Over the past few weeks, we've been working on a "top secret" project with Rand Han, a Chinese-American entrepreneur whose Shanghai-based marketing, advertising and communications support firm, BA360, has attracted a blue-chip roster of international and local customers over the past couple of years.  In the best social media tradition, we connected with Rand online after he added his Little Red Book blog to Social Media Today a few months back.

We're pleased to share our little secret with you this morning. SMTodayChina is our new Mandarin-language version of the Social Media Today web community.

SMTodayChina brings together in one site content from the leading Mandarin-speaking bloggers and thinkers on social media.  It will be updated daily by local content managers at BA360 in Shanghai.  It is our second foreign language site; Social Media Actualities, our French language site,  has been operating for more than a year and has built up a large and loyal following.

This is obviously a project we couldn't have undertaken without a solid local partner and that's where Rand Han comes in.  Born in Orange County, California and educated in Singapore, Rand worked for a couple of big agencies before deciding to open his own shop in Shanghai.  Since then he has acquired an impressive roster of clients, including Coca-Cola, the NBA, GM, Schindler, Acxiom and many other international and local companies.  A full service shop, BA360 (the BA stands for "Bloody Amazing") provides marketing, digital marketing, design and media support. 

If you're wondering how Social Media Today, the company, plans to make money on SMTodayChina, the answer is "we don't," or at least not directly. (We don't make money from this site although it is by far our most trafficked)  What we do as a business is build, manage and mine content-focused BtoB web communities for companies like SAP, Oracle Corporation, (and here) Teradata and Siemens.  Our business model--creating influential  niche communities around highly-targeted aggregated content that connects the interests of our sponsors to a membership  of potential customers--has produced real business results.  With the help of established local partners (like BA360), we're confident we can replicate that success in languages other than English. 

If you'd like to know more about our marketing and language capabilities, send an e-mail to Robin Carey and she'll be happy to tell you all about it.  And, please enjoy SMTodayChina.