Difference Between A WeChat Service Account and Subscription Account

February 26, 2020

While WeChat has been successful in building a giant user base, its platform is still relatively newer and people aren’t used to it. It has a new interface with newer features that take some time to be fully understood, one of them being the types of accounts provided by WeChat.

While registering, companies can choose between a subscription account and a service account. Individuals, however, can only register a subscription account.

Here’s an overview of the differences between Subscription accounts and Service accounts.

(more…)

You may also like

Essential WeChat Statistics for 2020

February 5, 2020

WeChat’s power and influence over the Chinese market is immense. With 34% of all data traffic in China coming from WeChat and users spending over 66 minutes daily on average on the platform, WeChat certainly is one of the most important apps for businesses in China.

Keeping that in mind, for it to work for your business, you need to know how to crack the platform, and that can’t be done if you don’t know what’s going on on the platform right now.

With the advent of 2020, here are some essential metrics and statistics that will assist you in your road ahead to tap the Chinese market.

(more…)

You may also like

How to Use WeChat for Business

January 31, 2020

Introduction

If you’re here, you’re probably a business owner or someone in marketing. In order to understand how to leverage WeChat for your business, you must know a few things about WeChat and how it works. This is especially informative since LinkedIn has removed its social component in its China’s version. This article will explain it all in an efficient and smooth way.

Let’s start with the first thing you would do – set up a WeChat account. Learn more about B2B lead generation strategies for WeChat.

(more…)

You may also like

A Guide To WeChat’s Built-In Automation Tools

January 29, 2020

WeChat’s Built-In Automation

There’s no doubt that WeChat is one of the most essential apps when it comes to China’s digital marketing scene. Most, if not all, businesses that begin in China or expand to China venture WeChat as an important resource in customer acquisition and customer interaction. With such a vast demand for this resource in every sector, marketing automation has become imperative.

WeChat has multiple automated marketing tools built-in to its framework that assist enterprises with a plethora of tasks while reducing human labor and making the businesses cost-effective.

(more…)

You may also like

WeChat Trends In 2020

January 23, 2020

2020: A Big Year For WeChat

WeChat is one of the biggest and most important platforms in the digital marketing game. For both freshers and professionals alike, WeChat brings a lot of opportunities for brand growth, community interaction and business development. So keeping up with the latest trends in the market become second nature to anyone who wants to leverage these opportunities.

Without wasting any more time, let’s dive into the treasure trove of WeChat trends that can be expected out of 2020.

(more…)

You may also like

WeChat Data Report – Summer 2017

August 18, 2017

From communicating with friends and performing complex payments, WeChat has been at the center of the digital revolution in the Chinese market. Each year, WeChat releases detailed reports on its performance and user behaviour with their analysis. Here’s a summary of the data in these reports.

Number of Users and Behavior:

WeChat has recorded daily active users to be over 877 million in June 2017 with over 20 million official accounts on the database. This is an increase of 21% from last year.

The app also recorded 600 million monthly active mobile payment users. Moreover, every day 50% of users use WeChat for an average of 90+ minutes. Another interesting point is that 30% of all time spent on mobile in China is on WeChat alone.

WeChat User Data 2017 China

WeChat User Engagement

We now know how many users visit the app everyday. It’s time to take a look at what they do when they are online. The last year saw an increase of 67% total messages sent per day on WeChat with an average of 8 calls per month with over 65 mins of calls per month per user. Apart from sending messages, users are also reading content from official brand accounts. Ever month users read official account articles the length of a novel!

Users also send each other 28 red packets per user in a month with ¥580 sent each month per user.

WeChat User Engagement

WeChat in Overseas Travel

Over the last year, 135 million outbound travellers from China spent over $261 billion abroad with top destinations that included, Japan, USA, Thailand, S Korea, Australia and the United Kingdom. This has been largely possible due to businesses targeting Chinese customers as they travel abroad by simplifying payments. For businesses, 40% of Mobike rides are initiated from their WeChat mini program (other 60% being from their own app) Anoother addition is that, Moments ads targeting Chinese tourists abroad are officially opening up to all businesses from August.

As WeChat sees an increase of users everyday, it will be quite interesting to see how the platform grows beyond its current capabilities to make it an integral part of business and life in the Chinese market.

You may also like

How to illustrate your WeChat articles perfectly ?

July 31, 2017

Visuals are an important part of creating quality content and delivering your message effectively to the right audience. The potential for an increase in audience interest and engagement is immense once you understand the intricacies of creating tailor made content for business.

Every day businesses are effectively utilizing the power of WeChat to connect with their Chinese audience better and as the market becomes more competitive, brands with great and visually appealing content are bound to stand out from the best.

Here are some effective visual formats and examples to help you create the perfect WeChat article.

GIFs:

GIF is the best format to use to illustrate your WeChat articles and deliver the message in a visually attractive manner. Lighter than a video, they will load quickly and bring motion to illustrate your copy perfectly. You can find tons of GIF’s online. However, it is best to create and design your own with a motion designer, to keep the visuals in tone with your brand personality.

Credit: Shilla Duty Free

ILLUSTRATION:

Finding the perfect picture or visual asset for your brand content can be a challenge. This is where working with an illustrator can come handy to produce the exact visual you have in mind and effectively deliver your message.

Credit: Atout France

PHOTO MONTAGE

They say an image is worth a thousand words, well how about a photo montage ? A photo montage is the way to go to illustrate a more complex idea and bring it to life.

Credit: FRANKE

STICKERS

Stickers are an integral part of the WeChat world and a common way of communicating with today’s Chinese netizens. Don’t stay behind and start building your own custom stickers to communicate in a fun and branded way on WeChat

Credit: BNP Paribas

QR CODE, HEADERS & FOOTERS

Some marketers think that QR Code’s are not visually appealing, but they are an essential part of the WeChat world and the key for user to access your WeChat account. Make sure to add them in the footer of you WeChat article and keep it interesting with some designs! Also why not add a nice header in your WeChat article to welcome your reader properly?

Credit: FRANKE

You may also like

How Wimbledon is using WeChat to attract Chinese audience ?

July 26, 2017

The Wimbledon tournament is one of the most prestigious tournaments in the world. In China, the Wimbledon tournaments were not as popular until, professional tennis player Li Na came along. She was instrumental in announcing to the world and to China, the world of Grand Slam Tournaments. Being quite successful at her career having won tournaments in Australia and France, she started and spearheaded almost a tennis movement in China.

Many young Chinese tennis fans had someone to associate with and support in the Tennis world and the support for the sport grew tremendously. However, due to less awareness of the sport fans found it difficult to access this Wimbledon content.

Wimbledon too, isn’t far behind and was quick to understand that in order to break into China they had to really understand the Chinese market which had tremendous potential to grow. They were able to understand that the traditional rules of other countries did not apply and Chinese youngsters were not always using television sets to view the tournaments.

Young affluent Chinese youngsters were using WeChat to view these tournaments and interact with their friends. In addition to partnering with digital TV deals, Wimbledon has now partnered with the most popular network in China, WeChat. Millions of young Chinese fans will now be able to access the Wimbledon tournaments on their mobile devices with ease.

As the fans of the sport continue to grow, the collaboration with WeChat will only boost the awareness of the Wimbledon tournaments much farther.

You may also like

WeChat: How The Royal Edinburg Military Tattoo is planning to attract more Chinese tourists ?

July 18, 2017

The Royal Edinburg Military Tattoo is a much awaited global gathering that showcases the talents of musicians and performers across the world. The Scottish tourism highlight is often attended by members of the British Royal family too. The Tattoo is also frequented by many Chinese tourists in Scotland. Every year, performers from over 48 countries take part in the Tattoo, and around 30 per cent of the 220,000 audience each year are from overseas.

With the increase of Chinese guests at the Edinburg Tattoo, the Tattoo has decided to introduce the support of WeChat mobile payments platform for its guests in 2018. WeChat has one of the fastest growing user base in China and is one of the most popular and easy ways to facilitate payments in China. The introduction of WeChat at the Edinburg Military Tattoo is said to help Chinese visitors seamlessly pay for tickets, services and merchandise at the tattoo.

The decision to enable WeChat Pay is predicted to increase the number of tickets purchased by Chinese visitors which increased 89% between 2015 and 2016.

You may also like

How the TOP 500 Official WeChat Accounts are performing ?

June 16, 2017

WeChat is fast growing as one of the biggest social platforms and is an essential part of the daily life in the Chinese market. Brands are increasingly using this platform as a way to leverage their goods and services in China. The market being highly competitive, for brands to make it to the top 500 WeChat accounts is a great feat!

Every month, top performing WeChat accounts are tracked and these are the findings. NewRanks tracked the performance of a pool of the most popular accounts between April 2016 and April 2017 and these are the top highlights for this analysis.

1. Average article views have reduced

In a short span of a year, WeChat added over 170 million monthly active users. However, the analysis found that there has been a decrease in the average articles viewed by the users. In fact the number saw a decrease of 5,257 views per article. An important influencer of this number may be the increase in the official accounts on WeChat. This means the users have more options to choose from and the official accounts are becoming increasingly competitive. On the other side, the number of likes to articles has increased by 138 per article.

2. Ranking of the Top 500 Accounts

An analysis of the top accounts from April of last year indicate that 75% of these top accounts have seen a decrease in their ranking compared to last year. Only 21% of these official WeChat accounts moved up in ranking in 2017. The decrease can be attributed to official accounts investing more in creating quality content over quantity of articles. Also, there is the viral paradox where you can’t predict the viral aspect of the platform.

3. Ranking Changed drastically for brands

Among the top 500 WeChat Accounts in April 2016, only 274 accounts managed to retain their position as being in the top 500. Even the most popular accounts have had to revamp their content considerably to keep up with the changing trends in social media.

A brand to note here is, Global Times (环球时报) that went up 428 ranks in a period of a year. Another brand to note is TripAdvisor that lost 15,584 points.

4. The shifting trend from traditional media to WeChat Accounts

Among the top 104 performing accounts 24% of the accounts are media related. This is a huge indicator that Chinese media is shifting the trends from traditional media to the new age media. Media accounts have the advantage to report live and get the information out faster with this platform.

5. Original Content Linked to Increasing Ranks

The percentage of original content increased from 8.7% to 11.2% in a year. The interesting thing to note is accounts that produce more original content have an increase in ranking as compared to accounts with decreasing ranking that produce 9% less original content. The publishing of audio content has also increased 4.8% as compared to 2.1% in 2016.

As the competition gets more intense, marketers have to increasingly develop unique content strategies to match the ever fast pace of the social platform.

You may also like