How to become a "100,000 likes" answerer on Zhihu? The Secrets of the 4 Major Internal Skills

Zhihu, a slow company, has now developed into a unicorn company with a valuation of over US$1 billion after nearly 7 years of development. Part of the valuation of Internet products is supported by people ( traffic ), and Zhihu is no exception. What’s more important is that Zhihu’s users are a group of high-net-worth users. Therefore, it has become the preferred marketing position for many brands. Not to mention the products of our small and medium-sized companies, even the current Internet giants need the potential energy of this platform.

If you say that you used Zhihu 5 years ago, it might have been a way of showing off and a topic of conversation, but it now plays more of a marketing role. A group of people who used Zhihu early on also earned titles in their own fields through Zhihu, such as "Excellent Answerer", "Answerer with 100,000 or 1 million likes", etc. If you ask me whether latecomers have the opportunity to enter Zhihu's traffic base to endorse themselves or whether a start-up company can also get a share of this platform. I said: That's totally possible. WeChat official accounts encountered a traffic bottleneck in 2015, and the opening rate showed an exponential downward trend. However, a bunch of official accounts, from unknown to large, emerged. Therefore, on a popular platform, no matter whether you enter early or late, as long as the strategy is right, you can become the leader on the platform.

Inner Practice 1: Image Project Must Be Done

As the saying goes: Clothes make the man. No matter which platform you operate , there are some basic infrastructures that cannot be ignored. This infrastructure refers to the information filling of the platform, such as avatars, one-sentence explanations, etc. These are the first set of clothes you need to put on when operating a platform.

Zhihu’s face-building project includes: background picture, avatar, place of residence, industry, educational background, personal profile, one-sentence introduction , etc. Don't miss any of these. Among these seven, the profile picture, industry and one-sentence introduction are more important.

Let’s talk about avatars first. If you are operating an enterprise account, then it is undoubtedly the product logo or company logo. If it is an individual, then there will be more freedom of choice. Some people like to put their own avatars on it, while others like to put some representative objects of their favorites, such as their favorite idols, anime characters, and some dogs and cats. If you use Zhihu to provide yourself with social endorsement in the Internet age, I suggest you put up a more formal personal profile picture. In other cases, it depends on your own interests and hobbies.

One sentence introduction. The one-sentence introduction is the most prominent part after the nickname that shows your characteristics. This generally has a "marketing" feel to it. Many companies usually put their own website links or guide people to follow their WeChat public accounts. Nowadays, many individuals are also self-media , so the second purpose of many people on Zhihu is to attract traffic to their other platforms, so they will say "WeChat search for xxx" and other attention phrases. If you are just playing Zhihu, then you can highlight the characteristics of your industry. For example, if you are in operations, then I would be an "operations cat" and so on. Why is your industry important? Because this is your positioning. For example, if you are working in the Internet industry, many of the answers to your questions may be about Internet technology, etc. When others look for you, they will also look for you based on your label, so you must give yourself a clear positioning in your industry.

It is best to write clearly about other information such as educational background and place of residence. This will help others to be more interested in you. An obvious example is yourself. When you come across some good answers, you want to follow this person, and then you go to his homepage and browse it, as shown in the picture below. Will you still want to follow him? Therefore, face-saving projects are the first step in operating Zhihu.

Inner Practice 2 - Content Positioning

Whether you are operating a WeChat public account, an APP, or other platforms such as Taobao , you will first set a tone for your content, which is a label that others recognize. Take me as an example. I am engaged in product operation . So when I browse Zhihu, most of the content is mainly product operation content, and I also pay attention to some big accounts that are also doing well in this field. In addition to product operation content and personal big accounts, we will also pay attention to peripheral content of product operation, such as science and technology, Internet, products, technology, tools , etc. and some Zhihu accounts that are doing well in these fields.

Therefore, you need to determine the content positioning when operating Zhihu. In terms of content positioning, you need to pay attention to two points : First, when operating a Zhihu account, whether it is a personal account or a corporate account, when answering the previous questions, you should not deviate too much. For example, if you work in finance and answer questions on topics related to education, biology, movies , sports, etc., then you are a bit off track. The second is to gradually accumulate the first relatively reliable fans and users by answering the questions in the early stage, and then gradually expand the scope of your own topics. For example, if you have been answering financial questions before, then you can move on to topics such as real estate, the Internet, financial management , and stock trading. Because the number of questions under a topic is limited, don't limit the scope of your topic and answer some pan-financial questions. On the one hand, you can expand the knowledge scope of your answers, and on the other hand, you can gain more attention from users.

Content Skill 3 - Answering Skills

People you follow

When answering your first question on Zhihu, you need a source of content. Although Zhihu has recommended some topics for you on the homepage, they may not be related to your industry, so at this time you need to follow your first group of people. For example, if I want to follow the better answerers under Internet topics, you need to search for "Internet" in the search box and then enter the search page. In the lower right corner, there will be the excellent answerers you want to follow. You can get your first batch of accurate content sources through them.

Time to answer

The time of answering doesn’t matter much, but when selecting questions, you should also choose the time according to the hot topics. When there isn't a lot of news about hot industry topics, it doesn't matter what time you choose to answer questions. But if there is some important news happening in your industry, you should take advantage of the momentum. For example, the news that Alibaba established the Alibaba Global Research Institute "Damo Academy" and invested 100 billion yuan in three years to attract top talents attracted more than 10,000 followers and nearly 500 answers under the relevant questions on Zhihu. If you are a practitioner in the Internet industry, you can give a strong answer. As long as the content is not too bad, you will get a lot of likes and attention. Why? As shown in the picture below, do you see the person you are following on the right? Most of these are excellent answerers with over 10,000 or even 100,000 followers. They have brought immeasurable user attention to this question, so as long as you can answer the question when these big names start to pay attention to this topic, it will not be a problem for more users to see your answer. So how do we choose this timing? It is best to pay more attention to information from mainstream media, Weibo and other channels . When an event attracts a lot of attention, you can search for some keywords on Zhihu, pay attention to related questions first, and then answer them when big names pay attention to them.

Frequency of answer

It is recommended that the frequency of answering questions should not exceed two questions a day . Some people answer several or even dozens of questions a day in order to get more attention and likes. This will have the opposite effect. Because Zhihu now also has a recommendation algorithm mechanism. If your content is relatively good and gets likes from some people in the early stage, the official will recommend this answer to more people to read. However, if you are cheating and answering several questions in a short period of time, Zhihu's machine algorithm will default to classifying you as a cheater who frequently cheats. In serious cases, you will be put in a small black room, and in less serious cases, you will be restricted from answering questions. At the same time, the weight of your account will also be affected, so you should control the frequency of your answers appropriately, and answer according to the principle of "quality over quantity".

Number of words in answer

From my personal experience, I have seen many high-quality answers that are mostly concentrated in the range of 3000-4000 words. It’s not that you have to answer to this number, but answers with this number tend to receive greater recognition and will receive a high number of likes. When answering, you can get to the point in one sentence, and you can answer from the following categories: resource enumeration, theory, and story. If you answer in one sentence, it is best to hit the nail on the head or make a joke (preferably on the latest hot topics of current affairs). It is best to be comprehensive when enumerating resources, and both the stories and theories should be full of details. Details can come from theoretical analysis, case analysis, or personal experience, but personal experience is best.

Topic tags and question quality

When you are choosing questions to answer, remember two principles: the topic tag must have a large number of followers and the question must also be popular. Because more people are following the topic tag, as long as your answer is unexpected, it can be pushed to users who follow this topic. Therefore, as the user base increases, more people will recommend it. And the more people who pay attention to this question, the greater the chance of recommending it to them.

Signature at the end of the article

Many people will leave relevant information such as their own/company’s official account number after answering the questions. And this signature is also quite particular. In the past, many people would leave a big QR code at the end of the article, but now it can no longer adapt to the development of the times, because firstly, Zhihu’s official machine will recognize and automatically block the point for you, and secondly, users nowadays are quite disgusted with these behaviors. So you need to be soft. Generally, there are three types of signatures at the end of the article. At present, the conversion effects of these three types are good:

Dry goods guide type

Extended reading

Scenario Application

Of course, in addition to these three types, there are also some other ways of signing, such as "being nice and clever", and the reason for doing this is to attract more users' attention.

Inner Practice 4: Appropriately Strengthen Interaction

Don’t think that to operate Zhihu you just need to answer questions. You should also interact with users and influencers. Zhihu is actually a treasure. People who know how to use it can learn a lot from it. For those who don’t know how to use it, it is just an ordinary APP. So when you operate Zhihu, you are actually strengthening your own knowledge in this area and taking a look at how others in this industry are doing it. If you think something is good or right, you can encourage it appropriately and interact with users. If you think there is something bad, you should examine yourself to see if there is any problem in that regard. This is called interactive learning.

So how can we strengthen interaction? There are two main ways to do it: After answering the questions, if a user asks for help or a question in the comment section, don't be stingy with your answers and methods, because at the beginning you are an unknown small account, and users can spread you through word of mouth, so at this time if you are a more friendly and "professional" who can answer every question, ordinary users will develop into loyal fans, and your secondary dissemination often depends on this group of people to help you spread.

The second is that when you are browsing some industry-related information, you can appropriately interact with industry bigwigs and try to show your face more often. Next time you give a better answer to a certain question, and this big V happens to have interacted with you before, he or she may unconsciously give you a like, which will also bring a lot of traffic.

At this point, the inner skills of operating Zhihu have been almost completely taught, and the only thing left is the last trick, which is the depth of the content. The world is now dominated by content. The quarrels among Zhihu, Weibo, and Toutiao are, after all, a competition for talent and content. The key is to lay a solid foundation for the depth of your own content.