In a leaked speech made to Twitter employees shortly after his takeover in August 2022, outgoing Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced several changes to the tech and social media company. One of his primary goals is to shift the company from being an “American-centric” company to being a company with a more international focus – specifically targeting the Japanese market.
“It may seem as though [Twitter’s user-base] is US-centric, but if anything it’s Japan-centric,” Musk said in the internal meeting.
“There are roughly the same number of daily users in Japan as there are in the US, despite the fact that Japan has one third of the population of the US.”
It seems clear that Musk sees Japan as both a role model and a primary focus for his company’s future. At the same time however, Musk is making changes that will entirely shift the way that Twitter is used without considering the needs of the Japanese market.
Drawing on insights from PR account managers and Twitter specialists at ShapeWin, this article will explore what makes Twitter a powerful tool in the Japanese marketplace. It will also dive into how Musk’s takeover and the “X” rebrand will play a role in shaping your future PR and marketing strategy in Japan. Understanding this article will ensure that your PR and marketing strategy will be effective for the Japanese market.
How Twitter/X is used in Japan currently
With 67.5 million total users – 53% of the total population – Twitter is the third-most actively used social media service in Japan, behind Youtube and the messaging service LINE. This also makes Japan Twitter’s second largest market, only just behind the United States.
Chinami Koga, a PR specialist at ShapeWin uses Twitter for a wide variety of purposes.
“When I was a student, I just tweeted about daily life, but recently I have been using it for work to monitor the promotions and advertisements of various brands and companies,” Koga explains.
“Although outside of work, I still find the site helpful for getting ideas out to a wide range of people.”
Koga signed up for the site over ten years ago, when she was in high school. By contrast, Mari Sugata, an experienced PR account manager at ShapeWin started using it three years ago, in order to understand trends in the Japanese market and social media better.
“In the Japanese PR community, there are those who see Twitter as an invaluable resource. We often exchange information about how to increase the number of followers, impressions, what to write in a profile and so on,” Sugata explains.
Twitter’s appeal in the Japanese market is two-fold. One half is the character limit. Because Twitter limits its posts to 140 characters in Japanese, it is particularly attractive to languages like Japanese, which uses Chinese characters to condense information when writing. Thus, Twitter in Japan can be used to transmit short, information-dense messages to a wide variety of people. It is no surprise that the haiku developed in Japanese- a lot of deep meaning can be conveyed in a few words.
But the other reason is Twitter’s tendency towards visual content. As Sugata points out, the lack of written content on Twitter is made up for by the prevalence of images and videos.
“Twitter is a lot more visual compared to other social media platforms like Facebook and Reddit,” she explains.
“Posting visual content, such as photos and videos, is important to gaining and retaining followers. I see people do these kinds of activities daily. They will take a picture of something at the start of a day, then like, reply and retweet each other in order to keep engagement up.”
These two concepts tie into Twitter’s primary usage in Japan: short-form opinions and reviews. Twitter’s head of marketing in Japan, Kentaro Morita, once wrote that Japanese people use Twitter like a search engine to see what real people are saying about brands and products.
Koga and Sugata broadly agree with this statement.
“I think Japanese users are inclined to try products that are recommended by someone they follow and trust on Twitter,” says Sugata.
“And if there is a picture or link to the product from the tweet, it significantly increases the chances of going to the site and checking the product out. They may even buy it if they find the product appealing.”
Koga adds that the culture of reviewing on Japanese Twitter has made Japanese brands or international brands with a presence in Japan open Japanese Twitter accounts to advertise their products and services.
“Because of Twitter’s ability to rapidly spread information, companies see it as a good tool for advertising,” she explains.
The most unique aspect of Japanese Twitter culture
None of this may seem outwardly surprising to anyone who uses Twitter, but they help explain one of the unique aspects of Japanese Twitter culture: the tendency towards anonymity. Unlike Twitter users in America or the Western world, over 70% of Japanese Twitter accounts are anonymous.
When asked about this tendency towards anonymity, Koga ties it back to Twitter’s primary usage being opinions and reviews.
“I think Japanese people tend to be concerned with how others perceive them,” Koga muses.
“Because of Twitter’s opinion-based culture, Japanese users prefer to remain anonymous on Twitter. That way, if they have an unpopular opinion, they can distance themselves from harsh critics and harassers.”
Overall though, despite its culture of anonymity, companies have found Twitter to be a useful method for gauging public opinion in Japan. Companies with a Japanese presence will often open Japanese-language accounts, and Japanese users will often follow these accounts to stay updated on new products and services and read comments to see real reviews and reactions to new services and products.
Branding in Japan: The Right Way
An example of a foreign company that uses Twitter effectively is KFC. The Japanese Twitter account has 2.5 million followers and frequently has high engagement. While other accounts such as McDonalds have high follower counts, they have significantly less engagement. KFC can even outpace some domestic consumer brands on social media such as Suntory and Sukiya.
While the brand has historic ties to Japan – KFC Christmas Chicken has been a staple of Japanese culture since the 1980s – KFC’s Twitter account is successful for a variety of reasons. The first is that KFC has had a long-utilized and well-recognized mascot that can be leveraged on social media. While Colonel Sanders is not an invention for the Japanese market, the Japanese KFC Twitter account creatively aligns him with the Japanese penchant for mascots, dressing his statue in samurai armor and other costumes and featuring him in Twitter comics that promote KFC offerings.
Capitalizing on the prevalent opinion and review culture of Japanese Twitter, KFC will also frequently include calls to action in their posts, encouraging user engagement. These include asking users for their opinions via likes or retweets and employing Twitter’s poll feature to gauge preferences among menu items. These strategic tactics reflect an astute grasp of Japanese Twitter norms, effectively boosting user interaction.
“KFC is a great example of a media mix,” Sugata says.
“In Japan, KFC does have a significant advertising presence on television. However, the KFC brand is great at utilizing each media’s characteristics and strengths effectively and their Twitter content works well for Japanese Twitter users. In this way, they are good at targeting a specific audience and delivering messages that are suitable to each channel.”
Reaction to the Musk Takeover
Since the initial announcement of Elon’s acquisition plans in April 2022, reactions from Japanese Twitter users have ranged from excited to indifferent.
“I was surprised by the news of Mr. Musk’s acquisition of Twitter,” one user tweeted. “More than concerns about privatization, I wonder what kind of future awaits us. The excitement is getting the better of me.”
“Elon Musk is amazing,” another user said. “He’s super rich and super famous.”
A minority have expressed reservations about Elon Musk’s takeover, due to how vicious Japanese social media can be. They are worried that Elon Musk’s changes – particularly regarding free speech will lead to Twitter becoming a more toxic environment, which can affect brand reputation. It is worth mentioning that #twitter終了 (literally Twitter is canceled) was trending on Japanese Twitter with just under 200,000 tweets, shortly after the announcement of Musk buying Twitter.
“When a famous Youtuber is caught in a scandal, people will write hurtful words such as ‘go die’ or ‘you’re ugly,’” one Twitter user explained.
Another user simply tweeted “Elon’s whimsical attitude is scary, so I plan on selling [my stocks in Twitter] soon.”
On a social level, there has not been a large migration from the service to other services such as Mastodon or other apps similar to Twitter. Instead, Japanese users are more concerned with the app running as smoothly under Musk as it had previously.
What is changing? And how will it affect your brand?
After rebranding the company to X, Musk has spoken about how he views the future of the platform as “everything app,” mixing written content with video sharing, games and even payment processing. To this end, upcoming overall changes including paid verification plans, artificially limiting the number of tweets users can see and improving the quality of video streaming.
On a technical level, changes at the soon-to-be “X Japan” concern employment and decentralization. While employment reductions have occurred, Elon Musk’s plans include expanding staff in India, Japan, and Indonesia to support the large user bases in those areas. This strategy aims to decentralize overseas operations, allowing local engineers to manage issues and region-specific content moderation. Consequently, service quality and technical support in Japan are expected to improve, benefiting brands through optimized loading times, SEO, and enhanced technical assistance for X usage in Japan.
Another major change that will affect brands is the paid verification plan. A solution to combat bot accounts and impersonator accounts, users will be able to verify their accounts through a subscription service and tweets from verified accounts will be prioritized in the RSS feed. Additionally these paid verification plans will allow users access to new features such as unlimited word count and added graphics. The system will be divided three sections:
- Blue checkmarks will indicate a user has a paid subscription and has their identity authenticated by X’s verification team.
- Gold checkmarks will indicate a corporate account that has been verified by X’s verification team.
- Gray checkmarks will be given to public institutions, governments and individuals with government affiliations on X.
For brands and organizations, both the gold and blue checkmarks will be important, as tweets from verified accounts will be prioritized by Twitter. A company’s gold account can be used to advertise new products and services, while a blue account, perhaps managed by a CEO, president or organization spokesperson can be used to retweet the gold account, and write independent tweets that humanize the brand. Influencers with blue checkmarks can also be sought out to aid in promotions.
Finally, X will also start limiting the number of tweets that can be viewed per day, as a move to artificially push users to their checkmark program. Verified users will be allowed to view 6000 tweets a day, whereas unverified users will only have access to 600 tweets a day. This will affect brands by reducing their visibility and reach on the platform and brands will now have to strive to create content that appeals to unverified users, to ensure consistent impressions and a high ranking in Twitter’s algorithm.
Conclusion
Elon Musk’s Twitter/X will be a more internationally focused company, with a focus on the Japanese market. It remains to be seen how this strategic move will play out and whether it will lead to increased profitability.
Sugata and Koga both remain optimistic.
“There was an idea of a “Twitter Dream” on Japanese Twitter, where people who were once nobodies can gain tens of thousands of followers, become influencers and gain sponsors. It is reminiscent of the American Dream of a century ago. I hope this idea continues as Twitter transitions into X,” Sugata reflects.
“There have been improvements to the platform, such as restricting the platform’s API to prevent scraping,” Koga admits.
“While the platform does seem to be running into issues under Musk’s leadership, I think that positive changes can be expected in the future.”
Improve your Japanese Social Media Strategy with ShapeWin
ShapeWin is able to craft customized social media strategies for your brand, on platforms like Twitter, FaceBook and Instagram. Our expertise lies in meticulously analyzing our clients’ target demographics, understanding their preferences, and creating content that resonates with these audiences. In Japan, social media marketing for platforms like Twitter is best for targeting men and women in their 20s and 30s.
By leveraging market insights to identify key trends ShapeWin creates opportunities that give value to your brand. By engaging with the right audience with a message that is tailored to their interests, we can improve your social media presence, help you reach your desired demographics effectively, and achieve your marketing objectives.”