Sina Weibo Expands to Singapore and Indonesia

What's This?

Vanessa Tan for Tech in Asia 2013-08-30 16:53:04 UTC

Sina Weibo has expanded to both Singapore and Indonesia, appointing a new company called Trends Media to focus its expansion efforts.

According to Trends Media sales and marketing director Jimmy Li, for Singapore, it aims to get more companies to sign up "blue V enterprise-verified" Weibo accounts, connect with more fans and set up a social store.

Sina Weibo’s blue V enterprise-verified accounts are a bit like Facebook brand pages. They allow merchants in Singapore and Indonesia to tap into a new pool of Chinese-speaking and overseas Chinese users for Sina Weibo, something that other social media platforms have previously neglected.

Sina hopes to serve as a platform for brands to expand into the China market. With these accounts, Sina aims to increase the number of Weibo followers and user community engagement. It also wants users to make cashless transactions with the company’s Weibo Wallet.

Building Up Location-Based Data

Sina Weibo recently launched a new campaign called Bringing Weibo on Your Travels. Geared toward Chinese speakers around the world, it's part of the company's efforts to connect with more merchants and fans to achieve its objectives.

When a Sina Weibo user travels, he or she is encouraged to upload pictures, information and geotag the location. With all this Foursquare-like data, it seems Sina Weibo will approach merchants in Singapore and Indonesia and get them to claim their enterprise-verified account.

For brands and merchants, there’s an abundance of data and statistics that can be collected about customers who are Weibo user such as the gender, age, number of followers, location, type of user (whether he or she has a verified Weibo account or is an ambassador), shortlink analytics and the type of device used.

With this information, brands can then effectively target Weibo users and set up advertising campaigns specific to the parameters set. Using its Weibo brand page, for example, a company can connect with its fans by rolling out promotions. So if someone managing a restaurant wanted to run campaigns to increase patronage, Weibo allows users to make purchases using its Weibo Wallet, a service similar to Alipay or PayPal that's only available in China.

Eighteen days into the Sina Weibo campaign, there are already 110 million posts for the campaign itself. Li said there are giveaways that will incentivize users to upload information onto the platform. Imagine the amount of information that could exist at the campaign's end on Oct. 7.

Will it Work For Countries Like Singapore?

According to Li, Singapore ranks fourth in the number of registered Sina Weibo users, with 1.5 million registered users and 800,000 daily active users. Although most in Singapore use social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, Li says the company is not competing with those types of platforms.

In fact, he says both can mutually exist with no conflict of interest. Sina aims to compete in the Chinese-speaking market, capturing at least one-third of the population of Singapore. It projects to hit 2 million registered users with 1.5 million daily active Weibo users. It will reach out to users via merchants and engage local Chinese-speaking celebrities to promote its platform.

It will also be actively promoting its new messaging platform WeMeet, a late-comer messaging app similar to WeChat or WhatsApp, and focusing on its localization efforts in Singapore. Sina also has plans to expand into Indonesia in December.

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