4 ways to operate corporate Weibo!

I used to work in Weibo operations for a vocational education company in a third-tier city. When I first arrived, the Weibo operations were basically at a standstill.

Moreover, due to the lack of KPI assessment and the square nature of Weibo's social networking, it cannot directly contribute to monetization. The attitude of the company and the team is "just do it", but I think every newcomer who has some ideals in the workplace will not be content with mediocrity.

Therefore, after taking over this job, I focused on the following aspects:

1. I have read a lot of marketing cases on the Internet. There are some accounts on Weibo that specifically recommend social marketing cases, but this is not of much reference value to new media people in third- and fourth-tier cities, because there may be a professional team behind each case.

2. I follow many brands that are recognized in the industry for having good corporate Weibo accounts. For example, Haier, Weilong and Durex, etc.

I found that these brands have one thing in common: their language is relatively lively, they are highly interactive, and they have regular column-style operations.

So after summarizing other people's operation experience and combining it with my own situation, I started my own Weibo operation journey.

Before sharing my operational experience, I have another suggestion: when you are still a newbie, try to learn from the best people in the industry, and know how to extract the essence and combine it with your own situation. This way you grow faster.

Later, I also communicated with many Weibo operation practitioners, and found that lack of budget and lack of ideas are common problems that trouble many operators.

Today I will talk about these two questions and how I operate a corporate Weibo with zero budget.

1. Why do we need to operate Weibo?

“Just do it casually” seems to be the first instruction many companies receive when operating Weibo. So what is the significance of operating Weibo?

Now let me show you some data.

In early 2018, Weibo and iResearch released the "China Post-95 Weibo Marketing Insight Report", which showed that "post-95 Weibo users are a unique market with huge consumption potential, especially in terms of electronic products and learning and training, their willingness and amount of consumption are higher than those of non-post-95 users."

The proportion of post-95s Weibo users who consume high-frequency words in learning and training is 2.6 times that of non-95s.

It can be seen from this report that for education and training brands, Weibo is still a very good exposure channel, and it is easier for companies to shape their own image and build closer relationships with users.

Operators can achieve practical goals such as attracting new customers, promoting activation, and generating revenue through reasonable operating methods.

When I was a civil servant candidate in Hebei Province, I indirectly acquired customers from Weibo and made nearly 70,000 yuan. How did I do it?

Because our brand is a leading brand in the vocational education industry and has a good foundation, many users often regard us as the official channel for obtaining exam-related information. We collect the most real needs of many users both online and offline, and this information is very valuable to me.

After collecting user questions, I first classified them and summarized the two issues that candidates were most concerned about.

The first is the new changes in the Hebei Provincial Examination, and the second is the relevant data on registration. Then, based on these two questions, we did the following:

1. Select relevant topics of Hebei Provincial Examination and maintain them in the form of columns. We answered the candidates' representative questions as soon as possible, and when publishing each piece of content, we would add a sentence like "If you have any other questions, remember to chat with me privately" to enhance interactivity.

2. Find the user with the question through direct search and leave a point-to-point message.

3. In the form of welfare gifts, free exam preparation materials have always been popular among candidates. The method adopted at that time was to send them by privately sending a specified code, and the threshold was set very low.

After doing all this, the data in the Weibo background began to change. The usual 2,000 readings had increased fivefold, and private messages in the background were also very active.

Whether it is answering questions or giving away information, the process design will ultimately direct traffic to the customer service’s personal WeChat. At the same time, I will immediately provide the basic information of the user’s questions to the customer service.

Through these operations, the customer service colleagues finally converted about 5 orders, with a cash value of more than 70,000 yuan.

This also shows that the cooperation between front-line operations and sales personnel is very important, and can unleash the effect of 1+1>2.

However, we have also seen many companies give up on operating Weibo, which I think is a pity.

2. Riding on the hot search topics

In fact, there are many free ways to operate on Weibo, and topic operation may be the best choice for "poor operation".

When I was doing Weibo operations, most of the data came from Weibo topics. Riding on hot search topics, becoming the hottest topic, replying to topics and trying to become the topic host became a daily routine.

Hot search topics represent the topics that receive the most attention on that day, similar to the title position of a TV program. As a qualified operations officer, you need to check the Weibo hot search list every day.

Because Weibo has clear regulations on jumping on topics, operators of corporate official accounts must remember not to stray too far from the topic's intended meaning when jumping on a topic. Not all topics must be participated in. Try to choose those that are relevant to the business or that are not too far away from the boundaries.

3. Hot Topics

When we browse Weibo, we will find that there are always two words "hot" on the first page. These posts will be displayed first when users open the topic.

Popular tags are automatically determined based on the comprehensive feedback from users’ forwarding and likes.

If you want to get a popular tag, you need to grasp two points: fast and accurate. Fast means being active in the topic as soon as possible, and accurate means getting to the core of the topic and publishing content that is discussion-oriented and can arouse interaction.

In the actual operation process, I found that posting "good luck blessing posts" in exam topics will achieve better results. You can try it. The copy should be fluent and easy to remember, and it is best to be accompanied by colorful and eye-catching pictures.

More than half of the dozen or so posts can get popular tags, and the highest single post has more than 190,000 views, which is very rare for an account with only 2,000 fans.

4. Grab the topic host

This is a great trick for topic management. Becoming a topic host can give you more authority, which means you can set more exposure positions to get more traffic. For example: homepage cover, introduction, avatar, top posts and popular highlights.

I have also become the host of multiple topics, including a super topic host with a total reading volume of 200 million, and the quality of posts in the topic is particularly high.

Weibo topics are now divided into two types: "ordinary topics" and "super topics".

Do you remember the vote for Jay Chou some time ago? It was done in Super Topics. Regardless of the topic, Weibo has clear requirements for the host.

1. General topics

Taking ordinary topics as an example, the site's review of the host mainly refers to the following aspects:

• Whether the applicant is the first user of the topic and the order in which the applicant participates in the topic discussion.
• The matching degree between the applicant’s attributes (account name and posting area) and the topic area.
• The value of the applicant’s contribution to the content and dissemination of the topic.
• For topics with the same IP name in categories such as film, television, variety shows, books and games, the official blog of the IP party will be given priority.
• For topics related to hot social events, priority will be given to authoritative media and first-time reporters.
• To be eligible to apply, you must meet the basic requirement of a full contribution level of 25. As for how to improve your contribution level, Weibo officials also have relevant guidelines that you can refer to directly.

2. Super Topics

The Super Topic Community can be considered a sub-brand of Weibo. The creation method is as follows:

• Step 1: Open an existing super topic on your computer.
• Step 2: Enter the preset super topic name, and you will be asked to choose friends to help.
• Step 3: After your friends follow the instructions, the topic will enter the review stage and the topic creation is completed.

Create a rule:

• The name should not exceed 32 Chinese characters, limited to Chinese characters, letters, numbers and underscores;
• The name cannot be the same as an existing topic.
• Applications with more than 10 applicants will be reviewed first, and we will provide feedback on the creation results within 1-3 working days.

3. Use topics

• Weibo activity carrier

A commonly used method is to guide users to post their learning records to topics, such as super topics. Cycles of 7 days and 21 days are more common, and there are also cases of checking in for 100 days.

Specific operations can be determined based on actual conditions. For ordinary topics, rewards can be given according to the topic contribution ranking, and for super topics, rewards can be given according to the fan level.

The basic principle is to allow users to be exposed, increase the search volume of the topic, and increase the influence of the company's Weibo account.

• Topic reference

Super topics are concentrated with precise users, and the content published in user topics can be used as a reference for our daily operation topic selection and for the optimization of original articles and website titles.

5. How to increase followers on Weibo for free?

The main sources of free followers on Weibo are Weibo search, Weibo recommendations and headlines. Now let’s introduce these three methods respectively:

1. Weibo search

This includes searches of keywords and topic nicknames. For example, if a user wants to interact with an official Weibo account, he or she can search for the brand name and follow the account. The word “Weibo search” will appear at the source.

Increasing the number of posts within a topic can also increase search rankings, be seen by users, and gain a certain amount of followers and interaction.

2. Weibo recommendation

Recommendations are made based on fan relevance, address book, etc., similar to the way of recommending people you may know. If a big account follows your account, it can also bring certain traffic.

3. Headline articles

This is a relatively effective way to increase followers on Weibo, and the articles can contain hyperlinks and advertising exposure. Most of them are real fans. The specific operation is to check the follow button after the headline article is published and then read the original text.

6. Enhance interaction with local (unlimited) influencers

This method is suitable for brands with a high degree of localization. It can promote connections with other brands and local self-media and facilitate relevant cooperation.

For example, when I publish exam reminder content during the operation process, I will circle our local campus information, which will be forwarded many times, indirectly increasing the exposure of the blog post and brand, and due to the local attributes of the account, it is very accurate.

The specific way to find them is to search for the place name + release (campus).

The above is my experience of operating a corporate Weibo at zero cost for nearly a year. I hope it can give some inspiration to friends who are on the front line of operations.

Author: Operation Publicity Xiao Leilei

Source: Operation Publicity Xiao Leilei