Want to explore your social media presence in China?
As the second largest economy in the world, China shows significant potential in purchasing power. Therefore, it is of absolute importance that American brands entering the Chinese market take the time to learn how to successfully connect with Chinese consumers through social media. Although many social media strategies work across global markets, China deserves a targeted approach because of its unique social media landscape.
If you are thinking about the most popular way to make your company noticed in China, the answer is Sina Weibo.
"Weibo" (微博) is the Chinese word for "microblog." It is one of the most popular sites in China, in use by well over 30% of Internet users, with a market penetration similar to what Twitter has established in the USA. It was launched by SINA Corporation on 14 August 2009, and has 503 million registered users as of Dec 2012. About 100 million messages are posted each day on Sina Weibo.
Additionally, Sina Weibo has 56% of the market share for users of micro blogging applications and 87% share of the market in terms of browsing time. You can find more stats on Weibo here. Moreover, according to TechRice (see chart below), Weibo's users skew a bit older compared to other Chinese social media networks, and live in bigger cities.
While Twitter and Facebook are blocked in China, an interesting comparison below shows the comparison of users' major source of information that highlights some of the key differences between Weibo users and those of Twitter and Facebook. Weibo users use the Internet and mobile devices as the major information source, while FB and Twitter users watch more TV than Weibo users to find information.
At first glance, Weibo has the qualities to be the leading social media platform to run marketing campaigns in China. But what are the differences between Weibo and US social network such as Twitter? What objectives should we achieve on Weibo? How can you measure success? Let's dive in!
Weibo used to be quite similar to Twitter: 140 characters in post (140 words in Weibo), social network functions, ideas of "follow and unfollow" and so on. However, as time went on, Weibo has evolved gradually into a social network that combines Twitter functionality with other social sites, such as Facebook.
Twitter follows the rule of "simplicity" (one of Twitter's 10 core values) while Weibo follows the rule of "enrichment." Weibo is an integrated social media platform of various social services and solutions. Influenced by its parent company Sina, Weibo has integrated with other services from Sina such as Email, Website Apps and games.
Weibo is more than a traditional social network – Weibo is a microblogging site, which encourages both comments and retweets. (E.g. Posts like "Who has a dog at home?" may have thousands of retweets and comments on Weibo, but that's inconceivable on Twitter, which keeps it to "reply" or "RT"). The commenting on Weibo feels a bit like Twitter merged with Facebook. Comments to a post can be shown as a list right below the post, the commenter can also choose whether to re-post the comment, quoting the whole original post, to commenter's own page.
Weibo developed a very "socialized" system to encourage retweets and make people notice a certain discussion or topic. On the contrary, Twitter is more driven by news and trending stories instead of the emotions around them. Additionally, users are allowed to insert graphical emoticons or attach own image, music, video files in every post.
You should pay attention to quality before quantity though on Weibo. The zombie fans are useless to your business. Actually, many zombie fans on Weibo, similarly to Twitter spam, will disappear after the promotion activities. You can use a website called Weiboreach to analyze your post and see how many active followers and zombie fans you have.
Know your content objectives and get the right theme for your posts on Weibo. Generally speaking, Weibo marketing resembles content marketing in that you need understand and profile your audience connecting them with the right content through Weibo posts. A brand should apply its content positioning to Weibo and get a proper theme for its posts. For example, a fashion company may want to have posts like fashion week, celebrities, discounts on luxury goods, beautiful places to go and so on. Stay within your theme so that you can get the followers you want.
Take advantage of your KOLs and build deeper relationships. Key Opinion Leaders are extremely helpful for retweets and help you to achieve your goals. They have a large amount of followers, and they guarantee the quality of their posts and retweets because they are somehow well known by people in the real world. Generally speaking, KOLs' posts attract lots of impressions and retweets. KOLs on Weibo are marked with a capital "V" after their names. Different colors stand for different user types. For example, the orange "V" means individual user while the blue "V" stands for group user (companies, organizations, media and so on).
Applying for "V" requires a certain amount of followers and post as well as the ID and certificate of employment. We consider the names with "V" as the KOLs on Weibo. A company should apply for its own blue "V" in the first place building relationships with KOLs. Set up a KOL objective for your PR guys and engage them. If you have enough KOLs on your list, remember to @ them (on Weibo the "@" means mention) in the post. At the beginning, you may want to spend some money to "make friends" with them, however as your post are highly qualified and your awareness rise, the cost will decrease.
Update your post at regular intervals. When you are running or exercising, you know it's easier to keep at a certain pace. So does Weibo. Creating new content regularly will help you increase active followers because they know when you will update posts, and you never let them down. There are some apps on Weibo such as t.pp.cc which can help you schdule your Weibo posts. All you need to do is to put your content into the app and set up the clock. The app will post automatically when time is up. This way, you don't need to stay online 24/7. Timing is also crucial. For example, people normally read posts on their way to work or after work, so make sure you schedule your Weibo content at the right intervals.
Use #Hashtags effectively. Just like Twitter, Weibo uses the symbol "#" to create topics. When we click on the content between hash tags, we can see all posts related to this topic. A smart company should know how to use hashtags. By using the hashtag, we can measure the volume of posts and use it to create buzz. Of course, you can create and promote your own hashtag if you have an audience big enough.
Monitor your own posts. Besides the quality of your posts, it's also very beneficial to know how your posts work towards your marketing goals. Sina Weibo has its own data engine available to check the performance of your posted topics, including the ranks of your posts. You will have a clear idea of how many comments, how many retweets and how many people mentioned you in a certain posts. Take a record of your post, analyze them, find those high-value posts and ask why: Did I choose the right topic? Is it because of the copywriting? Which KOL plays an important role? Any new KOL found in the comments or retweets? More information can be found in this analysis, don't miss it.
Reply to comments selectively. Replying to comments means interaction and keeping the followers engaged. Also, replying comments show respect to the followers. However, a popular post may often have thousands of comments, and if there are too many of them, you just cannot reply to them one by one. In this case, you should reply selectively. Several kinds of comments merit close attention: comments from KOLs, negative comments, questions and funny connects that make other readers comment. You should make different strategies and deal with them accordingly. There are different options when replying to comments. For example, you can choose to retweet and comment at the same time. This strategy can be applied to the KOLs' comments, and the influential ones to create even more buzz. As to the questions, answer them shortly and precisely. You may want to be polite enough to those negative comments no matter what. Remember, never lose your temper. Be polite, be reasonable, be patient. Badly answered comments are worse than not replying at all and don't let things go public. If you feel you were offended, ask Weibo administrator for help.
Case study: Xiaomi smart phone.
Utilize the private message. Weibo has private message function between the users and followers. Private message is secret enough, and it can protect the privacy of the followers. When running raffle events, you can choose private message as a tool to inform the winners. This way, followers feel respect and trust us; and since the private message is personalized and has high open rate, some companies use it to deliver promotion info just like direct mails.
Keep the event info real and transparent. When running events or raffles on Weibo, keep in mind that post the winning list on time live up your word. Make the event just fair and open to earn followers' trust. Sync your post on Weibo and your official website and make follow-up posts to attract more participants next time.
Weibo is a window to the Chinese market, and it's huge and still growing. If your company is serious about winning over Chinese consumers, take Weibo seriously and craft a targeted social media strategy for Weibo.
These tips and data are collected during my internship at Bomoda, a fashion company targeted Chinese market. Drop a note in the comments section if I missed anything. Looking forward to your feedback.
Thank you for the informative post! I really like the concept behind Weibo. Often times ive found myself frustrated trying to squish my thoughts into 140 characters on twitter. I think that Weibo is a lot more engaging and the communications between users is more efficient because of the microblogging feel. Definitely great for networking.
I love your blog post and I love your name!!! My friend on twitter sent me this article and I think its great you're sharing Chinese social media strategies in Nyu.
Conan, great content I have learned a great deal about Weibo from you. Thanks for that! For someone that wants to conduct social listening on Weibo, and have an account for that purpose is it possible? Secondly, are their tools to aid in translation in the event that you are not fluent or conversant in Chinese? Thanks.
Good questions. Firstly, of course you can have an account for social listening even if you don't post anything on Weibo. Actually Sina Weibo has its official news system which posts latest news everyday. Or you can just follow some KOLs for interesting news. Secondly, Sina Weibo has its North America Website which has completely English interface. Although many of its contents are still Chinese, you can post easily on Weibo. However, Sina Weibo itself has no official translation tools for non-Chinese users. Earlier this year, Sina cooperated with a professional translation tool named Youdao (belongs to NetEase) and provide translation service for users. This service is targeting for Chinese users who need Chinese translation from posts of foreign stars such as David Beckham. As foreign users become larger, I believe the mutual translation will develop. But if you are targeting Chinese customers, I do suggest to hire some Chinese guys (like me haha) just like Bomoda did.
Great insights Conan – thanks for shedding more light on this topic!
An excellent report. One question: How do we best handle the language difference?
We are looking at a way to target an audience based in China, but also in the rest of APJ from China. The tool chosen would be Weibo, however it does not seem to be accessible outside of China. Any tips to find a tool similar to Weibo / twitter that would be accessible from China and other countries in APJ (with English interface).
Weibo is no doubt a good choice for your audience in China, and for the rest of APJ from China, you can definitely choose Twitter. Twitter is very popular in Japan and other areas. Besides, I recommend WeChat for your Chinese audience. This app is becoming crazily popular in Chinese mobile market (and increasing users in other areas) and it has entirely English backstage interface.
Although it's a little hard to register and use for non-Chinese users, you can set up the English language in the options after you logging in. Google translation will be helpful at this moment.
Just a detail on the rest of APJ from China, how can they communicate via Twitter if they cannot access it from China?
To explain a bit more the situation, the employees targetting their clients outside China are based in China, this is where our issue comes from. They are not able to set up a twitter account in China. Thus, which tool should be used that can be accessed and managed from China to target the rest of APJ?
I got what you mean now. So you have some guys now in China and they need to communicate with audiences outside China because China has "great wall" against Facebook/Twitter, right? Hum, this is interesting. As far as I am concerned, WeChat is not so commercialized right now like Weibo, and it's usually used as a communication tool among friends. However, as I said, WeChat is still an option because now you can have an "official account" publishing news and advertisement on WeChat. (Now only 1 post everyday)Some international brands such as Cadillac or Dell are now on WeChat.
That is just mobile channel. If you want to try social network marketing, I would say just "go over the wall" with VPN. Just ask your IT guys and they will show you how to do it. With VPN, you can easily get access to Facebook/Twitter in China and it's legal.
I would like to say Weibo, but Weibo is not so influential in Japan actually.
Love if you can feedback me. Thanks.
Very interesting Weibo and I love it. So your problem is, you know people are retweeting your post, but you don't know where they saw your post, right? Actually, retweeting on Weibo is like a chain. Remember the famous theory? There are only up to 5 person between you and any other stranger in the world. People saw your post because someone "connected" you and them. Pay attention to the people who retweet you and you will find someone following you did the retweet at the beginning, and his/her followers pass on the torch. So if you want to make your post popular, you should follow people who have huge followers and make them retweet your post. Use "@" function properly.
Furthermore, if you want to know exactly who retweet your post, you can utilize a tool called Weiboreach (http://www.weiboreach.com/) which I mentioned in my post above. It can help you analyse the "travel path" of your certain post.
You said a charity org is collaborating with you recently, that is cool. Actually I have done a case study about using social network to help charity org when I was at school. We can talk about it further next time.
If I can engage your help, that will be great! Initially I told the charity that we will need to get a copywriter to do several languages on the site & then we link it to weibo & other chinese communities. But the problem is to keep it as a zombie account or someone who can help to monitor for us. If you do have friends who are willing to do so, please contact me & let me know. And I hope I can also get someone to help translate English to chinese (you)?
This is a great article about Weibo. I am using it everyday but not so sure how to promote my site using it. Weibo is a very important social media platform but Zombie fans and too many paid ads sometimes make people difficult to trust information on Weibo.
I have virtually no understanding of computer programming however I was hoping to start my own blog soon.
Hello I am a business fiction writer, my first ebook is on Amazon now. The book title is 'Chucked Out-An Anatomy of a Resignation'.
The work explores; Experience of lossing livelihood, Family as a source of strength, Survival of the fittest in organisations, Leadership and People behavior under stress, Passion and Smartness in organisations, Subtle discriminatory tendencies in Organisations and Answering the Enterprenuerial Call.
Like India I see China as the other big market for the ebook. How can I get this accross through weibo?