Zhihu operates the neglected traffic pool

I am one of the earliest users of Zhihu. During the most anxious years of my life, I became a heavy user of Zhihu. I check Zhihu every night and have accompanied the growth of Zhihu all the way, from hundreds of thousands to hundreds of millions, from closed to open, from a knowledge sharing community to a social intelligent community, from restraining desires to letting go of oneself. Zhihu took off the hat of tooling and established a social media label. The changes in Zhihu have brought in more individuals and companies, and also brought more commercialization.

I am very happy to be able to deal with Zhihu frequently in my current job. From a work perspective, I have a new understanding of Zhihu and see its greater value.

1. The underestimated Zhihu

I won't talk about the data.

Zhihu is a community that focuses on consuming pure text and image information. Currently, the entire community is trying its best to start its own commercialization process, but it is still extremely difficult due to its own DAU scenario limitations.

But for those who do marketing on Zhihu, Zhihu is a good place with a technical threshold. A person must undergo meticulous training before he can get started with "Zhihuization". Zhihuization is a very important starting point for traffic.

Secondly, the people on Zhihu have the attitude that they may succeed or fail. This group of people think they have a lot of knowledge and that all charging behaviors may be cutting leeks. They have irrepressible anger and presumption of guilt towards "deliberate marketing".

This group of traffic portraits is terrifying but also full of opportunities, and requires more cautious and silent operations. For example, if I write this article and post it on Zhihu, I might be criticized.

The political correctness of Zhihu is that marketing is guilty.

Even after being pushed by the official Zhihu's baton of accelerating commercialization, the user profile remains the same. This is the reality that those who operate Zhihu must face.

The derivative problems brought about by this reality are also an important reason that we must pay attention to.

2. Why do we do Zhihu marketing?

Zhihu marketing is an issue that almost every brand, especially service-oriented brands with high customer unit prices, must pay attention to. Why? It’s because of a derivative issue of the Zhihu community, the issue of word of mouth and reputation.

Since the presumption of marketing guilt is a kind of political correctness in the community, and most of Zhihu's young and active DAUs almost all have the mentality that once they find a marketing dog, they will be done with looting, smashing and burning.

There are also a large number of cases proving that Zhihu's DAU does have the power to ruin a brand in the Zhihu ecosystem.

The first step of Zhihu marketing is not to acquire customers, but to truly put the brand’s real voice, real user feedback, and real understanding in the Zhihu community.

Let more people know that this step realizes that continuous operation is not easy.

The second reason why we still need to do Zhihu marketing is that Zhihu has always been the Chinese community with the highest SEO index and has always been ranked very high in Baidu.

This means that once there are negative reviews on Zhihu, how to evaluate XX's negative review answer will particularly affect the user's decision-making experience.

The third reason is that Zhihu has always been a super strong depression. The reason is that although the DAU plate is small and the official commercialization is very weak, it is precisely because of this reason that the potential energy of traffic is still hidden in the real consumption content of the community itself.

The commercialization of the ecosystem has not yet been officially explored and shared, which means there are a large number of opportunities for lead mining, traffic pools, etc., and such opportunities are answered one by one.

3. All brands that want private domains should come to Zhihu

Content platforms have a natural 80/20 rule. High-quality respondents are always scarce, and most users come to consume.

Therefore, in order to maintain the value of the platform, it is necessary to strengthen operations on high-quality answerers and ensure their continuous output, and output in the direction of the platform's value orientation. However, Zhihu has been faltering in the monetization of mid-level and big Vs, so that now, directing traffic to one's own private domain has become the only goal of answerers.

In this way, Zhihu has become a place to wash traffic. With this utilitarian purpose, the respondents will use whichever method can bring more traffic. This is definitely not in line with the long-term value of the platform. The value of the content is decreasing, novice users are being misled, and answerers will not stay for long. Once Zhihu's traffic cannot be washed away or the washed traffic is not valuable, they will leave.

Zhihu has once again returned to acquiring customers through value, but the value is being diluted. Zhihu used to acquire customers through product promotion, and the number of customers acquired during product promotion was the only indicator to measure the effectiveness.

From the perspective of customer acquisition, all brands must come to Zhihu.

If you have any questions, go to Zhihu. This sentence expresses the tool attribute of finding answers and leaving after use. But is Zhihu for browsing or searching? There is a world of difference between strolling and searching in terms of value.

There is a natural threshold for promoting Zhihu. The two words in Zhihu's name indicate that there is a threshold. Not everyone understands the meaning of the word Zhihu, and not understanding it means that not everyone needs Zhihu.

This is an era of consumption based on instant gratification, not an era of knowledge-seeking based on exploration and solutions. At this point, both Zhihu and Bilibili will face a user ceiling. This attribute makes it impossible to support brand promotion, but there is a lot of traffic here that can only be directed to the private domain.

4. How should small companies do Zhihu marketing?

Zhihu marketing has two purposes, which can be achieved in parallel or with a focus on one of them.

The first purpose is reputation, and the second purpose is traffic acquisition.

Reputation management is a special feature of Zhihu, and it requires everyone's attention. It is particularly easy to fail, so a budget is required from the beginning.

The logic of acquiring customers through traffic is more like a kind of content distribution. The core is how to expose the content to the maximum traffic in Zhihu's channels. The core transaction process cannot be the moment when the product is seen, but a silent cognitive processing process.

The core focus of Zhihu marketing should be on the keyword search operation of Zhihu marketing. Based on the keyword search context, we should understand the precise traffic and make a good defense strategy.

Author: Zhao Zichen Vic

Source: Zhao Zichen Vic