When it comes to Douban, many people's impression of it should be labeled as: literary youth, book, movie and music reviews, interest groups; most people go to Douban simply because of their interests and hobbies, and some people gather here for other purposes, because where there is traffic, there is business, just like the smell of blood naturally attracts sharks; the author of this article will talk about the traffic business under Douban.

1. Why Douban?

In 2005, Douban founder Abei wrote the first string of code in Starbucks in Douban Hutong, Beijing; since then, Douban has successively launched music and movies.

As of the second quarter of 2019, Douban had 196 million registered users and Douban Movies had 100 million monthly active users. Douban ratings have almost become the only criterion for measuring the quality of a work.

Subsequently, the birth of Douban groups became a heavyweight product of Douban. Now Douban has more than 600,000 groups; among them, the Eight Groups, the Kou Group, and the Ha Group are the main representatives. UGC content even often appears on the hot searches on Weibo. The Douban groups that are gradually becoming popular have brought new traffic to Douban.

In addition to its large traffic, Douban also has a high Baidu weight of 9, second only to Taobao (unexpected); this means that articles posted on Douban can have a front position in Baidu search results, which is equivalent to attracting traffic to Douban and saving you a lot of advertising fees.

In addition to these, there is another important reason that attracts a large number of traffic generators, that is, Douban’s screening of UGC content is relatively loose compared to other platforms.

On other content platforms, algorithms are generally used to determine how much exposure a piece of content can get; for example, Weibo will judge based on account weight, likes, comments and other dimensions, and Zhihu will first give a small amount of exposure and then determine whether the exposure can be increased based on the amount of interaction.

On Douban, taking Douban Group as an example, the Douban Group uses the time when the user posts and the time when the latest comment is made as the basis for whether a post is ranked high (specific cases will also be mentioned later).

It is precisely the relaxed content screening mechanism that makes Douban a favorite target of traffic predators.

2. Common Routines for Douban Traffic Drainage

Generally, there are two types of Douban traffic generators: one is to do low-cost cold start of products, and the other is micro-business.

People who do cold-start product traffic generation usually go to corresponding interest groups to find seed users. For example, maternal and child apps will go to parenting groups. WeChat business has more diverse ways of generating traffic, such as finding agents and sellers. There are also relatively more places where traffic hooks can be placed.

Next, I will share several common traffic-generating routines.

1. Recruit part-time workers to attract traffic

Many people would go to 8.com or Gou.com when they think of looking for a job, but there are few places to go when they want to find a part-time job or a side job.

As a result, the omnipotent Douban group gave birth to part-time groups, such as the 550,000-member Douban Manuscript Bank; the original intention of many groups was to allow Douban users (Douban users are collectively referred to as "Douban users") to find side jobs, but later on their style gradually deviated.

Just search for a part-time job group and scroll down a few times and you will see several sayings like "earn hundreds a day" and "tens of thousands a month". They ask you to add WeChat without telling you what specific work you do.

If you ask in the comments what they do specifically, the other party will not tell you directly (like it's a big business worth hundreds of millions), but will only let you chat privately via DouYun (Douban's private messaging tool).

If you come across this type of post, you can basically judge that it is not a serious part-time job recruitment, but a traffic-generating post.

Some posts even say that they earn hundreds of thousands of yuan a month. I did a quick calculation and it translates to an annual income of several million. Wow, why do you want to share such a profitable side job with everyone? It’s incredible to think that someone who earns millions is personally recruiting part-time workers in the group.

But there will still be people who add each other on WeChat. This is the magic of Douban groups. The poster uses the precise traffic in the part-time group to stimulate the desire to make money by amplifying the income and improving the conversion rate of traffic.

As for these Douban users who were diverted there, those who were lucky might have just met a WeChat business recruiting agents, and the other party would post screenshots of the agents' income on their Moments, and hey, they might really be converted into agents; some who were unlucky might have met real scammers (part-time jobs are risky, Douban users need to be cautious).

2. Free information

This approach is more commonly used in vertical interest groups, such as postgraduate entrance exams, comics, and parenting groups.

The poster will first post a screenshot of a cloud disk, implying that he has the most complete information, and say that he can share it for free, but one has to add WeChat to receive it; because some groups have a rule that external links cannot be placed in posts, the poster will also use this as a reason to add WeChat to post, in order to eliminate other people's vigilance.

The "first beans, then private message" in the picture above is also a little trick, because the group will be sorted according to the reply time, and the posts that have been replied to most recently will be displayed first; so many traffic generators will let people who want resources reply first and then come to them to receive them, so that they can help them to push the post (killing two birds with one stone).

Of course, there are also people who don’t want to add WeChat. After all, they are still wary of strangers adding WeChat.

In order to dispel the concerns of this group of people, the traffic generator will directly leave a link to the information in the comment area. When you open the link, you will find that you can only see half of the information. If you want the full version, you still have to add WeChat.

I have to say that the conversion rate of adding WeChat in this way will be much higher than the previous method. After all, you have already read half of it and have a sense of trust. It is confirmed that you do have the resources, so just add it.

3. Comment area interception

Compared to posting by yourself, it is a more labor-saving method to directly use other people’s posts to expose yourself.

There is a mechanism in the Douban group comment area. As long as the number of likes on a comment is greater than 1, it will be included in the "most liked replies" for priority display (because it is necessary to exclude those who like it yourself. If it is greater than 1, it means that someone other than yourself has liked it, which can be regarded as a comment with certain value).

Therefore, traffic generators will generally look for posts with high interaction volume, and leave traffic hooks in the replies, such as: The original poster’s answer is great, I also did this and that, friends who want to learn can add me, and so on (a series of self-directed and self-acted dramas are performed brilliantly in the comment section).

After commenting, the traffic generator will use other small accounts to like his own comments, making the comments become the most liked replies. In this way, he will successfully stand on the shoulders of giants and earn the traffic bonus brought by the post.

4. Storytelling

After experiencing the previous rounds of routines, the leeks became smarter and began to automatically filter out these simple routines; but the writing skills of the traffic generators were also upgraded in sync with the times, so high-level traffic generators who wrote novels and stories came onto the stage.

For example, a micro-business traffic generator who wants to recruit agents will generally write a motivational post, describing how he turned around from being in debt of hundreds of thousands to becoming a winner in life with an annual income of millions. The counterattack process is full of climaxes and fascinating, no less than some Jiang literature.

Douban story post

Compared with the three types of direct expression of one’s feelings mentioned above, storytelling is undoubtedly more touching, and after touching people’s hearts, it can attract traffic.

Some posters will set hooks in the comment section, for example: Douban is often not online, if you want to continue to learn, you can add me; or there is no need for the poster to leave WeChat, many viewers will spontaneously send private messages to ask for contact information.

3. Traffic diversion with both risks and opportunities

Although Douban is relatively lenient in content screening, the platform is not idle. System deletion of posts, deletion of posts by group administrators, deletion of comments by posters, and banning and suspending accounts are the four common methods used by the Douban platform.

And for some groups where traffic diverters gather, Douban will add some special marks to posts suspected of diversion.

Among the four pillars, blocking accounts and banning posts are probably the most troublesome for traffic generators; after all, you can still post again after deleting a post, but it would be more troublesome if the account is lost (where there is demand, there is a market, and some businesses selling accounts have also emerged, which I will not elaborate on here).

In the past, one could register a Douban account using an email address, but with the upgrade of risk control, one account now requires a mobile phone number. In addition, many groups will refuse new accounts from entering the group, which has become a barrier for traffic generators.

In order to cope with frequent post deletions and account blocking, some traffic generators will adopt the method of posting tasks on task-based platforms, and use crowdsourcing to let others post for them; others will engage in commercial cooperation with group leaders in the form of purchasing group advertising space.

Of course, this also means that due to platform control, Douban’s traffic costs are also slowly increasing; however, compared to other platforms, Douban’s costs are still relatively low.

As I said at the beginning, where there is traffic, there is business, and Money Never Sleeps.

Author: Asi

Source: Asi's Notes