Why are many KOLs in China so popular but have little commercial influence?

In a recent survey conducted by consumer insights company Bomoda, it was found that although many Chinese celebrities have high visibility and engagement, their ability to convert these into purchasing behavior is low. The reason is that a post with a lot of hashtags doesn’t make a lot of sense.

One reason: simply adding a bunch of hashtags to a post doesn’t mean much.

Xu Weizhou at Louis Vuitton in Paris (Source: his Weibo)

When evaluating the effectiveness of KOLs , their popularity and engagement metrics are usually used as evaluation benchmarks. However, consumer insights firm Bomoda found that while many Chinese celebrities have high visibility and engagement, their ability to convert this into purchasing behavior is low.

In fact, many KOLs can spark social discussion but fail to motivate consumers to buy products, according to a report by Bomoda. This report surveyed more than 40,000 KOLs in China in the first half of 2017 and identified them through named entity recognition (NER) technology.

The following 10 KOLs posted the lowest quality content:

Bomoda evaluated the quality of these KOLs’ social media content based on a weighted system. Low-quality content was defined as posts driven by external fan support, posts that simply contained hashtags about endorsed brands, or posts that described recent events without providing any additional details.

Bomoda investigated more than 51 million Weibo posts, 2.3 billion related reposts and comments on more than 3.4 million WeChat articles.

Among them, Xu Weizhou ranked the lowest. 99% of the content he posted was classified as low quality. His posts are either unrelated to the products or brands he endorses or are just surveys initiated by his fans.

Ironically, however, Xu Weizhou does have voice and influence. As one of the most famous young actors in China, Xu Weizhou was once called the " traffic king" and scored a perfect 100 on Bomoda's social media influence list. In contrast, his actual business impact score was only 11, and his purchase intention score was only 7.

Why is this so for a celebrity with such a huge and loyal following? Bomoda believes that his fans are mostly teenage girls who lack purchasing power. Furthermore, most of the brands he endorses are high-end brands, such as Louis Vuitton (pictured above) and Tiffany & Co., which are beyond the reach of most of his fans.

Another celebrity with a huge fan base, Jackson Wang (pictured below), has better content quality than Xu Weizhou, with 40% of his content being rated high quality.

Wang Jiaer recently endorsed Pepsi , which attracted a lot of attention from fans, including two-thirds of social media conversations. However, Bomoda pointed out that most of Wang Jiaer's posts were "meaningless" and only added the tag #王嘉尔百士代言人# without any hint of promoting product sales, so his commercial value score was only 12.

Another KOL with low commercial influence is Zhao Liying (pictured below, also with a score of 12). Similar to the two celebrities mentioned above, Zhao Liying does not have the ability to initiate product-related discussions for her brand clients. On her personal social media account, 58% of the content only elicits praise from fans for her "sweet," "girl next door" image and sincere personality. In one of her July posts, she mentioned the Chinese sportswear brand Xtep, but the most popular fan comments were praising her soft hands, fair skin and crescent-shaped eyebrows with traditional poetry (“Hands like soft catkins, skin like solidified fat. Neck like a cicada, teeth like white gourds. Beautiful forehead and eyebrows, charming smile, and bright eyes. Zhao Liying! She is getting more and more beautiful”) or expressing their anticipation for her appearance in the next episode of “Princess Agents.”

Situations like these can result in high costs for the brands that sign contracts with these KOLs, only to find that the KOLs are not effective promoters of the brands other than effectively promoting themselves . Bomoda advises brands to think about the following question before signing a KOL: “Are fans likely to talk about my brand and products, or are they just expressing their love for the KOL?”

So, what data can reflect the real business impact? Try these two:

• The percentage of consumers who are willing to buy the product among all mentions and comments;
• The proportion of purchasing agents, Taobao sellers, shopping malls or shopping centers using a certain KOL through third-party promotional content.