Baidu Zhidao is a good channel for driving brand awareness and influence, if meticulously planned and executed. Baidu’s verification program, similar to Weibo’s verified individual with a “V” icon tagged on the user profile, is a good idea for Baidu encouraging more high quality content and higher interactions between “experts” and the users as the verification process requires real name authentications and constant active engagement.

On the other hand, to individuals and brands, it’s a good opportunity to build thought leadership and influential brands with a verified profile which will be authentic and trustworthy.

How to Get Verified as A Baidu Zhidao Expert

The requirement for Baidu verified expert is quite straightforward; as long as you are either a university student good at your specialty or a working professional with more than one year experience, you can apply.

The bad news is, the application requires photocopy of Chinese identity card; so for those who don’t have, you can’t apply to get verified at the moment.

Baidu Zhidao experts will be ranked by industry category based on your online time and then the total number of questions you answer. Higher ranking will get you more exposure on Baidu Zhidao.

In addition, once verified, experts need to login enough online hours and answer fifty questions within one month to reach “Level 1”; failing to reach Level 1 for consecutive three months, verification will be revoked. There are three levels; higher level experts have more privileges.

Should companies get one staff to do this?

Baidu Zhidao also has enterprise account, which you should be aware of. You should develop a tactical plan for Baidu Zhidao Experts and Enterprise based on your social media strategy or overall digital strategy for China.

There is no short answer to the question that you should or should not use Baidu Zhidao expert program. An enterprise account is more authoritative while an expert account is more personal and easier for building connections with fans and experts which directly or indirectly could help your business grow.

According to Experian Hitwise, Baidu refer 27% of the search traffic to its own web properties, among which the top three are Baidu Knows (or Baidu Zhidao, a Q&A style site), Baidu Encyclopedia (Wiki style site), and Baidu Post Bar (a UGC website similar to a forum).

Baidu Zhidao is the world’s largest Chinese interactive Q&A community platform. Recently it launched Q&A community marketing platform for enterprises.

Baidu Zhidao Enterprise Platform serves as corporations’ official customer service. The platform is offered for the enterprise users to communicate with their customers and lightens the burden of the high labour service cost, which can also help companies manage customer relations.

The platform is regarded as the customer service innovations on the Internet which builds a bridge of communication for the enterprise and the consumer users, in order to achieve efficient interaction between the two.

Baidu Zhidao Enterprise Platform offers both powerful precise marketing and market data monitoring functions for the corporations. It is set up to help promote the enterprise brands and supervise the quality and the satisfaction of the customer service. This to a great extent helps corporations save the costs of both labour cost and advertising.

You can send an e-mail to qiyepingtai@baidu.com to apply for the corporation with Baidu if necessary. Directly dialing 010-59924485/8632 to contact Baidu is also welcome.

Qihoo 360, China’s biggest anti-virus vendor, launched a search engine “so.360.cn” on 16 August in public beta and soon became the second largest traffic source to many websites like chinaz.com and dxy.cn.

Since 20 August, Qihoo has replaced the default search engine with its own on its directory site hao.360.cn and its own browsers. Due to the popularity of Qihoo’s products like web browser, it’s definitely a threat to Baidu. Some influencers like Kingsoft CEO Fu Sheng claim that 360 Search now has about 10% of search market in China.

Baidu has started displaying a notice to users referred by 360 Search on its Q&A site Baidu Zhidao, alerting users to set Baidu as its homepage or add a shortcut on desktop.

Update: 360 is now using so.com.