Alvin wrote me, “Quickly scanned your materials, but didn’t have time to fully dig in and digest all the materials. Would be helpful if you just sent me 5 slides telling me what you are proposing, how we could help each other and the benefits/cists to each side.”

The last part got me thinking, ‘the benefits to each side.’  My current thinking has been very one sided.  I wanted him to hire me and support me as I developed and integrated Clickboards into his platform.  But what do I get out of it? A salary and advertising shares?  Well that is not exactly a trade.  I mean I have to do business with the guy and show there is a future with my involvement and provide some measure of growth for his products.

So it struck me.  I can approach Alvin saying that I want to add a Clickboard portal to your website.  I could explain the benefits to him and how this will help spur his current business.  But here is where the real opportunity comes in.  The Clickboard portal can be added to any community site whether it be local, national, or global.  People can manage their Clickboards at any and everyone of these portals no matter which website they are on.  Granted each Clickboard portal will be tailored to the site that it is on and the management of the coupons will be more in line with the site they are on, but the access to all their coupons from Clickboards across the Internet is universal.  And this will be key to Alvin.

Any and all Clickbaords can be redeemed using Alvin’s mGuanxi mobile media application.  So now I am not stuck to supporting one website but able to grow the Clickboard portal across the web while it is hosted by other people’s websites, now all of them will be integrated for the use of one easy to use phone application, produced and manned by Alvin.

Now I just have to come up with those five slides.

I found a really cool feature on Google Analytics.  I can actually follow someone as they travel through my site going from page to page.  It shows me the percent of people who clicked on different links on a particular page.  So as Alvin and his company from Shanghai traversed my site on Tuesday I could actually follow them as the went from home screen to Clickcard, to Clickboards, to the About page and then the the Clickcard category and so forth.  I couldn’t tell which exact button was clicked by who because there was more than one person searching my site that day, but I could see two or three distinct paths.

The problem however is when they visited the Clickboard page.  The Clickboards are supposed to be ads.  Now Google Analytics will track ads but they have to be registered.  My Clickboards are not registered, so I was unable to see if they clicked on them and how many times and how far they went through the Clickboards.  Very upsetting because that was kind of the point of their visit.  Tomorrow I will have to find out how to register my Clickboards with the Google Analytics.  My first assumption is to add the tag to the Flash coding and then repost them.  And another way is somehow with this WordPress site.  It has an ad tracker too but haven’t explored this in detail yet.  Both options seem viable but I like the new Google Analytics tool so I am going to explore that first.

I guess I haven’t mentioned why I am so interested in mGuanxi and why I switched my focus from Jin Magazine.  First thing is first i guess, Richard, my current boss here at Jin Magazine, had the opportunity to review my proposal, well at least I put it in front of him.  Whether he looked at the numbers or not, I can’t say, but he refused the new project based on the fact that he is not looking to invest any more time or money into the Jin Media and rather focus on his logistics business.

So that said I needed new options, I was going to re propose to him but now that I think about it, that would have been futile.  So as the opportunity came to my attention when talking to Don Stewart, an indirect colleague of mine here in the office, who at one point offered himself as an angel investor, he brought to my attention several services that are in the same field I am pursuing.  One of which was mGuanxi.  Unlike the other text discount services he put before me, this media had a very unique web portal.

This web portal had the ability for people to come together and add contacts and join groups, take polls, blog, and send messages.  Much like other social media sites.  However this had no connection to their mobile outlet and the benefit to the users over Facebook and local forum websites was quite minimal.  But to me, this was a perfect platform to develop Clickboards.

By adding another tab which would represent Clickboards, using the clicker icon, users would enter a section of the website where they could manage their mobile coupons and acquire Clickboards.  Here they could share with their groups or contacts and friends and redeem points for luxury vouchers.  Really this is the high dive that could really put Clickboards on the map.  These are the top four reasons I had Don tell Alvin of mGuanxi why he should listen to me and my proposal:

Gives a reason for people to interact (to share their coupons, rewards, freebies and earn more)

Makes service free for user and adds performance for clients

Advertisers can decide what and to whom they reward

Breaches the gap between behavioral marketing and static impressions

So far, I have no response and neither does Don from Alvin Graylin from mGuanxi owner of the parent company mInfo.  He may think he is a little taller than me in his high heeled boots and can’t see the relevance of a Jin Magazine editor having come up with a good idea for him because he is a dual major MIT graduate.  But if he could stop himself a minute and so could the rest of you to review what I keep going on about, he may see the true validity that my project has.  Or maybe he is just on vacation and I need to sit back myself for a second.

The real reason I am going after my boss and mGuanxi is so that I don’t have to develop my own brand image.  Jin has a name which would make the Jin Card more recognizable here in Tianjin, and although mGuanxi isn’t a true silver dollar in terms of user interaction, it does have some strength in its name, something that I could definitely build upon.

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JIN MAGAZINE
Six month Outlook
The overall objective is to combine all our medias into one package.

Newsletter

With the advancement of our Newsletter we can now incorporate more into this giving more reviews and news that we cannot otherwise in the magazine.  This also allows us to concentrate more on giving deeper information in the magazine that we cannot otherwise in the Newsletter.

The future of the Newsletter is to provide quick promotions to our clients as well as encourage them to interact with the magazine.  For example a current project I am working on is to have Newsletter recipients to write reviews for our Website and to promote our Survey and Subscriptions.  Rewards will be given in the form of Coupons for their participation.

Coupons

In the next six months it will become fairly important to collect Coupons and Gift items that we can give away to stimulate activity on the Website and Magazine.  The Magazine will act as the initial stimulus to any promotions we want to promote.  For example at the end of the summer there will be a party (probably at the Sheraton) where we will give away the prizes for the writing and photography contest currently underway.  Prizes have been sponsored by Hyatt Hotel Jing Jin City.

Coupons can also be used to stimulate activity on the Website.  Daily, weekly, and monthly prizes can be given away for the most involved.  Other contests we can have include tickets for concerts, dinners for special occasions at hotels, drinks at bars for special events, DVDs and CDs for new releases, talent contest prizes, best weekly news about the foreign community, and more; all of this will be funded by the Magazine promoting these reward programs for the various venues.

Radio

We will begin working with the local radio stations that have English hours.  We will invite the people in our focus stories to come to the radio with us where we will interview them on the air.  If there is a band that we focus on in the Magazine we will invite them to play.  The Radio also allows us to sell advertising on our show time and to help promote our sponsors and contests.

Website (jin-emag.com)

The Website’s main new focus will be to stream the Radio programs that we create.  Again we can sell advertising before and after the streaming of the shows.  We will modify the website to be a true emagazine and we also need to change the name to jin-emag.com because Tianjinexpats.com has bought jinmagazine.com and this redirects people to their website.

Also using a new service I have found we can sell advertising on other websites for our sponsors that will drive them to our website.  We will promote our sponsors through local advertising on major Internet sites that are frequented by foreigners.  So our Website alone does not limit us to the amount of web advertising we can supply.

JIN MEDIA
JIN Goal
To create interactivity in the community

JIN Card

In the next year we want to work towards making the JIN Card.  This will allow users to redeem any promotions that they hear on the Radio, see in the Magazine, or browse on our Website or the promotions we display through other local online media outlets.  The discounts will be easy to redeem and collect and I want to just bring this up at this point.  The JIN Card will be unlike other cards that only get you standard discounts like 10-20% at participating vendors.  Actually discounts can be quite varying depending on product and time the clients want to put something on special.

As I have recently read, people do respond quite heavily to numbers in the discounts rather than flat rates.  This is a promising market and I believe with the combination of these five factors we can put much greater value into the Newsletter, Magazine, and Website, as well as our Radio portal on the Website.

This of course would include my Clickboards especially with the coupons and the redemption process through the Website and using the JIN Card.