As a WeChat operator, you can’t possibly not know these…

"How well do you understand WeChat official accounts ? Can you tell the main difference between subscription accounts and service accounts? Do you know where the original function came from? Why can some WeChat articles leave comments but others cannot? How can you enable article rewards?..." These most basic and realistic functional attributes directly affect the daily operation and long-term development of official accounts. Everyone who is currently or preparing to operate WeChat should have a firm grasp of them.

As old news, let’s start by differentiating between subscription accounts and service accounts.

The key differences between WeChat subscription accounts and service accounts

What we generally call WeChat official accounts are the general term for subscription accounts and service accounts. So, what is the difference between them?

1. The applicants are different

As the name suggests, service accounts mainly provide more advanced functional services, and are therefore aimed at government, media, enterprises, and other organizational users. Individuals cannot apply to open a service account. Subscription accounts, as a medium for information dissemination, are open to individual users in addition to governments, media, and enterprises.

2. Can I enable the payment function?

First of all, let’s understand what WeChat Pay is? According to the official introduction of WeChat: WeChat Official Account Payment is a complete solution provided by WeChat to official accounts that have the need to sell items, including sales promotion, payment collection, and business analysis. It includes multiple payment methods, such as official account (H5 web page) payment, QR code payment and card payment, as well as multiple payment tools , such as WeChat red envelopes , vouchers, etc.

With the opening of payment, merchants can directly conduct product transactions on WeChat official accounts and complete orders and payments, which is very convenient and fast. However, subscription accounts do not meet the requirements for activating the WeChat payment function. Only certified service accounts can activate the WeChat payment function. This is a difference between the two that cannot be ignored.

3. The number of group push notifications is different

This should be the biggest difference between the two: regardless of whether it is authenticated or not, a subscription account can push a message once a day, with no limit on the number of messages pushed at one time; a service account can only push messages four times a month, which means one message per week.

Therefore, the number of group messages is also an important basis for users to decide whether to open a subscription account or a service account. Generally speaking, for the purpose of publishing news and delivering timely information, it is recommended to create a subscription account, which can flexibly respond to various sudden hot spots and advance and retreat in moderation; and if it aims to provide customers with in-depth products and functional services, it is best to choose a service account, which does not have high requirements for the frequency of publishing.

4. Displayed in different locations in user WeChat

As can be seen from the figure below, all the subscription accounts you follow are folded together in the "Subscription Account" document. Only the overall document and a small part of the latest pushed articles are displayed on the homepage, and a small red dot is used in the upper right corner to remind you that there are updates. The service account is displayed separately on the WeChat homepage, and the information is displayed completely, avoiding being ignored by users when updating.

Of course, these are some of the most basic differences. Knowing these, I believe it will be easy to distinguish the two numbers. Next, I will talk about the WeChat original protection function. Some of its functions will vary depending on the nature of the subscription account and service account.

How to activate the WeChat original protection function

As a careful person, you must have noticed this situation: when reading articles pushed by certain public accounts, many article titles have the "original" logo under them, but some do not. Why?

Were the words “original” added artificially? In fact, the real reason is the launch of the original declaration function on WeChat.

The original declaration function of WeChat public accounts began on January 22, 2015. It is a major effort by WeChat officials to effectively protect the interests of original authors, promote the enthusiasm of original content producers, and curb plagiarism and fabrication.

How can I enable the original protection function? What conditions need to be met?

1. Duration

First of all, the WeChat public account you apply for must be in operation for a period of time. The length of operation varies from person to person and from account to account, but it usually takes more than several months. The reason for the time requirement is to allow WeChat to fully understand the articles of the public account, including whether the content is high-quality, whether the update frequency is normal, whether the originality is up to standard, etc. To put it bluntly, it is a qualification review to see whether you are worthy of being granted the qualification of originality.

2. Activity

The activity here refers to the frequency of updates and push notifications of articles on the official account. Before obtaining an original invitation, the official account must be kept active. Those who don’t update for ten days or half a month have too low activity. Even if the quality of their articles is high enough, they will not be officially recognized by WeChat in a short period of time.

3. Quantity

This number refers to the number of original articles in the WeChat public account. In order to obtain original invitations, in addition to time, output is also very important. WeChat has not given a specific quantity standard, but it must not be less and there must be continuous output.

4. Originality

It refers to the degree of originality of the article and the originality rate. In this regard, WeChat itself has a huge original library. The WeChat system will compare all the history on the platform based on the articles uploaded by the official account, and automatically determine whether the article is original and the degree of originality.

5. No history of plagiarism

That is to say, when applying for original protection for a public account, there must not be any plagiarism, or even serious plagiarism violations. If such a history exists, it will directly affect WeChat’s judgment of the originality of the account, which is very unfavorable for the application of original functions. Therefore, do not plagiarize other people's things just for the sake of convenience or luck.

6. Follow the rules

As the saying goes: No rules, no order. You must strictly abide by the original rules set by WeChat officials, do not do what the rules prohibit, and do more of what the rules encourage.

The above six aspects are important conditions for obtaining the WeChat original protection function. Many operators try their best to obtain original functions, and its benefits are actually quite attractive.

What can a public account with original functions do?

1. With original logo

Once the original protection function is passed, you can set an "Original Statement" when editing the article, including indicating the author, article type, and choosing whether it can be reprinted.

Once the original statement is set, the article that is previewed or pushed will have the word "original". This indicates that the article was independently created by the author and is recognized and protected by WeChat.

2. Whitelist can be set

Applicable to articles with original protection function, and an authorization form allowing reprinting is set in the article push. When other public accounts want to transfer the article to their own accounts and need to re-edit the article, or do not want to display the reprint source at the bottom, they have to ask the author of the article for a whitelist.

The original author can simply check the "Article can be modified" option, and the reprinting party can only edit the article content format, but the reprint source must be included at the end of the article. This is a very effective way to attract traffic. It can attract potential readers to enter the original account through the source at the bottom through the exposure of another account and become new followers.

3. Have a reward function

We often see "Reward" buttons under some public accounts. When you click on them, the specific reward amount will appear. The amount is set by the author (1-200 yuan). This is the right and benefit that personal subscription accounts that have activated the original protection function have after obtaining "accepting user rewards." In addition to personal public accounts, other accounts that want to obtain the appreciation function must first activate WeChat authentication or WeChat payment.

The opening of the “reward function” is also by invitation only, and operators cannot apply on their own. Therefore, it is also necessary to maintain the original frequency and activity of the official account.

4. You can leave comments

The message function is automatically enabled after the WeChat official account obtains the original protection function, but there is a prerequisite that the article must be pushed in batches for the message function to take effect. That is to say, if the article is only published in the form of a preview, readers cannot make relevant comments at the bottom of the article.

The message function can enable positive interaction with fans, promote fan activity, make the official account more humane and popular, and help improve user experience and leave a good impression.

5. Add historical links to articles

The series of links we see at the bottom of the article that can be clicked to enter another article are the historical picture and text message links inserted in the public account picture and text messages. It can drive the secondary dissemination of historical articles through the exposure of letter articles, forming a very effective guiding role.

To add historical links, the subscription account needs to be authenticated and have the payment function activated; the subscription account must have an original declaration function.

In addition to the above-mentioned common functions available under the original declaration function, there are also benefits such as page templates, becoming a member of the rumor-refuting center, and entering the WeChat original article library, which I will not discuss in detail one by one.

Finally, let’s talk about the issue mentioned earlier about the display location of subscription accounts. They are hidden in a folder and there is no sorting or classification. How can we effectively manage these numerous subscription accounts?

How to manage folded subscription accounts

The dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of WeChat subscription accounts that we follow have all been folded together, with a wide variety of categories, irregular updates, and chaotic order. One thing that many people find very troublesome is that they don’t have enough time to read every update of every account they follow. Sometimes the public account they particularly want to read is buried among hundreds or thousands of accounts, and to find it they have to search from beginning to end, which is too troublesome.

In fact, if you observe carefully, you will find that the default sorting of subscription accounts is based on the update time, with the latest updated account at the front, but it seems to be useless and there is still no classification management. So, there are only three things we can do:

1. Pin the subscription account you want to see to the top. The pinned public account will be displayed as a gray block and occupy the head position of the information flow . Currently, there is no upper limit on the number of public accounts that can be pinned to the top. You can sort all the public accounts on your mobile phone according to your needs. This is the most effective way at present.
2. Find out some subscription accounts that you don't want to miss the most, and figure out the update rules of each account (for example, update twice a week, once on Wednesday and once on Friday, and the specific update time is fixed at 10 pm). This way you will know roughly when to read the article updates of each account, and at least you won't miss what you want to read.
3. You can open several WeChat accounts using several mobile phone numbers, and then follow different types of subscription accounts on each WeChat account, so you don’t have to keep them all together. However, if you want to open multiple WeChat accounts on the same mobile phone, you need to download special software. At the same time, WeChat officials are very strict in cracking down on "one phone with multiple accounts", which is risky.

These are some tips for subscription account management that I know of so far. Of course, there may be more effective methods that have not been discovered and need further exploration.

The analysis of the entire article comes to an end here. After all this long-winded talk, do you have a deeper understanding of the functions of WeChat public accounts?

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