Lucy Newcombe, global corporate communications director at Computershare, discusses China's relationship with social, free and state media from Hong Kong

Running communications across China presents both challenging scenarios and fascinating opportunities. Encompassing both the Hong Kong and mainland markets means catering for three languages – Mandarin/Simplified Chinese, Cantonese/Traditional Chinese and English – multiple time zones, cultures and varying interpretations and practices of marketing.

Hong Kong has a ‘free’ media and PR is recognisable in the traditional western sense – while in the rest of China, national media is state controlled and publications in general expect a well-stocked ‘red packet’ to ‘help’ them with deciding to publish your news or attend your press event. You can of course circumvent this by making sure your news is so compelling the journalist can’t afford to miss out.

Buying advertising can be challenging – some publications won’t share their circulation figures and in one memorable discussion a publication I was considering advertising in refused to send me a sample copy as I wasn’t an existing advertiser.

Branding is a bit of a minefield with state-owned enterprises having the monopoly on using the word ‘China’ at the top of their brands. However, they can add ‘China’ within the name if it is to denote it being the Chinese subsidiary of a foreign parent. It’s definitely worth having your lawyer check out your ideas before you plough ahead and invest in a name that might not be allowed.

Companies however have an almost insatiable appetite for practical information - from a standing start, hundreds of people will quickly embrace and engage in seminars and webinars if you get your topic spot-on – and are far more willing than in the west to stay behind after work or start early if they know they are going to learn something.

Then there’s the sheer scale of social media in China – making it an attractive and at the same time daunting proposition to tackle. LinkedIn is permitted in Hong Kong and mainland China while YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are banned in the mainland. China’s well-established social networks include YouKu, Renren and Weibo – with 100 million YouKu views daily via mobile traffic alone.

In 2012, 536 million people had opened Weibo accounts. This includes Boris Johnson, Mayor of London – who has more than 125,000 followers but could do with refreshing his updates somewhat. One of his most recent posts is a welcome to the 2012 Olympic Games.

General users use Weibo in much the same way as people tweet – pictures of meals and selfies abound. The main difference is that there is state censorship of content (maybe that’s what has happened to Boris’s updates?) – anything verging on criticism of political policy is deleted. It can be disheartening when you’ve planned a Weibo campaign and its launch coincides with a state social media crack-down over a case such as that of Gu Kailai and Neil Heywood. Foreign companies often have their content wiped and access barred for anywhere from a few hours upwards.

However, social media has such a wide reach, and coupled with its low cost, it is at the top of the marketing toolbox for consumer brands in the Chinese market. On a business-to-business level educational seminars and webinars are very well- received, and more notice is being taken of online advertising campaigns.