Open content platforms offer a hand to country’s poverty alleviation efforts

By Chen Luyao

Open content platforms have become an effective channel to assist China’s poverty alleviation efforts, through advertising farm products in various forms so that they enjoy better sales at the market.

Recently, the open content platform of China’s internet powerhouse Tencent has helped central China’s Hunan province boost the sales of oranges in an e-commerce-supported poverty alleviation project.

The western Hunan area embraced an orange harvest around this February. But due to many reasons, some counties saw disappointing sales, such as Baojing county.

To cope with the situation, the poverty alleviation team of Tencent contacted relevant departments of Baojing and e-commerce platform JD.com, and then pushed tailored advertisement to target customers. The Tencent platform also asked other e-commerce platforms to support the effort.

Thanks to customized advertising and e-commerce, nearly 50,000 kilograms of oranges were sold to over 10,000 buyers within only two days, achieving a sales volume of 280,000 yuan.

Orange growers in Baojing entrusted the county’s commerce bureau to present a silk banner to Tencent for the timely and huge assistance.

The strategy is to create content to attract customers so that they buy the farm products on e-commerce platforms, said Chen Peng, chief director of Tencent’s open content platform.

“By doing this, we hope to offer as much help as we can to left-behind senior people in rural areas” Chen added.

The platform allows authors to produce articles, and distribute them to 9 platforms of Tencent, such as WeChat, QQ, and Tencent’s video services. The successful experience in selling the oranges is a result of such operation.

Last May, the open content platform launched a poverty alleviation program, together with the fund-raising platform of JD.com and other e-commerce platforms, in a bid to boost sales of distinctive farm products and generate revenue for farmers through advertising their farm products in pictures, videos and articles.

Chen introduces the non-profit poverty alleviation model as one in which local governments and e-commerce platforms recommend distinctive farm products to the content platform, who then visits, assesses and confirms information about the products.

Afterwards, authors of the content platform write various articles and then distribute them to Tencent platforms so that they are recommended to the readers. Finally, interested readers will buy the products via e-commerce platforms.

“We want to walk a new way of poverty reduction through the internet. In the process, we carefully select products, write detailed articles and adopt precision marketing,” Chen said.

In 10 months, nearly 100 distinctive agricultural products were launched under the joint efforts of the open content platform and e-commerce platforms, such as brown sugar, oranges, moon cakes, apricots, and tea leaves, which has lifted impoverished farmers and even counties out of poverty.              

“We’ve created more than 100 articles for these farm products, and helped generate more than 8 million yuan of income for related places. For instance, the sales value of moon cakes sold on JD.com reached 2 million yuan,” Chen introduced, adding that they lay great importance on this as it is related to farmers’ interests.

Currently, Chen’s team has offered assistance to poverty-stricken counties and cities in 10 provinces such as Yunnan, Hubei, Guizhou and Shanxi.

The new model has enriched internet-supported poverty alleviation. Chen’s team has teamed up with relevant departments in Hubei province to help poverty-stricken villages and households sell farm products and set up their brand products. So far, 8 kinds of products such as sweet potato powder, oranges and mushrooms, have been launched online with a transaction exceeding 300,000 yuan.

(Source: People’s Daily)

Photo taken on April 18 shows a piece of advertisement painted on the wall of a cooperative in Chaohu city, east China’s Anhui province. The cooperative follows the concept of building villages with their distinctive products and industries, and prioritizes the development of three villages: one that sells products via e-commerce platforms, one that displays local folk customs to tourists and one that runs catering and accommodation businesses. The cooperative has achieved integrated development of distinctive farm products, processing, e-commerce and logistics, accommodation and catering and leisure tourism.