3 Things Any Digital Marketer Can Learn from Chinese Social Media
Leticia Ye
Leveraging AI for Business Excellence | Driving Business Growth & Expansion | MBA
Do you know that more than 50% of the people in the world are using social media now? ?? According to the latest data by Hootsuite, as of July 2020, a total of 3.96 billion people are using social media!
Unsurprisingly, Facebook is the most widely used social media on earth, but there are now 16 social media platforms that have more than 300 million active users. Among these 16 social media networks, 6 of them mainly operate in China and are exclusive to Chinese speakers only.
Wechat: 1.203 billion Monthly Active Users (MAU)
QQ: 694 million MAU
Sina Weibo: 550 million MAU
Qzone: 517 million MAU
Douyin: 400 Million MAU
Kuaishou: 400 Million MAU
All of them have more active users than Twitter’s 326 Million MAU. ??
Since the above 6 social media platforms have their presence mainly in China, the ways these apps work is quite different from apps in the west. I hope this article gives you a different perspective on social media. ??
Private Domain Traffic (私域流量） and Public Domain Traffic （公域流量）
Before we talk about any Chinese social media, let’s look at two key concepts that people often talk about these days:
??Private Domain Traffic
It is the audience that you can reach out to within your own social media account. For example, Douyin followers, Kuaishou followers, WeChat official accounts subscribers, even your WeChat friends are part of the private domain traffic.
??Public Domain Traffic
It is the traffics and anyone can reach. For example, when you buy ads from platforms like Douyin, Tencent and Baidu, you are bidding on their public domain traffic. The advertiser that bids the highest (or 2nd highest) gets the placement. It’s the fastest way to grab users’ attention, while it could be costly if the competition is high.
Operating social media accounts means maintaining engagements with your audience in your private domain as well as getting new audiences actively from the public domain.
The algorithms of each social platform are like digital goalkeepers; they filter low quality & irrelevant contents to the user, meanwhile, those contents that are novel, funny or helpful score a goal. By understanding how the goalkeepers work, we can have a higher chance of getting more views and comments from our social media accounts.
Douyin is the mother of Tiktok and a time-killing machine. With its recommendation mechanism, Chinese users spend an average of 76 minutes on the app every day. (This is when Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity takes effect - time goes faster when you watch videos on Douyin ??).
When using Douyin, the users don’t choose what they see. The algorithm controls almost everything they watch.
(I am on the Recommendation page. As soon as I finish this video, the system will push more similar videos to me.)
As an account owner, it may be useful to understand how your post reaches out to your audience.
There are seven levels of traffic pools on Douyin:
- 200-500 audience
- 3k-5k audience
- 10k-20k audience
- 100k-150k audience
- 300k-700k audience
- 1 million - 3 million audience
- 5 million - 12 million audience
The factors that influence how many views the videos include:
- How many comments and likes
- How much video finish rate
- The time the video is released
- The performance of previous videos
- The number of account followers
When a video is published, it will be expose to the primary pool (200-500 audience) as a test, if the engagement rate is good, it will be released to the next pool and if the feedback is good, it will keep rolling to the next pools. To sum up, good quality contents; contents can trigger emotions and bring comments and likes can boost views.
?? A small note for Marketers :
Since Douyin accounts mostly rely on system recommendations, trended content gets a lot of public domain exposure, yet the connection between the account owner and its follower is relatively weak.
If you use Douyin influencer, the number of followers is less significant, but the video creativity, the number of comments and likes in each video plays a more critical role. On the other hand, its robust algorithm and eye-catching short video content also make it one of the best platforms to run ads.
These two platforms are similar in many ways, but Douyin has more users in the southern part of China while Kuaishou conquers the north.
In contrast to Douyin, Kuaishou has a Discover Page, and the thumbnails and titles of the videos influence the CTR of the video.
The algorithm is quite similar to that of Douyin. What’s worth mentioning is that partially giving users back the choice of what they want to watch also means that the followers tend to be more loyal.
Xiaohong Shu (Also called the Red)
Xiaohong Shu is a community for young people to share their lives. It touches on all areas of lifestyle, such as cosmetics and beauty, fashion, food, travel, entertainment, reading, fitness and childcare. What makes it hard for most marketers to ignore Xiaohongshu is that more than 85% of the users are female, and 70% of the users are under 30 years old.
Similar to Douyin and Kuaishou, the algorithm is trying to push the most appealing content to audiences outside your private domain, thus getting views is easier than getting followers on Xiaohong Shu. The quality of the post, the engagement and the weight of the accounts play a crucial role in how many views the post gets.
At the same time, Xiaohong Shu is an e-commerce platform, and it won’t be difficult to imagine people making irrational purchasing decisions after seeing some KOL’s recommendation.
?? If there is one social network that cross-border marketers should learn, I think it should be Xiaohong Shu.
As you might have noticed, the above media platform allows you to reach users outside your private domain. That is why we call them “open networks”.
Unlike the above social media platforms, WeChat is a game of private domain. When you release an article on your account, only users subscribed to your account can read it.
?? We call this “closed networks”.
The ways to reach more audiences in Wechat include sharing it on Moments and through “Top Stories”. So the most popular content on Wechat is usually articles with deep insight, useful knowledge or discount information. (All of us want to look somewhat smarter than we are ??)
?? Open and closed networks are just relative concepts (as well as private or public domain), as we can see that the apps are evolving quickly, and most of them have both systems. For example, with WeChat’s newly launched “Channel” feature, the audience now can browse appealing short video content even though they haven’t subscribed to it.
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Before this article concludes, we want to say that social media platforms, after all, are a way for ordinary people to share their lives, learn new ideas and knowledge and for strangers to connect. Your audience is no longer just your customers; they are your friends.
Generating meaningful interaction, talking about topics that people care about and delivering value to them are the things that forge social media today.
?? What are the lessons learned here?
1??Make the algorithms of the social network your alliance. Social Networks are massive but very competitive. Not knowing how it works will minimise your chance of getting exposure. Understanding how the platform selects new content and learning from other accounts saves a lot of time.
2?? It’s all about trial and error. Having a social media strategy is essential, but platforms and the audience are constantly changing, so it’s necessary to keep up with the latest trends. The good thing with social media is that it gives you plenty of opportunities to test and see what content is trending among your audience.
3?? The key point: Make friends with your audience. What I came to understand is that in this digital age, the more information there is, the harder it is for users to find beneficial information. Thus every interaction counts.
PS: In the next article, I will write in detail the algorithm of Xiaohongshu(the Red), which also applies to Tiktok. If you are interested, pls follow me or give me a like!
Any questions or want to know more?? Comment below to let me know! ????
Leticia Ye
Business Strategy | China Marketing | Brand Strategy | Performance Marketing | Market Research | MBA
4 年Private domain traffic can be really effective in generating leads and driving sales these days, it also helps with customer retention. It can be cost effective for brands who don't have huge budget. Brands should explore more on this if they haven't.