Of all the challenges of running a WeChat account, one is particularly difficult to overcome: creating great WeChat content. It is a costly and time consuming process, especially for young or small companies.
But a new rule from Tencent just changed everything. Read on…
Why is WeChat content so hard?
There are two reasons why WeChat content is hard.
First of all, WeChat content is limited in terms of amount you can send (once per day for subscription accounts, and as little as 4 piece per month for service accounts) which make it much harder to generate growth at the same pace you would with Twitter of Facebook.
Marketers from abroad are also familiar with a convenient way to manage social medias: re-sharing content from other accounts. This leads to an endless amount of great content you can send without having to invest much of your time.
There is however a solution to this last issue: copy content from other accounts.
Is copying content legal?
It is of course not a good idea to steal content from other accounts as a way to build a sustainable WeChat account (you might get deleted).
However, some accounts explicitly encourage other WeChat account managers to copy their content while quoting the source. This is a way for accounts to extend their reach without having to invest.
Some platforms such as newrank.cn have been existing for already a few months enabling public accounts to clearly state that they allow other accounts to “re-share” their content. The platform also provides a clear format as to how the “re-sharer” must quote the original writers of the content. Newrank.cn has 228 accounts it is collaborating with, and you have to join their community to be allowed to re-share.
But the pool of accounts you are able to re-share from is just about to get much much bigger…
How Tencent made it all simpler
Last week, Tencent released a new feature enabling all accounts having apply for “copyright protection” (原创保护) to explicitly state whether or not they allow third-parties to repost their content. This is a more automated and official way of doing exactly the same thing newrank.cn was doing.
You can tell if accounts have “copyright protection” by looking at the line of the very top of the account. If the little “原创” circled icon is here, you are good to go!
Here is the process:
1. When accounts create content, they can pick whether or not they allow their WeChat content to be re-shared
2. If the content is “sharable” and someone else tries to copy-paste its content on their own WeChat public account, WeChat will automatically detect the content already exists and will notify the WeChat Public Account manager that a link to the original content will be inserted (note: this notification appears just as you are about to send out the message to your followers)
3. A link to the original account will automatically be added at the bottom of the “re-shared” (in fact copy-pasted) article
And Voila! You just shared high-quality content, without having to spend time creating it, and in complete fairness to the original content creator!
Conclusion
This rule is game-changing for anyone managing WeChat accounts. It will now be much harder for people to steal content, and much easier for people to share content without infringing on copyright. A bright new future for an easier healthier content production community on WeChat!