Editor’s Note: The piece was written by Wenyuan Zhao, he lives in Beijing and has interestes in areas like digital journalism transformation, social media, interactive marketing, innovation diffusion and society. You can follow him on Sina Weibo @Zhaowenyuan1985 or drop him a line at firewoodcn@gmail.com.
Out of the over 130,565 enterprise accounts on Sina Weibo as of the end of this March, about 38% came from restaurants (50,000+) with auto, business service, ecommerce and IT followed, according to a “2012 Sina Enterprise Weibo White Paper” jointly released by Sina Weibo and social marketer CIC.
The White Paper detailed “the overall development of enterprises’ utilization of Weibo” and “the first industry benchmarks”. All the statistics was compiled by the end of March 29.
Restaurants took the lead with more than 50,000 enterprise accounts registered with Sina Weibo, dramatically ahead of automotive industry (7546) and business service (7212). ecommerce (6594) and IT (6047) came in the fourth and fifth place. The top five enterprise accounts by followers fall under IT and e-commerce categories.
Geographically, Beijing, Guangdong, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang make up the top five cities/provinces in utilizing Sina Enterprise Weibo the most. Multinationals also set up their accounts on Sina Weibo. 208 of them are from the U.S. and 178 from Japan.
The White Paper said that on average each Sina Weibo user follows 4 enterprise accounts while 56% of them follow at least one enterprise account.
However, according to the report, on average, only 35% of enterprise accounts’ followers are “active followers” , which means they login in, post or comment on Weibo recently. It doesn’t define how recent is “recently”, though. Something interesting, followers of accounts from IT, tourism &hotel, and restaurant & beverage tend to be more active while followers of ecommerce companies are more likely to interactive with these brands. It’s noteworthy that only 647 enterprise accounts are “lucky” enough to enjoy a 80% active followers.
This White Paper quoted a survey with 4931 respondents, indicating that new product information, promotion and user experience are the most popular topics among enterprise accounts’ followers – especially for female followers.
Another survey conducted with 4938 respondents revealed that 60% of the Weibo user would like to complain or communicate with brands on Weibo. The higher the education level of the user is, the more they’re likely to do this.
You can download the full report here.