Publicitas in Hong Kong

By Publicitas Hong Kong, 29 Sep 2011

(Published in the official Online eNewsletter September 2011)

Sina Weibo – widely known as the “Twitter in China” – now has almost 200 million registered users with over 50 million tweets (or “weibos”) sent every day, although it was only established in 2009 which is 3 years later than Twitter. With both Sina Weibo and Twitter running with the philosophy of 140 characters, what makes the two social networking sites different than each other? What makes Sina Weibo particularly delightful than Twitter for your China social media campaign?

1)      More Forwarding of Tweets

Sina Weibo’s versatile forwarding options allow you to comment (with extra 140 characters allowed), send direct message and share the tweets to groups with a simple click. While for Twitter, it only allows you to retweet a message while constraining the word count to 140 characters including the original tweets.  As the essence of social media marketing is to drive conversation among genuine people that spread the message of your brand around, Sina Weibo’s more diverse forwarding options have fostered its highly engaged user community and viral spread of forwarding tweets and direct messages.

2)    Verified Accounts

Sina Weibo provides free verification service to all users regardless of whether you are individuals ( “V” logo in orange) or organizations (“V” logo in blue). To avoid abuse of service, Sina Weibo set a requirement for individuals’ verification of a minimum number of 100 fans and 50 followees for an account. As for Twitter, its public verification service is no longer available as stated in its official website. Undoubtedly, Sina Weibo’s verified accounts feature has attracted a viral number of fans following verified celebrity accounts and create active fans activities among the community.

3)      Greater Multimedia Options

Long before Twitter introduced its in-house photo sharing service, Sina Weibo had already allowed its users to post pictures, videos, audio and polls with their tweets, hosted in Sina’s own server. What’s more, a watermark is also automatically embedded on the pictures, which further encourages Sina Weibo users to post original contents and gain personal credibility while preventing others from stealing their own pieces.

4)     Leading Portal Website as Support

If Twitter is a lonely island of a land of 140-character contents, Sina Weibo would be a big city with a giant country that backs it up. Being the 2^nd largest portal site in China (with 14 billion page views and 64 million unique visitors per day) means that Sina can better utilize its website to direct more traffic to its Weibo site and generated greater brand awareness and highly user engagement for users. It is always the giant who wins.

5)     More can be Said in 140 Chinese Words

Both Sina Weibo and Twitter restrain the word count to 140 characters, but the former is in Chinese while the latter is in English. Linguistically, there are higher information intensity in Chinese words, thus 140 Chinese words can express more ideas than the equivalent in English.  However, advertisers should not abuse the favorable Chinese word count advantage to throw too many contents in a single tweet. Fewer contents in one tweets and the leftover put in other tweets is advised.

6)      Accessible in China

The great wall in China’s internet realm has expelled Twitter away and makes Sina Weibo the largest microblogging platform in China. Many international brands are now establishing Sina Weibo accounts to increase its China market presence. Yet, brands should always beware of putting links related to sites blocked by the Chinese government such as Facebook and Youtube. This might render your Weibo tweets unsentable or unsearchable.

7)      Enterprise Accounts for Brands

Not only did Sina Weibo move to a new domain of www.weibo.com for shorter custom URL, but also it is launching a new enterprise version for commercial accounts with distinctive features. Companies can integrate Weibo accounts of company executives and customer service officers into one single platform and add modules like company introduction, announcement, links, videos, polls, activities etc. The handy analytics tool can also help track user engagement and interaction. In no way would your brand’s flame be hidden with this new offering.

Here we provide you a summary of the comparison between Weibo and Twitter:

For more information about advertising on Weibo please contact Publicitas Hong Kong for details.

Image source: technode.com