The success of Weibo (As twitter in webstern) promotion has made enterprises superstitious. A great deal of budget, professional outsourcing team, content contribution, increase of fans (as followers in twitter), all of these seem too strong so that blog, bbs (as forum in western) are sentenced to death…

But take take a deep look of the features of weibo and its substantial development, you may found that the limitation of weibo determines its disadvantages in enterprises business promotion. This will lead to an shortening result of weibo promotion by enterprises. You will get confined by over-expecting the result of weibo connection of social customer.

Why i said this…The following are my points of view:

1. Poor Privacy

it’s obvious that whom you have follow or been followed. it’s pretty opposite with the real business environment.

we know that in real business, the confidential of you and your customer is pretty high. IT IS VERY HORRIBLE that your clients or potential clients are exposed to any people…as you can see, it’s opened to public in weibo. can’t imagine that to a financial organization’s official weibo, whether you need a million-level client follow you or not?

if so, this great and quality client may be transfer directly or indirectly by @ (as mentioned in twitter).

if not, all your promotional information posted in official weibo cannot be seen by this quality clients.

this is a fine line.

despite the risk of client or potential client, there is also an information risk. how much enemies do you have in your followers/fans? you may not be able to know this….they can know your information, research your strategy, this mainly activities from your company are very convenient for them to get – this is the worst taboo in business war.

actually, you can separate your clients in weibo, to show some particular messages to specific clients (only google plus has this function called “circle”), message posting in weibo is whether opened to public or by private message (1 man once).

if you post everything out, you may get an half half favorite by followers.

2. Bad information loss

weibo message is just like waterfall, the advantages are you can get a lot information, also the disadvantages are some of them might be loss or covered by other messages.

there is one target in traditional TVC called share of voice, this is also happens in weibo. but the enterprises will finally notice that the SOV from weibo is quite low even than traditional media. the cause is simple. the orientation of traditional paper has targeted its client or potential clients. But weibo are too wide to know which followers/fans are potential.

3. Unpredictable message environment

try to imagine, today’s hot topic is SAVE THE BEAR, and your weibo are posting the ads of bear meat, how would the weiboer think?

if some places are encountering disaster suddenly but your weibo are posting something fun or entertaining…how would this be…

4. You don’t know the exact time of your client or potential clients using weibo

every clients has its own habitat, i like browsing weibo in the morning, he likes browing weibo in the noon, she likes browsing weibo in the evening, they like browsing weibo before sleep…you what time you can deliver you message to?

Of course, i’m not denying the usefulness of weibo promotion, weibo is magic, we all know that, i’m just suggesting that you should make a thothrough research and fully plan before you join this weibo battle

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