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.
