The Social Media Platforms You Must Understand for Marketing in China

We used to believe the Weibo was going to out when the WeChat rising. And we also found Weibo was getting warm again when we in the dispute of where the WeChat to go. Actually, neither of these two mainstream social media platforms is going to be replaced in the near future. 

But for marketing, they are two different media, compatible and complementary. Weibo is a platform to spread opinions, while WeChat is an outlet of emotions.

According to a rank published by iResearch recently, WeChat still has the leading MAU (monthly active user), followed by QQ, mobile taobao and Weibo. Comparing with the data of last year, Weibo has achieved significant growth. It shows that Weibo has unique value and its own features.

Since its birth, Weibo has become the largest social media platform, and the online spreader of many hot events. From the break of the news, discussion, controversy, to announce, audience not only pay attention to it, but also interact with it. People get to know the events, speak out their opinions and even affect the result. Transmission and interaction are the most important features of Weibo, and also the reason why it can't be replaced.

When Weibo appears, people found marketing has been socialized. The mode of brand building and spreading is no longer unidirectional, but has to be interactive. Along with the development of Weibo itself, the marketing strategies and methods that relying on it are also evolving. Weibo is not only a transmission channel, but also a we-media platform.

WeChat, because it is purely designed as a communication tool, cannot forward things like Weibo, but it is an advantage for it -- it can protect the users’ privacy, so the intimate degree is higher, the user's emotional expression is also more intense. 

With the appearance of "friends circle", people began to use it to launch all kinds of content that are related to themselves, so that the same content could appear both on Weibo and WeChat at the same time. And because the use frequency of WeChat is higher, that it is faster than Weibo to get friends’ status, the interaction between friends is also easier in WeChat. Because of what we said before, people will naturally shift from Weibo to WeChat. 

Because Weibo just can contain 140 words that it let users participate in the content with lower cost, so that the speed of the spread of information is fast. As for WeChat, everyone is willing to read contents with deep connotation and express her comments in friends circle, so emotional outbursts of big events are often occur on WeChat.

The commercial value of Weibo can be better reflected in manufacturing hot issues, which guide the users to e-commerce platform for impulsive consumption, brand image communication and so on by means of extensive business methods. WeChat is more suitable for a more slowly and exquisite brand promoting culture.