How to Create a Sina Weibo Account

How to create a Sina Weibo account

Three simple steps to create a new Sina Weibo account

1.  Go to Sina Weibo’s homepage: www.weibo.com

  

2. Click on the ‘Register Now’ button

                                                  3. Register with your email account

4    4. Check your email box and activate your account by clicking the link in the email

5.   You need to activate your account within 24 hours.

 6.  The activation link brings you to Sina Weibo

  

    7. How to log in next time?

Hope all of you will enjoy exploring Sina Weibo.

Ring X

Social Media in China, updated version

Dear All,

Here is the link to the new version of my presentation about Social Media in China.
http://www.slideshare.net/vickyyunxu/social-media-in-china-12749363

Hope you like it.

Regards,
Ring X.

What is Marketing? Basic knowledge

Keywords: marketing, customer classification, customer value and satisfaction, CPV, CRM.

Generally speaking, marketing is the process by which brands create and deliver value to customers and capture values from the customers in return. The bond between customers and brands are relationships. The stronger the relationship, the more value the brands would get. The key aim of marketing is then to build strong and lasting customer relationships with superior value and customer satisfaction.

However, not all customers are worth taking care of. Brands should focus on those profitable customers and divest in those unlikely to contribute profits to the companies. Customers could be classified into four basic categories based on profitability and projected loyalty: strangers, butterflies, true friends, and barnacles.

Strangers Unlikely to be profitable Unlikely to be loyal Little fit between the company’s offerings with the customer needs	Butterflies Possibly profitable Not loyal Good fit between offerings and needs N.B. they are highly likely to shift to other brands when their offerings are better. E.g. highly price sensitive customers
True friends Both profitable and loyal Strong fit between the offerings and the needs Brands love them and they love the brands.	Barnacles Highly loyal but not very profitable Limited fit between offerings and needs If they buy, capture as much as profits while you can. If they don’t buy, say bye to them.

In order to achieve strong and lasting customer relationships, the company needs to excel at partnership relationship management as well, which means that the companies should work closely with the partners within the company and outside the company to create and deliver superior value and satisfaction to their target customers in order to beat their competitors.

What is value and satisfaction them?

Customer perceived value (CPV) is the customer’s evaluation of all the differences and all the costs of a marketing offer compared with other competing offers in the market.

N.B. the price is not the sole measure of CPV. There are other variable affecting the CPV: brand, design, quality, easiness of purchase, return policy…

There are three possibilities of match between perceived performance and customer expectations.

(1)   L when the expectation exceeds the performance. When you bought a fancy dress online and received a rag, that’s it.

(2)   = when the expectation matches the performance. When you bought a fancy dress online and it was a fancy dress you received. Successful shopping you would say.

(3)   J when the expectation matches the performance. When you bought a fancy dress @ £15 and it was a fancier dress worth about £50 you received. WOW!

This reminds of a psychological term called Buyer’s Remorse and a strategy to avoid that -- Justifying the Sale with Social Proof. Remind the customers that they have made a wise decision in choosing the offering. This is a strategy often used in fashion retailing industry. Sales associates often make compliments of the customer’s purchase when they are closing the transaction. Reason? Push the customers to confirm that this is a good choice they make and nothing would go wrong about it.

After all, the companies chase after profits and what constitutes the profits? Customer equity. No customers, no business. What is customer equity then? Customer equity is the total customer lifetime value of all the customers the company could get hold of. Now you realize how important customers are? The job of the marketers is to attract, delight, and grow customers. Because highly satisfied customers are more likely to speak in favour of the product/service/company, they will do the marketing for the brands.

What is Marketing?

Sina Weibo user population exceeded 300 million

Happy to know that the total user population of Sina (NASDAQ:SINA) Weibo, the no. 1 micro blogging service has already exceeded 300 million according to their annual fiscal report published recently. It's said 10% of the 300 million users are located overseas (unverified data yet). If so, it is going to be a great opportunity for brands to get in touch with their Chinese customers.

Well, maybe not everyone can succeed on the Sina Weibo. London major definitely didn't. Reports said it was a failure for his PR team working on Sina Weibo approaching Chinese voters.

Several tips on the go: things that make trends on Weibo: images, jokes, entertaining news, but please NO political stuff.

Sina Weibo English Interface on iPhone

I just read news about launch of Sina Weibo’s English interface. The link to the news is here http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2011/04/25/chinas-sina-rolls-out-english-interface-on-weibo-iphone-app/ and I am downloading the English version now. It’s a mobile only interface. You won’t be able to use it on your laptop, but definitely you can access your weibo account on your iPhone much easier with English being the commanding language on this interface. It does not change the fact that majority of the online content is in Chinese. However, you will be able to use, log-in, send, play around and have fun with this English version.

If you want to download the app, it’s the second on the list if you search ‘sina weibo’ in the app store. The colour of the Chinese version is orange, and the colour of the English version is silver.

Have fun. J

Repetition of behaviour, repeated purchasing behaviour, and advertisement of experience

Katona (1953, p.334) points out that 'the basic principle of the first form of behaviour is repetition' and the form of behaviour depends on the frequency of repetition as well as on the recency and success of past performance. Therefore, when applied in the retail industry, the repeat purchasing behaviour depends on the recency, frequency, and the satisfaction level of past experience. An emerging question is: should the marketers then advertise more about the recent successful experience of consumers, especailly those consumers who repeatedly make the purchase rather than solely promoting the features of the products/services?

 

My answer is YES (personal opinion), for consumer goods particularly, such as cosmetics, baby caring products, food, housing cleaning products, and etc.

(1) If the customer is a new customer to the product/ service, other people's satisfactory experience in using the product/service increase his/ her confidence in the prodcut/ servce, hence increasing the probability of him/ her making the purchase.

(2) If the customer is a returning customer, the satisfactory personal experience reconfirms his/ her excellent choice and taste, which increases his/ her preference to the product/ service.

(3) If the consumer is a potential customers, advertisement of brands/ products / services serves as only messages letting him/ her know the thing, whilst advertisement of successful repeated purchasing behaviour of others gives him/ her an idea that the product/ servie is worth buying.

 

Promptu thoughts by Ring

@ Soton Library 14.58pm 19th February 2012

 

Yeah! The first blog with my iPhone. Start writing blogs on the go. brilliant!