RedNote is currently the most important Chinese social media app for travel, and as a brand, you will want to establish your presence on the platform. With similarities to platforms like Instagram, Tiktok and Pinterest, you might think yourself familiar with the app’s interface and be considering giving the responsibility for it to your existing social media team to manage alongside your Western social media platforms, or perhaps even to a Chinese member of staff working in another department. However, beware. It’s not just the language barrier you need to consider. Time zone issues, strict content moderation, and a market that comes with many cultural differences, means managing your company’s RedNote account is likely to prove more difficult than it may first appear.

Verification and set-up

It is also beneficial for your account to be set up by somebody with experience. Ideally, your account will be ‘verified’ to make it official (particularly if you are a tourist board or a well-established brand, this will be expected). Verification is not always a simple process and RedNote will reject verification requests if they don’t meet their criteria, meaning a second application fee will be due in order to resubmit. It will be much easier for someone who understands the process (and can read Chinese) to fill in the paperwork required to set up and verify the account, and, unless they have social media experience, a Chinese-speaking member of the team may struggle with the documentation.

Tip: It is very important to ensure that your account is owned by the company and not an individual, as an agency can be contractually obliged to hand over all numbers and passwords to you upon request. A risk of setting it up in-house is that your employee can walk off with all the passwords and all the knowledge when they leave your business. If you do ask a staff member to sign up to RedNote (or any other social media platform) do make sure the mobile number used is a company one, and there is a contractual clause somewhere to ensure logins and passwords will be delivered upon request.

What content does the algorithm want?

Delivering the right content is where specialists in social media will prove their worth. With social media being so well used in China, creating stand out content is a real skill. You must understand the market so that the content is localised, you need to make your content drive engagement, and you must be sure that you have not broken any rules. RedNote will stop traffic to your account if you are perceived to be posting inappropriate content, anything too commercial or inauthentic, or anything that links out to another platform. You cannot simply translate an Instagram post and expect it to do well on RedNote.

Understanding the Chinese cultural context

It is important that your account manager knows what is trending in China to maximise engagement with your posts. For example, at Guanxi, we recently we jumped on the back of the viral Dubai chocolate trend in a post for our client, London Designer Outlet. This simple post about Lindt received more than 100 comments and strong engagement.

Mistakes are easily made!

If a mistake is made on a RedNote post, it has the potential to go viral very quickly. This is why it is important to hire somebody who understands the differences and nuances of Chinese culture. There have been several instances of big brands missing the mark when it comes to advertising in China-  an example is the 2019 Burberry Lunar New Year campaign, which was disastrous in its misguided attempt to appeal to the Chinese market. Models were depicted with serious, sombre expressions appropriate for high fashion in the Western community, but entirely wrong for a Chinese holiday that centres around luck, celebration and joy, and the negative attention resulted in a backlash against sales.

Pepsi made a famous blunder in the 1960s with their ‘Come alive! You’re in the Pepsi Generation’ campaign, as the Chinese interpretation of their translation was roughly ‘Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave’. This was both confusing and offensive, as it related to ancestral respect which is essential to Chinese culture. This is an extreme example of course, but it does show the danger of getting language wrong. And it goes without saying; never rely on any AI translation tools!

Building followers and using all the functions of the platforms

Do you know how to build followers on Chinese social media? Your content may be great, but there is no point talking into an echo chamber. An agency may be better equipped to handle this responsibility, as staff are trained and specialised. Professionals know how to utilise social media in order to get results – they can comment as your brand on popular posts, launch hashtag campaigns on social media platforms, and engage with the various different facilities of the platforms. For example, RedNote has the Community function, and WeChat has Channels. Platforms also offer sponsored post facilities and you can buy into campaigns to drive traffic. There are many different functions on each platform, just as there are on Western social media, and it is important your account is managed by a professional who understands them and can utilise them all to your benefit.

Influencers and how to work with them

Agencies can also help with cost and logistics when it comes to working with influencers or running promotions as agency staff often have good networks of clients and partners working in the same space. For example, Guanxi reached out to hotel partners to support a Chinese Key Opinion Consumer campaign for the UK rail company, London North Eastern Railway. Hotel group, Malmaison, provided accommodation for the influencers on various trips around the UK.

Running a promotional campaign in isolation means it will be entirely self-funded, whereas working with an agency can open up opportunities for greater outreach at a lower cost. Experience also means that you will end up with a well organised, reliable campaign delivering good ROI. Agencies will know how to contract with KOLs and KOCs, what is fair pricing, and who are the best people to work with. It is not just about selecting an influencer based on his/her follower numbers. Engagement and brand alignment are equally, if not more, important. It can be difficult to determine whether or not to respond to an approach from an influencer without the experience.

Support from partners

Connections and partnerships can also be very useful if smaller clients need the support of bigger ones to help boost their content through reposting or commenting.

As an example, VisitBritain and many universities supported our campaign #UKimpression. This campaign ran during the pandemic and, as the outbound tourism market from China to the UK had ceased, Chinese students were the client’s priority. To target this segment, Guanxi initiated a joint digital promotional campaign in association with VisitBritain and the Chinese offices of seven UK universities. The campaign #UKimpression encouraged Chinese students to record and share their life and studying experiences in the UK via social media, to inspire others to travel the UK by train.

17 contestants from 8 universities joined the campaign, and nearly 1200 students voted for their favourite Vlogs delivered by the contestants. Winners won train tickets on the LNER network and recorded videos of the subsequent trips, published the following spring. This campaign delivered over 4.7 million views and engagements for LNER. These results would not have been possible without the support of the partners who saw the benefits of the campaign for their own followers and with whom the agency’s account team already had excellent relationships.

Can we not manage our Chinese social media in-house, then?

Yes, of course you can. But you need to have a Mandarin speaker on your staff who has experience of working in Chinese social media and, ideally, who is willing to be available to dedicate a lot of their time to posting, commenting, engaging and following trends across a range of Chinese platforms. Ideally, they will have contacts and partnerships which will help them and know how to negotiate with Chinese influencers. That is a lot to ask someone and difficult to juggle around another role, perhaps in operations or other areas of marketing.

At Guanxi, we have a talented and experienced team ready to manage your brand’s Chinese social media accounts. To learn more about how we deliver promotional campaigns and manage social media accounts in China, please feel free to contact us for a chat.