Chinese social media marketing overview —
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Post Date
February 14, 2022
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Category
China has become an important market for organizations interested in international commerce, with over 700 million social media users and strong economic growth.
The opportunity to reach such a big audience through social media marketing is appealing and daunting.
Unlike many other nations, China provides a unique difficulty for social media marketing since it heavily bans popular, worldwide social media networks, opting instead to create Chinese-specific platforms for its citizens. Because of their unfamiliarity and China’s unique restrictions around internet material, these sites can be tough to break. A firm may have a successful advertising campaign in China by changing its approach to worldwide marketing.
China’s Great Firewall
China has adopted a firm position on Internet freedom in the face of protests and turmoil in the twenty-first century. China deploys approximately two million government personnel to monitor, erase, and censor anything deemed harmful to China’s public image, dubbed “The Great Firewall.”
In 2016, Freedom House rated the Internet freedom of 65 nations, and for the second year in a row, China was listed as having the worst overall online censoring rate in the world. Naturally, this restriction has created many issues for multinational businesses whose marketing plans rely on traditional social media sites.
Platforms for Social Media Adoption
The majority of these social media networks are knockoffs of more well-known platforms worldwide. Four primary social networking services have risen above the others in China’s fast-paced technology culture:
- Weibo is a major social media platform that combines Facebook and Twitter. Initially using Twitter’s 140-character format, the platform ultimately increased the posted limit to 2,000 characters.
- In China, WeChat is the most popular instant messaging application. It allows users to communicate with one another, serves as an e-commerce and payment platform, and provides WeChat Moments, allowing users to share their lives with others. WeChat’s popularity continues to rise, and it has become an integral element of Chinese everyday life.
- Youku Tudou is China’s YouTube, with millions of users streaming TV series, movies, and user-generated material on the platform.
- Many people use QZone to share photographs, music, movies, and blogs. While QZone still has a substantial user base, it has lost a significant amount of ground to WeChat in recent years.
These platforms all have substantial user bases, which will continue to develop as long as they stay up with technical and social changes.
Marketing Techniques
Social media platforms are at the forefront of China’s present technology landscape characterized by rapid development. In China, the importance of social media marketing cannot be overstated, and the most popular sites enable third-party advertising. These networks’ payment tools are well-integrated, making marketing and e-commerce a lot more intuitive element of social media.
Advertisers gain from placing content on Youku Todou and other video platforms since the video has become a significant aspect of Chinese social media culture. The popularity of video has expanded beyond movies and scheduled user material, with advertisers increasingly focusing on live streaming.
A corporation may change their product to suit best in China by tapping into cultural and technology trends and perspectives. While restrictions and country differences might provide challenges, a corporation can compete in the world’s most profitable social media market by adapting its marketing strategy and knowing what a Chinese consumer would gravitate towards.