Lay Zhang — a Chinese great promotor of M-pop
Zhang Yixing known professionally as Lay Zhang is a Chinese singer, dancer, producer and businessman. Recently, he performed his latest song ‘‘Veil’ at The GRAMMY Museum on Nov.15.He was been presented as a successful promotor to include elements of Chinese culture in his music.
Currently, he has 50.84 million (508,400,000) followers on Weibo, a Chinese online streaming website. Additionally, he has 14.2 million followers on Instagram. The great success of his identity as a China artist induces a question about how he achieved this success.
There are two main reasons for that:
1. Consistent exposure to the public
2. Stick to his target
Consistent exposure to the public:
Currently, with high-speed and convenient access to the Internet, optimising personal webpage is one of the key elements to building a successful online presence. Lay consistently posts at least one time per week in any format: words or videos on Weibo. Especially, Lay as an artist always renew his performance video. Additionally, these different performance videos induce Many positive feedback for his performance. It is reasonable to state that consistent posting on social media is one of the key reasons why Lay’s followers are consistently increased. In Semrush survery 2020, 41% of participators stated the video was the ‘most efficient content marketing tool’. Thus, it means that with the consistent exposure that Lay has put on social media, a successful online presence is predictable.
- For future:
However, this does not mean there are no issues with his methods in building his online presence. On Instagram, his posts do not as frequent as on Weibo. Also, the format that Lay posts on Instagram does not as varied as in Weibo. He mainly focuses on pictures on Instagram. Thus, it creates an unbalanced amount of followers on different platforms. Consequently, he would widen his influence and gain more followers on Instagram if he posts in varied formats.
Stick to his target:
Lay insists that he wants to bring M-pop (i.e. Chinese pop music) into the world. From his albums ‘Lit’, he has incorporated different Chinese traditional instruments into his songs such as ‘er hu’ and ‘gu zheng’. This incorporation quickly attracted viewers’ attention. There are many videos on Youtube to promote and react to that new album. These reaction videos show that how M-pop influences and shocks the international market and this impact is benefited from the innovation of Chinese pop music.
- For future:
However, this does not mean there is no space for improvement in Lay’s online presence. Since Chinese traditional instruments may not be well known for international audiences, recording the process of making the song using Chinese traditional instruments will be an excellent way to promote Chinese culture and Lay’s influence. A successful example is Charlie Puth to create music using a mug during the show. This video increases the influence of his music and lets the audience know how a beat could become a song. Consequently, it is reasonable to believe Lay could use the same method to let the international audience know the process of incorporation of traditional instruments. It will be beneficial for him to build a successful online presence.
