Social Media Optimization and PR 2.o is subtitled “Practical Tools in an Economic Downturn”. While the world at large frets about what has happened to the global economy, we will be focusing on how the low-cost or no cost tools of social media can help companies, organizations and individual entrepreneurs to go on the front foot in their marketing and communications.

We believe it is a serious enough topic. We also believe in helping people have fun while they (and we) learn.

For more information about the workshop, including, location, times, how to register (for participation in the live event or online) go to the event Facebook page.

The audio of our chat lasts about 36 minutes: you can listen here or download the MP3 file to your iPod or other MP3 player.

And frankly, so am I.

Why would people blogging for business from the US and other Western countries ignore the potential for online business in China?

How can people in the West go on assembling for conferences and seminars about new media and online marketing and decline to look at China?

That’s the picture as seen by Lonnie B. Hodge, The American Professor (see Google screenshot below). A blogger and search engine optimization (SEO) specialist living and working in China, Lonnie can’t understand the lack of interest. Why, he asks, are people so uninterested in “the biggest Internet market in the world”?

In this conversation, Lonnie talks about blogging and online marketing in China and shares tips on

• how even people who do not speak or read Chinese can tap into the China blogosphere
• how bloggers whose blogs are in English or other non-Chinese languages can establish their presence on the dominant China search engine (yes, bigger than the Big G).

Lonnie also mentions his trip to the US for a lecture tour later this month and offers a face to face briefing on China for folks who might like to spring for a cup of coffee in one of the places he is planning to visit, including Colorado, California and Chicago, Illinois.

If you have the slightest interest in or curiosity about accessing marketing online in China, you will find in this recording invaluable clues to start you on your journey of discovery.

Disclaimer: Lonnie and I are business associates and we do provide a couple of plugs for our business in the course of the conversation – but you could think of them as “organic” plugs.