Operator, why is your official account unpopular?

If you are also an operator , have you ever thought about: Why do our official accounts need to follow hot topics? When reposting is so easy, why do we still have to work hard to create original works? Why are personal public accounts always more popular than corporate public accounts? And what exactly are we going to run? Before solving these problems, we have to start with the "fan effect" in the entertainment industry.

1. What is the “fan effect”?

On the birthday of a TFboys member in 2015, fans paid to make Wang Yuan the first Chinese artist born after 2000 to appear on the Times Square in New York; because Yi Yang Qianxi casually said "My dream is to travel around the world", fans customized a lifetime round-the-world travel ticket for Yi Yang Qianxi on 15 routes; they bought planets, subscribed to the surface of the moon, gave villas as gifts, contracted subways and buses, and sent blessings on private jets... and these events are just the tip of the iceberg of crazy fan behavior.

If you have also paid attention to the recent "Wu Yifan's P-date scandal", I think you have already gained a new understanding of the star Wu Yifan. Even though a large amount of evidence of Wu Yifan having sex was exposed online, fans were the first to speak up for their idol and denounce the rumor mongers as shameful or hype. Another similar example is that when Ko Chen-tung was caught for drug use, he was not criticized by the public like other drug-taking artists. Instead, he attracted millions of fans to the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television's Weibo to plead for him not to be banned. Do you remember that when Andy Lau was exposed to be secretly married, a female fan committed suicide because of it?

This is the fan effect, which also brings about the " fan economy " - paying for idols, which shows how powerful it is.

Why are celebrity idols so popular?

You would definitely say that it is because they have charming looks and have captured the hearts of fans in this age of appearance.

In fact, although the traditional evaluation methods of appearance and voice are effective, what is more important is the "character setting" created by the agency for the idol, which shapes a specific personality and conveys it to fans, further consolidating the image of idols in the hearts of fans. From the day the idol development program came into effect, everything we see and hear is a false image deliberately created by the management company. Rather than saying that it is the idol’s personal charm that attracts fans, it is more accurate to say that it is their “personality” that attracts fans.

The fan effect does not only exist in the entertainment industry, but also in the field of self-media and on live streaming platforms. As long as there are crowds of people, the fan effect exists. The entertainment industry’s “star-making plan” can provide us operators with a lot of ideas.

2. Back to our original question, why are personal public accounts more popular with fans than corporate accounts?

When everyone is lamenting that the WeChat bonus period is about to end, some public accounts have emerged. First, Mimi Meng went viral on WeChat with an article titled "To the Bitch". Within 5 months, the number of followers on her WeChat account grew to 2 million, and the number of views of many of her articles easily exceeded one million. Then, Papi Jiang emerged, gaining more than 8 million followers in less than half a year, with each of her WeChat articles exceeding 100,000+ views, and she also raised 12 million yuan in financing. Other personal public accounts that are equally popular among fans include Shenwanfawu, Li Jiaoshou , Great Annie , etc. There are countless public accounts that have become popular by posting articles in the name of individuals.

The fact that personal accounts’ content is not restricted by companies and brands is indeed part of the reason for their popularity, but there are also many corporate public accounts that are succumbing. Although they have not seen a phenomenal explosion like Mimi Meng, they are also widely sought after by fans. The official accounts of companies such as Guokr.com, Xinwenge.com, and Durex are all very popular in their respective circles.

Compared with the limited content, what is more important is whether the official account has certain "characteristics", just like the star-making plan of an agency, to create an image setting with a certain personality, attitude and values.

Take a close look at the public accounts listed by the author, which one does not have a distinct “personality”? Not only do personal accounts have obvious personal settings, but so do well-performing corporate accounts. For example, Guokr.com has an AI image setting, Xinwenge has Xinwenge's image setting, and Durex has Xiaodudu's image setting. Some public accounts, such as Durex, Lu Qi, Ayawawa, etc., can easily generate over 100,000 views of articles just by interacting with fans through chat records. It is not so much the public account that is popular, but rather the IP image. The "personality" or IP of most personal accounts is much easier to identify than that of corporate accounts.

These public accounts, whether they belong to individuals or enterprises, all have one common rule: they create a very clear IP image. They represent different groups, satisfy their psychological identity, and play the role of KOL. This is their inherent law.

In addition, behind every phenomenal event there must be an external factor that makes it inevitable, and this external factor is the trend: the era of content being king is over, and the information overload caused by the content era has further accelerated the rise of a more recognizable IP era.

The fan economy has entered an era of scale, and 2016 was a year of explosive growth. In addition to the sudden popularity of Mimi Meng and Papi Jiang, a large number of internet celebrities and influencers were produced, and game commentary and live streaming platforms became the new darlings of capital. When content is saturated, only unique, personalized and attitude-filled content can stand out.

The author divides the development trend of the social field into four stages:

The first stage is the era of content being king. This era may have been brewing since the rise of Weibo and began to explode during the WeChat platform period.

The second stage is the rise of IP, which can only be regarded as a transition period. Because with the influx of followers, the next stage will soon come. During this period, affected by the serious homogenization of content in the previous stage, users have become aesthetically fatigued with the content. For the first time, uniqueness and personality overshadowed content and became the protagonist. For fans, what is important is not what you talk about, but whether the content can reflect your characteristics, whether it can convey your personality, attitude and values ​​through the content, and whether these personality, attitude and values ​​are in line with my interests and temperament. Representative phenomena: Mimi Meng’s "To the Bitch", "To the Lowlife", etc.

Similarly, when there are more and more unique IPs, the audience will also become aesthetically fatigued. Only IPs with distinctive and unique images + high-quality content can continue to gain a foothold in the fierce competition. That is the third stage, the IP+content era. Representative phenomenon: game commentary. In the field of game commentary, the division is even clearer. Commentary videos can be roughly divided into three categories: videos without personality but with substance (such as JY), videos with personality but no substance (such as Super Xiaozhi), and videos with both personality, values ​​and substance (such as Kuxiaoxuetang).

So what about the fourth stage?

When personality and content are no longer a factor, what remains to be compared is the interaction and intimacy with fans.

Subconsciously, everyone is self-centered and no one is willing to be a fan of someone else. The reason why they follow you and become your fans or users is due to information asymmetry. Users and fans are in a weak position. This is an unequal social relationship. They pay attention to you, then identify with you, then trust you, then become your fans, but becoming a fan is not the ultimate state.

Fans will work hard to eliminate this inequality, shorten the gap between themselves and KOLs, and make a high-ranking KOL someone within reach. Interact with you, understand you, even learn from you and imitate you. Finally, we aim to achieve a more equal social relationship - becoming friends. So you will find that sometimes there will be some fanatical fans on your platform, who will leave you messages, send you voice messages, and ask you what you are doing every day? Care about your daily life and life. And this is exactly the same as the social model in reality! You see, although this society seems complex, the final determining factors are still those most basic rules. For example, if we replace these four stages with WeChat social networking, the same is true:

• [Stage 1] When using WeChat, you will add people who are useful to you as friends;
• [Stage 2] But you prefer to make friends with people who have similar personalities, interests, and values ​​to you;
• [Stage Three] And if by chance this person happens to be useful to you and shares the same life values ​​as you, that would be great!
• [Stage 4] If there are many people who are "useful to you and have the same personality and values ​​as you" as your friends, then the one you like more must be the one you know better, with whom you contact and interact more frequently, because he or she makes you feel "balanced" psychologically.

So let’s call this stage the interactive era, an era that emphasizes interaction. More diverse forms of interaction and experience, as well as methods that can more intuitively showcase your characteristics and allow fans to better understand you, will become the way Internet celebrities, experts, KOLs, and major platforms compete in the fourth stage. Representative phenomena: live streaming, internet celebrities and Papi Jiang.

So, why did Papi Jiang become so popular for showing her personality through videos?

Distinctive IP image + differentiated experience form (similar to live video) + high-quality content. In fact, it cannot be said to be high-quality content, but the first two conditions alone are enough to trigger a trend.

The emergence of the above four stages is a continuous improvement of the Internet in response to users' social needs.

Just like the characteristics of the Internet era: decentralization and homogenization.

As an Internet practitioner, if you want to continue to gain a foothold in the trend, the first problem you need to solve is differentiation:

Differentiated content services + differentiated IP images + differentiated experience forms.

Because of inequality, the audience wants to converge and pay attention to us; because we need to be noticed, we continue to differentiate ourselves to avoid homogenization and attract more attention. It is in this cycle that the information age develops.

3. So how do we need to operate to ensure this difference?

You rack your brains to post content that is useful to users, but the official account remains dull and grows slowly.

Why?

Because the people you attract can only be called users, not fans. Many people may have equated them in the long-term operation process.

In fact, users and fans are two completely different concepts. "Users" literally refer to people who use your products or services, while the term "fans" originated from the entertainment industry and refers to a group of people who chase stars. Generally refers to a group of people who are fanatically fond of something.

Whether your official account has more users or fans can be easily judged by the popularity of your official account. Is the user growth of public accounts weak? Do the reading volume and number of users require external intervention (various activities, promotions) to increase? Once the intervention stops, will the growth stop or even decline? If so, unfortunately, most of the people on your official account are probably users, not fans, and they don't follow you. For users, you are only useful to them. Once they find a product with the same effect as yours, the day when you are abandoned will not be far away.

“If there is no natural growth, there is no need to promote. Forcibly importing users will only leave a bad impression on them and they will never come back again.”

Solution:

• Continue to work hard on content, improve the availability of content, and increase the attractiveness of content to users (this is also the approach currently taken by the vast majority of public accounts). This approach will ultimately be a temporary solution, because with the advent of the IP trend, it will become increasingly difficult for public accounts that have not formed a unique and distinctive IP. Even industry-leading public accounts like 36Kr will face such embarrassment as more and more Internet information public accounts move in.
• Improve the recognition of the official account, build an image IP, and don’t just let your followers become your users, but also make them your fans. In this regard, we need to learn from the entertainment industry's brokerage companies and look for patterns from public accounts such as Mimi Meng, Papi Jiang, and Xinwen Ge.
• Provide differentiated experience forms, richer and more frequent interactions, and display the IP image indirectly or directly. Such as Papi Jiang’s videos, Durex Q&A, Ayawawa’s emotional Q&A, etc.

Content services connect us with users, IP image makes us more popular, and interaction makes us more closely connected.

For WeChat operations , what is more important is the IP image. Because content services and interactions will further shape the IP, content and interaction ultimately serve the image of the IP, and what ultimately makes us popular is still the IP.

As a social platform with a strong relationship circle, WeChat has its own operating model that best suits its ecosystem.

WeChat connects people, Alibaba connects people with products, Baidu connects people with information, and Weibo connects people with society. That is why we socialize on WeChat, sell goods on Alibaba, search on Baidu, and do public relations on Weibo. Different platforms have different ecological atmospheres and missions. The atmosphere of WeChat determines that on WeChat: building a personal IP image and creating KOLs will have a greater impact and wider dissemination than on other platforms.

On the other hand, if there were no official accounts and no content to share, and the Moments were simply open and relied solely on users to post their own photos and texts, what would the Moments look like?

In fact, since its inception, public accounts have played the role of KOL in our social field. It’s just that too many commercial purposes and short-sighted behaviors have caused many public accounts to lose their original appearance.

Today's products are becoming more and more humanized. I have reason to believe that the WeChat public accounts of the future will not only be windows, but also "characters" with emotions, personalities, and thoughts. They play different roles and may be your emotional think tank, health doctor, psychologist or life mentor. The difference between users and fans lies in the transformation from functional demands to emotional demands, which makes the bond of connection closer.

The prerequisite for the audience to become fans is understanding, and the process is roughly: understanding—identification—trust—fans . For them, the more abstract something is, the harder it is to understand, and the more concrete something is, the easier it is to understand. Because people will not feel fond of intangible things, they will only feel affection for things that can be seen and touched. If he really wants to develop a favorable impression, he will definitely first picture a specific image in his mind: such as long flowing hair, 36D, etc. Our emotions always need a concrete landing point to work.

Personal image＜ Corporate image/brand image＜ World view

The things we need to spread are nothing more than the three mentioned above, and the difficulty of fully understanding these three is gradually increasing.

To understand a person, you need to pay attention to him/her and understand his/her personality, interests and life values;

To understand a company’s culture or brand philosophy, you need to participate in the work; [Xiaomi’s sense of participation, forming fans]

To understand a world's worldview, one needs to integrate into it. So why is World of Warcraft so popular? Because you need to play games, you need to enter this world and accept and identify with its world view and values ​​little by little in the game. 】

Compared with product concepts, corporate image, and world view, personal image is easier to understand, thereby triggering resonance and gaining trust.

Therefore, for operators, a simpler and more efficient approach is to first create a personal IP image that is consistent with the brand, create celebrities in the circle, and then use this to promote the brand products and enterprises.

Finally, let us answer all the questions that have not been answered yet: The reason why we must insist on originality is that the focus is not on what is said, but on who said it. Although it is easy to reprint, those are, after all, other people’s opinions and values.

Similarly, we need to follow hot topics. On the one hand, it is because hot topics are easy to attract attention. Another reason is: how do you establish your personal image in life? For example, when you chat with friends, you will inevitably touch upon hot topics to a certain extent. Through hot topics, you can make comments, express your own views and attitudes, and indirectly shape your personal image. The same goes for official accounts. Treat your product as a "person" and plan its operation. It should not be dead.

At the beginning of its creation, we set up a "character" with a distinct personality and values. The public account's welcome message, automatic replies, top and bottom follows, article content and titles, comments on hot topics that the audience is interested in, and content that interacts with users are all places where we output our personality, attitude and values, making it easier for them to identify what kind of people we are. Simply using the top and bottom attention buttons as icons to guide attention is really too LOW.

For example, a real estate WeChat account can open a column called "XX house viewing" and produce content on a regular basis to teach people about buying a house, choosing apartment types, etc.; an emotional account can create a character of an emotional expert to answer emotional questions for fans; a parent-child account can create a character of a child psychologist or a child health expert to pass on experience to parents. Highlight the presence of KOLs in the content, speak in the name of KOLs, and take the opportunity to express unique personality, attitude and values.

As operators, what we need to operate and maintain for a long time is actually just such an IP image. It is our responsibility to make it distinct and distinctive and to keep its unity intact.

Times have changed. Operators, stop being obsessed with "dry stuff" and "useful". That will neither make you progress nor make your official account popular. …

First-rate operations focus on fans, second-rate operations focus on users. That's all, let's encourage each other.

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