You might think to use social media marketing in Japan. If you are a marketer in B2C company, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest are in your mind. If you are a B2B marketer, you would use LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Google+. You can learn what kind of social media Japanese people are using in this article before deciding what social media should you use for your social media marketing strategy.
Instagram is growing rapidly in Japan. It started to grow since 2013. In 2015, it has 8M users in Japan and it increased by 4M people from 2014. They do not show the number of users in 2016. However, it must have more than 10M users already.
A lof of young women use Instagram. They tend to like fashion and have the desire for recognition. They love to post their clothes and foods. Instagram is one of the best solutions to reach out these people. Of course, B2B is better than B2B. The quality of photos is important for this social media. If you want to use Instagram for social media marketing, you should check some Instagram accounts and learn what photos have a lot of likes.
Facebook is one of the biggest social media in Japan. 20% of Japanese people use this social media. But recently it might slow its growth. Facebook Japan doesn't publish the number of users in 2014 & 2015. In my opinion, it has less than 30M users (maybe 25M-27M).
However, a lot of business people use Facebook, not LinkedIn. If you are a B2B marketer, you have to know that LinkedIn is not popular in Japan. People like to have business communication on Facebook.
Twitter is also popular in Japan. An increasing rate of users of Twitter Japan is the highest compared to other countries. A lot of young people to like to tweet. People don't tweet often also use twitter for gathering information. This social media is useful for social media marketing to late 10's to 20's in both B2B and B2C business.
LINE is the biggest social media in Japan. About 50% of Japanese population use LINE. This is originally a messenger app like WhatsApp and WeChat. But LINE also has features like the timeline on Facebook. People can follow (become friends on LINE) pages companies create. Companies can use this feature (official LINE account or LINE@) for their social media marketing. LINE is good for B2C and O2O marketing to real stores.
LinkedIn has more than 430M users in global but it is not popular in Japan. In Japan, LinkedIn only has 1M+ users. Why is LinkedIn not so popular in Japan? There are some reasons I think.
LinkedIn is a very strong tool for B2B marketing in the United States. If you are a B2B marketer, you should keep this situation in mind.
In Japan, these two social media is not popular. Compared to Instagram, Pinterest has fewer users so much and not growing so much. Some people use Google+ for their business. People in marketing industry or digital marketing department tend to use Google+ because in 2013 and 2014 they believed a rumor that Google will use the information of Google+ (Author Rank) for their search engine ranking factor.
You can choose any social media for your Japanese social media marketing. Important thing is that you have to set your goal and persona and choose the right social media for the purpose.