It’s difficult to increase followers! How to scientifically and effectively increase the rate of followers of public accounts through pictures and texts?

• 《XXX gained 50,000 followers for one article》
• "XXX gained 100,000 new followers through 4 articles in one month"
• "XXX gained 1 million followers in three months and raised 5 million in Series A funding "

This is the kind of article that we often see on WeChat Moments .

Anyway, the public account is great.

Everything is good!

But when I look at my own public account again, it is still very miserable. I post articles every day, but the points just don’t go up. I think this is basically the pain of all editors.

Indeed, there are only 1% of public accounts that go viral, while 99% of public accounts have lower and lower opening rates for WeChat pictures and texts, and fewer and fewer followers. Even if they work hard to increase the number of readers, users just don’t pay attention after reading them.

How can this increase the number of followers?

So in such a tragic and difficult situation, how can we scientifically and effectively increase the rate of increase in followers of public accounts through pictures and texts?

(Note that this is not talking about the general increase in followers of public accounts, but specifically refers to the increase in followers of public accounts through pictures and texts. That is, the increase in followers brought about by a specific article being published, not the increase in followers through activities, mutual promotion, or external promotion.)

After all, it is a pity to write an article with great difficulty and get a lot of readers but users do not pay attention to it after reading it.

what to do? Rectification and optimization?

Yes, optimize!

So should we start a vigorous revision campaign right away?

Well, we need to change this and adjust that, change, change, change!

NO! This definitely won’t work. Even if you guess right sometimes, it’s still wrong. If we rely solely on empiricism, we will definitely not be able to cope with it.

In my opinion, most people die here. When they encounter a problem, they start working on it immediately without analyzing the cause or planning ahead. They just make changes as they can.

This is not good for either solving problems or developing long-term thinking habits.

Here I would like to recommend a good idea to everyone. To solve most problems, you only need to carefully implement these 5 steps!

Throw out the problem to be solved - analyze the problem - propose a hypothesis - verify it - solve the problem.

The first thing to do is of course to raise the problem to be solved: How to scientifically increase the rate of increase in followers of public accounts through pictures and texts!

Then, what we should do is to analyze which key items can effectively affect the number of followers of a picture or text, and propose hypotheses.

If you don’t even know the possible influencing factors, how can you eliminate them one by one? Find the factors that can truly increase the rate of followers of your public account pictures and texts and provide the best solution?

The next step is to verify and find the key items that can really have the greatest impact on the increase in the number of followers of your picture or article.

You should know that the influencing factors we analyzed earlier are only possibilities, or just assumptions. They are not the real reasons because the assumptions have not been verified.

At this step, another group of people will die, because proposing hypotheses and the final results are two completely different things.

Most people's approach is based on experience. They randomly think of one or two factors that can increase the number of followers of pictures and texts, and then they pat their chests and say that this must be the cause, and then they go all out and make drastic changes.

If this is not verified, it is very likely to result in wasted efforts on the wrong direction, or you will narrow down the possibilities and run into a dead end.

Therefore, all unverified reasons are not the real reasons, and all unverified influencing factors are not necessarily the key influencing factors that need to be optimized.

Testing your hypothesis is critical and is part of problem solving.

Here, I will focus on two items: proposing hypotheses and conducting verification.

1. Formulate a hypothesis

Often after we have a clear idea of ​​the problem we want to solve, we need to analyze the problem and then propose our own hypotheses based on the current situation.

Proposing a hypothesis is based on the previous analysis. Here, Lao Zei is doing both analyzing the problem and proposing a hypothesis at the same time.

Regarding "how to scientifically and effectively increase the rate of increase in followers of public accounts through pictures and texts", I have put forward hypotheses from four aspects.

1) The amount of reading of pictures and texts will directly affect the number of fans

If no one reads a picture or text after it is posted, there will naturally be no increase in fans if there is no reading volume.

Just like in general, for the same public account, the number of followers brought by an article with 100 reads and an article with 2000 reads are different.

So here is the hypothesis:

● Does your graphic title arouse users’ curiosity and make them willing to open it? Optimizing the title should increase article reading volume and bring more fans.

● Is your cover image interesting? Is it attractive enough? Can it encourage people to click and open? Optimizing the cover image should also work.

● Does your graphic summary encourage users to click on the graphic? This will also affect the opening rate of pictures and texts and the opening rate of sharing.

● In addition, is your push notification time during the peak reading time for your target users ? The time of tweeting will also directly affect the final reading volume of the picture and text. You can refer to "When is the best time to push articles on public accounts? The latest authoritative data interpretation)

…

Of course, we don’t mention here how to increase article reading volume by promoting pictures and texts to each other, external promotion and traffic diversion , multi-platform publishing, etc., because our focus here is on increasing the natural increase in fans of a picture and text.

However, there is a problem with the reading volume. If most of the reading volume comes from within the official account, then no matter how many readings it has, it will not bring new fans.

So this leads to the next point.

2) The increase in followers is from users other than the official account

We must pay attention to this point: the new follow-up behavior is for external users.

New followers must come from people who have not yet followed your official account, not from people who have already followed it. This is the essential difference. We want to make those who are not following us when they read the article follow us.

Therefore, only when the article is shared in large quantities can external users see our article and may they pay attention to it in the future.

At this time, the problem is that only when “people who have already followed” share the article and let more “people who haven’t followed yet” see it, can it get more attention, right?

So, the first question to address is why do “people who are already following” share your article?

This is actually the same as what we say about marketing and advertising: give users a reason to buy.

If you want users to share, you also need to give them a reason to share. In fact, everyone likes to share. How many people have you seen who can keep a secret? But people are all profit-seeking, so who would share without a reason?

This brings us back to the “ social currency” that was emphasized in “Go Viral” and “Social Currency” and is used by many Internet celebrities and IPs.

The concept of social currency has been mentioned by Mumu Laozei before. To put it simply, when we forward and share on WeChat, we are, to a large extent, packaging and improving ourselves, shaping our personal image or consolidating our social status.

There is also a concept called "self-completion".

Self-completion means that this content is basically consistent with our views, cognition, attitudes, pursuits, etc., is recognized and accepted by us, and helps us strengthen and improve our inherent image and values.

Everyone needs to shape their self-image, which requires sharing and expression, so there is an urgent need for social currency that can be used for "self-shaping".

This social currency mainly includes:

● Provide users with topics for conversation: Can your content provide users with topics for conversation?

● Help users express their ideas: Can your content help users say what they want to say? Especially when they want to say something but can’t for various reasons?

● Help users shape/consolidate their image: Can your content help users shape/reinforce the image they want?

● Satisfy users’ needs to help others: Can your content be shared by users to help their friends? Can sharing and forwarding help users maintain good relationships with others?

● Promote social comparison/satisfy users’ competitive psychology: Can your content make them look more prestigious? More profound? More stylish? Richer?

If your content can provide enough social currency (provide topics for conversation, help others, showcase your image, help with expression, and promote comparison), it will greatly increase the chances of being forwarded and shared.

Therefore, these points are also several influencing factors that indirectly increase the number of fans.

3) Can the content itself retain people?

Even if the reading volume of pictures and texts is very high, even if there are many new external readers, if people just click on it, your content will not retain people or will not be recognized by everyone.

That's useless and won't bring any substantial forwarding. So it can also be derived:

● Is the quality of your content among similar public accounts?

Have you ever compared your content with that of similar public accounts? Do you have very strict requirements for your content? Are you working harder than them to create high-quality content?

The more we do for our readers, the more support they will give us. It's a mutual relationship. Readers are not fools, they will choose a public account with better content.

● Does your content create a sliding scale effect for readers?

When a new reader reads our article, although any point at any time may trigger the desire to pay attention, the behavior of paying attention usually occurs after the reader has finished reading.

There are very few cases where readers stop reading midway and choose to follow, so when new readers come, the first thing we need to do is to reduce the situation where readers close the article midway and maximize the possibility of readers reading the entire article.

The purpose of creating the "slide effect" is that every sentence, every picture, and every element in our copy is to make readers start reading the copy immediately until they finish reading the last sentence.

It's like the slide game at the playground, sliding down the slide. Even if you hold on to the handrail, it won't help. Under the influence of gravity, kinetic energy begins to be generated as you slide down.

This is the effect we want to achieve in our article. All elements in the copy must produce a slide effect, so that your readers cannot stop reading the copy, just like sliding down a slide.

For example, we can:

① Arouse the reader’s interest from the beginning. The purpose of the first sentence is to get the reader to read the second sentence. The purpose of the second sentence is to get the reader to read the third sentence… and so on.

② Use more short sentences and compact narration to keep readers wanting more, which can create good tension.

③ At the end of a paragraph, use a very short sentence to entice readers to continue reading. For example, “Here comes the really exciting part.”

④ Let your readers keep saying "yes" and let them resonate with you when reading your article.

⑤ Construct the logical order of the article in advance so that your readers can always find the answer to the question in the next sentence.

…

● Is your content positioned vertically or continuously, making users want to watch it continuously?

This is also the key factor in whether the content can retain users. Just like offline sales, it is usually difficult to close a deal with a customer during the first visit. It often requires 4 to 16 consecutive visits.

The same principle applies to readers reading the content of your official account. When they see your article for the first time, they may think it is good, but they may not choose to follow it.

When they see your article for the second or third time and find that it is highly vertical and focused on one field, they are more likely to pay attention to it.

● Now there are more and more similar public accounts. Is your public account obviously differentiated?

This is the key factor in whether users choose to follow. If they are all the same, users will definitely not bother to follow.

One of the biggest obstacles to the operation of public accounts at present is the serious homogeneity, not only the homogeneity of categories, but also the homogeneity of topics and even the homogeneity of content.

For a similar public account and a similar article, why would readers choose to follow us instead of others?

The most direct way is to add some differences to the official account and to this article, preferably differences that exceed expectations, making the experience more satisfying.

For example, comfortable layout, special pictures, diverse content forms, more interactions, etc.

In addition, there is one thing that is most different from other public accounts, that is, your style, or the personalized attributes of the public account. Does this suit the tastes of your target users?

Today's readers, especially the younger ones, not only pay attention to the content, but also pay attention to whether the style is what they like. Just like making friends, they will look for people they can talk to.

I have seen many public accounts whose content is not that good, but their personality is very obvious and they have won the favor of many fans.

In short, we can add more stylish and distinctive elements to the official account. In the existing section, it has its own characteristics. The more obvious the differentiated features are, the more likely new readers are to pay attention to it.

● Are the core highlights of the content obvious and easy to grasp?

In the era of fragmented reading, users' attention is always less focused. Readers tend to scan and read quickly or jump around. At this time, many key parts of our articles may be directly ignored.

This will definitely affect the user attention rate.

There is a simplest method that everyone can do easily.

Just mark the core part of your picture and text, you can make it bold, add color, underline, etc. On the one hand, it allows readers to see it easily, and on the other hand, it strengthens and highlights these core highlights.

In this way, even if readers increase their reading speed, they can still easily get the key information in our article, so that they will not have nothing to remember after reading an article, which will lead to a loss of desire to pay attention.

● Is it possible to increase user attention again at the end of your article?

Although any point when a reader reads an article may trigger his or her decision to follow your official account, the ending is always the key point.

If a reader reads from the beginning to the end of the text or graphic, the likelihood of paying attention in the end is greatly increased. At this time, if the project is left unfinished, it will be a big loss.

Here are some suggestions for hypothetical items at the end of the article that can increase user attention:

• You can summarize the whole article and give a brief summary of the whole article to help readers sort out their thoughts;
• You can emphasize your point again, elevate the theme, and let users get your point firmly.
• You can just throw out some chicken soup, just to impress you nakedly;
• You can create golden sentences or quote famous sayings to instantly enhance your style, which will also stimulate readers to share;
• You can also throw out a topic specifically to spark discussion;
• You can also make a preview of the next issue to attract your readers and pay attention, the next issue will be more exciting.
• …

Of course, which method is suitable for your official account needs to be verified.

In short, even if you can't think of a good ending, don't use a bunch of irrelevant nonsense. Even just an END is better than a bad ending.

4) Are there enough details in the graphic to guide new users’ attention?

In addition to the above analytical assumptions, there are also some operational techniques that may greatly affect the rate of increase in followers of pictures and texts, and they are very direct.

● Does the head have something novel to draw attention?

As we all know, you can directly click on the blue public account name at the top of the public account picture and text to follow the public account. This is also an important way for new users to follow the public account.

Most readers are in a state where they can pay attention or not, so an obvious prompt will serve as a "psychological suggestion".

For example, you can use a very simple and crude way to direct attention:

● Is the introduction of the official account clear enough?

We usually give readers a recommendation for the public account in the picture and text, or an introduction to the public account’s positioning.

This is also a key factor in increasing the attention rate of pictures and texts on public accounts.

Because most public accounts are not very well-known, readers may not know what you do or what you will do next after reading an article, so they are unknown to you.

Therefore, we need to strengthen the recommendation of the official account and tell readers:

What do we do, what problems are we solving, what is our style and tone, who are we mainly targeting, what are our advantages, do we have any endorsements, etc.

● Do you simply put a QR code to follow, or add a sentence to guide?

Sometimes, the only thing between a user’s “final decision” and “starting action” is a “guidance”. At this time, one more straw will overwhelm all resistance from users.

The same goes for the follow QR code at the bottom or head of the official account article (mostly placed at the bottom, a few are placed at the head). It is much better to attach a sentence to guide attention than to simply put a follow QR code, and the behavioral guidance is more obvious.

● Can you reply with keywords /prepare some “small gifts”

This method is often used to increase user attention rate. It allows readers to reply to corresponding keywords in the background after reading the article to obtain things that have been set in advance.

This method has been used by many public accounts for a long time and is placed at the bottom of the article.

If what you provide is really needed by readers, not only will it not be resisted by readers, but it will also greatly increase readers' favorability towards the official account.

For example, you can do what Luoji Siwei did before, and recommend an article every day; for example, you can prepare some information packages/ tool ​​kits/discount packages for readers.

In addition, we can also prepare some small gifts for readers in the article, such as books, red envelope passwords, privileged services, memberships, etc., which can further increase the possibility of readers paying attention after reading the article.

● Do your articles often receive some user interactions?

We often say that in order to make public accounts more popular, in addition to high-quality content, we can also pay more attention to user interaction.

For example, at the end of Mi Meng , there are various content collections, Xin Shi Xiang has evening prayers, Chuangbian Wang Shi has meditation moments, Late Night Fa Ugly has topic discussions, Black Horse Commune has wonderful comments from the previous issue, and Chan Chuangyi has various shameless votes...

These are all small interactions that these big accounts have explored in the long-term operation process. They match their own positioning or business and are also liked by users. These forms may be updated and iterated by themselves, but the operational thinking remains unchanged.

The most commonly used form of interaction among public accounts nowadays is probably topic interaction. There must be a reason why so many accounts are using it.

In addition, interactions can include:

You can add a heartfelt comment or a small thought at the end of the picture or article every day; you can answer a question that fans ask the most every day; you can collect readers' stories at the bottom and then publish them; you can even recommend a core fan's personal WeChat every day...

I have recommended these methods to many people. They not only increase activity but also increase the possibility of fans following them. For some public accounts, the daily interactions at the bottom have even become a highlight, and people follow them just to see this.

● Does your article provide more rich content for new readers?

This method is also relatively common. You can recommend more high-quality articles in the form of pictures/titles/tag clouds at the bottom of the text and pictures.

For example, I will randomly recommend previous articles at the bottom of my own pictures and texts. When I have enough time, I will recommend the most relevant articles to the pictures and texts one by one:

This method allows readers to read more helpful content, and also allows readers to quickly judge the content quality and direction of your official account.

Of course, the most direct effect is that it will invisibly make readers feel that at least the content of our account is rich and good and is worth paying attention to.

Well, that’s all the analysis and assumptions about “How to increase the rate of followers of public accounts through pictures and texts”. Everyone must remember that all of the above are based on experience and assumptions, and whether they are ultimately feasible still needs to be verified.

There is no 100% universal solution. Something may be suitable for all public accounts but not for yours; or it may be suitable only for you. You won’t know if you don’t verify it.

There may still be a long way to go between proposing a hypothesis and ultimately verifying a feasible solution, so it’s not over yet.

2. Verify

The next step is to verify the hypothesis.

First of all, we need to eliminate some weak-impact hypotheses or hypotheses that cannot be realized temporarily based on the current situation of the official account itself, and then make a good plan and verify the most likely items one by one.

For example, your push time has been optimized many times and is very reasonable; your content upgrade problem is difficult to be solved in a short period of time; the core highlights of your content have been revealed; the ending of your article has formed an effective form; your public account introduction has been polished and clear enough; the bottom of your article has provided readers with more rich content recommendations...

So these can be ignored for the time being.

Speaking of verifying hypotheses, anything involving verification testing requires some "changes" to be made basically beforehand. How can changes occur for no reason if there are no changes?

However, since it is a "change", does your "change" make the goal better or worse?

This is definitely something you need to be aware of, but many public account operators are often making changes, but they are limited to changes and do not know whether the changes have brought about changes. They just keep changing.

This will bring a lot of uncertainty and misleading to our operations. You will never know what will drive the final increase and you can only go by your feeling.

In my opinion, operations also require science.

Similarly, Lao Zei recommends a verification idea to everyone, which also has 5 steps!

First, determine your operational goals in advance; then determine the key indicators that can verify whether the hypothetical strategy is feasible; then formulate and implement new strategies (changes); then count the key data in the test cycle before and after the "change"; finally, verify whether the key goals have been improved.

Well, regarding “increasing the rate of followers of public accounts through pictures and texts”, I will go through this idea here.

1) Determine operational goals

Determine your operational goals, that is, what purpose you want to achieve through this "change". All subsequent steps are designed based on your operational goals.

Here, our goal is very simple, which is to effectively increase the rate of increase in followers of public accounts through pictures and texts through some new operational strategies.

2) Identify key indicators that can verify whether the hypothetical strategy is feasible

The so-called key indicators are some key items that can be used to verify whether the goals are achieved.

How can we verify whether the number of followers of the official account through pictures and texts has increased?

To be honest, there is no data on how many fans a picture or article brings in on the official account. So we can only make a rough estimate.

In the [User Analysis] function of the official account, we can count the total number of fans that have increased on that day from the official account name in the picture and text page, the menu in the upper right corner of the picture and text, business card sharing, other totals, and the total number of fans brought by scanning the QR code.

Obviously, there are a lot of interference factors. However, you can compare the difference in the number of followers gained by publishing different content to indirectly evaluate its ability to increase followers.

Therefore, here I set this key indicator as the difference in the total number of fans increased as mentioned above. As for the data deviation caused by the natural increase in fans, 2%-5% of the impact is deducted in the calculation process.

Please note that we are not doing scientific research, so we do not need to calculate all the key indicators very accurately. We only need to select some of them that can truly reflect the changes in the targets.

3) Formulate and implement new operating strategies

This is our new operational strategy to achieve this operational goal. What we want to verify is whether this strategy is effective and can achieve the goal.

We have already given a lot of analysis and assumptions on this point. Here we will verify the strategy of "adding a sentence to guide the QR code".

Once the test items are determined, we need to make detailed plans for each strategy accordingly. For example, what is this one-sentence guide copy? How many sets of copywriting should be prepared? How long is the testing cycle? In what form does it appear? etc.

Here we decided to prepare two groups of guiding texts, A and B, and then test each for one week. The format is to make a picture directly together with the attention QR code.

It should be noted that when executing these test items, do not perform them at the same time, because this will interfere with each other and it will be impossible to accurately judge whether each influencing item is effective and how effective it is.

It is best to test them separately so that they do not interfere with each other.

4) Count the key data in the test cycle before and after the "change"

This step is the simplest. You only need to collect data corresponding to the key indicators determined previously. Note that before you start implementing your changes, you must make a good statistical record of the previous "before change" data.

Here, we have counted the total increase in followers of pictures and texts every day before and after the verification, and made a table. (Be careful not to have too much interference during the test, such as large-scale activities, if there are any, they can be eliminated)

5) Verify whether key goals have been improved

At this step, we will make the final calculation. We can see that the number of fans in the Group B test increased by 158 compared to the Group A test. However, as mentioned earlier, we need to deduct 2%-5% of the impact of fan growth.

Since there were no activities or external promotions, the number of fans naturally increased not much, and it was mainly from pictures and texts, so it is calculated here as 2%.

That is to say, the difference between the increase brought by the introductory words of Group B and those of Group A = 1661*(1-2%)-1503=124, which is an 8% increase before and after the change. After comparison, it is feasible.

By the same token, we can continue to verify the key influencing factors of other hypotheses, continue testing and refining, and ultimately obtain a better improvement plan.

In short, when it comes to solving operational problems, we cannot rely solely on feelings or pure experience to achieve our goals. We need to know whether any changes we make are valuable. We cannot just do it without summarizing.

Especially for those strategies that others have done well, we also need to verify them on our own official accounts. We must verify them. Sometimes, simply adopting something that is not only useless but may even kill you.

Therefore, proposing a hypothesis and verifying a hypothesis are two completely different things. There is a big difference between "analyzed" and "done".

Then, after continuous verification, small details were directly changed during the verification, such as the guide to the QR code above.

As for the major key influencing items, such as content direction, adding sharing elements, personalized style, vertical positioning, etc., once a good direction is tested, we will ultimately focus on solving the problem.

So far, this is my entire thought process and operation direction.

Okay, that’s all I have to say. I hope it’s useful to you.