Weibo can be better compared to a Chinese Facebook, as it’s more open and newsfeed based than WeChat. Launched by the Sina Corporation in 2009, it has reached a total of 462 million monthly active users, with USD $481. 9 million net revenues in 2018. Over the past 10 years, Weibo has transformed from a simple blogging site to a comprehensive social media platform, which has become an indispensable part of Chinese people’s everyday life.
There is another feature called “Super Topic”, which is commonly used by celebrities as it gathers related posts shared by other users mostly fans, similar to a hashtag. For example, as Huang Bo is an actor, the super topic under his name includes several discussions, pictures and videos related to him. Unlike a hashtag, a “Super Topic” has its own page with dedicated moderators. “Super Topics” allow users to discuss a certain topic and post relevant content to the page, and since it is actively moderated it can provide more valuable information than a standard hashtag. Within “Super Topics” there are some unique features, including “essential content” and the “hall of fame” where content is manually selected by moderators to be featured for users visiting the “super topic.
”Being a popular micro blogging platform, Weibo has always been compared with another of the world’s biggest social media platforms – Twitter. In fact, both of them are leaders when it comes to micro blogging platforms of the world – with one being used in China and one for the rest of the world. They share similar features, such as allowing users to share content and follow others for their latest posts. Besides, both of them implement a verification policy to identify accounts of public interest. However, while Weibo is often called the Chinese Twitter, there are many things that make the platform unique.
The platform provides precious opportunities for e commerce stores who would like to raise sales and brand awareness through influencer marketing on Weibo. To enjoy the service, stores with Taobao/Tmall stores can register with Alimama, so that their products will appear in the platform’s database and be accessible by influencers. It is beneficial to sellers as no extra cost is incurred, they only need to pay commissions if the product is sold out. However, it can be difficult to get any attention on this platform if you’re brand new to the market and have little brand recognition or previous sales in China. Apart from the platform, businesses can also consider traditional influencer marketing by inviting KOLs and celebrities on the platform to share your products.
Still, you need to pay for the post before getting the exact sales income and it is important to know how to leverage the right influencers. Success depends highly on their personal image, expertise, engagement rates, and the number of followers. To understand how to maximize the effects of influencer marketing on Weibo and who some of the biggest names in the business are read our post 4 Astonishing Weibo KOL Marketing Trends to Know for more informationApart from the local China market, Weibo has reached out to its neighboring countries by launching Weibo Hong Kong and Weibo Taiwan with traditional Chinese characters. To cater to the needs of foreign users, Weibo has developed an English edition for desktop and English apps for the iPhone and iPad. Although a full English, or other languages website interface has yet to be developed, we predict that Sina Weibo will begin moving towards internationalization, as competition in the domestic market continues to heat up.
Hopefully this will provide more marketers with the opportunity to make use of this incredible platform. We hope this article showed you that Sina Weibo is much more than just a Chinese Twitter clone.
