9 cases and 12 methods to obtain seed users

Regarding seed users , there are several concepts that we need to be clear about first. First, what is a seed user? They are the most trustworthy, influential and active fans, the ones who frequently interact with you, help you forward your messages to friends and give you advice.

Second, seed users are not equal to initial users acquired through promotional means. It should be said that seed users are selected from initial users, and their friendship is gradually established through later content operations and interactions. As Xiaohan often says: make friends with users. Seed users are divided into implicit and explicit users. Taking the official account as an example, those who frequently appreciate, leave messages, send messages, and forward your articles to their friends circle are explicit. Those who frequently interact on personal WeChat, pay to join your community, meet and communicate offline, and even have in-depth cooperation are implicit.

Third, the quality of seed users is more important than quantity. Even if there are only 100, you must select carefully and don’t blindly pursue quantity. The character of the seed users must be consistent with the tone of the official account. A few but good ones are better than a lot and a mess. Seed users are not the same as follow users.

Fourth, seed users have a great influence on the direction and tone of any product or brand itself. Douban founder Abei once said that the five employees he initially recruited were all Douban's seed users. They were very active and gave Douban a lot of constructive suggestions, which directly affected Douban's community atmosphere.

In fact, judging the quality of a public account's seed users is the same. You can observe the message areas of some large accounts. If the content of the message interactions is relatively deep and specific, and drives the atmosphere of discussion, it means that the initial operation and user interaction of this account are very successful, and the seed users are in place.

The influence of seed users and whether they can reach more target users has a great impact on the speed at which the official account takes off.

However, the circle of friends is like a swimming pool. There are too many good accounts in the water. Acquiring seed users is a difficult accumulation process. From 1 to 100, it is the most difficult, and the next 100 to 1000 are getting easier and easier.

We need to think clearly about what kind of seed users you want to attract? What are their characteristics? Where? How to attract them?

1. Who is your user?

2. What are the characteristics of the user?

3. Where are the users?

4. How to attract users——how.

Let’s look at 9 cases together and see the successful examples of acquiring seed users. Don’t think that it is easy and advanced for large companies to acquire seed users. These methods may seem low-level to us now, but as long as they can achieve the goal and get things done, it’s right.

In fact, whether at home or abroad, many successful startups use "stupid" methods to acquire seed users.

1. Jumei Youpin: A man registered a pseudonym to pretend to be a senior BB cream expert

The founder Chen Ou is a master of social media, with 37 million followers on Weibo. He is very good at telling stories, and his post “I speak for myself” once went viral on Weibo. For a while, the Chen Ou style was prevalent. In fact, Jumei had already entered its growth stage at that time.

Before Jumei was founded, it was actually working on a game advertising project. The angel investment was almost used up and there was no improvement. The three founders, all grown men, saw that group buying was becoming popular at the time, so they hit on the idea and started Jumei.

After the website was built, there was no money for publicity and promotion, so one of the founders, Dai Yusen, registered an alias on Renren.com and pretended to be a senior expert on BB cream. He wrote a post telling everyone what BB cream is and how to use it. The post became popular and received hundreds of thousands of views. At the end of the post, a purchase link from Jumei was embedded. It was this soft article that brought them hundreds of thousands of sales and thousands of seed users. You all know what happened next.

There are many cases where a company quickly opened up the market and acquired users by writing a hit soft article. Shi Yuzhu also found a group of writers to write soft articles about Melatonin in a closed hotel, promoting Melatonin to the market and acquiring seed users.

2. Quora: Answer questions when no user answers them

Zhihu in China imitates the question-and-answer community Quora, whose founder is the former CTO of Facebook. Just like Zhihu, Quora is a high-level question-and-answer platform. When it first had no users and no money to spend on advertising, how did they do it? Ask and answer your own questions, and they are all of high quality. Next, they invited test users to continue asking questions and answering them until the website's popularity gradually increased. They then opened the entire website to allow users to ask questions, answer questions, and maintain and modify content themselves.

3. Xiaomi: Hanging out in major mobile phone forums

Lei Jun and Li Wanqiang have said on many occasions that Xiaomi initially looked for mobile phone enthusiasts by posting on major mobile phone forums, selecting and contacting them one by one, and eventually found 100 users to become the first batch of internal beta testers of the product.

4. Smartisan smartphone: Marketing hype

Luo is very good at marketing and creating hype. He made the Hammer a controversial phone. Many voices emerged, and naturally it attracted attention. When the attention increased, the seed users were found, because if someone scolds you, there will be people who support you. Brands that are good at creating momentum, organizing events, and have strong public relations capabilities can be considered.

5. Zhihu: KOL recommendation

Those who have used Zhihu know that in the early days, most of the users on Zhihu were from the IT industry, which was related to Zhihu's invitation registration mechanism at the time. They invited Kai-Fu Lee and Lei Jun to endorse it. A large number of people who wanted to register on Zhihu had to spend money to buy an invitation code. If you have the resources of a big boss, you must learn to leverage his power and cling to his thighs.

Let’s look at the cases of four more public accounts.

6. My aunt’s stories – forwarded through the circle of friends of big V

They mainly rely on the power of industry bigwigs and opinion leaders to acquire seed users, select some influential articles, promote them to influential people, and ask them to forward them. At the same time, they mobilize the authors of the articles, colleagues in the company, and friends to forward them, and add comments and recommendations when forwarding them. The effect is more than three times better.

7. Lesson 3 – Submitting to a Big Account

Sandieke has many high-quality product analysis articles. Relying on their high-quality content, they immediately submitted them to 36Kr and Gupo's Things. At the same time, they responded to hot topics on Zhihu. With such persistence, they effectively completed the initial accumulation of accurate fans.

8. WeChat account of a maternal and child care company – WeChat group

One of our clients sells maternal and infant products, which is a new brand. What we planned for him was to register hundreds of small accounts, constantly join WeChat groups and QQ groups for mothers, which added up to nearly 3,000. He also established relationships with the group owners, held live broadcasts and serial sharing lectures in thousands of groups, distributed red envelopes, and organized activities. Under relatively easy circumstances, he gradually formed the first batch of stable and serious users.

9. One: Good content is the best way to spread

This sentence was said by Xu Husheng, the founder of Yitiao. In fact, Yitiao initially spent a lot of money on WeChat Moments advertising. Later, the continuous production of high-quality videos encouraged various experts and kols to repost them. For example, when a video introducing China's unique hotels came out, friends in the hotel circle were all over the screen. When the photography video came out, the art circle was all over the screen. Not to mention the food video, it was reposted tens of thousands of times in an hour.

Relying on the forwarding of high-quality content by industry people is an advantage that vertical media does not have, but it can be used as a reference. Finding opinion leaders in vertical industries and attracting them to comment and forward is a way to accumulate seed users in vertical industries. Different strategies are adopted for different user groups, but the ideas are the same, focusing on:

1. Who is the user?

2. User characteristics - what;

3. Where are the users?

4. How to attract users——how.

Combining with Xiaomi's case of finding seed users, what we do is highly consistent and effective.

Taking WeChat official accounts as an example, Xiaohan summarized the following 12 commonly used methods for finding seed users, which are more suitable for low-cost and low-budget enterprises.

Method 1: CEO’s participation is both a show and a skill

For new media operations, acquiring seed users is actually a physical job that requires strong execution.

In many startups, CEOs roll up their sleeves and get to work. What do they do?

Chat with seed users and make friends!

Users have no obligation to help us, but the CEO can impress them with entrepreneurial sincerity and passion, and express gratitude for their experience and participation with actual benefits and sincerity. This is the so-called transformation of Internet thinking.

The relationship between product developers and users is changing. Our relationship is equal, friendly and free. We create a relaxed and pleasant atmosphere and convey the values ​​and attitudes of the brand and products.

The process of cultivating seed users also requires our patience, but if it is done well, it will be a cause for great joy.

Method 2: Keep the benefits within the family and maximize the integration of internal resources

This method is suitable for companies with abundant internal resources, as shown in the figure.

Xiaohan once worked for a leading enterprise with 300,000 employees. The group has multiple WeChat public account matrices. When launching a new account, the first thing they do is to look at the WeChat public account matrix and focus on promoting this one to attract traffic. In addition, the group has apps, official websites, external emails, express delivery notes, business cards, etc. These external exposure platforms all have advertising space reserved for this WeChat public account to ensure maximum traffic and exposure. The most important thing is that the group made use of the circle of friends of 300,000 employees. By forwarding an article in a unified manner, the number of fans increased rapidly. Without paying, the group quickly acquired initial users, and then accumulated seed users through content operations.

Therefore, when engaging in new media in an enterprise, the first thing to do is to integrate resources. You need to consider what resources within the company can be integrated and used for your own benefit.

Method 3: One sentence is worth ten thousand sentences, make good use of KOL (opinion leaders)

It was often said in the past that if you want to run your own media, you must learn to control it, and the key is to leverage your power. One word from an opinion leader is indeed worth ten thousand words from an ordinary person. If you want to get to the top, you must learn to rely on others. As mentioned in yesterday’s article, Zhihu and Gupo’s Things all relied on the power of big Vs. If you have the support of investors, don’t miss this excellent resource and save a lot of advertising fees!

Qiuye IP Knowledge Group is the most united community I have ever come into contact with. If they want to promote someone, it is very fast. They themselves have opinion leaders in various fields. Instead of relying on opinion leaders, it is better to learn how to mix in circles first. Xiaohan knows a boy born in the 1990s who once sponsored Guijiaoqi to shoot a day-long video, spending RMB 100,000, and then crowdfunded raincoats. Guijiaoqi helped him promote the video and gained 1.5 million paying seed users. If you don’t have enough budget, there are shortcuts to getting traffic from opinion leaders.

For example, go to their official account to reply to messages and insist on going there every day. If each article has 10,000 views, then almost 10,000 people will see your name. If the content is written carefully and noticed by big Vs, it may be written into the article. You can make yourself familiar to the public first, so that the subsequent promotion will not be abrupt. If you want to attract the attention of a big V, you have to make friends with him. I know an author who persisted in replying on a big V’s public account for a year and attracted a large number of fans. Who are opinion leaders? As shown in the picture, it seems that Xiaohan is also very small. Of course. If you want others to push you, you must first practice your internal skills well.

Method 4: Practice your internal skills and spread high-quality content

Writing high-quality content is important, but spreading the content is even more important. It’s cruel to say that the life of an article on WeChat only lasts 24 hours. If you can write a hit article, you must spend enough energy to maximize the dissemination of the content and produce benefits.

When submitting an article, please remember to leave the QR code of your public account. When answering questions on Zhihu, you can also leave your ID. However, when posting articles on Jianshu, you cannot include advertisements and the review is very strict. When disseminating content, you can consider using a serialized format. For example, there is a public account called "Peers Circle". Its early way of attracting fans was unique: writing serialized novels. Huang Xinmiao, the founder of "Peer Circle", is not a professional writer and does not have literary talent, but based on his previous understanding of the psychology of pregnant women, he began to write obstetrics and gynecology novels. You know, curiosity about unfinished things makes all human beings itch. No matter whether you are serializing a novel or a joke, as long as the content is good enough, I believe there will always be people who will follow the show to the end. Later, the same-age circle was segmented according to user tags and a large number of WeChat matrices were created. Taking into account the psychological needs of pregnant women at different stages, the content was extremely detailed. After Yu Minhong invested in it, it became even more powerful. In the final analysis, it was because of the good content. However, when creating content, one thing you need to pay attention to is that depth, verticality, professionalism, and entertainment basically depend on the content, and the requirements for people are very high.

At present, society is in a stage of explosive growth of the pan-entertainment industry. People pay less and less attention to boring things, and the general public is not interested in things that are too professional, so entertainment is needed.

Method 5: Go to where targeted users gather and solve their confusion

For example, forums, BBS, Q&A platforms, and WeChat groups, go to these places to answer their questions, publish valuable content, quantify it every day, and use standard rhetoric. Although it is simple, direct, and a bit crude, it is effective. I have a client who sells customized clothes through pictures. They gained 70,000 users in three months by using only one trick: hiring an army of college students to go to Taobao communities and Baidu Tieba every day to answer questions about clothing matching and customization, and directly direct traffic to the app and official account to place orders. The cost of each traffic was 0.30 cents.

It can be said that Xiaohan’s first batch of seed users came from WeChat groups and Zhihu. In the absence of paid promotion, this is the lowest-cost, most convenient and effective way.

The previous article also wrote about the promotion of WeChat groups. There are some things to pay attention to, such as finding a group that matches the content, greeting the group owner, sending red envelopes, finding someone to help, and making a few comments yourself. There are too many advertising groups now, so less is more, and quality is more important than quantity.

Method 6: Small favors, benefits are value

Let's talk about Xiaomi again. For example, the first batch of registered users can get small gifts, coupons, special privileges and preferential policies. For example, if they grab a reservation code, they can buy a mobile phone at a low price. This kind of reciprocal psychology will never go out of date. The book "Influence" also wrote: When people accept gifts, they feel obligated to give back. On the one hand, users who have gained benefits will actively register, and on the other hand, they will have a positive view of the company itself and will be more cooperative in completing various interactive activities. The routine is based on interests. I once planned an event for a public account that does education investment. By following the public account, you will receive the latest investment research report on the education industry. This attracted precise fans. Then I focused on these fans to carry out fission activities, where people forwarded the account to get red envelopes and invited others to give out big gifts.

Method 7: Beautiful women’s temptation

Back to human nature, content related to beauties is a rigid demand. Momo, which was skirting the law in the early days, relied on this to find its initial users. After entering a certain stage and reaching a certain level of users, it began to whitewash itself and correct people's perception of the brand by operating the brand.

You may not know the famous WeChat, but when WeChat first launched official accounts, there were countless official accounts with colorful content, which attracted a large number of users to subscribe. In short, using primitive sexual drive for marketing has gray areas, but it is effective.

Method 8: Continuous value sharing, salon lectures and training

One of our clients is engaged in parent-child training. Their philosophy is very interesting and they have their own system. To obtain seed users, they only did one thing, which was to first organize the customers into a WeChat group and arrange a teacher lecture at a fixed time every week. Users can be pulled in, but the review is very strict. They must be the children's parents and cannot post advertisements. The company's official account, if it is in a professional field, is very suitable for this method, which is low-cost and fast. Their courses are systematic, covering one point each time in a serialized format, answering questions at a fixed time each week, directing traffic to offline stores, and converting them into paid training courses.

Method 9: Spend money to save time – Advertising

Spend money to buy time, save money to spend time. Being rich and willful is undoubtedly a shortcut. If your company’s WeChat account has some promotion budget in the early stage, you can try the following promotion methods to display your WeChat account to potential users on a larger scale and seek their active attention. (1) GuangDianTong

(2) Publish in Moments

(3) Forwarding red envelopes, posting to large accounts, etc.

I won’t say much about advertising channels. Just look at the pictures. They are worth collecting. They basically cover all the free and paid channels that can be used.

Method 10: Army positional warfare, offline promotion

I once ran a public food account. How did I quickly get 10,000 followers? It only took a week. We found several offline pancake stalls with large traffic to hold the event. Customers who bought pancakes could scan the QR code and get an egg for free. This was a few years ago, and the cost of acquiring users was very low. There are many offline methods, such as distributing flyers, paying attention to instant discounts, instant delivery, WeChat photo printer, etc.

Method 11: Interesting online activities

Our common activities include:

1) Cute Baby Contest

2) Character collection

3) Group buying

…..

When organizing activities, you need to plan them according to the characteristics of the products. It is not recommended to use activities such as drawing lots, sending red envelopes, and voting. These activities are too homogeneous and the users are not accurate. The truly accurate ones are activities that are in line with the product functions and the WeChat account functions themselves.

Method 12: Viral H5 Spread

Design some H5s that fit your WeChat account positioning and forward them. If the company has the technology, it will develop it. If it does not have the technology, it will outsource it to a third-party company and write an article about the spread of the virus later.

In short, there are many ways to increase fans and find seed users. We need to follow a principle: give users what they want and what they like. Give them what they want, and you will naturally get what you want!

Author: Xiaohan Tang

Source: Tang Xiaohan