How a pop star manage his/her public image on Weibo

Social media marketing by definition means useing social media portals to positively influence consumers toward a website, company, brand, product, service, or a person. 

Today I want to use Yang Mi（杨幂）as an example to illustrate how a celebrity can use social media to build up and maintain a positive public image.

Disclaimer: I personally hold no grudge against Yang Mi. I choose her as an example because her company is the most successful one in social media operations. 

Yang Mi is a famous Chinese actress who used to be known for her bad acting performance and her obsession with plastic surgeries. Now she has a wonderful public image and more than 70,000,000 followers on Weibo.

It will be very dangerous to say something bad of Yang Mi or any other pop stars, because their fans are searching their idols’ names as keywords all the time, and once they find some annoying comments they will attack and harass the Weibo bloggers until they delete all their blogs and shut comment function off. Sometimes even objective comments or comparing one star with another would be considered “very rude” by fans. 

So most of time, people cannot see negative remarks against Yang Mi because she has a group of 70,000,000 followers that is big enough to overwhelm any dissidents.

Different from Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, Weibo’s public opinions can be easily manipulated with public relation methods. That’s probably the reason why Weibo is making so much money while twitter is still struggling to find a way to make a profit. Weibo has a “hot topic list” which include the ten most discussed topics on Weibo. This list, however, can actually be manipulated with money. 

Yang Mi is a master of buying hot topics. Every time she is on a reality show or her new tv drama is coming out, her company will buy a tons of hot topics to create media hype. Even when she is not at work, she buy topics like “杨幂机场街拍” to court publicity. Weibo hot topics are supposed to be interesting user-generated content. But when you click “杨幂机场街拍”, you will only see the same overly computer-enhanced well-posed pictures along with similar compliments coming from one source. 

Another famous example is that after people blamed Yang Mi for not caring her 3 year-old child, her company soon started a series of hot topics to prove Yang Mi’s a good mother. To make the hot topics more real, she also buy zombie fans to copy and paste similar comments under the topics.

Buying hot topics is now a common tactic for pop stars to get a bit of self-promotion. But sometimes when it is overdone, people will feel cheated. Guan Xiaotong is also a actress who is obsessed with buying hot topics for herself. But she do this a bit too often and people get sick of her quickly.

If some negative thing hit the hot topic list, one can also use money to remove it  from the list. What is more, one can also block some keywords with enough influence and money. For example, days ago, a video taping Yang Mi’s slapping a girl assistant’s phone and verbally abusing her was released on Weibo. Many people were shocked and they started to question about Yang Mi’s moral quality. The video soon hit the hot topic list and then suddenly disappeared. Minutes later, even keywords “Yang Mi slapping phone” was blocked. A real hot topic was erased like it never existed.

Yang Mi’s company also owned several marketing accounts (营销号). One of the famous ones is called “圈掌柜”. “圈掌柜” has tens of thousands of followers now. It claims himself as a insider in the vanity fair and he discloses some gossips about pop stars from time to time. The truth is, “圈掌柜” belongs to Yang Mi’s company and its main responsibility is to smear other stars when Yang Mi is in competition with them. 

Of course, Yang Mi is not the only celebrity who own marketing accounts. Kris Wu（吴亦凡）has his too, namely “圈内教父”. As entertainment companies become increasingly experienced in new media operations, one should be cautious not to be misled by their distractions.

Regardless all the potential fake followers and zombie accounts that probably are there, Yang Mi is still among the most followed actress in China. She used to have bad reputation but after years’ struggle, she finally made herself the most financially successful actress. Social media helps her a lot.

Apart from Yang Mi, other celebrities are also using social media for their own good. Some young actors we called 小鲜肉 in Chinese are actually not that popular. They merely buying fake followers, fake retweets and fake interactions. Then they use the fake numbers to “prove” their popularity and charge ads agency millions of yuan. 

We may think social media brings us more in touch with celebrities, but it just provides us with more illusion.