Top 5 popular Chinese social media

On social media, every country has its own online marketing strategy. When looking at China, every business has its own preferences when using social media platforms. In addition, if you want to reach the increasingly important Chinese market, you need to know which social media platform they use. Here is 2018 China’s most popular social media.

Chinese Social Media App #1 – WECHAT

Now, if you are an online marketing expert in Sydney, WeChat is a place beyond all simple communication functions. The Chinese community uses this social media platform for booking forms, investing, shopping, paying taxes, transfer money. Use this platform because its goal is to connect everything around the world. In China, the platform alone reaches more than 1 billion monthly active users now in 2018 and reached more online deals by PayPal in 2015.

This is an e-commerce environment, instant messaging. Users using WeChat like to participate and participate effectively, in application-based activities such as shopping via the platform. Here you can find many international brands from different industries such as Mercedes-Benz, Tiffany, and Coca-Cola. In fact, many companies are leveraging WeChat for their Branding and to connect with Chinese online users. They create their WeChat official account, which allows them to send their content and provide their followers with their latest news or products.

You can use the CRM tools in your app to build your own HTML5 mini-site also called the Wechat Mini program, use the loyalty card process, and use it to influence marketing. Consumers don’t have to download any other app, they can just follow your WeChat link and get into your proper platform. Chinese people appreciate innovation and WeChat is continually making progress, trying to serve in a bigger way.

WeChat is almost unavoidable for business in China. It’s one of the smartest and most practical tools to communicate and to create a community, which allows you to get loyal consumers.

How to get followers on WeChat?

First, they must follow your account to see your information because, unlike Weibo or Sina, WeChat isn’t an open platform where everyone can see other persons’ activities online.

One of the ways to get fans is to advertise online. You can go on forums or other social media platforms, participate in their discussion and introduce your WeChat account to get people to add you. More your contact base is important, more it might be useful for you in the future.

Another way is to provide users with quality content. While people can’t see your WeChat account’s information, they can see your article if it is shared by another person. You need to provide quality content to your audience so they will share in their WeChat Moments with their friends.

The most dynamic community – DOUYIN

Douyin (or Tik Tok) is a video music creation platform. With this app, users can shoot short video music within 15 seconds, and they can easily post it online.

The app is well-known for its creative videos and funny users. As the hottest video makers are also “normal persons”, who we can meet in our daily life, it creates a kind of community and stimulates people’s engagement and love for this app.

Douyin is an app that relies a lot on the KOL effect in China. KOLs are the Chinese influencers and also the authors of the hottest video on Chinese social media platforms. To market in China, you may be interested to collaborate with a Chinese KOL to promote your brand.

A lot of brands started to advertise on this platform. The most creative ones created their own account, made their proper videos, and sometimes do some product placement.

How to advertise on Douyin ?

Many brands create a “challenge” on Douyin to engage users and make their brand’s promotion widespread. In my opinion, the challenge has to be easy to realize in order to attract more users to imitate. It has to be short but surprising, in that way people will spend time watching each challenger’s performance.

You need to follow the trend on Douyin because you can play on it to get more followers or get more exposure.

Direct communication with consumers – WEIBO

Now, if you want to target the largest number of public figures, celebrities, companies, and direct-talking organizations that forget Twitter,  Weibo is the way to go. This platform is so large that it creates the ultimate space for debate and conversation in Chinese society.

Even local governments, government agencies, and police have also created their own accounts on Weibo to communicate with the Chinese public and receive feedback. A microblogging hemisphere provides all the long forms to publish up to 10,000 characters, and Twitter also needs to figure out.

It has custom features that change your font style and size, you can share your video and multiple images simultaneously, file sharing, and compose opinion polls – using MP3, PDF, and DMG. All businesses that use social media marketing around the world should have an account on Weibo.

In the landscape, you will find many famous football superstars, like David Beckham, the most popular David ever since has over a million followers. Use it to trigger and increase your e-commerce website or to market your services and products. On this platform, you will find from the fashion brand to environmental organizations.

How to launch a Marketing campaign on WEIBO?

There are many other ways to promote on Weibo, I will provide you here with 3 possibilities:

• Create a game to engage consumer: you can rely on the online sharing power from Chinese users. If your content and your game’s reward are attractive enough, Chinese consumers will actively participate in your game and thus, in your promotion across the social network.
• Collaborate with KOLs : They often have a huge fan base in which you can tap. Moreover, they know their followers’ habit and their interests. Collaborating with the right KOL can definitely help you to increase your credibility and your brand’s image among Chinese people.
• Create quality content: again, quality contents are the most enjoyable for Chinese users. It can be based on funny, touching, real or a trendy topic.

Valuable comment – Zhihu

Service and product recommendations affect Chinese consumers. If you have a brand that you want to sell, this comment based on the social platform ZHIHU is the place. Users here share their thoughts and opinions on movies, books, events, music, and culture. A platform to express themselves and lifestyle as the center.

Zhihu is an online Q&A community. The community is friendly, rational, and conscientious, connecting elites from all walks of life. They share each other’s expertise, experience, and insights, providing a continuous stream of high-quality information for the Chinese network.

Zhihu is like a forum where people can discuss and bring their points of view. One of the major features of Zhihu is the integration of divergent thinking. Users engage in relevant discussions around a topic.

How to leverage Zhihu for marketing?

If you want to use this site, you do not need to sign up for an account, you can find luxury brand creative industries on this social platform.

For online and offline marketing, you create events based on your interests as they participate in discussion groups that build a fan base and invite other users.

It enables users and businesses to interact instantly with consumers on private-label pages and discussion pages.

Quite similar to a Linkedin account, you build thought leadership by answering questions and interacting with followers on Zhihu. It is also possible to write articles on the Zhihu blog, but only high-quality articles will be chosen and published on Zhihu.

More entertaining than Facebook – LITTLE RED BOOK

Little red book or Xiaohongshu in Chinese, is an application of social media app based on its user’s sharing and e-commerce activity. Young Chinese people (especially girls) are spending a lot of time on it because it gives a lot of useful information. We can find on Little red book different categories: fashion, foods, wedding stuff, pet, travel. The content is also diversified with products feedbacks, shopping tips, new trends, and promotional offers.

LRB earned Over 70 million users after 3 years of operations. 100,000 new content are added every day, with a total of 780 million product contents on its platform. The main users are women consumers with an average age of 18 to 35, with over 70% of post-90 users. Users are also bloggers.  They have their own profile page, can create posts, and be followed by other users. This creates a community of trust sharing the same ideas, opinions, bargains, and recommendations.

How to sell on Little Red Book?

In fact, LRB isn’t only a sharing platform but also an e-commerce platform. It follows or even leads the new business model in China which is social commerce.

Like the other social media platform, you need to create useful posts for users then you can add the product’s purchase option at the end. You can also collect other users’ buying experiences or product reviews to promote your product on LRB.

But first of all, you will need to enter into the platform, which means partnering with Little Red Book as a third-party business. The procedure could be sometimes a bit complicated to achieve, using Chinese and needing some paperwork. Our team is made of Chinese and foreign experts specializing in Chinese social media. Contact us if you are seeking to assign your business to the little red book Platform.

Final Thoughts If you are a marketer and want to work with a community of Chinese community in community media marketing, take the time to understand how their 5 most popular networks work. Social media marketing in China is in many ways the same as in the rest of the world. Share your interests and content by marketing in these prestigious social media environments and build credibility with your brand. Start communicating with your potential Chinese customers now!