Food & Beverage take top-spot on China’s Weibo
If using China’s Weibo makes you hungry, you are not alone. Restaurants in China have been finding great success promoting their swine and noodles on Weibo and are now the most common business-type to have an enterprise account on Sina Weibo.
A report published on Weibo.com has dived deep into Sina Weibo’s business profiles to discover how enterprises are developing and utilising their Weibo accounts. Investigations reported on March 29 2012 found more than 130,500 businesses had Weibo accounts. Over 50,000 of these business accounts were restaurants, blogging about chef expertise, promotions, gathering customer feedback and taking bookings and orders.
It hasn’t just been the fine dining establishments either. A street stall selling Chinese omelette (dan bing) in Wenzhou city, created a Weibo account, Zhaijibang Fetch-and-Carry, for omelette deliveries and within a year has morphed into general food delivery service with 25,000 fans delivering 200 orders per day – and charging a premium for the service.
While no other business types dominate Weibo like quite restaurants, the automotive industry is the second largest business segment utilising Weibo with 7,546 accounts (there are many car dealerships and places that fix your wagon in China), followed by business services (7,212), ecommerce (6,594) and IT (6,047). The most followed businesses on Weibo are all ecommerce and IT firms, with IT firms also being the most active - 45% of them regularly update (although ‘regularly’ isn’t defined).
Businesses in Mainland China’s three most international regions of Beijing, Shanghai (including neighbouring provinces Jiangsu and Zhejiang) and Guangdong (Guangzhou and Shenzhens’ province) account for the top five areas utilising Weibo enterprise accounts.
The Weibo Facts
There were 130,565 business accounts on Weibo by March 29 2012
50,000+ Weibo business accounts are restaurants
7,546 are in the auto industry
7,212 provide business services
6,594 are ecommerce businesses
6,047 are IT firms
IT firms are the most active on Weibo with 45% regularly active on the service
