WeChat popularly known as China’s ‘app for everything’ has over 1 billion monthly active users. WeChat Founder Allen Zhang on January 9 2019 gave a 4-hour presentation at the 2019 WeChat Open Course. He discussed on WeChats past, present and future tactics, stating his most critical priority is to make an effective product. This meant the following:
- WeChat will continue to march as a strong business, communication, and social tool with time.
- WeChat will help creators provide value.
As per Allen and his team with WeChat evolution, marketers can take indication on how best to reach their audience and where to put their efforts. So basically, be progressive with your WeChat marketing strategies, follow WeChat updates and new functions and get ready to embrace change.
Let’s discuss the future of WeChat Marketing including video content, mini-programs, B2B marketing, and social reading.
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Short videos
It allows users to share short videos with a particular group of audience. “Time Capsule,” a short video sharing function was launched by WeChat recently.
WeChat user’s follower base is a mix of friends, colleagues, business partners, community leaders and relatives; it is a mixture of people coming from different profiles. People have become more reserved in what they share to their public profile for everyone to see. Because of this, WeChat has become a high-pressure social app in China.
Hence, WeChat created Time Capsule as a more private, independent forum. It is quite similar to Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram Stories, where users can share short videos that last for 24 hours.
In future, we predict that users will also be able to set privacy options for these videos like
1) who can view the video, only friends, colleagues, particular groups, etc.;
2) where the video gets displayed, such as profile, group chat, Mini Programs, etc.
3) on which platform the video appears, such as Weishi, Time Capsule, WeChat Work, etc.
In terms of WeChat marketing, brands can share these videos on their Time Capsule and in a group chat with their customers. These short videos will enable them to promote their products and build brand awareness.
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WeChat Mini Programs
Mini Programs will cater diverse social interests, such as dance groups, parent groups, community stores, etc.
WeChat will help creators develop the best possible Mini Programs to provide services like plug-ins, Mini Program assistance, cloud development, logistics assistance, etc.
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B2B service platform
Allen Zhang said that WeChat Work will reduce internal operating costs and improving efficiency while helping enterprises to open source the sales process.
In Future, WeChat will build a community knowledge-sharing platform by integrating Mini Programs and other third-party applications.
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WeChat combines Social with Reading
Users can now watch and read high-quality content targeted to their interests. As per Allen Zhang the goal is to combine social with reading, improving content quality.
We predict that with such evolution, WeChat interface and UX in future might start to resemble more of an Instagram style, where users just slide the screen to view WeChat Moments, Top Stories, etc.
