How to Manage a WeChat Official Account

WeChat Official Account management is the daily running of a brand’s account: publishing within the notification limits, answering followers within 48 hours of their messages, setting auto replies and menus, growing the audience and keeping verification up to date. It is done on the WeChat Official Accounts Platform or in Tencent’s Official Accounts Assistant app.

Key takeaways

• Know your limit: a subscription account can notify its followers once a day, a service account four times per calendar month.
• Reply to follower messages within 48 hours, and save important conversations, because messages are deleted after 30 days.
• Set a welcome message and keyword replies, and use the menu to lead followers to your website, store or Mini Program.
• Grow the audience with QR codes, Mini Programs, advertising and KOLs, and measure what works.
• Renew WeChat verification every year: without it, a service account loses payments and other advanced interfaces.

Which WeChat Official Account do you manage?

Management depends on the account type. The WeChat Official Accounts Platform offers a subscription account, now labeled 公众号 (Official Account) in Chinese, and a service account (服务号). WeCom (企业微信), formerly the Enterprise Account, is a separate tool for internal communication. For daily management, the main difference is how often you can notify followers: once a day with a subscription account, four times per calendar month with a service account.

To compare the two types in detail, read our guide on the WeChat subscription account vs service account. A foreign company without a Chinese entity can only register a service account, and our guide to WeChat Official Accounts for overseas businesses explains its options. If you would rather delegate the daily work, a WeChat agency that builds for foreign brands can run the account with you.

Where do you manage a WeChat Official Account?

• The web platform. Log in to the WeChat Official Accounts Platform with the account’s email and password, or scan the login QR code with WeChat and choose the account. If the same WeChat user manages several accounts, the login screen lets you pick one and switch to another.
• The mobile app. The Official Accounts Assistant (公众号助手) is Tencent’s official app to publish, interact with followers and manage the account from a phone.
• The developer settings. When the account is connected to your own server, the server address that receives follower messages is set in the WeChat Developer Platform, under My Business, Official Account, Development Information.

How do you publish on a WeChat Official Account?

A post can be an article, an image or text, audio or video. When you publish it, you choose whether to send a group notification (群发通知):

• With the notification, followers see the update in the Official Accounts or Service Accounts section of WeChat, and in their conversation with the account.
• Without it, followers receive no alert, but the post still appears on the account’s profile page.

Group notifications are limited to one per day for a subscription account and four per calendar month for a service account, whether the account is verified or not, and unused notifications do not carry over. A title can take up to 64 bytes, about 32 Chinese characters, and a text message up to 1,000 characters (Tencent rules for group messages).

Plan your notifications around your key moments: launches, promotions, events. Well-planned messages move customers to action, and interesting ones get shared by your followers, which brings even more traffic to your business.

How do you answer your followers?

The 48-hour rule

An account must reply to a follower’s message within 48 hours. After 48 hours without a reply, it can no longer send a message to that follower, until the follower writes again (Tencent customer service).

Messages that followers send to the account are kept for 30 days, then deleted. Star the important ones in the platform to keep them.

Welcome messages and auto replies

The welcome message is often overlooked, yet it gives followers their first impression of your brand. Use it to make them feel welcome and to introduce your other services, for example with a link to your WeChat Mini Program.

Auto replies give followers a quick answer and add a little automation to your customer care: a keyword reply can answer the questions you receive most often. If your account is connected to your own server, WeChat forwards each follower message to that server, which has five seconds to reply with text, an image, an article, voice, video or music. Otherwise, the server should answer later through the customer service API (passive reply documentation).

Customer care

Efficient customer care is a critical part of your business. WeChat keeps you close to your users: collect feedback, provide after-sales assistance, reply to inquiries, or deliver messages crafted for specific followers. From there, lead them to other parts of your business, such as your website, your store or your Mini Program.

How do you grow and engage your audience?

WeChat offers a wide range of tools to promote your business in China, and each one can contribute to your marketing strategy. For more tactics, read our 9 ways to gain followers on your WeChat Official Account.

Mini Programs

Mini Programs work like applications, but users open them inside WeChat without downloading anything. A Mini Program can support a native app or stand alone. Through it, you can close a sale or engage your audience with coupons, vouchers, special promotions and games. If you do not have one yet, you can have your WeChat Mini Program developed and link it to your account.

QR codes

QR codes never became a habit in many Western countries, but Chinese users scan them every day. Add your account’s QR code to your products, packaging and marketing materials, and give people a reason to scan it with a promotion, a discount or another offer.

WeChat advertising

Advertising reaches people who do not follow you yet. Through Tencent Advertising, ads can appear in WeChat Moments, in Official Accounts and Mini Programs, in WeChat Channels and in WeChat Search (Tencent Marketing API placements). Campaigns can target an audience by age, gender and location. Our guide to grow WeChat followers with Tencent Ads details the setup.

Membership cards

WeChat membership cards turn followers into members. Use them to run loyalty programs, personalize your marketing content and retain customers.

WeChat KOLs (key opinion leaders)

KOLs are what we usually call influencers. WeChat key opinion leaders have many followers who trust their opinion and look to them for advice. They promote products or services for a fee, and the results depend on how well their audience matches your target.

How do you keep the account verified and secure?

• Renew WeChat verification every year. If the annual review expires or fails, the account loses its verified mark, a subscription account can no longer add external links to its custom menu, and a service account loses payments, authorization and other advanced interfaces (what an expired verification changes).
• Keep the administrator up to date. Logins and sensitive operations, such as a migration, are confirmed with the administrator’s WeChat.
• Plan ownership changes. An account cannot change its entity directly: moving it to another company goes through the WeChat Official Account transfer process.

What should you do next?

Start with the basics: a welcome message, keyword replies for your frequent questions, a menu that leads to your key pages, and a publishing calendar that fits your notification limit. Then review the account’s statistics every month and adjust.

QPSoftware, a WeChat development agency in Shanghai, can set up these tools with you and build the Mini Programs, apps and services behind your account. Contact us to get started with your WeChat strategy.

Frequently Asked Questions