Zhihu’s traffic pool!

All things are difficult at the beginning. Friends who have done business know that how to acquire new customers has always been a very important link. After all, only with the first time will there be every subsequent opportunity to make money.

So how do you acquire new customers? Some people like to pay to purchase accurate traffic, which is simple, crude and efficient. But this is not friendly to those who are just starting out. In the initial stage, they would rather spend every penny as if it were two pennies. Not everyone can choose to pay for traffic at will.

Therefore, how to spend less money to acquire more accurate customers has become the goal that our startups are striving for.

My main business is dealing with Gucheng Lake hairy crabs from my hometown. In 2017, I started answering questions on Zhihu and sharing various knowledge points about crabs. Up to now, my number of Zhihu fans has reached 25,000+, and I have acquired 3,000+ customers at zero cost.

In fact, this answer once received 20K likes, but unfortunately it was deleted for accidentally violating Zhihu rules. It has now been reorganized and published.

You know, the average order value of hairy crabs is not low, and the current traffic costs are getting higher and higher, so I think it is a good result to be able to acquire so many customers at zero cost.

Next, I will review the specific practices of Zhihu's precise traffic diversion from the following aspects, hoping to be inspiring to you.

1. Be familiar with the Zhihu environment

To operate Zhihu, start by improving the homepage information. You need to treat your avatar, nickname, signature, introduction and other aspects carefully. These elements are your external signboard on Zhihu. If you get the details right, when you answer questions and interact on Zhihu later, everyone will at least have a intuitive understanding of you.

My nickname on Zhihu was "Crazy Crab" at the beginning. My avatar was a photo of a steamed crab, and the cover photo was a beautiful picture of a crab pond that I took. You can see that everything I posted revolved around the element of "crab".

In this way, when I build the "Crab Expert" persona on Zhihu later, users will not feel uncomfortable when they click on my homepage information, and it will also help to build more trust in me.

After registering an account, you can get familiar with how to use Zhihu. For example, how to like and collect the content that you are interested in, how to search for topics related to your own positioning, etc., slowly you will understand how Zhihu operates.

In fact, this is also a process of maintaining an account. If a newly registered account starts advertising, I believe no platform will like such behavior, and Zhihu is no exception.

Here I suggest that everyone follow the official account "Zhihu Little Butler", which contains many articles introducing Zhihu rules. Be sure to read more and learn more. After all, all our operations on Zhihu are carried out under Zhihu's rule system. Once the rules are violated, the answer will be deleted at the very least, and the account will be banned at the worst.

2. Content Creation

When creating on Zhihu, you must follow the principle of high-quality content. If the content you produce is not substantial enough and users feel it has no value, then it will not be of any help in subsequent traffic generation.

We must remember that if we don’t take action, then it’s fine. But once we take action, we must conquer users with our high-quality content and professional knowledge. Only in this way can we quickly gain everyone’s trust and achieve our goal of attracting traffic.

Once we have clarified this tone, we can create content on Zhihu in a targeted manner.

Step 1: Select the right questions.

When searching for questions on Zhihu, it is important to find the right keywords.

When I was selling crabs, I found that some customers had a wrong understanding of crabs. For example, some people thought that crabs during the Mid-Autumn Festival were the most delicious, and some people only ate female crabs and didn’t know that male crabs were also delicious...

I thought this was a good starting point, so I searched for the keyword "secret" on Zhihu and found this question:

After this answer became popular, I searched for keywords with the same attributes as “secret”, such as “common sense”, “insider”, “little knowledge”, etc., and also achieved good results.

In addition, based on the gourmet attributes of crabs, I searched the keyword "gourmet food" and found the following question, which also had a good effect.

When searching for questions, we will find that there are many similar questions. I usually decide which question to choose based on the following three points:

1. Look at the number of followers and views of the question. Only if there are enough followers will such answers be meaningful and have the chance to be seen by more people. It’s just like when you open a store, you have to choose a place with a large flow of people so that more people will come to patronize your store. The principle is the same.

2. Look at the popularity of the issue. Check the update time of the top-rated answers. If they are all updated one or two years ago or longer, then you can pass this question and choose a more recent question to answer. You can also check when the last comment was made on an answer.

3. Check the problem log. Here we mainly check whether the question has been on the hot list and how many times it has been on the hot list. For example, for the question "Little secrets of the circle", after checking the question log, you will find that it has been on the hot list many times. This is a very good signal. The fact that it can be on the hot list many times shows that this question is very popular among Zhihu users.

You should know that every time you are on the hot list, Zhihu will give basic traffic exposure, so that your answers will be shown to everyone again and again. Isn’t that cool? So if you come across such a good question, you are lucky and you must answer it carefully.

By filtering questions, we can see how the highly-rated answers are created and what kind of answers Zhihu users like. This way, we can answer questions in a targeted manner when creating our answers, instead of being at a loss as to where to start.

Step 2: Create high-quality content.

If we pay close attention to the highly-rated answers, we will find that those with good conversion rates are all long and valuable articles. If it is valuable and informative, users will take the initiative to like and collect it, which will make it possible to attract subsequent traffic.

Taking my answer in the "little secrets of the circle" as an example, I listed dozens of knowledge points about hairy crabs in detail, including when hairy crabs are most delicious, how to choose hairy crabs, how to identify dead crabs and other knowledge points. For crab lovers, this guide to avoiding hairy crab pitfalls is a rare and useful resource.

If it is valuable, they will take the initiative to like it for you. The like mechanism of Zhihu is similar to the forwarding function of Weibo. The more likes, the more exposure you will get.

How to create this content? My idea is this:

1. Create according to your actual situation. My hand writes my heart. Creation is not about making things up, but writing based on the actual situation you have in your daily work.

For example, my understanding of the habits of crabs and the pain points of consumers gives me first-hand materials, so when I create, everyone can naturally feel the true feelings in the text.

2. Use an inventory-type structure to answer questions. When observing other highly-rated answers, I found that several articles used an inventory structure, which is to list 1, 2, 3, etc., one by one. I think this template looks clear and concise, and is especially suitable for outputting practical articles, so I used it directly.

3. The beginning of the article should be attractive. In order for an article to attract attention, there must be something that makes people scream at the beginning.

I found that many people think that hairy crabs are the most delicious during the Mid-Autumn Festival. In fact, hairy crabs are just coming on the market during the Mid-Autumn Festival, and their taste is far less plump and delicious than those in later periods. Based on this, I put this knowledge point as the beginning of the article, which breaks the user's inherent cognition right from the beginning, plays an eye-catching role, and makes them interested in continuing to read.

4. Use pictures wherever possible. Articles that contain useful information can easily give people a boring feeling, and adding pictures can solve this problem well. On the one hand, pictures can supplement text information, and on the other hand, food pictures can attract attention.

5. Mobilize users' emotions. During the creative process, I consciously described some knowledge points in an interesting way, such as explaining that crab roe and crab paste are essentially the reproductive glands of hairy crabs, and talking about the mating of hairy crabs. For many users, this is a very new and unique knowledge point, so they will actively participate in the discussion, which is very beneficial to the dissemination of the article.

Basically, I have already told you in detail about the ideas of content creation, how to choose questions, and how to create high-quality content. You can refer to my experience and answer the questions based on your own actual situation. I believe you will gain something.

Let me emphasize again, our goal in Zhihu is to attract accurate traffic, so content is very important and must be valuable. If you do answer, you must write high-quality content.

3. Promotion ideas

Once the content is prepared, it is not enough to just publish it. It also needs to be coordinated with effective promotion. Here are some of my promotion experiences:

1. Cold start. Ask your friends to like the article within two hours after it’s published to get it cold-started. It doesn’t need to be a lot, generally 20-30 likes will be enough to warm up the article.

2. Guide people to click likes. Now that you have finished answering the questions, you can encourage everyone to like the article at the end, emphasize the difficulty of original output, and emphasize the value of the article. This will easily arouse everyone's empathy and attract more people to like your post, especially those who are too lazy to like it.

3. Divert traffic through other answers. When answering other questions, if one of my answers goes viral, I will attach a link to the article "Little Secrets of the Circle" at the end of the article to divert traffic.

4. Cling to the thighs of Zhihu big V. If you browse Zhihu more often, you will find an interesting phenomenon. Some answers with high likes have this sentence: "Did some big V like this for me?"

This sentence reveals a very important message: the weight of likes from Zhihu big Vs is very high. When they like your post, it will bring you more traffic exposure.

When I was still an unknown person on Zhihu, I also experienced a period of rapid increase in the number of likes in a short period of time. I quickly realized that there must be a big V on Zhihu who liked my post, and I felt that I should not waste the opportunity here.

So I came up with a stupid method. I went through the users who liked my posts one by one. Thousands of likes mean thousands of Zhihu users. To be honest, it was really tiring to manually browse, but it was also very effective. I really found some Zhihu big Vs from them.

Then I sent them a private message, saying, "Thank you for liking my post. To show my gratitude, I'll treat you to crabs." In this way, I gradually got to know them, and I became friends with some of them. I treated them to my crabs.

Later, when I answered questions again, it was very convenient to ask them to like my posts, which brought me a lot of traffic.

In addition, when you see active big Vs on some hot topics, you can also seize the opportunity to interact.

There was a beautiful celebrity V who became famous by releasing her photos. One time I happened to see her answer, so I left her a message "You are so cute, can I treat you to crabs?" Maybe my comment style was quite different from what she usually saw, so I successfully attracted her attention, and she also interacted with me by leaving messages.

This way, her fans naturally saw me and I got good exposure. With this opportunity, I added her as a friend. Later, she also liked my answer, which brought a lot of traffic.

It can be seen that having a good relationship with the big Vs on Zhihu is very useful. If you want to connect with them, I think there are two key points: on the one hand, you must have value yourself. Your value on Zhihu means that you must have valuable articles, so that they will be happy to like your posts; on the other hand, making friends requires intention. If you promise to treat someone to a new experience, you must make arrangements in place, as relationships are built through interaction.

That’s all I have to say about promotion. Basically, if you have an article with high-quality content and add these promotion techniques, the results will not be too bad. If the details are polished in place, the article will become a hit.

4. Gains and insights

Let me first talk about my income from Zhihu.

In the most direct way, I gained thousands of precise customers who love to eat hairy crabs on Zhihu without spending a penny. This was my original intention when I operated Zhihu. Now it has been achieved, and the data is still growing.

Answering questions on Zhihu has a long-tail effect. In other words, your high-quality content can settle down and gain continuous exposure and attention. To this day, there are still users on Zhihu who leave me messages or private messages asking for advice on how to buy hairy crabs. Sometimes, when a question I’ve answered becomes a hot topic, the traffic increases dramatically, which is even more amazing.

It can be seen that Zhihu's traffic is very stable. A good article can bring you accurate customers continuously.

Moreover, the quality of customers attracted by Zhihu is also very good. Although Zhihu users like to play the joke of "the average Zhihu user earns a million per year", to be honest, Zhihu users do have good spending power.

The waters of hairy crabs are very deep in the e-commerce platform, and I don’t like to play tricks with them. I always insist on ensuring the quality and quantity of every hairy crab I send out, that every one of them is full of yellowness and cream, and that every one of them meets the specifications. If a hairy crab is marked as weighing 4.0 taels, I will send it to the customer at 4.0 taels, without any fraud or shortchanging.

A real shot of a hairy crab weighing 4.2 taels without herbs

In addition, I also try my best to differentiate the packaging accessories, using brown sugar ginger tea that looks better and tastes better, the more expensive Lao Henghe crab vinegar, and exquisite crab utensils made of stainless steel, etc.

As a result, my pricing will naturally be higher, but what is gratifying is that most of the customers brought by Zhihu will accept my pricing.

They recognized the value of the valuable information I posted on Zhihu, and they also recognized my hairy crabs, which allowed me to keep the pricing within a reasonable range.

What is a high net worth client? These are high net worth clients. For us who do business, isn’t it what we dream of to continue to have such high-quality customers?

In addition to the gains in terms of "profit", I also gained a little in terms of "fame".

Sharing is the best social tool. As the number of views of my Zhihu answers continues to rise, I have also received requests for reprinting from some self-media, including big public accounts and Weibo accounts with millions of followers.

Last year, through the introduction of a big V friend, my article was fortunately published in the print media "Sichuan Cooking", and I received the first royalties in my life.

To be honest, the spiritual satisfaction I feel when I see my article turned into lead type is indescribable. People who understand this will naturally understand.

After experiencing the process of increasing traffic on Zhihu from 0 to 1, I gradually gained some insights of my own.

I have a clearer understanding of drainage.

Think about it, why would you want to add a beautiful woman on WeChat? Is it because she provides the value of beauty that captivates you? Once you understand this, it will be much easier to get twice the result with half the effort when you are doing traffic diversion.

Package yourself as a flower and dress up beautifully, just like that beauty. Let your target group perceive your value, let them come to you and surround you, and the traffic will come naturally.

Now it's time to talk about transformation, isn't it? Because when outputting value, the trust issue has been solved.

This text was written after I read an article by Teacher Liu Run. The moment I saw it, I was deeply touched and felt a kind of spiritual resonance.

Because I thought about the process of attracting traffic on Zhihu, which is essentially the same as what Teacher Liu Run did.

Excerpted from Liu Run’s official account

I output practical knowledge about crabs on Zhihu. When my target customers who like to eat crabs see it and perceive my value, they will choose to trust me and actively come to me to buy.

The basis of all transactions is trust, and the process of outputting value is precisely to resolve the concerns of target customers and solve their trust issues.

Compared with blindly looking for customers in the past, this way of acquiring customers is more efficient and accurate.

For example, if you want to increase your followers by joining a group, one way is to add people everywhere in the WeChat group, and the other is for others to actively add you after listening to your wonderful sharing in the group. Which method do you think is easier to convert?

The answer is obviously self-evident.

Now is an era of overselling and competition is becoming increasingly fierce. How can we stand out? I think building a personal IP is a good way to break through. Selling people first before selling goods.

Operating Zhihu is actually a process of building personal IP. I output practical knowledge about crabs on Zhihu. To my clients, my IP is crabs. They trust me and my crabs, so conversion is a natural thing.

Of course, traffic generation is only one link in the entire business system. Product selection, after-sales service and other aspects are very important. Every link must be treated with care and not be sloppy, so as to form a perfect closed loop.

Hua & Hua mentioned in "Super Symbols Are Super Creativity" that everything is one thing, and I agree with it.

V. Conclusion

To sum up, this is a complete review of my operation of Zhihu, and I have basically covered all the things that need to be covered.

Friends who are interested in joining Zhihu can refer to some of my ideas. This is equivalent to a shortcut that can help you avoid detours, but the shortcut also requires you to take one step at a time. Only when you walk out of it, you will find your own path.

A handshake among thousands of people makes my sleeves smell fragrant for three years. Thank you very much!

Related reading:

Zhihu Content Operation Manual

Zhihu ranking algorithm and traffic diversion method

Author: Tang Hulu's Dream Talk

Source: Tang Hulu's Dream Talk (thlcybj)