Alex Duncan | Exploring the Social Media Landscape in China and the Importance of Quality Content

We started off the show with Alex talking about what Kawo is (the Hootsuite of China), how social media enables brands to help customers make buying decisions, and why in China social media management agencies are so much more prevalent there than in the west. One of the more interesting facets behind the dependence on agencies is due to the lack of a social media management talent pool in China as it has been slow to develop as a course of study in post-secondary education.

I then ask Alex to give us a detailed map of the social media landscape in China, and he walks us through the likes of Weibo, WeChat, tiktok, and xiaolongxu (little red book). He also explains more about what these fantastic and light-weight “mini-program” are, how they are used and shared, and why companies should consider creating a “mini-program” instead of a native app.

We then moved on to discuss enterprise accounts on WeChat. One of the more interesting points made by Alex in this section was to point out that WeChat has made a concerted effort over the years to put its users first, both in UI/UX design and in data protection, forcing companies to have to work hard to gain their attention. Companies cannot insert their content into a user's news feed, only the user can share it there, and the company can only know that it was shared but cannot collect data or information from it.

Our last section of conversation was dedicated to the trends in social media usage for brands looking towards 2020. Alex says brands are going to have to raise their game and really focus on the quality of their content as there is more and more noise being made and it is becoming harder to be heard above it.