Twibo: Your Chinese Social Media Manager

We help you do social media marketing in China

[chnsocialmedia]

What is Twibo

What is Twibo

Twibo is a full-service Chinese social media manager for companies and organizations that are looking to build their global awareness in China.  We are social media experts who help companies extract value from social media by executing a variety of social media strategies on Sina Weibo.

  Problem: Social media is difficult to navigate in general, let alone in China.  First, given the trillions of Weibo data points, company executives do not know how to organize these consumer insights or turn this information into actionable items.  Second, companies just do not have the knowledge or bandwidth to execute dynamic social media strategies.  Companies do not have the resources to actively engage with Chinese consumers.  Third, social media does not necessarily fit into traditional brand marketing.  Companies find it very difficult to measure impact.   

  Objectives: We help companies decide what social media should achieve for their business.  This may include lead generation, customer service, brand and marketing strategies.  We track brand sentiment from the public, including popular opinion leaders, and translate this information into a user friendly dashboard. 

  Engagement: We help companies build their Chinese presence by engaging in topics of interest.  This may include hosting discussions with brand advocates or engaging in two-way conversations with consumers.  We work with companies to define key performance indicators to track overall social media performance.

  Durex Case Study

Beijing is well-known for its’ summer rain.  In June 2011, a summer thunderstorm drenched Beijing citizens  A creative, young man wrapped a Durex condom over his shoes.  The image went viral after the official Durex Weibo account picked up the image.  The post was re-posted an estimated 40,000 times and reached an audience of 50 million users.  Social media experts regard this as one of the most successful social media campaigns. 

Chinese Internet Statistics

500 million smartphone users by 2014

Over 400 million online buyers by 2016

China to become world’s largest e-commerce market by 2015

B2C sales to exceed $420 billion by 2015, 20% more than U.S. e-commerce

  Chinese Social Media User

China internet users spend 46 minutes a day on social media sites compared to 37 minutes in the United States

Sina Weibo users are in higher income brackets; approximately $1,300 USD per month

66% of Chinese social media users follow brands

More than 50% of Weibo users access e-commerce sites after noticing relevant information on Weibo

[chnsocialmedia]

About Twibo: Who Are We? What Is Our Product?

We are a team of UC Berkeley students taking the Lean Launchpad class from Steve Blank. We are building a service helping American people and organizations to have their social media influence in China. If you are interested in our service or team, please contact [email protected]

You can get a quick picture of our service from this eBay listing. Actually this is only for one segment of our customers--American visitors in China. We are targeting more customer segments including schools (and other educational institutions that are actively recruiting students in China), startups that are interested in growing their Chinese users/customers, and VCs/Investors who are willing to hunt Chinese startups through social media.

At this very early stage, we are basically providing any services related to Chinese social media management or marketing. If you are interested in opportunities among the over 400 million social media users in China, please get in touch with us via [email protected]

Our twitter account: @chnsocialmedia; Facebook page: Twibo

[chnsocialmedia]

Case Study: Flipboard's Chinese Social Media Strategy

China has been a challenging venue for many U.S. Internet companies. But Flipboard, the social reading app, is making huge progress with its social media strategy in China.

Flipboard's China Story

Flipboard made its first overseas debut in China in December, 2011. Only six months later, in a report in May, 2012, Flipboard expected the daily number of downloads coming from China for its popular personalized news reading app will very soon surpass its U.S. downloads. How did Flipboard make such a huge success on its bet on localizing for China, while other US Internet companies such as Google and Foursquare are fumbling in China? Haven't they been pushing hard on Chinese localization, hiring Chinese employees, building data center?

Flipboard's Secret China Strategy

As a news app, Flipboard knows that it doesn't create content itself. It would not make any sense launching a Chinese app by simply translating the user interface without including news sources in Chinese. Therefore, in preparation for its first overseas debut in China, the mobile company hired Hong Konger Alvin Tse in Novemeber, 2011, then Entrepreneur in Residence at Stanford accelerator StartX and co-founder of Chinese Entrepreneur Organization at Stanford with the job title (seriously) "Everything China at Flipboard".

Literally as how his title went, Alvin took care of all the preparation work of Flipboard's China launch. It was easy to RSS Chinese news source. However, the hard but probably the greatest part that Alvin did for Flipboard was integrating with the two then most popular Chinese social media--Sina Weibo and Renren.

Why Flipboard's Social Media Strategy in China Has Been This Successful

It is critically important to understand how to utilize social media in a country like China as social media is far bigger a trend in China than in other countries. China has more than double the number of Internet users that the USA has. It also can boast the largest social media activity out of any country, with over 300 million people using social media, with these spending more than 40% of their time online using social media, and this figure is rising in every study published.

It was foreseeable that Chinese users would enjoy and spend a considerable amount of time flipping through their Weibo or Renren social feeds on Flipboard. But what has made its Chinese social media strategy even greater was that Flipboard leveraged the popularity of the two social media's iOS apps. They both have some features like the Facebook app center, where the Flipboard app was featured at a prominent place as a result of Alvin's successful business development with Sina Weibo and Renren. This was believed to bring in a big chunk of Flipboard's downloads in early 2012.

What's Your Chinese Social Media Strategy?

Relationships are very important in Asia and social networking is a vital component of that today. Therefore, it is a strong tool that should be explored in tech marketers’ toolboxes in this part of the world.

We are a startup team composed of three aspiring Chinese international students at University of California, Berkeley plus an experienced US entrepreneur. Blake Zhibai Han used to intern at Baidu--the Google equivalent in China which has 70% market share in search--as a product manager in social media integration. He graduated from the MIT of China--Tsinghua University as an Electrical Engineer and is himself a great influencer on Chinese social media including Renren and Sina Weibo.

After finishing his intern at Evernote running the note app's Renren page, Blake, together with his startup team at Berkeley, is now open to individuals or companies in the United States who want to build their own social media strategy in China. You can connect with Blake on his LinkedIn or Twitter mentioning "Chinese social media" or email [email protected] to learn more about our consulting services.