If you intend to enter a huge potential market like China, having a Weibo business account is an indispensable step. And knowing the Weibo business account benefits will help you have a better understanding of why it’s vital for your business.

Here, we will delve deeper into how to classify Weibo accounts and the many benefits for businesses looking into China marketing.

Types of Weibo Accounts

Personal Account

A Personal Account is for individuals who simply want to register and follow updates on Weibo. However, this type has limited features and is not actually profitable for businesses.

Celebrity Account

Well-known stars and personalities may apply for the Celebrity Account. Once approved, their Weibo page will obtain a red tick with a yellow ring to show account authenticity.

There’s also a badge for KOLs and Influencer Account that comes in a purple tick. These individuals are not as popular as celebrities, but their opinions and content contributions receive a lot of interaction from the community.

Weibo Account for Business

The blue tick badge on Weibo is what businesses like yours need to win Weibo. With this badge, Weibo users quickly identify that your page is a legitimate brand or business page.

By owning a Weibo Official Account, you are entitled to plenty of benefits that’ll help you grow our brand in the market.

Thanks to these markers, identifying pages on Weibo based on badges is much easier than on Facebook.

In addition, Weibo also assesses the level of user activity by scoring the account’s data. This includes the history of speeches, rule violations, even trade, the use of real names and social relationships, and more.

From the above, they will be “graded” according to the following levels:

• From 300-419: Extremely low
• 420-450: Pretty low
• 451-570: Normal
• 571-690: Pretty good
• 691-900: Very good

So, if you earn below 450 points, the account is at high risk of account loss. Furthermore, the safe range is from 451 to 570, as long as you don’t violate Weibo’s community safety rules.

Things to Remember About Weibo Accounts

• Creating a personal account is completely free.
• Gold Weibo account is only for hugely prominent people.
• A verified account with a media contract always receives exclusive and beneficial features for brand advertising.

Now that you know the basics of a Weibo account, let’s highlight the Weibo Account for Business. So, what perks can you expect for business accounts?

Weibo Business Account Benefits

Having a business account on Weibo lets you:

1. Get basic Weibo account services
2. Create promotions
3. Create events
4. Offer coupons
5. Send private messages
6. Perform data analysis and social listening

Now, let’s dig deeper into each benefit.

Basic Weibo account services

Basically, the service allows you to modify your page with a maximum of 5 images and 1 video. You can also do the following:

• Change your cover image
• Use and customise profile templates
• Utilise the VIP customer care service

Create promotions

Creating an online promotion is a must for brands that want to get closer to their customers. Not only it increases brand awareness, it also lifts brand recall resulting to more conversions.

Luckily, a Weibo business account lets you do this and more on the platform. This includes:

• Promote discounts
• Allow users to call your service hotline
• Generate own hashtags
• Create lucky draws
• Filter fake followers
• Data reporting
• Advance scheduling

Create events

On Weibo, there 6 types of events you can initiate to engage your audience more, such as:

• Wheel of Fortune – Spin to win a reward or red packet
• Flash Sales – Limited time offers
• Repost to enter a lucky draw
• UGC – Reward users who post your campaign on Weibo with prizes
• Pre-order – Like how mobile brands let people pre-order the latest smartphones
• Request a Sample – Users fill out a form to earn a free sample

Offer coupons

Coupons greatly appeal to users who constantly look for great deals. And when you offer an irresistible discount voucher, your target consumers are more likely to check out your brand and make an actual purchase.

Here’s what you can do with this Weibo business account perk:

• Create coupons
• Manage coupons
• Send reminders through private messaging
• Follow your account to claim coupon
• Share to Weibo after redemption

Send private messages

Similar to WeChat, Weibo also lets you send private messages for a lot of reasons. However, on Weibo, you can only randomly send to 10% of your follower base. Also, your messages are subject to Weibo’s safety regulations.

Regardless of the restrictions, you can still make use of this to boost your Weibo marketing strategy. Here’s what you can do:

• Send posts to your followers
• Send messages to groups
• Autoreply
• Menu

Perform data analysis and social listening

For brands, data is not simply about researching trends and interests to launch new products. But, it’s also understanding what customers want to sustain the follower base and eventually convert them into loyal customers. Hence, you must make use of Weibo’s features that allow data analysis and social listening for your future campaigns.

Don’t be confused though with Weibo’s 数据助手 (data helper). This is different from what we’re talking about here, and it costs an extra RMB 6,800 per year.

To continue, here are some Weibo features that can help you gain valuable insights:

• Keyword suggestions
• Website listening analysis
• Weibo event analysis
• Competitive analysis
• Social listening report
• Repost analysis

Finally, owning a Weibo business account is not as simple as it looks. You have to go through the verification process, and you must spend time educating yourself on Weibo marketing as well. But, once you have full access to a verified Weibo Official Account, you’ll ultimately benefit from China’s most popular social media website.

Looking for a Weibo marketing agency? Contact us today to find out more about Digital 38’s Weibo services.