In May 2013, the KAWO team executed a market research across 15 European Business Schools on Chinese social media and their followers’ engagement patterns on these platforms. The 15 Schools were analysed across the most popular social network in China: Sina Weibo, and were ranked according to their digital competency through 3 different categories. All data was analysed in the period between May 1st and May31st 2013. China’s rapid economic development has shined the spotlight on the shortage of managerial and leadership talent in the country. It’s become evident that China needs more people with international business skills, entrepreneurial drive and a strong network in countries that are economically important. As a consequence, there has been a growing interest of Chinese students to attend Western business schools and to discover more about their prospected academic careers, often through the communication channel deemed most trustworthy: social media. In this study, we have considered 15 of the top European Business Schools present on Chinese social media and evaluated their digital competencies in the market. The research measured each business school by assessing proficiency on 5 broad categories that determine their success with Chinese social network users. The objective is to provide a robust tool to understand the digital strengths and weaknesses of European Business Schools, and help admission officers and students recruiters to achieve a greater return on investment of their social media strategies. As the numbers of Chinese students’ applications to Western Universities continues to rise, business schools need to measure the impact of their communication strategies on all the networks where their potential new candidates are.

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TOP EUROPEAN MBA
PROGRAMS
ON CHINESE SOCIAL MEDIA
Report by

2. KAWO TECHNOLOGIES LLC COPYRIGHT 2013
02
ABOUT THE
STUDY
CONTENTS
In May 2013, we executed an analysis of the best MBA
programs in Europe on Chinese Social Media.
We identified the 15 Business Schools that were most
popular on China’s #1 social network: Sina Weibo, and
assessed their digital performance across three
specific metrics.
pg3
pg6
pg8
pg4
pg5
pg7
pg9
Introduction
Total Followers
Account Activity
A word on Sina Weibo
The Ranking
Fan Engagement
Conclusions
All data was analysed in the
period between May 1st and
May31st 2013.
CONTENTS I ABOUT THE STUDY

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China’s rapid economic development has
shined the spotlight on the shortage of
managerial and leadership talent in the
country. It’s become evident that China
needs more people with international
business skills, entrepreneurial drive and
a strong network in countries that are
economically important. As a consequence,
there has been a growing interest of Chinese
students to attend Western business
schools and to discover more about their
prospected academic careers, often through
the communication channel deemed most
trustworthy: social media.
In this study, we have considered 15 of the
top European Business Schools present on
Chinese social media and evaluated their
digital competencies in the market. The
research measured each business school by
assessing proficiency on 3 specific metrics
that determine their success with Chinese
social network users.
The objective is to provide a robust tool
to understand the digital strengths and
weaknesses of European Business Schools,
and help admission officers and students
recruiters to achieve a greater return on
investment of their social media strategies.
As the numbers of Chinese students’
applications to Western Universities
continues to rise, business schools need to
measure the impact of their communication
strategies on all the networks where their
potential new candidates are.
03INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION

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04A WORD ON SINA WEIBO
400 M
73%
HIGH
TIER1&2CITIES
REGISTERED USERS
NETIZENS PENETRATION
ENGAGEMENT RATES
USER LOCATION
287 M
ACTIVE USERS
A WORD ON
CHINA’S
TOP SOCIAL
NETWORK
Chinese social media presents an entirely parallel and separate
ecosystem to the rest of the World. Chinese consumers engage in
online conversations and interact with brands predominantly on
‘Weibo’ (literal translation of ‘microblog’).
The social network examined in this study has been
Sina Weibo,
considered that
60%of Weibo users live in 1st and 2nd Tier cities and
almost two thirds have a University degree or higher.
SINA

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05THE RANKING
METRICS
TOTAL FOLLOWERS
ACCOUNT ACTIVITY
FAN ENGAGEMENT
Total number of fans for
the account.
Frequency and quality of
the content posted on the
pages.
Calculated from the average
number of comments and
reposts.
THE RANKING
ESADE
ROUEN
HEC
CASS
BI
NORWAY
GRENOBLE
MANCHESTER
INSEAD
SKOLKOVO
IE
SPAIN
RSM
ESSEC
ESCP
SKEMA
ESC
TOULOUSE

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06TOTAL FOLLOWERS
TOTAL FOLLOWERS
ManchesterBusiness
School
BINorwgianBusinees
School
HEC
IEBusineesSchool
CassBusineesSchool
ESC
Toulouse
SKOLKOVO
BusineesSchool
ESCP
SKEM
A
ESSEC
RSM
ErasmusUniversity
GrenobleBusinessSchool
RouenBusinees
School
ESADE
INSEAD
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
Figure 1: total follower numbers as of May 31st.
In the first section of this research, we
considered the school’s official accounts and
calculated their total number of followers.
Manchester Business
School
was the winner in this category, with over
5000fans. Runners up were found in France’s HEC,
Spain’s ESADE and IE Business School and
Norway’s BI, all in the range of 3000-4000 followers.
All other schools presented follower numbers of
1000 and below.

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Figure 2: account activity calculated through the frequency and quality of posts by page.
07ACCOUNT ACTIVITY
ACCOUNT ACTIVITY
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
BINorwegian
BusineesSchool
CassBusineesSchool
IEBusineesschool
ManchesterBusineesSchool
RouenBusineesSchool
RSMErasmusUniversity
GrenobleBusineesSchool
SKOLKOVOBusineesSchool
INSEAD
ESCP
ESSEC
SKEMA
ESADE
ESTToulouse
In this section, we assessed the quality and the quantity
of the content produced by each account. The chart was
created considering firstly the frequency of the posts, and
secondly the quality of each message.
As shown above,
Cass Business School
achieved the highest score by posting up to
25messages per day.
However, Cass scored 6th in the overall ranking,
due to the low localization of it’s content, which
we found to be all in English.
Both HEC and ESADE scored high points
in the account activity section thanks to the
quality of their posts. These pages were
rich in video content and localized posts,
features that provide higher impact on
social media users.
Lower scores were achieved by other
schools, such as IE Business School or
INSEAD, due to the infrequency of posts
and lack of original content.
We consider a ‘quality post’ one that is
localized to a Chinese audience, enriched
with imagery and referral links for further
information.
HEC
NOTE

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08FAN ENGAGEMENT
FAN ENGAGEMENT
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
SKEMA
RSM Erasmus University
ESSEC
ESCP
ESC Toulouse
INSEAD
SKOLKOVO Businees School
Cass Businees School
Manchester Businees School
HEC
Grenoble Businees School
IE Businees School
BI Norwegian Businees School
ESADE
Rouen Businees School
Figure 3: engagement score calculated through the average number of
comments and forwards for every post in the month of May.
In this section, the research focused on
the audience’s reactions to the content
posted on the page. We calculated
the average engagement through the
average comments and forwards for
each post, over a period of 30 days.
Rouen Business School
scored the highest, thanks to a number of
targeted posts that achieved over
50 forwards,
higher than the average.This granted Rouen
the second place in the overall rankings, since
we consider consumer engagement as one of
the most important features in any social media
strategy.
Both Grenoble Business School and RSM
Erasmus University had medium-high scores in
this section, thanks to an average of 3 forwards
and 2 comments per post, despite having an
amount of followers lower than the average.
A low engagement score often marks the
presence of what is commonly defined as
‘zombie accounts’ or ‘fake followers’. Unlike
Facebook, Sina Weibo doesn’t require
real-name registration to open an account, and Chinese
agencies often present the phenomenon of ‘black PR’,
buying and trading fake accounts to boost social media
pages numbers.
NOTE

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09CONCLUSION I MORE ABOUT KAWO
CONCLUSION
MORE
ABOUT KAWO
This study was conducted from
May 1st to May 31st
considering the top
20 business schools
in Europe as ranked by the Financial Times in
2012. The research took into account only the
schools and universities that had an official
account on China’s number one
social network:
Sina Weibo
Source: http://rankings.ft.com/
businessschoolrankings/european-
business-school-rankings-2012
KAWO TECHNOLOGIES LLC COPYRIGHT 2013
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