Analysis of Zhihu content operation and promotion strategy!

While the number of registered users of Zhihu has grown rapidly, the quality of community content has declined. Zhihu is committed to finding a balance between "quality" and "quantity". With this purpose in mind, the author analyzed Zhihu's operating strategy.

After Zhihu switched from an invitation-only system to open registration, the number of users increased rapidly. As of January 2019, the number of Zhihu users reached 220 million, with a total of more than 28 million questions and 130 million answers, covering almost every aspect of life.

With the increase in users, the quality of Zhihu's content has declined, the community atmosphere has become weak, and core users have frequently left for other platforms. Zhihu has begun to show signs of becoming a "tieba" from its original "elite" community; the community has grown from small to large, and a reasonable balance needs to be found between "quality" and "quantity". Let us analyze Zhihu's content operation strategy together.

1. Market Analysis

1. Background: The phenomenon of information explosion

① The phenomenon of Internet information explosion has led to an increasingly high signal-to-noise ratio. Valuable information is drowned out by a large amount of useless information, and users have to spend a lot of time and energy to select truly valuable information;

② According to Penguin Think Tank survey data: more than 77.7% of users are at a loss as to where to start when faced with the flood of information, and they don’t know how to search. It becomes difficult for people to obtain valuable information.

③ Users are eager to obtain targeted professional knowledge. In order to save time and energy, people are beginning to be willing to pay for corresponding services. Therefore, platforms that can quickly and effectively help users obtain valuable high-quality knowledge are becoming more and more popular among users.

2. Prospects: The rise of paid knowledge

The information explosion has brought many discomforts to users, and information noise reduction has become a common demand of users. Knowledge payment provides users with a good solution.

The scale of knowledge-based users is growing rapidly, and users are gradually developing the habit of paying for knowledge. The knowledge payment market is constantly expanding, and the market prospects are huge.

① According to Penguin Think Tank survey data: more than 74.2% of netizens pay to obtain "targeted professional knowledge", and knowledge payment has a greater market prospect;

② iiMedia Research data shows that the number of knowledge-based paid users reached 292 million in 2018, and is expected to reach 387 million in 2019, with the number of knowledge-based users growing rapidly;

③ iResearch data shows that the scale of China's knowledge payment industry was approximately 4.9 billion yuan in 2017, and is expected to reach 23.5 billion yuan by 2020, with the market size growing rapidly.

3. Comparative analysis of competing products

In the knowledge age after the information explosion, the scale of knowledge-based users continues to expand, and users have higher requirements for the efficiency and quality of information acquisition. The knowledge payment market is a market that major content service providers are focusing on.

The following is an analysis of three competing products: Himalaya FM, which has the largest user base; Dedao APP, which is relatively mature in knowledge payment; and Wukong Q&A, which is completely comparable to Zhihu:

① Zhihu Bookstore, Zhihu Live and other knowledge products are essentially the same as the Get APP, but the Get APP has a complete knowledge payment system with comprehensive content, while Zhihu's core paid content is not systematic;

② Ximalaya FM has a wide range of content, a complete user connection path, and a systematic operation of perfect knowledge services. Zhihu is still relatively immature and imperfect in this regard;

③ Wukong Q&A is benchmarked against Zhihu. By poaching Zhihu’s core users, it has a certain impact on the core content of Zhihu, but the user base of Wukong Q&A is too small, and the overall threat is not great.

2. Product Analysis

1. Product positioning

Zhihu is positioned as a high-quality Internet question-and-answer sharing community that brings together professionals from all walks of life, allowing users to quickly obtain valuable answers by asking questions and inviting answers. Based on its core positioning as a question-and-answer community, Zhihu has gradually evolved into an open knowledge platform, which includes community products such as questions and answers, article columns, ideas, and Zhihu roundtables, as well as knowledge market products such as Zhihu Bookstore and Zhihu Live. The two are closely connected, and deep interaction is achieved with users through multi-scenario knowledge products (iResearch Consulting).

2. Product Status

Zhihu is a content-based community platform that focuses on PUGC, with MAU of 16.115 million and DAU of 4.097 million (Research Qianfan Index). After Zhihu went from an invitation-only system to open registration, the number of users surged, but this also led to a trend of Zhihu's "elite" content shifting toward "mass" content. The platform needs to strike a better balance between the "quantity" and "quality" of content.

① As of January 2019, Zhihu has 220 million users, with more than 28 million questions and 130 million answers, covering almost every aspect of life;

② With the opening of registration to the public, the number of users increased sharply, the atmosphere of the Zhihu community faded, low-quality content spread, and the high-concentration value was diluted, resulting in a large number of early core users leaving;

③ A large number of answers that were written without careful consideration reduced the signal-to-noise ratio of the entire website, making it more difficult for high-value content to be discovered, and reducing the user content experience;

④ Advertising still accounts for the majority of Zhihu’s monetization. There is no mature and effective solution for paid knowledge monetization, and the value of core big V users is realized slowly.

3. User Analysis

1. Target Users

Property tags:

• Region: First- and second-tier developed cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hangzhou, as well as coastal areas;
• Age: Mainly 26-35 years old, generally younger;
• Gender: The male-to-female ratio is close to 1:1, which is relatively balanced overall;
• Educational background: 64.5% undergraduates, 15.6% master's degree; mainly undergraduates and master's degree holders;
• Occupation: mainly white-collar workers and college students, with a stronger sense of learning;
• Interests: Zhihu users prefer social interaction, reading, information, life, work, etc.

User stratification:

• Top-level users: opinion leaders and industry authorities in various industries who are creative and influential;
• Core users: users who have relevant expertise in their respective fields, are able to produce high-quality content and are willing to share and discuss with others;
• Active users: have a high sense of knowledge, are full of curiosity, discover problems in life, share them with others, and actively seek answers;
• Ordinary users: a group of new knowledge seekers who are eager to improve themselves and enhance their competitiveness in the workplace.

2. User Profile

1) Searching for answers

• Tags: Xiaolan, 22 years old, female, Beijing, junior in undergraduate program, not planning to work in this major;
• Description: Currently looking for an internship, I want to work in a new media planning position, but I am not familiar with the interview requirements and have no relevant experience. I want to learn more about it.
• Pain points: ① There is too much and too mixed content online, which requires a lot of time and energy to filter and identify; ② Most of the content is not targeted, and it is difficult to gain an in-depth understanding of the relevant content;
• Strategy: ① The content quality on Zhihu is very high, and you can quickly find many relevant answers; ② Many answers on Zhihu have in-depth analysis, which is easy to understand.

2) Questioning

• Tags: Binzai, 26 years old, male, Shanghai, undergraduate, single, has reached a bottleneck after working for 3 years;
• Description: I have a mediocre job and average income. When I see my peers starting businesses and buying cars and houses online, I start to get excited and want to start an e-commerce business, but I have no relevant e-commerce experience.
• Pain points: ① I have no e-commerce experience, and I don’t know anyone related to it, so I don’t know who to ask for advice; ② I have seen many reports of training institutions cheating people, and I don’t know which institutions are reliable;
• Strategy: ① You can ask questions on Zhihu and then invite professionals to answer them, which is efficient and targeted; ② Zhihu Live has many courses to choose from, and the large platform is reliable and secure.

3) Casual browsing

• Tags: Sister Ting, 29 years old, female, married, Guangzhou, undergraduate, white-collar, clerical work;
• Description: The job is stable and boring, and my ability has not improved for a long time. I can see the end of it at a glance. I want to change, but I dare not quit. I have to take care of the family and don’t have a whole block of time to study;
• Pain points: ① The commuting time is long and boring, and I want to use the fragmented time to do meaningful things; ② I want to improve my knowledge reserves, but I have no direction and I am very distressed and don’t know where to start;
• Strategy: ① Zhihu provides interesting and useful question-and-answer content, which can not only help you kill time but also help you learn knowledge; ② Zhihu publishes a weekly report, selecting high-quality content to broadly and efficiently improve your knowledge.

4) Enthusiastic in answering questions

• Tags: Wei Ge, 33 years old, male, Shenzhen, married, master's degree, Internet operations manager;
• Description: A stable career, some achievements in one's field, some spare time, willing to share one's knowledge and experience, and enjoy recognition from others;
• Pain points: ① The career is too stable, which makes it easy for you to fall into a state of comfort and stagnation; ② You want to exchange your experience and knowledge for extra income, but you have no way to do it;
• Strategy: ① Sharing your knowledge with others can gain the attention of Zhihu friends and help you get to know more outstanding people; ② Uploading high-quality answers on Zhihu and sharing your knowledge and experience can realize knowledge monetization.

4. Content Positioning

1. Products

①ICAN is simple and clear, with black text on a white background, bold titles, and clear logic;

②The UI uses a blue and white color scheme, which is consistent with the user group's rational speech and objective discussion;

③ The product focuses mainly on issues and downplays the focus on big-name users, making the community atmosphere more focused on the content itself.

2. Users

Curious young people seeking knowledge and new knowledge (college students and working elites)

① The entire content community of Zhihu tends to be a place of rational discussion and objective analysis, which is very suitable for the general public to obtain information efficiently. The new knowledge group likes the tone of socializing, communication and sharing;

② The content of Zhihu LIVE is gradually shifting towards interpersonal communication, workplace, emotions and other areas that are urgently needed by young people in first- and second-tier cities, which meets the needs of target users.

3. Competitors

① Baidu Knows: It encourages users to answer questions by earning points. It prefers standardized questions and answers, and the content is relatively simple. It also lacks community culture.

② Get: Get APP is more inclined to systematic course content, with the core of helping users to learn efficiently and concisely. It has a high entry threshold and a weak community culture, which is very different from Zhihu.

③ Zhihu: Zhihu content tends to be non-standardized questions and answers with in-depth discussions. The overall content is more professional and profound, connecting industry elites to form a community culture.

4. Tonality

① To help the general public to obtain high-quality content efficiently, get in touch with elites from various industries, and create a high-quality Q&A community;

② To provide students with in-depth content, systematic knowledge services and establish an open knowledge platform.

5. Content Production

1. Homemade content

Each "Zhihu Roundtable" invites 1 host and 4 or more guests with many years of relevant industry experience to jointly express their opinions, break geographical restrictions, deconstruct the industry, and share their explorations and insights with users.

2. UGC content production

① The system invites users to answer questions based on the relevance of the questions, promoting user content production;

② Encourage users to participate in community interaction and produce more UGC content through the salt value system;

③ Zhihu provides certifications such as the "Columnist" medal to cultivate UGC into PGC and encourage users to actively participate in content production.

3. PGC production content

① Institutional entry: Invite institutions from various industries to settle in and provide more professional PGC content. Zhihu provides corporate certification to enhance brand exposure and achieve a win-win situation.

② Big Vs move in:

• Answer questions to provide traffic support, sort answers by weight, and increase exposure;
• Provide paid consulting services to give influencers better channels to monetize their knowledge;
• Provide "ideas" function to enable better interaction between big Vs and fans.

4. OGC produced content

Yanxuan columns, live lectures, magazines, book clubs and other content; building a content ecosystem, attracting more off-site content producers through diversified knowledge monetization models, and encouraging on-site producers to continue to produce high-quality content and form a healthy content ecosystem.

6. Content Screening

1. Salt selection recommendation

① Home page recommendations, Yanxuan popularity list, soaring list, popularity list and other selected paid content, so that users can find high-quality content faster;

② At the same time, give high-quality content more opportunities to be displayed, establish a competitive mechanism for the survival of the fittest for paid content, encourage users to continuously improve the quality of content, and build a healthy content ecology.

2. Hot list recommendations

① Recommendations of the hot list of the entire site, the hot list of categories, and the hot search content in the search bar, so that users can find the content that everyone is paying attention to more quickly;

② Improve the timeliness of content and give full play to the value of content; allow users to access content beyond the issues they are concerned about and expand the boundaries of user content consumption.

3. Question and answer ranking

① The ranking mechanism of the answers to questions is based on the weighted ranking of users’ votes of approval, thanks, comments, and disapproval;

② Score = weighted approval votes - weighted disapproval votes. The higher the score, the higher the priority of the answer. Bad answers may even be folded.

③The voting weight of a user is determined by the relevance of the user to the question and the salt level.

4. Personalized recommendation

① Zhihu algorithm determines the user's content preferences based on user attribute tags and behavioral tags such as asking questions, answering, following, browsing, searching, and agreeing, and distributes recommended content in a personalized manner;

② At the same time, users can improve the matching degree and enhance the user experience by choosing to block specific keywords or specific questions.

5. Content Filtering

①The system automatically filters out low-quality content such as witty and mindless comments to ensure the overall quality of the content;

② To prevent users from posting unfriendly content such as personal attacks and political issues, the system provides a reporting mechanism;

③ The content reported by users will be judged by the Public Arbitration Chamber; the Public Arbitration Chamber is composed of users with a salt value of 500 or above.

6. Content Integration

① Zhihu Weekly, Zhihu Special, Zhihu One Hour, Zhihu Salt;

②Collate high-quality content collections and form free collections to facilitate users to quickly obtain high-value content and expand content dissemination;

③For specific topics, select high-quality authors, output short and long paid content, and provide users with more targeted content choices.

7. Content dissemination

1. Baidu Communication

All Zhihu questions and answers will be connected to the Baidu APP in the form of a smart mini-program, and will be distributed to users with different interests through AI technology in the Baidu search, information flow and other product matrices.

• Display location: Baidu search results information flow;
• Display material: title + content introduction;
• Display rhythm: When users search for keywords in Baidu, the results will be captured and displayed;
• Arrival time: the real time when the user searches using Baidu;
• User group: People with precise content needs who actively search for relevant issues.

2. In-site communication

The Zhihu system judges users’ preferences based on user attribute tags and behavior tags, recommends relevant content, improves content matching, and improves communication efficiency.

• Display location: Recommended information waterfall on Zhihu homepage;
• Display material: title + content introduction;
• Display rhythm: The system recommends display during the user's use of the product;
• Arrival time: the real time when the user browses the product;
• User group: precise user group matched by system algorithm.

3. Special topic communication

Zhihu operators organize high-quality PUGC content into special topics, weekly magazines, etc. according to themes or time, set up exclusive display pages on the site, or share them to public accounts, Weibo and other channels.

• Display location: In-site columns, Zhihu official accounts outside the site;
• Display materials: special topics + related content; topics + screenshots of in-site content;
• Display rhythm: weekly; topics are distributed according to nodes; daily distribution outside the site;
• Arrival time: The Weibo is updated every hour while the user is using the app;
• User group: existing and potential users who follow Zhihu official accounts.

4. User self-propagation

Zhihu provides a sharing function, encouraging users to share their favorite content with WeChat friends, Moments, Weibo and other off-site channels to expand the content's dissemination.

• Display location: User’s third-party social application account;
• Display materials: title + link + number of answers;
• Display rhythm: users share randomly and display randomly;
• Arrival time: the real time shared by the user;
• User group: Passive acceptance group, non-precise group.

8. Optimization Suggestions

1. Free content analysis

1) Advantages

Zhihu has the highest quality question-and-answer content on the entire Internet, its users have high educational backgrounds, and the community has a strong "elite" atmosphere; after opening registration, the number of users has increased rapidly, the overall quality of content has declined, and the atmosphere has begun to show "tieba-like" tendencies.

① Content quality: More than 80% of Zhihu users have a bachelor's degree, connecting elites from various industries. The overall content is professional and in-depth, with a high quality rate;

②Quantity of content: As of January 2019, Zhihu has received more than 28 million questions and 130 million answers; its huge content library covers almost all aspects of life and a wide range of content.

2) Insufficient

① Too many advertisements: Zhihu’s hard ads are hidden in the content information flow, with one ad every 6 pieces of content. The ads are frequent and there is no personalized recommendation. Most of them are junk ads for users.

② Entertainment-oriented: Hot searches and hot lists tend to be entertainment-oriented. Sometimes, an entertainment gossip occupies several hot search positions, which makes the overall atmosphere for users too entertainment-oriented and reduces the atmosphere of seeking knowledge.

③ Decline in quality: Zhihu has a large amount of ill-considered, casually written, witty, and emotional content, which has led to fewer people answering seriously and a decline in content quality;

④ The atmosphere becomes weaker: the boundary between good and bad content is blurred, there are too few well-reasoned discussions, the logic is confusing, there are too many contents that make random accusations, the professional ones cannot compare with the funny ones, and the atmosphere of rational discussion becomes weaker.

3) Suggestions

① Advertisement blocking: Provide members with advertisement blocking service, choose between membership and advertisement monetization, high user acceptance, and guaranteed user experience;

② Entertainment-oriented: Similar content is displayed according to the highest popularity, and the number of entertainment news is limited, so as to improve timeliness and maintain the atmosphere of the community;

③ Hierarchical management: Add the function of hidden questions for members, a premium area that only members can see and certified influencers can answer, and differentiated services for core users and ordinary users;

④ Second Community: Build a member-only community and operate the elite community and the general public community separately. This can not only maintain the original community atmosphere, but also adapt to the general public after the product grows.

2. Paid content analysis

1) Advantages

Zhihu has created an open knowledge platform, which includes community products such as Q&A, article columns, ideas, Zhihu roundtable, etc., as well as knowledge market products such as Zhihu Bookstore and Zhihu Live. The two are closely connected, and deep interaction is achieved with users through multi-scenario knowledge products.

① Content expansion: expand the platform content service forms, expand the content boundaries, improve community user stickiness, and increase user activity through more high-quality content;

② Knowledge monetization: Attract more external content producers to join the site through diversified knowledge monetization models, encourage internal producers to continue to produce high-quality content, and form a healthy content ecology.

2) Insufficient

① Content stacking: content is repeatedly displayed, for example: "Magazine" and "Reading Club" are displayed side by side, but "Yanxuan Magazine" is also displayed in the Reading Club. The names have been changed, but the actual content is the same;

② Misclassification: "Zhihu Weekly" is a free album of high-quality content on Zhihu, but it is placed in "Members-Reading Club-Zhihu Products", hidden deep in the paid content, and the classification is misclassified;

③ The tone does not match: Zhihu’s expanded content has an inaccurate tone. The reading club is mainly composed of novels and magazines, and the content of novels does not match the tone of Zhihu’s original elite community;

④ Poor user experience: The magazine section has no classification and no personalized recommendations. The content is displayed randomly and cannot be searched by keywords. The output is rote, and the user experience is poor.

3) Suggestions

① Clear logic: The content display logic is clear and explicit, and the same content is displayed at the highest level to avoid giving users a feeling of content stacking and lowering users' product expectations;

② Clear classification: "Zhihu Weekly" is separated from member paid content and placed in "My" or an important core entrance is developed under the "Recommendation" page;

③ Inconsistent tone: Replace novels with published books that match the user's tone, so that users can have a clearer sense of the atmosphere of seeking knowledge and learning;

④ Type classification: classify magazines according to publisher, style, popular articles, etc.; user personalized haunt recommendations, and provide keyword search function.

9. Personal Thoughts

1. Regarding the watering problem of Zhihu community

The quality of Zhihu's content has declined, the community atmosphere has become weaker, core users have left for other platforms, and new content has become largely watered down and contrary to the product's tone. As a result, Zhihu needs to be divided into two communities through membership functions.

① One part will develop as a high-quality elite community, maintain high-quality content production, and ensure the content quality of the popular community;

② One part will develop a popular community based on the existing content, discover and cultivate high-quality users and send them to the elite community to ensure the user quality of the elite community.

2. About the issue of paying for knowledge on Zhihu

The platform tried to expand various content and then bundle them together to promote membership, but it focused on the wrong point. It highlighted the 9.9 free viewing everywhere, giving users a cheap feeling of 9.9 free shipping on Taobao, which goes against the concept of paying for knowledge.

① It is better to have nothing than to have something too much. Expand outward from the core Q&A. For example, columns are combined with Q&A, and users crowdfund around questions to open columns.

② To monetize the knowledge of core users, we provide knowledge services to the B-side, including advertising soft articles, copywriting, consulting, planning and other paid knowledge services.

Author: Huaqiang

Source: Huaqiang