If you think the most common language in the blogosphere is English– think again.

At least according to Technorati, in its April State of the Live Web report, the language with the most frequent blog posts in Japanese, with 37%, followed by English with 36% and then Chinese at 8%.

In doing some research on how business researchers can effectively find and understand blogs in non-English language (for the August issue of The Information Advisor, and my forthcoming book, The Art of Strategic Listening, Paramount Market Press 2007), I had an extremely enlightening email interview with Michael Darragh, the digital strategist for China and Asia Pacific for Ogilvy PR Worldwide who is based in Shanghai. Darragh generously and insightfully answered several questions I emailed him about the state of Non-English blogging, particularly in China and other Asian countries at detail. His responses, too long to be published in full in these formats, are too valuable to let go waste, so I am posting them here on this blog.

I received an instant education from Mr. Darragh—read through his responses and I know you will as well.

Q. Can you briefly describe the state of blogging and online communications in China?
A. In China, digital communications is dominated by search, instant messaging and bulletin board systems (BBS). Baidu is far and away the most useful search engine for Chinese information. Google and Yahoo! attract considerable traffic too; however the consumer will refer to them when searching for information outside China. Instant Messaging is dominated by two players, the über-popular QQ, with its denizens of student members, and the universally popular MSN Messenger which people graduate to. Meanwhile, BBS is an incredibly popular form of online communication in China; leaving blogs in their wake.

The appeal of BBS is they are reminiscent of a round table where everyone can contribute his or her opinion for debate. BBS is a very collaborative platform as opposed to blogs which are normally at the dictate of one individual. Some blogs feel like a lecture. Many netizens, particularly the younger ones, are tired of having other peoples’ opinions thrown at them. They get enough from school, work and home. The Internet is a source of entertainment and enjoyment, and BBS are much more playful than blogs.

In China, blogging is not as evolved as in Europe or the States, but it is nevertheless a very important consideration for marketers due to the sheer number of people blogging. Most Chinese blogging networks are not as good as American and European blogging systems like Blogspot or Skyblogs in terms of sophistication and architecture. To further exacerbate this shortcoming, many international blogging systems are unavailable due to language restrictions or because of the so-called Great Firewall of China which denies users access to myriad parts of the web, including Vox, Blogspot, Typepad and popular web 2.0 applications such as Flickr and Wikipedia.

This will change. The Central Government has reneged on its plan to force bloggers to register with their real names and identification. This is a small win for blogging in China, paving the way for the burgeoning digital class to express themselves as individuals alongside the superstars and university professors whose blogs carry significant weight and influence in China.

We are also witnessing a plethora of web 2.0 ventures vying for a piece of the pie. Video sharing sites that mimic YouTube are gathering momentum as more and more Chinese are able to afford video cameras or mobile phones with video recording capacity. Tudou.com, in particular, has a wonderful business model and is a pleasure to do business with. For instance they are in contact with a network of aspiring filmmakers which marketers may call upon to create a three-minute web video. It is up against 50 competitors in the video sharing market.

MySpace recently launched here and I for one have high hopes that Chinese people will embrace social networking. As a Rupert Murdoch enterprise it is getting a dose of criticism in the blogosphere, but the proof will be in MySpace’s ability to harness the nuances in Chinese networking into software that doesn’t play tricks in the name of consumerism, and affords users every opportunity to tailor their privacy level to each of the people in their network.

As far as web 2.0 or user-generated content is concerned in China, for every operation creating buzz and greenbacks out of Silicon Valley there is a company attempting to emulate its business model in China.

Q. What is the actual process you take to find and review Chinese blogs and consumer content? In other words, do you conduct searches in the Chinese language directly on services like Technorati? Or do you employ other tools or sites?
A. In China, there are an estimated 20 million blogs. Considering there are 139 million Internet users - or about 10% of the overall population, increasing to 25% and 30% in Shanghai and Beijing respectively - this means one in seven Chinese netizens is a blogger. But in reality, many blogs lay dormant and abandoned. Random musings from lovesick teenagers are frozen in time, forgotten. I estimate there are five million blogs in China that are regularly updated and enjoy a steady readership. There are millions more using video sharing sites, social networks and bulletin board systems (BBS) to express their thoughts.

When I look at blogs I want to determine one thing: their ability to influence or change public opinion. To do this I consider six factors:
1) Site traffic
2) The number of other blogs linking to the blog
3) The frequency and depth of new blog entries
4) The average number of comments for each blog entry
5) Their affiliations, such as offline members, positions in the wider community, etc.
6) A sixth sense, in other words the gut feeling one gets from reviewing several pages of a blog

However, not all of these things are easy to evaluate. Site traffic for instance is not generally public knowledge. Major blogging hosts like Sina and Sohu, merely have a ticker indicating how many times the blog has been accessed. But it doesn’t give me a timeframe or indication of how many unique visitors that includes. Furthermore, online services such as Alexa are so skewed towards tech blogs that they might be useful for Intel but not Mary Kay.

The answer is to take time evaluating blogs and that’s what we do. Using all the available tools, from Technorati to a range of Chinese language tools, it can take a month to really asses the influence and authority of an individual blog. I need to become a regular reader of the blog and get to know his or her style.

On such tool is Blogool, a start-up which has the potential to become the best blog search engine in Chinese. It’s a cool application to use in our office.

Q. What are some of the biggest challenges in finding/reviewing blogs in Chinese vs. those in English?
A. I’ve answered some of that above, but challenges include the longevity of a blog, its hosting solution, and general respect, or lack thereof, for the individual blogger.

Oftentimes I find the perfect blog only to realize it hasn’t been updated since October 2005. I want to reach out to the blogger and say, “hey, don’t quit, you’re onto a good thing.”

Alas, many bloggers are disheartened by the criticism they may face from peers just for having the courage to express themselves as an individual. Back in BBS land they have more security and can hide behind several avatars.

Also I am more likely to encounter frustrations with domains hosted outside mainland China. Just last week I noticed that Typepad blogs can no longer be accessed (unless the user has an unique domain). Blogspot blogs are a gamble. Vox, which seemed so promising and almost the perfect blogging platform for newbies, was blocked weeks after its launch. So I denied numerous entertaining and informative blogs written by overseas Chinese.

I never know from one day to the next if Technorati is going to work. At the moment I can access it. The Chinese blogosphere – in Chinese and English – recently mourned the blocking of Flickr and I have grave fears for the future of YouTube.

My best resources, therefore, are human. We make an effort to bookmark good blogs when we find them in our recreational and professional web surfing (using HaoHao which is similar to del.icio.us). Everyone in the company knows which clients we serve and their categories of business. It’s easy to bookmark a blog and add a few descriptive tags.

Q. What would you say are some unusual or distinguishing characteristics of Chinese bloggers vs. American or more Western ones?
A. In China every celebrity has a blog. Long before Paris Hilton and Lily Allen embraced YouTube and MySpace, Chinese celebrities embraced blogging as the ultimate platform to engage in real dialogue with fans.

Singer/actress Xu Xinglei’s blog is one of the most popular in the world. Six months ago it was ranked the #3 most authoritative blog, by Technorati. It is currently ranked #47 but its readership has remained steady. Individual blog entries can attract thousands of comments.

The living legend, Yue-Sai Kan, has blogs on Sina and Sohu. These blogs are popular because of the offline authority and influence these people bring to the blog. University professors and television journalists are also taken seriously in their blogs.

Blogs are increasing in importance and readership everyday. Blogging providers like BlogBus and consortiums such as Bullog.cn are working to position bloggers as respected and reliable sources of information. And reading newspapers and BBS, blogs are being quoted or referenced more frequently than ever before.

There are common traits, naturally. How businesses approach bloggers demands adhering to guidelines that reflect the respect and reverence we hold for influential bloggers. Ogilvy PR’s guidelines are developed by bloggers for bloggers and placed on the Internet for all to see.

You can’t just send press releases willy nilly to bloggers and expect them to extol your products virtues. That is spam and the result could be a lot worse than you imagined.

We find that even in this new high-tech world, decent old fashioned public relations - as pioneered by companies like Ogilvy – achieve the desired effect.

Q. What do you think is the current state of Chinese and non-English language blogs and consumer generated content, in terms of a)their impact on marketing and p.r. efforts and 2) their ability to be found and heard by English speaking businesspersons?
A. User-generated content has just as much appeal here as anywhere else. With so many supremely talented designers and develops it is no wonder we are seeing sites dedicated to amateur singers, musicians, artists, photographers and other art forms. Before YouTube there were the Backdorm Boys, the original lip sync video superstars and later Motorola spokesmen. The little chubby Chinese boy who was parodied in so many PhotoShop’d movie posters is now a young Internet entrepreneur whose community, “Little Fatty”, is a hive of activity.

I think it’s very easy for native English speaking bloggers to dismiss the importance and influence of non-English blogs. There are millions of blogs in Chinese, Spanish, French and Portuguese that are reaching audiences who cannot understand English at all. And even if they can read English, it’s not always fun reading cleverly written English language blogs. For example, I can read Spanish and French but I very rarely read their blogs because I know I’ll need a dictionary handy and many of the unique local references will go over my head. Easier for me to stick to English!

Imagine, too, the huge number of people who are blogging or maintaining social network profiles in Korean and Japanese. With eight-five percent of Koreans keeping an online social profile, marketers are crazy to dismiss social media from the communications plans.

If business people work in a multi-national environment, like Ogilvy, they can look within their own networks to know which are the leading blogs in their category. Or better still, turn to a company that has digital PR and communications experts situated in the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific.

Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide established its Digital Influence practice to service the new demands of clients in a world where trust in traditional media is deflating in favor of social media. And where anyone can become the influencer. If I need to know who the leading auto blogger in India is, my answer is a phone call away. If I want to run a simultaneous digital PR campaign in Malaysia, China and the Philippines, I can call on my colleagues and collectively we will make it happen.

Q. Do you have any general tips, advice or sources for English speaking researchers who want to get a sense for understanding the blogosphere in China?
A. There are a few excellent resources for learning more about the scene in China. Our very own Ogilvy China Digital Watch is a bi-lingual blog edited by Kaiser Kuo, former bureau chief for Red Herring in Beijing. Jeremy Goldkorn’s Danwei.org is a terrific source of information for marketers and advertisers. China Web 2.0 Review, meanwhile, tracks many of the exciting new web tools launching in China. Commence by subscribing to their RSS feeds and you are on your way.

The next thing is to have someone on the ground and that’s where I come in. Come to me and I’ll tell you what is being said about your brand online and who is leading that discussion. News travels at lightning speed in the Chinese blogosphere and bad news travels even faster. With five million active blogs and millions more conversations occurring in BBS, videos sharing sites and other user-generated content platforms, it is imperative that marketers know who is influencing opinion online.

I encourage online campaigns that harness the very best the web has to offer. Programs that inspire bloggers, v-loggers and social networkers through digital sophistication and originality can generate conversation by e-mail, IM and BBS, as well as big news portals. The return on investment can be blow you away. Companies cannot continue to put China off until “next year”.

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Michael Darragh’s role as Digital Strategist, is to assist brands elevate their brand equity online and reach hard-to-find netizens whose use of the Internet is confined to just a handful of social media sites. He works with international brands in China and across the Asia-Pacific – such as Adidas, Goodyear, Intel and Nokia.