3 best platforms to find WeChat KOL

We have written it before: Key Opinion Leaders (KOL) are maybe the best way to promote your company on WeChat. But how exactly can you find the right KOL for your industry? Here are platforms which help you do just that.

Newrank.cn is a familiar name to our readers: it is the platform ranking all the major WeChat accounts based on their popularity, and frequently issues reports on their performance.

But did you know they also have a KOL platform?

Here is how it works

1. Register as as Advertiser Owner (广告主)

2. Select your industry and your budget. Newrank will calculate the estimate account of impression and reads you will get based on your selection.

3. Upload the article that you want to post

4. Two ways to initiates the bidding:

• Request pricing from a specific WeChat account that fits your budget (Newrank.cn gives an estimate of how much the KOL will want in order to post the article)

• Or announce your advertising offer and let other KOL accounts place bids

5. The bidders decides which offers he or she wants to accept

6. The money is transferred to Newrank

7. KOL posts the article and confirms it with Newrank

8. Newrank transfers the money to the KOL

Fairly complex bidding process, but an interesting one! And of course Newrank gives you data about past traffic from the KOL and estimate of views for the message.

Weizhishu.com offers a more basic transactional model for KOL. Here you simply have a list of KOL, sorted by industry, with the price of each single message.

The ability to easily sort accounts based on your budged comes out as extremely convenient.

However, be careful: a lot of the accounts on weizhishu.com fall in the "too good to be true" category: many followers at very low prices. If the platform is very convenient to use, it might take you a lot of time to find legit KOL on it which will actually convert into value and sales for your business.

The prices for high value KOLs are on the other hand over priced. It's best to compare it with other platforms or directly contact the account through WeChat to find out the actual pricing.

WeMedia offers a more traditional approach to KOL selection. When Newrank and Weizhishu both mean to be self-service platforms, WeMedia will require you to go through their sales team in order to discuss potential collaboration.

The platform has a wide range of KOL under its management. After reaching out, they will provide with a detailed excel spreadsheet including prices. Moreover, WeMedia has discounts which enables it to get cheaper offers than if you discussed directly with the KOL.

However, quality-control is still your responsibility: WeMedia has a mix of high quality accounts and "robot accounts" with inactive followers.

KOL exchange platforms are good ways to screen accounts, but numbers can lie.  Three rules when dealing with such KOL exchanges:

• Of course, do your due diligence, and have a close look at each account to check for inconsistencies (too much promotion but high reading rates, etc...)

• See if the KOL is selective about the content that they are willing to post (if they would accept to post pure promotional post, most likely it's not a high quality account)

• If things turn bad (you realize after the campaign that engagement rate is way too low which shows the account has some fake followers), complain and complain hard. You will likely get compensated, and even if you can't get a refund, some KOL are likely gift you a free message