How did we gain 1.5 million new WeChat followers through one event?

When friends talk about Tencent's products, they all say, "Hey, being a big company is good. You don't have to worry about traffic . You can achieve your KPI just by pushing it."

But in fact, this is not the case. Take the WeChat public account fans that this article will talk about as an example.

We once tried to cooperate with super big names, such as WeChat Games and Didi Taxi , which have tens of millions of followers. However, after one activity, we only gained tens of thousands of new fans, which was a real letdown for these big names.

In addition, we have also dug deep into QQ Music and placed QR codes wherever possible. After all, QQ Music is a product with a DAU of over 100 million, but the number of new WeChat fans has remained at a level of several thousand per day.

Therefore, we have never had the opportunity to gain fans easily, but instead we have had to work extremely hard.

Although her thighs were thick, hugging them did not make her look attractive. Using Internet thinking to understand this means that only by truly meeting the needs of users can you win users.

Let’s talk about the origin of the activity. One day, my boss asked me to give him a budget to run WeChat Moments ads . We were all shocked when we heard the news. Moments ads are such a high-end thing, and we can actually experience it in person once in our lifetime. We are so excited, aren’t we? ! But this is the origin of the story, just an introduction. We will talk about WeChat Moments ads next time.

After a series of discussions, we decided to hold an event in the name of QQ Music. Since attracting APP downloads is too difficult, let’s attract fans of the WeChat public account . WeChat is also a battlefield where QQ Music needs to increase its presence.

Confucius said, "Food and sex are part of human nature." Everything in the world is inseparable from the word love. The activities to attract new fans are like a campaign to chase girls. In this process, you need to clarify these issues:

• Who to chase? What does she need? – Find target users and understand their needs;
• How is your appearance? – Create a good first impression and improve user experience ;
• Why follow you? – Provide something that the other party needs and is valuable to them;
• How to maintain revolutionary friendship? – Ongoing operations strategy;

Step 1: Find the target and understand the object

"Even if there are three thousand rivers of water, I will only take a sip." The first and most important step in pursuing a girl is to determine your target.

At the beginning, we had to determine what selling points to use to attract users and get them to pay attention to QQ Music. This step was the most critical and also the most difficult step, and we compared many plans internally.

For example, we emphasize our "genuine, good sound quality" and "15 million music library", so please download/follow QQ Music. But the attraction is not that strong, right? This is just thinking about the problem from an official perspective.

Or if you want to highlight our high-end "lyrics posters" and youthful and fun "personalized barrages", come and download/follow QQ Music. QQ Music's lyrics posters and personalized barrage have won a very good reputation. This selling point is indeed based on the user's perspective and is closer to users, but it is still difficult to have a trigger point.

Just when everyone's brainstorming was entering a tense state, the boss gave a direction: fan economy .

In simple terms: create a ranking list and let fans vote.

Then the next step is to get to know "her" in depth, the object we are going to pursue, that is, what the fan group is and what they need. In the jargon of product managers , it means: target user profile and user pain points and needs.

There is no need to explain too much about the celebrity fan group. Tencent Vice President Ross once shared his experience in operating the fan economy at Tencent's strategic conference. He said that the obvious characteristics of the fan group are a sense of identity, participation, and superiority.

• Sense of identity: Fans of the same star have a strong sense of identity. They call each other family members and have their own exclusive "nicknames", such as four-leaf clovers, planet fans, corn, stars, deer fans, etc.
• Sense of participation: They want to establish emotional and material connections with their idols, such as collecting all of the star’s albums, flying thousands of miles to see their idols, and participating in the star’s growth (SNH48).
• Superiority complex: One’s idol is the best. The most typical manifestation of this is to tinker with various charts to get one’s idol to number one.

Regarding the "three senses" of fans, the ranking format is most effective. Once fans discover any ranking list, whether domestic or foreign, on large or small websites, they will vote for their idols day and night and spread the news within the group.

Fans’ support for their idols is like a shark’s pursuit of blood, and like a girl’s love for shopping.

Therefore, we chose to create a ranking list, which has a low operating threshold and good results. It is truly a cost-effective product/operational must-have.

Step 2: First impressions matter — build your product

The first impression is crucial in interpersonal communication. When pursuing fans, you must make them interested in you at first sight. Translated into the words of a product manager, this means: provide a product with a good user experience and that solves core user needs.

The first version of the ranking design is shown in the figure. From the perspective of "appearance", the visual design can already beat a large number of H5s in seconds. However, in an era where “minimalist” style is prevalent, this design still feels too heavy.

The key modifications are:

1. I hope the head is lighter and less disturbing;
2. Highlight the large number of participants and create a lively atmosphere;
3. The original design was that each successful share counted as a vote, but the threshold was too high , so it was changed to just clicking a button to vote.

So there is the second version:

The second version is much simpler. This version looks very advanced. At this point, he has become a tall, rich and handsome man with elegant manners, who can be released to "harm girls". However, the only drawback is that this version of the design is not that stimulating to users. Just like what the girl said, "there is no feeling", it is easy to be labeled as a nice guy!

So we continued to discuss several optimization directions:

1. Reduce operations, be more focused , and disable "Play All" and "Download All";
2. To enhance the appeal of idols , the picture for each song can be changed to the singer’s portrait. The idol is watching you, so hurry up and vote/share.
3. Highlight the rankings and highlight the top three to give fans a sense of superiority.

So, we finally launched the third version, which is the style you see in the picture below.

So far, the work of creating the first impression has achieved a phased success. We are very confident that this is a page that users like, can understand and operate, and are willing to spread. (About 10% of UVs are brought by users’ spontaneous sharing)

1. This is a page with clear functions . Fans know: This is an annual ranking list launched by QQ Music. What I need to do is to help my artist get on the list.
2. The page operation is simple , and the only prominent operation is "vote", which will not distract attention;
3. It mobilizes fans' sense of participation and superiority . The rolling "number of participants" tells them that many people are voting, and every time they cast a vote, they can see that the number of votes for the idol has increased by 1, providing real-time feedback on fans' actions (sense of participation). In addition, the top three artists are highlighted, highlighting the superiority of the idols and fan base.

Step 3: Give me a reason to choose you - Provide value

Is it enough for the page to look good and the functions to be clear and simple?

As the saying goes, what's the use of being handsome? It can't make a living. (←_←This sentence is written very carelessly. Of course being handsome is useful. Cry)

We want to establish lasting revolutionary friendship with our fans, which means we want to go a long way. So we must provide the value that users need, and only then will they follow you.

Don’t forget that our goal is to increase the number of fans of the WeChat official account. It seems that we have been talking for so long but have not yet gotten to the point. So let’s start with the most critical part of the entire activity: how to attract fans to follow the QQ Music official account.

At the beginning, we took the route of the domineering president.

Isn’t it just about pulling up a public account? That’s easy. You can only vote by following the QQ Music public account! Hahaha, fans, do you guys deserve it or not?

When we first went online, the number of fans really started to increase rapidly. I feel a little excited just thinking about the happy days that are about to come.

But this user experience is too weird . It’s fine to promote activities within WeChat, but if you want to promote an activity on QQ Music, you have to follow the WeChat public account to participate. It’s impossible to have fun with you.

At this time, we were having a fierce competition internally . On the one hand, after the restrictions were lifted , the KPI of attracting fans' attention could not be met , so we asked whether we should be patient and push it for a few days. On the other hand, this setting not only looked a bit strange, but also raised the threshold. Few people would switch from QQ Music to WeChat official account to participate in the voting. The interaction rate was very low , and the number of votes grew very slowly in the early stages.

The result of the PK is to relax the restriction that only those who follow can vote, and think of other ways to attract people.

After the restrictions were lifted, the user interaction participation rate increased significantly. The figure below shows the number of voters, which saw an explosive growth after the restrictions were lifted.

However, the increase in the number of voters looks good, but it really cannot be used to make a living. Our goal is to increase the number of fans of the official account.

During that extremely difficult time, we came up with a solution: to provide differentiated value and meet the core needs of the fan group, which is to help their idols to top the charts .

"If she is young, take her to see the world; if she is experienced, take her to ride the merry-go-round."

Experienced love experts tell us that we should always provide the value that the other person needs.

You can vote even if you don’t follow the official account. I will give you 5 votes and you can vote as you like. However, if you want your idol to be on the top of the list, you need more votes, so come and follow the QQ Music official account, and we will give you 10 more votes.

If the plan is feasible, we will quickly follow up and implement it, and take several key measures:

1. Create a ranking tutorial and spread it on Baidu Tieba , Interest Tribes, and Sina Weibo to let fans know how to participate in the voting and "what benefits will you get if you follow me";
2. To strengthen the impression on the page, after each vote, a pop-up window will tell the user that the vote was successful and that they can get 10 more votes by following WeChat. After the user’s votes are used up, tell the user that they can follow WeChat to get 10 more votes.

Since the restriction of "you can vote only if you follow" was lifted, although the number of voters on the page has been growing, the number of WeChat fans has basically stagnated, leaving men silent and women in tears.

After the above series of emergency adjustments, finally! Under patient persuasion, fans began to follow the WeChat public account, and the number of subscriptions increased rapidly again . At this time, tears began to flow.

Step 4: How to attract more fans - refined operations

Even good wine needs no bush. Once the product is made, it still needs good operation and promotion .

But is it enough to just put up a focus picture and a splash screen and then wait for fans to come? Although QQ Music has a huge number of users, as we said before, hard advertising has no future.

No matter how delicious the wine is, we still need to find people who drink it in order to achieve conversion. And our list activities require finding fan groups.

So where are the fans? This is not a difficult problem. It is available on the SNS network and in QQ music products. What we need to do is to reach them.

(1) For social networks such as Baidu Tieba , Interest Tribes, and Sina Weibo , the strategy is to capture the leader first and stimulate competition among fan groups . Find the manager of the fan club and publish the promotional posts we made. Of course, the promotional posts should be people-friendly rather than hard advertising, and then fans will generally start to spread the word. During the voting process, real-time battle results will be released to allow several fan groups to compete with each other.

(2) “ Big data mining” to identify fan groups for targeted delivery . Based on listening behaviors, interest group following, celebrity public accounts, etc., we conduct cross-analysis to dig out the fan users of each celebrity and reach them accurately. We have used the number packages mined here in many places such as WeChat Moments advertising , QQ Music push, and Mobile QQ push. The conversion rates are significantly higher than the usual average, and we have experienced the charm of data mining.

(3) Play the emotional card and add fuel to the fire. The event lasted for 7 days in total, and the fan groups of various groups were very active in the first 6 days. By the last day, the rankings had remained basically unchanged, and I was wondering if there was any way to run it again. Since ancient times, the best is yet to come. So after much thought, I decided to hit the key point of the fans, which is to play the emotional card! Focus on the fans of the top few stars again, dig out the users who have voted, push it again, and use a friendlier tone (be a little sweeter, dear~ come and follow the official account), and the final push content will be as shown in the figure below.

Under the strong appeal of the stars, the effect of this wave of push was unexpectedly good, with a click-through rate of over 30% . You should know that it is very good if the click-through rate can exceed 10%. The conversion rate was also very ideal, with a huge peak appearing on the last day, which is the peak on the right side of the picture below.

The first peak also accurately pushed messages to all fan groups, but the copy was generic (not thoughtful enough). The push volume of the second peak was much smaller than the first, but the effect was much greater than the first, which once again made us realize the power of refined data mining.

Let’s go back to the old saying. Can we achieve our KPI by just clinging to someone powerful and pushing it with huge traffic? This is like the principle that only the person who drinks the water knows whether it is hot or cold.

Fans are voting enthusiastically on the page, and behind the scenes we are also working hard to discover target users, arouse their interest, and find their pain points to attract them to follow the QQ Music official account. Without the refined operations behind it, it might be like a stagnant pool of water. The number of subscriptions may increase, but an increase of 1.5 million in 7 days is definitely an unattainable fantasy.

Step 5: Maintaining long-term revolutionary friendship - continuous operation

Fans follow your WeChat account because they want to vote, not because of the charm of the WeChat account itself. We still have this self-awareness.

But it’s New Year’s Day, and since you’re here, and we’ve established a revolutionary friendship, I won’t let you down.

Getting fans’ attention, although achieving KPI, is only the first step. Continuous operation is important, but what’s more important is to use high-quality content to keep your fans like you.

During this period, the operational focus of WeChat official accounts is as follows:

(1) Publish the voting results . This is what fans care about most and must be provided.

(2) The voting results shall be solemnly announced . Since this is an online event, we cannot actually present an award to the artist, so we "awarded" the top 10 artists an "Annual Sharing Chart Top Ten Singles" online and created exclusive pictures for each artist. Be consistent and let fans know the results of your efforts .

(3) Post articles about their idols. The initial countermeasure was to publish articles about several big stars, such as TFboys, Luhan , bigbang, etc. This type of article received a high number of readings and reposts, easily exceeding 100,000.

Conclusion: Lived happily ever after?

This influx of new fans brought many known and unknown challenges:

1. 1.5 million fans suddenly poured in. They were highly similar and very sensitive to their idols, which was a big challenge for the future operation of the official account. If you accidentally say something wrong, they might all run away.
2. After all, fans gained from activities are not as good as fans attracted by content. Their interest is not in the content of the official account, so it will reduce the overall conversion rate .
3. Thinking further, WeChat official accounts are important, but is attracting user attention through various activities a sustainable strategy? If the content and style are not attractive enough, the value of the product to subscribers will be greatly reduced. After all, users come for benefits, and they will leave in the future because of no benefits.

The increase in the number of fans is both an opportunity and a challenge.