WeChat Official Accounts are a mini-website with blog pages. They are an interface a company can use to:
- Increase followers
- Send users push-notifications
- Redirect followers to a website, e-commerce shop, or allow them to buy directly through the app.
WeChat Official Accounts are in the chat list of WeChat with all your other contact messages. A company can open an official account to obtain customized information through the bottom menu interface. Meanwhile, push notifications are messages that pop up on a user’s chat and show up whenever the official account sends a message.
What are the different types of WeChat Official Accounts?
There exist several types of WeChat Official Accounts:
- WeChat Subscription accounts (订阅号). Companies with subscription accounts can send up to 1 push notification per day to their followers. They are grouped in a dedicated folder appearing alongside a user’s friends in the “chat” section of WeChat. A company can create a subscription account with a Chinese ID (in which case their features would be limited, especially access to the WeChat API) or a local Chinese business license.
- WeChat Service accounts (服务号). These accounts appear as friends in the “chat” section of WeChat. They are remarkably visible and have extra features compared to subscription accounts (in particular, WeChat login, geo-localization, and WeChat payment). But, companies can only post 4 messages per month.
- Enterprise accounts (企业号). Enterprise accounts are meant for the internal management of companies. They need both the account and the follower to confirm each-other. Companies can’t share content with unauthorized users. These accounts are perfect for a business wanting to share an internal newsletter or other important information.
- WeChat mini-programs (微信小程序). WeChat mini-programs are a type of accounts launched in January 2017 by Tencent. These accounts are mostly used for offline applications when followers are only meant to use the App once. With these accounts, companies can’t send push notifications.
As Enterprise Accounts are widely used for internal management, and WeChat mini-programs find relevant use-cases with difficulty, most companies usually gravitate around either Service or Subscription accounts.
How to use WeChat official accounts wisely?
WeChat isn’t the be-all and end-all of marketing. As a moderately closed social media platform, follower gain is tough! Content shared on the platform is shared only to your followers, and there are no opportunities to promote posts outside of your user base.
That’s why promotion is key, as organic content can’t go far on its own except it goes viral. We can’t think of anything worse than going through all the trouble of creating a WeChat Official Account and falling flat on your face when it comes to using it. You will need a well-thought-out WeChat marketing strategy to make the most out of your WeChat Official Account.
Take a look at the strategies below for some ideas!
WeChat content: Create emotionally appealing, valuable, and useful content
Creating high-quality content on WeChat is crucial and one of the essential parts of successfully managing a WeChat Official Account. Content should be useful, informative, and consistent to maintain your user base and draw new followers. According to the CAICT survey, 49% of the WeChat users would share an article on WeChat if they believe it’s useful.
People get bored easily, and you need to craft interesting and educational content to stand out and attract traffic. Content on a WeChat Official Account should usually adjust with the following rules:
- Ensure that your content arouse positive emotions;
- Create engaging and compelling visual content (gifs, stickers, infographics)
- Make your content unique, unusual, and useful.
- Choose headlines that arouse curiosity, emotion, and wonder.
- Create “how-to” content that clearly answers the most frequently asked questions and gives solutions to your target audience’s problems.
Draw followers to your account with QR codes
WeChat automatically creates a QR code for each WeChat Official Account. You can customize the QR codes to suit your branding. Also, you can post these codes in all of your social media networks (not Weibo, you might get penalized), brochures, product packaging, or even in your brick-and-mortar shops.
QR codes are a great method to attract customers as they allow you to offer discounts, free WiFi access, or promotions. With just a single scan, you can increase both sales and followers on your official account. You can also use QR codes for targeting. WeChat Official Account enables you to tag followers who scan different QR codes and push content based on those tags. This provides greater personalization and advanced segmentation. Sadly, this is available only for Service accounts.
Use WeChat HTML5 campaigns to awe, shock, and engage.
HTML5 (H5) campaigns are a great method to boost customer engagement. WeChat Official Accounts can host pages built with HTML5 to create novel and original campaigns. Brands can launch H5 campaigns with various creative features, such as games, quizzes, voting, and more! To motivate your customers and boost participation, it’s good to provide engaging incentives, such as discounts and bonuses, to go along with the campaign. There are many tools to create a simple H5 application. But you need to know where to look. So don’t think this is something only big companies can use.
However, remember that WeChat is a closed platform. Hence, to promote the campaign, you will need to boost sharing, work with KOLs, or invest in WeChat advertising to take the best out of the campaign.
We know that WeChat is more than a messaging app. But we also saw today that WeChat is more than a social networking app. WeChat is the ideal platform to fill the gap between online and offline marketing and is a great way to connect with Chinese customers and increase brand awareness. Don’t miss out on this huge opportunity if you want to attract more Chinese consumers!
