WalkTheChat

WeChat content market is getting more competitive

WeChat content produced by public accounts is the bread-and-butter of social content in China.

In mid-2015, the number of views of WeChat subscription accounts started to decline. Some popular accounts saw a decline of more than 50% in readership.

What is the extent of the issue, and what’s causing it?

Performance of top-500 WeChat articles

The study is focusing on the 500 most popular WeChat accounts, and the picture looks bleak

In absolute number, the top-500 WeChat content accounts also saw a steep decline in reader numbers while their posting frequency remained relatively stable.

Performance of other WeChat accounts:

 

The performance is a bit better for other WeChat articles:

A bit better than the top-500 accounts, but still not perfect.

What are the reasons for the decline in WeChat content readership?

1. Most of WeChat accounts share non-original content.

The content is often simply copy-pasted from competing accounts or from the web. The increase in posting frequency is therefore purely quantitative and not qualitative.

As others accounts post more often, everyone is slowly pushed into a spiral of accelerating speed, ultimately leading most influential accounts to plagiarism.

This is also a reason why the most influential accounts suffer most, as they are the first victims of copycats.

2. Increasing competition

The amount of accounts publishing on WeChat keeps growing. As users start following more and more accounts, they don’t necessarily check them more often, and the overall readership is getting diluted

3. Little effort done to better target users

Although WeChat enables to target users splitting them into groups, most accounts make no use of such features. Competing platforms such as Today’s Headline(今日头条)and Baidu Baijia(百度百家)are doing a much better job at targeting content to readers’ specific interests.

WeChat is dead, long live WeChat!

Does it mean that WeChat is dying as a content platform? Certainly not.

Because of its ubiquitous position in Chinese users life, WeChat has become the number one target for all marketers and advertisers. The numbers above are a natural consequence of such a rush on WeChat content marketing.

What can you do to stay relevant in such a competitive environment?

And if you follow the above advice, you will stand a chance in the WeChat war.