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.

The idea of setting up this site was inspired by my attending the superb keynote by award-winning podcaster Leo Laporte, at last October’s BlogWorld and New Media Expo in Las Vegas.

Up till then I’d had the idea of doing interviews and other podcasts and posting them on my deswalsh.com site. But after listening to Leo I decided that I would either start a show on an existing network or else set up my own site. That firmed up into a decision to start my own site. More work in setting up, but I like the idea of being answerable to myself on this project.

It won’t stop me looking at network podcasting later.

Interviews galore

As part of the process of thinking about the site, I sat down one day last year and, over a cup of coffee and off the top of my head jotted down the names of about fifty people I would like to interview for this show and whom I felt confident would be willing to be interviewed. So I don’t see myself running out of people or topics any time soon. And looking at some of the names, I know there are going to be some stimulating and informative conversations.

An initial round of interviews is already underway, in connection with the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum next Tuesday, February 19, primarily in Sydney, Australia, and with speakers also via streaming video from the USA and Europe.

Inaugural interview

I’ve already done one of those interviews, with knowledge management expert Stephen Collins. So Stephen is the inaugural interviewee. Here is the interview:

Click here to download…

Moving right along

Tonight I’m interviewing someone who is very knowledgeable about Second Life and the metaverse story generally. That should be fun as well as being informative.

If you have topics you would like addressed, and/or people you would like to hear interviewed, please leave a comment here or drop me an email to deswalsh (at) gmail (dot) com. Yes, you can nominate yourself if you feel you have a good story to tell about social media and business.