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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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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