Weibo Brand Account Social Marketing Handbook

In 2021, will we still have Weibo?

When brand blue V emerged, we found a new channel, replacing the brand official website as a new window for brands to communicate with users. This change was actually very natural, because the era changed from the Internet era to the mobile Internet era. Brand blue V was on the cusp, and advertisers invested in it. Countless digital companies emerged and wanted to create works. A few years later, the cusp was no longer there, and we calmed down. There were more issues to think about:

"There are so many cars in the social media race, why would users want to get on your car?"

“With our increasingly limited budgets, how can we spend our money effectively?”

“How should we operate Weibo?”

"Does Weibo really need to be maintained today? Do we really need to stop updating?"

…

It is never a rational behavior to stop updating Weibo. Regarding the operating attitude of the official Weibo, my suggestion is not to stop updating, but to change from "insolent" to "restrained" and rethink the operating methods and content strategies.

For brands, Weibo is an important platform that can have a huge impact on the brand's products and services and deeply reach users. However, many brand accounts are neglected in management and operation and become superficial, which has a certain impact on the brand image. You must be fully prepared before setting up an official Weibo account.

Soul-searching question: Ask yourself: Are you operating an official account or producing Internet garbage?

If you are an operator on the front line, you must have been asked to produce such KPIs: "2-3 original contents per day, 1 forwarded interactive content, and participate in 1 linkage every week." This was my requirement for content when I was in charge of Haier Air Conditioner's official Weibo account. I was very resistant to these data requirements. Does the brand really have so much to say every day? Is it really possible to produce high-quality content at this frequency every day? What is the purpose of linkage?

Under heavy pressure, there will inevitably be parallel imports, planning some insignificant content to make up the number of articles, or referring to some hot topics and marketing accounts to produce some extremely awkward or completely unrelated content. The content produced under such circumstances is nothing but Internet garbage.

Think about it carefully, are you producing Internet garbage now?

1. How to create content more purposefully?

1. Understand your account

The industry a brand is in, the brand's growth stage, and the role the brand hopes to play through Weibo are all different, so there is no standard answer in this area. Even at different times, the answer changes. Operators need to constantly ask themselves these questions when making plans. The answers are the basis of all content planning.

We need to face up to our position and figure out our own value so that we can do the right things in the right direction. Take a restaurant Blue V as an example. At that time, the brand already had 45 self-operated stores across the country. Many users had taken the initiative to post their orders on Weibo. At the same time, the brand was going to sponsor an idol event. He needed Weibo as a battlefield to speak for him, so he registered an account. But for this brand, spending a lot of effort on operation was a waste of resources. Therefore, after the sponsorship event, the main content of the official blog was to like and post orders, flip cards to give gifts, product dynamics, and consumer feedback. The operation can be said to be relatively simple. While freeing up manpower, it simply ensures that the brand has a window on Weibo.

2. Understand your fans

If the above is about knowing yourself, then we should take a good look at our marketing targets and do a good job of knowing the enemy. The fans of an account can be divided into three categories:

Users who have already consumed

Users who are curious about you

The person you want to attract

3. What are fans’ demands for the official Weibo account?

What kind of content do these fans want us to give them? We can find the answer from Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory.

The basic content of Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory is to divide human needs into five types from low to high: physiological needs, safety needs (low stage), social needs, respect needs (intermediate stage) and self-actualization needs (high stage). In fact, the same is true for fans’ demand for Weibo content.

Corresponding to the content classification:

Necessary information = product-related information that actually creates value for users;

Feeling of being protected = there is a way to complain and guaranteed after-sales service;

Emotional connection with the brand = interaction between the official blog and users, including comment interaction, fan content flipping, online activities launched for fans, etc.

Fans’ sense of belonging = exclusive treatment and benefits for Weibo fans;

Consensus on values ​​= resonance of brand content.

We regard the first four categories as daily content of the official blog, and the last category can be classified as brand content. In summary, what fans need is: real daily content + sincere brand content.

2. What are the means to achieve content?

Based on the above five categories of content, our production methods in actual process are mainly divided into self-produced content, joint content and peripheral content. Self-produced content is content produced by the brand itself and needs to be consistent with the brand's external image. In fact, different brands have different departments responsible for peripheral content. Some brands have already been managed by the PR department, while others do not have clear explanations and become an ignored part. In fact, for brands with fewer official blog operations, the operations editor can consider tapping into some growing bloggers or KOCs and use product replacement reviews.

1. Blue V linkage

What I want to emphasize and share with you is the Blue V linkage. Joint content mainly refers to the content cooperation between Blue V linkage and KOL. With the popularity of cross-border cooperation in the past few years, Blue V linkage has also become an operational KPI. In this part, I want to emphasize that every collaboration should have a meaningful consideration, as to why the collaboration is being done. Many collaborations just for the sake of collaboration are actually Blue V's own "one-man carnival party". After working for a long time, they are just tired. The Blue V collaboration theme must be meaningful and creative.

Let me give you an example of a collaboration I have done before: "Ocean Five". Ocean Five are a limited group of five trainees who failed to make their debut in the popular variety show "Youth With You". Because the five outstanding trainees failed to make their debut, fans frantically posted in the related super topic to express their dissatisfaction. The popularity of Ocean Five's super topic once crushed Cai Xukun's super topic, which had always been ranked first. The popularity was off the charts. I was in urgent need of completing the interactive KPI, so I suddenly came up with an idea and called together Haitian Bibimbap Sauce, Haima Automobile, Haizhiyan, and Haidilao Seasoning, four brands that start with the word "Hai". Blue V and Haier Air Conditioner formed the "Ocean Five" and released a joint attitude poster. Each company provided a certain number of its own products for lottery. Fans of Ocean Five were enthusiastic and actively forwarded the post. The data went off the charts that day. When your linkage theme can be combined with creativity, the data actually increases very quickly.

Of course, a large amount of exposure is a double-edged sword. When more and more fans of the Ocean Five paid attention to our collaboration, voices began to question whether we were trying to ride on the popularity of the brand. Then, the louder the voices became, the higher the negative index of each brand on Weibo began to rise. Under pressure, each brand had no choice but to delete the posts. Therefore, before initiating a collaboration, we must prepare solutions to various special situations in advance and make sure that the theme for the collaboration is a good one.

2. KOL collaboration

As for KOL cooperation, it is recommended that you also consider the content production ability when screening. What we should do should also shift more from delivery to producing high-quality content. In the past, we valued the KOL’s channels and his fan circle, and wanted to bring the brand into the field of vision of his fans. Those were relatively hard advertisements. For us now, budget usage may need to maximize value.

Finally: Some thoughts about practitioners

1. Job requirements

Some people say that new media is a job with a low threshold, which may be true, but it is not easy to stay in this industry. This industry requires us to keep learning, thinking, understanding strategies, being creative, able to execute, hard-working, and dare to chase hot spots... So to do this well, we need to keep working hard.

2. Work Value

New media is actually also a kind of media. Since it is a media, we must also learn to be cautious in what we say and do. We must think about the value of every activity we initiate and the impact of every word we say. If you are just looking forward to completing the work, then it will be difficult for you to achieve anything in this industry. Similarly, you will become the one who creates Internet garbage. So there is a lot of room for our work. When you create valuable content, the work you do also has more value.

“A brand is a complex symbol that is the intangible sum of brand attributes, name, packaging, price, historical reputation, and advertising methods.”

—David

Author: Super Influence

Source: Super Influence