Zeng Qiao: 7 Key Points for Marketing in WeChat Ecosystem in 2025

This article, written by Zeng Qiao, founder and CEO of Morketing Group, deeply analyzes the seven key points of marketing in the WeChat ecosystem. Combining the author's many years of creative experience in the WeChat ecosystem, the article explores the user reading habits, content creation strategies and new directions of brand marketing of public accounts and video accounts, aiming to provide guidance and inspiration for brand marketing activities in the WeChat ecosystem.

Is anyone still reading the official account?

Are long text and graphic expressions outdated?

Are there any benefits for joining the video account?

Is the user quality good enough? …

As a creator who has been deeply involved in the WeChat ecosystem for more than 10 years, I am constantly concerned about these issues every day. The answer is obvious: Under the Morketing Group IP matrix, we have released several hits with sales of more than 100,000 this year, as well as more small hits with sales of more than 30,000...

As a senior institutional creator, we have seen the new dividends of video accounts, but we are still in the exploratory stage, and "how to make it popular" is still a core issue. Relatively speaking, the quality of video account users is relatively high, and the challenge for creators is that they must continue to provide and contribute higher-quality content to readers.

As a person who has been deeply involved in the marketing industry for many years, I often hear soul-searching questions from many brands: "What new development direction does the official account have?" "Video accounts seem to be on the rise, but are there still early dividends? How to do it?"

Combining my personal observations with what I heard and felt at the Tencent 2024 Talent Marketing Summit, I have some answers.

In essence, at present, the upper limit of a brand's marketing development is determined by two things: 1. The efficiency of marketing distribution, that is, the speed and accuracy with which you distribute information to the audience, that is, "people"; 2. The quality of the content, including matching, richness, user payment level, etc., that is, the key is "content".

Based on these two points, how are the “people” in the WeChat ecosystem? How to create “content”?

1. People: As users continue to read and develop habits, experts are accelerating their layout

The key to judging whether an ecology is developing in a benign and healthy way lies in "people".

How long do people spend in the ecosystem every day? What content do they browse? How do accounts interact with each other? ... These questions directly reflect the user stickiness and vitality of the ecosystem, and also directly reflect the commercialization potential of the network ecosystem. In other words, whether it is a qualified soil for brand marketing.

About 12 years ago, when the WeChat ecosystem was just emerging, WeChat public accounts were almost the most critical online platform for mobile phone users to read long articles and absorb new information every day. 12 years have passed, and people's reading habits on WeChat public accounts have become deeply rooted.

This year, I had discussions with many friends in the industry on the question of "Does anyone still read public accounts?" I found that not only do people regard public accounts as the core channel for obtaining daily information, but interestingly, they have all quietly developed similar public account usage habits - such as reading the top starred public accounts and browsing the industry news of the day before going to bed; when reading in-depth long articles on the marketing industry, they first save the articles and then forward them to the company group; use WeChat search as a "work" search engine to screen high-value content...

Judging from the market data provided by Tencent Advertising, in terms of official accounts, "users' reading volume remains unchanged and their enthusiasm for creation remains unchanged." Both the average daily reading volume of users' official accounts and the average monthly number of posts by creators have increased significantly month-on-month from January to September this year. In terms of video accounts, "users' habits are gradually forming and experts are entering the market at an accelerated pace." The data on both the user side and the expert side also achieved a significant month-on-month increase from January to September this year.

So, how do we understand these sets of data released by Tencent Advertising?

First of all, after the continuous increase in video accounts and multiple upgrades of official accounts, in 2024, from the perspective of "people", experts and users, that is, content creators and recipients, are still pouring into the WeChat content ecosystem.

Secondly, the interaction paths between users and experts in the ecosystem are very smooth - with a WeChat ID as the center, users can satisfy their curiosity and desire to explore the "big world" through the top public domain accounts; they can also share their favorite content with any friends or any circle of acquaintances in their own "small world", or receive content preferences from others.

In professional terms, relying on the accumulation of more than ten years of graphic and text self-media, and the media dividend of video accounts, the dual account settings of content accounts + video accounts have broken through the communication barriers between the public and private domains. In the WeChat ecosystem, group chats among acquaintances, interest circles, friends of friends, business partners...all may develop a content dissemination path. As a result, "people" continue to broaden their horizons, and good content continues to be seen by the "right people".

Finally, let’s take a look at the user portrait of the WeChat ecosystem.

On the official account side, Growth Black Box's "2024 WeChat Content Seeding Trend Insight Report" pointed out two surprising data:

The first is that "93% of users have maintained or increased their usage time in the past year." This shows that young people not only read public accounts, but also love to read them more and more. Of course, this has a lot to do with WeChat's continuous update of the public account recommendation mechanism in the past year.

Another is that "28% of users read almost every work". This figure is completely contrary to our stereotype that contemporary netizens "have no patience to read text content". As many as 28% of users read every graphic work, which shows that in the WeChat ecosystem, users' willingness and ability to actively read and actively obtain information are very optimistic.

At the same time, on the video account side, 48% of the people have increased their usage time of video accounts in the past year. More specifically, 52% of high-income people have increased their usage time.

In terms of influencers, the new video account "Laoyang Kitchen" launched in July this year has gained more than 400,000 followers per month. At the same time, top, middle and bottom influencers are constantly pouring in and gaining followers rapidly. These data provide the answer to our initial question - video accounts still have huge and certain dividends.

Tencent Advertising named the public account users, who are mainly aged 18-29, "Enterprising New Youth", and these people also represent the basic base of "people" in the dual-account ecosystem. At the same time, the deep users of the video account are called "the new crowd space", which is the "people" engine that drives the entire WeChat content ecosystem forward. Under the dual effects of the basic base + engine, we can see that this fertile land of online content born 12 years ago is redeveloping and growing.

2. Content: Return to “value” and “emotional resonance”

In recent years, the marketing industry has become increasingly competitive and difficult, and discussions about the "traffic dilemma" are endless. But as mentioned at the beginning, the "content" largely determines the marketing ceiling of a brand.

The chaos in the industry is essentially due to the serious decline in the value of brand content. I summarize the reasons as follows:

First, judging the quality of content has changed from an emotional standard to a rational standard, and the quality of content has become lower and lower. As a result, the content produced by brands can only please algorithms instead of users. In some extreme cases, in order to pursue the KPI of completion rate, brands choose to compress the video length to less than 3 seconds. In this case, how can the quality of content be guaranteed?

Second, in the long run, the influence of popular content on consumers’ minds is very low. This is because when content is fragmented, consumers’ brand awareness will inevitably become shallower and more fragmented, and brand power and user loyalty cannot be formed.

In the first half of this year, we launched a survey among young people from all walks of life, asking them to write down their favorite brands. Among the top 50 brands, almost all are well-known national brands. Surprisingly, some traffic brands with fierce marketing offensives and fancy content in recent years did not make the list.

Third, the current consumer industry pursues "emotional value". Whether in terms of output information or form, as long as the brand cannot make consumers feel more emotional value, it is difficult to call it a good content. Jiang Nanchun once shared with me that "China's manufacturing capacity is too strong, and consumers pursue spiritual pleasure more than material functions." This suggests that the competitive focus of brand communication should become providing consumers with more sufficient emotional value from the content level.

So, let’s take a look at how the content in the WeChat ecosystem is doing.

Judging from the current market performance, official accounts are known for their in-depth content, while video accounts excel in interest-based communication as their core content capability.

Amid the bad news of "no one reads public accounts anymore" in the past two years, Tencent Advertising data shows that compared with 2023, the number of top (million-level) authors, average reading volume, and total reading volume of public accounts have all achieved rapid growth in 2024. I believe that the underlying reason lies in the unique communication model of public accounts: the early model of public accounts to increase fans was mainly "user active search + attention + friend sharing". Later, with the addition of more interactive models such as public domain traffic recommendations, "friends are reading", and "friends like", today's public accounts have gradually formed. Therefore, to a large extent, users actively read and authors pursue "content power", which is engraved in the genes of public account products.

For such a huge user base, this content-first recommendation mechanism is very rare. This also means that after 12 years of operation, users have a very high degree of trust in the content of the official account and a high depth of reading. The survey data of Growth Black Box proves this: "43% of users can remember the main content of most of the official account works they have read." VOGUE, Visual Magazine, Yitiao... These official accounts that have been in operation since the earliest days have now become millions of accounts and have even formed their own "content brand power." Of course, including us Morketing, which has been developing for 10 years and has continued to cultivate high-quality original content, it has also reaped the value of "content brand power." Therefore, to a large extent, for brands, official accounts are a valuable springboard to supplement content power.

However, video accounts have a completely different style, which is lively, interesting, and life-like. Video accounts contain a lot of food, travel, life records, news, knowledge, social culture, and other content with greater information increments. Growth Black Box observed that on video accounts, 61% of people liked "high-quality" content, 53% liked content that reflected their personal "values", and 51% took the initiative to share "emotionally resonant" content - this shows that due to the "strong social attributes", video accounts naturally form an active dissemination field that pursues good content, which helps to polish and disseminate good content.

"Let everyone's content have better accumulation and operation, and work together to maintain lasting vitality." said Bu Yuqing, head of Tencent Advertising Mutual Selection Platform Operations. It can be seen that the official has given enough space for the growth and accumulation of good content; and this is a rare opportunity for brands to reshape content.

3. Why is the “double number” ecosystem a blue ocean for brands?

The Lingmou Awards has just been held. During the industry exchanges, I found that more and more brands are creating content through the WeChat social ecosystem this year to re-establish their competitive advantages. Whether it is the top mature brands or white-label brands, they have all poured into the WeChat content ecosystem this year. Tencent Advertising shows that the number of business orders for video accounts has increased by 363% year-on-year.

Every historical innovation in brand marketing is essentially an innovation in communication content. For example, the rise of new media represented by WeChat public accounts 12 years ago, and the popularity of short videos 6 years ago. Every iteration of content format has brought about an iteration of brand marketing.

Nowadays, how has the content ecosystem based on WeChat official accounts and video accounts updated the marketing logic?

From the perspective of marketing content, content with opinions, word-of-mouth, and personality is good content that can truly empower brand marketing. In the dual-account ecosystem, the official account provides authoritative "slow content"; the video account provides more "emotional value" with a persona close to life. At the Tencent Talent Marketing Summit, Yitiao founding partner Fan Zhixing said, "The video account video embedded in the official account text is the most formal and solemn communication scenario on the entire social terminal."

Take the video account @一道 for example, the average number of views of the last 10 business orders has reached 900,000+. In the dual-account ecosystem, there are many experts similar to @一道, who operate the public account + video account simultaneously, making the persona more complete and the content more valuable.

From the perspective of communication, from the public domain to the private domain, the entire WeChat content ecosystem has formed a "communication field" with complete links. As mentioned earlier, the dissemination of information from influencers and users has become more multi-threaded. For brands, this is even more important - first, it has a key opportunity for "acquaintance marketing", which can help brands find a breakthrough point, especially at a time when branding is difficult to establish and consumers pay for circle influence; second, the coordination of public and private domains has always been a difficult point in digital marketing. Few brands can do a good job of operating in the entire domain. Now, with the support of good content, the link from dual accounts to corporate WeChat has helped brands solve a major problem of long-term in-depth operation.

I followed a mother and baby blogger @阿水和小鱼, whose short videos recording life can easily be forwarded more than 10,000 times, and the interaction rate of nearly ten videos is as high as 2.5%+. Behind these good data are actually two links: acquaintance social networking + public domain promotion, which help the content reach more suitable audiences in the same circle.

Finally, from the perspective of the entire "content ecosystem", WeChat has achieved verticality and transparency as much as possible. As a content creator, I think the "verticality" is extremely important, a point that has been ignored by many platforms in the past, because it can determine the life and death of the account and the vitality of the entire platform content in the long run. Under the logic of private domains, public accounts and video accounts have achieved very vertical audiences and content, which is a good thing for both influencers and users in the ecosystem.

In addition, both the video account and the official account have a mutual selection function, which uses content as a link to directly promote cooperation, which is truly content-first and ensures that high-quality content is seen by more people who need it. As Li Zhenglin, a mutual selection creator of the video account, said, "Brands will choose us, and we also have choices for brands. Only when the tones match can we collide with content that is recognized by the public."

4. 7 key points to leverage WeChat content ecosystem

Finally, how do we do marketing in the WeChat ecosystem?

I suggest that brands focus on the following 7 key points:

First, “dual number linkage” takes into account both authority and entertainment.

In recent years, we have been talking about "combining brand and effect". Interestingly, the official account + video account is naturally like a combination of brand and effect (the former is more inclined to brand advertising, and the latter is more inclined to effect conversion). In the future WeChat content ecosystem, the linkage of two accounts is a necessary step for brands to accumulate content and disseminate content, and it can also help brands realize different advertising needs more quickly.

Second, we should strengthen the content linkage capability between public and private domains, weaken the sense of advertising, and focus on conversion of marketing among acquaintances.

As Growth Black Box data points out, "more than 60% of people will continue to watch content because of likes or shares from their friends." It is recommended that brands design a complete acquaintance marketing + conversion path from the public domain to the private domain.

Third, use content as a yardstick to conduct mutual selection and screening.

Tencent Advertising pointed out that the number of commercial content with 100,000 likes has tripled, while the CPM of commercial content has dropped by 44% year-on-year. This is largely due to the two-way selection between "good content" and "good brand", which maximizes the work results. Therefore, when brands do content marketing in the WeChat ecosystem, they should select suitable content and influencers through dimensions such as account groups, tags, core content, and list selection.

Fourth, pay attention to the content value needs of all age groups, and tilt video accounts and official accounts toward the core groups accordingly.

As mentioned above, the core groups of public accounts and video accounts are users aged 18-29. However, considering the specific circumstances of the industry, account, and brand, for example, in some fields, young users of public accounts may have higher stickiness, and young and middle-aged user groups of video accounts may be more loyal. When creating commercial content, certain segmentation can be made between accounts.

Fifth, make good use of WeChat’s crowd assets.

Because the communication links of the WeChat ecosystem are very complex and there is a lot of room for play, brands need to deeply explore the social functions of WeChat, reach a wide range of people through fancy communication links, and finally accumulate brand crowd assets. You can also make good use of digital marketing tools such as Ruyi to select numbers before investment and track and review after investment to improve the conversion ability of the crowd.

Sixth, channel integration within and outside the WeChat ecosystem.

The dual accounts and WeChat ecosystems, such as search, mini-programs, live broadcasts, Moments, and overseas e-commerce, have all been connected. Brands can start from the content that users watch and the jump path after watching, to achieve multi-channel resource integration and user reach.

Seventh, pay attention to the power of the entire ecosystem rather than a single information carrier. Channels may be abandoned by consumers, but good content will never be.

From 12 years ago to now, WeChat official accounts have completed the first phase of very deep content accumulation, which is the cornerstone of the ecosystem. The completion of various content capabilities such as video accounts, search, and Moments, and the comprehensive reach of simulated acquaintance social links, have further completed the content ecosystem of WeChat. In the past, brands lost their voice in some single channels and made the content narrower and narrower; now in the content ecosystem of WeChat, brands must adhere to the concept of content first, let the value of content return, and let good content lead the brand to the right consumers.

Author: Zeng Qiao This article is written by the operator [Morketing], WeChat public account: [Morketing], original/authorized to be published on Operation Party, any reproduction without permission is prohibited.

The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol.