In this world of fake news and online scams it can be hard to know what is real on the internet, this is especially true in China.

To combat this, Weibo has a complicated world of options to verify your account and let your users know they're getting the real thing.

Once verified you get a 'V' on your profile. There are multiple types, you might have already seen some users have a V on their profile icon and heard people call Weibo KOLs 大V (big V).

Weibo's help docs for verification are chaotic and scattered around so we've created this ultimate guide.

Summary table

	Individuals					Organizations
Type	Orange 身份认证	Purple 兴趣认证 （达人）	Red		Gold 金V认证	Blue 官方认证
			自媒体认证	签约自媒体
Suitable for	Personal users	KOLs	Grass root media	Grass root media partners	Superstar KOLs	Companies, non-profits & government institutes
Example	Regular Zhou	Kobe Bryant	歪果仁研究协会	Tastemade 美食	回忆专用小马甲	KAWO 科握
Icon
Requirements	Profile photo & verified phone number
	Follow >50 users Have >50 Followers Support of 2 verified followers	Post consistently in a specialized field (see Weibo's categories)			>10,000,000 reads per month and >10k followers	Pay a fee: Basic 500元 Medium 5,000元 Advanced 9,800元
		In the past 30 days post >30 times and earn >10k reads	Post >20 toutiao articles or have uploaded >20 videos to weibo or miaopai	>1,000,000 reads per month
VIP Phone Customer Service (Chinese Only)					✔	✔ (medium and advanced)
Annual Membership					✔	✔ (advanced)

Takeaways

• Individual verification is free;
• Everyone needs to bind their phone number and upload a good profile photo;
• Golden verification is only awarded to most popular accounts on Weibo;
• A contract grass root media account gets more privileges on media content, which include:
• Paid Articles: readers must pay to read your article;
• Article Notifications: your followers will get notified via PM when you publish a new article;
• Allow users to follow your account from inside a video;
• "Original work" (similar to "original content" on WeChat);
• Force users to follow to continue reading an article.

It's important to remember that Weibo only charges organisations for verification so there are a lot more options. Let’s take a look...

Organization verification

For a Blue V verification, has 3 levels and includes benefits in 6 different categories:

1. Basic Services
2. Promotion
3. Events
4. Coupons
5. Private Messages
6. Data Analysis & Social Listening

1. Basic Services

A purchase of the Blue verification will give you a banner image slider in the homepage, on the top of your post feeds. You can insert up to 5 images and 1 video.

2. Promotion

Weibo's promotion tools are essential for any brand looking to boost engagement and grow their account.

Basic plan users will experience some restrictions in utilizing the campaign and promotion tools. If you would like to run campaigns on Weibo, we recommend you buy a medium plan and ideally splash out for the  9,800 RMB Advanced plan if you're a heavy user of 粉丝头条(fensitoutiao).

3. Event Platform

Weibo offers 6 types of event promotions:

1. Wheel of Fortune: spin to win a prize or red packet
2. Flash Sales: limited time offers inside Weibo
3. Repost to enter a lucky draw.
4. UGC: reward users who post your campaign on their Weibo with prizes
5. Pre-order: similar to how Apple lets people pre-order iPhones.
6. Request a Sample: users fill out a form to get a free sample.

4. Coupons

Coupons are a great way to entice users to follow your account and give a little nudge to those with demonstrated intent to purchase.

5. Private Messages

Private messages are almost a direct rip off of WeChat's articles. The basic plan bizarrely only lets you send them to a random 10% of your follower base and has other restrictions on menus and auto replies.

6. Data Analysis & Social Listening

This is not to be confused with Weibo's 数据助手 (data helper) which costs an additional 6,800 RMB/year although medium and advanced plans can get a discount on it.

Overseas brands need to pay $1,000 to apply for organization verification. Detailed information could be found at Weibo's Support Page.

? using KAWO entire teams get a better reporting experience without any of this extra nonsense...

Other things you should know

Lots of organizations just get individual verifications, or don't even bother getting verified at all.

It's true that Blue V gives you instant authority as an official account, but authority can be built with consistent posting, formal tone and professional content as well. Take a look at Penguin Market, a online import food and lifestyle seller with 50k+ followers. They remain unverified, but are still super popular.

So before you spend time and money on a Blue V, free verification may be sufficient for your needs.

Non-Blue V accounts can also purchase the RMB 5000 and 9800 packages! 

It seems Weibo will take any money they can. It took us a long time to read through all the docs inside Weibo to find that non-verified users can also purchase the service pack! It has a different name "超级粉丝包" (Super Fans Package).