A Complete Manual for Enterprise We-Media Operations

Lei Jun, chairman of Xiaomi, opened a Xiaohongshu account in June 2019 to promote the newly released Xiaomi CC. So far, in nearly 9 months, Lei has posted a total of 70 notes and gained 26,000 followers. On average, 8 articles are published each month.

Looking at Lei Jun's Zhihu account, Lei Jun started using Zhihu as early as 2011 and currently has 372,000 fans, but he has only answered 9 questions on Zhihu, and the most recent answer was more than two years ago.

It seems that there are more people working in the Internet and technology industries on Zhihu, and they like to discuss topics related to mobile phones and Internet technology, which is more in line with the tone of Lei Jun and Xiaomi. What's more, Lei Jun has many more fans on Zhihu than on Xiaohongshu.

(372,000 fans is a pretty good number. Zhihu data is very real, unlike some platforms where more than 90% of the data is fake. On Zhihu, anyone with more than 10,000 fans can be considered a big V.)

So, why is Mr. Lei, who is nearly 50 years old, still trying hard to get along with a group of post-95 girls, working hard to post content on their platforms, and ignoring Zhihu where the average annual salary of post-985 girls is one million?

Because as an entrepreneur, Mr. Lei knows very well where Xiaomi's users are.

By showing off the super beautiful landscape photos taken by the Xiaomi 10 ultra-wide-angle lens, the beautiful mobile phone cases designed for Xiaomi CC9, or the colorful and cool new wallpaper downloads of Xiaomi mobile phones on Xiaohongshu, young ladies may place an order to buy them.

But if these contents are posted on Zhihu, the most likely response will not be buying, but public ridicule. On Zhihu, you want to tell them about Xiaomi's various black technologies, company strategies and technical routes, future plans and patriotism. Even if you talk at length and make them dry-mouthed, users may still not buy it. For Xiaomi, Zhihu is not a good platform for selling products.

This is the choice of Lei Jun, a business owner, in self-media .

The company should operate its own media wherever its target consumers are. This is the first rule for a company to operate its own media.

Content seeding has become a popular subject in recent years, especially in the beauty industry. Skincare brand HFP has achieved great success through the launch of a large number of mid- and low-profile public accounts, and makeup brand Perfect Diary has achieved great success through the launch of a large number of mid- and long-tail KOLs on Xiaohongshu.

For grass-growing science, the first thing is to choose a good platform. Why does HFP focus on WeChat official accounts while Perfect Diary focuses on Xiaohongshu?

That’s because HFP focuses on ingredient-based skin care, so it needs to educate users, and so it chooses social media such as official accounts and WeChat Moments.

HFP shares stories and knowledge about various skin care ingredients, and then uses celebrities, scientific experiments, before-and-after comparisons, numbers, and authoritative organizations to endorse them, deepening the benefits of the ingredients to the skin, allowing you to watch HFP's ads with relish through the text and unconsciously develop trust in the brand.

Perfect Diary is a cosmetics brand, so it needs to show its effects, so it chooses content platforms dominated by pictures or videos, such as Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, Douyin, and Weibo.

Perfect Diary presents eyeshadow application methods and tutorials, lipstick effects, and product reviews and comparisons of major brands of lipsticks. It also teaches girls all kinds of makeup knowledge, and they get the goods without realizing it.

Therefore, companies need to decide which platform to operate on based on their own product attributes, user characteristics, and the tone of different self-media platforms, as well as what content format and operation methods different platforms should adopt. This is the second rule for companies to operate their own media.

Based on these two rules, let’s talk about the specific gameplay of different self-media platforms.

Tik Tok

In the 1960s, Leo Burnett, an advertising master and one of the six giants who influenced modern advertising, most advocated the advertising concept called "innate drama" .

He believes that every product has an inherent dramatic side. The top priority for advertisers is to find out the magic of a product that can arouse people's interest and then show it in the advertisement, making the product rather than the creativity the hero in the advertisement.

However, most of today's advertisements are either boring and brainwashing slogans, or empty emotional and attitudinal appeals that are a million miles away from the product. We have forgotten that what can most impress consumers to buy is the magical effects and dramatic application scenarios that the product itself shows in the user's life.

And TikTok is a powerful tool for showing the drama of products.

In the company’s self-media matrix, Douyin should play the role of a magician, expressing the charm and magic of the product in a dramatic way, so that consumers will be obsessed with the product.

For example, if we search for Haidilao on Douyin, the most popular videos are collections of various ways to eat Haidilao, collections of internet celebrities’ eating methods, and challenges of eating all over Haidilao with 100 yuan. This is the drama of Haidilao.

It is not just a place to fill your stomach, but a place where you can use your creativity and imagination to eat to your heart's content, eat happily and eat in a variety of ways. Only by taking pictures of these and showing them to consumers can you impress them to come and consume at Haidilao.

Let’s take a look at Xiaomi’s official TikTok account. How can we make consumers want to buy Xiaomi? The answer is to show them what they can do with Xiaomi phones. Therefore, Xiaomi has produced a series of tutorials called “Shooting Blockbuster Movies with Mobile Phones.”

Let’s look at the various topics initiated by Xiaomi: #How to take photos while staying in bed# How to take photos while staying at home; #Photograph the world slowly# How to use the slow-motion mode of Xiaomi mobile phones to create dramatic effects; #Ultra-wide-angle shooting# How to use the ultra-wide-angle mode to create more shocking pictures. This is the drama of Xiaomi.

Among all the topics initiated by Audi’s official Douyin account, the most popular ones are #冬日燃引擎# and #生活出生命阔#. Both of these show that Audi takes you to see the scenery, whether it is playing in the ice and snow world or seeing the magnificent coastline.

Other performance-oriented topics initiated by Audi, such as #A Good Car Show#, #Joker Talks about Cars#, #Celebrity Hall of Powerful Voices#, #There is No Car I Can't Repair#, and #Self-cultivation of a Gold Medal Salesperson#, have relatively average playback volumes.

This is not only because short videos of performance jokes and stories are difficult to shoot, so fewer users participate.

Many official brand accounts also want to learn from the personal accounts (KOL internet celebrities) on Douyin and shoot videos of story-telling and joke-like nature. This is actually a misunderstanding.

Because a personal account has a character image to attract fans and a clear personality as an internal clue to lead all videos, which is something that an official account does not have.

The role of a corporate Douyin account should be that of a magician, fully considering what role the product plays in the lives of users and what dramatic application scenarios it has, and then showing the magic of the product. Instead of just thinking about how to shoot funny clips, the clips lack charming characters to run through them. Even if one of them is well shot occasionally, it is difficult to form a synergy due to the lack of coherence between the videos.

You know, Leo Burnett’s famous saying is, we want consumers to say, "This is a great product," rather than "This is a great ad." This famous quote is extremely suitable for TikTok.

WeChat

WeChat account is the brand ambassador.

The first thing that companies should be clear about is that WeChat public accounts are corporate official websites in the mobile era. In the PC era, a company needs to have its own official website to demonstrate its strength and image. A company that does not even have an official website is not trustworthy in the eyes of consumers. In the mobile era, public accounts take over the functions of official websites. Companies need to use official accounts to showcase their brand image, product lines, and provide consulting and after-sales service functions. This is the role that a corporate official account should play; it is the brand ambassador of the company.

If a company ignores this role definition and tries to turn the official account into a tool to attract fans and acquire customers, then I can only say, I wish you good luck.

In today's Internet environment, it is unrealistic to rely on writing and publishing articles on public accounts to increase followers. What’s more, many companies don’t even understand how to publish articles on their official accounts.

In reality, most brands have turned their official public accounts into in-house corporate publications that feature leadership speeches, industry trends, company news, employee stories, and so on. Of course, if a company defines its official account as being for its employees, dealers, and shareholders, then there is nothing wrong with doing so.

However, if the official account is set up to target consumers and you expect to attract customers through it, then doing so is going in the wrong direction - not to mention increasing followers, you will definitely lose followers.

Because consumers only care about how your products are, not what happens in your business. Companies hold year-end meetings, bosses deliver important speeches, and what developments take place in the industry, what does this have to do with consumers? Qian Zhongshu said it right: "If you eat an egg and think it tastes good, why do you need to know the hen that laid it?"

From the perspective of publishing, what companies really need to do is to become the embodiment of knowledge in the field to which their products belong. This is just as Luo Zhenyu said, we should "sell goods as knowledge, and sell knowledge as goods."

You can look at HFP’s public account tweets and Perfect Diary’s Xiaohongshu notes. In their tweets, they don’t emphasize how good my products are throughout the article. Instead, they share skin care and makeup knowledge with consumers. In the process of sharing this knowledge, they also sell the products.

If I were to start a clothing brand, what I would share on my official account would definitely not be the selling points of my clothes or the news about my company, but rather the knowledge of various dressing combinations for consumers. What to wear to a meeting, what to wear on a date, what to wear on Monday, what to wear on the weekend, what fabric to wear in winter, what cut to wear in summer... this is what consumers need.

Peter Drucker said in his book Post-Capitalist Society: "Knowledge is the only meaningful resource today." What is a product? In fact, it is a set of knowledge that is effective for users and can be verified through consumption. Knowledge is productivity. Knowledge is the personalized flow of an enterprise.

When publishing articles on WeChat public accounts, one should convey knowledge to consumers from the user's perspective, rather than speaking to oneself from the company's perspective.

However, how to publish articles is not the most important thing in WeChat operation. We still need to emphasize that WeChat is not equal to public accounts, and WeChat operation is not equal to writing and publishing articles.

Zhang Xiaolong said that "WeChat is a lifestyle." WeChat is not just a media. Companies cannot treat WeChat public accounts as a free advertising space, but must manage it as a system.

If a company wants to operate the WeChat platform, in addition to official accounts, it also includes personal accounts, WeChat groups, mini-programs, and corporate WeChat. WeChat itself is a huge product matrix today. To operate WeChat well, different self-media products need to perform their respective functions and cooperate with each other.

Official accounts are the core carrier for retaining users, but to activate users, establish a personal image, and interact deeply with users, you need to use personal WeChat accounts and their circles of friends, or make good use of corporate WeChat to communicate with consumers, and then use WeChat fan groups to plan activities, promote, attract traffic, and split users. Mini programs are used as product display and e-commerce platforms for monetization.

This is how WeChat works.

Weibo

Compared with WeChat and TikTok, two content platforms, Weibo has stronger news attributes and is more of a public media.

Therefore, the Weibo platform should serve as the official spokesperson for the company, speak out in a timely manner on major company events, new product launches, and various marketing activities, and follow up promptly on some important events and hot topics in society, make its own voice heard, and express its own attitude and position.

Many companies may be confused. Compared with Douyin and WeChat public accounts, which can be updated daily or two or three times a week, Weibo is more immediate and may have seven or eight updates a day. However, companies do not have so much news to release, so what should Weibo say?

My suggestion to everyone here is that Weibo should be operated as an IP, and not post here and there, posting whatever comes to mind without any rules.

Let’s take a look at how Audi uses Weibo. Audi’s official Weibo posts usually follow the fixed template of “Today is the day for XX”. Today is the day for being happy, today is the day for being expectant, today is the day for being passionate, today is the day for being girly… different products and brand activities are introduced based on this format.

At the same time, based on this format, it is also associated with some social hot spots, such as "Today, pay tribute to those who go against the flow", "Wash your hands frequently every day", "Today, give out candy" on March 14th, White Valentine's Day, and "Today, be your true self" on March 8th, Goddess Day, etc.

This not only standardizes the content of the official blog, but also maintains the brand's consistent tone, so as to avoid ignoring the brand due to excessive pursuit of hot topics.

Don’t be dissatisfied with the IP-based operation that results in a single content format. You should know that the ancient city’s clock tower can gain more than 1 million fans just by checking in with the “ding~ding~ding~” sound at the appointed time every day.

Including TikTok, the format of two people talking while walking has attracted countless accounts to imitate it. I still don’t know how it became popular.

However, there is one special reminder about operating Weibo, that is, you must use Weibo frequently, grasp the tone, pay attention to your three views, and be careful not to make mistakes.

Sony China posted a message on February 15 this year: "If your girlfriend asks you about your lipstick color again, just use the model of your lens to counterattack her." Although Sony added a dog head emoji after this Weibo post, the comment section still went viral, with many commenting that the post was sexist and an insult to female photographers.

Although Sony just wanted to play a common joke, today's Weibo is so magical. When it comes to major events or sensitive topics, it is best for companies not to get involved.

Zhihu

If you think Zhihu is a popular science and academic platform, and that companies operate Zhihu institutional accounts to share various technologies and professional knowledge, then you lose.

Maybe this was true in the early years of Zhihu, but with the rapid increase in the number of users in the past two years, Zhihu has become popular. The answers that are most likely to receive high likes on Zhihu are all kinds of jokes, chicken soup, witty comments, made-up stories, and emotional catharsis. This kind of content has long been proven to be popular on various platforms, rather than calmly and objectively presenting facts and reasoning, and highly professional technical science popularization.

Let’s take a look at Tianyancha’s institutional account. Tianyancha has answered more than 800 questions on Zhihu, and the three most popular answers are all related to current affairs.

Tianyancha uses its own product features to provide the parties with some public company registration information. For example, in response to the question “What are some absolutely true revelations about the entertainment industry?” Tianyancha’s answer is to dig out the companies under the names of major celebrities and their partnerships with other celebrities.

Another example is Audi’s official account. Its three most-praised answers are “Why is Audi called a lighting factory?”, “What mind-blowing things can drones do?”, and “Is it reliable to fry steak with a car engine?” These are all questions that are both entertaining and mind-blowing, rather than serious science-based automobile knowledge.

Therefore, if companies want to make good use of Zhihu institutional accounts, the role they should play is that of a player, using their product-related expertise to provide users with some interesting and fun knowledge.

If you don’t believe me, take a look at Alipay’s Zhihu institutional account. Its two most-praised answers are both about whether to use WeChat Pay or Alipay for payment. This is the mentality of netizens - they just want to watch the fun.

The next two highly-rated answers were "If someone blew up all of Alipay's storage servers (physically), would everyone's money in Alipay be gone?" and "How much return can one get if one leaves 1 million in Yu'e Bao overnight?" These were strange and thought-provoking questions.

Zhihu is different from other platforms where you can just post content directly; it is a question-and-answer community. Therefore, for companies, finding good questions is much more important than writing good answers.

The dimensions for evaluating a good question include the amount of user attention the question receives, the number of answers, its popularity, and the quality of the question itself (whether it is interesting, whether it is mind-blowing, whether it can arouse user curiosity, etc.).

To play around with Zhihu, you need to have the mentality of playing with Zhihu and become an expert player. Don't be serious and do boring science popularization, otherwise no one will pay attention to you.

Little Red Book

In terms of product attributes, Xiaohongshu has both the Weibo side - with internet celebrities as the main body and the content shared being dominated by food and outfits; and the Douyin side - after all, Xiaohongshu is also vigorously developing videos, live broadcasts, etc. However, in terms of recommendation algorithm, I personally think that Xiaohongshu is very similar to Zhihu.

However, after this year's virus incident, it is obvious that Xiaohongshu does not yet have public attributes. This is far from Weibo, WeChat, and Douyin headlines, and even Zhihu and Bilibili have a certain gap. Therefore, the best product definition of Xiaohongshu is still a community for women to recommend products and a community for women to live in.

The self-media gameplay of Xiaohongshu can refer to the content gameplay of Weibo, Douyin, and official accounts. Note that the content should not be too long and should not be long-winded.

But the most important point in playing with Xiaohongshu is that Xiaohongshu is a community dominated by pictures. No matter what content it operates, the pictures must be exquisite, beautiful, high-precision, and preferably original.

In this era where appearance is justice, if the picture is not beautiful enough, it will not be successful in promoting products on Xiaohongshu. The role of Xiaohongshu is to be obsessed with appearance.

Station B

Earlier this year, at Kotler’s 2020 opening lecture, I mentioned the trend of content platforms in my speech.

What is the trend of content platforms? It was Weibo 6 or 7 years ago, it was WeChat official accounts 3 or 4 years ago, it was Tik Tok, Kuaishou and Xiaohongshu in the past two years, and it was Bilibili this year.

After years of development, Bilibili is crossing the gap in popular awareness and generating new traffic dividends. Everyone can pay more attention to this platform and make preparations early.

For 2020, which has been a heavy blow to the company, I think every company should see the importance of having its own marketing position and operating its own user pool. I believe that products, self-media, and marketing campaign IP are the three major marketing fronts for an enterprise. Today's article will first talk about self-media.

For self-media operations, the biggest challenge faced by most companies is not at the practical level, but at the conceptual level.

As mentioned earlier, Tik Tok is a magician, WeChat is a brand ambassador, Weibo is an official spokesperson, Zhihu is a player, and Xiaohongshu is a beauty party... Different platforms have different role definitions, different content creation methods and different marketing methods.

If an enterprise wants to operate its own media well, it must choose the right platform, set different roles for different platforms, and match different content and promotion methods. This requires companies to have systematic planning, continuous investment and strong operational team support.

But in fact, many companies just spend a few thousand dollars to hire an operator, and then leave all the self-media platforms to him alone to manage.

One person is responsible for the operation of all self-media platforms, from Weibo to WeChat, from Toutiao to Douyin, Kuaishou and Xigua, from Zhihu to Xiaohongshu, from Dayu to Penguin and Baijiahao; one person is responsible for all content creation and all work, from writing to shooting, from design to illustration and typesetting, from backend operations to event planning.

Apart from the salaries paid for operations, the company did not invest a penny. Not only is there no investment, but we also hope to bring high output. You hire an operator and pay him 3,000 or 4,000 yuan a month, and hope that he can bring you hundreds of thousands of fans and sell millions of goods. So why doesn't he do it himself?

If you think that you can just hire an operations officer to handle this entire huge system, I don’t believe it. For enterprises to operate their own media well, the most important thing is not how to play on each platform, but the change of concepts and investment in talents and resources.

The company has no expenses and team investment, but still wants to become famous overnight, earn 100,000+ yuan every day, and dream of achieving sales KPI... Hey, don't just drink, eat some food, you see you are hallucinating.

Author: Empty-handed

Source: Empty-handed