What is Weibo
Weibo is a micro blogging service, the Chinese counterpart to twitter.
Although weibo is mainly focused on youger users, it attracts almost half a billion active users per month. It allows them to discuss hot topics, mainstram information and celebrity related issues. Weibo has created a well established ecosystem and is an important part of the chinese internet landscape. Sina, the company behind Weibo, has recognised three main trends of the Chinese online world at a very early stage: the Wanghong economy (internet fame, similar to "instafame" in western web societies), short videos and live video streaming.
Weibo is very popular among celebrities and influencer (called KOL for "Key Opinion Leader" in China) to interacti with their fans and followers. The number of posts that can be published per day is not limited on Weibo (as it is on WeChat), so it allows a much higher frequency of posting.
Weibo for Professional & Commercial Use
Corporate Accounts and Pages
Companies can register an account to publish and create a Weibo page to publish information and interact with customers. As a microblogging service, communication on Weibo mainly folows a one-to-many direction and let users like and share posts. Some of the post with the highest viral reach (numbers of shares and likes) of all time were originally posted on Weibo.
Influencers (KOL)
For product and destination marketing, the large number of KOLs with massive follower base are a efficient way to boost recognition and consideration. Due to the massive user base and popularity in China, top KOLs can trigger multi million sales boosts just with a few posts. However, the fee that KOL asks increases with the size of their follower base and celebrity status. Top KOLs are super stars on a similar level as top actors and musicians.
Weibo Advertising
Display Ads
Traditional yet still effective: display ads on Weibo allow advertisers to present products and services in rich media formats on different pages within Weibo. They appear either either as banners on the home ore search page at prior positions or in the users news feed (side bar), optimised for mobile and desktop use. Display ads can be targeted based on keywords in users searches or relevant accounts.
The pricing depends on the placement chosen, the size and associated keywords.
Search Engine Promotion
Similar to paid search ads on Baidu (or Google), Weibo offers paid search results to appear in the users search stream when searching for topics, accounts, posts and fan pages. While display adds are a great way to get traffic to external locations such as your online shop or Chinese we site, Search engine promotions are the way to increase the visibility of your Weibo account and page.
Search engine promotions can be targeted by keywords that appear in the users searches. The pricing is based on the competitiveness of a keyword and it's popularity.
Fan Tunnels
Fan tunnels are a great tool to increase reach. They allow to target ads based on sociodemographic properties as well as user behaviour, followed accounts, locale and device type. New users, similar to existing fans but also entirely new audiences can be reached through this way of advertising. Fan tunnel ads appear at the top of the users news feed and thus reach a high level of attention.
The pricing is based on impressions on a CPM (Cost Per Mille) model and starts from 5 RMB (approx, EUR 0.65).
Fan Headlines
While fan tunnels target new audiences, fan headlines are focused on existing followers and their connections. The posts appear as well at the top of the users news feed, connections and categories of interest. but are marked as "Promoted" or "hot". Although the visible classification, they reach a high user acceptance and likelyhood of being shared. Together with fan tunnels they are a great way to boost user engagement with your account and page.