Penetrating Asian Markets with Social Media
While many Asian markets offer financial growth opportunities for U.S. entrepreneurs, we will focus on the top five nations where a U.S. businessperson can have the biggest influence and rewards. These are China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Malaysia.
The four most important points to consider when going after Asian markets are:
The four most important points to consider when going after Asian markets are:
- To reach your target Asian consumer, you’ll have to get into the trenches to figure out who you are dealing with. The Asia Pacific region is different from the USA in every way. It is more communal, social, and family-centered, with huge ethnic pride and sentimentalities, and multicultural and multilingual, too.
- Videos have proven to be a successful form of marketing. Videos on social media are shared 1200 times more than any other kind of content. While an average marketing video on social media is about 2 minutes long (or less), TikTok has challenged these norms.
- Your marketing approach needs to be multilingual – both in terms of written and oral language. For instance, as a standard practice, almost every website in China offers three language options: traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, and English.
- Offer varied payment options: offer them ease, convenience, and value. Payment methods that Chinese consumers prefer are AliPay, WeChat, and UnionPay. You can also offer Cash-on-Delivery solutions – a rather popular payment option in Southeast Asian countries. In Japan, though credit cards are in mainstream use, customers also want the option to pay via JCB or head over to a Konbini store to buy the items they need.
China
China remains an attractive market for companies across the globe, with U.S. and UK tech firms citing it as a top market for its strong GDP. China’s GDP (surpassed only by the United States) is the primary driver of growth opportunities.
In China, people on average spend 5 hours and 50 minutes on the internet, which accounts for one-third of waking time in a day. Within the time sent on the internet, Chinese people spend an average of 2 hours and 12 minutes on social media platforms. Additionally, iiMedia research shows that more than 40% of Chinese use 3-4 social media applications per day.
China in particular is one market that favors its own social media platforms. Forget Facebook and WhatsApp – here it’s all about Weibo and WeChat (as well as a lot of other contenders). If you’re trying to penetrate China’s market, you’ll need to decide which platforms are best for you and then learn their various intricacies.
According to Statista, the Chinese internet population was around 971 million in 2020 and would surge up to 1.29 billion by 2026.As the world’s largest online community continues to grow, Chinese social media sites have become popular tools to reach Chinese customers. With the diversification of China's social media ecosystem, various social media applications have brought a deeper impact to customers’ lives. More and more brands have also been using social media as a major marketing tool for brand promotion and other activities.
Here are the top eight Chinese social media platforms as of this writing (August 2022).
WeChat. https://www.wechat.com/
As an instant messaging app, the basic function of WeChat allows its users to send words, emojis, and pics one-on-one with contacts. They can also do audio calls and video calls. Users can also form a WeChat group with as many as 500 people and hold group WeChat calls with as many as nine people. First released in 2011, it became the world's largest standalone mobile app in 2018, with over 1 billion monthly active users. WeChat has been described as China's "app for everything" and a super-app because of its wide range of functions] WeChat provides text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, video conferencing, video games, sharing of photographs and videos and location sharing.
WeChat is also popular in Mongolia and Hong Kong and maintains a foothold in Chinese speaking communities around the world.
Instant messaging is WeChat’s core service. It’s where the app started and where it maintains its strongest hold over the social media market in China.
WeChat is owned by Chinese firm Tencent, one of the most valuable companies in the world. Run by billionaire businessman Pony Ma, current estimates put Tencent’s value at $69 billion USD.
Weibo. https://weibo.com/overseas?ssl_rnd=1661544446.1756
Launched by Sina Corporation in 2009, Sina Weibo, or simply Weibo is a microblogging website and app which compares to Twitter and Instagram. And with more than 300 million monthly active users, it is China’s biggest social media platform after Tencent’s WeChat.
Five primary methods to connect with people via Weibo exist:
Little Red Book https://www.xiaohongshu.com/
The app, which is based on the popular book of the same name, allows users to find and share information about local businesses. Little Red Book has quickly become a favorite among Chinese consumers, and the app’s developers are planning to expand into other Asian countries soon. Based in Shanghai, this innovative app helps over 100 million users - mostly younger women - to discover and review beauty and health products that can be hard to find in China. This is a social ecommerce media platform. Redbook as it is sometimes called is first and foremost a content sharing site, where users can post product photos with reviews and tips for other users to read, comment, and save to their boards - like Pinterest.
90% of these users are middle or upper-class women with higher degrees of disposable income. This is an incredibly lucrative market for global fashion and cosmetics brands.
Compared to “traditional” advertisements, content on RED appears more trustworthy for Chinese millennials. It is an ideal place to create word of mouth and increase brand awareness, especially for smaller or less well-known brands. Brands can use Red as a part of a marketing plan, instead of just leveraging it as a cross-border e-commerce platform, for example, to detect the latest interests from young consumers in China.
Douyin https://www.douyin.com/
Think of Douyin as the Chinese version of TikTok, even though it is not precisely that. A Google search of “douyin” would return to a Wikipedia page explaining what TikTok is. While the two apps are indeed owned and developed by the same company and have an almost identical user interface, Douyin and TikTok have distinctively different user bases and in-app features. In order for content to be accessible to users in China, brands and advertisers should target the Chinese video app instead of TikTok; the latter—both the app itself and its content—is only available for international users. They utilize a short video and live streaming combination.
Kuaishou https://www.kuaishou.com/en
Kuaishou is an online video platform that allows its users to broadcast daily activities, habits, and more online.
Zhihu https://www.zhihu.com/
Zhihu, the Chinese version of Quora, is a popular online Q & A and social platform in China.As of 2020, Zhihu has 420 million registered users, 56% of whom are male (but the proportion of female users continues to grow). Users are located all over China (mainly in first and second-tier cities).
Bilibili https://www.bilibili.com/
Bilibili, nicknamed B Site, is a video sharing website based in Shanghai where users can submit, view and add overlaid commentary on videos.
Douban https://www.douban.com/
Douban is a social networking platform that focuses on expressing oneself and one’s lifestyle. Users often post on Douban to discuss books, movies, music, and events, and can also connect with each other based on similar tastes and interests. It generates income from advertising, interactive marketing, and channel fees from book e-commerce.
Japan
A highly stable economy, Japan has enormous purchasing power; its population of 127 million enjoys a per capita GDP of around $41,000, just slightly less than the UK’s $44,000 or $63,500 in the US. Furthermore, the government had economic growth at a healthy 4% in 2021, putting it in a good position to recover strongly following the pandemic.
With over 82 million social media users in Japan and a multitude of platforms to choose from, it is important to create the right content for the appropriate platform, depending on your product, service and target audience.
You will likely be familiar with the top social media platforms in Japan. They are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram.
Twitter: A platform known to be dwindling in users and tweets worldwide is still experiencing massive popularity in Japan. In terms of users, Japan comes in second place after the USA with 48.45 million users.
Instagram: There are 33 million users on their platform in Japan. Their largest audience is aged 18-29, spending over 100 million hours on Instagram a month.
Facebook: The world’s most popular social networking platform is not the most widely used in Japan. It does, however, still have 26 million users with most of them in their 20s and 30s.
YouTube: The popularity of YouTube in Japan is undeniable. The video sharing platform had over 62 million MAU as of October 2018.
Singapore
Singapore scores well across the board: the country tops all other markets in terms of ease of doing business and outperforms all other Asian markets on the State of Global Expansion Report (2020) in regards to skills availability and innovation capability.
The leading metric used for measuring the performance of campaigns of most brands in Singapore is social media monitoring. The result is no surprise when most people use digital channels to connect and communicate with one another. With over 5.2 million active social media users nationwide, this number is considered impressive, given that the total population of Singapore is 5.9 million.
The top social tools in Singapore are Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. With a mobile penetration rate of 148.2% which translates to each Singaporean owning 1.5 mobile phones, only a business enterprise hell bent on failure would ignore the critical role that social media marketing plays in brand awareness, audience connection, improved customer service and increase in sales.
The keys to success in Singapore–as elsewhere–are these: Know and understand your target customer; identify key metrics that identify success with your social strategy; develop a social media mission statement; create quality and engaging content; track and analyze results.
South Korea
The South Korean market is considered by many as the center of social media evolution. As one of the world’s most connected countries, coupled with a high rate of active social media users, social media marketing is undoubtedly an integral part of a brand’s marketing strategy when penetrating the South Korean market. As of January 2020, South Korea has 44 million active social media users, with a penetration rate of 87%. Some of the most popular social media platforms include KakaoTalk, KakaoStory, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.
Malaysia
The top social media sites in Malaysia are Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. The key approach here, as with all the other markets, is to localize the posts, use short videos when possible, be multilingual when posting and provide different payment options.
China remains an attractive market for companies across the globe, with U.S. and UK tech firms citing it as a top market for its strong GDP. China’s GDP (surpassed only by the United States) is the primary driver of growth opportunities.
In China, people on average spend 5 hours and 50 minutes on the internet, which accounts for one-third of waking time in a day. Within the time sent on the internet, Chinese people spend an average of 2 hours and 12 minutes on social media platforms. Additionally, iiMedia research shows that more than 40% of Chinese use 3-4 social media applications per day.
China in particular is one market that favors its own social media platforms. Forget Facebook and WhatsApp – here it’s all about Weibo and WeChat (as well as a lot of other contenders). If you’re trying to penetrate China’s market, you’ll need to decide which platforms are best for you and then learn their various intricacies.
According to Statista, the Chinese internet population was around 971 million in 2020 and would surge up to 1.29 billion by 2026.As the world’s largest online community continues to grow, Chinese social media sites have become popular tools to reach Chinese customers. With the diversification of China's social media ecosystem, various social media applications have brought a deeper impact to customers’ lives. More and more brands have also been using social media as a major marketing tool for brand promotion and other activities.
Here are the top eight Chinese social media platforms as of this writing (August 2022).
WeChat. https://www.wechat.com/
As an instant messaging app, the basic function of WeChat allows its users to send words, emojis, and pics one-on-one with contacts. They can also do audio calls and video calls. Users can also form a WeChat group with as many as 500 people and hold group WeChat calls with as many as nine people. First released in 2011, it became the world's largest standalone mobile app in 2018, with over 1 billion monthly active users. WeChat has been described as China's "app for everything" and a super-app because of its wide range of functions] WeChat provides text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, video conferencing, video games, sharing of photographs and videos and location sharing.
WeChat is also popular in Mongolia and Hong Kong and maintains a foothold in Chinese speaking communities around the world.
Instant messaging is WeChat’s core service. It’s where the app started and where it maintains its strongest hold over the social media market in China.
WeChat is owned by Chinese firm Tencent, one of the most valuable companies in the world. Run by billionaire businessman Pony Ma, current estimates put Tencent’s value at $69 billion USD.
Weibo. https://weibo.com/overseas?ssl_rnd=1661544446.1756
Launched by Sina Corporation in 2009, Sina Weibo, or simply Weibo is a microblogging website and app which compares to Twitter and Instagram. And with more than 300 million monthly active users, it is China’s biggest social media platform after Tencent’s WeChat.
Five primary methods to connect with people via Weibo exist:
- Weibo Influencer Campaigns: Working with Chinese influencers, Wanghongs, and Key Opinion Leaders (KOL marketing), allows you to reach a younger population in China. A KOL is similar to an influencer in regards to follower size, but a KOL has a more targeted audience.
- Weibo Paid Ads: They work similarly to WeChat ads. To attract more followers, there are 3 types of paid ads options available on Weibo Paid Ads:
- Fensi Tong (粉丝通): this allows more specific targeting options, including interests, gender, location, and devices.
- Sponsored Post: Promotes content to current followers and/or potential followers.
- Weibo Tasks: Grow your followers by paying other accounts to repost
- Fensi Tong (粉丝通): this allows more specific targeting options, including interests, gender, location, and devices.
- Weibo Lottery: Connect with your audience by letting them win prizes.
- Cross-Promotion: Sina Weibo is a great commerce platform for B2C promotion. And it also works well for B2B promotion.
- Organic Growth: Posts with higher engagement will reach more Weibo users. It is therefore vital to continuously improve the content quality.
Little Red Book https://www.xiaohongshu.com/
The app, which is based on the popular book of the same name, allows users to find and share information about local businesses. Little Red Book has quickly become a favorite among Chinese consumers, and the app’s developers are planning to expand into other Asian countries soon. Based in Shanghai, this innovative app helps over 100 million users - mostly younger women - to discover and review beauty and health products that can be hard to find in China. This is a social ecommerce media platform. Redbook as it is sometimes called is first and foremost a content sharing site, where users can post product photos with reviews and tips for other users to read, comment, and save to their boards - like Pinterest.
90% of these users are middle or upper-class women with higher degrees of disposable income. This is an incredibly lucrative market for global fashion and cosmetics brands.
Compared to “traditional” advertisements, content on RED appears more trustworthy for Chinese millennials. It is an ideal place to create word of mouth and increase brand awareness, especially for smaller or less well-known brands. Brands can use Red as a part of a marketing plan, instead of just leveraging it as a cross-border e-commerce platform, for example, to detect the latest interests from young consumers in China.
Douyin https://www.douyin.com/
Think of Douyin as the Chinese version of TikTok, even though it is not precisely that. A Google search of “douyin” would return to a Wikipedia page explaining what TikTok is. While the two apps are indeed owned and developed by the same company and have an almost identical user interface, Douyin and TikTok have distinctively different user bases and in-app features. In order for content to be accessible to users in China, brands and advertisers should target the Chinese video app instead of TikTok; the latter—both the app itself and its content—is only available for international users. They utilize a short video and live streaming combination.
Kuaishou https://www.kuaishou.com/en
Kuaishou is an online video platform that allows its users to broadcast daily activities, habits, and more online.
Zhihu https://www.zhihu.com/
Zhihu, the Chinese version of Quora, is a popular online Q & A and social platform in China.As of 2020, Zhihu has 420 million registered users, 56% of whom are male (but the proportion of female users continues to grow). Users are located all over China (mainly in first and second-tier cities).
Bilibili https://www.bilibili.com/
Bilibili, nicknamed B Site, is a video sharing website based in Shanghai where users can submit, view and add overlaid commentary on videos.
Douban https://www.douban.com/
Douban is a social networking platform that focuses on expressing oneself and one’s lifestyle. Users often post on Douban to discuss books, movies, music, and events, and can also connect with each other based on similar tastes and interests. It generates income from advertising, interactive marketing, and channel fees from book e-commerce.
Japan
A highly stable economy, Japan has enormous purchasing power; its population of 127 million enjoys a per capita GDP of around $41,000, just slightly less than the UK’s $44,000 or $63,500 in the US. Furthermore, the government had economic growth at a healthy 4% in 2021, putting it in a good position to recover strongly following the pandemic.
With over 82 million social media users in Japan and a multitude of platforms to choose from, it is important to create the right content for the appropriate platform, depending on your product, service and target audience.
You will likely be familiar with the top social media platforms in Japan. They are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram.
Twitter: A platform known to be dwindling in users and tweets worldwide is still experiencing massive popularity in Japan. In terms of users, Japan comes in second place after the USA with 48.45 million users.
Instagram: There are 33 million users on their platform in Japan. Their largest audience is aged 18-29, spending over 100 million hours on Instagram a month.
Facebook: The world’s most popular social networking platform is not the most widely used in Japan. It does, however, still have 26 million users with most of them in their 20s and 30s.
YouTube: The popularity of YouTube in Japan is undeniable. The video sharing platform had over 62 million MAU as of October 2018.
Singapore
Singapore scores well across the board: the country tops all other markets in terms of ease of doing business and outperforms all other Asian markets on the State of Global Expansion Report (2020) in regards to skills availability and innovation capability.
The leading metric used for measuring the performance of campaigns of most brands in Singapore is social media monitoring. The result is no surprise when most people use digital channels to connect and communicate with one another. With over 5.2 million active social media users nationwide, this number is considered impressive, given that the total population of Singapore is 5.9 million.
The top social tools in Singapore are Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. With a mobile penetration rate of 148.2% which translates to each Singaporean owning 1.5 mobile phones, only a business enterprise hell bent on failure would ignore the critical role that social media marketing plays in brand awareness, audience connection, improved customer service and increase in sales.
The keys to success in Singapore–as elsewhere–are these: Know and understand your target customer; identify key metrics that identify success with your social strategy; develop a social media mission statement; create quality and engaging content; track and analyze results.
South Korea
The South Korean market is considered by many as the center of social media evolution. As one of the world’s most connected countries, coupled with a high rate of active social media users, social media marketing is undoubtedly an integral part of a brand’s marketing strategy when penetrating the South Korean market. As of January 2020, South Korea has 44 million active social media users, with a penetration rate of 87%. Some of the most popular social media platforms include KakaoTalk, KakaoStory, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.
Malaysia
The top social media sites in Malaysia are Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. The key approach here, as with all the other markets, is to localize the posts, use short videos when possible, be multilingual when posting and provide different payment options.