How do I get the CMA community into Chinese?

[kellian]

Hi everyone,
My dad has a kung fu school and I study southern style 5 animal form. So naturally, with my "weird" martial arts family, I ended up working in China building a Chinese language learning site. This is my question:

How do I get the CMA community into checking out my new project and learning some zhongwen??! I'm assuming that a lot of people who study Kung Fu also want to know Chinese language and culture (I did...). But how do we get Kung Fu students to make the click to Chinese language? Any ideas?? Blogs? Forums? Ads in magazines? I don't even know where to start...


-kellian
www.activechinese.com
我干学写汉字！

[forever3821]

kellian,

kung fu or forms have names for each move; for exsample, tiger climing down a moutain. when doing your form, you can talk about each move's name and explain it it chinese and english. you can also spend a day in chinatown learning about the chinese cultures. i hope this will help.

[Chief Fox]

Place an ad in Kung Fu Magazine.

Purchase a mailing list of Kung Fu schools and send them a mailer.

Contact Tiger Claw and see if you can purchase their mailing list.

The grass roots way.
- Go to tournaments and hand out flyers.

- In the town were I live we have a Chinese new year event at a local event center. See if there is anything like this in your town. Go there and hand out flyers.

[kellian]

Thanks for your replies. I live in Shanghai now so the Chinatown option is out I think ;) But really good suggestions, I'll check it out! Thanks again!




------------------------------------
www.activechinese.com

[GeneChing]

...and this first post borders on spam, but we'll let it go since it's a genuine request for promotional info, not just a promotion.

To clarify Chief Fox's most excellent answer, we do not sell our mailing lists to anyone. Direct Advertising is always really the best way. With the internet, so few businesses are 'real'. People are pretty tired of spam. Direct Advertising offers much more validity because the potential buyers realize that the vendor is serious enough to invest in advertising. We all know spam is cheap, so we don't take it that seriously. This is one reason why I don't get too upset with people who spam on the forum. It's like saying "my company is too cheap to invest in a real ad? Wanna buy from me?" They stab themselves in the foot. Still, it's annoying, so we ban them. :D

For direct advertising with Kung Fu Tai Chi or KungFuMagazine.com, our rates and schedule are posted on the site (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/about/adrates.php). Our parent company also has a quarterly industry newsletter, Claw Marks, and their rates and schedule are available on TigerClaw.com (http://www.tigerclaw.com/index.php?SCREEN=clawmarks). Additionally, both our forum sponsor, MartialArtsMart.com (http://www.MartialArtsMart.com) and Tiger Claw offer stuffer programs where promotional flyers can be added into our product fulfillment. So there are plenty of options.

I hope I didn't just back kellian into a corner with this. If that product doesn't get professionally advertised, I wouldn't want it to reflect poorly on them, since there was a private inquiry that was made in earnest. There kellian, in good Chinese tradition, you now have an 'out'. :)

[kellian]

uhhh, wow thanks for my "out", Gene. I have to say I was a little surprised but I'm really sorry if you thought I was spamming or invading your board. Actually I'm the senior product manager for my site so it's not really my job to spam... I leave that to the interns ;) Approaching the martial arts' community was my own pet project so I approached it a little timidly and thought this might be a good place to start. Anyways, I will definitely work with your suggested methods and I apologise if I offended you in any way. You have a fabulous site and I really enjoy all the insights on CMA.

-Kellian

[GeneChing]

Like I said, your private inquiry was earnest. You just have no idea how many spammers we get here on this forum. Once our forum crossed 10,000 members, we started getting inundated with spambots. I have to delete about 2-3 dozen spambots a day. It gives me time to have some tea and compose my head in the mornings. Still, many get through.

I gotta get me some interns...:cool: