Talk about how to make money using Zhihu traffic

How to make money using Zhihu? This is a topic that everyone is very concerned about. The author of this article has sorted out and analyzed it from four aspects, summarized his own views on this issue, and shared them with everyone.

This article was shared behind closed doors in a community in July this year. This article aims to explore the characteristics and utilization methods of Zhihu as a traffic pool, and mainly proposes ideas. You can learn from it for specific operations.

The general idea of ​​doing traffic business: major Internet products are equivalent to ready-made traffic pools, and doing traffic business is to scoop soup from these pots into your own bowl.

Let me start with the conclusion:

1. Zhihu is currently in a traffic value trough
2. Zhihu is suitable for cold start of products/businesses/IPs
3. Professionalism + content = output, no need to be the leader
4. Transaction-oriented, quick decision

1. The underestimated Zhihu

Zhihu has a nickname in the Internet circle called "Bihu", which means that it is a place where people are pretentious and make up stories, and it is extremely unfriendly to commercialization or monetization. If I post this article on Zhihu, the standard opening sentence is usually "Thanks for the invitation. I'm in the United States and just got off the plane. I have too many acquaintances, so I'll remain anonymous."

Another result of being unfriendly to commercialization is that Zhihu is a community that is more likely to cause harm than help for major brands and products. It is difficult to create a positive brand image, but negative and black material often originate or amplify Zhihu.

What's more, countless Zhihu big Vs, including Zhihu officials, have been ridiculed and exposed by Zhihu users on the road to commercialization.

Therefore, Zhihu is also a black hole and a dead end in the eyes of the marketing and public relations departments of large enterprises. Many official blue V accounts have given up the operation of Zhihu, or outsourced it to public relations companies, and posted some soft articles or soft questions. They can buy likes and answers from big Vs for a little money. Although, in my opinion, public relations investment on Zhihu is useless for brand reputation.

But we are not operators of large enterprises. Since we are businessmen who make money directly, in this case, Zhihu is actually a good traffic pool and value depression , and Zhihu users are not useless. Here are some examples.

2. Advantages of Zhihu

Before the end of 2018, Zhihu content had a very high weight in Baidu search results. One reason was that the quality of the question-and-answer content accumulated by Zhihu over the years was much higher than that of Baidu Knows. Another reason was that the page structure of the Zhihu web version was very search engine friendly, and the operations and growth teams also did a lot of effective SEO work.

During the growth process of Zhihu's users, many individuals or teams who knew how to use Zhihu to do business also benefited greatly. This was Zhihu's first bonus period.

As Baidu promotes Baijiahao, Zhihu's content's ability to spread with the help of Baidu search has been greatly weakened. But it doesn’t matter. On the one hand, the volume of searches within Zhihu is very large. I am also personally exploring the techniques for optimizing searches within Zhihu, and will discuss them when they are mature. On the other hand, and more importantly, Zhihu has ushered in another bonus period, that is, the shift from attention distribution to intelligent recommendation.

Friends who are familiar with the growth history of Toutiao and Weibo probably know that intelligent recommendation is of great significance to traffic distribution. At the current stage, Zhihu’s intelligent recommendation does not have much human intervention. This is a major benefit, which means that good content does not have to wait for big Vs to turn over the sign, but will be distributed to other users quickly.

In addition to the recommended column, Zhihu also provides many other recommended places, which add some chicken-and-egg gameplay. Due to the limited space (and laziness) of this article, I will not elaborate on them.

High-quality content is something that Zhihu welcomes and cannot refuse. In other words, even if you have very blatant commercial purposes, if the content you produce on Zhihu is of good quality, Zhihu will generally not interfere.

Let’s summarize this paragraph. If you have a certain amount of accumulation or information collection ability in a certain field, and have some so-called "dry goods" (I personally hate this term) to output, you can quickly complete the cold start of your personal brand, your products, and your business on Zhihu. Moreover, the delivery of this type of content will bring you continuous and long-term benefits.

3. Strategies and Misunderstandings of Zhihu Traffic

Zhihu's most active user groups are mainly residents of second- and third-tier cities and students from second- and third-tier universities. This type of people are characterized by having plenty of time, limited knowledge, and being dissatisfied with their current situation but unable to change it . Zhihu provides this type of users with an atmosphere of "education through entertainment", so they are quite dependent on Zhihu.

Therefore, if your content is related to education, training, and making money, it will be easy to attract such users.

However, the consumption level and repurchase of the first type of users are problematic, so we welcomed the second type of users, namely the highly educated and high-income group represented by the Internet and financial industries. This type of user is calmer and has independent thinking ability than the first type of users. Once they are attracted by the content, their purchasing power is astonishing.

From 2015 to now, many Zhihu celebrities who have gained both fame and fortune have served this type of users. To name a few, there are Liang Jingtao (Japanese romantic tour), Xu Bin (real estate lawyer), carpenter Xiaoqiang (solid wood furniture), and Li Laoshu (cars). The products and services that this type of users can afford have a high average order value and strong fission capabilities. It can attract thousands of people and support a small team without any problem.

When it comes to closing deals, there is a misunderstanding. Many people on Zhihu still follow the habit of directing traffic to official accounts and Weibo, but if your content is very clearly about promoting products or guiding purchases (I also recommend posting this type of content), the best way is to directly direct the transaction to WeChat.

As for official accounts and Weibo, if it is not for content filing, there is little point in directing users to them, because users can see your content on Zhihu, and the more conversion steps you have, the more serious user loss.

Another misconception is that there are already big Vs on Zhihu in the field in which you are good at, so there is not much room for you to display your expertise. In fact, due to Zhihu's question-and-answer mechanism, the questions that big Vs participate in are essentially about everyone exchanging their fans with each other.

As a newcomer, you can go to popular questions or content from big Vs to attract traffic and find customers. It is equivalent to someone using a colander to sift the meat for you in the Zhihu soup. Why not do it?

The essence of Zhihu advertising is to package commercial purposes with high-quality content. On this basis, with Zhihu's current traffic distribution mechanism, there are still many opportunities for newcomers' content to be exposed.

4. Some shortcuts for cold start

1. If you don’t want to build your personal IP and just want to attract transactions, you can directly find a big V to publish content, whether it is related to the field or not;
2. Buy likes and buy small accounts to interact and lead the trend in the comment area;
3. The content can be about planting seeds or pulling out seeds - pulling out the seeds of Zhihu's internal and external competitors;
4. Your competitors’ content may not be a bad thing for you. You can track their keywords and gain traffic through Zhihu’s recommendation function.

Author: Judge

Source: Judge