Auto Industry PR Communication Research In Wechat Friends Circle

In the recent years, social media has been boosted with the development of mobile internet. Thanks to its enormous amount of user, Wechat has become the most powerful new media platform in China despite its very short history. Leveraging Wechat to conduct a better marketing or PR communication campaign becomes the most popular topic. However, there are very few theoretic or statistic research focus on it. Upon auto industry cases and practices, this thesis is devoted to the exploration of Wechat Friends Circle public communication.In the introduction part, this thesis introduced the research background, research significa nces as well as research strategies and methods, followed by literature research covering class ic PR communication theory, development of mobile internet, Wechat Friends Circle peculiari ties, social interaction function as well as interpersonal trust model of Wechat Friends Circle. After that, it established Friends Circle PR communication model and indicated key influentia1factors of this model based on logic reasoning. Author sampled1,091messages published in Friends Circle to draw a picture of auto related message circulation generated by3different gr oups including journalists, employees and customers. The data analysis and statistics lead to t he results of several different dimensions of photo engagement, information resource, original ity, contents and employee brand loyalty, which validated the communication model raised be fore. In the last part, this thesis summarized key principles of auto PR communication plannin g and execution in Friends Circle, as well as some valuable suggestions. Limitations of this re search were also pointed out at the end.