User:QIANXIA LIN/sandbox

Background
Due to the Great Firewall of China, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are all blocked within mainland China. However, China is still the largest social network market in the world. Social Media in China includes WeChat, QQ, QZone, Weibo, Blogs, Forum, Podcast, content community and etc. Up to April 2017, six Chinese social networks, WeChat, QQ, QZone, Sina Weibo, Baidu Tieba and YY, ranked in the top 18 by active users in millions, even surpass LinkedIn ranking 19 worldwide.

 WeChat 

As the most famous social networking media in China, WeChat owns 889 million active users per month, at a 28% year over year increase, developed by Chinese internet giant Tencent. 46 billion of WeChat Red Envelopes were sent around Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) 2017. Companies could cooperate with China Central Television’s heavily-watched New Year Gala, doing promotion by instructing the audiences to shake their mobile phones to get the Red Enveloped.

WeChat creates an environment to allow business owners to sell their products or services and communicate with their customers conveniently. Official Account is one of the features of WeChat which provided more information and services to their followers. 72.7% of Official Account are registered through a business entity and 64% operators tend to invested their account for brand promotion and operation. Companies are able to share information, campaigns and customer service through Official Accounts, such as People’s Daily, Lengtoo (a famous entertainment official account), Tongdao Uncle (an account about the horoscope), Vista story (a news magazine official account) etc. Businesses marketers also use Find Radar in WeChat to promote their brand, which is a feature to quickly add friends in your vicinity and show them your companies information on your personal homepage.

Also, some self-employed people are able to share their products or services such as selling cosmetics, sunglasses, shoes, clothes and etc. to their friends/customers on their Moment who also be called the micro boss. However, overload advertising makes some customers feel disturbed and they might choose not to see their Moment. Over 200 million users linked their WeChat account with Credit Card and 53.6% of them choose WeChat Pay payment services. It is a very convenient way for buyers to pay for their products or services. Even in the physical store, it is common to scan the QR code and pay by WeChat Pay rather than by cash. There are still a lot of features provided by Tencent or third-party operators, which help the corporations to sell their products to target audiences, such as Group Buy, Women’s Style, Movie Tickets, Food Delivery, Home Services, Specials, Hotels, Order Taxi, Rail & Flights, and Bicycle.

 Weibo 

Weibo is the microblogging service includes maximum 140 Chinese characters in one post, like Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo. Sina Weibo is the most popular Weibo in China with 313 million active users up to April 2017, following Twitter (319 million) and ranking at top 11 famous social network sites worldwide.

Since 2009, Weibo has become rapidly popular in China. It is the most rapid and widespread social media in China, which have played an important part in 'new new media' market. Lots of companies register a certified official account to promote and advertise their products and services to the public. If you want to attract and retain more customers, you would better spend time and money to invest your official account, making it more interesting and valuable. For instance, the Forbidden City Taobao and Durex are two successful Weibo marketing examples. The Forbidden City TaoBao has more than 720 thousand followers and Durex has more than 2 million fans. They both adverting their products through Sina Weibo by posting interesting advertisements.

Also, some companies will have commercial cooperation with online celebrities who owes 3-5million followers, and required them to recommend their products or services to their followers. Also, some online celebrities have their own business like selling clothes and accessories on the Sina Weibo, attracting customers by posting beautiful photos and providing valuable information. Paying for the SEO could help the companies rank first to customers when they searching for some related information.

 Others 

There are more than 868 million active users monthly from QQ. Using QQ Marketing developed by Tecent helps the company to better operate their products. For examples, companies are able to gain a catchy account number. Many staffs could use the same account at the same time which is more easy to operate. QQ Marketing services also helps companies to record the personal information of customers. Lastly, Qzone, Baidu Tieba, YY, Blogs, Forum and Podcast are another social media marketing patterns in China.

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