Expanding your institution into China does not need to be difficult. We assist our clients in building a respectable presence in the Chinese market by offering a number of services, including the construction of an attractive landing page hosted in China, the creation of a mobile friendly WeChat website, the designing and printing of marketing materials, and the translation of English content to cater to the tastes of Chinese audiences. Due to our use of local servers, our domains are easily accessible to Chinese users. Our design package is the easiest way for you to make your first step into China.

Bilibili

Bilibili is a mature platform for educational content, with over 20 million users focused on tutorials and educational content, and over 500 universities in China using the platform for sharing online courses. To help students during the pandemic, BiliBili released “Studying From Home” in early 2020 in partnership with China Education Television and several schools and universities. Interesting use cases include “demo” classes from well known professors, cross-posting, and video ad campaigns.

Sunrise offers several Bilibili account management services, including registration and verification, account design, and filming and localizing videos.

Douyin

Douyin is often compared to its sister company, TikTok, which is also owned by ByteDance. It is enormously popular in China, with 600 million daily active users, with 53% under the age of 30 and the majority located in first and second-tier cities, offering ample opportunities for marketing and recruitment. As Douyin quickly grew to prominence since 2017, few universities maintain an official presence, conferring a “first mover” advantage to those that do.

In addition to creating and operating an account, universities should also consider targeted advertisements, as Douyin’s advertising tends to be low cost and high yield.

WeChat

Although it is a new entry into the short video form social media scene, WeChat, with its 1.2 billion users, could open video streaming to an enormous market. WeChat has traditionally functioned as an instant messaging app, hosting up to 500 people in each group, with additional audio and video call functionality with as many as nine people at once. Its Moments section functions more like a social networking platform like Facebook or Instagram: users can share photos, sub-one minute videos, and links. Like on Instagram, users can add hashtags to define topics and improve discoverability, and WeChat friends can comment and react to the posts.

A WeChat official account is many things in one. An info page on China’s largest social network. A home for information and updates about you, equally important as your website. A channel for users to ask you questions easily. A vehicle for your colleagues and partners to easily share content about you on Chinese social media. The voice of the university in China.

Kuaishou

Similar to Douyin, 80% of Kuaishou’s users were born after 1990, and as of early 2020, it has 305 million daily active users, who spend an average of 86 minutes on the app. However, as opposed to other platforms where recorded videos dominate, half of Kuaishou’s content is livestreaming, Users are more likely to watch a livestream, so it is an effective way to amass a following and interact with students directly. Streamers can also guide the audience to join their universities’ private WeChat groups, which offer additional exposure. 

Kuaishou is a new recruitment channel for universities, but the popularity of content related to studying abroad suggests that universities can still reach a substantial market through the platform. Vlogs posted by Chinese international students often amass thousands of likes and substantial engagement. Universities can post student-led tours or videos that showcase a day in the life of an international student to capture this market.