The key questions of American real estate agents are: how to find qualified Chinese buyers? How can I market myself to these foreign buyers? How to interact with these Chinese buyers who live twelve to fifteen hours away from the US? The following article will attempt to answer these questions.
WeChat (Weixin or “微信”), the most established social media channel in China is the answer to all of these questions. WeChat is being used by 700 million of Chinese every month and is growing fast.
Facebook, a commonly used platform in the US, is not allowed to operate in China. Twitter is facing the same restrictions and, as a result, Chinese companies have launched their own “Facebook” and “Twitter” type social media platforms several years ago to fill in this gap. Many of these Chinese social media channels offer pretty much the same functionalities as Facebook and Twitter offer but of course in the Chinese language. Of all these Chinese born social media platforms, WeChat has become the number one social media platform in China with 700 million active users per month. WeChat is an app that runs on your mobile device and can be simply summarized as a Facebook and Twitter combined into one app.
It is important for US agents to understand the importance of WeChat and how to take advantage of it. Based on a report published by Tencent Penguin Intelligence and China Academy of Information and Communications Technology in March 2016, the following are the key findings relevant to US real estate agents.
WeChat offers the following functionalities:
The implication is that WeChat users can simply message each other and users often conduct long conversations via WeChat. As the WeChat app also allows calling other WeChat users, many Chinese use it as an alternative to using their normal mobile phone line.
The good news for US agents is that by having WeChat installed on your phone, you can call your clients via this WeChat tool as well and it will be free. There are no international roaming charges as you call within the WeChat framework. This is a very important advantage for US agents. Of course, you can simply send messages and the client will respond when they have time – from this perspective, it works similar to sending SMS messages.
The implication, again, is that WeChat is a powerful social media tool in China. The app on your phone simply allows many functionalities that any user is using in his or her daily life.
The implication for US agents is that it is useful to become active on this Wechat tool, or engage someone to run your WeChat account for you. By posting regularly on your WeChat wall (“Moments”), you are very well getting exposure to the Chinese buyers.
58% of WeChat users are browsing and posting on their walls (as “Moments”) on daily base. 53% are using it to share information and 49% are using it for reading content.
These are good numbers to know for a US Agent who is looking to find house buyers from China. The fact that a large number of Wechat users are looking and sharing for information on Wechat every day allows each US agent to become part of this community by sharing information about their city and their listings.
As Wechat has more than 700 million active users per month, it is expected indeed that many users have a significant number of WeChat user with whom they communicate regularly. Based on a recent promotion that Eastwestproperty.com ran in early July, more than 10,000 people viewed our promotion within 12 hours after posting. This is due to the fact that many WeChat users would send the survey to their friends who continue to send it along and this creates a chain of people looking at the promotion.
The same is true for listings that an Agent would like to promote. If you like to promote your listing within China, then WeChat could help. You could post your listing on your own WeChat wall of course but you could also circulate it to all your WeChat friends and others to maximize exposure of your listing. And the good news, 51% of WeChat users have indicated that pictures are the number one type of content that they like to see on their wall! This is a perfect reason for American Agents who have listings to get on WeChat and start posting their listings.
More Wechat users read news on social media than TV and newspaper combined. The implication for the US real estate agent is insightful and a game changer. Gone are the days of paying for expensive advertising on TV, websites or newspapers in China – it simply is not worth the money that you are spending. Creating a WeChat account to target Chinese buyers of US houses would be much more cost-effective than most other channels.
Many American real estate agents have understood the importance of WeChat. However, the vast majority of Agents do not know how relevant it actually is for their real estate business.
WeChat is the most important social media channel in China. Every single Chinese buyer that has been reaching out to us is using WeChat. Eastwestproperty.com is very active on it by posting relevant articles about the US real estate market. Furthermore, American real estate agents should consider opening their account and becoming active – besides posting on Facebook and Twitter for the local American clients.
Source: Originally published on Inman on Dec 14 2016
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