Screenshot of Wanghongs.net
A NEW B2B platform, Wanghongs.net, has recently stepped out of its home market of South Korea and aims to more efficiently connect brands around the world with China’s biggest social media influencers.
While companies usually approach public relations agencies for such services, a big differentiating factor lies in the technology used by Wanghongs.net, which uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to help clients determine the right influencer to maximise their outreach effectiveness.
Essentially, the web-based platform offers intelligent matchups based on their algorithm and evolving data, explained Jungwook Son, co-founder and CTO of Wanghongs.net.
While the platform does cater to brands of all kinds, almost 90 per cent of clients have been travel brands like airlines and hotels “paying big money” to utilise the platform, revealed Son.
Their advantage also lies in being able to connect their platform with Chinese social media APIs such as Weibo, a difficult feat, as unlike American companies like Facebook and Twitter, their APIs are not publicly accessible.
“We have to pay roughly US$10,000 to contract with Weibo in order to use their APIs,” he said.
It has been about a year since Wanghongs.net was first developed in South Korea, where it garnered clients the likes of Yanolja (South Korea’s Airbnb), Korean Air and Korea Tourism Organization (KTO).
KTO, arguably their biggest client to date, engaged Wanghongs.net to boost awareness of its Korea Grand Sale event.
Commenting on the success of that project, Kei Chun, co-founder and CEO of Wanghongs.net, said: “KTO wanted to make shopping a major attraction for travellers and we worked with them to bring their content onto Chinese social media. Within 2.5 months, we got 71 million reach in China on Weibo and 1.8 million online coupon sales.”
The coupons allow for discounted shopping at over 1,000 duty free shops in South Korea.
When asked how they make money out of the technology, Chun said: “Basically the business model is when clients pay for advertisements with the influencers, we get some of that. We also charge for analytics for clients to gain insight into their content.”
The two founders have further plans to spread the word of their product at trade shows, while at the same time rely on the name of their platform, Wanghongs, which they say is a naturally hot keyword for search, thus boosting their organic online reach.
