WeChat Official Accounts and marketers

WeChat , the most popular instant message app in China, just like snapchat in America, but WeChat is more powerful in the aspect of changing people's life.The first reason is that Chinese markets have more users, and the second reason is that instead of only attracting young people, WeChat also possesses a large number of middle-age fans.Maybe Chinese have no habbits to check their emails everyday like western people, so WeChat just takes the places of email and QQ ,and it is showed that in China, a lot of companies use WeChat to co-work, leaving message and allocating individuals' assignments . In 2014 , Tencent's figures showed that WeChat now has 438 million monthly active users.

But WeChat is  more than  a IM app. I believe people who use WeChat must be very familiar with WeChat official accounts, or WeChat platforms.One of the function of WeChat is that you can follow public accounts that will periodically send you information. These accounts can be companies, brands, bars, nightclubs, hotels or publications.The two types of account have differences in set up and usage. But from a marketing perspective they are a way to find brand advocates and to get information to people about your products and services.

There are two types of accounts you can follow: Service Accounts and Subscription Accounts.

Subscription Accounts are much more prevalent than Service Accounts. Subscription Accounts that I followed range from local bars to national restaurants, from local music promoters to international tech publications.The great thing with the Subscription Account is that when there is a new notification, it  will not only shows within the app, but does pop up on your phone as a push notification.

It transcends the social network spectrum in a way that is sometimes difficult to assess.Firstly, WeChat platform is a perfect place to do advertisements.Because WeChat users are so dependent on this IM app to contact with their friends or co-workers, any advertisements in there can be more powerful than any kinds of ads in other social medias.Of course, these ads in platforms are packaged elaborately : some of them embed with beautiful articles, others may be show with charming pictures.

There are so many species of WeChat platforms, some of them are totally commercial as they are  controlled by corresponding companies and work for their companies; others may have less commercial intention ,like some official accounts only share good articles and comments of books; there are also some personal platforms with no commercial intention at first, they are called "we-media".Just like blogs, owners of we- media can share everything they want and share the updates in "moments ".  After becoming  popular, we-media can also make money ,and some of them can build  their own companies.

For example, Rishiji， a young we-media which mainly making cooking video ，firstly only be known by little people, but now is well-known and also share videos in other hot social media like youtube .This video group firstly only have 4 people, and now it employed tens of co-workers to adapt the development of their studio.

For myself , I nearly take WeChat as a new type of e-magazines, which include all kind of information and I can follow or unfollow them in a second.Some of them share nice videos to amuse me and other s can share link to buy particular products I want to buy, which is convenient and quick.Moreover ,I can share the good article with my friend in "moments",and when we chat below the moment, it is a new way for advertising.

Big Change and New Strategy in Advertising

In this book, the author shows us a picture： a funnel which indicates the general stages before buying behavior. As we can see , after seeing the information of one particular product, there are a lots mental activities happen before customers buy it. In this funnel , all the brand companies hope to control the middle process.

Here is the Video showing the differences between old ads and present ads. It shows old TV ads always describe their products and exaggerate  them, whereas most modern ads use a story line to attract audiences.

May be in the old days, it is easy to persuade audiences to be loyal to one product because there is no existence of dialogue in the social medias, so there is little risk for users to share experiments with audiences.That is to say, once the audiences see the information shouting in TV ads, there is little resource for them to refer.That's why their behaviors of making a purchase largely depend on the needs of the products and whether the ad is attracting.

But now as the developing of social technologies, everything is changing.The textbook did a survey online in 2010, which found that 73 percent customers said they trust recommendations from friends and acquaintances, and more than half trust online reviews from strangers. At the same time, trust in ads continued to plummet. People no longer trust ads and even no longer watch ads on TV. They learn information from each other and talk about products online so more audience could see it. That means once people are aware of your product, it is no longer useful if you use the old way by shouting in the advertisements to persuade your customers. There are too many ads surrounding us, and you must be familiar with the annoyed feeling because of the exaggerated words using in the ads.

Just like most modern ads showed in the first video, a good advertisement now means to be hot and discussible in the internet.  Blendtec's video is definitely a successful example attracting thousands audience and cost little. It is eye-attracting firstly so audience love to share it with their family, friends , and in this way they can do totally free ads showing the fantastic quality of their blender .

Here are a lots of same examples like that: many cosmetic companies are now taking advantages of comments , dialogues and relationships between people to build their brand's name. A well-known way is co-working  with famous youtubers.For my own experience, I love to see youtubers sharing their experience of new cosmetics and if it looks good, I will buy it, otherwise,I will never believe their gorgeous advertisements and persuade my friends be careful to waste money on it . 

The Fast-grow Chinese Memes and Their Effects

It is a popular way for people to express their emotions by using emojis in today’s social media platforms . It is said that The first emoji was created in 1998 or 1999 in japan by Kurita ,  who took the inspiration from weather forecasts that used symbols to show weather, and then a great number of emojis was adopted in Apple’s phone, which made emoji become increasingly popular worldwide. In 2015, it is found that "Face with Tears of Joy" was the most popular emoji across the world, and I have counted that I can send 30 times of this emoji to my friends in social media in one day!

Researchers found that the preferences of emoji can be different when it comes to different cultures.  While Italian and Francian and French like use romantic emoji, the Spanish prefer to flex their muscles while the British and Americans mainly seem to be weary. Moreover, In Brazil, Colombia and Argentina, countries known for their love of rhythm, people favour musical notes. But things became complicated in China because of the newly-developing popular culture of memes.

Chinese memes are mainly some funny pictures coming from movies, dramas, cartoons or professional memes creators, interpreted with funny and popular words. They were massively used in daily conversation in Chinese social media like Wechat and Sina Weibo.It is now a common scence that people only use memes to chat without saying as memes can express a lot and make conversation interesting.

Like this popular meme, in which the man who is lying in the sofa indecently (It is said that Beijingers are especially prone to this way of reclining. Many entertainers of Beijing origin have been caught on camera in this inelegant but comfortable position.  )is GeYou,a master comedian whose cameo appearance in a situation comedy spawned a wave of good-humored interpretations and imitations , and this meme was used in social media when the somebody feels upset, sad,or surprised.For example, I often use it when my friend tell me that he or she can not hang out with me or have to change the original schedule .

So you can see ,memes have already became one important social media's culture in China.It is so important because firstly, it can make your chat fun and relieve awkward situations if all the people have nothing to say(using meme to chat with strangers is also a good way to use it) ;secondly ,it can share the most popular event in society,and it is the time you find yourself outdated if you can not understand one popular meme.