If you’re going to succeed when marketing to China you need to understand your audience. Just like Western counterparts, Chinese social media platforms are great way of bolstering your online presence, expanding your marketing platform, and driving traffic to your website. And while there are plenty of tales about how difficult it is to get into China, some of the statistics on social media users and their behaviour will make you desperate to enter this lucrative and receptive market.

If you understand what Weibo users want you are in a much stronger position to market to them. And the good news for you is Chinese social media users are a very responsive audience. With a 30% year on year growth in the number of active users (making the current number of MAUs 156.5 million) Weibo is a goldmine for potential recommendations, reviews, referrals, and conversions.

Learn what Weibo users want from Chinese social media platforms

At the end of the first quarter of 2014 Weibo had 290 million users on PC and 106 million mobile users. 76.4% of people with a Weibo account have used it as a source of news, making it the third most popular source of news online in China and the second most frequently used mobile news app amongst social media users in 2014.

When it comes to online shopping, nearly 20% of Weibo users shop online more than 10 times per month, with 20.9% of users shopping between six and 10 times per month, and 35.6% shopping between 3 to 5 times every month. Almost 95% of Weibo users are at least slightly interested in shopping on Weibo. This could be partly down to the fact that the average user on Weibo is between 20 to 35 years old, an age bracket associated with consumerism and high spending in China.

Weibo is a strong source of traffic when marketing to China

When compared to other social media users, people on Weibo tend to post more often with just under 60% of users posting at least three times per week. When the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge went viral on the network there were more than 2 million posts on the topic, gathering together more than 2 billion views. More than 50% of Weibo users accept advertising on the site, and only 30% of users take no further action after viewing ads on the platform.

After viewing an advertisement on Weibo, 52% users will browse the product’s official website, whilst 53% will also search for the products on a search engine. This alone demonstrates just how useful Weibo can be as a source of traffic for your site.

While the statistics cover advertising, they clearly show that once Chinese social media users are aware of the products that interest them they have a very strong click-through-rate. Making Weibo users aware of your product can see a large number of people searching for other social media reviews, browsing your website, or looking at search engines for your product.