Social Media in China

Although I knew that people in China uses different social media sites compared to the rest of the world, I never knew social media is huge here. According to McKinsey&Company, "In addition to having the world’s biggest Internet user base—513 million people, more than double the 245 million users in the United States¹ —China also has the world’s most active environment for social media. More than 300 million people use it, from blogs to social-networking sites to microblogs and other online communities.² That’s roughly equivalent to the combined population of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. In addition, China’s online users spend more than 40 percent of their time online on social media, a figure that continues to rise rapidly." 

Apparently, a lot of social media sites were blocked in China. For example, Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, Netflix, Blogger, and many more. The government have been controlling the people's access to all these sites through a system called "China's Great Firewall". 

However, with the help of a Virtual Private Network, I manged to get access to all these. China has their own version of 'Facebook' called 'Ren Ren', 'Twitter' called 'Weibo', 'You Tube' called 'QQ' and many other equivalents. In fact, the Chinese are the most active social media users in the world as they have the largest population in the world. 

I found a social media comparison for China and the rest of the world on Google. 

According to Theresa in her article about social media at http://growglobally.org/?p=754, she gave the following tips for one to adapt to the social media in China.

1. Relearn what you know about Social Media platforms:  Using Social Media in China requires understanding which platforms offer the kind of reach you need to build brand awareness.  These tools can be different in terms of capabilities given they are designed for Chinese user preferences.
2. Know your target audiences and their domicile in the Social Media world :  Different social media platforms have different target groups. It is important to identify those and engage on the platforms that suit the associations’ mission and objective.
3. Understand the Chinese way of communicating:  Less is often more – China is a low-context country, meaning that communication should be short and precise.  Chinese users prefer short message services to long blogs and articles.
4. Stop thinking campaign, think communication:  Social Media is about interaction and reactions, it is about engaging.  A predetermined campaign cannot deliver that value without blending a more spontaneous, two-way communication that reacts to users.
5. Mind the new generation: The younger generation in China knows how to handle media and is adapting fast.  Associations have to be prepared, otherwise users already moved on and actions are too late.

I am definitely looking forward to how the social media in China will develop in the years to come. I strongly believe they will dominate some of the popular social media in the world in future.