How does WeChat Reading achieve user fission?

More and more people in the circle of friends have started to share some pictures about their reading time and links to "red envelopes". These links caught my attention. After investigating, I found that these reading time and red envelope links that appeared in the circle of friends were the user growth "routines" of Tencent's "godson" and WeChat's "little cousin" WeChat Reading .

WeChat Reading is a less important product attached to the WeChat ecosystem . It did not attract anyone's attention in the initial stage. However, now WeChat Reading is as powerful as a rising star, waving its claws wildly to keep users glued to its product.

According to the " QuestMobile : 2018 Mobile Internet Report", the user activity of WeChat Reading in 2018 increased by 93% compared to 2017, while the year-on-year growth rates of iReader and QQ Reading were only around 10%. What is the reason that WeChat Reading has become such an explosive product in just one year?

The author has recently carefully studied the "black technology" used by WeChat Reading in various product functions. Today, let me explain what kind of fission method WeChat Reading uses to attract a steady stream of users to register for WeChat Reading and make the user activity so high.

Growth hacking method 1: behavioral links based on social growth

Almost all of Tencent's products have been endowed with social gene attributes since their birth. As a member of Tencent, WeChat Reading is no exception. WeChat Reading has embedded social factors in its bookstore recommendations, reading pages, idea circles and reading time rankings . Social behavioral bonds are the best way to connect internal and external growth.

Social growth link 1: Team up to draw unlimited cards

The unlimited reading card is a fission growth activity recently launched by WeChat Reading. It means that with the unlimited card, you can read any book at will without paying any additional fees. For those enthusiasts who read for a long time every week, it is a good reading benefit.

The process of giving away unlimited reading cards on WeChat Reading is divided into several steps. In the early stage of the event, you will be given a 3-day or 7-day unlimited reading trial card for free by logging into the APP. Through subsidies, you can experience the product and form an addiction model. Towards the end of the activity, once the trial period is over, discomfort will arise after the original addictive path of being able to read any book for free without any other sexual manipulation is formed.

If you want to continue to experience this unlimited reading experience card, you need to purchase it or invite friends to join a group purchase to continue the original service experience and convenience.

Free card delivery

Free card delivery

This method of drawing is very similar to the group buying method. You invite 4 friends to help you start the drawing. The invitation link channel is directed to the WeChat Moments or WeChat Group . Compared with other products, general invitation links will include numerous social platforms to ensure the success rate of invitations and the compliance of team formation.

An interesting point is that WeChat Reading has set up an unequal rule, that is, the more new users you invite to join the group, the higher the chance of winning the grand prize, and the members of the invited team in each period cannot be exactly the same as the previous period.

The fission gameplay of group buying is an old topic and also a standard routine gameplay. The way to play WeChat Reading is to first give you a certain amount of time to experience it, which brings you certain conveniences or temptations, and then let you choose to invite friends to start a group to help you save money. The intelligent algorithm mechanism of WeChat Reading will autonomously identify new users, increase the chances of winning big prizes, and allow you to share more links with new users next time, thereby achieving the goal of user fission .

Suggestion: WeChat Reading invites people to join the group, and new users who are invited in may also win the prize, and only through the WeChat-based social circle of acquaintances. Low threshold and high efficiency. As for how to survive, we will talk about it later.

Social growth link 2: Sharing fission and honor

When making purchases on WeChat Reading, every time you buy a corresponding reading book, WeChat Reading will prompt you that the reading red envelope coins can be shared with friends to grab reading coins. Reading coins are the trading currency circulating within WeChat Reading, and they are often sold out within a few minutes when shared on Moments.

As mentioned earlier, the data algorithm of WeChat Reading is very powerful. I bought some books some time ago and shared the link to my Moments. My mother accidentally clicked on it and got several times more reading coins than other people. If you want to use the reading coins you have grabbed, you need to download WeChat Reading (WeChat Reading will guide new users to download WeChat Reading step by step). My mother is not a WeChat Reading user, but WeChat Reading attaches great importance to new users.

Compared with the naked WeChat reading link, there is a more invisible fission method, which grows invisibly and is shared willingly. That is the picture bookmarks shared on WeChat reading.

The content of the bookmark can be defined according to your own reading. It can be a short and concise sentence or a long and detailed opinion. WeChat Reading also cares a lot about the user experience. Not only can you choose from a variety of sharing layout styles and color styles, but most importantly, you can remove QR codes with "advertising" elements for free.

Let book sharing become a kind of honor in reading, so that rare things become valuable. The sense of honor in reading will invisibly bring about the fission of many users.

Suggestion: The red envelope link of WeChat Reading can be appropriately changed into a sharing link of the mini program , so that you can grab the red envelope and also read all the free books online for free. When a certain reading progress is seen, guide users to download the APP or register. The guiding functionality of the pictures shared on WeChat Reading is actually not very strong.

You can add some halo images created by contrasts of "excitement", "vanity" and "evenness" to the shared pictures to accelerate users' creation of tags for sharing, thereby attracting and recalling new users.

Growth hacking method 2: User retention based on social genes

In addition to routine new user acquisition, any product's slightest change in internal functions will have a huge impact on user activity and retention . After Weibo lifted the 140-character limit, according to Weibo's Q3 2017 financial report data, as of September 2017, Weibo had 376 million monthly active users, a 27% increase over the same period in 2016, of which 92% were mobile users; daily active users reached 165 million, a 25% increase over the same period last year.

Any slight improvement in the product will greatly increase user activity. WeChat Reading, which is based on social genes, is filled with a large number of social genes from the product's discovery page, bookshelf page, idea page, and my center page. These genes are the main reason why WeChat Reading users remain and are active at a high level.

The retention of social genes: omnipresent social interaction among acquaintances

Social interaction is the most important form of interaction between people in life, and WeChat Reading’s products have never missed any social function pages. When new users are still confused after registering, WeChat Reading will help you make a decision. As a new user, you will first be given a gift. If you download and find the book you are interested in with a purpose, then the next action of WeChat can be ignored. However, WeChat Reading has bridged the data gap. Before you make the choice to make a decision, WeChat Reading is ready to help you solve the problems caused by making a decision.

On the discovery page, WeChat Reading will recommend books to you based on the number of simultaneous readers among your WeChat friends and the number of readers on the entire network. When it shows how many of your friends are reading a book, you can think that since so many people have read this book, it must be read by like-minded people and is worth reading.

Suggestion: It is very valuable to recommend books based on what your friends are currently reading. But if we try to show the reviews of the previous book to people who are looking for new books or new users, would it be more valuable?

Preservation of social genes 2: Value social interaction among strangers

On the bookshelf reading page, WeChat Reading also retains the social function. The small head button in the upper right corner of the reading page will show the number of people currently reading the book, the reading progress and the number of notes. Such social functions stimulate the reading nerves of every reader and may make people feel not alone in reading, but they are also selling "anxiety". There are so many hardworking and excellent people in the world that I feel ashamed of myself.

Every page that contains very good words or refreshing ideas will always trigger readers' thinking about the current sentence. The picture below shows a reader’s annotation of a sentence. We can comment and interact. Similarly, you can click on the avatar to learn more about the user details. You can see the books on the bookshelf, the number of followers, and most importantly, you can interact with them through private messages.

This kind of hidden social interaction on the bookshelf has surpassed the social methods of acquaintances and opened up the way of communication between strangers. Not only can you learn sparks of thought from the comments, but you can also make friends with "valuable" strangers.

Suggestion: If private messaging becomes widely used, the final presentation method will still be transferred to WeChat. It would be better to like the views of a certain book and form a ranking list of the people who have contributed the most thoughts to the book (presented in the book and on personal pages), so as to implement this method and stimulate activity.

Preservation of social genes 3: Stimulating human competition and “labor” currency

WeChat has a function called WeChat Sports, which ranks people based on the number of steps they walk that day. WeChat's first game, Shooting Planes, ranks people based on the duration of your challenge and the number of enemy planes you defeat. Tencent's proud King of Glory ranks people based on their game rank.

Tencent is a company that will motivate you and make you willingly contribute money and time. WeChat Reading is no exception. Your reading time will be published on the rankings and updated in real time, stimulating your unwillingness to fall behind.

After enjoying the halo of honor and the likes of definite recognition, the function of exchanging reading time for book coins is even more "cool". Every 30 minutes of reading can be exchanged for 1 reading coin, and a maximum of 10 coins can be exchanged per week. You can exchange the reading time for reading coins that need to be recharged with money, and make money through reading. Such behavior will greatly stimulate users to read more, occupy more rankings, redeem more, and redeem more actively.

Suggestion: Tencent’s rankings are great for all its products. Rankings are an important way to catalyze social interaction. If I have my own product in the future, I will also add this feature.

Social gene retention 4: the most subtle user experience and interactive experience

Everyone is familiar with the shake function of WeChat. WeChat Reading also has a shake function . It doesn't mean that you can find a book friend by shaking, but that you can discover a good book by shaking (a book recommended based on your previous reading content). If you listen carefully to the shaking sound, it is quite nice.

Discovering a new book by accident is easier than finding it and reading it on your own. When reading a book without a plan, the most difficult thing to choose is what to read next after finishing the current one. Just like our daily lunch time, the most troublesome thing is not knowing how to choose. But if others choose the food for me, we won’t be entangled, and won’t even have the question of whether it is delicious or not.

WeChat Reading is also a service that allows you to shake your phone accidentally when you are struggling. The algorithm will then recommend content to you based on what you have read and understand your shake better.

Suggestion: This function of WeChat is so subtle that it makes people tremble, and it can give you a ten-point chance of survival.

Summarize

Having summarized the hacker-like fission growth of WeChat Reading, I would like to emphasize that growth fission does not necessarily mean sharing links outside the site to make people register, but rather includes a complete set of internal product users' ultimate services and changes. Every slight revision will bring substantial positive data feedback from users.

Based on the behavioral bond of social growth of WeChat Reading, fission 1: team up to draw cards, combo punches, and constantly attract new users; fission 2: the honor and fission of sharing, defining circles, and the halo of honor constantly stimulates users;

User retention based on the social gene of WeChat Reading:

• Retention 1: WeChat Reading flexibly uses the social behavior of acquaintances, making reading a more valuable topic of communication.
• Retention 2: Social networking among acquaintances, such as university circles, has limited circles and limited people. Only by opening up the circles of strangers can you gain more users and longer-term retention.
• Retention three: The reading rankings and the exchange of time for coins are really used to the extreme.
• Retention four: Care about every detail of the user, including the function of shaking to recommend books, which is a truly perfect product.

WeChat Reading is a great product. You can discuss with people who are studying different subjects while reading, redeem reading coins based on the length of time you read, and make friends with people you share a common language with based on the people who read. The fission of WeChat Reading is worth pondering.

Bonus: WeChat reading fission mind map:

Source: Post-95s Talking About Technology