Sina Weibo enterprise accounts in Hong Kong exceed 1,000

Sina Hong Kong revealed that the local user base for Weibo hit the two million mark earlier in November. According to Salina Ghafur, head of marketing for Sina Hong Kong, 40 per cent of local Sina Weibo users are between 16 to 25 years old, while 30 per cent are from 26 to 35 years of age. “Over half of HK's internet population has adopted Sina Weibo on their PCs and smartphones, and for this we are humbled,” Ghafur said.

Over a thousand corporations, organisations, government bodies, educational institutes, and charities in Hong Kong have registered and been verified for the new Sina Weibo Enterprise Edition. Launched in beta-testing mode in June this year, Enterprise Weibo features verified brand profile pages completely customisable with multi-media widgets, e-commerce applications, embedded photo galleries, streaming audio and video, flash banner ads, and private groups. In particular also comes with an analytics tool that tracks user interactions.

Ahead of competitors, notably Tencent Weibo, Sina Weibo also kicked off the 'Wei' advertising campaign in Hong Kong two months ago, creating an outdoor presence for the Chinese-language microblog for the first time. 

By saying 'Wei' to the public - the colloquial Cantonese greeting - the US$515,000 (HK$4 million) campaign looks to increase people's awareness, recognition and recollection of Sina Weibo by creating a strong association between 'Wei' and Weibo.com.

The first phase of the campaign has already run across 80 Hong Kong buses, on 12-sheet MTR posters, in print publications and online banner ads. Phase two is under development and is expected to roll out sometime in December with the aim to further integrate Weibo into the daily lives of Hong Kongers.

In a seminar held last week, Xu Jingyang, deputy general manager of Weibo Business Products at Sina, said business opportunities abound in social marketing, and Sina Weibo's brand-oriented Enterprise Edition could be used as a promotional and social engagement tool.

Within Hong Kong, Harbour City was the very first local marketer to utilise Sina Weibo as a marketing conduit and information hub, starting from January last year. Using a social media strategy personalising Harbour City as another user with the sharing of interesting tidbits about entertainment and daily life such as jokes, cute pictures, and videos to attract key opinion leaders as its followers, the Weibo page of the shopping mall now has more than 358,400 fans - the most for any local brand. Harbour City's account has since been migrated to the Enterprise Weibo edition.