China’s social networking landscape is changing rapidly. The incredible global success of TikTok is an opportunity to take a closer look at the immense potential of the tools developed by the world’s second largest power.
The main Chinese social networks in 2021
More and more companies and brands are going on Chinese social networks. However, it is not always easy to distinguish the different tools. You are certainly starting to get a good idea of what TikTok is, but what about other trendy Chinese apps?
First of all, if you want to improve your knowledge of Chinese social networks, you should start by taking an interest in Weibo and WeChat. These are the two most widely used social media applications in China. To give you an idea of the extent of this, WeChat has more than 1 billion active users per day in China, while Weibo has only 400 million active users per day in China (and actually 50 Million really active). To make it quick and understand roughly what we’re talking about, we can compare Weibo to China’s Twitter, and WeChat to Facebook.
Note that WeChat is particularly interesting for marketers because it is a “super app”: it is used not only to chat and socialize, but also to make purchases, pay taxes, consult a doctor, etc.
You should also be interested in Douyin, the trendiest application in China with no less than 600 million active users per day. It is no more and no less than the Chinese version of Tiktok, which is isolated from Tiktok in the database.
At last, if you are wondering what is the equivalent of Instagram in China, look at Xiaohongshu. Founded in 2013, the social network, which is actually a kind of mix between Insta and Pinterest, had more than 20 million active daily users during the Spring Festival in 2020.
KOLs and Chinese social networks
Now that you have a clearer idea of what the main Chinese social networks are, it might be interesting to look at the main trends that drive them. The emergence of live streaming and video is one of them. Indeed, it marks a new stage in the communication on Chinese social networks.
But above all, we note the strategic importance of KOLs in the communication of brands to Chinese customers. A study conducted on KOLs and Chinese social networks reveals that 63% of advertisers plan to increase communication budgets dedicated to KOLs, while 49% of them will put more emphasis on the animation of their official Wechat account.
