3 Ways to Grow Your Oasis by Weibo Following Organically
Have you heard of the Oasis social network platform by Weibo? If you haven’t, you will want to read our previous post announcing its arrival a few months back.
Within the China market, Oasis is most closely compared to social network Red, which also touts a more visual platform versus other Chinese social media apps like WeChat and Weibo, which are relatively more text intensive in their content.
When the platform initially launched, Weibo had used its tried and true formula, inviting celebrities to get onto the platform first and sharing beta version invite codes to their fans, so their fans would follow them onto the platform. We have mentioned in our previous blog post on key trends for the beauty industry for Chinese consumers how celebrities hold the key to a tremendous amount of consumer spend in the China market - fans are very much willing to spend on products and services endorsed by their idols.
Now that the platform is starting to take shape, we have spent the past few months testing out growth tactics you could use to grow your Oasis account organically. Here we share what has worked for us and will likely work for you if you implement these tips.
3 TIPS TO GROW YOUR OASIS ACCOUNT
WHICH CONTENT CATEGORY ARE YOU IN?
Across platforms, the users, influencers that are most successful are those who show focus. For example, fashion, beauty, travel, outdoors, pottery, etc. Why? because your followers know why they come to you and they follow you for the specific content they know you will share.
If you are focused on sharing food recipes and suddenly you shared an interior design photo, it would actually break your focus.
So, the first thing you want to do is to hop into the ‘explore feed’ on Oasis and figure out which of the content categories you want to be in and stick to it.
Figure out where your content could shine on the platform
TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE EXPLORE FEED AND CURRENT CAMPAIGNS
Once you have decided on what type of content your account will focus on, the next thing you want to do is to figure out what others in the same content category are doing, and analyze what they are doing well. For example, if you are a food blogger, what types of cuisines, content formats, hashtags, are getting the highest engagement?
Do your research, take what’s working, and add your own twist!
Another tip is to participate in ongoing campaigns on the Oasis platform. Within the explore feed there is usually a weekly campaign going on where you can submit content using a campaign hashtag; this is similar to what Douyin (China version of TikTok) has done, where they issue challenges to fans and users create videos with the campaign hashtag. Similarly, you can create campaign content on Oasis and submit with the use of the campaign hashtag. Getting onto the featured feed for a campaign will definitely help with exposure.
Content is categorized at the top of the explore feed. On the left is ‘Travel’ and on the right is ‘Food’
COMMENT STRATEGICALLY
Liking a photo doesn’t get you in front of more accounts, commenting on a photo does; but because it takes more effort, few people do it, or some do it with little effort by simply posting an emoji.
You can stand out by commenting in a few ways:
Comment on posts that are in your content category. This way, if others see your comment on let’s say a food post and click through, they will see your food-related content.
Comment on posts that have 30-40 comments. We chose this threshold because any more than that your comment will get buried. You want the owner of the profile to see and respond to your comment, and you want their fans to see your comment too, so it’s best to choose posts that are gaining traction but aren’t overly popular.
Comment like you mean it. Again, don’t just post an emoji, read the post content, and respond with some insights. For example, if another food blogger posts about their new recipe for Blueberry muffins where they tried adding cinnamon, you want to mention cinnamon in your comment, because it’s something they wanted to highlight and it also shows you actually read their post. You have no idea how much people appreciate this given the prevalence of bot comments on every social platform.
This post has 24 comments on it so it makes it easier for the owner and others to see your comment
BONUS TIP: STAY ACTIVE ON THE PLATFORM
Oasis has an ‘activity counter’ for your profile that is essentially a score that shows how active you are on the platform. Out of a score of 100, if you are logging in once per day and liking a few photos, you will likely rate around a score of 70. This is for Oasis to incentivize users to spend more time on the platform; each time you like or comment on a post, or when you follow a new account, you are given additional points on the platform. These ‘points’ are awarded to each profile in the form of ‘water droplets’ (Oasis, in the desert, water droplets are good… get it?)
Currently, you can use the water droplets you accumulate to download high-quality photos and videos from the feeds of other users. The future plan for Oasis seems to be to allow online shops to accept these ‘water droplets’ rewards for purchases that happen on online shops that are set up on the platform.
Every social media network in China has an eCommerce strategy tied to it, allowing small businesses to large brands to monetize their content. We appreciate this tie-in as it allows us to see whether the content is working and driving sales.
Was this way too much to read? Watch our YouTube video below that summarizes these points in video form. Have questions? Drop us a comment on our YouTube video and we’ll get back to you asap!