Which one will deliver the best return for you
WeChat and RED (also known as Little Red Book, or Xiaohongshu 小红书) are the two names you always hear when talking about Chinese marketing.
Chinese people nowadays use both WeChat and RED as their daily search engines, so having a Chinese social media presence on one or both of them will definitely help with growing your brand awareness and increasing your sales.
However, these two platforms have distinct attributes and functionalities, making them two very different tools to target your Chinese customers. If you choose the wrong platform, your investment may just be in vain.
Now let’s see which platform is suitable for you to start with.
WeChat has been called the super app, the Chinese see it as a lifeline and are rarely separated from it. 84% of your target Chinese audience is in one place, so you never want to miss it.
But do you really need a WeChat official public account? Well, it depends.
Even though we say that WeChat is King, it’s not necessary for all businesses or organisations to set up their own account. Let’s see how a WeChat account works:
- A WeChat public account is a mini-website for your business/organisation, it’s a platform to store all useful information with regular updates via WeChat posts. It suits governments, schools/universities, medical institutions etc.
- WeChat public accounts can post in different forms – articles, videos, and images, but mostly are long form articles with WeChat-friendly layouts. So, for example, tourism destinations and art galleries can showcase the beauty of their assets; real estate companies can update their listings on a regular basis and grow their own follower bases.
- WeChat accounts can only publish and push 4 posts per month to their account followers (e.g. 4 posts per month for an overseas public account), so WeChat content needs to be informative, useful and engaging, to attract new followers. You will need to engage a professional WeChat manager, or a Chinese marketing and communications agency to manage the account for you and maximise the value.
- WeChat is not suitable for short and frequent posts, so if you are small to medium retail business owners, we suggest you consider RED as your first priority.
However, having said that, WeChat has other marketing tools that may still be beneficial for your business/organisation, for example, media placements, influencer marketing, etc, so that you won’t miss the opportunity to reach that massive 84% of your audience.
RED
RED is a vibrant community of user-generated content, especially product recommendations, to help drive your sales. So in particular, shops, restaurants, and retail brands, are highly recommended to set up their own RED accounts. Tourism destinations also gain significant traction on RED, reaching more Chinese travellers by showing appealing photos and videos.
Having a digital presence on RED will help open up the door to directly target your Chinese customers. It allows you to post unlimited content, and work with RED influencers to maximise the exposure of your products and brands. For videos, you don’t need to send out a film crew – you can repurpose existing content with subtitles (we can help).
Similar to western social media, the traffic, exposures, engagements and leads on RED are largely dependent on your content – whether the cover photo is attractive, whether the topic is engaging, whether your post frequency matches customer expectations, and, most importantly, whether your content is in line with the platform’s regulations, and so on.
That’s what Chin’s marketing team can help with!
If you are keen to have your brand visible and searchable on the most popular Chinese social platforms, contact us today for a free consultation.
Email: info@chincommunications.com.au
Phone: 1300 792 446