2020 Zhihu operation and promotion strategy!

I think Zhihu operation is just one of the channels for brand promotion and paid conversion. The operating methods are very different from other platforms. Today, Wukong Notes will analyze Zhihu’s operating methods through actual cases!

Before you start using Zhihu, you must think clearly about these three points!

Why do we want to create Zhihu?

Are the attributes of Zhihu crowd relevant to you?

How much manpower and material resources do you plan to invest?

If you think about these three points clearly. So let’s get started!

1. Channel Analysis

Through comprehensive channel analysis (crowd attributes, website traffic, user activity, etc.), you can verify whether Zhihu is a suitable platform for you!

1. Crowd portrait

As a content-based product, Zhihu will have different product positioning at different stages of development. We can use population portraits to determine the regions where Zhihu users are distributed and how old they are. Based on this, we formulate operational strategies and directions based on the content positioning of the product positioning. (Data source: Baidu Statistics)

1) According to the Baidu Index, the top 10 regions of Zhihu users in the past 30 days are Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Beijing, Shanghai, Shandong, Sichuan, Henan, Hubei, and Fujian.

2) Through the Baidu Index population attributes, it can be seen that in the past 30 days, people under the age of 19 who use Zhihu account for 25%, users between 20 and 29 account for 65%, users between 30 and 39 account for 8%, and the rest of the users account for 2%; in terms of gender, male users account for 68% and female users account for 32%.

From this we can see that Zhihu users tend to be younger overall, and the content tends to be rational, technical, and knowledge-based.

2. Website traffic

We all know that Zhihu has both PC and App versions, so we need to consider it comprehensively from both perspectives. The PC side needs to focus on three data: UV (unique visitors), PV (page views), and IP. The App side focuses on the number of registered users and the number of active users.

①PC side analysis:

According to the webmaster data, Baidu weight is 9, Baidu traffic is estimated to be 4,258,936, and Chinese website ranking is: 7

②User activity

According to ASO100 data, the iOS version of Zhihu is ranked 61st in real time, 5th in the social list, and has a user rating of 4.8 points. The Android version of Zhihu, taking Huawei phones as an example, has been downloaded 1.8 billion times. It can be seen that there is no doubt about its user activity, and this is a very high-quality channel.

2. Channel Rules

1. Before opening an account, you must first understand the relevant rules of Zhihu. After all, if you are "advertising" on someone else's territory and accidentally cross the red line, there is a risk of getting your account blocked.

Zhihu has a complete set of "Zhihu Community Management Regulations (Trial)", and all users need to abide by these regulations.

2. There are many activities in Zhihu Announcement Center. Although it says that these are activities for institutional accounts, individuals can also participate! You can combine your own business and direction to divert traffic.

3. Zhihu has a rule specifically for "promotion exposure", and the details of the rule specifically explain "inappropriate behavior". At first glance, it is indeed very scary, and almost all the methods that most people can think of are banned by Zhihu. But after testing, it is possible to add a name and introduction of the WeChat public account.

Summary: Each platform has its own rules. Only by understanding and knowing the rules can you avoid pitfalls when operating. Although Zhihu has many rules that require operators to be vigilant at all times, there is no need to be intimidated and dare not do anything.

3. Channel Operation

After analyzing the platform's traffic and rules, you can plan how to operate Zhihu based on your main direction or your company's main business. I think it should be operated from two aspects!

1. Before operation - find your own user group

For those who have just started operating Zhihu, Zhihu has a large amount of traffic and users, but it is not clear how much of this channel belongs to us. If you do it blindly and waste company resources, your boss will put you in a small dark room!

So how do we verify the Zhihu channel to see whether there are and how many users are interested in company-related topics? Wukong will analyze the topics on Zhihu from the perspective of operations. As shown below:

From the above figure, we can see that the topics and user groups in the operation field have reached a large scale, and the number of essential questions is also considerable. It is feasible to use Zhihu as a channel for operation-related businesses.

2. In operation - planning your own account and content

If you want to turn your account into a big V, it is far from enough to simply post some content. In the early stage, we have made preparations for operations and found a user group that suits us. Then, we should plan the account and content from two aspects.

1) Account preparation

①I believe some people have heard of Wilson's law, also known as the cold start law. After you answer or post an article, the more likes and comments you get, the more likely you are to be recommended by the system.

For example, after you have just answered a new question, the system will not recommend this answer to all users who follow you. It will push it to a part of users first. Assuming that it is pushed to 100 users and 10 people view it, then the system will continue to push it to 1,000 people according to this ratio. If the ratio remains the same for these 1,000 people, the system will continue to recommend 10,000 people.

Therefore, based on this principle, it is recommended that you prepare several accounts (10+), and you can also ask colleagues and friends to like and comment after posting.

②As far as I know, corporate certification has been carried out on a large scale since last year. The official authority given to institutional accounts is very high. There are fixed rankings every month to attract traffic to the institutions, etc. It is recommended to prepare 2-3 main accounts, and choose one of them for institutional account certification. You can operate it together with the corporate account + personal account to create a brand matrix.

2) Hot content

① Create hot topics and good questions:

In the early days of Zhihu, most of the high-quality questions were asked by Zhihu operators. On the one hand, the cycle for users to ask questions spontaneously was relatively long. On the other hand, Zhihu operators themselves had a better way to push questions to users' homepages, so that the questions received more answers. Therefore, we can pay attention to the world's hot spots and classic and hot issues in various fields, and turn them into debatable issues. When necessary, we can even write an answer to attract more people's attention and responses.

② Targeted field content

First of all, since most of the seed users came from the Internet and entrepreneurial circles, the issues discussed in Zhihu in the early days were mostly IT and Internet-related issues, and some fields were selected for operations in a targeted manner.

Secondly, expand keywords in these fields, write articles that users like based on the keywords, and answer questions that users are concerned about, so as to increase the number of Zhihu fans.

Finally, use multiple accounts to fully cover the areas of the company's industry.

3) Answer content type

① Practical knowledge sharing type: You can answer based on the knowledge you have learned and industry knowledge (if you don’t know how to write, you can find relevant books and knowledge sharing from predecessors, and summarize and organize them).

② Inventory type: This is a collection, such as recommending 10 useful websites/APP applications, etc. Another type is to take stock of all the answers under this question, and then summarize the 10 with the highest likes rate.

For example, if there are 100 answers to a book recommendation question, you can take stock, read all 100 answers, and then make a table. It would be even better if you know how to use crawlers, and select the 10 books with the highest likes rate. This kind of answer usually gets a lot of heat~

③Humorous type: Although some answers are short or even only have one sentence, if they touch your heart or are very humorous, the approval rate will be quite high. However, this will not help you increase your followers, because there is no practical content. Everyone understands the so-called principles. I come to Zhihu to find methods, so what I want is methods.

4) Drainage

In fact, as I mentioned above, for really good content, you don’t need to attract users to it, they will naturally find you on their own initiative. But you still have to put it there, because some users really want to follow your official account but can’t find it. For example, I often receive private messages or comments asking me for my public account number.

There are two ways: 1) Insert your public account in your personal introduction

2) Insert your public account at the bottom of each article or answer

But please note that you must not release the official account in the early stage, otherwise it will be judged as an advertising account by Zhihu and will be blocked.

4. Channel Investment

Finally, I will summarize some resource coordination issues when promoting a brand through the Zhihu channel for your reference. (Thanks to 3 good friends)

1) Staffing

At that time, I was the only one in charge of Zhihu operations in our company, from positioning planning to content operations as well as data and effect tracking in specific operations.

Whether this requires adding staff can be determined based on the situation. You can consider adding content output personnel (text content, video content, and image content), because high-quality content is so important in channel operations.

2) Relationship maintenance

We have an account that has been certified as an institutional account, and we may get to know Zhihu sales and operations staff. In order to avoid adverse consequences such as account blocking and to handle account blocking matters efficiently, we can establish good relationships with them!

In addition to coordinating and maintaining external resources, we must also pay attention to close cooperation between teams, especially when cooperation among multiple parties is required to complete the entire channel operation and promotion.

Taking our company as an example, we have new media operations personnel, event planners, copywriters, short video shoots, etc., and we can coordinate relationships in advance according to operational needs.

3) Cost Estimate

The cost here depends on your operation stage. For example, if you want a big V to drive our account, you must first clarify how many big names you want to invite and how much each big name will cost, and then you can figure out the total cost required.

For different operating strategies, the required expenses will definitely be different, so everyone needs to make arrangements based on their own actual situation. (The early stage is about exposure and the later stage is about content and content)

V. Conclusion

1) Before selecting a channel, you need to analyze the channel flow and the correlation between the channel and the business based on the data.

2) Before starting formal operations, understand the channel rules, especially those that are relevant to you.

3) If you are worried about your post being deleted, in addition to packaging the content well, you can also try to get in touch with the operators within the channel.

4) When formulating an operational strategy, it is best to divide it into several stages and subdivide the goals to be achieved in each stage.

Author: Wukong Notes

Source: Jianshu

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