An intro to China's social media
In 2009, the Xinjiang region in China erupted in fatal violent riots that would consequently change the face of the internet for the whole country. Due to the fast-paced and deadly consequences of the riots, the communist government intervened and immediately limited and banned access to uncensored online information. This ban extended to Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and more social media platforms. In turn, the ban acted as a catalyst for China to start developing its own tech sector, often muscling out foreign companies in favour of developing local apps where it could monitor and censor content. Unlike other worldwide markets, the Chinese market is large enough to encourage competition within itself, meaning there is enough diversity in local apps that foreign competition is not needed to see growth and variety.
So why the history less? As Australia continues to be a multicultural destination to live, the Chinese population has exponentially grown. According to Australian Bureau of Statistics, the number of Chinese residents in Melbourne was 38% of the entire city’s population in 2017. Huge. The Chinese community contribute $207 billion to our economy, dominate the international student intake year on year, and add $10.3 billion to the tourist industry. Basically, they are a major revenue stream for Australian brands to engage with.
The problem? We are talking to this market ineffectively as we continue to use western means to do so. China hasn’t had any of our familiar social media apps since 2009 (if that) and have developed an affinity and habitual understanding for apps we have ignored or not discovered. To talk to this growing market in urban Australian cities, consider the social media kingpins Weibo and WeChat; China’s largest social media platforms that are substitutes for what we know as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Uber, and more.
What's Weibo?
Similar to Facebook, Weibo is the largest microblogging site in China. However, its main focus isn’t on relationship building or friends lists but rather on information and content; sharing news, views and opinion on celebrities and current affairs.
Some stats:
In the Australian market, Weibo sees on average 845,000+ active users a month who post 5,400,000+ posts each month.
From a day-to-day breakdown, the number of Australian daily active uses is 402,000+ people, with 309,500+ users logging on from mobile devices.
80% of Weibo users are 17 to 33 years old, with a 58% skew to female users.
80% of users have a bachelor’s degree or higher (this is important to note as brands are sceptical of the platform as it’s not in English, but in fact a lot of these users are educated, often speaking more than one language and having a comprehensive English literacy).
In terms of what the platform can offer brands, Weibo is the largest short video sharing platform in China, integrating video advertisements and live video content to help create genuine interactions. It also allows companies to customise public pages that people can follow, create microsites hosted on the app and can promote advertorial content published on other trusted “Key Opinion Leaders” (a.k.a KOLs, which is China’s version of Influencers) pages with large followings. Another big selling point is that a lot of users prefer to search brands via Weibo, and also use it as a search engine similar to Google. Weibo allows you to purchase worldwide key search terms, meaning brands can more specifically target audiences and dominate terms exclusively, unlike Google ad-words which is more limited in its offering. Consider the below example from the University of Melbourne.
https://www.chinasocialsolutions.com/unimelb
Not only did they use advertorial and video banner advertisements to target perspective international students, they took over the search term “study overseas” for 3 months.
“More than 1.5 million users have searched the keyword on Weibo; each of them was greeted by Melbourne Law School's banner, Weibo account recommendation and sponsored content as the top search result” – Di Sandhu, China Social Solutions
Fun fact: Weibo is Mandarin for ‘microblog’
What's WeChat?
In 2012, WeChat was just used as a private messaging app, but today it’s a multi-purpose tool for public and private use.
“WeChat has become the ultimate app that people cannot live without in China.” - Di Sandhu, China Social Solutions
Again, similar to Facebook (add friends and interact with them online), but more successful and diverse in its offerings, it features things that not even Facebook has effectively been able to implement into its own platform. It also combines apps like WhatsApp (messaging), Snapchat (discover) and service apps like Uber (taxi services), UberEats (ordering food) and Wallet (digital payment). This app isn’t just a social media platform, but its own ecosystem. Further, its main point of difference is the keen use of QR codes.
In Australia, QR codes were gimmicky and weren’t integrated cohesively into everyday life, which lead to a dramatic decrease in their use to near extinction. Only after years of poor execution have they made a resurgence in apps like Snapchat as a way to quickly add someone through their personalised badge. Elsewhere in China, WeChat utilised these codes to create a personal stamp from 2013 onwards, forever changing culture and the economy. This QR code was a direct link to someone’s wallet, as almost all Chinese businesses accept WeChat codes as a secure method of payment, but
“Codes started showing up on graves (scan to learn more about the deceased) and the shirts of waiters (scan to tip). Beggars printed out QR codes and set them out on the street” - Mara Hvistendhal, Wired.
Some stats:
Monthly active Australian users 800,000+
200 million active users worlwide
Daily active Australian users 480,000+
Predominately users are aged within their 20s*
55% skew to male users
78% of mobile users are on an Android operating system
76% of users are online to follow updates from friends
WeChat has a range of different advertising methods to use, the first and most popular being its “moments” feature. This operates similarly to how Facebook ads appear on a person’s timeline. The platform allows brand to target users through data on gender, location, age, interests, etc. similar to Facebook through back end management. Second, banner advertising can feature at the bottom of KOL articles or messages written by a verified WeChat account. The final method is similar to paid partnerships with influencers on Instagram or Twitter. You can pay Key Opinion Leaders in exchange for promotional material on their WeChat account.
Below are two of China Social Solutions integrated campaigns run through WeChat and Weibo for Medibank and David Jones. Both used verified brand accounts, as well as KOLs and various advertising means to connect with their desired market.
https://www.chinasocialsolutions.com/medibank
https://www.chinasocialsolutions.com/davidjones
What’s next?
Near the end of 2015, Zhima Credit, an app launched by the Chinese government that collated a person’s credit score, had been designed to work with a person’s more nuanced social data on apps like WeChat, QQ (another chat, video and group app) and Alipay (similar to WeChat). At the moment, it is unclear how this voluntary connection between your credit score and social media could affect an individual’s social standing as it has yet to be tested, but when originally announced, Ant Financial (the parent company of Zhima Credit) stated that the company plans “to help build a social integrity system” by 2020.
In theory, your social interactions in the future may start to be rated and influence your reputation in society; good deeds and subservience to governance get rewarded with exclusive accessibility to society or better deals and discounts from brands, while bad deeds may see you unable to attend events, follow certain content and alert others you are a dishonest person not to be trusted.
Social interactions and ratings effecting your reputation… sound familiar?
Update: Check out “Data in the pandemic: The Hero or the Villain” to see how some of these same apps were used to combat the spread of Covid-19.