Take these Zhihu promotion and follower-increasing tips for free!

In the past two years, the Internet industry has reached a consensus on one sentence: "The essence of entrepreneurship is growth. Without growth, the company is no different from death." But now it seems that this sentence is only half right. In an environment where major unicorns and upstarts are striving to go public, whether they are in the start-up stage or not, what companies want is growth, or to put it more bluntly - traffic is the life-saving pill for every company in the market now.

So where is the traffic hidden? At the beginning, we talked about traffic on Weibo. Companies rushed to buy fans, hot searches and marketing accounts. Later, Weibo became over-commercialized and its ecosystem was corroded. At this time, we happened to welcome the rise of WeChat. The release of self-media dividends gave a number of companies the opportunity to expand their ecological territory. Today, the environment seems to be uncharacteristically abnormal. Centralization has been disintegrated, users' time is divided into different apps, and jumping and migrating between major mobile apps has become the norm. How to get traffic at this time? If we use one word to describe it, it must be "focus on the big and let go of the small." What we are focusing on is the top traffic and the traffic siphon effect of multiple platforms.

140 million registered users, 34 million daily active users across the entire platform, 23 million questions asked in total, and nearly 100 million answers received. These are the data announced by Zhihu as of the end of March.

It is obvious that Zhihu is one of the top traffic players - not only the top traffic, but also high-quality top traffic. In today’s article, we will briefly discuss how to dig traffic from Zhihu and how to dig it most effectively. We start with the logic of Zhihu, hoping to provide everyone with a valuable traffic mining methodology.

1. The value of Zhihu traffic

First of all, we need to solve a problem. What is the difference between traffic on Zhihu and traffic elsewhere? Why has it become high-quality head traffic?

In fact, Zhihu's question-and-answer style traffic already has examples. Let's review Baidu's business model back then. What did Baidu provide to enterprises? In fact, it is an entrance to traffic. Each question and answer corresponds to a solution to a product or service. If you want to occupy a certain entrance and get accurate traffic, you need to pay Baidu. Moreover, the high value and high matching of traffic also lead to vicious bidding and fierce competition. The essence of this is that people rely on search engines to complete the "information completion" process before making consumption decisions.

Of course, we have now entered the era of mobile Internet from traditional Internet. In the large sector of mobile search, Baidu is getting further and further away from us, while Zhihu is getting closer and closer to us. The high value and professionalism of Zhihu's content have helped it gain more and more recognition in the market. Behind this is the iteration of users' credibility of content - it's useless to say it's good, just let your strength speak for itself. However, it needs to be emphasized that although users' content consumption habits have changed and platforms have been replaced, the essence of people needing a platform to "complete information" has not changed, and this is the value of Zhihu.

The added value of Zhihu users: young, wealthy, and able to think (listen to advice)

The second point is that in addition to the high quality of Zhihu’s traffic, its volume is also large. Of course, some of this is traffic attracted by Zhihu itself, but in addition to that, Zhihu also has another major source of traffic - Baidu. During Zhihu's development period, the high quality of original content created by experts on the platform has accumulated extremely high weight for it. Coupled with the increase in users and the expansion of economies of scale, many questions are ranked first in keyword searches, and the traffic is extremely terrifying. As a result, within one or two years after the Zhihu App was launched, the PC side still accounted for the majority of the overall traffic.

So in general, doing well on Zhihu is equivalent to doing well on WeChat subscription accounts and Baidu SEO, not including the brand that companies are paying more and more attention to nowadays (Zhihu is an excellent platform for building brands). Once you understand this, you will naturally realize the importance of Zhihu.

2. What kind of ecosystem is Zhihu?

Since we want to dig up traffic on someone else’s home turf, we certainly need to understand the logic of the platform. So how does Zhihu, a content community, work? What is the most critical factor among these? How can we use it to get the most traffic?

It is better to quote the opinion of well-known VC Qu Kai here: On the surface, all social products have to solve only one core problem, which is matchmaking, media creation, and ultimately allowing users to form better interactions and retain relationships based on the media on this platform. The medium of Zhihu is question and answer. Through question and answer, I can show what I know, what I am an expert in, etc., so as to shape my image on the platform and connect with more knowledgeable people to make friends with me.

But there is another layer above the media, that is people, who will become the big Vs of the platform in the future. For the community, the network effect of users is single-point radial, that is, the so-called "big V" in Zhihu outputs information in a one-way manner to their many fans. Therefore, for big V, there is a certain network effect retention, but for the vast majority of long-tail users, Zhihu does not provide social value, but the value of reading and learning.

Zhihu’s product flow design diagram – Reprinted from Chapter 42

On the other hand, there is the platform's recommendation mechanism. The recommendations on the homepage are basically based on the "likes and dislikes" of the answers: a piece of content may enter the homepage from multiple paths (for example, two users you follow agree with the same answer and it belongs to a topic you follow), and the starting point and type of each path have different weights, and the score of the entire content is finally calculated. Dislikes play a much greater role than likes, so as long as you get more likes without being disliked, you can get a good ranking and recommendation.

To sum up, in addition to the editorial recommendations within the Zhihu platform and users' own searches (in fact, after searching themselves, they will still give priority to reading the answers of the top-ranked big Vs), most of the traffic is still driven by big Vs. Big Vs can not only help you expose the answer, but can even help you make the answer popular.

3. Traffic mining and brand building

First of all, before you do it, you need to examine whether you are suitable for it.

1. As mentioned earlier, Zhihu marketing requires the production of a large amount of continuous high-quality content. It is difficult to build a supporting marketing team. Therefore, if you want to do Zhihu, you must have a high-quality content production mechanism.

Second, it is more suitable for subjects with strong topic extensibility. It is not suitable for subjects with a narrow content coverage. If it is done in the wrong way, the loss will outweigh the gain.

3. Marketing on Zhihu requires a long period of accumulation, and the marketing effect cannot be seen immediately. Therefore, it is more suitable for brand building but not suitable for direct sales conversion.

Overall, Zhihu's ecosystem is more suitable for self-media people, media organizations, and corporate brand public relations departments, as they have strong advantages in content output and brand building.

Now let's talk about the practical operation -

Personal account——Best for increasing followers through self-media

Most of the big Vs on Zhihu fall into this category. Some of them started from Zhihu, gained enough influence, and then expanded to other platforms such as WeChat and Weibo. There are also those who started from other platforms and want to come to Zhihu to develop new traffic pools. In short, no matter which one it is, the breadth of Zhihu's content and topics is suitable for every type of self-media person to obtain new traffic.

What kind of content can maximize the traffic?

First, you need to clarify your own positioning, and then use this to decide the categories of topics you can approach. For example, there are basically only three types of people who are concerned about the question "How should startups achieve profit growth": entrepreneurs, investors, and industry practitioners.

After clarifying the fundamentals, it is time to find the problem. Here are some ideas:

1. Related to hot events. There is a hot list on the homepage of Zhihu, which actually selects the recent hot topics and asks big Vs to answer them. Because the topics are newsworthy, they will be hyped up, the platform traffic will be increased, the big Vs will get enough exposure, and the fans will satisfy their curiosity, and everyone is happy.

What we need to do is to be fully prepared whenever a hot event occurs, and seize the time window to push our well-polished excellent answers to the front. As the number of likes increases, your account will naturally attract countless fans. Of course, if necessary, you need to seek help from big Vs to establish connections and help you promote. Don’t be stingy when it comes to paying the cost.

2. Issues that are universal and attract a lot of attention. Every industry and every sub-sector has corresponding issues. The traffic of such topics depends on how many people pay attention to this issue. If there are many people paying attention to it, it means that the topic itself is explosive, and it will naturally spread if there is a good answer.

Of course, in addition to the above two categories, there are also topics that suddenly become popular, which you need to monitor in real time. Generally speaking, there are three steps: finding a topic, creating good content, and finding someone to help promote it.

About content production and matching

There is also a fixed routine for general content writing: start by introducing the stakeholders, answering the background of the questions, and then sharing your personal experiences, which is an important foundation for gaining identity recognition. The middle part follows the writing logic of Zhihu: is it, why, and is it necessary to write. At the end, you can guide users to comment and interact, such as clicking a like, discussing something together, etc. This will help the weight of your answer and thus form a chain of diffusion. Accurately grasping the topic selection and the writing logic of answering questions are the first steps to achieve good marketing results.

In addition, content needs to be accumulated and classified. It would be even better if you have your own original public account. You can structure the content and split it into answers. Finally, use the split content to match the corresponding tags. This not only allows you to post faster and grab a lot of traffic, but also provides better and non-repetitive answers to many similar questions on Zhihu, achieving the purpose of distribution through some minor adjustments.

Some partners may ask, is it possible to set up some questions related to themselves?

Of course you can, but there are also things to note -

1. The setting of questions must match the audience. Well-designed questions will attract more people to participate, and more people will like and pay attention. If your question is not well designed, users will not read it no matter how good the answer is given by the big V.

2. When a big question has become popular, try to work on some smaller, more segmented questions . For example, “How to choose a good company that suits me” is a big question, but we can change the angle and change it to “What characteristics do good companies generally have?”

Institutional Accounts – Best for Brand Building

Choosing an institutional account proves that you are endorsing the brand. When operating a Zhihu institutional account, it is especially important to be serious and build brand trust by contributing professional content. In addition, institutional accounts will often be officially recommended, which is a good opportunity to build a brand, and the content must meet strict standards.

Generally speaking, the following requirements must be met: 1. Valuable information; 2. Speak human language and be down-to-earth; 3. Be neutral, objective and rational.

Unlike topics on social platforms such as Weibo and WeChat, where the popularity can only last for a day at most, Zhihu's content has an extremely long-lasting long-tail effect, which is the trust established by the platform and institutions working together. In addition, institutional accounts also allow companies to refute brand rumors and make announcements in the first place.

Alipay’s PR on Zhihu

I won’t go into details about the operation of institutional accounts, but here’s a tip from Tencent Technology:

1) As an institutional account, you need to have a clear positioning of your own and maintain it in future operations;

2) Scarcity means uniqueness, you need to find your core advantage. For example, we are better at three aspects: exclusive insider details in the technology circle, contact with top figures, and refuting and restoring rumors.

3) One more perspective. Don't just join in the fun just because a question is popular. There should be more incremental information beyond the existing answer angles. For example, you can question the facts of the question and answer itself, provide another perspective on the event, or focus on a specific area.

4) Always remember that what you need to present is knowledge, not information.

5) Never be two-faced. Have clear values ​​and definite conclusions. Don’t be too big or too comprehensive.

6) Don’t forget to interact and show your interest.

4. Conclusion: Learn to face uncertainty

This concludes our discussion. In fact, the marketing environment is changing all the time, especially for emerging traffic platforms such as Zhihu, which are constantly considering profitability, and their platform rules and so on will continue to iterate. Therefore, uncertainty is an element that marketers in this era must recognize, but we must always understand that no matter how the platform changes, marketing as a concept must be constantly improved and adapted to changes - the only constant in the market is change.

Related reading:

1. Zhihu’s operational strategy: What are the chances of fighting against content “entropy increase”?

2. Zhihu promotion and operation: How to become a Zhihu celebrity with millions of likes?

3. How to use Zhihu promotion to efficiently attract targeted users?

4. Zhihu’s 4 quadrants and 2 rivals!

5. Zhihu: Douyin and Kuaishou cannot represent all short videos

6.How do keep, Zhihu, etc. conduct user operations?

7. Understand the 4 principles of Zhihu community operation in one article!

8. Encircle and suppress the number one V on Zhihu!

9. Zhihu Promotion and Operation | Zhihu under siege!

Author: Tencent Media Research Institute

Source: Tencent Media Research Institute