China’s CEOs join social media to learn how to win followers and influence people
- Business heads in China joining social media to become online celebrities, drive traffic and boost sales as internet economy takes on greater importance
When Zhou Hongyi, co-founder of Chinese cybersecurity firm Qihoo 360, shared his ambitions to be an online influencer, he named a role model whose behaviour on social media has garnered praise and derision alike – Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
“Billions of people across the world know what he wants to do [after] he posts a tweet – this is the new way of communication in the influencer era,” Zhou said in February on Weibo – itself the Chinese equivalent of Musk’s platform X, rebranded from Twitter in one of many mercurial shifts from the world’s richest man.
Zhou now has over 11 million followers on the microblogging site, and more than 6 million on Douyin, the Chinese precursor to TikTok. The attendant publicity, he estimated, would ultimately save his company a billion yuan (US$137.9 million) in advertising fees.
While in the past a more reserved approach to business was the norm in China, a louder, eye-catching style rooted in the phenomenon of the celebrity CEO has grown more popular in the present day.
Like Zhou, a growing number of executives are seeking greater commercial success by parlaying their heightened visibility into social media fame.
