Recently Leon Zhang, Digital Strategy and Insights Lead at Burson-Marsteller China, was invited by AmCham (The American Chamber of Commerce) as a panelist of roundtable “Marketing the Weibo Way”. Leon shared experience, best practices and a case study of Corporate Weibo (microblogging) marketing at the roundtable. Here is Leon’s keynote address:

"Good afternoon everyone. I’d like to introduce a real-world case study of how a brand used weibo to achieve its marketing and communication objectives.

This B2B China Social Media case is interesting because:

First, this case has just won a PR award in Asia Pacific, SABRE award for best B2B marketing in 2011.

Second, the brand is a B2B company. As we know, a common view to weibo is that it’s a platform full of consumers, so it’s good for B2C companies. But the fact is, weibo can be also very helpful for B2B companies.

The overall goal was to extend client’s thought leadership and brand awareness in China’s social media space, and the target audience was its key stakeholders, including: media, opinion leaders, operators, manufacturers and developers.

So what did the team do? 3 keywords: research, content, and engagement.

The first step was an extensive research and analysis to better understand the situation, this included 3 parts: influencers, audiences, peers.

1) Influencers analysis. There’re mainly 3 sources to identify this:

First, as a PR firm, we have a well established media database, so media influencers were mapped out;

Second, client knowledge and experience;

Third, ongoing interaction with users when maintaining the weibo account.

2) Audience analysis. This includes,

Audience segmentation - Divide audiences into different interest groups;

Behavior analysis - Understand what each interest group is most debating and interested online.

3) Peers or competitors analysis. Constant research on how the industry peers were using weibo to reach their audiences and establish point of view in the market.

After the research and better understanding of audiences, it’s time to create good content.

Good content needs good differentiation and positioning. This weibo was positioned as:

1) A source of valuable, reliable and up-to-date information about wireless technology, products and trends;

2) A professional forum for industry leadership and followers to discuss hot issues and latest developments in wireless communications;

3) A place for influencers to directly interact with the brand, learn about the company.

Then develop content strategy, content approval process, editorial calendar and guidelines, according to both the positioning and research results.

Going into the ongoing maintenance, engagement with users is also very critical. Engagement has 2 meanings here: 1 is daily interaction with users to strengthen the relationship, like replying to the comments, @ or retweeting, etc; 1 is ad-hoc or regular special events or programs.

The results were good both quantitatively and qualitatively.

Quantitatively, the weibo followers were increased from 4,000 to 30,000 in about 1 year;

Qualitatively, the weibo has got a lot of very high-quality followers, for example, some of the most significant corporate followers are: China’s 3 operators, partners, analyst institutions, and media. And some significant individual industry followers are: CEOs and senior management in the industry.

In summary, the 3 key takeaways from this case are:

1) Always start with listening, research and analysis, before deep diving into execution;

2) Content is king. Have a good positioning and differentiation first, and then create content that your audiences like;

3) Ongoing engagement and commitment. Weibo is a long-term business, you need to engage with users constantly, and this needs long-term commitment to weibo platform.

Thank you very much.”

About the American Chamber of Commerce Beijing event:

Topic: Marketing the Weibo Way

Date: 12:00 – 2:00 PM, Wednesday, December 07, 2011

Venue: AmCham-China Conference Center

Speakers:

Leon Zhang, digital strategy and insights lead, Burson Marsteller China

Will Tao, consulting director, iResearch Consulting Group

Bill Bishop, founder of DigiCha, a blog about the Internet and media in China

Jingyang Xu, Sina Weibo deputy general manager, Weibo Business Products Division

Moderator: Jeremy Goldkorn, CEO of Danwei

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About D/BM:

D/BM is Burson-Marsteller’s integrated digital and social media practice for China. D/BM supports by monitoring online reputation and marketing, identifying and fostering influencers in real-time, and by developing communities that enable targeted communications and marketing in the digital age.