The Most Popular Marketing Platform in China

China now has the most social networks globally, and many companies use these social platforms to grow their businesses. When you are closer to your target customers, you can better grasp traffic secrets.

Let's look at some of China's most popular and used social networking platforms!

Douyin: The New Trend of Short Videos

You must have heard of Tik-Tok, the famous app that allows you to share short videos with others anytime, anywhere. Douyin, on the other hand, is its Chinese version, and it was also the first version to be launched worldwide.

It was launched in April 2017 by the Chinese tech giant, ByteDance. Douyin, like its relative TikTok, has achieved great success internationally in a relatively short period. 43% of Douyin and TikTok users are overseas.

What exactly makes Douyin so attractive?

Easy to use: The video is short in time and moves fast, and users only need to swipe their fingers on the screen to continue watching.

Entertaining: They are often accompanied by music, special beauty filters, and sometimes even live-action live performances, giving users the most direct viewing experience.

Clear categories: Users can search by category and only choose to watch videos on interesting topics. We can find quite a few classes, from "animals" to "make-up" to "dance" and so on.

Good at recommending: Using historical data and user preferences, it can infer users' favorite topics and make recommendations. This feature optimizes the user experience and greatly improves user satisfaction.

Douyin is not a social platform. It is more like an entertainment app. Live streaming is the latest trend in marketing and is very popular with brands. Companies use live video to allow influencers to interact with their products or services, attracting their fans and potential Users to click into the live broadcast room to stimulate their desire to buy.

Not only that, but Douyin is also the social networking platform of choice for Chinese content creators. The direct presence of the brand still needs to be stronger, but using influencers for marketing will cause a large splash and achieve exponential growth.

WeChat: A APP That Includes Everything

WeChat was released in 2011. It is, first and foremost, a chat app originally used for messaging.

It allows users to make calls, send messages, photos, videos, and even post Moments on your page, which is a bit like posting to a user's timeline on Facebook. As of February 2021, there are already 1.023 billion accounts with Wechat. What a staggering number. But, you know, China's population is only about 1.4 billion.

WeChat is an application software that has successfully adapted to the development of the times. It integrates various services into the software, and user numbers keep growing. Whether it is the elderly or children, students or office workers, WeChat has become one of the software that Chinese people open daily.

But, the more features WeChat rolls out, doesn't mean the more dispersed the traffic will be. Because all WeChat traffic is concentrated in one APP, no matter how many functions, they are all included in WeChat's mini-programs and official accounts.

Today, Chinese people can use WeChat Pay to book a restaurant of their choice, search for the nearest store on a map, hail a taxi, and even book two-night movie tickets in the WeChat app. Not only that, on WeChat, there is even the company's official account to communicate business culture with customers.

Since 2017, WeChat has begun to provide small programs, which are understood as some small function buttons that appear at the top of WeChat. Its functions are the same as the apps in our mobile phones, except that uers do not need to occupy the storage space of the mobile phone, and many brands are promoted through these small programs. As a result, users can satisfy their purchasing needs while playing WeChat. According to the survey, 18% of WeChat mini-programs are for e-commerce services.

Since WeChat can connect their bank cards with the app, users can click on the links to buy the displayed products. These links can directly lead to the sales platform or the brand's official website, which is convenient and allows consumers to buy with guaranteed.

Weibo: An APP That Lives On Trends

Weibo is a bit like Twitter, as users worldwide know it. It was launched in 2009 as a microblogging website that hosts various pages.

There are all kinds of communities, super chat, and brands and products. So that users can share content, chat, comment on trending topics, follow celebrities, download pictures, and more.

The advantage of the Weibo social network is that in addition to posting content, users can also see the information posted by the official Weibo so that everyone can keep abreast of the latest trends and news.

In addition to its main functions, Weibo also provides a live video function, which is very attractive to users, similar to Douyin Live.

Brands have figured this out, and similar to WeChat, Weibo has been one of the most popular Chinese social networks for years for better communication and attracting consumers. To this end, brands will use short videos or short-lived pictures in the form of stories, just like on Instagram or Snapchat. However, after a certain time limit, the content is automatically destroyed.

In addition to spreading, companies can directly insert links to collaborative shopping platforms such as Taobao/Tmall on Weibo and easily sell products from Weibo. Yes, Weibo is part of the Alibaba ecosystem, so the introduction of external links is allowed.

Xiaohongshu: Chinese Instagram

Xiaohongshu, a social networking platform with a strong appeal to women, accounts for 80 percent of its users.

The principle is very simple; it is a bit like Pinterest/Instagram, providing the ability to create accounts and share photos and videos of specific topics, products, brands, etc.

Xiaohongshu focuses on collecting users' opinions or giving their opinions to certain publications. These opinions and suggestions can be about jewelry, cosmetics, clothing, food, and other different aspects.

Chinese like to share their thoughts and prefer their opinions or suggestions to be adopted. Xiaohongshu even allows users to follow certain accounts or join communities they identify.

The platform is also popular with brands and has more than 100 million followers, most young people between 18 and 35.

Brands have flocked to RED, opening several official accounts in 2019-20, a popular social networking platform in the cosmetics and luxury sectors.

A new generation of young people is indulging in the world of Xiaohongshu.

Kuaishou: Small and Short Videos

The average Chinese spends an entire day watching short videos on apps. It is also the success of Douyin and its competitor Kuaishou. Kuaishou is also a video-sharing platform with over 480 million users.

And the popularity is going to continue growing. On February 4, 2021, Kuaishou was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, holding a large amount of 4.5 billion euros, which is also the largest IPO in the technology industry since 2018. In this country, where everyone is good at making short entertainment videos, Kuaishou has achieved very gratifying success.