WeChat Content: Create Valuable, Emotionally Appealing, and Useful Content
Creating high-quality content on WeChat is absolutely essential and one of the most important parts of successfully maintaining a WeChat Official Account. Content should be informative, useful, and of consistent quality to maintain your base and attract new followers. According to recent research, 49% of the WeChat users would share an article on WeChat if they believe it‘s useful.
People can get bored easily and you need to create content that is interesting and educational in order to stand out and draw traffic. Content on WeChat Official Accounts should generally align with the following rules:
-Make sure that your content evokes positive emotions;
-Create interesting and entertaining visual content (gifs, stickers, infographics)
-Make your content unusual, unique, and useful
-Choose headlines that envoke curiosity, awe, emotion
-Create “how-to” type content that specifically answers the most frequently asked -questions and provides solutions to the problems of your target customers
Research shows that video is also booming on social networks. GIFs and videos are compelling visuals that can support your storytelling, especially for industries like fashion and beauty, food and beverage. Short video, in particular, has become incredibly popular which can be seen with the rise of platforms like Douyin/TikTok and Kuaishou.
WeChat Search
Coming up with new content on a regular basis can be incredibly difficult and if you outsource it, downright expensive. WeChat’s closed system makes it incredibly frustrating as well, as you could create the best piece of content in the world and watch it get little to no traction on the platform. WeChat introduced a search feature in 2018, that many brands have hope to make use of to improve the velocity of their content.
The search function on WeChat is still relatively new, so extensive research and testing has yet to yield any concrete strategies for dominating WeChat search. If it’s like any other search engine, keyword optimization could help drive traffic to relevant articles. This is something to consider in the content creation process and in your overall WeChat marketing strategy.
The “Wow” of WeChat
WeChat recently underwent a massive update in January 2019. Some of the biggest changes were a redesign of the overall look of the app and the addition of a “time capsule” feature similar to Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook’s stories feature.
A lesser-known addition was the “Wow” feature. When reading articles posted by subscription accounts if users click on the like button, the article will be shown to all the user’s contacts under the “Wow” tab under WeChat’s “Top Stories” section. This drastically increases the importance of likes in terms of content as it gives the content another opportunity for it to spread organically. This makes likes a much larger factor and striving to achieve likes should be a part of every brand’s WeChat marketing strategy.
Scheduling Posts to go out at the right time
Since WeChat Official Accounts are very limited in the amount that they are allowed to post, you should make sure that each post goes out at the right time for the maximum effect. Most articles tend to go out during business hours in China, making it one of the most competitive times to post an article.
When posting an article on WeChat there are two things you should consider on the timing of your article.
1. Picture your target user. When do you think they‘d be reading on WeChat? Commuting time, After work, or maybe even Sunday morning?
2. Look for times when readership numbers are up and competition is low. This prevents your article from getting drowned out while still getting a good amount of views.
Be sure to keep these in mind when formulating your WeChat marketing strategy.
