For businesses targeting the Chinese market, Weibo is usually the top platform to look and it’s not hard to see why. With 486 million monthly active users, choosing the right Chinese travel influencers on this platform could be all that’s needed to solidify brand awareness and zero in on potential customers, especially during peak travel periods. However, it’s not all down to the numbers. It’s also important to ensure you tick the right checklist when hiring a Chinese travel influencer for your brand. Here are some things to consider.
Weibo Followers; Who they are
Weibo boasts approximately half a billion monthly active users. That’s massive enough for any business. Your ideal influencer should have a large enough following to tap into the platform’s wide reach for your business. But more than that, it’s important to ensure you don’t get ripped off. There are many fake accounts on Weibo, most of which are populated by unreal followers. Since these accounts have a massive follower base, it can be tricky choosing a “real” travel influencer for your brand. One workaround would be to monitor the engagement rate of your potential influencer. If their posts are anything but captivating and attract few to no engagements, you know to look elsewhere. Whether it’s in the “likes,” “shares” or “comments,” a post receives, a influencer’s engagement rate is an important metric to look out for when choosing one for your business.
Keep track of engagements
Engagement is all about the views, shares, and comments of a post. Great posts will likely attract more comments. Readers will share posts they find relevant to their circles of friends. If a influencer is doing great in all of these departments and has worked with other brands in your niche, then you have a good choice to consider. Still, it’s important to note that Weibo engagements have generally taken a dip for some time now, so you might not be overly focused on that. As for “views,” they are not public domain, so your best shot at checking this stat would be to ask your potential influencer.
Facts About “Views”
Views are an important indicator. Still, there’s one thing to bear in mind when looking at Weibo “views.” Weibo essentially counts a view once a post is “seen,” even if once, as long as it was “seen,” then you have a view. The obvious drawback then is that viewers may only have swiped across a post on their page, and not actually “read” or engaged with it in any way, much like occurs when you swipe past posts on Facebook or Twitter. And so it’s easy for posts to give a false sense of popularity or valuableness when they actually didn’t attract the attention of your target audience.
The Audience
One key challenge of turning to only Weibo is the fact you’re practically unable to know who followers are and the reason they are following a particular account. For instance, while it’s safe to assume a influencer in the travel domain would have large swathes of followers who love to travel, you can’t tell if they’re looking to travel to Europe, explore other Asian countries, or even planning any trip in the first place. This is where Mafengwo comes in. A travel review site, Mafengwo allows you to target people who are actively making holiday decisions and consuming user-generated contents. Further, Mafengwo showcases the five top blogs daily on their homepage, and some stay longer depending on content engagement, potentially opening you up to over 50,000 views as opposed to less than 10,000 views away from the homepage. With over 1 million of such contents (mostly on travel guides) and millions of monthly visits, leveraging Mafengwo for your tourism business can only be a good decision.
To Wrap Up
Weibo is no doubt a great platform for Chinese-tailored businesses, and influencers are just as key for wider content reach. However, it takes the right approach to make the most of these platforms. This starts with analyzing profiles and choosing a influencer that’s right for your business. With most Chinese travellers turning to online resources when planning a trip, working with Chinese travel influencers who are good at what they do and produce content for targeted followers is a more practical strategy to successfully penetrate the Chinese tourism market. For enhanced targeting, Mafengwo is where to look. Unlike Weibo, Mafengwo allows users to filter content specifically tailored to their travel preferences.
