MSL China Executive Whitepaper
MSL China Executive Whitepaper
Creating a Weibo That Supports Your Business By Stephy Liu, Johan Bjorksten, Fiona Shen, Jason Zhou
MSL China Executive Whitepaper
About MSL China Following the union with Eastwei MSL, MSL China is now a top 5 international strategic communications agency in Mainland China. With 200 colleagues across 4 offices, MSL China brings together over 20 senior consultants with more than 12 years of strategic communications experience in this key global market. Part of MSLGROUP Greater China, the largest PR & social media network in the region today, MSL China provides knowledge driven, integrated campaigns and advisory services spanning nearly every industry and communications discipline. MSL China has received recognition from the International Business Awards, The Holmes Report’s “PR Agency of the Year,” the China International PR Association and China’s New Media Festival for its creativity and effectiveness in strategic communications and industry-leading social media offering.
About MSLGROUP MSLGROUP is Publicis Groupe’s PR, speciality communications and engagement group, advisors in all aspects of communication strategy: from consumer PR to employee communications, from public affairs to reputation management and from crisis communications to event management. With more than 2,900 people, its offices span 22 countries. Adding affiliates and partners into the equation, MSLGROUP’s reach increases to 4,000 employees in 83 countries. Today the largest PR network in Greater China and India, the group offers strategic planning and counsel, insight-guided thinking and big, compelling ideas – followed by thorough execution. Learn more about us at: www.mslgroup.com+ http://blog.mslgroup.com+ Twitter+ YouTube
In February 2011, MSL China published the whitepaper Best practices in Chinese microblogs which discussed a hot topic: should organizations leverage the new weibo phenomenon for communications, and if so, how? Half a year later, most companies in China, from consumer electronics, lifestyle and automotive brands to industrial equipment providers and other business-to-business companies are tweeting away to reach target audiences with corporate and marketing messages. Some brands are doing this successfully, generating wide attention and word-of-mouth from online communities. But many corporate weibo accounts seem unable to engage with the online community, don’t generate a lot of commentary. In fact, after the initial rush of interest, we are starting to see users defect from company accounts; some brands have fewer and fewer followers. Some promotion methods that seem to have produced initial results “forward this tweet to three friends and receive an award” are now often viewed by initial brand fans as an increasingly counterproductive irritant; even when a few people do participate, they have learned to immediately cancel their subscriptions after receiving the award. Because of this, our clients are no longer asking us “should I launch a weibo initiative?”, but rather “how can I ensure that my weibo account stays fresh and continues to attract increasing numbers of users, so as to remain a sustainably cost-effective promotion channel
for our brand?” Against this background, and given the fast developments in the weibo arena, we felt that it is again time to summarize the most useful recent best practices in microblog communications to achieve what we might call a “passing grade” on the corporate weibo account. In this whitepaper, we will take the most popular Chinese microblogging service, Sina, as our point of departure. We will then look at the reasons why local readers choose to “follow” or “cancel” corporate microblogging accounts. Against this background, we will share some best practices from MSL China’s experience of managing weibo accounts for a large number of Chinese clients. More specifically, in order to get a “passing grade” for your weibo, we believe marketers need to ● Objectively assess the current status of their weibo effort ● Analyze the reasons targets groups “follow” or “cancel” their accounts ● Master six key weibo management tactics ● Create a sustainable platform for daily maintenance.
MSL China Executive Whitepaper
Understanding the status of your weibo 5 Typical Types of Brand Weibo Communications By looking at a large number of corporate and organizational weibo accounts, we have found that they can be classified in order of maturity into what we ca ll “a imless”, “ tr a ditiona l”, “content-driven”, “interactive” and “strategic/business-driven”. The graph lists some of the typical characteristics of each type, with the most primitive efforts to the left and the most advanced to the right. Most current microblogs in China fall into the “traditional” and
Aimless Blindly maximizes number of followers
Traditional Communicates using PR methods from traditional media
Contentdriven Pushes interersting and relevant content
Interactive
Strategic
Provides platform for interaction with audiences
Content and interactivity support communications and business goals
“content-driven” categories, while the weibo that tend to really attract target groups are “interactive” or “strategic”. Let us have a look at the reasons for this.
The “Suning Campus Club” brand account displays over 700 posts – but all are nearly identical, and there is no audience interaction.
Aimless The two main reasons that some weibo fall into this category are lack of persistence.The company opens a weibo account without systems in place to ensure long-term content or a basic failure to grasp the real benefits of a microblog. The latter often results in so called “zombie” accounts. The easiest way to spot zombies is to compare the number of “followers” with the number of forwards per tweet : the account may have over a hundred thousand followers, but there may be as few as three or four forwards of each tweet,
whereas a “normal” or “live” account would have a much higher proportion. There may two reasons for this discrepancy: the number of followers has been faked, or content quality is not interesting to followers. Many clients spend large sums on hiring so-called “digital consulting companies” who achieve a seemingly high activity in what’s called “astroturfing”: using automated programs or college students. To senior managers who do not understand the mechanics o f m i c r o b lo g s , results may look good, but in fact, such efforts rarely provide real value for money to the co m p a n y. T h e potential adverse effect can be serious: users resent being duped, and when they find out, companies in China have recently found themselves in the midst of a media crisis or even litigation.
Traditional These microblogs are the result of “old-school” PR methods: basically, shortening press releases or other corporate content to 140 characters to fit the new weibo medium, but keeping the formal tone of voice. Accounts in this category can be spotted by the fact that there is almost no interaction, discussion and forwarding. This is a very common phenomenon. In fact, the majority of company weibo efforts currently fall into the traditional category. The root cause is corporate conservatism and a fear of experimentation, and often a failure to understand how social media function. Traditional weibos are often made fun of online; in our opinion, they usually have an adverse effect on the brand.
Content-driven A content-driven weibo effort shows that the company already has a fundamental grasp of social media and how to leverage them for communications efforts; a lot of fast-moving consumer goods, consumer technology and IT, and lifestyle brands have already entered this space. The brand tells interesting stories and has developed a close rapport with readers. The account is managed by a professional team who update specially created content on a daily basis: content is rich and varied, often contains a blend of text and pictures, and has an informal tone-of-voice that feels natural to the online audience. A good example is Louis Vuitton’s acclaimed weibo account.
Interactive In order to reach this level, the company must leverage an experienced weibo team that is capable of launching content that actively drives interaction: interesting activities and engaging discussions that hook followers and foster a close and lively relationship with them; @ANNASUI is a good example. Taken to the highest level, such interactivity allows the weibo to rely mainly on UGC, User Generated Content and generate IWOM, Internet Word-of-Mouth; examples are @BananaTaipei (a stylish bag company
from Taiwan) and @QiongYouWang (famous travel review and discussion website). Banana Taipei, a fashion brand from Taiwan, is one of the best examples of how to leverage KOL’s and consumer generated content. The weibo account has also been successfully integrated with the brand’s Taobao store to drive sales.
Strategic The highest-value microblogs combine content and interactivity based on the brand personality to drive a targeted and measureable online marketing effort. The whole microblogging effort is aligned with sales and branding objectives to become a long-term, sustainable business tool. When we analyze these accounts, it is clear that content is being generated according to a long-term (more than six-month) plan. We also find that they are usually closely integrated with other communications channels and activities. In order to achieve these results, the weibo team must have firm objectives, a sustainable strategy, a well-defined online brand positioning, and a detailed execution plan for content and interactivity. Of course, the team must also be experienced and have the staffing to execute the strategy on a daily, sometimes hourly basis. Moreover, the communications team must be structured in such a way that weibo content can be aligned with other social media, traditional advertising and PR, as well as sales campaigns and other marketing efforts. Some examples in this category are award-winning accounts such as @mini China (Mini Cooper China), @durex, @Singapore Tourism Board and @IKEA.
MSL China Executive Whitepaper
Why users “follow” or “cancel” weibo accounts Let us now look at the reasons that the above
the professional weibo communicator needs to
categories are so important for our analysis. Why
understand what makes online audiences tick.
is it that most company efforts fail to reach the “strategic” level? The reason is simple: marketers
These answers are very much in line with our own
fail to understand user preferences, are unable to
experience from managing accounts: if you want to
establish real dialog and interactivity. Because of this,
succeed, you need to use themes that are logical and
there is no strategy to talk of, and the weibo account
relevant to users and interesting content that is in line
fails to generate business results. So just as every
with the brand image. That’s easy to say, of course –
good marketer starts by looking at consumer needs,
but how should one go about achieving it? Let’s have a look at some concrete tactics.
Why do people follow a brand account?
“The Weibo Poem” A popular internal MSL China posting on the principles of weibo management. The posting quickly went viral amongst our consultants – a great example of how creative format generates buzz and increases the impact of communications.
MSL China Executive Whitepaper
Getting to the “passing grade” – designing a high-ROI company microblog Six pillars of brand weibo operation
movie itself. If you don’t do this right, you risk diluting the brand or giving it a split personality. Establishing the “tweet image” avoids this by explicitly deciding the tone of voice, style and positioning of weibo content. Some companies hire legions of students to fill their microblogs with content; if this is your approach, you will need to spend significant effort training a bunch of teenagers to adopt a style that is engaging and for other age groups: if you want to attract and keep 2835 female consumers, you need to make sure your tweets are at the right maturity level. You may need to train your “actors” to be versatile enough to support a variety of brands aimed at different target groups.
Weibo contents
Tweet content Tweet tone You need to listen before you can tweet. Before you launch the weibo, you must establish a “daily listening” system which takes in not only what followers are saying on your own account (which is often influenced by your own editorial activity) but also listens to what’s going on in the microblogging environment at large: what your target group are saying when they are in their own forums. Continuously analyzing the larger blogosphere is the most important input for your strategy. Once you understand what your audience needs and what they care about, in essence allowing you to balance your “supply” with the “demand” for various types of content. Our colleague Gaurav Mishra calls this finding the “Social Heartbeat”.
Tweet image In this respect, weibo marketing is no different from traditional marketing: in the end, you are trying to create a clear image and positioning in the minds of your target group. Building a brand is like building up the image of a personality in a movie: the script determines how the actor should interpret the role; if the script is good enough, you can exchange the actor without changing the style of the The IKEA weibo image ·Love family, love life at home ·Simple, honest ·Pragmatic ·Always provides “small surprises” ·Helps you find the happiness and beauty in everyday life
The brand’s“weibo positioning” sets the stage for content, tone-ofvoice, design of interactive activities and follower management @IKEA is a good example of a microblog with a personality that accurately reflects the brand image. This clear positioning is one of the reasons that the IKEA weibo is currently ranked higher than any other home furnishing brand on Sina. The positioning also helps us maintain a relaxed, natural flow of tweets that gain user comments such as “IKEA’s weibo content is sweeter than first love” and “every time I get an IKEA tweet I feel like building myself a home”.
Content is king – nowhere is this m o re tr u e tha n i n s o ci a l m e d i a . Brands and users communicate through content and activities. As a result of the weibo revolution, marketers are rediscovering the need to “market” great content in addition to great products. You need to begin by understanding what kind of information, entertainment and other content users will be looking for in your online brand space. One example is the analysis from DCCI below on usage habits in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s generations; the differences between age groups are clearly significant. Since microblogging is a high-frequency communications channel, the need for content becomes huge. We categorize content as “company-generated”, “usergenerated”, “timely” and “opinion leader cooperation”. As a very general rule of thumb, a ratio of 6:2:1:1 is about right; but this of course varies significantly between different companies, products and brands. Company generated content can be produced using what we call the “tweet content matrix”: this includes positioning and style, target group characteristics and the business and communications needs of the company. The tweet content matrix ensures
MSL China Executive Whitepaper
that your weibo maintains a consistent editorial style despite the fragmented nature of the channel, makes it easier for the weibo team to execute on the strategy as well as launching “opportunistic” tweets based on ongoing events without compromising the “look and feel” of your account. The clearest example is the use of “#XX#” tag series (in general, we recommend using tags for themed campaigns; these can be designed according to a “topic tag creation process” which is illustrated below together with the tweet content matrix. In addition to the company-generated content, leveraging a certain amount of user-generated content is an effective tool. By finding ways of encouraging audiences to contribute, which can include active campaigns to solicit contributions, you should generate at least the minimum level needed to ensure that the weibo is truly interactive and doesn’t degenerate into a one-way loudspeaker.
results if you plan it well. Audiences tend to be increasingly turned off by simple “send this to three friends and get a prize” activities, so you need to find a theme and “reason to participate” that is not trivial.
Brand account cooperation
engagement and involvement; in order to attract weibo followers, we need to create an interactive or, better yet, viral, promotion. We also need to coordinate and integrate all online platforms:brand weibo account, home page, campaign minisite, SNS pages and so on.
It sometimes makes sense to implement co-branding efforts with other official brand accounts, allowing the to build on each other’s popularity, just as when two people introduce each other’s circles of friends to each other. There are several types of cooperation: Brand cooperates with sub-brands or brands in the same group is a ususal approach. A typical example is th e co o p e r ati o n b et w e e n th e H o n g Ko n g Tourism Board and local commercial brands; by leveraging the popularity of local brands, and multiplying their effect under a common umbrella, the marketer creates a win-win situation. This also creates an official endorsement of the individual commercial brands, providing support for their credibility and loyalty.
Brand cooperates with brands accrosing industry can make surprise towards follows. This can create an image of openness, liveliness and participation for the brand, by leveraging common interests in the target group. Such activities are not easy to design; they must be carefully selected not to give a “forced” impression. For this reason, it is used rather sparsely, but we believe it is worth spending more effort in this area. A successful example is the cooperation between Trendmicro and Durex.
Competitions and awards
Tweet interactivity As we have seen, content and interactivity are the two key components that dovetail to make a weibo truly attractive to users. There are many kinds of interactivity; in order to build your weibo into a marketing powerhouse, you need to choose those activities that will attract your particular target group. In this way, the account will “come alive” and become a platform of two-way interchange. In our experience, some of the most useful activities are:
Minisites and apps If yo ur b u d g et a llow s , a n d co nsi d er in g th e characteristics of your target group, launching a fullblown campaign supported by advertising on minisites or apps can still generate good value. However, you need to align the activity carefully with the positioning of your brand. But even if the campaign relies mainly on advertising, we still need to ensure that it encourages
This may be one of the most hackneyed and overexploited online tools, but it can still generate good Using weibo to distribute content from influential KOL’s is a great way of promoting products and events. The Puma Social campaign featured celebrity model Pace Wu, who already had a large weibo following, in real-life events. Her weibo posts generated strong online buzz and wordof-mouth.
Combining weibo activity with traditional media and other offline promotions. Many brands currently do Brand cooperates with brands in the same industry is conducive for winning fans.The Singapore Tourism Board cooperates with travel and tourism portal eLong in a fans interactive activity using awards and other straightforward incitements to participate, generating substantial attention for both accounts within an hour of the activity.
this successfully, but there are two especially easy ways of doing this which companies often disregard: You can promote successful online activities such as awards to generate print publicity in real-life interviews, forums and panels; we can also leverage digitial tools such as weibo to engage traditional stakeholders – journalists, experts and officials – before the physical activity takes place.
MSL China Executive Whitepaper
Technical tools like this “weibo voting widget” used by Hotel.com can effectively help brands to understand consumer preferences and behavior. The campaign provided incentives to consumers who fed their information into the widget.
Coordinating with other online platforms Many of our clients ask us to support in driving traffic to the home page or e-commerce platform; we have found social media, and weibo especially, to be a great complement to traditional traffic support like Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and click-through advertising. This is confirmed by the DCCI figures below. Coordinating the brand's entire online presence is becoming a must for successful internet marketing. When you search for the brand online, you will often find that the weibo receives high rankings on the search engines, in essence becoming the brand’s “second face” in addition to the home page. By considering how target groups look for information, and in particular their search behavior and search terms, you can create tweets that frequently contain the most popular phrases that users are looking for.
Tweet follower relations By “relations”, we mean the way the brand responds to online commentary and how well it understands the needs and behavior of followers. As a rule of thumb, no question or negative comment should be left unanswered for more than 48 hours. We always try to involve the client’s PR department and often Customer Service department in drafting a standard “weibo discussion FAQ document”. This document is usually an adaption of traditional standard operating procedures from customer service documents, where the language has been revised to better suit the online environment. We also try to ensure that the style reflects the personality of the brand itself. The content of replies should be practical, focused and to the point; but also
straightforward, personal and colloquial, making it easy to read. Address users by their online nicknames and avoid using polite forms of address. Actively responding to questions and criticism is useful both as a way of increasing interaction and dialog, and as a way of adapting content to user interests and needs. In addition, analyzing followers in depth is also an important part of managing the account. One way is to simply conduct surveys and voting activities on the account itself. We also recommend using add-ins or widgets插件such as the Weibo Positioning Billboard
(微博风云榜), Weibo Fan Analysis (围脖粉丝分析) and Wei Fenxi (微分析) as analysis tools.
MSL China Executive Whitepaper
KPI In our previous whitepaper, we explained how to use a number of generally applicable KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) such as number of followers, and number of forwards. But as the weibo marketing environment matures and companies establish more specific goals for their weibo activities, these metrics are no longer enough. To capture the ROI of our weibo effort, we need to combine
KPI of Weibo Account Influence Analysis Follower Quality Index Number of followers
Number of followers
Active followers
Number of active followers Percentage of active followers
Verified followers
Number of verified followers Percentage of verified followers
Popular followers
Number of popular followers Percentage of popular followers
Number of sub-followers
Analyze the number of sub-followers (followers of each follower) using theappropriateplug-in
Zombie followers
Number of zombie followers Percentage of zombie followers
several qualitative and qualitative metrics that better reflect our marketing objectives and can provide input for ongoing strategic improvements. Based on experience, we suggest
Demographics
Age, gender, education, income, geographical distributtion, etc
Topical Interest
Analyze follower interest and preferences from comments and questions on our content
Brand Interest
Users comments and voting to analyze the level of brand liking and loyalty
followers to marketing target group; content attractiveness; and degree of interactivity. These measures are interrelated: no matter how influential our followers are, if we want to achieve marketing objectives, we must also understand how closely they reflect our target group.
A clear strategy is not enough; an effective weibo
the five categories the company’s weibo belongs
initiative also relies on professional and efficient
to, there will be different tasks and priorities. Most
day-to-day management. Based on experience, the
of our clients ask us to strive for the most advanced
MSL China team has collated a checklist of the most
option: a strategically integrated weibo initiative that
important tacticts, listed in chronological order from
directly supports the company’s communications and
inception to measurement. Depending on which of
business objectives.
Follower relevance
using a set of practical KPI’s, including influence of followers; proximity of
Brand weibo checklist
Engagement with content Average number of forwards of original postings Average number of comments on original postings
Proportion of original and user-generated content
●Average participation in activity, for example uploads, forwards,comments. ●Increase in follower number as result of activity As a rule of thumb, proportion of original and user-generated content should be 3:1, but this depends on specific circumstances
Relative proportion of positive, negative and neutral comments
Engagement with brand Relative proportion of positive, negative and neutral comments Direct effect of the weibo marketing effort – this can be analyzed using consumer survey tools, focus groups or informal gatherings of weibo followers
Integration with other social media platforms Consumer dicussion and buzz around brand outside the brand account. Number of external links Store traffic and sales
Brand Weibo Checklist
MSL China Executive Whitepaper
In this whitepaper, we have tried to provide a strategic recipe for weibo success. But in the end, no matter how good the strategy, the extent to which your company’s employees embrace microblogging will be the key to success. The MSL China weibo team consists of a bunch of expert weibo enthusiasts, but we have found that this is not enough; we must get all employees to become weibo ambassadors of the company. Today, many of our employees are active on our own @MSL China account. Even our hoary old directors have joined the weibo craze. @them if you have the chance!
Weibo management is like a love affair: even if you can achieve instant passion using a few short-term marketing tricks, the real challenge is to build longterm attraction. You need to nurture trust and emotional rapport between your brand and its followers; every now and then, you also need to provide a surprise or especially romantic moment to keep the flame alive. Successful brands don’t try to generate love at first sight; they devote themselves strategically to creating those deep and honest interactions that foster life-long relationships.