How did 12 top accounts including Xinbang, Guokr, and Liushenleilei complete their first small goal?

All things are difficult at the beginning, especially for those who have just switched to new media , they are all worried about how to acquire the first batch of users. We interviewed 12 top WeChat public account managers to talk about how they obtained their first batch of seed users .

01. "Liu Shenleilei reads Jin Yong"

The key is not to promote it manually, but to serve 100 people first.

Hello everyone, my name is Liu Shenleilei. I have a very strange job, which is to interpret Jin Yong’s martial arts novels. Today I will talk to you about how I got my first batch of users.

Actually, it is very simple to say. I posted it on WeChat Moments a few times before, and about a hundred people followed it, and the number of people is gradually increasing.

I found that at the beginning most of them were colleagues, then peers appeared, then relatives of peers appeared, then colleagues of relatives of peers appeared, then relatives of colleagues of relatives of peers appeared. In short, the circle expanded little by little, breaking through one wall after another, and slowly more and more people came.

It seems that the method of forcibly pushing things to the circle of friends is what we call "human push", which means human recommendation. Nowadays, in some companies, bosses will be unhappy if their employees don’t do nude sex.

In fact, how to promote it is not the key, the key is that the content must be good. For example, if you have 100 people at the beginning, serve these 100 people well, or at least don’t feel disgusted with them. If you feel disgusted with them, no matter how good your relationship is with them, you will not push the service to the 1,000 people.

Now we are particularly anxious about the lack of channels, but when you only have 100 people, do you expect to serve 10,000 people if you don’t serve them well? This is unrealistic.

There are also some people who, when talking about other people's success, are particularly good at finding excuses for others, such as "he is different, he has channels", "he started early, he caught the window period". Anyway, I myself don't have any channels.

Instead of making excuses for others, it is better to do the content well yourself.

02. "Business Style"

A group of good friends

Hello everyone, I am Deng Wei, the founder of Business Fan. Today I will talk to you about how we at Business Fan obtained our first batch of seed users.

Regarding this issue, there are mainly four aspects. First of all, I started the "Business Fan" in 2013. At that time, I had the advantage of being early. There were not many people running public accounts, and the competition was not as fierce as it is now.

Second, it’s very simple. Of course, after you create a public account, you have to be thick-skinned. For example, I recommended it to all my friends on WeChat and asked them to follow it.

Third, I joined a reliable organization at that time. For example, I was working on the Rhino Finance Self-Media Alliance at that time, and I was the leader. Later, the number of members in our alliance grew to hundreds. For example, the "Visual Magazine", "Financial Gossip Girl", "Wall Street Journal" and so on that everyone is familiar with today, these are all partners I met in the early days of the alliance.

Our alliance members will also recommend each other, and the effect of this recommendation will be better. It was very rare for us to have a public account at that time. After people followed you, they would want to follow other public accounts. When you recommend something to users, they will be very interested.

Fourth, if you want to attract and retain users, the most important thing is what content you post. At that time, we found a very interesting positioning. The English word for business fan is Buiness Fan, and ours is pronounced as "zhuangbi fan". Our positioning is a guide to showing off, covering all aspects of business people, such as what suit to wear, what watch to bring, and what car to drive.

All of our authors, including myself, produce content that revolves around the topic of showing off. These contents were also forwarded in the circle of friends, and eventually we accumulated the first batch of seed users.

03. " Book List "

Study on the dissemination rules of WeChat articles

Hello everyone, I am Zhijun from the WeChat public account Book List.

How did "Booklist" get its first batch of seed users? In fact, it can be summed up in three words: create content.

At the beginning, all members of our team came from traditional media. We knew that it was not so easy to create a good content, so from the very beginning, we spent a lot of time studying how articles on WeChat public accounts were spread.

I remember we also drew a chain at that time.

So when we are looking for topics and writing articles, we will consciously focus on these key points. When expressing, we will also change our way of expression to make the article more in line with the expression of WeChat public accounts.

I remember the legendary copywriter Joseph Sugarman saying:

In an advertisement, all elements appear first to encourage readers to read the first sentence of the copy, then the second sentence, and the third sentence.

In fact, the same is true when we create content. From the title, introduction, main text, to the ending, there will be some hooks in every place to attract users to continue reading, so we will polish it again and again in the process of completing the entire article.

For example, the title. Although we didn't say we had as many as 100, it's common to have dozens of titles. We will choose different titles, then compare them, and everyone will choose and vote to see which title is the most attractive and can best express the meaning of the article.

Before pushing the article, we will send it to some friends for testing to see what details need to be optimized.

The first explosive growth in the number of users of Booklist was in May last year. At that time, we published an article titled "I picked up a few girls with Uber and came back to transform a company." The article was read more than 2 million times in three days, and more than 500 public accounts reposted the article, which increased the number of users by 20,000 to 30,000.

This article page did not come about suddenly. Rather, when we were polishing this article, we used the methods I mentioned earlier. We put a lot of thought into everything from the title, introduction, to the main text, to the ending. It took us a week to complete this article.

Up to now, our requirements for content have not changed, and are becoming increasingly stringent.

Because for a public account like ours that focuses on content , good content is worth our time to produce and polish . Then the value he brings sometimes exceeds our imagination.

The above is some small experience in achieving the first small goal of the book list. I hope it will be helpful to everyone. Thank you.

04. Aspirin Museum

If you put your heart into every article, users will naturally stick to you.

Hello everyone, I am Yue Ge from the Aspirin Museum. Today I would like to talk to you about how our Aspirin Museum acquired its first batch of seed users?

The Aspirin Museum published its first article on November 3, 2014. The first article I published at that time was called "Dark Fairy Tale", which was an integrated series about dark fairy tale movies. The first article I wrote when I first opened the account received more than 3,000 views, which I thought was pretty good.

Then the second article wrote about the love story of Abramović and Ulay, called "An Artist Should Not Fall in Love with Another Artist." This article was the second article I wrote on my account, but it received over 3 million views at the time.

In fact, I also feel that I am quite lucky because when I wrote the second article. In fact, there is very little information about Abramović and Ulay’s performance art works in the country. Because that was in 2014, and I had just watched their documentary and found it very interesting.

Then I went to some foreign websites to find their information, added some of my own ideas, and put together this article. Then this article gained 50,000 followers.

This is a good start. After the second article, I realized that content is very important for a new media copywriting manuscript. So after the third article, I would look for interesting things in each article that I might not normally see, but that I find very interesting.

So starting from this basic fan base, I update some interesting things every day. The next first batch of fans will be based on the 50,000 people who will forward and recommend it.

Early users were really attracted by the content, so they have very high stickiness and will stay permanently. I now have nearly 500,000 fans, and those early fans are still here.

They have been following the site since the first article until now, because if every article is written with care, the fan stickiness will be very high.

So my first batch of seed users were attracted by the content, and then they stayed in the "Aspirin Museum".

05. "Financial Gossip Girl"

First the gossip was spread on Weibo, then the sublimation was spread on WeChat

Hello everyone, I am Suzy from Financial Gossip Girl. Today I’m here to talk to you about how we at “Financial Gossip Girl” acquired our first batch of seed users.

Speaking of seed users, we actually gathered together on Weibo. I remember that the first Weibo post we sent out was about the gossip about the extramarital affair of a certain fund tycoon, and we named the person by name, so it quickly received hundreds of reposts, and our fans also grew from 0 to 3,000.

Although this Weibo post was later deleted, the reputation of the entire financial gossip girl has spread in the circle. Everyone knows that there is a gossip girl on Weibo who dares to speak the truth and expose secrets, so if anyone has any explosive gossip in the circle, they will send it to us as soon as possible.

Therefore, these seed users will continue to give us information, and then we will continue to attract more users through these information and gossip . This was one of the ways we initially gathered seed users on Weibo, and it was mainly based on content.

Of course, a lot of our content at that time was shared and reposted by some big accounts, and it was through these big accounts that the entire content received greater exposure .

What we just talked about was how "Financial Gossip Girl" obtained the first batch of seed users on Weibo. When it came to WeChat, of course we directed the first batch of seed users through Weibo.

However, later on, what really attracted users on WeChat was not limited to just explosive gossip. We also upgraded the spirit of gossip and refined it into a spirit of doubt and exploration.

Therefore, the gossip content we posted later was actually not limited to the small gossip revelations posted on Weibo. We might pay more attention to long-form content and more in-depth content on WeChat. Of course, we also created this depth with the spirit of gossip.

For example, we previously gossiped about what kind of person Zuckerberg is. In fact, this kind of gossip is relatively positive. Everyone wants to know what kind of life this new type of rich person that everyone is interested in has. This is also a very positive gossip. Content like this is still very popular.

Okay, that’s all for today, thank you everyone.

06. "Here comes the poisonous tongue"

In addition to analyzing the platform mechanism, you also need to establish a personal ID

Hello everyone, I am Gao Xiaomao, the sharp-tongued one, also known as the sharp-tongued grandma CC.

After seeing the 100 million yesterday, I felt a little nervous, but then I thought: Everyone has dreams, what if they come true?

Let’s not talk about the one hundred million. Today I’m going to tell you how I accumulated the 10,000th user.

In fact, before I started my WeChat public account, I wrote articles on Douban, and at that time I studied the entire operating mechanism of Douban.

For example, his group is "The article is famous but the person is not." In other words, people enjoy reading the posts, but have no motivation to pay attention to other updates of the person who wrote the post.

There is also another one which is Douban’s homepage, which is completely different from the group’s stuff.

The content of the homepage tends to be chicken soup and literary. The main carriers are basically chicken soup articles, fashion articles, and very beautifully organized photo albums. This kind of content will be more popular in personal accounts.

But here comes the problem: it is very difficult to obtain seed users with a personal account on Douban.

So what I did was to start by posting on the forum, and then keep promoting my personal ID in this post. When my personal ID had about 500 or 800 followers, I started writing chicken soup for the soul.

I still remember the name of that chicken soup, it was called "Give me the appearance of a goddess and the heart of a man". At that time, which was probably around the end of 2013 and the beginning of 2014, this type of chicken soup was still relatively rare.

Douban has a mechanism that if you get only 10 or 20 reposts in a short period of time, the system will recognize it and report it to its editor, who will then push you to the front page.

Then I was on the Douban homepage for the first time, and I think I had two to three thousand followers within two or three days. I continued to work hard and wrote a few more inspirational articles, and later I had 10,000 followers.

This is how I got my 10,000th fan. I hope this little experience can help you.

07. "ONE·Literary Life"

Create leaders and establish key players

Hello everyone, I am Xiaofan from "ONE·Literary Life". Today, let’s talk about how we “ONE” acquired the first batch of seed users.

In fact, we are quite special. Our initial motivation was a book called "The Chorus", because this book was very famous in that era, right?

When we turned from traditional media to mobile Internet , we were naturally equipped with some advantages. Taking into account those unexplainable reasons, we had some taboos and some new choices when making "ONE".

The name "ONE·Literary Life" is also chosen in the hope that the platform will focus more on literature and art and become a high-quality life companion.

At first, we captured about dozens of very powerful and high-quality authors, who provided content for us "ONE", and we shared and pushed it on WeChat. In other words, they provide content on both our APP and WeChat at the same time. Of course, at that time, we also cooperated with the fancy promotion on Weibo.

These authors have become our important leaders and key figures besides Han Han.

On the one hand, we strengthen the advantages of these authors, and on the other hand, we let our users recognize these authors while also recognizing the interests of our editorial department and platform. I understand that this kind of recognition of interest is very important.

Thank you everyone.

08. "Guokr.com"

It has become a popular science media, just do your best

Hello everyone, I am Xu Lai, the editor-in-chief of Guokr.com. Today I will talk to you about how Guokr.com and Guokr.com’s official account acquired seed users .

The first one is Guokr.com. When Guokr.com was first launched, it consisted almost entirely of 15 theme sites and was a popular science media.

Such popular science media could be said to be the only standing force for science communication in China’s Internet environment at the time, so all we had to do was do our best. As soon as there is any sign of trouble, everyone will come to see you.

The March 11, 2011 earthquake in Japan and the subsequent nuclear crisis are such events. This was the first time that Guokr.com crashed due to too many active visits.

The second is the official account of Guokr.com. We have always paid great attention to the construction of channels for content output . We set up a corresponding Weibo account as early as possible and quickly made it a big account. Similarly, when WeChat launched the public account function, we were the first to move in and start operations .

At that time, we had accumulated a lot of experience in content production and delivery and had strong advantages, so all we had to do was be ourselves.

Coupled with some product operation assistance in the early days of the official account, we quickly accumulated a base of subscribers and stabilized this advantage.

09. " New List "

The list has become a hot product, the first single point breakthrough

Hello everyone, I’m Xu Danai from Xinbang. Today I’m going to tell you how we at Xinbang acquired the first batch of seed users - of course by publishing the rankings.

It’s been exactly two years now. Around July or August 2014, we published the first issue, which was also the first WeChat public account influence ranking in China.

It just so happened that I had a column called Media Notes at the time, which was mostly watched by people working in the media industry.

We will first release the list through this channel, and then open a separate public account, and then continue to classify it, making it more and more detailed, and working around the list.

Now it can be understood that the list is a hot product. We will go deeper into this hot product and conduct industry intelligence, analysis, interviews, and even analyze some cases related to content marketing .

The first batch of seed users are very important to us, because they are usually the top KOLs and top influencers on the list. They actually have a lot of commercial value to us.

We still insist on publishing our list until now. Of course, I think the list is just a tool , a cut, and basically we believe that the competition for the list in this field is over.

Everyone may know that the entire industry basically uses Xinbang, especially Xinbang’s top 500, as the most important criterion for value judgment.

The strategy of launching a list of hot products at the beginning was of great help to us. Of course, if it were just a list, I believe it might not be enough, so this could be considered a single point breakthrough.

10. "Mustard News"

Do you remember the New Year's Eve lottery in 2014?

Hello everyone, I am Mr. Chi from "Wasabi Micro News". Today I want to talk to you about how "Mustard Micro News" obtained its first batch of seed users.

If you are an old driver of new media, you must remember that at the end of 2014, the circle of friends was flooded with the following message: "My New Year's fortune is..." At that time, many accounts took advantage of the New Year and Spring Festival to make H5 games that required people to shake their phones and test their fortunes.

At that time, our team thought: since everyone likes this kind of test so much, and WeChat did not say anything about inducing attention or inducing sharing (which is a violation). So we made an original H5 test called "Use Tarot Cards to Test Your New Year's Fortune".

Because there are more than 50 tarot cards in total, we made more than 50 pages of random jumps to explain the new year's fortune based on the content randomly drawn by everyone. This test was done by an intern at the time, who completed the entire content writing and planning in two days.

Then it took only 3 days for our followers to increase from 10,000 to 150,000. These 150,000 people became the first batch of seed users of the "Ji Ma Micro News" account.

Later, we followed the trend of "everyone likes to do such tests" and did some tests such as "testing your start of school luck", "testing whether you will fail the final exam", and testing your March and April sign...

When we first started doing this, we were all looking for original lyrics and the motivations behind the original creations. Until WeChat said that this would affect the experience of the Moments, and that it was not allowed to do so and the account would be blocked.

We were also hit at this time, and our account was blocked for a month. During this month, we have been reflecting and thinking about the new route and direction for our next operations.

We decided to work hard to create interesting content that everyone will like. So in our second phase, we really used content operations to increase our number of followers from 200,000 at the time to nearly 400,000 at this stage.

This is the story of how we acquired the first batch of seed users for “Mustard Micro News”. It may not be possible to refer to it now, but we still believe that there will be more things worth spreading in the future, and even opportunities for you to have a lot of fans overnight, as well as content worth planning.