Country-specific Social Media for Internet Markeitng

Every successful campaign has an excellent agency which has given its best to make it possible. The huge reach of social media has ensured that the efforts of a social media of one country spills over into a number of different countries. It means that the work of one social media in a particular country can inspire another social media agency in a different country.

A number of social media agencies spread across the world offers exemplary services. A few, however, can be ranked as the best. The latter provides useful and creative solutions for a number of local, national and international brands. The following list we have come up with at Globibo Media features those social media powerhouses which influence the buying decisions of people in their target territories.

China

Weibo

For the Chinese, who are starved of Twitter due to government policy, Weibo is the window through which they can talk to each other. It is an extremely popular blogging platform targeted towards Chinese users. Although Weibo is structurally similar to Twitter, the language difference between English and Chinese resulted in this media site to develop differently. As 140 characters written in Mandarin packs more content compared to 140 characters typed in English, the Weibo communication length is much more than extended compared to the Roman script language. This permits users to engage in micro-blogging. Any company holding a Weibo account may also increase their communication level with customers. They can post messages which contain larger amounts of content compared to Twitter.

Even though there were rumors that Weibo is dying due to lack of privacy due to a number of laws passed by the Chinese Government, the fact is far from the truth. The number of active users continue to rise, with a 34 percent rise every year. It went up by a massive 57 percent in 2015. It continues to be China's dominant source of news content. Netizens come or acquiring information, comment and share. This platform also has a number of extra features to keep the users returning back to the Weibo site. This social media giant at present has registered users numbering over 500 million. Active users per month comes to 390 million. Weibo has not been killed by WeChat. Page views number 800 million and 4.9 million comments are written every day.

A few of Weino's top stars have followers compared to global stars. The top five ranks have held their positions. In number one position is Yao Chen. The second position is held by Chen Kun. Other lower positions have seen a number of people come and go.

WeChat

It is one of Asia's most used and popular messaging apps. China is an exceptionally lucrative market for this app. Tencent, the Chinese technology company, developed this app in 2011. It has in excess of 697 million active users every month.

A number of western marketers who wants to expand business in Asia realize WeChat's potential. The app, however, can be daunting prospect to anyone not conversant with the Mandarin script. The app can be divided into three vital components: Wallet, Moment and Subscriptions. All of them are important to publishers and brands.

Moments: It is WeChat's basic feature. A user can post text updates and also upload to a maximum of nine images. Articles and videos can also be shared. It is similar to Twitter News Feed and Facebook Timeline.

The basic difference of WeChat from the other social networks is that privacy and intimacy are a notch higher. Others are unable to read your contact list. Only verified friends can view your updates. You can exclusively see interactions of people you have saved on the contact list.

Subscriptions: In light of advertising, Subscriptions makes for an extremely effective content marketing platform. It finds favor among brands and publishers. It is found on the friend list of the WeChat user. When the user clicks it, he or she can access content from a large number of companies. Branded apps can be downloaded too.

Wallet: It is what the word means You can pay anyone or a merchant through messenger. The WeChat Wallet has expanded from Hong Kong, China and is now available in South Africa. Payment through WeChat currently clocks around $556 billion, almost double the $282 billion moved by PayPal in 2015.

You must have a Chinese ID or own a China registered company to sign up. In case you have no connection with China, you can ask Tencent to make an account. Do note that people resident in the PRC cannot see your account.

Youku Tudou

It is like YouTube in the sense that both Youku Tudou and YouTube allows users to post self produced videos. People upload professional videos too. Many utilize this site to download or stream movies. Television shows are available. In essence, it can be regarded as an alternative to television viewing or visiting a movie theater. A majority of videos available are culled from foreign sources, from Japanese dramas to American movies. The shows mostly come with a Mandarin subtitle. Do know that that Youku and Tudou were once competing and separate websites. The two later merged to form an united company.

Dianping

It can be called China's version of Yelp. This website crowd-sources reviews related to established businesses. Other than the principal business of reviewing restaurants, this website also accepts ratings at the fundamental level. Members of Dianping can vote for the dish they love the most at a particular restaurant. This can be a game changer as many restaurants serve in excess of 100 dishes on their menus.

Dianping's popularity is cemented by the feature that the website can rank local businesses and restaurants in a number of cities depending on their popularity. This helps travelers to select a restaurant when they visit a city. Manty regard the Dianping website better than Yelp or Groupon. The present value of this startup is calculated to be about four billion dollars.

Douban

It is one Chinese social media website which have no western counterpart. It can be regarded as a blend of Imdb, MySpace, SoundCloud and Spotify. The website shows a distinct leaning towards culture. Members discuss movies, events, books and music. You can easily book tickets for concerts and movies. E-books can also be downloaded. Members can link to one another based on similar interests and tastes. The website also has Douban FM, a music subscription service.

Japan

Almost all Japanese have mobiles, and thus brands engage consumers via social media hosted on their cell phone. It is calculated that 90 percent of the Japanese population is online. About 50 percent of those are active users. This is distinct from a population who has simply an account.

Social media in Japan comprises of three sub-categories: Group Social, Game based Social and Direct Social. In Group Social media, the three big players in the Japanese market are Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Data shows that Twitter has 26 million users and Facebook 25 million users. Instagram is used by about 9.2 million users.

Other than these big three, there are a few Social Media websites or apps worth a mention

LINE

This social media website is vital to any Japanese marketing campaign. Marketers find it useful as the application service is speckled with promotions. Users may choose to follow the official LINE account for a company within messaging functionality. Messaging is timed. Users may also purchase or receive digital stickers which function as the emoticons within the messages. This can be vital for companies. Other initiatives within this app includes LINR Currency, music streaming service, and also an app taxi service. This social media is also into mobile gaming. LINE continues to have excellent potential.

MIXI

This social media, although powerful, seems to be losing ground in Japan. It is like Myspace in the United States. Its subscribers have shifted allegiance to Twitter and Facebook. Their popular offerings until now includes the entertainment division. It had also crafted the immensely popular “Monster Strike”, a smartphone game.

GREE

It has 190 million subscribers all over the world and operates in nine countries. Japanese users constitute 15.3 percent of the number, making the total number of subscribers to be in the region of 29 million. Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu has ranked the company as the quickest growing Japanese company after it acquired OpenFient in 2011. It provides a platform catering to mobile social gaming. The total number of game applications offered by the website exceeds 7,500.

Mobage

It is a platform for mobile social gaming. It is highly engaging and has user networks of interest centric and virtual social graphs. This social media is active in three networks: Japan, the West and China. Developers can deploy the games that they have built so that other mobile gamers can play them.

Korea

South Korea leads the world in internet connectivity. It has one of the fastest median connection speeds in the world. The country enjoys 84 percent internet penetration. When it comes to demographics of mobile users, about 78 percent use smartphones and 97 percent of them are aged between 18 and 24 years. The South Korean Government has partnered with Samsung, LG and other top mobile companies to implement a series of new features like hologram transmission, Ultra-HD and premium social networking services.

KakaoTalk

This social media service became a hit soon after its launch in 2010. It soon became the top social network and has more than 48 million users. All of them are monthly active users, or as colloquially known, MAU. This versatile messaging platform permits free calls, in-app shopping of gifts, event scheduling and multimedia messaging. It has excellent penetration in the Korean domestic market and brands regularly use it for marketing purposes. Kakao also has an advertising platform, called “Plus Friend” so that users can be connected to the brands they like, media companies and celebrities.

LINE and Facebook

LINE, the messaging platform is Naver Corp's subsidiary unit. Naver is a South Korean company. About 14 million people have subscribed to LINE. Koreans use paid stickers- a form of bigger emoticons mainly utilized for messaging. Standard stickers comes free. A few services levy a charge between $1 to $2 for the premium packs. These can be customized with the intention of branding use. They are also used for limited edition events. To give an example, PSY, the Korean rapper has own sticker. The latter depicts the “Gangnam Style” hit song.

Facebook is extremely popular within the country. SK Telecom and Samsung are heavily dependent on the platform to sell their products. Warner Brothers, the film studio company ran a hugely successful mobile campaign to make South Koreans aware of their new film “Edge of Tomorrow”. It is found that the studio targeted 21 years and more and provided sneak previews. The movie was a spectacular success, with the ad impressions totting up 1.8 million.

Russia

About 82 percent of the Russian population is on social media. Russians prefer homegrown social media websites over foreign ones.

Vk.com

It was earlier known as Vkontakte and is presently the most used social media platform within Russia. It has about 46.6 million users every month. The platform can be described as a blend of file sharing platform together with Facebook. Similar to Facebook, users of Vk have profiles. They can search for other users and can add them so that they can follow status updates, videos and photos. Users can upload any kind of audio and video files. They can share resources with a number of other users. Since this service can cross legal boundaries, Vk is trying to ink a partnership with a number of record labels to start a subscribed service which will permit legal sharing of files.

OK.ru

Although Vk is popular with users in the 18 to 34 age group, people older prefer the OK social media site. It enjoys 31.5 million viewers every month. Women forms the majority, making up 69 percent of the total membership.

If you want to know more about using social media to promote your brand in any specific country, get in touch with our experts at Globibo Media today.

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