A Guide to Weibo Advertising

Sina Weibo is one of China’s most popular social media websites. It boasts over 350 million active monthly users, making it more popular than Twitter. If you are going to advertise in China, Weibo is one of your best advertising streams. Here is a quick guide to help you figure out the best Weibo advertising campaign for you.

1. Start with Clear Goals

Weibo advertising is just like other advertising, you have to have clear goals before you craft your campaign. On Weibo, you may want to think about how the platform can best suit your needs. Think about the assets you want to use, how you want to advertise, and how you would like to grow your brand through the site. Then make a plan and, most importantly, follow through.

2. Get and Stay Active

Weibo has created a network that expects and demands levels of engagement that companies in North America do not need to equal in social media. Weibo advertising users expect brands and companies to engage and comment, not to simply fire off their messages, and that means you need to dedicate time and effort to actually using the platform if you want results.

3. Learn Weibo’s Four Advertising Channels

Weibo advertising essentially has four channels when it comes to their advertising: display ads, Weibo search engine promotions, fan tunnels, and fan headlines. Each acts a little differently and can yield different results. Here’s what they are:

• Display ads work almost the exact same in Weibo advertising as they do in other online advertising. They take up a certain amount of space, will be converted for mobile and browser, and users who click the ads will be taken to a homepage for whatever they clicked. They work as sponsored searches and sit on the sides of feeds, just like Facebook.

• Search engine promotions show up when people search for something using Weibo. The platform’s search engine capabilities are surprisingly robust, and some experts argue search engine promotions are the most effective means of reaching users. Weibo advertising users love the search engine, and keyword targeting can help you get people who are already interested in what you do.

• Fan tunnels are the surgical way to reach people on Weibo. Unlike the previous options, these target demographics that you can control, like Facebook audiences, and make a post that will sit at the top of their feeds. Since it’s reaching people who are in your target demographic, it lets you craft specific campaigns to get people who are probably already interested in what you sell or offer, but who may not have heard about you yet.

• Fan headlines work like fan tunnels, but instead, they target your followers and their friends. Think of it like word-of-mouth: your followers will have a post at the top of their feed about you, as will friends of your followers, meaning you can catch them up on what’s new and engage their friends at the same time.

Connecting with people via Weibo is very different from traditional social media marketing, and it is best handled by the experts. At Ads to China, we can help you craft a Weibo advertising campaign that will be effective and that will best use the platform to help you reach new successes.