39% respondents surveyed by GlobalWebIndex used WeChat in August, making WeChat the most popular messaging app in APAC in the third quarter of 2014. Since 2013, WeChat official account was devoted to exploring more social functions for WeChat users, advertisers and so on. Till now, WeChat official account had made four big steps in 2014 to get closer to its goal.
On 10 Dec 2013, WeChat Community started close beta test on WeChat official accounts and such testing continues.
WeChat official account can publish posts in its own WeChat Community and users make comment on it, which is similar to how traditional online community works. Now, WeChat community is still alive with low activity.
At the early stage of WeChat official service account, one could publish one post once a month which restricted its marketing capability. WeChat Community was born for settling such issue while it never became well-known among users and it was easily forgotten.
On 13 May 2014, WeChat opened custom menu which turned into a lightweight application. WeChat official service account can access interfaces of voice recognition, QR code, location based service and users’ groups.
The custom menu made it much easier for WeChat users and official accounts to realize interaction.
On 23 July 2014, WeChat official account made new adjustment adding the number of views of article and image as well as the like button at the bottom of the image or the article.
WeChat users can directly know about post views and then distinguish good ones which can increase users’ activity. Besides, advertisers can place ads on WeChat official accounts which have high activity based on Guangdiantong (an ad platform of Tencent) to improve marketing efficiency.
Such step that WeChat made indicated its data is becoming more transparent and its marketing capability is strengthened.
On 19 Dec 2014, WeChat official account made close beta test for commenting features. Commenting feature is restricted by online censorship capability of public information.
WeChat is making every step carefully, avoiding to be like another Weibo. Its launching of new functions or features often go through a strict internal testing stage before available to public.
WeChat launched advertising platform for public accounts in July 2014, both enterprise and personal public accounts can apply to be a publisher and as long as permitted, publisher can see total number of impressions, clicks and revenue. Total accessible WeChat apps increased to 67,000 with daily average increase of 400 mobile apps. There are more than 10,000 advertisers on WeChat advertising platform.
Also read: What WeChat Did in 2014:
- Wechat Launched Wechat Contacts App Offering Free Calls
- Wechat Aiming Int’l E-commerce Market with Payment Solutions
- Wechat Social Features Attractive to Mobile Gamers
- Wechat Testing Micro-video as A New function
- Wechat Launched Business Accounts for Team Collaborations
- Wechat Allows Advertisers to Promote App Downloads
- Wechat Launched Card Payment, Faster Than Using Credit Card
- Wechat Added Banner Ads Option for Wechat Advertising Platform
- Wechat Launched Wechat Shop Feature for Verified Wechat Official Accounts
- WeChat Tests POS Payment, Ambitiously Boosts O2O Services
