By: Britt Johnson
This week Digital Royalty client Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson kicked off a 25-day worldwide press tour in Taiwan to promote his upcoming action-adventure film, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island. Amidst planning the social strategy to support his appearances, one hitch became more and more apparent: How will he share his experiences with his Chinese fans?
Due to strict government restrictions, popular American social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are banned throughout the country of nearly 1.3 billion residents. The regulations have spurred the rapid development of native platforms, one of which being Sina Weibo. The Twitter-like website allows users to post short-form bulletins, repost interesting content, and engage in two-way communication with friends.
Weibo currently boasts 250 million registered users, and nearly 80 million posts per day. Despite these statistics, very few American-based brands have taken the opportunity to extend their online influence to China and its surrounding counties. Digital Royalty helped Dwayne launched his Weibo account upon his arrival in Taiwan, joining the likes of other notable users such as Starbucks, the NBA and actor Hugh Jackman.
Several trans-continental e-mails and phone calls later, here are the lessons we learned from creating a Weibo account:
- Content is Key: Just like your English posts, Weibo fans want to connect with the human aspect of your brand. Quality photos and videos can cross the language barrier and communicate messages more effectively than text. Plan to utilize a media-rich content strategy if creating an international account.
- Ask for Help: Traditional Chinese is a complex language. Despite numerous translation tools available online, these methods cannot identify the subtle nuances in grammar and figures of speech. Identify resources that can assist with the translation of posts, and the optimization of brand accounts.
- Don’t be Afraid to Repeat: One look at your Facebook and Twitter insights will tell you that your content is not reaching much of the Chinese-speaking demographic, if at all. Re-purposing messaging from these sites is permissible, given the very small overlap in fans. For example, Dwayne utilizes his Taiwan-specific tweets and posts as material for his Weibo account.
- Acknowledge Cultural Differences: The beauty and challenge behind managing a Weibo account is finding messaging that will resonate with a new and unfamiliar audience. Acquaint yourself with the holidays and notable events that may affect your brand. Finding content that is specifically tailored to their interests will help your account to grow more quickly and accumulate dedicated fans.
- Get Certified: Much like Twitter, Weibo has a verification process for high-profile brands and personalities. Be sure to obtain the badge upon launching an account. Chinese fans rely heavily on the “certified” status. For this reason you will likely see a large spike in followers after Weibo has granted you the badge.
If your brand is seeking a comprehensive international social strategy, I highly recommend checking out what Weibo has to offer. So with these tips, I say, 好運氣. (Good luck!)
By: Britnee Johnson
Today, my enthusiasm for Twitter has taken on a whole new level of excitement. If you were reading your social feeds this morning, odds are you saw the folks at Twitter chatting about their latest version of the platform via the #LetsFly hashtag. To those of you who are still trying to navigate the new design or are gearing up to explore option-features, I invite you to read below and find out exactly why the new version will have you seizing a pre-holiday thrill.
Prior to the new version, those of us logging into Twitter.com would see a simple feed of all our followers’ activity in addition to a separate feed of your own. Now, users will be exposed to an entirely new interface including tabs such as Home, Connect and #Discover, which provide an enhanced experience.
For the accounts who have enhanced profiles, new features will include:
- Enhanced profile with option to include an additional image below your profile avatar
- Ability to highlight the most engaging content to existing followers by ‘pinning’ a tweet to the top of your profile page
- Access Twitter Analytics for brand accounts that have enhanced accounts
Key takeaways for the everyday user will be that they receive the latest version of the platform equipped with the newest tab features and search options (equipped to lure in all social addicts) in addition to finding out the amount of retweets and favorite per tweet. The enhanced profiles will allow users and brands to better market to their audience through the second image (think spot for hashtag or ideal real estate for branded message) and added analytics. If you’re like me, you’ll find yourself even more excited about connecting with tweets, as there are added features like drop down selections for viewing multimedia in addition to a new user-friendly layout. As for marketers, it’ll be a big win if they know how to play their social media cards just right and creatively optimize the space.
Just from the looks of things, my social wheels are spinning. I’ll assume if your reading this, yours are, too. For more information, check out the Twitter tutorial, here.
By: Kirsten Stubbs
Social TV used to mean families gathering around their televisions to discuss sitcoms over TV dinners on portable trays. Tonight, The X Factor USA ushers in a new generation of social TV, spreading the discussion from across your living room to across the world.
As one of television’s most buzzed-about programs on social media, it only makes sense that the show would harness the power of the readily available and plentiful opinions of its socially savvy viewers and give them the power to vote via Twitter.
In addition to voting via phone, text message, website and Facebook wall, The X Factor USA is the first television talent competition to allow fans to vote for their favorite acts via Twitter through direct messages.
It all goes back to social media’s inherent ability to deliver value when, where and how fans (or customers, consumers, guests, clients) want it. The people behind The X Factor realize a vast portion of their audience is discussing the show online and are using that latent power to enhance the already social idea of voting for the future of the show and the ultimate winner.
Interested in voting for your favorite contestant via Twitter DM or any other medium… and being part of the future of social TV? Check-out all the ways you can voice your opinion on The X Factor here.
