These posts often start with the update’s topic in square brackets and/or a hashtag. The latter can be a branded tag or a trending topic (or both). While creating the post, it’s quite handy to use the hashtag search tool provided in the creator function. It’ll give you a good overview of what’s trending. You can also browse the topics by category (education, food, travel, etc.), and search using keywords (such as 留学 ‘study abroad’). It’ll help you find the most relevant hashtags for your post.Trending hashtags on Weibo
content in your updates, and the platform gives you quite a few options. You can also increase interaction by adding a poll, for example.
Visually, it’s a good idea to post pictures in groups of three. Actually, a very popular format is a photo grid of nine pictures. This may be nine different pictures arranged together in an appealing way or one picture broken down into nine pieces to draw more attention. You can also incorporate characters in the grid that could stress the CTA you used in the post. For instance, in the first picture below, the characters say ‘Share the post to join the contest’ (words you couldn’t otherwise include in the post).
Image Grids on Weibo
Uploading a video is also a good option. Weibo allows both short videos (similar to Douyin) and longer ones. Once you add a video to your post, it will be automatically added to Weibo’s video platform and can be browsed (and discovered) by users.
Managing Content on Weibo
You can manage things such as updates and interactions directly on Weibo or integrate your account with an external CMS (content management system). The second option is particularly handy if you want to manage many platforms in one place.
Our team likes to use Yimei Zhushou (易媒助手), which allows us to manage multiple platforms in one place, but it doesn’t provide us with data analysis. For that, we go back to Weibo’s back-end.
You can also integrate Weibo with international CMS providers (such as Hootsuite) with an additional plug-in (more here).
Advertising on Weibo
As a marketer trying to reach a broader audience on an overly crowded platform, there are some challenges that you need to consider. The issue of reach is not limited to just Western platforms, and China-marketers saudi arabia phone number encounter the same difficulties reaching their desired audience with their content in China. It may be due to ‘zombie’ followers, the platform’s algorithms, or the fact you are just starting out as a brand in China.
An answer to that is social advertising. You may use it to boost your regular posts to the target audience and plan targeted advertising campaigns with a well-crafted call-to-action (CTA).
Weibo offers a few different options:
And there’s, of course, an option of working with influencers to increase your brand awareness.
WEIBO NEWS FEED ADS
News Feed ads are basically boosting your existing Weibo posts. If you see an unsatisfactory number of views or interactions, you can pay to show the post to a broader audience. The targeting options are more limited compared to Fan Connect, but there are no additional requirements, such as setting up an advertising account or verification, so it’s an easy and fast way to get more exposure.