How to Create a High Quality WeChat Article

In this post, I will teach you how to create a high-quality WeChat article, by showing you how we do it at my marketing agency.

But why should you listen to me?

My name is Tait Lawton, founder of Nanjing Marketing Group. These days, most of my online content is about Chinese cultural trends, but I still like to create these guides to provide you with practical marketing advice. 

My team and I have been using WeChat since the week it was created in 2011, and every month, we create entire novels of content for a range of clients, mostly service businesses and schools.

Usually, we help companies enter the Chinese market, and one such company is Genie.

We took over Genie’s, an American manufacturer of lifts and platforms used in construction, maintenance, warehouse stocking, and equipment installation, existing WeChat account in 2023.

This gave us a chance to compare the original results with the results of the WeChat articles we created:

• 40% more views
• 60% more likes
• 180% more likes (in some cases)

Our bar for quality is very high, and the articles we create must meet these five criteria:

1. Be useful to the reader.
2. Be easy to absorb.
3. Follow Chinese advertising law or the whole WeChat account could be shut down.
4. Fit the global brand of the business.
5. Finally, some articles are designed to spur readers into action, such as meeting with a sales representative or making a purchase.

By the end of this post, you should know if you want to write WeChat articles and understand how to do it yourself (or hire someone to do it). 

Whatever your level, I will make it understandable for everybody, even if you aren’t a marketing pro.

To begin, I’ll explain the team, and then the process.

If you prefer things in video format, you can find the same information on YouTube.

The Team

A great WeChat article creation team should have at least these two people: A writer and a manager.

Let’s talk about the writer first.

It’s not unusual to see companies underestimating the time and skill that goes into crafting great WeChat articles. 

The writer on your team should not be just anyone. 

Just because Tim from your engineering department speaks fluent Chinese doesn’t mean he’s the right person for the job. Tim already has full-time work responsibilities, so he might have no time to write; furthermore, he may have no interest in the subject matter or no knack for writing.

I mean somebody who is a strong writer and communicator. 

These are the actual criteria we use for job postings:

• Minimum of three years of relevant work experience.
• A bachelor’s degree or higher; the specific major is flexible.
• Preferred experience in education or service industries similar to our clients, with the ability to provide examples.
• Excellent writing skills, capable of independently crafting content for marketing purposes.
• Strong market insight and a unique perspective with familiarity with new media communication.
• Proficient in design, including image creation for articles, web page layouts, and thumbnail design, with the ability to adhere to brand guidelines to produce visually appealing content.
• Effective written English communication skills and a good command of conversational English.
• Strong comprehension, team collaboration, and a sense of responsibility in work.
• Demonstrated learning agility, with a keen interest in adopting new concepts and continually expanding knowledge and skills relevant to the role.

All of the above are the pre-requisite requirements for a new starter. From here, they get the hands-on experience with us that will (hopefully) see them develop into a competent article writer.

Hiring somebody with less experience is a whole other path because they must be trained,

For every 100 applications, we will do between four and six interviews and hire one (or no) writer.

(Plus, now that I have nearly 100,000 followers in China interested in cross-cultural communication, I can attract great quality applicants that would be hard to find via regular job sites.)

For this specific article, the author’s name is Ivy.

She meets the above criteria, and also has the following:

• Study abroad experience in an English-speaking country. She received a master’s degree in media and public relations from the University of Leicester in England.
• Work experience in tourism, e-commerce, and journalism, including writing for Nanjing Daily.
• Photography experience (hobby).

Next up, you will need a manager.

These people go by the names “marketing manager” or “director of marketing, APAC”. 

In small businesses, they might even be the founders, but whatever their title, they are the project leaders and have expertise in their business, customers, and services.

An example of a great manager is our contact on this project, Grace.

A manager like Grace works with external vendors like us and people working in Genie to set targets and get results.

You’ll know what I’m talking about if you’ve worked in a large organization before; but, if you haven’t, you just need to appreciate two things:

1. There are multiple different departments involved, each with different needs.
2. Even if we do much of their Chinese marketing, a marketing agency like mine is just one piece for her to manage. 

For us, these two people are part of a broader team.

There will surely be an editor involved, as well as

• a search marketer, 
• video creators, 
• account managers, 
• SEO, 
• other writers, and
• developers, etc.

These are outside the scope of this post, but just keep in mind that WeChat articles are part of an overall marketing strategy involving multiple channels.

The Process

Now that the team is in place, it’s time to discuss the WeChat article creation process.

We live by a motto in Nanjing Marketing Group: 探索，创新，发现, or “Explore, Create, Discover, “ and this process repeats with every two-week sprint.

Let’s discuss Explore first. 

Explore

Before any content is created, the manager and writer put a plan in place, which is the very beginning of exploration for a new project.

Even if we’re just starting the project, these two people include everything they currently know in this condensed plan (in Google Doc format). 

This is just marketing 101, but believe me, teams will mess this up. 

Everybody in marketing needs to understand these basic facts:

• What the offer is.
• What the goal is.
• Who we’re targeting.
• Who the competition is.
• How to position the brand.
• The restraints in budget and time.

Sometimes this is done as a content calendar with content for the next three months laid out.

Personally, I prefer to create many ideas but avoid specific dates for when each one will be pursued, which allows us to be more flexible in adapting to customer feedback and trends.

Create

To help explain this phase, let’s analyze one article – 夏养三伏，您的吉尼高空作业设备该如何保养？ In English, the title is “Summer Maintenance During the Hottest Days: How Should You Maintain Your Genie Aerial Work Equipment?”

Ivy, the writer, prepared this article in August 2023, which is traditionally known as the “三伏” (sānfú) period in China, basically the dog days of summer.

This wasn’t her first article for Genie, so she also has existing knowledge in her brain to use. Plus, she talked to somebody at Genie to gather relevant information.

Ivy’s Create process followed these five steps:

1. Select an interesting topic. When it gets hot in China, heat is on everybody’s mind. The article could be both practical and emotionally appealing.
2. Search on platforms like Baidu, WeChat, and Little Red Book for common concerns and problems that equipment might face in high temperatures. 
3. Plan the article’s main parts: The intro, maintenance pain points, and summary
4. Write the article. I can’t give point-by-point advice on how to write; however, the finished article went according to her plan in this case.
5. Create the images (more on that soon).

The article flowed from one step to the next.

The intro naturally leads to the idea that equipment, like people, needs “heat prevention and cooling” and careful maintenance in high-temperature weather.

Then the bulk of the article was about the maintenance pain points, such as inadequate protection leading to mechanical failures resulting in decreased rental rates and high repair costs. 

For each of those points, there are steps for equipment maintenance. Plus, there are photos of Genie engineers inspecting equipment, making it easier to comprehend.

In the final summary paragraph, Grace finished with the important reminder that Genie offers comprehensive maintenance services, giving users peace of mind.

How are the images created?

Based on the client’s materials and design guidelines, we create or adapt images for the WeChat article cover and inside the article.

For that, we use software like Photoshop, Chuangkit, Canva, and occasionally the AI tool Midjourney (many tools now integrate AI features, which means we have to adapt). 

In the example below, the small engineer figure and the aerial work platform illustration in the bottom left screenshot are materials provided by Genie.

We drew the moon and mobile phone-style images in the right picture.

After the article is created, it is reviewed (usually in Google Docs). 

Multiple people may be involved in the review, including one or two from our side and one from the client.

But, as I’ve already mentioned, we only really need two people, so the manager (or person leading the project) could engage in the review to check the content.

During the review stage, we’ll often have a manager use this as a training opportunity for the new writer.

When it’s edited and approved, we publish it and often choose to release the articles at the same time and day each week.

How long does this take?

From initial creation to revisions, layout, and final publication, the process usually takes about 8 to 10 hours. 

For new projects we’ve just taken on, this can stretch to 10 to 15 hours, as we need more time to understand the client’s products, services, and unique advantages.

So, that’s how to plan, create, and review one article. Let me sum it up:

• Choose a topic that is interesting to the target readers.
• Craft a title that is attractive but also searchable.
• Plan the main points of the article.
• Write.
• Create/edit images.
• Review.
• Publish.

Finally, we enter the Discover phase. 

Discover

It’s essential to do the final step in our circular “Explore, Create, Discover” process regularly because that is what drives iterative improvement.

First, we’ll check how the article is doing one day after being published. If the open rate is weak, we may change the title to help improve it.

Second, at the end of each month, we’ll review the overall marketing for the campaign, including WeChat articles and other pieces of content.

We examine the article’s open rate, readthrough rates, user comments, and whether the article inspired readers to take action.

We make sure to share the relevant data with everybody involved. If it’s just the writer and manager, the writer needs to convey the market feedback to the writer.

After we’ve reviewed everything, we go right back into the beginning and start again with the Explore phase of the cycle. 

The “Explore, Create, Discover” continuously repeats, and with each month and article, we improve the process, and your business should start seeing positive results:

• More leads
• Overall increase in the number of followers
• Increase in sales 
• Improved sales process
• Easier business 

Contact Us

Engaging, professionally crafted WeChat articles are an indispensable asset for wowing your current customers and impressing new ones.

Unfortunately, many companies don’t capitalize on the opportunity and are missing established methods for creating the content themselves or finding capable writers to do it for them. 

If you want more information on how to create WeChat articles, or you want to employ a team with 12+ years of experience writing engaging content, arrange a free consultation with us here to discuss the options available to you and your business.

For more information on WeChat and Chinese marketing in general, there’s our China Digital Marketing 101 page.