, caused LinkedIn's share price to jump a few percentage points."

Localize your approach.
Facing the China-based incumbents, LinkedIn has adopted a smart approach that combines the best of its global leverage with China-specific strategies. Compare, for instance, the Simplified Chinese home page (still in Beta):

It contains China-specific imagery, rather than the international images used in other locales. LinkedIn has also implemented APIs that allow for working with local providers. In this case, notice the integration with Weibo and QQ, allowing users to share content and invite friends to LinkedIn. At the moment, advertisers can target their campaigns (ads and sponsored updates) for China, but not yet in the Chinese language.

Read more, please go to Libor Safar 's blog post at Moravia.