- Hey, I just bought something.
- What did you buy?
- I'm not telling you.
- Can you guess what Jennie just bought?
(smooth percussion music)
Five most commonly questions about WeChat.
- So Victoria, what exactly is WeChat Pay?
- So WeChat Pay is basically
an integrated payment processing within the WeChat app.
So in China, they essentially made the wallet obsolete.
All they have to do is bring their cell phones with them
and many, many retail shops, restaurants,
- Beep.
- All they do is show you this little thing
called the QR code, you scan it, it goes "Beep,"
and then within a couple seconds
you have just made the purchase.
- So it's kind of like Apple Pay, and like PayPal.
- Exactly, it's--
- But even more convenient.
- It's exactly like Apple Pay,
except it's integrated within the WeChat app,
so because WeChat app is so multi-functional
everyone's on it already makes it even extra-convenient.
- And is it just for small purchase
or the big purchase as well?
- You know what?
Even street vendors accept WeChat Pay now.
- [Man] Like you mean like street food, right?
- [Victoria] Yeah, absolutely.
- [Jenny] Like (mumbles).
- [Man] Barbecue (mumbles).
- [Victoria] Yes, even they accept WeChat Pay.
- [Man] That's amazing. That is amazing.
What about in terms of the official account?
I know there are two different types of WeChat accounts.
How does that work?
- So, there are two types of official accounts.
One is the subscription account.
- Subscription account, okay.
- And the other type is the service account.
- Okay.
- So they're different and without getting
into too technical,
the subscription account is if you want to do
more of a content type of marketing as a business.
So you're expected to pump out content regularly
to keep your audience engaged.
Now the only downside is, with a subscription account
your account sits within a separate folder.
So when the user opens up their WeChat,
- They see all their friends' stuff first, right?
- They see their friends' stuff first
and then your account is within a folder,
so if they don't ever open that folder
they might never see your content.
- So they get some kind of notification
if you upload something new
or do they have to click on that folder?
- The folder itself would have a notification,
but then wouldn't know specifically from which
subscription account it's from.
- Got it.
- So that's the one downside.
- Okay.
- Now with the service account,
your account will sit within your friends' list group.
Or your friends has a chat list, right?
Your business account will also sit within that list.
There's no extra click to go into a separate folder
to see it, right?
Now the only limitation to that
is there are less opportunities to post.
So there's a limitation as to how many times
you can post content.
- What's the max if you have a service account?
- Currently it's about like four times.
- Okay, four times a...
- A month.
- So once a week?
- Yeah, so basically once a week
because they do wanna control spam, is really their goal.
- I see, I see.
But, if it's subscription account
then they can post everyday, it's okay.
- There's definitely a lot more freedom
to post more, more allowance.
And also with the service account,
you can do more customization.
Maybe you can build a campaign based on an HTML5 game,
so more interactive game, maybe during Chinese New Year?
- Chinese New Year, yup.
- Something that's popular.
And it'll ask for more customization for your audience.
- And can anyone or international company, outside of China,
sign up for one of those two accounts,
or do they have to have,
because I know it's not that easy,
so what's the procedure?
- Right, so for a business to want to have
a business account on WeChat,
they would have to have registered in China.
They would have to have a bank account.
- So they have to have a, kind of, China ID,
and they have to have a China bank account.
Because it integrates with WeChat, right?
- Yes, payment processing.
- So once a company has those things in place,
then what we do,
we then can help a business set all those things up.
Set them up with either a service account
or a subscription account, based on their company needs
and their vision and their goals.
- Yeah, so it's not simple as like
if you set up a Google account,
anyone can go and log in and type in an email.
It's not like that.
It's a more complex process, right?
- Yes, and there's pros and cons to that, right?
If you wanted to create a Facebook company page
or a LinkedIn company page, anyone can go and create that.
It's really hard to verify the authenticity
of these businesses.
And also, those platforms
count those pages as legit accounts so,
- Like real users, and stuff like that.
- Exactly, so when they say,
"Oh we have this and this many million number of users
"and this many accounts," how authentic is that number?
So, WeChat really wanted to eliminate those fake accounts
so they've taken extra step
to make it a little bit harder for businesses to do that,
but at the same time, the users can feel
more comfortable using and trusting some of the content
because they know that they have to go through this process.
- So in a way, you're talking about 900 million users.
We're talking a big percentage of that are real users.
Like real people, real accounts, right?
- There's really no real way to avoid
people creating fake accounts.
Like with any kind of technology platform.
- Just like Facebook.
- People that want to create something fake,
they will find a way, right?
But at the very least, they have taken measures
to eliminate that,
whereas if you took it to any other platforms,
they haven't really been able to do that.
So that's one bonus of being on WeChat.
- And once the company, let's say international company,
sets up the official account, and they have subscription,
how do they get subscribers?
What would be the best way for them to communicate
and kind of send out messages and posts from time to time?
- So there are different ways,
there's something called a KOL,
which is like "Key Opinion Leaders."
So in China it's very popular to get a celebrity, or,
- An influencer, right?
- Influencers, basically.
And there're different rankings to KOLs, right?
You have your E-listers,
which is the most popular people in China
and of course they would be very expensive.
- Million, millions of followers.
- Yeah, hundreds of millions of followers, right?
But then you have something similar to what we have.
Like you know, the YouTubers, that are kind of like,
- Kind of like a B,
- Like a B, C level.
You know, they have good traction,
they have their own niche following,
and they are very popular
in terms of getting the eyeballs and getting engagement,
so a lot of companies like to use somebody
who's popular in that moment.
It could be somebody who just came out with a new song
and that person's not even a real singer or artist,
but they they just kind of gone viral, right?
Or maybe somebody who looks like an artist, right?
They might do something like that.
And to gain some traction, basically,
get some popularity out of that.
- Okay and then once they have the subscribers,
they could grow that
and if they post good content out there,
a lot of these posts you can also see, right?
Where they have make a long article,
could be they embedded a video,
or some kind of photo and they get people to share.
People like to share on WeChat if the post is good.
They go, "Hey, check this out!"
I get that from people all the time, too.
- Yeah, my mom and dad that's them all the time.
- Yeah, they just share if they see something.
It's one form for them to distribute.
- Definitely.
- Interesting.
What about, what do you think is the number one challenge
when it comes to marketing on WeChat?
- So, a lot of foreign companies, or western companies,
that want to get into WeChat, they have to understand
the Chinese business culture and etiquette.
That's really important.
And if you watch any of our old videos, one of the videos,
we talked about business etiquette in China and the culture.
There's a huge difference between
like Cantonese and Mandarin.
So first and foremost, the company needs to have
that kind of understanding.
So, you don't necessarily want to use
something like Google Translate.
Those things are not gonna work.
- Sometimes when we work with a company,
then we see what they do.
Just take the English content and translate into Chinese
using Google Translate and they just blast it to--
- [Victoria] Oh, and that's just throwing a grenade.
- It just is so bad and it hurts their credibility so much.
And people look at it as like,
"You don't even, you're not even taking the time to?"
So the language barrier could be an issue.
So someone has to create that content, and verify it,
and make sure it's accurate and represents the brand,
before they set it up.
And also we have to work with them in terms of the strategy.
What they are actually trying to do.
I know when we work with developers, that it's not just,
"How do we showcase a property?
"How do we showcase a home?
"What are we trying to do?"
It's not just one post, but it's a sequence.
It's more like a launch, a campaign that we would more do.
So from there, when we work with people,
what's been your experience?
What's the first thing and second thing
that we kind of first do?
To kind of help them with reach their market?
- So when you visit a business account,
people can look back at the last 10 posts
that you've created.
So when you start a business account,
the first thing you need to have prepared already
is 10 pieces of content.
- Not just one piece.
- Not just one.
Because they're going to know that you're kind of new.
Now the other difference between WeChat platform
is that on Facebook you can see how many followers
a business page might have.
And that may or may compel you to follow.
Some people might go,
"Oh, this business has millions of followers,
"must be good stuff, let me just like it anyways."
Now, WeChat has blocked that so--
- You don't know how much followers--
- You have no clue how many followers are on that page.
- How popular it is.
- So you're really trusting the content
to do the work for you and it's gotta be strong content.
- Which is good as an advantage because if Facebook,
people go to the Facebook page and are like,
"Oh only 200 followers, oh, you're no good."
Here, if your content speaks itself,
people think when they look at the content,
"Oh it's very good."
They assume that you have a lot of followers.
They assume you have a lot of subscribers, right?
- Exactly.
- And also I think one thing
is they show the views of the article, but then--
- But it gives you like an indicator a little bit.
- Yeah, but then once it's over, I think 10,000,
it just say, "10,000+."
They don't you the exact number.
And also even when--
- Which is smart.
Which is very smart.
- And even when subscriber leave a comment,
you can filter them before you post it
so it's totally up to you
which kind of comment you want to post.
- Yeah, and you can also see what gets engagement,
what people like.
An interesting thing is,
when you log in to your WeChat account,
you can see the faces of people who subscribe,
like you can see those people.
It's actually a little bit like a Facebook.
Very, very powerful.
So that's some of the basics
of WeChat marketing and how WeChat works.
If you have any other questions, comment below.
We can take those questions and make some future episodes.
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I appreciate it.
I'll see you in the next video.