Weibo is still the second most used social network in China. We wrote the first version of this article in 2020. Six years and two platform waves later (Douyin, then Xiaohongshu), clients still ask us the same question in every kickoff call: is Weibo still worth a budget line in 2026? The honest answer changed since 2020. Weibo lost real ground on pure sales and KOL performance. It kept a job no other Chinese platform does as well.
Philip Chen is CEO of GMA in Shanghai. He has run Weibo campaigns for foreign brands since 2013, three of which had to survive an actual Weibo Hot Search crisis.
Why is Weibo still important for brands in China?
When people think digital in China, WeChat comes first. But Weibo still matters, especially when the goal is brand awareness rather than a closed community. Chinese consumers remain wary of brands and products they don’t recognize. Awareness on Weibo is what gets your name into the pool of options a shopper considers before she ever opens Tmall or Xiaohongshu.
What Weibo offers to users and brands
Weibo means “microblog” in Chinese, and the logic is close to Twitter/X: short posts, hashtags, a public feed. Compared to that model it still offers more:
- Microblogging with multiple photos and videos in one post
- Full public reading access, even for people without an account
- A “hot search” module that surfaces trending topics in real time
The hot search list is the closest thing China has to a live national trending feed: the top 50 most discussed topics, refreshed constantly. Brands can buy placement in it, and brand crises land on it whether they bought placement or not.
Good commercial content on Weibo can still beat WeChat for reach
Proper collaboration with KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) can still make a campaign travel on this platform, because Weibo stays an open network. Everyone can see everything, everyone can comment, and that openness is what pushes people to engage with a brand post instead of scrolling past it. Plenty of industries still check Weibo first to judge whether a brand is credible before they check anything else.
WeChat, Weibo, or both?
In 2026 this is really a three way split between WeChat, Weibo, and the Douyin/Xiaohongshu pair, but the old WeChat versus Weibo logic still holds for what each one is for:
- WeChat is built for one to one communication. Use it to verticalize the message and build loyalty inside a community you already own.
- Weibo is built for one to many visibility. Use it to generate awareness or give an event, a launch, or a promotion the widest possible reach.
Weibo still earns its place at the start of a brand’s China journey, and it stays useful afterward as the tool your KOLs and your PR team reach for when something needs to travel fast.
Weibo’s numbers in 2026
Weibo’s own mid-2025 investor disclosures put monthly active users at roughly 588 million and daily active users at around 261 million, figures echoed in DataReportal’s Digital 2026 China report and in Statista’s tracker of Weibo’s user base. That is still a large audience, larger than the 550 million we quoted back in 2020, but the composition shifted more than the headline count did.
- Users under 30 now make up about 70.7% of the active base, up from the 40% aged 23-30 we saw in 2020.
- Gender split flattened out. It used to skew male (57/43); recent trackers put it close to even, with women slightly ahead.
- Lower tier cities (line four and below) now account for about 31.5% of active users, a real shift away from the first and second tier metros the platform used to over index on.
Weibo also grew its verified creator base: about 125,000 accounts hold “gold orange V” or “orange V” verification as of late 2025, up sharply from the year before. Content supply on the platform is not shrinking. Ad demand is where the story gets more complicated.
What actually changed on Weibo since 2020
This is the part most agency blogs skip, because it is not flattering. Weibo’s share of KOL bookings dropped sharply in 2026 benchmarks circulating among Chinese marketers, down roughly 29% year over year, with Kuaishou down about 20% over the same period. Xiaohongshu grew KOL bookings around 27% and Douyin around 15% in the same window. Brands are not leaving Weibo. They are shrinking the KOL performance budget they used to put there and moving it to platforms that convert better, particularly Douyin, where whole sales journeys now happen inside the app.
At the same time, brand advertising as a share of total China ad spend climbed back up in 2026, moving from the old 2:8 brand-to-performance split toward 3:7 or 4:6, and some of our clients are running closer to 5:5. That shift favors Weibo, because Weibo was never the best converter. It was always the best amplifier.
Xiaohongshu also changed the game on the discovery side. A growing share of Chinese shoppers now use it the way Westerners use Google, searching a product name before they buy it anywhere. Xiaohongshu’s search behavior pulled a chunk of the “learn about a brand” job away from Weibo’s hot search, which used to be the default place people went to check what was being said about you.
Weibo’s response has been to lean into AI tooling for its 2026 fiscal year, including AI powered ad targeting and AI video generation for creators and brand accounts, aimed mostly at lowering the cost of producing content at volume. It is early. We would not build a 2026 strategy around Weibo’s AI tools yet, but we are testing them on smaller accounts.
Weibo offers multiple functions for brand marketing
Weibo combines public self expression in real time with a distribution engine: any user can post, any user can follow, comment, and repost, and that model still turns an original post into a live viral stream when it catches.
Weibo users can:
- Open personal accounts
- Follow accounts and be followed
- Publish text and visual content
- Track “hot topics” for breaking news
- Watch live streaming
Verified brand accounts can:
- Communicate one to many at scale
- Build brand awareness
- Convert followers into customers, at a lower rate than Douyin or Xiaohongshu
- Retain an existing audience
- Collaborate with KOLs for reach
- Buy display ads, search promotion, fan tunnels, and fan headlines
Getting verified is still the first step
A verified account, the “V” next to your username, is still what gives you access to full tools and credibility with followers. For a foreign entity, budget around 1,000 USD, versus a lower fee for a company holding a Chinese business license (Hong Kong entities sit around 4,000 RMB). One change since 2020: verification is increasingly billed as an annual charge rather than a one time fee, so confirm current terms before you commit a budget, since Weibo has adjusted its renewal policy more than once in the past two years. Documents needed still include an application letter and company registration papers translated into Chinese. GMA handles this registration for clients who would rather not deal with the paperwork.
How brands still build awareness on Weibo
Post content built for the format
Post types range from short text, blogs, live streams, and Q&A. Your linguistic style should match your brand voice and your target audience, not a translated version of your Instagram caption.
- Concise posts with photos, video, memes, or GIFs still travel better than long text.
- Short video now carries more weight in the feed algorithm than it did in 2020, so plan for vertical video, not just static images.
- Live streaming remains popular, mostly used by KOLs to connect with an audience and push new products.
- Hashtags on Weibo come in pairs (# hashtag #), a quirk of Chinese not using spaces between words.
Answering questions and keeping the page alive still matters more than the platform’s algorithm on its own. A post gets a second of attention, so make that second count, and don’t shy away from discounts and offers: Weibo users still expect commercial content here, unlike on WeChat.
Collaborate with KOLs
Weibo is still where many influencers prefer to communicate one to many, live streaming included. In a society where social consensus shapes buying decisions, and where counterfeits keep consumers cautious about brands they don’t know, KOLs and Key Opinion Leaders remain a shortcut to trust. That said, book KOLs on Weibo today for reach and buzz, not for a direct sales attribution number, that job now belongs to Xiaohongshu and Douyin.
Use targeted Weibo ads where they still make sense
Weibo still earns most of its revenue from advertising, and the ad system, close to Facebook’s in structure, remains one of the cheaper options for the reach it delivers.
The main ad types to consider:
- Display Ads, placed on the discover page, the homepage, and users’ feeds, akin to Facebook Ads.
- Search Promotion, which increases the visibility of your account in Weibo’s built in search, a feature WeChat still lacks.
- Fan Tunnels, a targeted headline placement at the top of a user’s feed to reach new followers.
- Fan Headlines, which target your existing followers and their connections, useful since re-sharing remains a daily habit for a large share of Weibo users.
The Weibo store, still a secondary tool
Weibo pushed its own “Weibo Mini Shop” after cutting the direct links to Taobao and Tmall it used to offer through its Alibaba partnership. Unlike Tmall or JD, Weibo still has no real product listing and inventory system of its own, so most brands link out to Taobao, Tmall, or Youzan rather than trying to run a full storefront natively. Treat it as a bridge, not a destination.
A case that shows why Weibo still matters for PR
Julien runs a French oral care brand selling on Tmall through a distributor. In March, a Xiaohongshu post claimed one of his products contained an undisclosed ingredient. It was wrong, but it spread, and within a day a version of the claim reached Weibo’s hot search under a generic “imported toothpaste safety” tag, not even his brand name yet, which is the dangerous stage: still containable, about to stop being containable.
Here is the mechanism that mattered. Julien’s team already had a verified Weibo account with a real posting history, not a dormant shell created for emergencies, so a statement posted from it carried weight instantly instead of looking like damage control from a brand nobody had seen post before. GMA paired that statement with the actual lab certificate as an image, pushed it through two KOLs who had covered the brand honestly before (not paid crisis mercenaries, which readers spot instantly), and used a small paid push to keep the correction visible in the same hot search thread rather than starting a separate one. That is the part outsiders miss: on Weibo, replying inside the existing hot search thread keeps your correction attached to the rumor. A separate post just gets ignored.
The topic dropped off hot search within about 14 hours instead of the multi day cycle we have seen on cases handled without a live account or without a same thread reply. Tmall sales dipped for four days and were back to baseline within twelve. That is a rescue Xiaohongshu and Douyin cannot deliver on their own, because neither has anything close to Weibo’s public hot search mechanic. For a broader playbook on this, we wrote a separate crisis strategy piece for luxury brands that applies just as well outside luxury.
The honest verdict: does Weibo still earn a 2026 budget?
Yes, but for a narrower job than in 2020. Should you cancel Weibo entirely and put everything into Xiaohongshu? Not so fast 🙂 that depends on what job you actually need done.
- PR and crisis response: keep Weibo, and keep the account active before you need it. This is the platform’s clearest remaining edge.
- Hashtag campaigns and launch spikes: keep Weibo as an amplifier, paired with Douyin or Xiaohongshu for the conversion step. Weibo starts the conversation, it rarely closes the sale.
- Celebrity or KOL endorsement visibility: keep Weibo, it is still where an endorsement announcement gets the widest, fastest public reach.
- KOL performance marketing and ROAS: move that budget to Xiaohongshu or Douyin. The 2026 booking numbers back this up, and so does what our clients see in their own dashboards.
- Community building and retention: that job belongs to WeChat, not Weibo, and it did in 2020 too.
Weibo did not die. It specialized. Treat it like the fire alarm and the megaphone, not the cash register.
FAQ
Is Weibo still worth it if my main channel is Xiaohongshu or Douyin?
Yes, but as a second channel, not your first hire. Keep a verified, active account for visibility and crisis readiness, and let Xiaohongshu or Douyin carry the sales and search job. Trying to run Weibo as your primary sales engine in 2026 is where most brands waste budget.
How much does Weibo verification cost for a foreign company now?
Budget around 1,000 USD for an overseas entity, less with a Chinese business license, and roughly 4,000 RMB for a Hong Kong entity. Confirm current terms before you commit, since Weibo has moved toward annual renewal billing rather than a strict one time fee, and pricing has shifted more than once in the past two years.
Can Weibo alone drive sales, or do I need other platforms too?
Weibo alone rarely converts well in 2026. Its strength is visibility and trust building, not checkout. Pair it with Tmall, Douyin, or Xiaohongshu for the actual purchase path, and use Weibo to get your name in front of people before they search for you elsewhere.
What is the fastest way to get burned on Weibo?
Creating a verified account only after a crisis hits. A brand new account posting a crisis statement looks like damage control and gets picked apart in the comments. Set the account up, post real content on it for months, so it has credibility the day you actually need it.
Do I need a Chinese business license to run Weibo ads?
No, foreign entities can get verified and run ads without a Chinese license, though the verification fee is higher and the paperwork takes longer. A local partner or agency can shorten that timeline considerably.
GMA is your Weibo marketing partner in China
We have run Weibo accounts and campaigns since before this article existed, and we have handled the good launches and the messy crisis weeks. Weibo keeps evolving, and getting the account set up right, with real content history before you need it, is most of the work. See the full range of what we do on our China marketing services page.
Our Weibo marketing services:
- Weibo account setup and verification, handled end to end
- Content management: copywriting, posting cadence, account optimization
- Follower engagement to keep your community active, not just growing
- Weibo KOL marketing, matched to your category, not the biggest follower count
- Campaign management: contests, live streams, hot search pushes
- Monthly reporting on what happened and what’s coming next
Contact us for additional information!
