Social Connect: Social Media in China
Along with the active presence in the ad world, The North Face enhances its social media networking. The North Face was active in Twitter before and now it dominates Instagram with posting photos of nature and loads of tags, as a result to gain 1.2 million followers.
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However, business in China is different. China has around 591 million Internet users; the mobile Internet is still having a significant growth. It is reported that 91% of Chinese Internet users have a social media and 87% of China’s social media users now access via mobile devices at some point each month. It is crucial that they are willing to buy items recommended by other social media users. The rapidly growth of technology, cause social media as an opportunity to enter into a potential market, China.
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The Chinese government has significant control over social networks, the Great Firewall block the global networks like Facebook and Twitter and Google+. Therefore some social media platforms are formed especially in China like WeChat and QQ.​
Inside blue circle: China social media
Outside blue circle: Global social media
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WeChat is the most popular Chinese mobile app in China. Although it’s similar to QQ (a former social media of WeChat) and WhatsApp (a popular mobile app used in Asian countries), WeChat allows users to do more, combining features from Twitter, Facebook, Skype, Instagram and geo-location apps. It is an instant messenger app but brands have official accounts on the network. Moreover, WeChat supports payment and money transfer, which allows their users to peer-to-peer transfer and electronic bill payment.
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WeChat is user-friendly app for Chinese users to communicate easily in the social network, and due to the successful payment function, it is convenience to support money transfer just through the mobile. For the business side, WeChat offers brands to gain a widely reputation from the consumers when users follow the brands and keep updating the news from it. In the video, it shows how the powerful revenue may cause by using WeChat for the business and how it has changed the Chinese consumer behaviour. That is the reason why the western brands are using Chinese social media sites to engage consumers.
WeChat (Chinese: WÄ“ixìn)
600+ Million active monthly users
- Instant messaging (text, video, voice)
- Users can become 'followers' of brands
- Allow making money transfer
- Shopping and booking