How to grow your social media following in Asian markets
Producers within Western countries may not be too familiar with platforms such as Weibo & WeChat. But with over 340 million monthly active users, it’s certainly something worth paying attention to. Likewise, WeChat now has over 1 billion monthly active users, and users within over 180 countries around the world. With a strong presence of social media on both platforms, there are countless opportunities to grow your brand within the Asian market. In this article, we’re going to discuss the difference between the two platforms, and some marketing tactics to grow your audience within the Asian market.
Chinese businesses are already extremely efficient at targeted social media campaigns on Weibo (often referred to as the Chinese version of Facebook). But with the platforms gaining more attention by the day, more people within the western industry are developing a strong interest within the Asian market. For example, Coca-Cola & Louis Vuitton are verified accounts on Weibo, and have already generated a large following. By creating brand awareness within the continent, companies (and music producers) have the potential to gather insights and analytics regarding consumer demographics.
To talk about the platforms in a little more detail, WeChat is an application, similar to Facebook, that provides multiple services for pretty much anything you’d need. Whether it’s messaging, booking a doctors appointment, payment, or anything else you can image, WeChat has it covered. In contrast, Weibo is a microblogging platform in which users can express their thoughts. The reason that music producers should be focusing on platforms such as WeChat and Weibo is that their uses within society vary from each other. Much like you’d have different social media strategy for Facebook and Twitter, the sample principles apply. Whilst roughly 70% of Weibo’s users are below the age of 30, nearly 40% of WeChat’s audience is above 30.
So how can you use WeChat & Weibo to grow your presence in China? The first step would be to create an official, verified account that positions your brand extremely well within the platform. Also, having a content strategy for both platforms is extremely important. By using multiple forms of media such as videos and photos, it allows you to create a strong brand image across the platforms.
Next, you should have blogs and articles within Weibo so that you can socially commentate on trending topics. Like Twitter, this strategy allows you to be quickly discovered due to a large number of people searching for a topic. If you’re smart, you could even use guest bloggers to increase your fan base on the platform. Finally, creating regular and consistent content is absolutely crucial to maintaining a strong social media presence on any platform. With the right social media strategy for both WeChat and Weibo, there is a lot of potential for you to significantly grow your brand within the Chinese market. Good luck!
