WeChat or Weibo? Use Two Weapons Wisely

New media marketing is most effectively marketed by internet-driven technology such as blogs, RSS, web video productions, podcasts and social networking platforms. A strong social media presence gives personality behind your brand and helps you engage with your customers in a way that is not only relevant, but will inspire your customers to impact change. When a company uses social media advertising, not only does the company dispense its marketing message to the users of the original site, but that message triggers a chain reaction that ripples through the site’s user base and soon spreads to other social media advertising venues where the new sites’ users also become willing participants in the word-of-mouth marketing campaign that has by this time taken on a life of its own. This is an example of the social media advertising model in action. WeChat marketing and Weibo marketing is nowadays the 2 most popular social media marketing channel in China. WeChat is the most popular application in China which offers hold-to-talk voice messaging, broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, photo/video sharing, location sharing, and contact information exchange. WeChat supports social networking via shared streaming content feeds and location-based social plug-ins (“Shake,” “Look Around,” and “Drift Bottle”) to chat with and connect with local and international WeChat users. Weibo is a public network for sharing information, while WeChat is more like a personal network; these two platforms of social interaction are fundamentally different. But because there are overlaps in Sina Weibo users and WeChat users, spending time on one product means a decreased amount of time invested on the other platform.

Regarding SEM and SEO in China, Baidu is the No.1 Chinese Search Engine with 74.3% search market share. So if you are thinking to sell to China, Baidu.com is definitely one of the major Search Engine that you should optimize for. Baidu SEO is the way to increase Baidu rankings and citations by making contents more relevant to Baidu and Chinese searchers. For Baidu’s SEM, clients select keywords and the maximum price they are prepared to bid on each keyword (Cost per click – CPC). Baidu only charges client when their ad is selected or “clicked” so they only pay for performance. Just like on other search platforms, Baidu don’t publish the exact algorithm that gets a site the top advertising slot. We do know however that it’s a combination of quality score and maximum keyword bid.