China Chat is the meeting point for all WeChat and China Online Social Marketing curious. During two days, experts and top industry speakers shared their inputs and best practices of the year. Organized by ChinaChannel and Walk the Chat, it gathers more than 500 experts, eager to learn, meet and share. Being immersed in the Chinese digital environment for a year, we assisted to some of the conferences. Here is what draw our attention.
WeChat Key Trends 2017 – H2
Matthew Brennan, from ChinaChannel underlined the increase of WeChat payment. Catching up on Alipay, taking 40% of the Third-party mobile payment market in China (2017, Q1). Originally a messaging app, WeChat is now a direct competitor Alipay, a pure payment app. Also, we heard about WeChat Ads growth with a quote of Youzan‘s CEO, Baya, (largest WeChat shop platform in China) stating “Within 18 months, Tencent ads revenue shall surpass Baidu”, July 2017.
The First 48 Hours – The Most Critical Time to Create Follower Value
Joseph Leveque, from 31ten, started his presentation by highlighting two main issues on WeChat:
- We are flooded by WeChat Official Account pushes. There is an increase of 250% of Official Account from 8M to 20M in 2 years, whereas the number of WeChat Monthly Active Users increased by only 70%, 550M to 938M. WeChat users are too solicited, having the consequence of plummeting the reading rates.
- The second issue is that 50% of Official Accounts have a stagnating or decreasing number of followers. This fact explained by the non-relevant content delivery.
The solution to these issues that Joseph proposes is to leverage the 48 hours “golden window” that WeChat offers us to send 1 to 1 unlimited messages. Enabling brands to capture as much information as possible and therefore build a valuable user journey.
He also highlighted that most brands under-utilize their “golden window”. Then he gave the best practice to leverage this “golden window”:
“Keep in mind be contextually relevant + intuitive + rewarding”
WeChat Driven Innovations in Employer Branding & Talent Acquisition
Beecher Ashley-Brown, from Ajinga, explained how to use WeChat for employer branding and talent acquisition. Stating to introduce the subjects that 78% of companies don’t have sufficient talent to drive business growth. He then highlighted that 68% have included a Job button into their company WeChat Official Account. Then Beecher gave us the best practices for WeChat recruiting. From treating your candidates like consumers to gamify with rewards recruiting referral programs, he ended by showing some results of Starbucks recruitment campaign, of which 30% happened on WeChat.
10 Rules of WeChat Marketing
Thomas Graziani, from WalktheChat, exposed us the 10 rules of WeChat marketing. He stated that WeChat marketing is for every brand and industry but must not be the number #1 focus. Research on how well the brand is doing between WeChat and Tmall can help you in this task of choosing. Also, you must always consider the characteristics of the platform, format, edition, and purpose of it. Furthermore, he highlighted that WeChat advertising has potential but is not as powerful as Facebook Ads. He concluded by saying that marketers should look into other additional platforms to generate followers.
5 mistakes that breaks Brands on Chinese Social Media (WeChat – Sina Weibo – QQ – Youku)
Ashley Dudarenok, from Chozan, gave us a quick pick on 5 mistakes that break brands on Chinese social media. Starting by showing that Chinese and Western social media aren’t used for the same purpose, she stressed the fact the social media account should be treated as a business branch. She then exposed typical social media crisis in China, such as PR crisis mishandling, fake results to meet KPIs purchased by partners/KOLs and not responding in time to new regulations on social media.
Thanks to the speakers and people we met, this conference is a yearly meeting not to miss in China.
Graduating from our MBA Digital Marketing & Business, ESSCA-EFAP, in a few months, this conference was a great opportunity to realize what we learned and what is still to learn. Special greetings to Maximilian Rech and the China Chat team.
Authors: Lauranne Poncin & Charlie Bussat