Weibo microblogging service

The WeiBo microblogging service (along with WeChat) is the main channel of communication with the Chinese audience and today has more than 700 million users - mainly residents of China.

The WeiBo service allows users to publish and share media content, comment on posts, subscribe to other users (bloggers) and has all the basic functions of any Western social network.

Weibo as an online tool to promote your project and bring attention to your brand

Weibo allows you to create a personal account and maintain your own blog, publish interesting content and attract the desired target audience. Any user can subscribe to your updates, recommend you, or “repost” your published content, which will attract even more subscribers to your WeiBo account. Thanks to the built-in advertising tools, your account may pop up for other users as recommended (relevant to other user interests) and appear in the general WeiBo news feed. WeiBo allows you to “rack up” subscribers, including organic traffic, which contributes to an indexation of the account in the search results. Simply put, your account becomes easier to find and it is seen more by WeiBo users.

Weibo opportunities and ads’ types

There are 4 types of accounts:

• Non-verified account

• Individual's verified account (yellow check mark on the page top)

• Legal entity's verified account (blue check mark on the page top)

• Celebrity's verified account (red check mark on the page tops, available for accounts with a million organic followers only)

In addition to the image element and area of activities, verification defines the available promotion tools, two of which are:

• Contextual advertising with advanced targeting settings (keywords, geography, gender, topics, etc.)

• Targeted promotion of publications (filters by topics and bloggers)

Contextual advertising in Weibo

Contextual advertising is available to accounts registered to either individuals or legal entities, but it is important to have these accounts verified.

Registration to a non-resident is also possible. Verification of such an account requires submission of company's charter documents and information about representatives along with their personal details translated into Chinese. Application will be reviewed within 30 calendar days after that you will have access to your personal account which will become operational after you make a deposit. The minimum deposit to launch contextual advertising in Weibo is 10,000 CNY.

Promotion of publications in Weibo

The fastest but no less effective way to cover more target audience is to promote your publications. Promotion tools do not require any verification and are available to all registered users including non-residents. You just need to have a Weibo account registered by submission of your personal details and verification code which will be sent to the phone number you specified during registration.

Promotion of publications in Weibo

The two key parameters for promoting publications are topics and bloggers.

Topics are selected based on your area of activities; for example, if you represent the travel industry, then tourism, travel bloggers, individual countries and cities will be your main topics.

In the case of promotion through bloggers, your publications will appear as "recommendations" in the general feed of this blogger's followers.

Thus, it is better to "mix" both parameters to distribute the promotion of each publication to bloggers and the topics you select for the largest coverage and effective targeting for your target audience.

The cost of promoting Weibo posts

User coverage directly depends on your budget. In average, CPM is 25 yuan. For example, 500 yuan allocated per post gives 20,000 to 25,000 user coverage. The range is determined by particular topics, the blogger and his/her audience.

Why do you need Weibo

Weibo microblogging service is the essential part of integrated marketing in China. This is not only an image tool, but also an effective way to warm up the audience of interest. If you represent a business sector where your product or service needed to be visualized, then Weibo service will cope with that as good as its Western equivalents banned in China.

WHAT WE CAN DO