China is the largest social media market in the world, and its social media landscape is very different from that of its Western counterpart. There are virtually no western services available, including but not limited to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
The Chinese, on the other hand, have their own ecosystem, which may be more developed than the ecosystems in western countries. You should read our review of the Chinese online environment in 2019, which will help you gain a better understanding of how businesses interact with Chinese customers.
A big country that has experienced tremendous modernization in the most recent decades, the country has also experienced massive digital development throughout this time. That growth is reflected in the number of people in the nation who have access to the internet. According to statistics compiled by the World Bank in 2006, just 10.5% of the population in China have access to the internet. In the year 2020, that percentage will have risen to almost 70 percent. That is a huge population of people who are online, and the majority of them are active. According to the data provided by Statista, the country has over a billion users of online media, which is much higher than any other nation.
According to Azoya, the largest platform in China, WeChat, has 1.2 billion monthly active users, the majority of whom are located in China. There are over 520 million people using Weibo on a monthly basis, whereas Little Red Book has 420 million users. To put it bluntly, the amount of individuals in China is unmatched everywhere else in the globe, and the level of commitment they show to the most popular content providers is astounding.
In China, those who have significant influence are also referred to as Key Opinion Leaders, or KOL for short. The power that these endorsers have over others is substantial. A poll conducted by Statista found that 81 percent of respondents who follow at least one influencer have, at some point in the past, purchased the products that were promoted by that influencer. The robust nature of China's retail sector is one of the primary reasons behind this phenomenon. According to Chain Storage, in 2021, 52% of China's retail purchases came via e-commerce sales. This would make China the first nation in the globe to have more than half of its retail sales come from channels. This number is significantly higher than that of other countries'.
On Single's Day, which took place in October of 2021, the most significant illustration of the strength that influencer marketing economy possesses in China was presented. According to Accenture, two marketers, Li Jiaqi and Viya, collaborated to sell a staggering $3 billion worth of products on that single day only by recommending them. Single's Day is China's greatest shopping holiday, and these two advertisers are responsible for the majority of the sales. This is an unfathomable quantity, the likes of which no other marketers, no matter where they are, could ever hope to achieve.
Because of the sheer number of people who use website platform in China, the influencer marketing economy sector in China is easily the largest in the globe. No other country on the earth even comes close to matching the number of users in China. It is likely that the close connection that now exists between businesses in this region will only get stronger.