In my last post, I wrote about how social marketing works in B2B. I suggested social media was an effective channel for customer communication. Smartchinasourcing.com is a great B2B social media, which is ranked my favorite B2B choices in 2007. But when I read this on the site, it puts me off:
China’s imports of advice: an interview with the 16-year-old ex-servicemen
Q: Compared to the procurement in the country, what the purchase process in the most need additional attention, direct imports from China.
A: Decision-making to ensure that products meet the specifications right, because we have done a lot of safety shoes and start-up procedures, and has very strict requirements, this type of footwear in Canada. At the same time, ensure that the designs are correct, and make proper samples. Large orders, we ask the factory for our customers a barcode or cartons, boxes or master’s degree in content labels cartons. This will save us a lot of time, because it constantly moving the cargo to a minimum. We also specify what is, we want to printed on the cartons.
I bet you are scratching your head and don’t have any clue. Well, the previous quote is just to imitate my experience. If you read Chinese, this is the exact translation of the article:
Let me tell you how I get this. The original article is written in English, which is a well-written piece. But when I select to read in Chinese (I was thrilled because the site has got its Chinese version), the article is translated by a robot. The reading just makes no sense. So to illustrate my experience, I then copy the Chinese version, translate it back to English using Google translate. This is how I get you the closest lost-in-translation experience possible.
I am quite disappointed because Smartchinasourcing.com is a good site. It offers many valuable information and expert advice for the B2B community. I believe it still does. But the robot translation will just discourage the user experience a big lot.
I just said in my last post the B2B marketers are overkilled by marketing for selling. As an annotation for why social marketing NOT works in B2B, clearly because the marketers are overkilled by technology too.
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Thanks for visiting this weblog. I am a digital marketer based in Hong Kong. After founding a marketing consulting company, merged it with a trade show company, and completed my tenure in 2007, I am blogging my insight and commentary for marketing and entrepreneurial experience. Now I am the Managing Director of 
