Research On The Ways To Increase The Influence Of County-Level Government Wechat

China has already entered the Internet era.Today,cell phones are the most widely used devices for Internet surfing.By the end of 2018,98.7%of all Chinese Internet users accessed the web with cell phones,totaling 81.7 billion users.As one of the most popular social networking Apps,Wechat's number of daily access surpassed 100 billion in Aug.2018.Moreover,the Wechat official account platform offers a wide coverage of the Chinese demographic,making it an ideal platform for many local public affairs offices'new media campaign.Despite years of development,the Wechat official accounts of many public affairs offices were ineffective because of homogeneity and lack of creativity.Moreover,it was hard to balance prudence and boldness,two opposing styles that were often seen in government issued documents versus those of the new media.Consequently,most official accounts of the public affairs offices had very few followers.It has become the most pressing issue for these official accounts to attract and retain followers and encourage reposting.This dissertation used the official account "Qinhuai Fabu" as an example.It examined the account's developmental path over four years,and established its unique role over Weibo by reviewing the page setup,target audience,covered topics,and other characteristics of "Qinhuai Fabu".Moreover,the account's level of influence was assessed using the WCI Index(one of the most widely adopted metrics for the level of influence on Wechat).A focus study was conducted to analyze data on the number of reads and the number of thumb-ups from Dec.2018.In addition,using case study and comparison,this dissertation assessed the current operation effectiveness of "Qinhuai Fabu",and suggested ways for improvement.Specifically,the following recommendations were proposed based on the 5W elements:1)establish the importance of "Qinhuai Fabu",within the district government;remain in close contact with relevant governmental divisions to ensure fast and transparent communication in order to improve information accuracy and timeliness;2)train a professional team to maintain the official account and create high quality content;3)take the reader-centered approach and publish contents that are created and enjoyed by the public;4)improve the user interface and innovate on ways of presentation;5)add interactive service features to improve user satisfaction.