Six most popular body image Weibo trends

Weibo trend #1: hairy armpits selfies

This trend was started by Xiao Meili (first from left), women’s rights advocate, who encouraged women to take selfies of their unshaven armpits and post them on Weibo. Her idea was to challenge common stereotypes of female beauty that pressure women to shave their armpits. Original contest that was viewed almost 2 million times, was followed by selection of 3 winners. The first place winner (third from the left) got a hundred condoms, second place received a vibrator and the third ten winners were awarded with female urination device.

The contest participants have received quite a bit of support from other social media Chinese users and even from those outside of China. Critics, however, were quick to point out that shaving armpits doesn’t have much to do with feminism but a matter of personal hygiene. Others noted the fact is that shaving armpits for women didn’t become widespread in China until the 90s, one of many western trends that took root in Chinese society at the time.

Weibo trend #2: belly button challenge

Participants in this challenge were asked to reach their belly button from around the waist and post the picture of their success. It was mentioned 130 million times and spawned 104,000 active discussions threads on Weibo. Apparently, being able to do so demonstrated one’s skinny figure, the ideal to strive for.

As it later turned out, ability to accomplish this feat had nothing to do with fitness but more with the length and flexibility of one’s arms. The trend was also mercilessly mocked by people uploading their humorous take on the challenge. It also exposed more serious issues related to promoting eating disorder in never ending quest of already thin people to lose even more weight.

Weibo trend #3: coins on the collarbone

This new social media craze took over Weibo just after a week following the original belly button challenge. In order to demonstrate their skinny figures, young Chinese females were taking selfies with stacks of coins standing upright on their collarbones. Some people were able to balance as many as 20 coins on a collarbone.

A well-known Chinese actress, Lu Jiarong, was even able to fit 80 coins (40 on each side) while still managing to take a selfie. Although not as big as other trends, it still attracted over 30 million views and was followed by usual mockery with people balancing everyday objects, such as coffee mugs, eggs and cellphones on their shoulders.

Weibo trend #4: underboob pen challenge

This viral trend has started in Japan and quickly gained popularity among Weibo users in China. It was tweeted with hashtags #carrypenunderbreast or #UnderBoobChallenge which is pretty self-explanatory. Most troubling was the fact that it was often accompanied by caption “pass the challenge to prove you are a real woman”.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the challenge has seen its fair share of mockery too. Few overweight men took humorous selfies with stationary stuck under their “manboobs” while some fit male participants demonstrated their ability to hold pens between their sculpted pectorals.

Weibo trend #5: A4 waist

This challenge that started in February this year required women to take selfies with a piece of A4 printer paper in front of their waists. Being able to completely hide one’s waist behind it was the proof of successfully meeting the test. The width of A4 paper is 8.3 inches which means that a woman waist had to be no bigger than 25 inches.

This trend quickly became as controversial as the previous Weibo trends and was criticized for promoting unhealthy lifestyles. Some women went on to take photos of themselves behind their diplomas to make the point on the superficial nature of this challenge while others covered their faces with A4 sheet.

Weibo trend #6: iPhone 6 knees

The latest of the viral Weibo trends from last month was about being able to hide one’s knees behind iPhone 6 placed on top of kneecaps. This trend was all about promoting pencil-skinny legs – the latest standard of beauty in China. “iPhone6 legs” has already accumulated over 90 million views and 80,000 comments on Weibo.

Although the challenge was supposed to involve standard iPhone, it still isn’t clear whether using iPhone Plus models was considered “cheating”. Some even suggested the next challenge such as being able to completely hide one’s body behind iPad Pro… In China, anything is possible!

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In terms of monthly users, Weibo is the second largest Chinese social media platform after WeChat. However, unlike WeChat, it is still primarily PC based. Weibo is one of the most powerful marketing tools in China offering wide range of possibilities for reaching people across various demographics and psychographics.

Weibo offers to marketers a powerful Weibo Index tool to learn more about what platform users are searching for. Compared to previously covered Baidu and Qihoo tools, it is structured in sig
nificantly different way allowing generating other types of data.

It is important to note that social media platforms like Weibo could be quite similar to search engines in many ways. Platform users search for terms in a similar way as they do using Baidu or Qihoo. This allows Weibo to generate wealth of information that could be indispensable for marketers looking to customize their message for this particular audience.

Weibo Index into four main tabs: historic keyword trends, real time trends, geographical interpretation and user attributes analysis.

Let’s examine what Weibo Index shows for the same keyword we used for Baidu and Qihoo tools covered earlier.

The first graph shows search volumes for a keyword on PC and mobile. It is quite clear that there is a certain correlation with the search results we have seen with the search engines: both types of data show a sharp peak in the second half of March:

Looking at both PC based and mobile searches reveals the fact that most searches have been done from mobile Weibo app rather than PC based website:

Next tab displays search volumes in the past 24 hours. Here, peaks occur in different times compared to results from the search engines. Apparently, Weibo searches for iPhone 8 have peaked at around noon and then again at 23:00:

Such information can be particularly useful for social media marketing. It can allow marketers to figure out optimal timing for posts to receive maximum exposure on the network. In fact, the data can even be reduced down to an hour level in order to identify search volumes of every single minute within a particular hour!

The location tab shows geographic distribution of the searches:

Here the situation is also a bit different from the results we have seen with Baidu and Qihoo. It seems that people in Hebei and Zhejiang provinces were the ones most interested in iPhone 8.

Last tab, audience attributes, shows even less correlation with the search engines data for this particular term. This time, women represented the vast majority of the audience (80%) vs. only 20% of men. Also, the audience is significantly much younger on Weibo: most people searching for iPhone 8 were between ages 19-24.

This information could lead to a different approach for marketing this specific product. On Weibo, marketers could be tailoring the ad to a largely young female audience while Baidu and Qihoo ads should cater to older male crowd. Optimizing marketing approach across different platforms would be much more difficult without having such data.

Last section of the audience attributes tab relates to user persona that seems quite irrelevant for this particular keyword. Also, Weibo shows the data on zodiac signs of the users searching for a particular term:

Apparently, Libra born users were more active in their search for iPhone 8. Why was that the case? I guess we will never know.

In any case, Weibo seems to be the only network out there that enables marketers to incorporate astrology into their marketing…

Continue to WeChat Index tutorial >>>

Here are our tutorials on China keyword research tools:

Keyword research on Baidu: Baidu Index

Keyword research on Qihoo: Qihoo Index

Keyword research on Weibo: Weibo Index

Keyword research on WeChat: WeChat Index

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In this post, we are going to review the primary routes for promotion and advertising on Sina Weibo. There are three basic ways to promote a brand on Weibo:

• Weibo Fans headlines (粉丝头条)
• Weibo Fans pass (粉丝通)
• Weibo Micro task (微任务)

Weibo Fans Headlines

This is the simplest way to promote a post by pushing it to the top of followers’ feed. At present, Weibo charges 2.37 RMB per post to be displayed above others in the feed for 24 hours. There is 40% discount for any posts that mention anything related to Weibo itself.

Making a post more prominently displayed can be an effective way to attract clicks from brand followers by having them notice the content as soon as they log in. The obvious disadvantage is the fact that it only improves your content’s visibility with your existing followers and does little to acquire new ones. On the other hand, the price for this type of promotion is fairly affordable.

Fans Pass

This type of promotion involves an ad campaign and can be initiated and managed with an ad account. The ad account opening process requires local ID and usually takes about 3 days to complete the approval process.

There are two pricing models: CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and CPE (cost per engagement) which are determined by automated bidding process, similar to the familiar Google Adwords.

CPM prices start at 5 RMB per CPM and can be increased by bidding up with 0.1 RMB increments.

“E” in CPE type of Weibo advertising stands for “engagement” that can be either click, a forward, a like or a follow. The initial price is set to minimum 0.5 RMB per CPE and can be increased at 0.01 RMB increment. The final price will be ultimately determined by quality of the content and competitive offers. If the price is set too low and the content is not engaging enough, the ad may not receive enough exposure, so setting the right bid and making adjustment to the content takes a bit of tweaking.

Weibo ad account provides some analytics tool to judge the effectiveness of an ad campaign but finding the right combination of all the parameters takes some skills and experience.

Micro task

The third type of promotion, which is also unique to Weibo, is called Micro Task and involves engaging KOLs, or Key Opinion Leaders.

KOLs are basically people with a lot of followers and are considered to be authority figures in their areas of expertise. Some KOLs have millions of followers which enables them to broadcast a targeted message to a very large audiences.

Depending on a specific industry, Weibo offers a range of KOLs to choose from. Typically, those with the largest following are more expensive to engage.

Working with KOLs requires opening an account and paying a deposit that is currently set to 2,000 RMB for companies. Once a suitable KOL is chosen, you can set a task (hence the name of this feature – “micro-task”) that normally involves posting your content in KOLs account that should appear at the time of your choosing and remain visible for a set period.

Depending on a specific KOL and the type of promotion task he/she receives, the price is set by Weibo automatically.

Individuals (as opposed to companies) can also use micro-task to promote posts. There is no deposit for individual account and you pay as you go per each task. On the other hand, individuals can’t pick KOLs that will be assigned by Weibo automatically.

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In China, Sina Weibo and WeChat are two most popular platforms. Sina Weibo has evolved around desktop use while WeChat only works with mobile. I have already those platforms in much more details in this blog. For now, suffice it to say that, for the purpose of market research, Weibo is much more suitable and this is what I will be focusing on.

Using Chinese Social Media Channels for market research

First of all, searching for something like “sunglasses” on Weibo is unlikely to be a very useful exercise – most results would probably quite irrelevant returning mostly some news or pictures of people wearing sunglasses.

While searching Chinese social media channels, it is much better to make a more focused searches such for specific brand names of competitors for example.

In any case, when it comes to searches for social mentions Weibo is fairly similar to Twitter with the difference that instead of preceding a term with #, it should be enclosed with # like this: #太阳眼镜#.

One useful aspect of a search for a broad term is finding out who is advertising with that keyword. Here is the screenshot of a sample search results with the ads shown on the right panel:

The best way to use social media search is to find out about the competition and how they are using this channel. For example, let’s search for one of the famous brands for sunglasses – Oakley (the brand name searches don’t require #):

The first result would usually be the official brand account followed by news and social mentions which also can be quite useful.
While browsing competitors accounts it is a good idea to note how many followers they have, how frequent they post and whether they receive engagement on their tweets.

In the above example, Oakley’s account reveals a fairly active channel with over 80K followers and 5.5K tweets (as of November 2015). The company seems to be engaging in promotions via sponsored sports events and many tweets feature new designs and product launches:

In summary, social media searches on Weibo are best for researching competitors and their ways of using this highly effective marketing channel. It can help you to figure out how much emphasis on social media your marketing campaign should include and what you should be tweeting about to keep your targeted audience engaged.

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The book explains in great details two main platforms that, today, are “must haves” for every digital marketing strategy – WeChat and Weibo. The book is filled with helpful tips and plenty of examples of successful strategies that work, Ashley’s book, which she shared with us prior to the its official release this week, is a must read for anyone who is serious about getting into Chinese market.

Here is more about the book:

Marketers who have struggled to capitalize on their Chinese social media presence can rest easy, with the launch of new book “Unlocking the World’s Largest E-market: A Guide to Selling on Chinese Social Media”. In response to growing interest in the world’s biggest e-market, author Ashley Galina Dudarenok has consolidated her 12 years of professional experience in digital marketing in China into an easy-to-read business book.

China has the world’s largest e-commerce economy, with revenues of 7.57 trillion yuan (US$1.17 trillion) in 2017. Hong Kong has strong business ties with China, yet many local brands and small business owners have an incomplete understanding of Chinese consumers and the online channels to reach them. There’s an increasing demand to learn about digital strategies and tactics specifically for the China market but current books on the
subject often lack practical solutions. Seeing a gap in the market, Dudarenok decided to publish a book not just for brands seeking to enter China, but also for those who want to expand their presence in China and those who provide services to Chinese tourists abroad.

“Unlocking the World’s Largest E-market” is now available on Amazon.com and Kindle. From Feb. 5th to 10th, you can purchase the ebook for $0.99 and the paperback for $5.99.

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Most recently, Weibo has introduced the set of new rules on what KOLs can and can’t do on their platform. Some of those rules are designed to fight completion, others to maximize the ad revenue.

ParkLU, a digital advertising platform that connects China’s internet celebrities and brands, recently released a list of rules that are currently being enforced on Weibo.

Here are the new Weibo KOL posting rules:

Link blocking to all e-commerce sites except Alibaba properties

In light of fierce competition within BAT (Baidu-Alibaba-Tencent) this rule makes a lot of sense and is hardly a surprise. Since Alibaba is the largest shareholder of Sina Weibo, they want to make sure to benefit as much as possible their own ecommerce platforms such as Taobao and Tmall.

KOL accounts need to seek permission before promoting more than one brand in a single post

This new Weibo KOL rule is most likely aimed at improving quality of the posts. Promoting multiple brands in a single post typically benefits KOLs themselves (since they can charge more), however the marketing message gets diluted which probably isn’t what a brand is paying for.

All posts with external links will receive a 20% media exposure penalty

Clearly, Weibo would like to keep as much traffic as possible within the platform. For example, posts linking to other Weibo posts or pages would get better ranking vs. those linking to pages outside the platform.

Posts containing plagiarized content will receive a 50% page weight penalty

This new Weibo rule still doesn’t go as far as the equivalent one for WeChat where such posts are most likely to be taken down completely. Of course, in some cases, proving who copied whom can also be tricky.

Posts containing long form images will receive a 50% page weight penalty

According to ParkLU CMO Elijah Whaley, this rule is rather confusing. Such images have been quite popular with users and it is not immediately clear why Weibo doesn’t like them anymore.

Accounts that only repost will receive a page weight penalty

This rule once again is designed to improve the posts quality and encourage creating original content by KOLs rather than recycling and reposting content already existing elsewhere.

Post containing a QR code will receive a page weight penalty

The penalty for QR code is clearly targeting Weibo’s largest competitor WeChat. It isn’t anything new though – Weibo wasn’t allowing posting WeChat QR codes for a while now.

Posts that mention WeChat will receive max page weight penalty, limited to 10% total visibility

Here is another shot against WeChat. In fact, WeChat has been blocking all the links to Alibaba ecommerce stores (Taobao or Tmall) for years now, so it is only fair that Weibo would reciprocate.

Accounts that mention marketing, sales or advertising businesses could receive a page weight penalty

With this new Weibo KOL rule, the platform is trying to avoid promoting competition that may take some of Weibo’s advertising revenues. Posts should be focusing on promoting brands, products and services rather than potential Weibo’s competitors.

Lucky draw campaigns must use Weibo’s official lucky draw function or receive a page weight penalty

Since lucky draws are quite popular in Chinese social media, Weibo prefers to use their own tools rather than third party service for this type of campaigns. This way, the traffic stays in Weibo rather than goes elsewhere.

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Although, the number of Weibo registered users has plateaued in the last 2 years, the number of daily and monthly users continues to increase. In September 2015, MAU (monthly active users) reached 227 million which represents 33% growth compared to the previous year. DAU (daily active users) for the same period was at impressive 100 million – 30% yearly increase.

What it means is that, although the platform total user base didn’t grow, it has become much more active than before.

Marketing on Sina Weibo, is it worth it?

Weibo has managed to successfully reposition itself from primarily desktop based platform to a mobile one. Its mobile app is quite popular and the source of more than half of the network’s traffic. In fact, people between 17 and 33 years old, who also represent the most active user base, is 83% mobile.

The platform has positioned itself as a discovery based network which makes marketing on Sina Weibo a more natural choice. This is in contrast with the larger WeChat that is still centered around its chat function. Much more private nature of WeChat doesn’t allow the same type of discovery as Weibo does. This fact makes Weibo much more attractive to marketers and, as result, the largest part of the service’s revenue comes from its various advertising programs.

Network’s ability to target users more accurately based on their interests and behaviors is what also boost the effectiveness of marketing on Sina Weibo.

Sina Weibo users tend to be quite educated. According to the latest data, over three quarters of users hold higher education degree. No such statistics is available for WeChat.

In terms of age distribution, almost 80% of Weibo users are between 17 and 33 years old. Only 13% are older than 34.

A few years ago, Sina Weibo was only popular in 1st and 2nd tier cities. Lower tiers still preferred Tencent Weibo at the time. This has also changed – Sina Weibo has achieved roughly equal popularity and market share among all city tiers. This trend is  also attributed to the fact that Tencent‘s WeChat is gradually cannibalizing Tencent Weibo.

Weibo paid membership has also been on the rise. VIP user base has risen by 60% in Q3 2015 compared to the same period a year ago. According to Sina, revenues from VIP membership fees in 2015 exceeded USD 15M.

2015 has also seen a closer cooperation between Sina Weibo and Alibaba, its strategic partner. It is expected that, at some point, Sina Weibo will become more integrated with Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms like Taobao and Tmall.

Published content on Sina Weibo has also become more diverse. Previously, the main Weibo’ topics used to be centered around news and media, business and celebrities. Now, the more diversified content covers movies, books, games, arts, lifestyle and other areas – another reason why marketing on Sina Weibo can be a more suitable choice for brands.

In conclusion, marketing on Weibo still offers good value. Company’s strategic measures like cleaning up the network from “zombie” users and re-positioning it for mobile space, have clearly paid off. In addition, accurate targeting for advertisers still makes it an attractive marketing channel in China.

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Turnover is a problem that plagues companies in all industries, a revolving workforce leads to increased training costs, inconsistencies in work and low morale – this all affects the company’s culture and profits. It is one of China’s leading issues in the workplace, at 19% their employee retention rate is among the worst in Asia.

The most common reasons given by Chinese professionals for leaving, were: limited career progression, and unsatisfactory salaries. Unfortunately companies decided to combat this by engaging in a salary war. The result was that workers would switch jobs as soon as they got a better offer. The most effective way to combat high turnover rates is not simply an increase in salary, it is understanding where Chinese professionals conduct their job searches and what they look for in a job?

Where do young professionals in China look for jobs?

Attracting talented employees that fit in with the company culture is the most effective way to reduce employee turnover rates, the simplest way to do this is to know where people search for jobs.

According to We Are Social’s 2016 Digital report, there are 3,419 billion internet users and of these 2,307 billion people are active social media users. The number of reported social media users is up from last year by 10%, an increase of 219 million and this trend is expected to continue on an upward trajectory. In East Asia it is reported that 48% of people have active accounts on the top social networks in each country. More importantly, 81% of job-seekers in China are applying by phone. The next question is: What networks are they using? LinkedIn, is gaining popularity in China but headhunters should not rely exclusively on this site. Instead, they should use it in conjunction with the two most popular Chinese social networks: Sina Weibo and WeChat.

LinkedIn, their Chinese platform is growing

LinkedIn only launched its local Chinese language website in 2014, due to concerns on how best to approach the market. LinkedIn’s English site had attracted 4 million Chinese users but they wanted to access the other 140 million Chinese professionals and hoped that a Chinese language version of the site would facilitate this. A little over a year later, the site has more than tripled its user count, due to its willingness to play by Chinese rules of expression, and its partnership with two local well-connected Chinese firms. LinkedIn naturally attracts people with multinational corporations and to target young professionals in China LinkedIn is also launching Red Rabbit. Dual brand strategies are a great way for foreign brands to adapt to local culture without losing its brand image. Red rabbit results from the LinkedIn China team research on Chinese young professionals’ communication habits and social media usage; consequently the app has many features similar to Weibo and WeChat.

Sina Weibo, a way to easily get access to all kinds of professionals

This year, Sina Weibo has gained 80 million users worldwide, bringing its total user count to 300 million. Weibo is a microblog that has strong dissemination power for product promotion and job listings. Weibo users can go to an enterprise’s page and click “paying attention”. This means that job-hunters see job updates from their ideal employers. Many users are also posting “micro-resumes”- If you think limiting a resume to one page is difficult, imagine cramming your entire career’s worth of experience into 140 characters. Thousands are posted daily, and many say it is one of the most efficient ways for job seekers to find employment. These short introductions allow headhunters to quickly screen candidates. Weibo had so many people post “micro resumes” and “micro-recruiting” pitches that they have now created an online micro-recruiting service, which provides a much needed space where job-seekers and recruiters can meet.

WeChat, the social media giant you cannot overlook

Anyone who lives in China will assure you that it is almost impossible to conduct business here without first creating a WeChat profile. WeChat is a popular messaging app where users can do just about anything, including now find jobs. Headhunters who are planning on using this app, must have a wide network that includes all sectors because they will rely on this WeChat network to get introduced to talented and reliable candidates.

The job search is simple, there are WeChat groups that vary by sector (Finance, Automotive, Oil & Gas, Food & Beverage, etc.). Headhunters and job-seekers need only join these groups to connect with each other. Many agree that these groups are more effective than job listings, HR websites, or even LinkedIn. Companies have also established official career accounts where they post employee stories, videos on company culture and job openings.

Additionally, WeChat bots are popular and Jobots (Job Bots) are now being developed. These Job Bots would partner with headhunters and seek the best candidates for the position. The Bot asks questions to get an idea of what the candidate values, personality type and how well they would fit the position.

What do young professionals prioritize when searching for jobs?

Young professionals in China have overwhelmingly listed salary as the most important characteristic for accepting a job offer, but to avoid engaging in a salary war companies should also take candidate’s wants into consideration. Young professionals place a lot of importance on work-life balance, the availability of training programs and opportunities for promotion. The company culture and the relationship with the closest supervisor play a central role in workforce retention. Companies should ensure that they are offering fair compensation in addition to fostering an environment where self-development and relationships are a priority. Recruiters should be able to accurately describe not only the position they are filling but also the company and its cultural offering.

The rise of digital in China has really changed recruitment practices. However, don’t forget that a recruitment strategy is based not only on the internet and social networking websites for professionals. The most effective methods for sourcing talents in china are: the recruitment agency specializing in a particular area, access to a great talent pool; the headhunter’s personal network and referrals: direct contact with applicants through a reliable intermediate; LinkedIn, users in china have a profile and are most active on the site, the page offers the website of the company; WeChat groups.

An efficient recruitment strategy is the combination of all these elements.

This article was written by Wei Hsu founder and CEO of INS Global Consulting, leader in Labor Dispatch and Headhunting in China since 2006.

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Microsoft claims that Tay fell victim of a deliberate attack by trolls who were determined to sabotage the experiment. Tay was designed to learn from the users and model her (its?) responses based on the context of conversations and using typical millennials’ slang and speech patterns which it was supposed to pick up. Apparently, Microsoft didn’t anticipate how malicious some of those users could be and, as a result, Tay wasn’t prepared to simply identify and ignore the abuse. In fact, she seemed to pretty much agree with anything being said to her – key vulnerability that was exploited by trolls. Such a major flaw in A.I. design only underscores the challenges we are going to see in the future with similar approach.

In sharp contrast to Tay, Chinese bot Xiaoice is considerably nicer. Like Tay, it is also designed to learn from users, as well as from  real conversations that it is constantly mining on the internet. Xiaoice already has over 20 million registered users, 2.6 million followers on Weibo where it is already ranked as the top KOL (key opinion leader) and is used by 40 million smartphone owners across China and Japan (where it goes by Rinna).

As a digital assistant, Xiaoice can be accessed from multiple platforms: Weibo, WeChat, as a shopping assistant on JD.com  and other ecommerce platforms or used as a standalone app with Microsoft smartphones. It has become a cultural phenomenon of sorts with people chatting with her for hours on end, especially when feeling depressed.

Why Xiaoice, after well over a year online, didn’t turn into a monster like Tay after mere 24 hours of being live in Twitter?

After Tay fiasco, Microsoft specifically mentioned Xiaoice in their apology letter:

“In China, our Xiaolce chatbot is being used by some 40 million people, delighting with its stories and conversations. The great experience with XiaoIce led us to wonder: Would an AI like this be just as captivating in a radically different cultural environment? Tay – a chatbot created for 18- to 24- year-olds in the U.S. for entertainment purposes – is our first attempt to answer this question.”

Some say that the nature of censored Chinese internet has something to do with Xiaoice pleasant personality, although the real reason is, probably, a combination of factors. First of all, other experiments with A.I. chatbots didn’t reveal similar problems: Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Facebook’s M, Google Now, and Microsoft’s own Cortana didn’t turn ugly. So, probably, better design has something to do with it.

Second of all, Xiaoice was designed as a virtual assistant, a chatbot with a useful function, as opposed to Tay which was more of an experiment on millennials psyche. Naturally, people tended to treat Xiaoce with more care and as a sort of a virtual friend with real emotions. At the 2015 GeekWire Summit, New York Times reporter John Markoff noted that 25 percent of users had told Xiaoice “I love you.”

The experiment with Tay and Xiaoice reminds me of two recent movies that explore A.I. from new angles. Xiaice is somewhat reminiscent of Spike Jonze’s 2013 movie “Her” where the main character eventually falls in love with Samantha, super intelligent computer operating system.

On the other hand, Tay has been more like 2015 film “Ex Machina” which is about (spoiler alert!) a somewhat more sinister and unpredictable aspect of human-like A.I.

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First interesting fact is that approximately 9 out of 10 China’s online users have a social media account.

Qzone remains the largest social media platform and QQ the most popular messenger. No platform, however, can challenge WeChat‘s dominance in mobile. 

Although, Weibo has some luster, it is still a very effective advertising platform as it has the ability to target users much more accurately than other services.

Chinese social media marketing is even more important when is comes to ecommerce. As the infographic shows, Chinese are very active online shoppers, spending a lot of time researching products online and commenting on the experience. 75% of online shoppers would provide feedback at least once a month as opposed to only 25% of US users.

Finally, 77% of Chinese expect a brand to have a social media presence – a clear sign to marketers that it is one of channels in the marketing strategy mix that can’t be ignored.

Here is the full infographic:

Chinese Social Media Marketing for Business

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