WeChat scores goal in SA

South African soccer publication, Soccer Laduma, has recently teamed up with WeChat to become the first verified WeChat Official Account in Africa.

Soccer Laduma sends out daily broadcast messages to its followers highlighting the best news and content of the day. Regular audio messages from the editorial team and South African soccer legends have also proved very popular, as have the weekly chat group sessions. Followers easily discover additional content by sending keywords to the Soccer Laduma Official Account to receive text, audio, video or rich media content within WeChat.

Soccer Laduma’s Sales and Marketing Director, Brendon Radomsky, says, ‚”We are proud to attribute our success to the power of our fanatical, soccer loving readers and WeChat has given this enthusiasm an extended platform where fans can engage. It is great to empower fans with a multifunctional engagement tool such as WeChat: we feel it will prove instrumental in identifying what kind of content our readers enjoy most.‚”

As a team, Soccer Laduma has embraced the WeChat technology since starting with it two months ago. A recent addition to the weekly broadcasts is the weekend game predictions, delivered through the WeChat audio clip functionality, which has seen great uptake from the readers. Users get an enriched experience as WeChat enables them through the use of an Official Account to connect continuously with Soccer Laduma. They can interact and get news about what is important to them when they want it. Anything from video, voice and imagery are part of the rich content WeChat users can enjoy.

‚”The growth of this Official Account highlights the strength that WeChat as a social communication app has amongst African smartphone users. It also portrays how brands can harness this power and use it to engage with consumers in a new and exciting way, says New Business Manger for WeChat Africa, Ronald Bach‚”.

There has been an increase in Official Accounts as more brands recognize the significant value that WeChat can offer in terms of user engagement and content sharing. Users add an official account as a contact simply by using the brand’s WeChat ID or scanning the brand’s unique QR code from within the WeChat app.

‚”It’s clear that WeChat is constantly innovating and adding features that users need. The simplicity of their approach means that we can develop new content streams and deliver it in the way our fans want. WeChat’s rise in adoption amongst Africans proves that they’ve got a winning formula, and an app that’s going to stick around for a while‚”, concludes Clint Roper, Editor of Soccer Laduma.

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