WeChat is the must-have social media platform in China, with over 1.2 billion monthly active users. Almost every Chinese smart phone user has installed the WeChat app. Chinese users spend an average of over 70 minutes a day within WeChat. All this amazing data makes WeChat become one of the most popular choices for brands to get started with social media marketing in China.
WeChat is integrated with a lot functions and features, such as text chat, audio/video call, group chat, sending files, mobile payment, friend post sharing, travel booking, shopping, living services. In WeChat, brand operators can create official accounts to share content improve brand marketing, launch Mini-Programs for deeper engagement with consumers, and directly communicate with consumers through private traffic pools to enhance consumer’s loyalty.
The mini-program is the key feature of WeChat, which it allows companies or merchants to provide a various of services and interactions with consumers. In the future, WeChat mini-programs will still be one of the channels that brands cannot ignore for developing online business and continue to play a greater business value.
WeChat social media ecosystem is still the platform with the closest relationship with users and the highest monetization value. The average daily active users of WeChat Mini Programs are over 450 million in 2021 and people used Mini Programs 32% more often each day. In 2021, the number of active mini programs soared 41% compared to 2020. Transactions generated in the catering, tourism and retail industries, sectors hit hard by the pandemic, managed to jump by more than 100% year-on-year.
WeChat is a potential platform to reach Chinese users. Compared with Tiotok/Douyin, the recommendation mechanism of WeChat Channels can fully tap the value of the user’s acquaintance relationship chain and network resources to help brands expand private traffic and influence.
Both of QQ and WeChat are created by Tencent company. As China’s first hugely popular messaging service, QQ shaped the development of both China’s web and mobile web. Despite being launched all the way back in 1999 (5 years before Facebook), QQ has survived the trials of time.
Today, QQ still has some 850 million active monthly users – more than double the number Twitter claims. QQ was the first product released by Tencent, which is now one of the largest internet companies in the world. QQ hit one million users in its first year and 50 million in its second. By its tenth year, in 2008, the startup had 856 million total users, a record of 45.3 million simultaneous online users, and more quarterly income than the next two largest Chinese internet companies (Alibaba and Baidu – you may have heard of them) put together.
As the mobile computing era got under way, Tencent worried that desktop-native QQ would not make a successful transition. Instead, the company came up with what we now know as WeChat.
QQ was once an indispensable part of Chinese people’s lives, but the smartphone and WeChat have eclipsed it. Nonetheless, QQ remains today a huge platform with one of the world’s largest active user communities in Chinese social media. It is beginning to successfully reinvent itself for the younger consumer, and by association, the marketers who want to reach them.
Chinese social media platforms are totally different from the western social media. While Facebook, Youtube, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter continue to dominate the western world, China has seen the emergence of many innovative new social platforms, such as Wechat, QQ, Weibo, Douyin, Kuaishou, Bilibili, Xiaohongshu, etc. These Chinese social websites have hundreds of million users.
In China, the 5G mobile network and the popularization of smart phones are rapidly developed. There is almost one billion smart phone users in China. Chinese people on average spend more than 5 hours on the internet per day. They spend an average of more than 2 hours on social media platforms. Additionally, a study shows that more than 40% of Chinese use 3-5 social media applications per day.
According to the related report, the Chinese internet population was around 989 million in 2020 and 160 million 5G mobile users, 89% of world 5G users. And mobile phone user accounts are over than 1.6 billion in 2020. As the world’s largest online community continues to grow, Chinese social media platforms have become popular marketplaces to reach Chinese consumers. With the diversification of China’s social media ecosystem, various social media applications have brought a deeper impact to Chinese consumers’ lives. More and more brands have also been using social media as a major marketing method for brand advertising activities.
For brand marketing, understanding the various Chinese social media platforms is crucial to engage with Chinese customers. The social media usage with hundreds of million active users on Weibo and WeChat in China is huge. The business value of Chinese social media for brand marketing and ROI is significant.
We can help you better interact with Chinese consumers where they are most engaged.
Many years of experiences in executing organic and paid social media strategies in China.
We can help you navigate China’s social environment, helping you apportion your budget in the most effective channels possible.
We can support your China social strategy in key areas.
Social media-buying on Weibo and WeChat
Analysis and reporting in Chinese or English
We specialize in the localized Chinese marketing services and help your business succeed in China. Our team is always ready to help. If you’ve got any questions, just send us an email and tell us your needs, or fill out the contact form. We promise to get back to you quickly.
E-mail: Info@euobiz.com
English
French
German
Spanish
Portuguese
Russian
Japanese
Arabic
Hindi
Indonesian
Italian
Javanese
Korean