Young Girl Builds Her 'We Media' Empire with Creative Spirit

Within one year, a digital marketing company born on a Chinese campus has attracted 198 partners and five million fans. Wei Mingyue, 23, and her partners have carved out a bright path through their persistence and courage.

By the end of last year, Wei registered and established the fledgling Shangqiu We Media Star Network Technology Company. Her company harnesses the power of mobile apps to reach audiences via news feeds and microblogs on the most popular social networking platforms. China's Netizens commonly have accounts on WeChat (a mobile chatting tool developed by China's leading Internet giant Tencent) and Weibo (the Chinese equivalent of Twitter), leading to the term "We Media" to describe the content, commercial or otherwise, that is "liked" and "shared" daily between millions of users.

Now a graduate with an ideological and political education major from Shangqiu Normal University, Wei had been thinking about how to start a clever business ever since her first year in college. "My classmates were busy  washing dishes at restaurants or passing out leaflets in the street. But I think we, as university students, should use our brain to earn living expenses instead of merely depending on manual labor." 

"It was a charity event that brought us together." Wei and her classmates set up a students' club named "Eternal Love" in May 2013 and collected thousands of yuan for Shangqiu Aide Orphanage. Through this activity, she met many partners with passion and a dream, who spared no effort to promote the touted We Media networking plan. And a team of 20 people has taken shape.

"Weibo, WeChat and a spectrum of other mobile apps are enjoying great prevalence in our life. Everyone is a user of We Media." Wei recognized the enormous potential in the newly emerging market.

It is not by chance that she set the goal of starting a We Media firm. Wei said frankly that she had been studying how to do business with We Media during all of her college years. In order to improve her operating and managerial capability, she went to a corporation based in Nanjing, capital city of east China's Jiangsu Province, working as an intern during the summer vacation ending her sophomore year.

"At the beginning, all of us had to work till very late, occupying ourselves with maintaining the platform, editing articles and promoting publicity. We do all these things with our whole heart."

They began running a pilot program in October 2013. Due to lack of experience, each of them could only earn a monthly salary of 1,000 yuan (U.S. $161) in the good spells, and during the dry patches there was no income at all.

Till June 2014, her university launched a project supporting innovation and entrepreneurship for students. She got an office through the scheme as well as immense motivation.

"We began working at 7:30 in the morning and only went to bed at around 2:00 a.m. It took us two months to explore the core and essence of We Media marketing." By the end of 2014, they founded the company and as of now each of them receives monthly earnings of over 4,000 yuan (U.S. $644).

"In the firm, every one is the boss." Wei attaches great importance to the individual development of her team which is now composed of 38 full-time employees and 160 part-timers. They often discuss working procedures with each other in turn at meetings, "in a bid to prompt them to think from the perspective of the firm as a whole."           

Wei has been facing hardships and obstacles with a persistent and optimistic attitude. "The achievements are created by all of us step by step, which I greatly cherish and fully appreciate," she smiled when talking about the progress during the past year.

Currently, her company is engaged in the operation of We Media, a public WeChat account, a personal account and website building. It was rated as one of companies with the greatest development potential at the Shangqiu Young Entrepreneurs Summit this spring.

"I hope it will become a professional We Media company that provides utmost assistance for the public," Wei says, forecasting the outlook of her firm in the near future.

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Recent years have seen declining employment rates for university graduates. A popular saying "Graduation means unemployment" is more of a shrug than a ridicule. According to statistics, there are 7.49 million university graduates in 2015 and many Net users joke that 2015 will be the most difficult year for employment ever in history.

Zhaopin.com, a leading employment website providing a one-stop service for both job seekers and employers, released a report on the job market for 2015 graduates. It shows that there is an increase in university students who are willing to start their own business, up to 6.3 percent this year from 3.2 percent in 2014.

The report cites different reasons for entrepreneurship: 27.4 percent say that they will start a business to realize their dreams; 20.8 percent express that they are interested in it; 19.3 percent say directly that they do so simply to make money. And freelance work constitutes an importance cause for starting business. Ideals, interests, wealth, freedom and a series of other reasons all highlight a strong self-awareness among today's university graduates.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang is touched by the entrepreneurial spirit of the young generation. He has mentioned several times that the government should attach great importance to online shopping, express delivery and other new commercial activities and make necessary adaptations. He often says that China must encourage grass-roots entrepreneurs and young people because the country will have a future as long as they have hopes and expectations. "Mass entrepreneurship and innovation do not only offer the young generation an opportunity to pursue their dreams but are also of practical significance for China's social and economic development."

(Source: China Women's News and other news sources/Translated and edited by Women of China)