Chinese Social Media Brief: Overview, SNS Analysis and Key Trends

Chinese Social Media Brief
25 April 2014
Imagination / China Social Media Brief/ April 2014

2
#1
Overview
of Chinese
social media
#2
Social Networking
Sites analysis
#3
Key trends

3
#1
Overview
of Chinese
social media
#2
Social Networking
Sites analysis
#3
Key trends

Imagination / China Social Media Brief / April 2014
Chinese social media
Overview
The most fragmented and competitive
social media landscape, each social media
site and e-commerce platform has at least
two major players.

China VS America
total population:
netizen population:
mobile netizen population:
netizen average age:
urbanization rate:
social media user population:
social media user penetration
among population:
social media user penetration
among netizens:
time spent online weekly:
time spent on SNS daily:
1.3 billion
591 million
464 million
25 years
72%
598 million
45%
91%
21 hours
46 minutes
317 million
245 million
182 million
42 years
82%
228 million
72%
67%
23 hours
37 minutes

Understanding the user
The world’s most socially
engaged and active netizens
> 7 out of the top 10 active regions on social
networking sites (SNS) are in China’s tier1 2 cities.
30% and 50% of Chinese social media users
are creating and curating original content on
SNS, compared with 1% and 9% in the West
respectively.
Highly trust and rely on SNS as source of
information.
80% of Chinese social media users say they use
social media channels to search for information
about products and brands.
66% of Chinese social media users follow on
average 8 brands, while 33% of Americans have
ever followed a brand on social media sites.
Heavily influenced
social shoppers
43% of China’s netizens are interested
in products shared by friends on social
networking platforms.
51% of Chinese car buyers decide against a
brand after reading negative comments on
social media sites.
More than 50% of Weibo users access
e-commerce platforms after noticing relevant
information on Weibo.

The Renren /
Kaixin001 dynasty
Real name
Real connection
The Weibo dynasty
Anonymity
Casual connections
The WeChat dynasty
Privacy
Mobility
Evolution
China has been experiencing a light-speed SNS evolution.
2008 – 2009 2010 – 2013 2014 – ?

8
#1
Overview
of Chinese
social media
#2
Social Networking
Sites analysis
#3
Key trends

Chinese social media site
Overview
The most popular Chinese social media sites
0
Qzone Wechat Tencent
Weibo
Sina
Weibo
Pengyou Renren
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
Registered users
Monthly active users
Note: The figure of Sina Weibo Monthly Active Users is represented by Daily Active Users

Qzone
Implications:
For brands that are looking for maximum message
coverage among younger social users, especially in
lower tier cities.
For brands that require flexibilities to highly
customize their pages and micro-sites to integrate
multimedia content and applications.
For brands that want to communicate to specific
demographic groups by using Tencent's targeting
self-serving system (GDT) to choose where, when
and to whom to display their ads on the platform.
Overview:
Tencent Group’s biggest open platform.
China’s biggest social networking site in terms of
registered and active users, paid service subscribers
and quantities of updated feeds.
Demographics:
Users are largely recruited from Tencent’s top
instant messenger QQ.
The active users tend to be lower end netizens,
new netizens and users of lower ages from Tier
2, 3, 4 cities.

Qzone user page
Activity classification
What others are following
Status updates
Someone you may know
Send a birthday gift
Feed classification
Game and Application
All feeds
What others are playing

Qzone brand page
Activity classification
Verified account
Interactive zone
Active follower
Latest feeds
Posts
Shared videos
Album

Qzone key figures
Posts on the first
day of 2014
1 billion
623 million
Posts on the first
hour of 2014
28 million
Active users from mobile
terminal increased by
10.4%
Average photos
uploaded daily
200 million
Active APP users
184 million

Sina Weibo
Implications:
Weibo is best for thought leadership and
broadcasting messages on a more public scale to
increase brand awareness and campaign reach.
For brands that intend to use this platform as their
key and primary information hubs and trigger
points to drive traffic to other digital platforms.
The stand-out attribute of recreation usage on Sina
Weibo gives marketers an edge when marketing
with fun and leisure related content.
Overview:
Weibo means micro-blogging in Chinese. Sina
Weibo was China’s first opened micro-blogging
service in 2009.
A hybrid of Facebook and Twitter. However it
launched multi-media functions one and half
years earlier than Twitter.
Currently there are 404,000 enterprise accounts
on this platform.
Recreation and emotion are the top 2 topics on
Sina Weibo.
Demographics:
Sina Weibo enjoys high penetration among
Chinese high end groups with monthly income
of over RMB 8000 from Tier 1 cities.
90% of Sina Weibo users are between 15
to 34 years old.
86% of web users are active members of
Sina Weibo.

Sina Weibo user page
Hot topics
All feeds
Someone you may
be interested in
Popular micro-blogs
Status update and
content sharing
Feed classification
Follower classification
Official applications
Popular tools

Sina Weibo brand page
On going activities
Survey research
Account contact
External links
Account introduction
Followers, Fans, Posts
Focal area
New feeds

Sina Weibo key figures
Daily active users
from mobile terminals
38 million
Average daily posts
130 million
Daily active users
60 million
Total posts on the first
minute of Horse Year
808298
Enterprise accounts
0.4 million
YOY increase
20%
YOY increase
52%
YOY increase
55%

WeChat

WeChat
Implications:
For brands that want to improve their
customer service by creating real-time and
more personal conversations.
For brands that aim to engage and seek
support with their most devoted fans by
in-depth communications.
The internal mini-site functions of service
accounts give service-oriented companies an
edge when providing basic services.
For brands that want to broadcast original
and highly relevant content to their followers
once a day, which can be almost guaranteed
to be read.
A potential new channel for e-commerce
business with smaller product lines or those
who sell on convenience.
Overview:
Originally Tencent group’s mobile text and voice
messaging application.
Evolving to a versatile platform with introductions
of offline to online payment, gaming, LBS,
e-commerce and social networking features.
Registered users reached 600 million in only
3 years.
Companies registering their service or subscription
accounts reached more than 2 million
in only 15 months.
Demographics:
WeChat enjoys higher penetration among affluent
Chinese groups with monthly income of more than
RMB 3000 compared to other social networking
sites, making up of 58% of the total WeChat users.
61% of WeChat users are male and 39% are
female users.
80% of users are below 35 years old.

WeChat
WeChat
Instant messaging SNS Gaming
E-commerce
Payment LBS / O2O Office Accounts Smart Home
Text message
Voice message
Walkie talkie
Video chat
Group chat
Send contents from other
apps
Picture exchange
Stickers
Geographic location
Upload posts with text
or photo
Browse friends’updates
Comments/likes
Share others’links
“Look around”to find and
talk with strangers
“Drift bottle”to send
message to strangers
Mobile gaming
Check friends’scores
Invite friends to play
E-commerce
An e-commerce
button, directly
displaying some
products
Merchants sold via
brands’service accounts
Payment
Consumption on WeChat
Consumption on
other apps
Scan QR code to
pay for purchase
on PC website or
at offline store
Scan QR codes for offline
payment
Scan QR codes to search
for and buy products on
WeChat
Navigation using the
location friends send to
you
Search for discounts and
group buying activities
nearby
Subscription account
Send followers push
notification once
everyday
Service account
Send followers push
notification once a
monthin a new chat
window
Customized menu with
up to 15 functions
Sell products within
service accounts
Skyworth TV allows users
to control their TV
through WeChat
Search and pay for
movie and drama
through iCNTV account
on WeChat and syncs
them with Skyworth TV

WeChat
Fever for next self-service advertising platform.
Tencent is testing to integrate some trial
WeChat subscription accounts with its self-
service advertising system Guangdiantong (GDT).
Currently WeChat supports text link ads at the
bottom of mobile pages and the average click-
through rate is around 3.5. As WeChat is promising
to become more open, targeting advertising on
WeChat will be supported and competed fiercely
with more formats of ads.
WeChat forecast in 2014
From selling convenience to a versatile lifestyle
service platform.
After Tencent taking 20% of stake in Dianping-a
restaurant rating and group buying website-it is
predicted that Tencent would focus its strategy
on broader O2O market segments to seize the
dominant position in the O2O field. With access to
Dianping’s huge local lifestyle information a new
category of “Food No.1” was added on WeChat
in Febuary 2014. It is expected that WeChat would
leverage more location base services, such
as table booking and group buying in the
near future.
From e-commerce to social shopping.
Currently WeChat is selling limited merchants from
its B2C platform Yixun directly. With partnering up
with Meilishuo, a Chinese Pinterest clone, WeChat
is going to add a new fashion channel to its mobile
payment service later in 2014.
Offline purchase payment with WeChat will be a
new norm.
Initiating a trial run with Wangfujing’s flagship
store in Beijing WeChat was available to
complete payment in store on February 14th 2014.
Tencent is expected to roll out a new POS solution
in larger scale to start O2O payments for general
merchandise.

WeChat
Instant
messaging via
voice, text,
video call
Friends
Discovery
Games
Add contacts
by Wechat
ID, QQ and
mobile
contacts
Starbuck
official
Account
page
Intimate
social
networking
circle
Mobile
Payment
service
Instant
messaging
via voice, text,
video call
Lays brand
campaign

WeChat key figures
272 million
Time spent per user
monthly in Sep 2013
226 minutes
YOY Increase
124.3%
YOY Increase
148%
Average photos
uploaded daily
200 million
Message sent within
one minute on Year
of the Horse’s eve
10 million

Renren

Renren
Implications:
For brands whose communication content strategy
is highly oriented towards college students and
young professionals.
With an official censorship policy and a specific
category limitation for small business, big brands
enjoy more flexibility for customizing their business
pages.
The feature of real name guarantees more
authentic metrics in terms of followers, responds
and reposts to measure campaigns’ effectiveness
and ROI.
Overview:
A equivalent Facebook of China.
Renren retargeted its users on post-90s and
repositioned from SNS (social networking services)
to SMS (short message service) to reinforce instant
messaging and group messaging.
Uploading photos and updating status make up of
70% of user generated content.
Demographics:
Most of users are university students and
recent graduates.
Around 7 in 10 (69%) of Renren users tend to be
light users who visit its website less than once a
day.
52% of total Renren registered users are post 90s.
More than 75% of the total 54 million monthly
active users are post 90s.

Renren user page
Friends recommended
Useful functions
Account recommendation
Update posts
Feed classification
Group classification
Useful tools
Popular application
New feeds

Renren brand page
Timeline
Hot topics
On going activity
Message board
Content classification
New feeds

Renren key figures
Percentage of users
access to Renren
through mobile
80%
Average numbers of
friends each user follows
187
Time users spent
online monthly
9 hours
Average number
of friends each
post-90s follows
253
Brands each user
follows on average
6 brands
Average number
of friends each
post-80s follows
137

High
Satisfaction
Adoption
Low High
Promising Essential
OvervalueExperimental
Qzone
Douban
Tudou
Kaixin001
Jipang
Renren
Tencent Weibo
Youku
WeChat
Sina Weibo
Which platform to watch in 2014?
Social marketing ROI:
In 2013 Weibo yielded effective results to only 47% of companies in terms of branding and sales promotion.
Only 24.2% of companies had a positive opinion in terms of WeChat's effectiveness in producing results.
Source: Forrester social marketing survey, Q2 2013

Which platform to watch in 2014?
Social platform investment
forecast in 2014:
More companies are further increasing the use and
investment on Wechat. Nearly 60% of companies
surveyed by PR Newswire say that they will increase
their budgets allocated to WeChat in 2014.
Sina Weibo is still the most popular platform for
companies and brands. Even around 50% of
companies surveyed will increase their budgets to
Sina Weibo in 2014, a noticeable drop from 69%
in 2013.
Key conclusion:
While WeChat is strong in networking, self
expression and communicating with friends,
Sina Weibo is better for getting news, acquiring
information about brands and organizations.
Sina Weibo is strong in increasing brand awareness
and campaign converge but WeChat is better
with consumer engagement and brand loyalty
development.
WeChat is emerging as a social shopping and
E-commerce platform. With the introduction and
openness of integration payment system to all
business, WeChat is gaining popularity for B2C
business to be the next influential e-commerce
platform.
The effects of brand campaigns on Wechat can’t be
tracked and measured meanwhile social marketing
on Sina Weibo is more matured and effective in
terms of ROI measurement.

Case study
Best practice
WeChat red envelop game
WeChat has developed a social media equivalent
of the traditional red envelopes containing money
that are given at Chinese New Year. A gifting feature
allows a user to either send money direct to a person
or, alternatively, to send an amount to a group of
friends and let the app divide the cash randomly
among them. The results was that 4.82 million
engaged users on new year’s eve and 20 million
envelopes handed out. The main benefit for Wechat
is the fact that users who play the game must have
their WeChat’s payment systems activated.
The launch of Hongmi phone on Qzone
In 2013 Xiaomi collaborated with Qzone exclusively to
launch its Hongmi phone where users could reserve
Hongmi phones on its official page. Since it began
on 31st July 2013 the reservation reached 1 million
in half an hour and 5 million in 3 days. 100,000
Hongmi phones were sold out in 90 seconds and the
total reservation reached 7.45 million. The fan base
reached 13 million since Xiaomi’s certified official
page was opened in 13 days comparing to 2 million
fans on its Sina Weibo official account and 1 million
on Wechat.

32
#1
Overview
of Chinese
social media
#2
Social Networking
Sites analysis
#3
Key trends

Key Trends
Humanization
Monetized influence
Personalization
Overcoming skepticism

Humanization
China's population has been greatly influenced by
family relationship, togetherness; social harmony
and a great nation rather than individualism and
freedom. This cultural difference explains why
Chinese consumers place much more emphasis
on brands’ sharing behaviours than Germans,
Americans or French. Smart phones and social
media take this truth to the next level by allowing
brands to better connect with consumers and be
part of their life 24/7/365.
It challenges brands in China to humanize
to open up their company and culture, and
inviting customers in for co-creations of their
products, service or processes. The pioneering
brands experience the business value of brand
humanization by acting like partners rather
than owners.
Being considered meaningfully different by target
consumers produced a 37% higher contribution to
brand value.
Zara, which is seen by Chinese consumers as a
'Dreamer’, increased brand value by 60% in 2013.
Nivea has a clear personality in China with a brand
value rise of 36% compared to 2012.

Humanization – Case studies
Coca Cola
In 2013 Coca Cola launched a nickname bottle
campaign on Sina Weibo. It allowed consumers to
customize their own bottles by choosing prominnet
buzz words as their nicknames that the brand had
collected from Chinese social networking channels.
Firstly utilizing Weibo’s E-wallet, Coca Cola enabled
consumers to customize and pay for the order on one
single platform. With RMB20 every social user can
have a chance to realise his/her star dreams and show
his/her own Coca Cola bottle on social networking
sites. This campaign saw 20% sales increase
compared to the same period the year before.
Volkswagen
People’s Car Project was an integrated campaign and
social media platform, asking Chinese car drivers to
submit their ideas for car designs of the future. To
sustain repeat engagement the campaign integrated
five social networks, implemented social and
gamification features, and an on-going plan for new
functions, content and incentives. The best and most
unique ideas are incoporated into current cars and
influence future car development, culminating in the
production of a final concept car. The program grew
awareness and brand perception, and returned year-
on-year sales increases.

Monetized influence
When celebrities and key opinion leaders have been
utilised maturely for sponsored content on Chinese
social networking sites, their social influence on
business value has been questioned.
At the same time, monetized fan economics
revealing the power of die hard fans on the
business are emerging, capturing the interest and
care of advertisers.
34% of businesses feels that their social strategy
is connected to business outcomes.
The founding executive editor of Weird Magazine
Kevin Kelly once argued that to be a success
online, you don’t need a huge audience. You just
need 1000 true fans, who are willing to pay you.
Boston Consulting Group studies show that 7%
of the customers drive 40% of sales.

Zhenyu Luo
The Logic Show producer and host Zhenyu Luo
was the first person to utilize WeChat to promote his
paid membership by charging his followers RMB 1200
for a two year subscription. In 6 hours he has received
1.6 million membership fees from his 5500 die-hard
fans.
Kun Chen
Chinese celebrity Kunchen, who is followed by 63
million fans on Sina Weibo created his self official
paid account on Wechat. It costs RMB168 yearly to
follow his account to get access to his selected and
exclusive content such as his voice morning greeting.
Additionally, he used this account to promote his new
books, records and movies.

Personalization
The development of social media has influenced the
way in which brands reach and interact with their
consumers. The emerging communication channels
of consumer’s preference challenge advertisers to
adapt and react quickly. More importantly, the focus
on personal two-way communications seems to be
fundamental to enter consumers’ lives and hearts.
Consumers in emerging markets are leading the
way in their use of newer channels for brand
interaction: 35% of Chinese and 29% of Indian
consumers have used a brand's smartphone app to
engage with a brand to which they are loyal in the
past six months, compared with 17% of US and
14% of UK consumers.
In addition, an average 39% of consumers in Brazil,
India and China had actually interacted with a
brand they were loyal to using social networks in
the past six months, compared with only 14% of
mature market consumers.

Personalization – Case Studies
Starbucks
Starbucks initiated a WeChat campaign named
Naturally Awake. By connecting with Starbucks'
official account users can send an emoticon message
to Starbucks, who replies with a link to a song
that fits their mood base on the sent emoticon.
It was one of best practices utilizing WeChat to
deliver personal content without manpower in
the back end.

Louis Vuitton
As one of the pioneering brands to open its WeChat
official account, Louis Vuitton started to employ
one to one personal customer service on WeChat in
late 2012. By connecting with Louis Vuitton official
account, consumers can ask any questions and will
receive direct answers from real and professional
customer advisors from 10AM to 7PM everyday.

Overcoming skepticism
As China's population grows with Internet
and media rigorously censored by the Chinese
government, the nature of social media makes
it the preferred information source for Chinese
netizens. They value a lot the voice of their friends
and influential bloggers on social networking sites
about companies and their brands, products and
service.
However, the rising number of manipulated
fans and artificial writers is creating massive and
unreliable content on SNS. When it comes to
advertising, Chinese netizens are very savvied,
particularly critical with brands that get it wrong or
don’t respect fans.
If the message is unauthentic or too promotional
fans will jump out to question, which puts the
brands' authenticity in risk.
A recent Alibaba survey found that 59% of online
merchants consider trust the largest obstacle to
online business growth in China. Online fraud
has cost Chinese consumers at least ¥30.8 billion
(US$4.8 billion), and 32% of Chinese web shoppers
have reportedly fallen victim.
Some 64% of Chinese customers are worried about
food safety issues, a total peaking at 68% for
31–40 year olds.
China registered a brand advocacy score of 30%,
compared with the US on 13%, the UK on 12%
and Brazil on 6%.
Owned advertising, in the form of content and
messaging on brand websites, was the second
most-trusted advertising source in 2013, with 80
percent of Chinese respondents indicating they trust
this platform, up 20 percentage points and from a
sixth-place ranking in 2011.

Overcoming skepticism – Case Studies
McDonald's
On March 15th 2013, CCTV reported that one
McDonald's store in Beijing sold overdued food.
However, for Chinese consumers who are facing
much more severe food scandals everyday, this news
raised a question among social networking platforms
”Do you believe CCTV or McDonald's? Further social
users were initiating a campaign to show their
brand trust of going to McDonald's the next day
of the news.
Vanish
From the insight that simply saying “new and
improved stain removal products” is not
convincing enough for Chinese skeptical consumers,
Vanish launched a social campaign “do it yourself
to believe it”. Stain removal testing kits were
developed and sent to mothers who had applied to
take part in. Within 8 weeks 63,000 mothers had
used the kits and created online and offline reviews
and recommendations, creating a successful
product launch.

Want to talk?
Chinese Social Media Brief Author:
Cuimei Lai
Creative Strategist
E: Cuimei.Lai@imagination.com
T: +852 3513 1300
Imagination Asia Limited
32/F Cambridge House
979 King’s Road
Taikoo Place, Island East
Hong Kong
W: www.imagination.com
T: @ImaginationLabs
Media and General Inquiries:
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Head of Marketing and PR, APAC
E: Pablo.CG@imagination.com
M: +852 6051 1300
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Chinese Social Media Brief: Overview, SNS Analysis and Key Trends

Chinese Social Media Brief: Overview, SNS Analysis and Key Trends

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