WEIBO MARKETING AGENCY
Weibo means microblog in Chinese. It was launched in 2009 and quickly became popular. By the end of 2019, Weibo had 516 million monthly active users, 222 million daily active users who are widely distributed with more than half living in Tier 3 and Tier 4 cities. 78% of regular Weibo users are well-educated. They expect high-quality, creative content, which requires brands to be inventive.
Similar to Twitter, Weibo is where fresh news finds its audience any time, anywhere. It’s fast-paced and lets people see views all over the world, learn about the story behind the scenes, enables self-expression and helps people share their opinions. This also makes it perfect for celebrities, idols and influencers to communicate with their fans. There are more than 29,000 celebrities, thousands of influencers and 1.5 million brands on the platform. The platform’s constant flow of novel user generated content and professional content makes Weibo popular with young people.
According to official reports, 98% of Weibo’s active users are interested in online shopping. Brands that want to get in touch with their fans, followers, advocates and potential clients go to Weibo. Fashion and beauty industry brands are regular campaign promoters. Brands in FMCG, technology, education and others also prefer Weibo.
It’s popular for the following reasons:
- Makes communicating with friends easy
- Efficiently transitions between different pages
- Powerful posting platform for daily events and memories
- Easily facilitates participation in different campaigns
- Tracks hot topics and trends
- Gives easy access to livestreaming sessions.
TWO TYPES OF ACCOUNTS ON WEIBO:
Personal Accounts are the majority and are set up by regular users for personal interactions.
Official Accounts are for corporations, media, institutions, registered websites, apps, NGOs, school organizations, government departments and more.
Companies should set up official accounts. Before starting anything, it’s important to have a visually appealing, user-friendly home page. After that’s done, following hot topics and reposts can help brands begin to understand the interests of their target audience. Posting information on brand pages increases awareness and improves image and trust. Another opportunity to let your consumers know more about the brand is to launch creative campaigns with KOLs.
Personal Account
Official Account
WEIBO AND OUR SERVICES
To kickstart marketing on Weibo, brands should set up and verify their official accounts. Before starting any activity on Weibo, it’s important to have a visually appealing, user-friendly home page. Content plays an important role on Weibo. Brands are therefore encouraged to have a content calendar with regular posting. According to data, over 50% of accounts publish on average once a day. Following hot topics and reposting can help brands begin to understand the interests of their target audience. Posting interesting, useful information on the brand’s home page and launching creative campaigns with key opinion leaders (KOLs) increases awareness, improves the brand’s image and builds trust. Campaigns such as lucky draws, coupon offers and brand topics can help brands interact with the audience and analyzing follower characteristics and data from posts helps brands to develop their strategy further. In order to increase brand exposure on Weibo and to broadcast brand content to the target audience, various advertising formats are available with specific targeting options.
Our goal is to help your company build a brand image, increase your followers, engage with your audience, and convert it all into increased sales. Our social listening skills help us understand your brand and your target audience. After that, our team can provide consultations, strategy planning, content creation, campaign execution and more. We provide timely KPI reports to help you accurately assess the impact and results and understand if you’ve reached your business goal.
Find out more about our social media marketing services.
WEIBO CUSTOMIZATION:
Weibo home pages allow pictures to be posted for profiles, covers, banners, backgrounds and have space for brand-related information. It’s also possible to integrate QR codes from your official WeChat account. Implementation and management can overwhelm even experienced marketers but our Weibo experts will share useful tips with you and give you solutions for possible restrictions. This information will make the process of customizing your Weibo page smoother.
DEVELOPING A SOLID CONTENT STRAREGY: THE 4-1-1 RULE
It’s not surprising that Weibo became popular among companies and brands as the channel to engage with Chinese consumers but the unique interests and attention range for Weibo users has become a real challenge for anyone looking to grab their attention. Every day different brands post thousands of articles so it’s hard to stand out. Well-prepared, solid content strategies are a must.
Brands regularly post 4 types of content:
- Shareable content for friends
- Soft content
- Interactive content
- KOL promotions
Weibo users prefer formats using a mix of images and text but what’s most important is the frequency and sequence of content. Based on our experience as an agency, the 4-1-1 Rule ensures effective communication with your followers. We’ll teach you all about it.
Find more information about what types of content you need for Weibo marketing.
FOLLOWER ACQUISITION AND DEVELOPMENT
The primary goal of most Weibo marketing strategies is to continuously grow the number of followers. There are four ways that help brands attract their initial audiences:
- Utilizing current databases
- Using key opinion leader promotions
- Weibo advertising
- Weibo online campaigns
All of these methods have pros and cons but once you accumulate a healthy follower database, it’s easier to convert them into real customers. Launching Weibo marketing campaigns requires higher levels of management and more tools. Users see these interactions as fun and entertaining but for brands, they’re an opportunity to do word-of-mouth marketing.
WEIBO CASE STUDIES
As a Weibo marketing agency with over 9 years experience, we’ve helped our clients craft tailored strategies that build, promote and protect their brand online in China. Here are just a few small examples of what we do:
We helped an international mega event increase its followers from 0 to 163,000 in 18 months.
We increased a Russian luxury hotel’s online followers to 20,000 in 6 months.
We did a product-based co-branding campaign with dairy products and beverages that got impressive results in terms of sales growth and views for brand topics.
We also did a Korean beauty brand launch campaign with Chinese celebrities. The celebrities fit the brand image so well that it helped the brand increase their followers and made significant headway promoting their products.
How do our agency help brands win on Weibo? There’s more to it than posting frequently. We pay attention to timing, sequence and content. Our Weibo experts formulates monthly content plans that change during the different brand building phases. For example, at the new fan attraction stage, KOL promotions can drive traffic and exposure. During the fan base expansion stage, soft content connected with the brand’s essence and content advertising are best. In order to enhance fan loyalty, posting with appropriate trending topics to trigger discussion and ongoing communication is the order of the day. Step by step, we’re going to build your brand’s image and improve its reputation.
Helping brands break through in this new and challenging market is one of our specialities.
YOUR WEIBO MARKETING AGENCY
As one of the most popular social media platforms in China, Weibo is essential for communicating with Chinese consumers. By working with us, you can be sure that:
- We will handle Weibo account registration and verification, branding, and content smoothly and professionally.
- Our Weibo experts understands the most effective marketing strategies for Weibo that take into account its newest functions, trending topics, hashtags, campaigns, special occasions and more.
- Our experienced social media marketers, copywriters and designers will ensure your content stands out from the crowd and gets noticed on Weibo.
- Our team knows how to work with organic traffic and effectively allocate your advertising budget
- Alarice’s team will assign a personal account manager who will send monthly KPI reports and answer your questions to make sure that we’re on the right path to achieve our Weibo goals.
- As a Weibo agency, we work closely with Weibo’s internal team and often know of new functions and updates first.
- Alarice will keep you updated about the most recent trends and hot topics on Weibo. China’s market changes fast. In order to stay on top of these changes, our team monitors hot topics, trends, case studies and viral campaigns on a daily basis.
- Alarice will coordinate marketing campaigns with a unique set of KOLs that best fit your audience profile and brand image. We closely vet our KOLs to ensure results.
- Weibo is a great platform for social listening. We’ll make sure you’re in the know about your industry, your competitors and your own brand sentiment. We not only listen, we also manage that sentiment for you.
We care about your products as if they were our own. Contact us to learn more about our Weibo marketing services.
FAQ
Depending on your needs, audience and the scope of work, we’ll publish between 15 and 80 Weibo posts each month. We’ll craft compelling, visually appealing posts and link relevant ones to China’s most popular topics of discussion and do mini campaigns to engage with followers. Weibo is all about sharing fun, useful content.
Yes. We can support you and your in-house team. Schedule a consultation. We’ll review your challenges and give our recommendations on your content.