Is your Facebook page reaching them?

If you have read Chinese Canadian ethnic market – population snapshot, you might have noticed that so-called Chinese Canadian are not all the same. There are several sub-groups among them, depending on how long they have been in Canada, and where they immigrated from if they came here in the recent decades. If you have read this post , you might also have an idea that they don’t all speak the same dialect, nor write in the same written form either.

This post is about Chinese Canadian who came to Canada in recent years. They speak Mandarin and some have their own dialects such as Cantonese, Wu (Shanghai, Zhejiang Province), Fujian dialects, etc. There will be a separate post to discuss Chinese Canadian originated from other places and their needs.

Chinese Canadian who came to Canada from Mainland China certainly have ties with their families and friends residing there. So they are using the same social media app to communicate with the people back in China, and among themselves too. Predominantly, Wechat (or what is called Weixin in China) is the main social media app they are using to post moments, text/voice/video chatting, engage in e-commerce and retail shopping, track daily steps, give and receive virtual red-packet money that’s linked to the bank account, and join purpose-based Wechat online/offline groups (for example, bulk-purchase for group discount, travel interest groups). However, some Wechat functions (Wechat Vlog account, Wechat red-packet) are not opened to all overseas Chinese users.

In additional to Wechat, Chinese Canadian also use apps such as:

• Sina Weibo: Invested by Sina Corp. it was the most popular app before Wechat was created. Although its status has been eroded by its competitors such as Wechat, in December 2020 it still had an average 521 million active monthly users and 225 million active daily users. It seems that the number of users are recovering in the first quarter of 2021. The original and basic function is mini-blogging. It quickly becomes a good tool for KOLs and businesses to build up mass followers. Many tourism marketing organizations have their accounts on Weibo too.
• Kuaishou: invested by Tencent, 262.4 million daily active users in the first nine month of 2020 according to its Hong Kong Stock Exchange IPO disclosure in November, 2020
• Douyin (or Tik Tok), invested by ByteDance, has 600 million active daily users as of August, 2020
• Xigua Shipin (Watermelon videos): also created by ByteDance, focuses on longer form videos and encourages content creation, has 270 million monthly active users in first quarter of 2020 and functions somewhat similar to Youtube
• Bilibili: Video, animation, comics, games site that allow content creators and viewers to share content and overlay their comments on screen, wildly popular among young people. It is invested by Hangzhou Huadian, Sony Corporation of America also has a 4.98% stake. It had 156 million active monthly users as of first quarter of 2020.
• Weishi (short video Vlog): created by Tencent, the 30-second short Vlog can be posted at Wechat moment that usually only allows 15-second videos. It had 120 million monthly active users in 2020.
• Weichat Shipin (Wechat Vlog channel): It is attached to Wechat, created by Tencent in 2020, allows short Vlog up to 1 minute long, maximum 9 photos, or 1000 words article. It is an app within the boundary of Wechat itself so only the friends of that Wechat account will be able to see it. It aims at competing with Tik Tok. It has some restrictions for overseas cellphone numbers to be the channel owners, however overseas users can watch Weichat Shipin.
• Xiaohongshu: created by Xingyin Technology, originally was a content/tips sharing platform, now a platform that people look for USC recommendations from shoppings to lifestyle and connected with e-commerce. Most of the users are women. There were 123.219 million active monthly users as of November 2020.

That looks like a very crowded space already. In other words, if you only use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. your messages might not get too much attention from Chinese Canadian who are busy using Wechat and other Chinese social media apps.

It is also a challenge that the plethora social media platforms seem to be overwhelming, just to guess where to start, how much resource it might demand from you.

In fact, it is not that difficult to decide. Wechat, with 1,029 million daily active users, is by far the largest and the most influential social media platform. For Chinese Canadian residing here in Canada, using Wechat means seamless communications with friends and families.

Wechat also allows businesses, organizations and individuals to create their own channels, called Wechat Public Platform Account. The Wechat Public Platform Account allows its owner to publish posts in chronical order and these posts can be shared and re-shared by followers. It is quite common that not only Chinese language digital media but also traditional print media in Canada have their own Wechat Public Platform Accounts, some of them even have multiple ones depending on the themes and purposes (news, life style, etc.) just like using them as online magazines. Chinese Canadian rely on these Wechat Public Platform Accounts as their source of information. There are some very influential public accounts created by individuals too. It does not mean that they don’t read English news. Many of them do use Facebook for various purposes (kids’ schools, colleagues, etc.). However, when they make purchasing decision, information streaming from Wechat will influence them more.

So, perhaps it is worthwhile to take a closer look at your Facebook’s user data to see if you have reached this particular consumer segment or not, provided that you plan to expand the influence into Chinese Canadian ethnic market.

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References:

https://finance.sina.com.cn/stock/usstock/c/2021-03-18/doc-ikkntiam4887520.shtml

https://weibo.com/ttarticle/x/m/show/id/2309354635427880697994?wb_client=1

https://finance.sina.com.cn/stock/hkstock/ggipo/2020-11-06/doc-iiznctkc9797452.shtml

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/05/kuaishou-ipo-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-tiktok-rival.html

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/15/bytedance-douyin-has-600-million-daily-active-users.html

https://kr-asia.com/the-top-chinese-short-video-apps-in-2020-vying-to-grab-your-attention-with-fast-content

http://www.xinhuanet.com/tech/2020-05/19/c_1126003334.htm

https://www.sohu.com/a/441519019_533924