Stephen Hawking published his first post on his verified Weibo account on the morning of 12 April 2016 recalling his deep friendship with China and hoping to share more about his life and work.

Right after publishing the first post, Mr. Hawking’s fans on Weibo is growing exponentially and exceeded 780 thousand in 3 hours. That particular one Weibo post attracted 140,00 re-posts, 130,000 comments, and over a quarter million likes. Mr. Hawkings got ONE MILLION fans on Weibo in less than 5 hours!

At the time of writing this post, Mr. Hawking’s first Weibo post received 370,404 retweets, 398,312 comments and close to ONE MILLION likes! His Weibo account has over 3 million fans, following no one at the moment.

Weibo had over 271 million monthly active users in March 2016 according to Quest Mobile, comparing with 707 million WeChat users.

This fast growth of online fans is not much a special case; and, many foreign marketers are aware of. However, many are blindsided by the popularity of WeChat (Weixin) in China. Most marketing directors and c-level executives from large corporations I talked to during the past year somehow have a perception that Weibo is dead; and, they lost interest utilizing this platform promoting their brand and products but WeChat.

The key is to understand the unique essential feature of the social networks.

WeChat is no doubt a more engaging platform compared to Weibo, considering the fact that most users’ friends on WeChat are their real life friends, colleagues and business associates. But, it is much of a closed social network; the main social networking feature is WeChat Moments. One could not even see all comments left on his/her friends Moments postings but only those comments left by common friends.

For companies to build a fan base on WeChat, WeChat Official Account is the right “weapon”. Major objectives of companies’ official accounts are customer marketing, products launch and O2O transformation. You can read more here and here.

Download: WeChat Online Marketing Guide

Weibo, in comparison, is much more of a open and public social network despite its lower level of engagement. It delivers reach. In general, it takes less efforts and much less time to reach the same number of user base on Weibo than WeChat. You can find out more about Weibo users here.

Understand what you are doing and where you are going first.

I had a quick consulting session in Shanghai this March at a Fortune 500 American company in B2B area on WeChat marketing. The person in charge wanted to develop a WeChat official account, just like many other companies. What was missing is the lack of social media strategy; and, personas development is a critical part of that, without which all efforts to put into WeChat official account development, content creation and engagement fans would lead to nowhere near that company’s bottom line.

On China social media, it’s important to understand the essential unique features of each platform, based on which you should develop a strategy that you can tie to your business long-term success.

Read more on Weibo and WeChat here.

72% China online shoppers keep online all day according to a recent survey conducted by Epsilon.

The top factor that affects Chinese consumers brand satisfaction is brand accessibility whenever needed according to Epsilon. The same survey also revealed that two of the top 3 favorite brands are e-commerce platforms; Chinese consumers are regularly engaged with an average of three to four e-commerce brands.

65% respondents are willing to share their brand experience with families and friends; 60% would share in social media; and, 58% would share positive reviews online. The top engaged brands with Chinese consumers are Taobao (19%), Apple (13%), JD (12%) and Samsung (12%) while the top brands with the highest scores of brand satisfactions are Huawei (84%), WeChat (Weixin) (82%), and Tmall (82%).

Collecting personal private information during brand engagement may not be easy; effective tactics recommended by Epsilon include:

• Bonus points
• Member points
• VIP special offers
• Transparent and clear privacy policies

Also read:  Alibaba Rose to No. 1 Most Valuable Retail Brand in 2015

China retail market has been growing rapidly attributes to the booming economy and the increasing demand for consumption goods. China’s FMCG market is evolving quickly; the overall market continues to decelerate across all sectors and all city tiers; channel dynamics changed substantially with more challenges in offline channels facing the growing popularity of online shopping in China according to Kantar Worldpanel report.

Chinese shoppers demonstrate very low engagement with brands for most of the 26 categories Kantar studied. The average purchase frequency for the top brands among the categories is less than one purchase every four months—a very low purchase rate.

Low-frequency shoppers represent a significant percentage of each brand’s shopper base and contribute a significant share of its revenues. Kantar Worldpanel also found that the majority of shoppers left the brands they studied after two years. In order to compensate for losses, Kantar recommends brands continuously recruit shoppers.

Kantar Worldpanel reported 5.7% value growth for China’s FMCG market for the latest 52 weeks up to Sep 5th 2014 which remains low in comparison to historic levels. FMCG growth recovered to 6.9% in Q3 2014, higher than both Q2 (4.7%) and Q1 (4.6%).

Read more: Chinese Consumer Goods Companies Take Share from Foreign Companies

Chinese users displayed the highest level of engagement and interactions with brands on social media, according to PwC research.

In the pre-purchase phase, 87% of Chinese users would use social media to research a brand and 86% have also bought products through social media. Most strikingly, 93% of Chinese online shoppers have commented on an experience.

Online word of mouth on Chinese social media should be one important part of your brand building; focusing merely on the number of fans can not lead you anywhere. We recommend, brands should develop content and engagement plans targeting each purchase phase of consumers on multiple social media touch points.

In a study by Waggener Edstrom, Chinese online shoppers are most likely to say obtaining information about products and services tended to be number one way they engage with brands on mobile.

Brands That Chinese Digital Shoppers Follow on Social Media

According to the same study, mobile device brands are the most followed on social media by Chinese digital shoppers:

1. Mobile devices (83%)
2. Consumer electronics (65%)
3. Healthcare (61%)
4. Food & beverage (55%)
5. Travel & tourism (48%)
6. Personal care (39%)