How can newbies quickly become familiar with WeChat public account operations?

This article discusses four major aspects: familiarity with WeChat public accounts, typesetting techniques, column construction, and operation and promotion. This article is mainly aimed at novices in WeChat operation of various companies and friends who want to operate WeChat public accounts by themselves. It is more about some basic operation knowledge. Feng Chao, editor of Jimifeng Technology, hopes to help everyone.

How can newbies quickly become familiar with and operate official accounts?

1. Be familiar with WeChat public accounts

No matter what you do, the basic principle remains the same: you must learn to walk before you can run. I often meet people asking me how to operate WeChat and what matters should be paid attention to when interviewing for new media operations. However, I don’t pay much attention to Weibo and WeChat, and have never registered and operated any public account. When operating WeChat, you must remember to be calm. The benefits of WeChat are gradually passing, and you need a solid foundation and the ability to endure loneliness.

In the first stage, you should have a very good understanding of the six functional modules of WeChat official account: application registration, automatic reply, custom menu bar, material management, group messaging and official account settings. The following 10 questions are what beginners must know:

1How to register a WeChat public account

2What is the difference between subscription account and service account?

3. Setting of the public account name and introduction (especially the public account name cannot be changed after it is set)

4How to set keyword reply

5How to set up first follow reply

6How to set up the menu bar

7How to send group messages

8How to create a message with multiple images and texts

9How to add materials (pictures, text, links, etc.)

10. What are the statistical functions of the public account (such as users, views, followers, etc.)

2. Understand typography techniques

After becoming familiar with the basic functions of WeChat public accounts, you need to understand WeChat's typesetting skills. This is also a headache for all new media beginners, because the editor that comes with WeChat is too bad. For the layout of WeChat public account content, we need to use two tools: WORD and WeChat editor.

WORD is easy to understand. I generally recommend that new media operators write the material content in WORD first, so that there can be a backup and it is easy to modify at any time. Because there are often bugs in the WeChat backend, the content may not be saved properly if you are not careful. And after understanding the formatting of public accounts, you can actually do without an editor and just use WORD to do it all.

WeChat Editor is actually just a web editor, but it provides various styles and allows you to perform typesetting operations directly on it. Currently, the better WeChat editors include 135 Editor and Xiumi Editor. However, many people go too far and treat the WeChat editor as a magic tool. They like to stack content in various formats, thinking that it will look good. However, they don’t realize that it actually looks colorful and messy. The most beautiful layout is always simple, natural and generous.

Regarding WeChat typesetting, it is recommended that beginners edit all the content manually except for the WeChat introduction at the beginning and end of the article, which should use the editor's inherent format. The general content arrangement techniques include the following:

1. For graphics with more text, it is recommended to use 2-4 lines as a paragraph, so that the overall reading is clear and not tiring;

2. For graphics with less text content, it is recommended to put each punctuation mark on a line and center it, which will be very concise and clear;

3. If there is a lot of text, it is recommended to align all the text to the left and right. Note that the WeChat editor cannot align the text to the left and right. You can use the WeChat editor to do this.

4. In terms of font comfort, Microsoft YaHei is better than Songti;

5. In terms of font size, size 15 is the best;

6. In terms of reading comfort, medium gray is more suitable for reading than black;

7. In terms of line spacing, if it is a long paragraph of text, a line spacing of 1.75 times is more appropriate. If the content is less, especially centered text, a line spacing of 2.0 times is more appropriate.

The layout of WeChat pictures and texts can actually be edited in the text box of the WeChat editor just like WORD. This is also easier, and you don’t always have to rely on some layout styles.

The first two parts are more of an introductory process, and are just the beginning of your step into the door of WeChat operations. The following three points are indicators that determine a person’s WeChat operation level.

About the profit model of public accounts

1. Increasing click-through rate by brushing up on reading and then accepting advertisements is a model

2. Use your own influence to get advertising

3. Place some local advertisers. You can either sell door-to-door or have others come to you.

3. Column Construction

From the perspective of WeChat operations, I belong to the group of people who tend to follow marketing management and tradition. I believe that WeChat content should be in line with the positioning, have prominent columns, and have intertwined content.

Whether operating a personal account or a corporate WeChat account, the positioning needs to be very clear. Don’t always think about posting chicken soup, jokes, and weather gossip.

You should determine the product's clear positioning based on the product's features or your own advantages, skills, and knowledge points. Otherwise, you will definitely have no idea about the subsequent column construction and content promotion.

If there is only a simple positioning, the content will be very messy in actual operation. At this time, we must pay attention to column construction. Your WeChat is actually the same as a TV station. Your fans are the audience, and you should also create some interesting columns to cater to the audience. The construction of the column focuses on: uniqueness, novelty and sustainability. On the one hand, your category must be highly relevant to your positioning, and on the other hand, the column cannot be too cliché, but it must be continuous, otherwise it will be difficult to find suitable content.

The construction of a column includes five parts: regular columns, irregular columns, column content, column release time, and column frequency, which are suitable for people at the entry level.

4. Operation and Promotion

I think operation and promotion can be divided into two stages: internal and external. Internal skills are more operational, mainly referring to the four aspects of being good at imitation, brand image, high-quality content and good interaction, while external skills are more promotional.

Internal Strength Level 1: Good at Imitation

When you don’t know what to do, the best thing to do is to imitate. You can pay more attention to and learn more about some of the WeChat public accounts that are operating well and the WeChat public accounts of your competitors. All new media operators should be a very active group with a very wide range of concerns. Don’t just limit yourself to your own small circle. Learn more about some good WeChat public accounts and see how they operate. When doing new media operations, you should read more and think more.

Internal Strength Level 2 - Brand Image

When it comes to building a corporate brand image through new media, many people will probably think of Durex’s official Weibo. As far as official accounts are concerned, there are two ways to display the brand image: one is the content of the operation, and the other is the style of the operator. The former is to convey a characteristic through content, while the latter is to convey a brand through the personal operator. However, the latter has higher requirements for personal color and requires a more intense crowd.

Internal Strength Level 3—Quality Content

When it comes to spreading the word and increasing followers, basically the most common advice is to create good content. Other methods are not guaranteed, and in the end, user retention, activity, and dissemination still depend on the content. The content is divided into two parts. One part is to provide high-quality content. Operators should consider what is special about your target audience, what they are interested in, and what content will be helpful to them.

The second aspect is how to arrange good content? The first is reflected in the relevance of the characters. That is, the target audience of your content should be groups that your fans are familiar with. The second is the relevance of the content. The content should be close to the fans' lives, and should not be random chicken soup, jokes and gossip.

Internal Strength Level 4 - Good Interaction

Fans are alive, not dead, and we need to make them feel satisfied with the experience. The most common forms of interaction are backstage interaction, comment replies, and building micro-communities. A more in-depth form is external interactive communication. For example, you can get a girl’s contact information by sharing content, you can participate in a lottery after voting, you can get certain benefits by inviting friends to experience it, etc. The entire WeChat is actually a relatively closed community. Your users will only be keen to recommend you if you can make them have a great time.

External gong is mainly about promotion. There are many ways to promote it, mainly the following:

1. Push hard. It is actually very simple to push this hard. It just means inviting people around you to pay attention to you and begging them for help. However, it is an essential step in the early stages and you have to be shameless.

2. Increase search weight. Increase Baidu's search weight, for example, answer various questions on Baidu Knows, Zhihu, Baidu Wenku, Douban, etc. or publish relevant articles, such as "What are the xx types of WeChat recommendations", "The top ten popular WeChat public accounts in China in xx", "The most popular WeChat public account recommendations in xx", etc. Another way is to include some platforms that recommend WeChat public accounts.

3. Lucky draw. The cost-effectiveness of the activity is currently low. Such activities have a low sense of participation for users because they know that the probability of winning is not high.

4. Red envelope method. The red envelope method is clear in its name. It relies on red envelopes to attract users. Well-known examples include Haiding Micro Business Card and Quick Red Envelope. One way is to send red envelopes through the payment interface and red envelope interface provided by WeChat. The amount of the red envelope for a single user does not need to be very high, mainly ranging from 0.1-2. Ordinary user groups will be very happy, especially students. If the interface cannot be implemented, you can use Alipay red envelopes and send Alipay red envelope pictures through the official account at a fixed time every day.

5 rules for sharing pictures. The picture sharing method is actually based on WeChat business. For WeChat followers, the fastest way is to scan the QR code directly. This method usually involves making a promotional picture, which does not have to be very exquisite. It mentions a benefit point (such as paying attention to get phone bills, postcards, and traffic), and then includes the WeChat name and QR code. Share this picture more often in the circle of friends, and the effect is also good. The reference case is Meitui.

6. Resource sharing. This is quite popular at the moment, but may be hit by Tencent, that is, the free PPT templates, free resume templates, free download of 3,000 novels, etc. that are often circulated in the circle of friends. The reference case of "Playing around in University" can actually count as any resource integration.

7.Vote for the lucky draw. Some voting and lottery methods are effective while others are not. The key lies in whether the candidates are willing and motivated to canvass for votes. Most young intellectuals and white-collar workers are too proud to canvass for votes, but those idle young mothers at home and young men and women in third- and fourth-tier cities are very motivated to canvass for votes, and they are the core group for increasing fans.

8. H5 that accumulates rewards. The reward-accumulating H5 has become a very popular promotion method since last year. The core is that users need to call on some friends to help them complete the task, so that they can get prizes, which also drives secondary dissemination. There is a little trick. For example, if this H5 requires 10 people to support it, you can put a reminder on the page that users can get 5 supports for free by following WeChat. This way, you can implicitly force users to follow.

9 accounts promote each other. It is a blessing to be able to promote each other with big accounts, but don’t worry if there is no big account for mutual promotion. You can contact some accounts with similar or slightly more fans as yours to promote each other. Of course, it is not particularly difficult to contact some big accounts, especially some company accounts, because everyone has KPIs.

10External drainage. External traffic mainly relies on other self-media platforms, such as Baidu Baike, Toutiao, Sohu self-media platforms, etc. You can also post your own WeChat content on these platforms, which can also increase some traffic.

Editor’s summary: These external skills may not be suitable for all WeChat accounts, they are just simple and crude. The key is to do a good job in internal work. WeChat operation is like a marathon. Without sufficient foundation and perseverance, it is difficult to do well.