Opportunities on Wechat for your international recruitment
Go abroad! These days, leaving to study at an overseas university has become a trending fashion among the middle-class families in China. UK Council for International Student Affairs (UKCISA) found that the number of Chinese students has exceeded 85,000, making them the largest group of international students in British universities. The tuition fees that the students pay have become increasingly important for these universities’ financial sustainability.
How to recruit more quality Chinese students is an issue that almost all universities are considering. Many universities (including Oxford, Cambridge, Newcastle, and City University, among others) have signed up for an official Weibo account in order to engage with current and prospective Chinese students. However, given the fact that WeChat is becoming the most popular social media platform in China, it seems that most British universities are not ready to engage in the new battlefield.
At the early stage of its development, WeChat was as simple as an instant messenger. However, with the platform constantly introducing new functions and updated versions, WeChat is a far more complicated social networking platform now. Users are now able to share photos (Moments), meet new people (People Nearby), and subscribe to official accounts signed up by businesses.
The opportunities
WeChat is a social media platform which has great potential for British universities’ Chinese student recruitment. Today, WeChat has more than 650 million monthly active users. In particular, research indicates that WeChat is probably the most important social media app that Chinese college students use on an everyday basis, as they also use it to remain in contact with their parents. This means the app is not only used by prospective students, but also by their parents who financially help the students.
Creating an official presence on WeChat thus enables a university to build its brand awareness among the family members of the prospective students. This is especially useful because, except for the very top universities like Oxford and Cambridge, the brand awareness that many British universities enjoy in the West does not exist in the Far East.
The challenges
Using WeChat to engage with Chinese audiences, however, also has challenges. Owing to Internet censorship in China, the Tencent Company, which launched WeChat, provides two portals for official accounts registration – an international portal and a domestic portal. The international portal allows overseas businesses outside the country to sign up for an official account by providing the company registration documents in their home country. Ironically, this kind of account cannot reach the audiences who live in Mainland China and therefore is of little value to British universities’ social media activity in the country. However, the domestic portal is only accessible to businesses that are officially registered in China. This policy creates a thorny issue for British universities.
To cope with this issue, one way is to use the university’s official presence in China. For instance, University of Arts London has a student recruitment office registered in China. The student recruitment office signed up for an account for the university and circulates campus news on behalf of the university. The most important advantage of this approach is instant recognition – key words like ‘university’ are allowed in the nickname of the official account. The official status of the account is fairly apparent to audiences and potential followers, making them more likely to subscribe to the account and trust the information that they see there.
Many universities also use an alternative approach, signing up an official account in the name of the universities’ Chinese student society or alumni group. For instance, Newcastle University has an account signed up by its Chinese student society, while LSE has one signed up by its Chinese alumni group. Both accounts are led by the students/alumni, and circulate news about the universities, helping raise their profile and engage students in China. The disadvantage of this strategy is that the word ‘university’ (in Chinese or in English) is not allowed in the nickname, which can have an adverse effect on the “official” status of an account. However, given the existing connection between students and a Chinese student society, this is still a possible strategy for British universities, especially those ones who do not have official presence or only have occasional collaborators, to engage followers in China.
Furthermore, apart from signing up for an official account, the features of WeChat also allow university staff to develop ongoing relationships with Chinese students. Different from Weibo, Chinese users mainly use WeChat to keep in touch with friends rather than subscribe to news. University staff may therefore sign up for their personal WeChat account and engage with Chinese followers as their friends. These personal accounts, alongside the official account, enable the university to communicate with Chinese followers.
It is undeniable that the Internet in China is still very much under control by the government and the censorship creates difficulties for foreign businesses. Nevertheless, we should also have no doubt that the opportunities that WeChat offers far exceed the challenges. It is an emerging battlefield in which British universities have to engage in order to recruit quality students in China.
Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any further queries or would like a hand to build your official presence in China.