Popular Media Channel in Japan  - How They Differ in the US

In the previous blog post, I wrote about top 5 social media channels used for ages between 20 to 29 which age range is most active on social media. In this post, I will cover YouTube, other social media channel popular in the United States but not in Japan. I will explain a bit more about LINE as well.

Popular media channel in Japan - how the differ in the US?

From the chart below, you would notice some characteristic difference in terms of which media chhannels are used in Japan vs US.

 Data source: Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications

WhatsApp

Only 3% are used by 20's in Japan, even though it is the highest rate among all the generations. 1% people use WhatsApp. If you are thinking about using WhatsApp for marketing, just forget. 

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is only used by 4% of 20's, and 2% in all generations. In general, LinkedIn is the popular platform for job seeking, especially for the ones who are searching jobs at international companies. Does it work well for marketing? Probably not.

YouTube

YouTube is popular in Japan as well. However, as I mentioned in the E-Book (Where Do Japanese People Gather Information?), it is rarely used for business. Watching movies is not a good dicipline at most of Japanese working environment, even if it is business related.

LINE

LINE is a unique platform for it has been developed in and targeted for Japan. It is very successfull seeing the fact that there is not other countries countries where adoption rate is this high. Most of Japanese people in all generations have the app on their smart phones to communicate with friends. Here are some of the features;

• Be friends with business accounts, as well as your real real friends.

You can create accounts for free, or also have special acount for business. Your customer will be connected if they find you as their favorite brands, or stores they frequently use.

• Messaging

The text chat interface is very similar to Facebook Messenger. The difference is, text chat is the main purpose to use LINE and the timeline is not used as often. You can text chat, send photos, make free calls, and send 'stamps.' Another unique feature about it is, you will receive messages from the business account who you connected with. Please see the example. You receive advertisement or coupons in the same way as you receive messages from your real friends.

Another unique feature which is used in the messaging screen is 'stamps.' LINE has some default stamps for free, and you can purchase to add more within the application. Also, there are some stamps offered for free, and you have to connect with that account in exchange. Did you find the trick? If you create nice stamps, you get connetions and will be able to send ads who downloaded the stamps.

For business, how you utilize LINE is first create the business account, advertise the LINE account via other media, then send messages to the subsribers (accurate expression is friends), and post news articles on timelines. Consider creating nice stamps if you want to collect more accounts within LINE alone.

Please also check "Top 5 Social Media Channels in Japan"