How to do content marketing on Zhihu?

At present, Zhihu is the platform that can best solve the "problems" of those who pursue quality life, the knowledgeable middle class, and the new generation of people. Users have a high degree of recognition and stickiness towards Zhihu. So how do companies do content marketing on Zhihu?

Recently, the always lavish Wukong Q&A withdrew from its strategic high position in Toutiao, and Zhihu became the winner of this competition. From the departure of 300 big Vs last year, to Zhihu announcing that the number of answers has exceeded 100 million, to the nearly doubling of the number of users, although there are voices of Zhihu's failure, in this battle without any obvious "response" actions, Zhihu has indeed proved with results that the 7-year barrier cannot be shaken by a huge investment of 1 billion.

According to data from QuestMobile :

8% of users who uninstalled Wukong jumped to Zhihu, and almost no users who uninstalled Zhihu jumped to Wukong Q&A.

It can be seen that among all kinds of communities and platforms nowadays, Zhihu is the one that can best solve the "problems" of those who pursue quality life, the knowledgeable middle class, and the new generation of people. Users have a high degree of recognition and stickiness to Zhihu. It is precisely because of this feature that many companies want to speak out on Zhihu and want to influence people with “three highs”.

How does it affect?

My answer is: high-quality sharing + hard advertising.

It is not recommended to do soft advertising, because Zhihu users are very sensitive to marketing . 90% of practitioners do not have the ability to write soft advertising that people will not notice after reading it. Instead of being shy, it is better to declare your purpose openly. Let’s break it down and explain it with some typical cases. Please don’t just read this sentence and send out a bunch of discount promotion information.

Next, we will talk about how to grasp Zhihu based on some fundamental logic, from positioning, planning to practical skills.

1. What do you want to achieve?

Before starting anything, we need to be clear about what our needs are.

What do you want to achieve on this platform?

The two most common ones – influence and conversion . Influence mainly refers to improving reputation, popularity, etc., which is relatively abstract; conversion refers to achieving APP downloads, sales, etc.

Demand sometimes depends on some objective factors. Generally speaking, it is related to the department you belong to and the business situation. Large and mature enterprises tend to focus on influence, while medium-sized and small enterprises tend to focus on transformation. If one person is invested, there must be corresponding output.

For example, BMW's goal is definitely to influence its reputation. It won't expect people to buy a car immediately after reading an article. Another example is, if you are in a PR department, then the core need of your department is to reduce negativity and enhance its reputation. How many products are sold has nothing to do with you.

Although demand is greatly influenced by objective factors, before you start, you must clarify your needs with your boss and what you expect to achieve on this platform. This will directly affect your subsequent goal setting, planning, and your KPI assessment.

2. Is the ROI acceptable?

Now that we have our expectations clear, let’s evaluate the ROI.

First of all, the costs can be roughly divided into three parts: labor costs + operating costs + (advertising costs) .

In terms of human resources, the common approach in the industry is for one person to be responsible independently, or to set up a new media team to be responsible. Possible influencing factors are: the size of the company; the degree of demand for information output.

On Zhihu, because of the need for professional content, another way has emerged: the new media people + creator group. This means that an operator is responsible for the daily operations of an account, such as topic selection, user interaction, activities, etc. The creator group refers to people with professional knowledge within the company, such as CEO, product designers, engineers, sales, and HR. They can all become creators. They have an internal incentive mechanism to encourage everyone to share their professional experience.

Operating costs mainly refer to internal incentive policies and user-oriented activity costs; advertising costs mainly refer to the purchase of commercial products to promote accounts and content.

Secondly, in terms of revenue, if it is influence, then the amount of exposure and reading in 1 month, and the number of followers in 3 months are easy to measure. When making estimates, you can refer to the data of companies of similar size and industry on Zhihu. Each company’s personal homepage will display data such as followers and likes.

Finally, once the costs and benefits are identified, the specific ROI becomes clear. What can be predicted is that: similar to other platforms, the cost of operating on Zhihu is higher, but it will also be worth it because the value of a single follower is greater.

3. Clear positioning

I previously looked at the case of China Science Expo, the top-ranked institutional account in the science category. Their positioning is "targeting users over 18 years old, with an interesting and rigorous image of scientists, publishing cutting-edge, interesting, and practical popular science content and interpretations of scientific hot spots."

Therefore, when it comes to clarifying the positioning, we can answer it by "what kind of people are we targeting, with what style/image, and what kind of content are we publishing". The answers to these three fill-in-the-blank questions are also interrelated.

3.1 Who is it for?

This is related to the target audience of the product/ brand itself. For example, if I am engaged in IT vocational education, then people under the age of 18 who follow beauty topics are not my target audience.

3.2 In what style/image

We often say that a brand without a personality is soulless. Specifically, this "personality" should not be a charming beauty pretending to be an eighteen-year-old girl to cater to the market, but an image refined based on the company's own culture and product characteristics.

The brand personality of traditional industries that have been in existence for more than ten years is often fixed, while the brand personality of emerging industries and emerging companies has more room for development. Judging from the equal and friendly values ​​advocated by Zhihu users and Zhihu officials, the brand personality traits of the "ruler" and "entertainer" types are not applicable. The "explorer" and "wise man" types are more appropriate types, which need to be supported and shaped in every aspect of daily topic selection, copywriting , illustrations, etc.

3.3 What kind of content to publish: The “6-circle rule”

In terms of topic selection, combined with the goals set previously, you can write about the following directions.

• The more emphasis is placed on "influence", the more outward the topic selection will be; the more emphasis is placed on "transformation", the more inward the topic selection will be.
• The further you go out, the greater the breadth of your knowledge of the creator; the further you go out, the greater the depth of your professional knowledge of the creator.

(1) Knowledge related to the product/service itself

This is the easiest thing for most people to write, but it is also easy to go astray. Most people would write: What products our company makes, the products are great, how to use them, and they are on sale now, come and buy them. No matter where it is, such content cannot stimulate users' interest in reading.

It is recommended that you write more content about product principles and characteristics on Zhihu. For example, if your product is toothpaste, you can ask the corresponding R&D personnel to write about how fluoride in toothpaste prevents tooth decay and how the dosage is considered. Zhihu users are very good at reading long articles and in depth, so there is no need to worry about no one reading your article because it is too professional.

Of course, it is difficult for general operations personnel to write this type of content in a professional and in-depth manner, so they can mobilize more product managers , engineers, sales personnel, etc. to write it, and operations personnel can beautify the content and make professional terms easier to understand.

For example: Disney did not simply promote the release of its new film, but instead introduced in detail the creation process of the princess image, which greatly satisfied the user's curiosity and also attracted the attention of a large number of users who are interested in animation.

How were the Disney princess images created?

(2) The people, culture, and philosophy behind the product/service

In addition to what your product is, it will make your brand image more complete if you occasionally talk about the people, culture, and ideas behind the product. For example: We often see JD.com telling stories about how its delivery staff provide high-standard services to users without fear of difficulties.

From an operations perspective, it would be very appropriate to find the customer service department, HR, business managers, or even the CEO to share these stories and ideas.

Let’s take the second example: Xibei Youmiancun tells the story of a dishwasher who is willing to do work beyond her job responsibilities and feels happy and satisfied. Everyone felt that this was a group of warm people and had a good impression of this company.

What are some things that may seem ordinary to you but have special meanings to others?

(3) Industry-related information or knowledge

Compared with individuals, companies are more capable of producing content from an industry perspective or information that only insiders understand because of the convenience of obtaining information. Overall, this type of content is more likely to receive official recommendations. However, operations staff often do not have experience in vertical industries, so it is more appropriate to work with senior practitioners and teams within the company to polish the experience.

The third example: Based on the data from the platform, word of mouth shared the distribution and average customer spending of two popular street restaurants, Lazhou Ramen and Shaxian Snacks, which stimulated foodies’ strong desire to interact.

Lanzhou Ramen and Shaxian Snacks, which one is the most popular restaurant in China?

Siemens invited internal experts to share the application of artificial intelligence in manufacturing, conveying to people the image that Siemens has always been at the forefront of science and technology and pays attention to advanced technologies.

What are the applications of artificial intelligence in the manufacturing industry? How to help the manufacturing industry transform/upgrade?

(4) Target group’s lifestyle/attitude

Life attitude is a type of writing that is both simple and difficult. It is simple because it can be written by operators based on their own experiences, and it is difficult because it is difficult to grasp the refinement of "attitude".

If you are in a large enterprise, you can communicate more with colleagues in the marketing field, as they are very good at conveying life attitudes. If no one in the company can help you, you can take the initiative to chat with employees and users to find out their stories, what they like to do in daily life, and what their views are on things.

Another example: Mini’s main business is cars , so they will write: What is the evolution history of your vehicles? This type of content tells the history of each generation of MINI models and some interesting stories behind them, but more content is written about travel to convey their values ​​of loving life, loving fashion, and being adventurous, and to gather people with similar tastes.

What are some of the lesser-known and less visited places in London?

What is it like traveling along the Sichuan-Tibet Line, Yunnan-Tibet Line, Qinghai-Tibet Line, and Xinjiang-Tibet Line?

(5) Activities and social hot spots

Whether it is products, industries, social hot spots, or activities, they all do not deviate from the biggest circle of "target group's lifestyle/attitude". If a company pursues this hot spot today and that hot spot tomorrow, it may have traffic . However, the most basic brand reputation and clear brand awareness are gone, and the method of forcing oneself to take advantage of hot topics is especially ineffective on Zhihu.

The last example: Some time ago, the change of legal person of Alipay attracted a lot of attention. Tianyancha combined its own products to display the legal person situation of Alipay, which received more than 1k likes and brought considerable exposure to its own products. This hot topic was very well taken advantage of.

What do you think about the change of Alipay’s legal representative from Jack Ma to Ye Yuqing? What does this mean?

After clarifying your positioning, you can start taking action. The core of Zhihu is still question and answer, so you can start step by step by selecting specific questions. I will talk about the daily practical part later when I have time.

Finally, I spent a lot of effort to explain "high-quality sharing" above. The reason is that you hope to demonstrate your professionalism in this industry, your dedication to products, and your sincerity towards users through high-quality, high-value content. If users have a positive understanding of your products and brand, "conversion" can actually be achieved in just one sentence.

Source: Zhihu