How does social media affect a Chinese girl in her daily life?
Social Media Mix 3D Icons – Mix #2 by Blogtrepreneur (CC BY 2.0)
I lived in China for over 20 years, until 2015, I came to Australia beginning my master degree life at Deakin.
When I was in China, I used social media every day. I use Wechat to communicate with my family and friends, I use Weibo to communicate with the world, I use Taobao to purchase stuff almost every day. When I started my Australia study life, I started to use Facebook, Instagram, when I enrolled in ALC701, I started to use Twitter and established my first blog site. See? I use different social media platforms almost every day, it is changing my life indeed.
Social media marketing (SMM) seems pretty essential for consumers around the world, this blog I want to discuss why social media marketing in China is important.
According to Internet consumption ecology big data report of China(2016), China’s Internet consumer market is leading the world, in 2016, it is expected that China’s retail e-commerce market will count for 56,000 million yuan(nearly 10,769 million in Australia dollars), China’s retail e-commerce market is expected to make up 15.9% of the total social retail sales, becoming the highest penetration rate of e-commerce in the world’s major countries. E-commerce is integrated into people’s daily life, especially for the female group. At this moment, SSM seems a new way for companies or organization to do the online campaign. A lot of corporations are using Weibo (microblog site in China) to do SMM in China.
Weibo.com Logo English by bfishadow (CC BY 2.0)
The advantage of SMM is:
- The speed of information update is quicker than other traditional marketing methods. On social media platforms, you take control of the whole board, especially on Weibo, you can update the information by yourself, consumers can get notifications in the first time.
- It is more directly for corporations to see the effect of advertising. Advertising input-output ratio (ROI) is the most care about the thing for advertisers. Advertisers can through their advertising broadcast/comments to see their advertising effect directly. It can also be used to calculate the input and output ratio of the data to adjust the further advertising strategy.
- SMM can help corporations closely contact with consumers. Social media makes the communication between corporations and consumers more easily, interactive was once an obvious advantage compared with traditional media network media, but it was not until the rise of social media, we truly experience the magic interactive features of social media. Social network enabled corporations to have the official microblog account and official home page both on Weibo and other platforms. Both corporations and consumers are users on Weibo and other social media platforms. online customers feedback on social media can provide corporations a new to listening to customers (Denizci Guillet, Kucukusta & Liu 2016). Due to the equality and social networking communication convenience feature, corporations and consumers can communicate more easily which is good for corporation brand image.
- SMM is more widespread. Once the information released by the enterprise is very “valuable”, it is likely that many fans will automatically broadcast it, birds of a feather flock together, the follower of your Weibo’s follower might be your potential follower, thus every follower can help you to broadcast your “valuable” information to get more attention on Weibo.
Keith & Manfred (2012) indicate that social media provide a lot of opportunities for companies on listening to their consumers, engage with their consumers, and even influence the conversations between corporations and consumers. Corporations can evaluate the importance of SMM to make more profit and build stronger brand image!
Reference list:
CBNData 2016, Internet consumption ecology big data report of China(2016), CBN, 08/12/2016 http://cf.dtcj.com/《2016中国互联网消费生态大数据报告》Final_1481191681739_kjmooa5n5dgm6rzlg14i.pdf
Denizci Guillet, B, Kucukusta, D, & Liu, L 2016, ‘An Examination of Social Media Marketing in China: How do the Top 133 Hotel Brands Perform on the Top Four Chinese Social Media Sites?’, Journal Of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 33, 6, pp. 783-805, viewed 4 August 2017.
Keith S., C, & Manfred, B 2012, ‘Are social media replacing traditional media in terms of brand equity creation?’, Management Research Review, 9, p. 770, Emerald Insight, viewed 4 August 2017.
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