Zhihu operation and promotion strategy

I am currently researching how to create Zhihu. I have compiled some information based on online sharing and my own experience, and I hope it will be helpful to you.

The purpose of using Zhihu or other platforms is nothing more than to create a hit product, increase followers, attract traffic, and generate cash. Therefore, it is also important to study how to write popular answers or articles.

First of all, we need to register an account on Zhihu. After registering the account, we need to complete the basic information and fill in all the necessary information.

After completing the registration, we can start creating. Please note that it is best to do everything you can, such as articles, videos, ideas, answers, etc., and continue to update and create high-quality content.

Every day, we browse Zhihu, read articles, watch videos, like and comment likes, just like normal users.

In short, use all the functions of Zhihu, log in every day, and stay active.

Here are the most important points when you first start writing Zhihu.

1. Focus

That is, focus on answering questions in a certain field. It is important to do a good job of positioning, that is, to clearly understand what type of problems we want to solve for which groups of people. This is very important. Then focus on this field and continue to produce high-quality original content.

2. Persistence

Operating Zhihu takes time and patience. But often in the early stages, many people have no writing experience, the quality of their answers is not high, they have few fans, and they cannot get positive feedback, so they choose to give up, which is a pity.

If you want to be on Zhihu, want to attract traffic through Zhihu, and want to increase your followers on Zhihu, you must be able to endure loneliness and be able to persevere.

Continue to produce content and update 2 to 5 answers to Zhihu questions every week. Don't interrupt.

3. Re-answer

When you first start using Zhihu, it is best to write answers first and try not to write articles. Write articles when you have a certain number of fans.

Because the articles written at that time will be seen by more people. Otherwise, if you publish articles at the beginning, they will rarely be recommended and difficult to be seen by users.

4. Quality First

After starting to post on Zhihu, it is recommended to update 2 to 5 Zhihu questions and answers every week to ensure the quantity;

The answer must be at least 2,000 words to ensure quality.

In fact, as long as we have a few articles (answers) that are pushed to the hot searches, we can bring in a large number of fans or a large amount of traffic.

If a piece of content becomes popular, the traffic will be quite large.

So what matters most is the quality of the content, not the quantity.

After talking about the above four key points, let’s talk about how to solve these points.

1. Focus

Focusing is very simple. We just need to find a good field and continue to output content in this area to help our target users solve related problems in this field.

2. Persistence

Persistence is actually quite difficult, and many people choose to give up when there is no result.

But no matter which platform you start, the start-up period is always difficult, but most people fail on the eve of dawn, so persistence is victory.

So how can we persist?

1. Group together

①That is to find companions who write on Zhihu, and stick together to write. We can encourage each other, learn from each other, and communicate with each other.

②They can also continuously iterate with each other.

That is to say, do a review. Below is a review template.

The first is self-review: how I have achieved my writing goals for this week; what I did well; what I can do better; and what my next adjustments will be.

The second is feedback from others: what is written well; what can be done better.

2. Tear down others

Study and analyze the top influencers or highly-rated answers in the same field to see why their articles receive high praise.

Study how they start, the structure of the text, how they end, the angle of content, emotional drive, delivery of valuable content, layout, etc.

We need to know that there must be a reason why other people's answers can become popular. We should study them more and read more when we have nothing to do. After seeing many routines, we will understand them.

If you look at others more, you will have more confidence and will continue to iterate. Positive feedback will gradually appear, and you will see hope and it will be easier to persevere.

3. Answer

1. How to find a good question

It is the issue that the target users are most concerned about in the near future, and it is best if it is an issue in the professional field.

So how do you find the problem?

Five ways: search by selecting hot list, keyword search, topic search, big V search, and 5118 search engine search.

There is a hot list option on the Zhihu mobile homepage. You can choose any question on the hot list. It is best to choose questions related to your field that have a popularity of at least one million and have hundreds of likes within two weeks. It is best to complete them on the same day.

As long as the answer you write can make it to this hot list, you don’t have to worry about traffic. This has also become a battleground for the best questions.

On the computer side, if there is a recent hot topic, we can also open the question log and see the editing status of the detailed question: Any question that was on the hot list a month ago is very likely to be on the list again. Once on the list, the traffic will be of a different order of magnitude, so this type of question must be written!

so:

(1) Questions related to your own field on the hot list are very good questions. As long as a question has been on the hot list, it is easy to be on the list again within a month. Zhihu will have a large amount of traffic, so you must answer it seriously.

(2) There are answers that have received thousands of likes recently. On the one hand, it shows that after this question is answered, there will definitely be users who will view and like it (there have been successful cases before); on the other hand, it also shows that no matter how many highly-rated answers there have been to this question before, the latest answer will still be recommended by Zhihu first, and there is a chance of it becoming popular.

The essence of Zhihu’s answers should still return to content and solving problems for users.

(3) Try to answer the question on the same day as possible rather than the next day for the best results.

2. How to find a good question? We can also analyze it from two aspects: data and peers.

(1) Data

The data includes answer data and question data.

Let’s talk about the answer data first, that is, the number of answers, the number of likes on the answers, and whether there are recent answers and comments.

①The number of answers must be less than 200 , so that the competition pressure is not so great.

② There must be no highly-rated answers, that is, the number of likes must be less than 1,000 . If there are highly-rated answers, especially if there are several highly-rated answers, it will be difficult for us to be recommended.

③Someone must have answered this question recently or commented under someone’s recent answer .

You need to pay attention to the date. The closer the date, the better. You can also choose to see the publication time of the most recent answer.

If one of the answers to this question does not meet these three criteria, it is best not to answer it, because the probability of it going viral is extremely low.

On the contrary, if all three criteria are met, your answer will be more likely to be seen by more users, and the prerequisite for going viral is that your answer must be seen by more users.

So why are answers that meet these three criteria seen by more users?

First, if the number of answers is less than 200, it means that there are few people answering and the competition is small.

On the contrary, the more answers there are, the more competition there is for this question, and it will be difficult for us to get users to see our answers.

Second, there is no highly praised answer. Before answering a question, we should look at the answers below the question one by one to see if anyone’s answer has more than 1,000 likes. If so, we will just give up.

Basically, as long as there are more than 1,000 likes, then this answer to this question will basically have a foothold. Zhihu will continue to recommend this answer in the future. Unless we write it very, very well, it will be difficult to have a chance to break through the first place recommendation.

Third, if someone has recently answered this question or commented on an answer, it means that this question has been recommended recently and will be more easily seen by users.

In addition to the answer data above, there is also question data.

3. Question data includes tags, number of followers, and number of views

① The more tags, the better

The more tags there are, the more types of people can be recommended.

②The higher the number of followers and views, the better

2. Pay attention to your peers and check what questions they are answering every day.

We can put all the questions that meet the above conditions in our favorites. When we need to answer them, we can find the question with the greatest potential to answer.

So, how do you decide which question has the most potential?

The answer is to look at the title. A title that contains keywords + long-tail words has the most potential.

Keywords + long-tail words are searched by the most people and are also easier to be included in Baidu.

We can also search for field-related keywords and long-tail words on Zhihu, and we can see a large number of relevant answers. Then, we saved all the answers in folders. Likewise, when an answer is needed, we find a question with the most potential to answer.

4. Quality

That is how to answer a question well.

The most essential purpose of the Zhihu platform is to allow high-quality answers to receive more exposure and help users solve problems.

The most fundamental reason why an answer can become popular and attract fans is that it helps users truly solve problems, which is to test your true strength.

You must spend a lot of time on content, and truly help users solve problems. It is truly altruistic. Benefit others first. After doing this, you can consider things like attracting traffic and increasing followers.

Before answering questions, you should also organize a material library for yourself. This material library can help us answer questions better.

Here are four steps to collect materials.

Step 1: Use keywords and long-tail words to search for related questions, then click on them one by one, and list the top five most liked, collected, and commented questions for each question.

Step 2: Look at how the top five answers write their beginning, body, and ending. The beginning includes attracting attention and arousing interest. The body of the article includes examples, hooks, and pictures. The ending includes guiding people to follow, add public accounts, like, collect and comment.

Step 3: Collect a large number of introductions, main bodies and endings.

Step 4: Collect a large number of keywords from the comment section to better understand the users.

Through the above four steps, we know that a material library mainly includes title, introduction, text and ending. As long as we repeat the above four steps, do them a lot, and continue to do them, you will have an extremely huge material library.

If you need materials, just look for them in the material library.

If you don’t know how to write the introduction, just look for high-quality introduction examples in the material library.

Finally, we also need to know that users come to Zhihu to search for answers because they want to solve problems.

Therefore, we must be truthful, sincere, and altruistic, and sincerely share what we know, our experiences, gains, and insights. Since users are looking for real and useful experience, the more real the experience is, the more useful information is provided, and the more straightforward and readable the text is, the more it will attract them and the more competitive it will be.

Then the next step is to answer the questions.

(1) First, find 5-10 articles on this subject on Zhihu and read and analyze them. You can also look for it on other platforms, especially for popular content, to analyze why it became popular and look for inspiration.

(2) First determine how to effectively solve the current problem, collect relevant materials, and then organize, classify, and refine them.

(3) Then, I refine the solution to the problem into several key parts and main points, that is, what I really want to tell everyone.

(4) With these key points as the core, express your answer in a spoken way, which will make the overall answer smoother.

The above is the preparation stage, which is the stage that requires focused preparation.

(5) Start writing your first pass from beginning to end.

(6) Start the first revision: sort out the logic and make sure there are cases to support each key point.

(7) Start revising the text a second time: sort out the key sentences.

(8) Start revising the article for the third time: write the beginning, insert the lead-in content, and highlight the key points in black.

Remember to focus on the beginning, the end, and the cases in the middle. Each article is approximately 2000-5000 words.

Please note that words such as "public account" or "WeChat" should not appear in the article, as they are very sensitive. After being notified by the platform several times, the account may be directly blocked and it will be very difficult to recover it.

A few more points.

1. Learn to write golden sentences.

Let me share a routine method for writing and polishing golden sentences.

(1) Identify a problem to be solved.

(2) Find out the common understanding of this issue.

(3) Find your unique solution to this problem.

(4) Write down some catchy quotes.

(5) Polish the famous quote, for example, by using contrast, metaphor, formula, etc.

Note that the most important step here is your unique solution: it is essentially a deep understanding of the industry, that is, your professional ability and summarizing ability, that is, the ability to see the essence of the problem.

So how can we improve our ability to see the essence of problems?

Every day, for your professional field, for an event or a problem, write down the essence of the problem. Keep it simple, no more than 3 sentences. If you continue this for a month or two, your ability to see the essence of problems and write golden sentences will definitely increase greatly. The essence is often simple, so keep it concise.

Take a look at how other people write their famous quotes and apply them accordingly.

2. Pay attention to the beginning

All the beginnings are not fabricated but truly extracted from reality.

So how do you refine your own beginning?

Sharing some common practices used by Zhihu experts.

The basic framework is this: I was in XX state before, and I really wanted to do XX but couldn’t find the path; suddenly XX happened at some point, and I found a XX method; after XX efforts, I finally got XX results; after that, I summarized the XX method and shared it here with everyone; I used to be the same XX as you, and since I can do it, I believe you can do it too.

This is the structure of the story. After it is refined, it can indeed inspire everyone's desire and confidence to a great extent.

3. Elements of high-quality and highly-rated answers

① No less than 2,000 words, with enough substance and value, it is best to make things clear.

② Use subheadings appropriately to increase the sense of hierarchy.

③ Make a good start to the article. The beginning is very important.

④ Pay attention to the use of pictures and emoticons. Pictures can increase the readability of the content.

⑤ The key contents should be bolded appropriately to highlight the key points;

⑥ Provide certain solutions that readers can benefit from.

4. Practical elements

The practical elements can be considered from three aspects: one is to provide solutions, one is to save time, and one is to enhance cognition.

① Provide solutions

A good answer must focus on providing a solution.

We need to think about what kind of people our readers or the audience of the answers we write are, and what solutions or values ​​they need. This is the core focus of our creation.

② Save time

Saving time is easy to understand. It means that after readers read our answers or articles, they can save a lot of time and energy to find other answers. One answer can solve 99% of this person's needs. Such a perfect answer is the high-quality writing style we pursue in the middle and late stages.

So, how to save time for readers?

It’s very simple. Make your answer as comprehensive as possible and solve most of the readers’ questions.

③ Improve cognition

Improving cognition means that after reading your answer, the reader will feel that he or she has gained something. The best answers are often those that can raise the other person's cognition by several steps after reading our answers.

Improving cognition is more reflected in professionalism. Many fields have professional content. Professional content suitable for the general public can be expressed in a more popular viewpoint. Professional and easy-to-understand answers are often the most popular with the public.

Finally, if you want to improve your appearance, you can do so by [reporting] other content. I have done this before and reported more than 50 items in a week. Most of them were successful, and my appearance improved by nearly 200 in a week.

Self-recommendation of content is a very good feature. As long as you have good content, you can use this feature to get recommendations. I have an answer and just because I used this feature, the traffic suddenly increased a lot. So you can use this if you have good content.

Author: Lao Chen's deep thinking

Source: Lao Chen's deep thinking