Weibo Marketing: Everything You Need to Know (Part 1)

5 min readJan 9, 2017

Sina Weibo (新浪微博), more commonly known simply as Weibo, which is the Chinese word for “microblog”, is a social networking and microblogging service based in China. It’s owned by Sina Corporation which also owns Sina, the largest Internet portal in China.

Numerous sites offer microblogging services in China but Weibo is still the most popular. The latest report from the China Internet Network Information Center showed that Weibo has 536 million registered users, 282 million monthly active users (MAU) and over 126 million daily active users.

Registering a Personal Account

There are two types of account on Weibo: personal and official. Personal accounts are for individual users, while official accounts are for corporates, media, institutions, registered websites, NGOs, school organizations, government departments and more.

For personal account registration, you need an email address or phone number that hasn’t been used before to register another Weibo account. Currently Weibo only accepts mobile numbers from China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, the U.S., Canada, Brazil, and Malaysia.

Users have to pay to become a “Weibo Member” which is essentially a VIP membership. It includes fifteen “special privileges” in terms of user personalization, functions and security. A one-month subscription is priced at 15 RMB (2.17 USD). Discounts are offered for longer subscriptions of three months to one year.

What are the Most Popular Things to do on Weibo?

● View Pages

Netizens can easily get news and updates as well as visit different pages on Weibo anytime and anywhere.

[For brands: You can post updates, photos, videos or even a link to your website. Posting frequently brings your business alive on Weibo.]

↑ For instance, this famous blogger posted, “Here to teach you some useful DIY cat toys. Economical and funny. Save this post if you have a cat.”

● Post

The great majority of Weibo users microblog as a recreational activity or as an outlet to vent. There are, however, many users who use the app to send out useful and interesting content. Weibo enables people to document their daily lives and communicate up-to-the-minute information very quickly and efficiently.

[For brands: You can view your target customers’ posts to know more about their interests, likes and dislikes. You can also interact with customers and receive feedback.]

● Stay in Touch with Friends

Users can conveniently search for old friends, make new friends, build business connections or simply extend their personal connections by interacting with friends of friends — which can have a powerful multiplying effect. Users who join communities and groups can meet new people whose likes and dislikes are similar to theirs and further extend their networks.

[For brands: Weibo makes it easy to connect with your audience.]

● Participate in Campaigns

Chinese netizens pay a lot of attention to campaigns. When there’s an attractive campaign, people love to post about it and tag their friends to encourage them to join, no matter what the prize is. For a minute of their time, a few words and a click or two, they get a chance to win something for free, so why not? In addition to being affordable, Weibo campaigns are usually able to reach a much wider audience than many standard marketing strategies.

[For brands: You can easily launch a campaign to increase exposure and raise awareness.]

↑ The 2017 Astana Expo account launched a campaign to announce 200 Days Until their Opening Ceremony on Weibo.

● Track Hot Topics

The site showcases the most popular core content and there are also lots of user-generated lists of trending issues. Users love this information as it helps them to keep up with fast-moving pop culture, fashion and news.

[For brands: You can find out which topics are current and interesting to your audience and use this knowledge to create posts that are related. You could also opt for display ads or Weibo search engine promotion to help create the perception that your brand is a “hot topic”.]

↑ This list shows a ranked list of hot topics with page view stats.

Users enjoy taking surveys and voting in polls to express their opinions. They also enjoy checking the results of surveys to see what others are thinking.

For brands: Weibo’s built-in polling system allows personal and official accounts to create surveys as a way to engage with their audience and gather useful information. Businesses that use these surveys can understand consumer preferences and behavior more clearly

This feature allows users to broadcast live events. Viewers can interact with broadcasters in real-time. Mobile video app Yizhibo, integrated its service into Weibo this year. Users can now broadcast live videos through the Yizhibo app, which broadcasts them directly to Weibo through Miaopai.

For brands: Live streaming is a great way to interact with your audience in real-time. You can share live events, host interviews, show product creations, give your audience a look behind-the-scenes, conduct mini training workshops or host Q&A sessions.