A veteran with 5 years of operation experience shares again: practical cases of increasing followers on Zhihu!

Lao A talked to me about her experience in operating the Zhihu channel , which helped the company increase its followers and expand its brand influence.

After listening to it, I think this methodology is also helpful for us to operate other channels ( Tieba , Weibo, etc.) to achieve fan growth, brand promotion, and paid conversion . So based on Lao A’s sharing, I compiled this article.

What should you do before operating a channel?

Mr. A said that working in operations at a company is actually quite hard, especially the operation of new media channels, which many companies do not pay enough attention to. But as an aspiring operator, as an operator with a lot of KPIs to meet, how does she do things on the Zhihu channel?

First, Mr. A conducted a data analysis on the Zhihu channel to verify the channel quality. Maybe you will say, it’s easy to tell that Zhihu is a high-quality channel, so is there any need to do more?

However, without real data to support it (and it was two or three years ago), how can you convince your leader in a professional manner?

1) Channel data analysis

Zhihu has both PC and App versions, so it needs to be considered from both perspectives. The PC side needs to focus on three data: UV (unique visitors), PV (page views), and IP. The App side focuses on the number of registered users and the number of active users.

Through the data disclosed by Alexa, Webmaster Home and Zhihu, Lao A obtained the following key data information of Zhihu (the following are the latest data I checked under the guidance of Lao A. I use examples to prove that this method is easy to learn and use)

Judging from the traffic trend, Zhihu's traffic is also on the rise:

Data from Alexa

According to Alexa statistics, Zhihu's global website ranking (average in March) is 127th.

Data from Alexa

Judging from the Zhihu channel itself, there is no doubt about its traffic situation. It is a very high-quality channel.

2) Business relevance analysis

After ensuring that there are no issues with channel traffic, you need to further consider the relevance of this channel to the company's business. In other words, what is the value of this channel to your company's business and whether this channel has/is your target user .

For Ms. A, she needs to verify the Zhihu channel to see whether there are and how many users are interested in pet-related topics.

If there are few people interested in "pets", no matter how high Zhihu's own traffic is, it will not have much effect on Mr. A.

It’s like promoting cosmetics in a nursing home. Even if there are 100,000 or 200,000 people in this place, they have no demand for your products, and these people are of no use in helping you achieve your targets.

Afterwards, Mr. A analyzed the topics on Zhihu and summarized the following data:

From the above data, we can see that the number of people who follow "pets" on Zhihu has reached a large scale, and the number of excellent questions is also considerable. It is feasible to use Zhihu as a channel to promote pet-related businesses.

The above analysis steps are applicable to the analysis of any channel, and you can apply them according to your own situation.

3) Convince your leader/boss

You may think that this step is not important, but if you can't get past your boss, all the previous analysis will be in vain, so hurry up and take notes and see how the old drivers convince the boss and gain support.

Based on Lao A’s experience, if she wants to convince her leaders to operate the Zhihu channel, she must prove to them that the Zhihu channel can bring value to the company.

Bringing value is actually a very general term. When it comes to operating a certain channel, it can be subdivided into different core values ​​such as fan growth, brand promotion , and paid conversion.

Lao A’s company is a one-stop comprehensive service platform for pets. She wants to achieve the two core values ​​of fan growth and brand promotion by operating the Zhihu channel.

With the channel data analysis and business correlation analysis data from the previous two steps, it is easier for Mr. A to convince his leader.

First of all, Zhihu itself has a large amount of traffic. The current number of registered users has exceeded 160 million, the number of daily active users has exceeded 26 million (App side), UV (average in March) has exceeded 16.7 million, PV (average in March) has exceeded 53.6 million, and IP (average daily) has exceeded 4.5 million.

Secondly, the number of people who pay attention to pets on Zhihu has reached a very large scale (combined with data explanation), and operating Zhihu as a channel has practical value in promoting the company's brand and increasing the number of fans.

Here’s a tip for everyone: In the workplace, asking your boss whether a task is feasible is a necessary step. Before asking your leader for instructions, do a feasibility analysis yourself and directly tell your leader what value this will bring to the company.

After verifying the feasibility of the channel and convincing the leadership, you can officially start channel operations.

How to carry out specific operations

In the previous session, Mr. A used channel data analysis to convince his boss to decide to operate the Zhihu channel.

Next, Mr. A entered the core link: how to carry out specific operational work on Zhihu?

Old A said that based on her many years of experience, this part must be rigorous and detailed enough. What leaders care most about is the operational goals, and what you need to do is to let the leaders see how you will achieve the operational goals. You need to have a detailed operational plan .

1) Study channel rules to avoid pitfalls

Before opening an account, Mr. A first learned about the relevant rules of Zhihu. After all, if he was "advertising" on someone else's territory and accidentally crossed the red line, there would be a risk of getting his account blocked.

Zhihu has a complete set of "Zhihu Community Management Regulations (Trial)", and all users need to abide by these regulations. Because Mr. A’s promotion plan also includes video content, he also studied the "Zhihu Video Service Agreement (Trial)" carefully.

Zhihu has a rule specifically for "promotional exposure", and the details of the rule specifically explain "inappropriate behavior". At first glance, it is indeed very scary, and almost all the methods that most people can think of are banned by Zhihu.

The fact is, the rules are in front of us and we need to be vigilant at all times, but we don't have to be scared and do nothing. Under such a strict system, how does Mr. A implement his operational strategy while avoiding risks?

2) Account opening and risk assessment

Lao A said that when they first started operating the Zhihu channel, Zhihu had not yet launched institutional accounts (enterprise accounts).

Mr. A registered 2 main maintenance accounts and 40 small accounts at that time. Why are there 2 main accounts? Think about it, you have to be prepared for everything. If one of your accounts is blocked, you can still send out another one to save the situation.

According to Lao A, the 40 small accounts actually do not play a big role in actual operations, and the key still depends on the packaging content. Of course, just in case, we must also be prepared to keep a small trumpet, which can still play a certain role at critical moments.

In order to prevent these small accounts from looking like "fake accounts" at first glance (even though they are fake accounts), Lao A selected some more friendly avatars for these accounts and also gave them more popular and real user names in order to gain the favor and trust of other users (to avoid risks).

3) Phased operation strategies and goals

You certainly can't become fat in one go, so Mr. A formulated the operation strategy in stages and subdivided the operation goals for each stage.

① Early stage

The goal in the early stage is mainly to increase followers. Mr. A set the follower increase target for the main account to be 1,000 people (within 2 months).

Everyone should break down the phased goals according to their actual situation and not be too eager for success, but also not be completely unchallenging.

How to increase followers? Mr. A breaks down this goal into the following steps:

a. rub

The answers to popular and featured topics on Zhihu were not initially limited to the pet field. Because this was the early strategy of the old A team to "cast a wide net and focus on catching fish."

Moreover, Mr. A focuses on answering questions that have already gained a certain degree of popularity and are currently hot, so as to gain the opportunity to "show his face" by riding on the popularity and hook up with more people.

After participating in the hot topics and key questions, Mr. A tried to participate in some other issues. When these issues are not very popular, Lao A will fully coordinate the resources at hand (other accounts) to invite some big names in the field to create momentum and try his best to promote these topics.

b. Guard

Zhihu’s Featured Questions are a position that the old A team strictly guards. They answer at least one Featured Question every day.

No matter what field the essential questions are, Lao A will do his homework before answering to ensure that the answers are sufficient, professional, and interesting, so as to maintain his status as a "high-quality" answer to the essential questions and establish a good image in the minds of other users.

c. Push

After finishing the answer, coordinate with other accounts to interact with the answer (do not use the same IP or mobile client to like).

The interaction time is set between 6:30 pm and 7 pm (the most popular answers at this time can get the most user attention). If you collect 40 likes, your answer can be pushed to the most popular column of the day.

d. aim

In addition to the essential questions, Lao A also keeps an eye on hot topics. The most brutal way to deal with it is that Old A will go to wherever the topic is most popular.

When encountering a more controversial topic, Mr. A will seize the opportunity, quickly take sides, and start a fight with the other team. In the process of "tearing", clarify one's own position and stance, and cause a certain degree of "controversy" while complying with Zhihu rules.

Through the above four methods, Lao A helped the main account accumulate a certain base of fans.

② Advanced stage

Through early accumulation, Lao A had accumulated 1,000 fans, which was considered a small V in the Zhihu environment at the time. He then entered the core stage of operation and promotion , with the goal of increasing volume and promoting the brand.

In this regard, what specific things did Mr. A do?

a. Focus

Compared with the "wide net casting" in the early stage, Mr. A began to focus on pet-related topics in this stage, and cleverly attached the company's promotional materials in his answers (the specific operating methods were the same as the first stage).

The answers in this stage are related to the publicity effect, so Mr. A made more sufficient preparations before answering than in the first stage. First, we divided the pet-related topics on Zhihu into the following categories:

Answers to the first type of topics should highlight professionalism; answers to the second type of topics should be humorous and interesting; participation in the third type of topics should appear intimate and real (ensure the quality of photos and videos); participation in the fourth type of topics should focus on emotional expression.

b. Build momentum

Combine current hot events with events related to the company's products to create special events. The most important thing is to raise some interesting and practical questions in the topic you initiated, and then mobilize the main account and other small accounts to answer them.

When planning the special event, Mr. A has already thought about which accounts will raise questions, what kind of questions to ask, which accounts will answer, and from which angles to answer.

At the same time, in order to reduce the suspicion of "multiple accounts cooperating to publish advertisements", Mr. A will appropriately disperse the time of answering and use different language styles (distinguishing words and tones) to answer, so as to avoid letting the Zhihu platform discover that it is the same person operating.

Mr. A said that making arrangements in advance like this can clarify the division of labor and cooperation among various numbers, predict some risks that may occur in the process, and evaluate the final results.

③ Detonation stage

During this stage, Mr. A’s main goal is to detonate the final operational promotion. The core logic is to establish a brand and drive fan growth through brand influence.

The specific operation includes the following parts:

a. Planning

Mr. A plans in advance the brand topics to be promoted on Zhihu based on the company's major marketing events over the years. I will not go into the details of the specific planning scheme here.

At the very least, it is necessary to clarify what kind of topic volume this topic will drive and what kind of fan growth it will achieve. It is necessary to communicate well with the partners of this topic (Zhihu's professional operation team) or big names in the pet-related field, coordinate the roles of various small accounts, and the key indicators to focus on at each time point.

b. Cooperation

When the time was right, Mr. A contacted some big names in the industry to build momentum for the topic, such as forwarding activities, sharing stories, and senior reviews. (PS: After the Wei Zexi incident , Zhihu banned a large number of big V accounts)

Lao A said that the comments involved here were actually prepared by her for these teams and big names. Of course, the final version released was the result of full communication between both parties.

The "cooperation" mentioned here only serves to add icing on the cake. No matter which stage you reach, you still have to rely on yourself to package the content and discover gameplay routines. We must always stand on the user's side, sincerely think about what the user thinks, and hit the user's needs or pain points.

4) Zhihu institutional account operation

On July 20, 2016, Zhihu launched institutional accounts (enterprise accounts). Lao A began to switch to institutional account operations in August 2017. To date, their account has more than 17,000 followers.

Lao A said that the underlying routines for operating institutional accounts are actually the same as those for personal accounts. As for the specific rules, you can check the contents of the "Zhihu Institutional Account Service Agreement."

Compared with personal accounts, institutional accounts are more tested on the ability to package content, but once the content is eye-catching, the brand advantages and professionalism of corporate accounts are also extremely obvious.

Lao A used the same method he used to operate his personal account and was selected into the Zhihu official institutional account rising star list in the second month.

Of course, Mr. A really put a lot of thought into the topic selection and packaging copywriting :

100,000+ replies cannot be achieved by relying on small accounts or other forms of interaction. You must work hard on the content.

How to coordinate resources

Finally, I summarized some resource coordination issues when Lao A promoted his brand through Zhihu channel for your reference.

1) Staffing

Mr. A arranged a full-time staff member at that time to be responsible for the registration of small accounts (you can also buy small accounts on Taobao ) and the tracking of data and results in specific operations.

Depending on the situation, you can consider whether to increase the number of content output personnel (text content, video content, image content), because high-quality content is so important in channel operations.

2) Relationship maintenance

In order to avoid adverse consequences such as account blocking and to handle account blocking matters efficiently, Mr. A very cleverly contacted Zhihu's internal operations staff in advance and established a good relationship with them.

Especially in the later stage of institutional account operation, Zhihu invited institutional accounts with level V 6 to form the "Zhihu Salt Value Explosive Group".

In addition to coordinating and maintaining external resources, we must also pay attention to close cooperation between teams, especially when cooperation among multiple parties is required to complete the entire channel operation and promotion.

3) Cost Estimate

For Mr. A's experience, it was mainly the third stage (detonation) that incurred costs. In fact, in the end it was found that not much money was spent.

First, make it clear how many big names you want to invite and how much each one will cost, then you can work out the total cost required. For different operating strategies, the required expenses will definitely be different, so everyone needs to make arrangements based on their own actual situation.

Summarize

Lao A’s sharing this time is based on an operation case of the Zhihu channel, and her solution is also applicable to other channels.

The overall logic is: use data to verify channel quality → study channel rules → formulate operation strategies (break down each stage) → sort out the resources needed to operate the channel

1) Before selecting a channel, you need to analyze the channel flow and the correlation between the channel and the business based on the data.

2) Before starting formal operations, understand the channel rules, especially those that are relevant to you.

3) If you are worried about your post being deleted, in addition to packaging the content well, you can also try to get in touch with the operators within the channel.

4) When formulating an operational strategy, it is best to divide it into several stages and subdivide the goals to be achieved in each stage.

Author: Taolu Editorial Department, authorized to publish by Qinggua Media.

Source: Operation Research Society (U_quan)