Social media: A new vehicle for city marketing in China

• This article introduces several cases of social media tactics applied to city marketing in China.
• Using social media is a new tool for city promotion and publicity in China.
• Microblogs are the primary form of social media promoting microblog e-governance and city brands.
• Other forms of social media are promoting Chinese cities as tourism destinations.
• Chinese city governments need to deliberately manage and direct the public to use social media.

Following global trends, cities, like companies, across the world are under fierce competitive pressure. To compete and promote city brands, various levels of Chinese governments have begun to integrate multiple marketing tactics to promote cities. Social media has gained global popularity since 2008. Utilizing social media for city marketing is being applied in the Chinese cities. This paper introduces the application of social media for city marketing in Chinese cities. Based on several cases of social media use for city marketing in major Chinese cities (e.g., Guangzhou, Chengdu and Nanjing), this paper suggests that using social media is an appropriate tactic to promote cities because of the participative, interactive, open and transparent nature of social media.