My Top Chinese Social Media Apps & Platform in 2024

Social media aren’t the same in China.

When we talk about social media platforms, the first thing that generally comes to our mind is international platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter.

But all these are not accessible in China (understand ‘banned’).

Consequently, more than a billion Chinese internet users ends up on local platforms such as WeChat, Douyin (TikTok) etc.

I have been working on helping brands in the Chinese market for over a decade. Let me walk you through all you need to know when it comes to social media in China.

Overview of the Chinese social media landscape

As one of the most lucrative industries in China, many brands are trying to conquer the Chinese market. However, the Chinese market is way different from the Western one. China has its own e-commerce websites and social media platforms and they often work hand in hand. Thus, if you want to seize the opportunity of selling your products to a wide audience, don’t forget to get as much information as possible about Chinese consumers’ habits.

Chinese social media platforms stand apart from their Western counterparts by providing a more diverse range of functions. From online monetary transactions to gaming and entertainment, these apps have something for all social media users in China.

What’s more, the e-commerce capabilities are so broadened that each app is now an integral part of its own commercial ecosystem – highlighting just how much social eCommerce has prospered within the country.

Chinese consumers & online shopping

If you want to attract Chinese consumers, you have to know that nowadays, the majority of the Chinese population is purchasing goods online instead of going to brick-and-mortar stores. It is easier, more convenient, and most of the time, cheaper. All of this was possible thanks to China’s digitalization and the rising use of the internet.

China is the world’s largest social media market, with people increasingly depending on such platforms to express and share their opinion, ask for product recommendations, and connect with other users.

There were more than 900 million online shoppers in China, which means that e-commerce platforms and social media are more than ever at the core of Chinese society.

China is a bustling market of 1.4 billion consumers, with an ever-growing appetite for social media and digital platforms. In 2023, seven out of every ten Chinese individuals had already made the switch; by 2026 that number will reach nearly all citizens as usage skyrockets to 91%. There is no denying that you really need to become present on Chinese social media sites.

Top 11 Chinese Social Media Platforms To Know About

In the increasingly digitalized market of China, brands need to use Chinese social media platforms in order for them to be visible and increase brand awareness. Chinese people are very active on these platforms so it’s no surprise that 92% of luxury and fashion companies have at least an official WeChat account.

Brands that have an active presence online will often receive positive feedback through comments or shares while those who don’t might find customers giving them bad ratings without hesitation if given enough time which could lead to decreased sales numbers overall.

Chinese Social Media #1 – WeChat (微信)

With more than 1.2 billion monthly active users, WeChat is the most popular app in China. Even though it was at first a messaging app, the app released under the giant Tencent in 2011 quickly became a vast ecosystem of services. Nowadays, WeChat is a must-have for every citizen and business as it became a new player in the e-commerce industry.

WeChat is even more important for fashion brands as it allows you to promote your brand by sharing posts, and articles, running mini-programs, creating H5 Brochures, etc.

Moreover, it is the best way to communicate directly with your customers and reply to their questions. 

One key point to successfully promote your brand through WeChat is to create an Official Account. Don’t worry, if your brand is still not present in China, we will help you find and reach your target audience by improving your brand awareness as well as creating your WeChat official account.

Some of the best features of WeChat for brands include:

• WeChat Moments: that work like a Facebook feed
• WeChat Official Accounts: a must-have for any brand that wants to become reliable to Chinese consumers
• WeChat mini-programs: that allow for the creation of WeChat stores, where you can sell your own products without the need of entering Tmall first
• WeChat Pay: allowing consumers to pay for products directly in the app
• WeChat CRM
• Influencer marketing
• WeChat Channels: a short video sub-platform, where you can reach out to new audiences

Chinese Social Media #2 – Weibo (微博)

Launched in 2009 by the Chinese technology company Sina Corporation (新浪), Weibo is one of the biggest Chinese social media apps. It provides microblogging services and has often been compared to Twitter but has evolved to be much more over the years with eCommerce and live streaming function functions for instance.

The engagement on the app is great and the post can go viral in a couple of a minute. This high engagement and ad algorithm are similar to Facebook, making it a great place for marketing to promote products and gain visibility.

With over 570 million monthly active users, Weibo is one of the leading social media platforms in China. Furthermore, its impressive 94% mobile penetration ensures that brands can effectively reach their target audience through this app – making it a great option for promotion and marketing efforts.

Additionally, creating official verified accounts on Weibo makes engaging with customers effortless; providing ideal conditions for building strong brand awareness amongst Chinese consumers.

Almost all the fashion brands in China have a Weibo account on which they can share content with their followers, as well as promote their brand and new collection.

Chinese Social Media #3 – Xiaohongshu (小红书)

Founded in 2013 by Charlwin Mao and Miranda Qu, Xiaohongshu (小红书) also known as ‘The Little Red Book’ and ‘RED’, is a Chinese social media platform and one of the world’s largest community e-commerce platforms. Over the years, it has grown to become China’s foremost shopping platform in terms of beauty, fashion, and luxury products.

In 2018, it was listed on Forbes’ “Top 50 Most Innovative Companies in China 2018” list. As of 2023, Xiaohongshu is boasting over 200 million monthly active users. It was also valued at more than USD 3 billion in 2018 and has the support of giants like Alibaba, Tencent, Zhenfund, Genesis Capital, etc.

Xiaohongshu differs from most other e-commerce backbones, offering platforms for users and brands to interact in more interactive and informative ways. Its messaging features allow companies to connect with Chinese Internet users directly upon purchase, whilst its reviews system provides detailed posts by KOLs & KOCs that demonstrate product usability – perfect for influencer marketing campaigns.

Even though Xiaohongshu is an e-commerce platform, it has some social networking features, allowing users to share reviews and experiences about products. Xiaohongshu can be a valuable tool for your e-reputation in China, as word-of-mouth is the main way of discovery for Chinese consumers. By sharing their opinion on Xiaohongshu, users are at the same time promoting your fashion brand.

Chinese Social Media #4 – Douyin (抖音)

With more than 700 million daily active users in China as of 2023, Douyin, known as Tik Tok in other parts of the world, is one of the most lucrative and promising apps in China. In March 2021, Douyin launched its flagship stores, available for brand accounts on its platform, marking a major step into e-commerce. 

Until now, Douyin was just a way to promote new products and popular items to consumers through short videos and live-streaming. Moreover, it was also possible for companies to send vouchers to their followers and add links to e-commerce platforms such as JD.com and Taobao. However, these flagship store allows fashion brands to directly promote, advertise and sell their products on this social media platform.

Chinese Social Media #5 – Weitao (微淘)

Following the success of its e-commerce platforms Tmall and Taobao, Alibaba decided to follow the trend of content marketing and Chinese social media apps like WeChat and Weibo, by creating its own social experience in 2013: Weitao (微淘).

As a matter of fact, social media and e-commerce platforms are closely linked, especially in the eyes of Chinese mobile users. The majority of brands using e-commerce platforms have also an official account on various Chinese social media platforms.

Weitao can be a useful and powerful tool to leverage your brand on Tmall and Taobao as consumers are able to directly click on the pictures of products to be redirected to your store. It is also important to collaborate with influencers and KOLs to promote your products among Chinese customers.

How to use Weitao?

Compared to other social media, Weitao is seen as a digital shopping assistant, so you must only talk about products. For example, you can write short articles about your products, short posts, etc. Users are able to share their experience by giving writing reviews about your products and your online store, watching live streaming, short videos, etc.

Chinese Social Media #6 – Youku (优酷)

User Statistics:

1. 381 million monthly active users (MAU) on the mobile app
2. Monthly retention rate 45.1%

What Is Youku?

Youku is one of the most popular video-sharing platforms in China. More than 1500 license holders that upload media content include TV stations, film and TV production companies, and distributors. Youku is often used to stream and download movies and TV shows. It is different from its international rival, YouTube, because it has mostly professionally created content rather than self-created content by the users.

Who Uses Youku?

The majority of the Youku user base is under 30-35 years of age looking for entertaining, educational, and informative videos.

Why Is Youku Important For Businesses?

Youku provides analytical tools that track users’ viewing data with lots of information like demographics, location, browsing technology, language, and viewing time. The platform uses this data for targeted marketing for businesses. With many active users and daily views on Youku, it is an excellent platform for targeting customers using video content.

Advertising / Marketing on Youku

Like YouTube, Youku also provides various marketing solutions to the brands, including paid advertisements such as static and animated banner ads, text links, in-stream advertisements, buttons, branded viral videos, and pause ads. These tools are popular for social media marketing through this platform.

Chinese Social Media #7 – Kuaishou

Kuaishou is another short-video Chinese social networking platform and the biggest competitor of Douyin in the Chinese market.

Kuaishou’s success as one of the largest short-video platforms in the world lies within its unique approach to targeting underrepresented, lower-tier city consumers.

The content featured on this Chinese Social Media app is casual and down to earth; it’s focused on daily life activities often taking place even in rural areas that were previously neglected by other applications.

These efforts have paid off—over 600 million monthly active users attest to Kuaishou’s continued presence significantly larger than Douyin – with prospects for further growth still ahead.

Kuaishou became even more popular when the live-streaming function was added to the platform, and today it’s one of the most viewed live-streaming platforms in China, with more than 200 million live streams being added every day.

Chinese Social Media #8 – Jinri Toutiao

User Statistics:

1. About 279 million monthly active users (MAU)
2. 290.1 million average daily active users (DAU)
3. 55.5% market penetration of news information

What Is Jinri Toutiao

Jinri Toutiao is a Chinese social media platform that efficiently and accurately connects people to high-quality and rich information that creates value. This search engine service provides accurate, professional, and fast results. Apart from the default comprehensive search, it can do specific searches like videos, information, pictures, and music. Toutiao uses very complex algorithms with artificial intelligence, analyzes each user for their location, clicks, and browsing history, and then recommends the best-fitted articles and videos that provide the highest value to the user.

Who Uses Jinri Toutiao

Most of the users of Toutiao are a young generation of 18 to 30 years old who are freelancers, self-employed, or owners of private companies, living in the first or second-tier cities. These users are primarily tech-savvy millennials with relatively high purchasing power and hold a bachelor’s degree or above.

Why Is Jinri Toutiao Important For Businesses?

With a large user base, Toutiao is a vast social media platform for businesses to promote themselves to the targeted users who are highly educated and affluent. Businesses can open their publisher account, Toutiao Hao on Jinri Toutiao, distributed to relevant users using the Toutiao algorithm.

Advertising / Marketing on Jinri Toutiao

Jinri Toutiao is a fantastic platform that covers more than 100 content fields. Advertising on Toutiao can significantly improve the brand awareness of businesses willing to put their feet in China. With the official account of Toutiao Hao, companies can continuously and efficiently increase followers through regular updates and interactions on Toutiao. Advertisement options like open screen ads, ads on the news feed, search ads, and text ads can provide high-intensity promotion to increase the brand awareness, new product promotion, and engagement of the customers.

Chinese Social Media #9 – Baidu Tieba

User Statistics:

1. 544 million monthly active users (MAU)
2. 202 million daily active users (DAU)
3. 43.67 million monthly active app users
4. Around 25 millions communities

What Is Baidu Tieba?

Baidu Tieba is the leading online discussion forum in China provided by the search engine giant Baidu. It is totally content-oriented and highly interactive. It allows users to search through keywords and enter the discussion forum on any topic or interest of their choice. Users can add a topic by creating individual ‘Tiebas’ or bars for each topic. And then, users can start the discussion on it through a large active user base. Users can follow the topic of their interest to get the updates in their feed. Smart Mini Programs and Managed Page helps users access a vast range of information and services on this platform.

Who Uses Baidu Tieba?

Baidu Tieba has a user base of a very young age group with a relatively low education level, primarily students. These netizens are interested mostly in celebrities, TV programs and films, gaming, books, and short stories.

Why Is Baidu Tieba Important For Businesses?

Baidu Tieba is one of the most popular platforms for social media marketing in China. Brands can target the exact customer they are looking for using forums on Tieba, thanks to its artificial intelligence-based algorithm and deep user insights. Businesses can create specific content and target niche groups through this platform. They can start discussing the targeted topic and utilize this platform to engage with users. If brands can successfully harness the power of Baidu Tieba through interesting and valuable content, they can quickly grow their organic presence in China without going for paid advertising. Businesses can utilize the strength of forums to collect feedback from users.

Advertising / Marketing on Baidu Tieba

The top search engine of China, Baidu, supports Tieba, making much difference. Baidu Tieba is one platform in China that you can harness without investing much money by simply creating original content. On Tieba, if you know how to engage with the users organically, you are already on your way to creating a loyal user base. There are options for paid advertising that look like organic posts, but users are smart enough and do not generally click into those paid advertisements. On Baidu Tieba, you don’t need to be or use an influential KOL to attract users. All you need is such an exciting post that triggers the hot discussion. Question and answer posts and live streaming serial stories are two categories that create a lasting impact on Baidu Tieba.

Chinese Social Media #10 – Douban

User Statistics:

1. 400 million Monthly Active Users (MAUs)
2. 200 million registered users
3. 4 minutes 46 seconds average visit duration

What Is Douban?

Douban is a Chinese social networking platform for sharing and recommending books, movies, and music. It has expanded itself completely around urban life. Today, Douban is an easy platform for users to listen to their favorite music, book tickets for movies and concerts, and download ebooks. Users can network with other users if their specific interests match each other. You can compare Douban with Reddit.

Who Uses Douban?

This social media platform is the king among the users of Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities who are intellectuals and pop culture junkies, explicitly interested in movies, music, books, and arts. They are highly educated, have a high income, and pursue high quality. They are influential in their circle and possess the right to speak. The users can create in-depth content from stories to scripts and illustrations to music.

Why Is Douban Important For Businesses?

Douban is a fantastic social media platform for promoting more sophisticated and culturally oriented products, mostly related to arts. It’s a high-quality and original interest-based online platform. Douban offers an excellent opportunity for brands to promote and connect with targeted users through word-of-mouth marketing and reviews, ratings, and discussions. Brands have a perfect opportunity to change and improve their brand or product’s perception/opinion/outlook through this platform. They can create events for like-minded users with similar interests for a discussion, for some rich interactions, and to gather feedback. The most crucial point to be noted by brands is to become a part of the community before getting any attention from the users.

Advertising / Marketing on Douban

Douban offers marketing solutions like advertisements during app startup, native advertisements in images, texts, videos, drop-down ads, and banner ads on the home page. It allows brands to create a ‘brand station’ that is a separate page where they can post everything about their brand and advertise on Douban FM with audio ads.

Chinese Social Media #11 – Meituan Dianping

User Statistics:

1. Around 62 million monthly active users (MAU)
2. 667.5 million Annual Transacting Users
3. 8.3 million Annual Active Merchants
4. Operates in over 2,800 cities and counties in China

What Is Meituan Dianping?

Meituan Dianping is the one-stop solution platform for daily life services in China. It offers a large platter of services like food delivery, restaurant reviews, travel booking, bike-sharing, buying promotional offers, booking movie tickets, booking beauty salons, and finding hotel deals. They currently offer around 200 different services on their online platforms making it China’s leading e-commerce platform. Users can review various services provided by other companies and enjoy their offers. The services on Meituan Dianping have gained so much popularity that the daily average number of food delivery transactions crossed 43.6 million in 2021.

Who Uses Meituan Dianping?

Meituan Dianping is popular almost in all tiers of cities of China. It is mainly used by office-going and urban populations with disposable income and those who expect quality service.

Why Is Meituan Dianping Important For Businesses?

Meituan Dianping allows businesses to post promotional offers and interact with customers. It has got so popular that it has become the most prominent service review platform in China, focusing mainly on restaurants. It has a great user-friendly platform for its customers, and hence it is one great channel for social media marketing by interesting brands. Advertising and promotions by businesses get the advantage of powerful location-based targeting. This information can be used to promote the nearby local users.

Advertising / Marketing on Dianping

With substantial user data such as demographics, location, consuming patterns, and preferences of their target customers, Meituan Dianping offers an incredible platform for brands to advertise in a pinpoint way to their targeted users. It will help them increase customer loyalty and brand awareness manifolds. Brands can utilize SEO, image, URL promotion, and website ads to grow.

How can Fashion brands take advantage of social media in China?

If you want to take advantage of Chinese social media, you will first have to understand and adapt your marketing and advertising strategies according to Chinese consumers’ habits.

When are Chinese users generally connected to the internet?

If you want to promote effectively your fashion brand, it is important to take into account Chinese consumers’ habits. For example, they visit social platforms during these periods of time:

• 08.00 – 10.00 (On their way to work / Before work)
• 13.00 – 14.00 (During lunch break)
• 16.00 – 17.00 (After work)
• 18.30 – 19.30 (Before dinner)
• 22.00 – 23.00 (Before sleeping)

Chinese KOLs to leverage your brand

KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) are the best ambassadors of your brands, they act like influencers. If you want to promote your brand, you can collaborate with KOLs who will promote your products to their community.

Some KOLs are even more famous than celebrities and they have more impact when it comes to sales. Many brands collaborate regularly with KOLs, the more they have followers, the more expensive their fees will be.

Contact us to expand your China Social Media Marketing Strategy

After reading this article, you can see that social media are part of Chinese people’s lives. Thus, it is an excellent marketing tool for fashion brands to grow their awareness and become viral.

Our agency can help you create your Official accounts on social media, run Paid Advertising Campaigns, Content creation, and so on.

So, if you want to know more about social media in China, do not hesitate to contact us. We offer a free consultation with one of our experts, that will advise you on the best social media marketing strategy for your brand.