How to get fans and followers on WeChat ?

With your WeChat official account now set up, it’s time for you to build your community and recruit fans, mainly refers as followers on WeChat. You will need a strong and growing community to make WeChat a relevant tool of your digital marketing strategy. But how to you add people to your WeChat account ? Can you automatically add followers on WeChat ? What should be your target. To get follower on WeChat, you need to:

First, give visibility to your account offline and online thanks to QR code
Second, make sure your account is easy to find and attractive on WeChat
Last, promote your account through campaigns, partnership with influencers (KOL) and media buying

The general rule on how to get a fan / follower on WeChat:

To get a follower on WeChat, the user must pro-actively follow the account:

By scanning the QR code of the account,
Searching your account on WeChat
Being recommend the account by a friend
Paying you through WeChat.

There is no legit solution to automatically add followers to your account even if you already have some contact details about them like email or phone number. Only personal accounts can add contact based on the mobile phone number, the Official WeChat account can not.

So, as the follower can not be added, you need to give visibility to your account.

Give visibility to your account with QR codes

QR codes is the natural way to identify in WeChat. People and company are sharing and interacting with QR code every day in China and it’s done with no friction as a cultural habit. You scan QR code to add friends and official account, or pay your purchase.

Sharing and giving visibility of your WeChat Official account QR code is a must do and the way to start getting followers on WeChat. So make sure to add your QR code:

In your store and on the packaging of your products
On your business cards, email signatures and sales presentation
On your website
Offline promotion supports (Magazines, billboards…)

Keep in mind that QR code are basically visual web links, so they can be unique and WeChat allows you to create and track multiple QR code for your official accounts.

Being able to track the performance of your QR code depending on the different channel will be key to adjust and evaluate the performance of your digital marketing strategy in WeChat.

Have an easy to find and attractive account

Chinese WeChat users will browse and search information within WeChat for hours every day.

You need to make sure your account is easily discoverable by using relevant key words both in your WeChat account name and introduction, as well as in your article. Have user-centric approach and include some SEO best practice in your digital marketing for WeChat.

Keep in mind it’s very easy to un-follow an account after a quick first visit and your bounce rate can be pretty high if you are promoting an unattractive account on WeChat. The relevant metric to track is the net increase of followers (New followers - Followers who unfollow the account).

To reduce your bounce rate, make sure your account is well set up and the content you are sharing is attractive to your audience.

Promote your account with digital marketing campaigns, key opinions leader and media buying

You need to make WeChat a key pilar of your digital marketing in China. So any efforts you make should leverage and have an impact on WeChat.

WeChat is the best platform to reach out to your community as your message will be deliver to 100% of your followers. So any user you reach out though your digital marketing effort in China should be retain on WeChat.

Make sure that any digital campaigns and efforts includes WeChat and give some true customer value so the user for stay in touch on WeChat.

Influencers and key opinion leaders can be an important part of your digital marketing plan in China. If you have some brand ambassador in China, they are probably very popular on social media platform and have large community on WeChat. Implement some coordinated effort for them to share and promote your account to their community on WeChat.

Last but not least, WeChat offers some paid media solution so the user can promote their account with advertising. These solutions are an efficient and quick way to build your community on WeChat. The minimum budget to start buying advertisement on WeChat is 50,000 CNY (+/- 7,000 USD or Euros).

Click here to learn more on WeChat media buying solutions.

Now that you have started to build your community, let’s see what are the best practices to share great content in WeChat.

If you need help, Next-Ren.com team is here to help you to recuit new followers on WeChat and implement an efficient digital marketing strategy in China.