Zhihu Promotion and Operation | Zhihu under siege!

Since Zhihu was founded in December 2010, it has been 9 years now. Zhihu has had a subtle confrontation with the world, and has received gifts because of the confrontation, but it has also compromised in the gifts and collapsed in the compromise. When Zhihu had already become obsolete, the earliest batch of users could only wave goodbye.

Do you love Zhihu? If the answer is before 2015 , I would say YES . After that, I will still use Zhihu, but am I passionate about it? It's not worth it anymore.

In the Internet field, no one can be compared to Zhihu, which has a user base of 200 million and plays so many roles at the same time, including question-and-answer community, search engine, news community, Dianping, emotional forum, first-person literature network, etc.; no one has fallen from the top of the contempt chain as quickly as Zhihu; and no one is as full of countless possibilities as Zhihu, but every path is fraught with difficulties.

Before 2015 , Zhihu was the "Zhiyin" and "Story Club" of the Internet age. It was a review website that interpreted all current hot issues, a shopping guide website that covered everything from 10 yuan to 10 million yuan, a film review, music review and book review website, a mixed forum for various professional disciplines, a search engine that could provide access to social knowledge that Baidu could not cover, a place where joke writers and online writers huddled together, the largest UGC platform on the Chinese Internet, and the savior of marketing accounts on Weibo and WeChat .

After 2015 , " Zhihu, share the story you just made up with the world " gradually became an unspoken joke in the Internet generation. In order to discredit Zhihu, the Orange V on Weibo " Sexy Corn " even launched the #Zhihu Elite Style Essay Contest # , asking netizens to imitate his elite pretentious style in the form of essay writing, and attracted nearly 3 million reads.

There is a question on the platform, " What is the biggest problem facing Zhihu now? " The author with the ID " Li Xinghe " summarized it as follows:

1. There are too many witty answers and a lack of substantive content.

2. Open registration leads to a decline in the quality of questions and answers.

3. The search function is too imperfect, and it is even difficult to find answers and questions that you have written before.

4. There is too much mindless criticism (criticism of the system, criticism of education, etc.). People are laymen but think they know more than insiders, and they make random comments on issues that they only have a vague understanding of.

5. Some of the content is too emotional. The answer that suits your own interests is a good answer, and the answer that does not suit your own interests is a bad answer. Compared with Quora (the American version of Zhihu), there are too few well-reasoned discussions and too many contents with confusing logic and random accusations - the platform has a tendency to become a forum.

This summarizes some of Zhihu's problems from the user's perspective, but from other perspectives, the platform's predicament may be more than this.

All minorities eventually lose to the majority

There is an old saying that goes, no matter how mellow the wine is, its taste will change if you add too much water.

In 2011 , no one (including the founder) could have imagined that Zhihu would occupy such an important role on the Chinese Internet today , stirring the nerves of netizens and the waves of public opinion, and becoming a " traffic black hole " that grabs users from Weibo, Renren, Douban, and Tianya .

Among the user characteristics officially announced by the company, the “ three highs ” group (high education, high income, and high consumption) is the mainstream. The public impression of Zhihu is that its users generally regard themselves as " elites " : earning 20,000 yuan a month is not as good as a dog, and except for the Ivy League and 985 , all other universities are fake.

No wonder. Among the first batch of Zhihu users were well-known figures such as Ma Huateng, Kai-Fu Lee, and Wang Xiaochuan. In 2012 , a question asked by Pony Ma on Zhihu triggered media discussion on Ma Huateng's anxiety and sense of crisis.

In the following years, a series of celebrities including Meizu's Li Nan, Song Dongye, and Wang Ziru also joined Zhihu, sparking a lot of discussion . At the same time, Zhihu is also attracting and incubating its own KOLs , and a series of big Vs such as Gu Xichao, Ge Jin, and Cai Tong have emerged in the community . The existence of these KOLs not only produces high-quality answers, but also naturally gives them an “ elite ” temperament. For a long time, " Zhihu elite " has almost become a synonym for " upper-middle class " .

As the number of users increases, the gears of the UGC model begin to rumble , and both elites and mediocre people are happily typing and seeking likes. When the number of answers on Zhihu exceeded 100 million, founder and CEO Zhou Yuan said: " Most of us are ordinary people. The power of Zhihu comes from ordinary people in various fields, industries, and professions. This process of gathering small things into a big one must be very useful and valuable. All Zhihu users are witnesses, participants, and creators of this moment. "

Different from previous years' judgment that Zhihu users are " high-value people in various fields " , this time Zhou Yuan attributed the 100 million answers to the results of answers from " ordinary people " rather than elites.

Once a niche high-end website becomes popular, or even quickly becomes famous, it will be followed by a large influx of new users, and the consequence is bound to be the dilution of the highly concentrated value . This is what is called the " social evaporative cooling effect . "

Many users are concerned about a question: Is Zhihu becoming a Tieba? According to the user "叶落孤舟", " It's more than just Tieba-like, it's also Renren-like , Baidu -like , Weibo-like, Douban-like, Hupu-like, and Qiubai-like. " Since Zhihu has partially replaced the roles of Tieba, Baidu- like, Douban, Hupu, and Qiubai with the " universal generator " of questions and answers, it's no wonder that many users are using it as a social tool .

Faced with the " community watering " plague that has infected Tianya, Renren, and Douban groups and caused them to be unable to recover , Zhihu , which has chosen to open registration, will sooner or later run into it.

The community atmosphere of " If you work hard, you will win " that Zhihu has worked hard to cultivate in the early days is still difficult to resist the " bad habits " brought by the large number of latecomers . Because the questions are open to everyone, no matter whether they are professional or serious, everyone can " express their opinions " . A large number of ill-considered, hastily written answers reduce the signal-to-noise ratio of the entire website, making it more difficult for high-value content to be discovered.

A community without low-quality content, without all kinds of users, and without people arguing and arguing is not a community. The development of Zhihu is ultimately determined by its users, and the most powerful balancing force between "quality" and "quantity" also comes from users.

If Zhihu used to be a place for in-depth discussions on various interesting topics, now more and more people want others to pay for their ignorance. Under questions such as " How to make 1 million quickly " and " How to learn web development quickly " , most of the long and eloquent articles show the mentality of a large number of people who are eager for quick success and are impatient. As for those that have confusing logic and are concluded without verification , there are countless of them.

Under this question, you will see that the so-called big V group on Zhihu started to complain that the influx of the general public is making them increasingly unhappy. They have lost the vigor and enthusiasm they once had when they were the only one in power, and instead often spend a lot of time facing doubts and even insults. So what is the reason?

When professionals are faced with novices who are not on the same level as them and it is difficult to find a worthy discussion partner, they will move to places with higher barriers to entry. If Zhihu during its closed period was a coffee shop where high-end users gathered in groups of two or three to discuss issues, then the guests who later swarmed in and shouted loudly would definitely drive them away.

As early as 2014 , many experts left Zhihu because they could not bear the " insults and malicious speculations " in the comment section , triggering a trend of " escape from Zhihu " .

Why is “ community watering ” a fatal threat to Zhihu? Because it shakes the foundation of the platform as a " high-quality content community " and makes it disappear in the crowd of other networks.

If Zhihu still does not wake up in the face of the collapsed trust crisis, all that awaits it is the self-admiration of the scholars in the late Qing Dynasty.

· Public relations that cannot stop losses

Spreading the rumor that "Lenovo cut off supply to Huawei" was only banned for 7 days, but questioning Zhang Jiawei was permanently banned? This is a real operation that happened on Zhihu some time ago.

When the Huawei incident was heating up, a user named “灰机” who was certified by Zhihu as a “PhD student in Nanoscience and Technology at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology” posted a question and answer, claiming to have received information from an internal Huawei employee stating that “Lenovo has stopped supplying computers to Huawei due to the US blockade”. This caused an uproar on the Internet. Lenovo, which was already at the center of controversy, was struggling to get rid of the label of “the conscientious enterprise of the American empire” and fell into a new public opinion hole.

After being abused by many netizens, Lenovo, the victim, made a solemn statement to urgently refute the rumors, collected evidence against the rumor spreaders overnight, and will hold the rumor mongers accountable through legal means.

After the incident was reversed, the "grey plane" that had previously spoken with certainty apologized to Lenovo on the platform, while Zhihu, as the platform, became the target of public criticism.

Zhihu itself is innocent. The attack from public opinion this time stems from the "spiral of silence". It's innocent, but not innocent either.

In the Internet environment in recent years, Zhihu has formed an inherent impression among the public as a "holy land of pretense". Any negative events related to it will always be labeled as the so-called "original sin". This is certainly not a normal public opinion environment, but it is also due to the deviation of Zhihu's operational direction during its development.

After the public opinion crisis fermented, Zhihu banned "灰机" for seven days for "violating community regulations." Obviously, Zhihu did not pay enough attention to the "black swan event under freedom of speech". This public relations move failed to satisfy the public, and the public opinion environment did not improve.

Three days later, Zhihu’s housekeeper announced in its thoughts that six users would be permanently banned: “According to reports from some Zhihu users, six users continued to post unfriendly content, harass and attack others in groups.”

This other person is the community’s top V—Zhang Jiawei.

Zhang Jiawei, winner of the second prize in the 4th New Concept Writing Competition, one of the "Five Tigers of the 1980s Generation", and a young writer, joined Zhihu. His answers can be found on sports including basketball, football, tennis, literature, martial arts, food, life, love, and even art, politics, and movies.

His image of being eclectic but not specialized aroused doubts among some users. Later, Zhihu user Zhizishengzi published an article titled "Publicly report to the authorities that Zhang Jiawei and many other big Vs are suspected of buying and selling approvals". Later, some negative information about Zhang Jiawei's "erudition" was also exposed: in Zhang Jiawei's book list, he claimed to have read many famous Chinese and foreign classics. Later, it was found that his answers to many questions about related works had many mistakes and omissions, and it was suspected that he had not really read them - at least not finished them.

Later, the Clam Saint published another article titled "I suggest that Mr. Zhang Jiawei should not use original pictures when plagiarizing other people's articles in the future", exposing his plagiarism behavior.

As the incident continued to ferment, Zhihu's public relations once again disappointed people, and the incident was put to an end by permanently banning the questioner.

If the actions of the Clam Saint and others are really rumors and have brought about bad influence, I am afraid that they cannot compare to the statement of "Grey Plane" that "Lenovo cuts off supply to Huawei." However, at almost the same time, the user "灰机" was only given a seven-day ban, which was "not considered a punishment".

What's more, the behavior of Zhizi Shengzi and others cannot be defined as spreading rumors. Zhang Jiawei's response to the wrong answers was to rewrite the answers of that year, and he remained silent about plagiarism. Even if it is a rumor, it should be a confrontation between the two parties based on facts. The official Zhihu directly stood up and took hard measures based on power, which will only make Zhihu's image continue to fall.

What are the judging criteria of Zhihu? What about the value system? The public is becoming increasingly confused. The biggest failure of an Internet tool is not that people leave it, but that it collapses internally. Zhihu should re-examine its public relations ideas and avoid going against the public.

The dilemma between commercialization and specialization

Are there any other examples on Zhihu where someone came late but gained a large number of followers? "In an answer to the question, we can see that many of the early users who ranked high on the Zhihu fan list are no longer active. Instead, some users who only started answering questions in the past two years have gained a large number of likes and attention in just a few months. The new generation of Zhihu celebrities who emerged after the opening of registration have long been well aware of the tricks in Zhihu's "new ecology" - only entertaining answers are the most popular with the masses. Instead of clarifying the truth with them, it is better to make them laugh.

When no one is serious, you will lose if you take it seriously. The value system of Zhihu Q&A has quietly changed. The weight of professional content has long been reduced due to the influx of a large number of downtown users, and the spirit of "entertainment to death" is also quietly taking place on the platform. This is exactly what the big Vs despise. In addition, the commercial monetization of KOLs has always been a problem.

KOLs need to monetize, which is an inevitable trend in the development of every large community. The "anti-advertising" community atmosphere and "flow limiting" mechanism that Zhihu cultivated in its early days have produced a sharp conflict with this trend. No KOL dares to advertise publicly. All big Vs can only carefully choose topics, write soft articles, constantly deal with the media and the client, and revise the manuscripts to make them softer again and again, for fear that fans will recognize them as advertisements. Because once it is discovered that it is a soft article, it will be criticized by users and even lead to post deletion.

KOLs spend a lot of time on content operations, attracting fans, and then monetizing, but the last step is so difficult.

It is said that the Zhihu team referred to three objects when discussing commercialization plans. In addition to Quora and Douban, the other one was LinkedIn. LinkedIn's outstanding performance in monetizing the value of its personal connections is enviable. Its talent solutions and marketing solutions for the B-side and its premium membership subscription services for the C-side can all generate considerable revenue.

As an 11-year-old Internet veteran, LinkedIn's business model has long been proven on the other side of the mainland, but no "Chinese version of LinkedIn" has grown into a successful company. Even LinkedIn itself encountered difficulties in entering China a few years ago, and had to start from scratch to create a younger and localized "Chitu".

Since its establishment, Zhihu has been regarded as the company in China that is most like LinkedIn.

But Zhihu has now become a hodgepodge website where "high-end and vulgarity coexist, and chicken soup for the soul has all the same color". The early "prestige bonus" has slowly disappeared, the high-end commercial value has gradually been lost, and there is not much room for the remaining commercial red ocean to play.

Zhihu has tried hard to empower KOLs, but with limited results.

Zhihu University’s knowledge service matrix consists of a “course system”, a “book system” and a “training camp”. The course system includes "Live Lectures" and "Private Lessons", completing the initial coverage from audio to video, from small volume to large volume, and from short-term sharing to long-term systematization. The "book system" includes e-books, audio books, and reading clubs from "Zhihu Bookstore".

At the same time, Zhihu announced that "Super Membership" is officially on sale, priced at 348 yuan. Users who purchase it can access more than 3,000 live events on the site, more than 600 "reading club" audios read by outstanding answerers in various fields on Zhihu, and more than 700 popular e-books.

As of June 2018, Zhihu had provided 15,000 knowledge service products, with 5,000 producers and 6 million paying users. Every day, more than 1 million people use Zhihu University.

The road to commercialization is still difficult, and it has become normal for KOLs from Zhihu to leave based on profit maximization.

In March 2017, Wukong Q&A, a question-and-answer platform under Toutiao, signed 300 Zhihu influencers, which caused a stir.

At the beginning of 2019, the movement of big Vs leaving Zhihu was staged again. But this time it was not poaching by the platform, but an active choice by the big Vs, who planned to join Weibo. Afterwards, the official Weibo Q&A account announced that 100 answerers had joined, including many big Vs who participated in the escape plan, which caused a great shock.

Under this trend, Zhihu and big Vs dislike each other, and the two sides have not achieved mutual benefit and win-win results in making money. Today, Zhihu is still looking for an operating method that suits itself. On the premise of turning content creators and platforms into a community of interests, it needs to focus on improving the professionalism and depth of content.

Zhihu has a long way to go to break through

The emphasis on user quality and content quality from the beginning, as well as the high-quality opinions and content output of the community itself, laid the foundation for Zhihu's extremely high starting point of value. However, as Zhihu moved from the invitation-based era to the era of 60 million users, and then to the current era of 200 million users, the halo of the past can no longer fully represent Zhihu.

Today, Zhihu wants users to see themselves as a city rooted in the Internet age, where they can debate how technology is changing the world and discuss how to choose a suitable razor for themselves, rather than just a high-end salon that is full of elites and celebrities.

· Freedom of speech is a paradox for Zhihu : For Chinese Internet users, if they want to discuss a specific topic in depth, they should go to Zhihu. The platform is China's largest question-and-answer knowledge base. This was common sense for most people in the past few years.

But there is a paradox here. The masses equal traffic, but there is no good or bad traffic, especially in the open Internet environment of freedom of speech. Deliberately causing trouble, provoking others, wanton insults, regional blackmail, cult fans and even other sensitive topics have always been a problem.

“Whether in ancient or modern times, in China or abroad, the masses are blind. The so-called masses are nothing more than all kinds of people, including literati, ruffians, the well-educated, and the evildoers. Therefore, a unified “public opinion” does not exist at all. Don’t imagine the “masses” as a collective that seems to have a unified cognition.” This passage is the current situation of the group on Zhihu.

If Zhihu wants to avoid homogenization and retain the atmosphere of an "elite knowledge community", it cannot allow "freedom of speech" to run rampant. It should work hard on controlling the community atmosphere, screening the Q&A crowd, and punishing users who violate the rules.

Reorganize Zhihu’s value system: strike a balance between commercialization and specialization, and achieve commercial profitability while ensuring a rational “public space”.

· Screening of sinking information: Zhihu, which is attacking second- and third-tier cities, needs to judge and trial and error how to continuously output high-quality content that is down-to-earth.

Finally, it is the sincere wish of a Zhihu user for seven years: I hope that Zhihu, which I once loved, can return again after going through the pain of commercialization.

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!

Author: Tenant 404

Source: PR Home