Users of corporate accounts must be verified internal staff in order to follow the corporate account. They are not available to the public nor marketers. WeChat Corporate Accounts: WeChat Corporate accounts are primarily for internal communication and management. They are meant for individuals, not marketing, but can be successfully used as your first foray using WeChat or your business with a maximum of 5000 ‘friends’. Personal accounts: these are accounts of normal WeChat users. Lets first have a look at the different types of accounts available. The simple answer is yes, but in a different way than you would if you had a Chinese company or a Wholly Owned Foreign Enterprise (WOFE) and could access an official account. Tasmanian SMEs that are in the tourism, student accommodation, education, real estate and luxury niche product market would be obvious candidates to cater to this market. There are a couple of broader strategic digital considerations here: one is that you have a website that is localised for China and hosted appropriately and that you have a digital marketing strategy that is designed for your Chinese growth whether that is attracting customers inside Tasmania or selling Tasmanian goods to mainland China. While WeChat has been a largely internal brand, Tasmanian firms looking to trade with Chinese consumers need to be where their consumers are, and having an active presence on WeChat is a smart step to connect with your customers and future customers in a channel that is already deeply embedded in their lives. Tasmania has been strategically marketing itself to China for over a decade, looking to attract consumers for tourism, education, residential and business investment, and for our businesses to become exporters of Tasmanian branded niche products such as value-added food and milk products, cold climate wines, boutique spirits, health products, education and increasingly services such as training. When WeChat was initially launched it was seen as a poor cousin to Facebook and Whatsapp, but quickly and rapidly escalated as WeChat launched feature after feature that seamlessly integrated and simplified the life of Chinese citizens in every aspect imaginable, while connecting them together. All these channels have subsequently evolved into significant players in Chinese e-commerce and marketing. The social media and digital communication vacuum from the absence of Facebook et al was filled by a number of Chinese companies: WeChat began like Facebook and Instagram, Weibo like Twitter and YouKu similar to YouTube. This is known colloquially outside China as the Great Firewall, and it means that companies like Facebook, Google and YouTube are unable to operate inside China due to their refusal to comply with the rules that the Chinese government have in place. For some quick geopolitical background, China has a sophisticated amount of internal management of digital information flows. WeChat kicked off in 2011 and is used in China somewhat like a countrywide intranet rather than an internet due to the high levels of localised usage within the confines of a tightly regulated market. It has 1.1 billion registered accounts and 846 million monthly active users according to parent company Tencent, making it not only a super app, but much like Facebook is in the West, a channel that is too big to be ignored if you have, or want to have business dealings with mainland China. WeChat is a marketing and social media platform also know as a super app because of the sheer volume of its features and functionality.
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