The 10 Essential Weibo Words Explained

Sina Weibo – Translated from Chinese Weibo（微博） simply means ‘micro-blogging’ . Since the evolution of these types of sites the one owned by the Chinese goliath Sina has taken over as the most accessed of all the micro-blogging sites, that’s why we work with them!

Verification – these are Weibo accounts with the blue tick, they’re legitimate （认证）accounts, not ghosts or robots. The blue verification tick comes with a bit of clout meaning that you know the people you interact with are the real deal. To become verified a business must complete and submit essential paperwork for checking, this can take about 5 days and different costs apply depending on whether it is a personal Weibo account Verification or enterprise/business Weibo account verification.

Visits – how many times other Weibo accounts come along to have a look at what you’re up to, this begins the engagement and interaction process.

Engagement – to know if your Weibo account is getting interest and becoming popular in the Chinese market you can obtain reports on engagement. This includes the number of comments, reposts, likes, and shares that your content has, you need a lot and good content to enable this engagement.
Impressions – this is the number of times your content is presented to its audience.

FST (FenSiTong) – this is the advertising account you need that’s aligned with your Weibo account. For a simple guide on how this function works, please read our recent blog on weibo marketing here. Once you have a FST account you can promote your posts, be seen by more users and achieve more impressions. You can select the demographics of your advertising audience as well as where in the country you want to target. You will also have full control of the budget through various settings at the backstage. We have extensive experience helping western companies marketing through Weibo FST marketing, please talk to us if you are interested in this !

KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) – These are the Weibo influencers. They could be individuals or groups with a huge active following. They can be called upon to promote a brand or business, as they often have followers and authority on a certain topic or area. KOL marketing used well can be very effective if applied appropriately but some really influential KOLs can cost millions of Yuan based on the popularity of the Weibo account.

DaRen – DaRen(达人，which is a VIP account) means ‘expert’ or “master” in Chinese and it is an identity that Sina Weibo gives to active Weibo users. A DaRen account is NOT a verified user account (as opposed to a brand/business account) and is noticeable from their red star next to their name .

Weibo Hashtag – Like twitter, hashtags are widely used in post publishing; Unlike #twitter, two hashtags are used when creating a #Weibo# topic. Weibo seems 200,000 new hastags being createdly daily. It is possible to promote a certain hashtag to the trending hashtags area for more exposure and engagement. This could very effective when integrated as part of a product launch or event promotion on Weibo.

Weibo Banner Ads – This is the shouting part, how to get seen on the site. Weibo (especially when logged in via a computer rather than tablet) has various spaces for displaying advertising banners. The cost of banner ads is high compared to Weibo FST promotion so it is often used by larger brands to launch a specific product or service promotion.