logo

The Challenge

The BMJ, one of the world’s leading general medical journals, had difficulty building a presence in China. Translating content into Chinese was comparatively less successful in getting engagement from the Chinese research community.

logo

The Solution

Impact Science assisted The BMJ to pick an optimum combination of content formats for WeChat from their journals, blogs, announcements, etc.

We hand-picked key articles from the flagship journals and other content sources, based on in-depth analyses of trending topics among Chinese researchers.

The selected articles were repurposed in attractive and engaging formats suitable for WeChat audiences.

logo

The Impact

The number of followers on The BMJ’s WeChat account increased by >14% in just 3 months.

In a span of 3 months, 44 content pieces were produced with >10,000 reads.

Background

Published by the British Medical Association, The BMJ is one of the world’s longest-running and most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals. Although originally catering to the English-speaking medical community in the UK, The BMJ has a number of international editions and aims to increase its presence in different countries, as part of its mission to create a healthier world for all.

Even though Chinese researchers generally hold The BMJ in high esteem, the journal found it initially difficult to meaningfully engage with the Chinese research community. Chinese translations of existing BMJ content seemed to generate limited impact.

Strategy & Approach

The BMJ approached Impact Science as a partner to create an engaged community on WeChat, China’s largest social media platform (with a whopping 1.2 billion active users monthly). The idea was to use organic, research-based content.

Based on market landscape analysis and in-depth understanding of the Chinese research ecosystem, Impact Science did the following:

  • Optimize the combination of content formats for WeChat audiences from The BMJ’s journals, blogs, open access articles, announcements, etc.
  • Select key articles from the flagship journal and other content sources based on in-depth analyses of topics that would interest Chinese researchers.
  • Repurpose and localize the selected articles into plain language summaries, WeChat articles, and bite-sized summaries to build a focused and engaged community on WeChat.

Plain language summaries and Bite-sized summaries

Examples of content topics selected

Conclusion

Within 3 months, Impact Science was able to produce 44 content pieces with 10,000 reads. The new content strategy led to a >14% increase in followers on The BMJ’s WeChat account.

Impact Science drew on its in-depth understanding of the Chinese research ecosystem and WeChat user behaviors, to identify the best way to leverage content and thereby build engagement. The content and technical support that Impact Science provided to The BMJ’s local team in China enabled The BMJ to successfully penetrate further into the Chinese market.