The following content is the editor’s exclusive experience gained from writing about Zhihu and analyzing Zhihu over the years. A lot of the content cannot be bought with money, so I hope everyone will understand it and put it into practice.

1. Why write on Zhihu: The importance of Zhihu + How to make money on Zhihu

2. How to improve answer ranking: Explanation of Zhihu’s algorithm + Zhihu weight improvement

3. How to write answers that are easy to get high praise: Easy to write answers that are easy to get high praise on Zhihu + Types of Zhihu answers

4. How to attract traffic on Zhihu: Which places officially allow traffic-attracting methods

1. Why write Zhihu

It is difficult to increase the number of followers of a public account. A public account is like a fish pond of one's own, which can be directly converted and monetized, but it is becoming increasingly difficult for content to grow on its own, so I have to attract traffic from outside. We usually start with several channels for external traffic: Douyin, Toutiao, Zhihu, Baidu Knows, Douban, Xianyu, QQ Interest Tribe, Xiaohongshu, Meipian, Baidu Tieba... I chose to attract traffic through Zhihu for these two considerations.

▌The number of Zhihu users is still rising

In May 2018, at the fifth Zhihu Yanshang, Zhihu founder and CEO Zhou Yuan revealed that Zhihu currently has 160 million registered users, with an annual growth rate of 95.12%; the number of Zhihu answers also officially exceeded 100 million on May 8. Most of Zhihu's active users are young people. More and more high school and college students use Zhihu. Most of these users are born in the 1990s and 2000s and have strong spending power. So how can we make money through Zhihu? Let me give you some points.

The first is that when our Zhihu fans exceed ten thousand, someone will ask you whether you accept paid likes. This is related to Zhihu's algorithm rules. The answers liked by big Vs will appear as prompts in the user's information flow, increasing the exposure of the answer. At the same time, the likes of big Vs have a high weight, which can easily bring the answer up. But I don’t recommend that you do this. We have been blocked for doing this before. There are also friends from Zhihu University in the live broadcast room, so I’ll stop here. In addition, one fan on Zhihu is worth 2 yuan in the market. It is easy for an account with 0 fans to increase fans but difficult to lose fans. However, when it reaches a certain size, Zhihu officials will limit the flow and have been continuously supporting small Vs to create. Therefore, if we make 10 accounts with 10,000 fans, the value may be better than an account with 200,000 fans and it is easier to divert traffic to ourselves.

There are also some routine operations. For example, when you have more fans, you can take on soft articles. I will give some examples below. E-books, Zhihu Live, paid consulting, and Zhihu University are all ways to monetize Zhihu. In Zhihu, we can see a group of people who often write answers about the workplace, fitness and weight loss, and gender emotions (especially PUA). Their way of making money is to write articles on Zhihu, create an image of an expert/master, and then direct traffic to their official accounts, and then use copywriting to convert to their courses or private consultations.

There is also a group of people who often write answers about movies, music, travel notes, and some about beauty. Their monetization model is often to wait until the Zhihu fan base reaches a certain level, then start connecting with the B-end and recommend products in related questions.

Others are self-media. Basically, what they write on Zhihu are some opinion-based answers, which are then directed to official accounts and then monetized through advertisements in the official accounts. Some self-media that do not have official accounts or do not monetize through official accounts make money by accepting manuscripts.

2. How to improve answer ranking

▌1. Explanation of Zhihu algorithm:

Let me first explain to you the algorithm mechanism of Zhihu. When we play with traffic on different platforms, the first thing we need to do is to understand the platform rules. Only when we understand the platform rules clearly can we safely divert traffic under the rules. Zhihu answers do not necessarily rank higher if they have more likes, because Zhihu has a unique ranking algorithm: the "Wilson" interval method, which determines the ranking of Zhihu answers. This algorithm has the following characteristics:

1. The sorting is dynamic and is based on user feedback (user feedback includes likes, dislikes, comments, thanks, and favorites)

2. Each account has a different weight in a certain field. If you have high-quality answers in a certain field, then your behavior in this field will have a greater weight, even if you are anonymous (for example, if you write about the workplace and have high-quality answers in the workplace field, then if you like your peers, your likes will have a greater weight. If you write about emotional issues, your answer may have less weight than a small V in the field)

3. Corresponding to the second point, when you finish writing your answer, it is equivalent to giving yourself a thumbs up, so the greater the weight, the greater the impact on your answer (therefore, it is also important for us to mix in the circle of answerers on Zhihu, and when necessary, peers can like each other to improve the ranking of answers)

4. If your answers in this field are always folded, muted, or frequently like each other, then your weight in this field will be weakened. So let's put aside the power of content marketing and analyze it based on the rules.

▌2. How to use rules to improve answer ranking

1. Determine your positioning. The questions you answer must belong to the sub-topics under the parent topic of your positioning, so as to increase the weight of your account in this field.

2. Zhihu encourages small accounts to grow quickly, so before choosing to answer a question, choose to follow those questions that have been followed by more than 2,000 people. After answering, try to receive support from these people and quickly improve the ranking of your answer.

3. To answer a cold start, you can find some people to like each other. The number of likes should not be too many, about 15 is enough. If the circle of likes is stable, it is best to like each other by searching for questions. The browsing time should be more than 30 seconds.

4. Get help from big guys. Find big guys in the field of positioning and ask them to give you a personal praise after answering.

After Zhihu was revised this year, the corresponding account weight has also begun to be quantified, that is, the salt value. Now let me tell you what salt value is and how to increase it.

▌3. The benefits of high salt value are these

If there is a problem with your account, Zhihu officials will give priority to solving it for you. When we see an answer that is over-marketed, one objection may cause that answer to be collapsed, and the corresponding weight of our likes will be increased. At the same time, our own answer will also be more likely to have a higher ranking. The salt value score is between 0 and 1000. Each person's score is determined by 5 dimensions. 260-300 is the basic score. 600 points and above can get priority processing. When it reaches 620, you can edit the question. When it reaches 640, you can edit the topic (which is conducive to our better occupation of the field). When it reaches 650, you can add a reason for your objection when you object. If it reaches 700 points, Zhihu will give priority to your event. 850 points can achieve great weight whether you like or object. If it reaches 950 points, your objection + reason may directly collapse the other party's answer.

▌Increase salt levels through these actions:

If we want to get along well on Zhihu, we can improve our saltiness through the following behaviors: first, improve our personal account information to improve our basic credit score; second, by asking questions, answering questions, writing columns, publishing ideas, and obtaining approval, thanks, and collections, we can improve our content creation score; third, by making friendly comments under different answers, communicating with other comments, paying attention to each other, approving, and thanking each other, we can improve our friendly interaction score. Another action is to report or oppose answers that are excessively marketing, hostile, or reactionary, which can improve our community building score.

The pitfalls of reducing the number weight:

Official manual: https://www.zhihu.com/question/19581624

Answer folding criteria:

What kind of answers would be recommended for modification if they take up space, collect, invite, or thank you for comments on questions or other answers, do not meet the requirements of the question, require detailed explanation, contain factual errors, or duplicate existing answers?

https://www.zhihu.com/terms2

Violation of laws and regulations, unfriendly behavior, posting junk advertising information, pornography, vulgarity, false information, malicious behavior, posting superstitious content, clickbait,

Why was I banned?

There are 3 types of ban penalties: 1-day ban + 7-day ban + permanent ban

If 1 serious violation content is deleted, the account will be banned for 1 day;

If multiple illegal content is deleted, the account will be banned for 7 days, and serious offenders will have their account banned depending on the severity of the offense.

If a user's account has been banned due to content being deleted, the number of days they will be banned when their content is deleted again will depend on the severity of the situation:

If a user is banned twice due to content deletion within 3 months, and is reported for illegal content again, the account will be suspended/permanently banned;

If a user's illegal content posted 6 months ago is reported and handled, he or she will not be punished, but the content will be deleted.

Title:

https://www.zhihu.com/terms2

[To sum up the pitfalls of account suspension: Don’t argue with others on Zhihu]

▌4. 7 steps to avoid account suspension

1. Within one month of account registration, use the account like a normal person. Before answering questions, pay attention to the questions first and then answer them. Generally, there are about 3 answers. 2. Only one account can be logged in on one mobile phone. 3. Do not post external links, but you can embed your own Zhihu answer links in the answer to enrich the content. 4. Don’t put your WeChat ID in your answer. Once reported, you will be directly put in the black room. I will talk about how to correctly attract traffic on Zhihu later. 5. The same content should not appear under multiple questions. If the system detects it, it will delete the answer if it is minor, and clear all answers and all data if it is serious. 6. Answer cold start, don’t ask friends to like too many times. Browse the full text for 30 seconds before liking each other. The number of likes should be around 15, and avoid answering the same like multiple times. 7. Don’t answer policy-sensitive questions. We are here to attract traffic, not to be angry young people.

3. How to write answers that are easy to get high praise

Because there are more and more young people in Zhihu, the most popular answers on Zhihu have gradually become some opinions that have no nutrition and are not verified. Among them, Zhihu has a type of copywriting that is the easiest for us to write and can achieve the goal of attracting traffic. I call this type of copywriting a character-building article. Such articles have only one purpose, which is to establish a warm image of the account we are answering. This image must have a clear personality and attitude, such as this:

The answerer is a man. He wrote a lot of self-deprecating or unique descriptions in his personal introduction. Just through a self-introduction, he has created the image of a person on the Internet. He teaches women how to get rid of bad men, which is similar to the monetization model of emotional counseling. So the questions he often asks and answers are like this:

His character is a friend of women who laughs and scolds, and his circle of friends is also like this:

Therefore, his circle of friends also maintains the same personality as that on Zhihu. In addition to shaping your personality in your personal introduction, you also have to reflect your personality in your answers. So I suggest you start with these points to make your answer more humane.

▌How do you express your own personality?

1. Answers must be confident, positive, not afraid of authority, and dare to diss anyone

2. Before writing your answer, use a table to record other answerers’ writing angles and change your angles (for example, if others write that a good man should be steady, then you can write that a good man should be interesting)

3. Paraphrase your copy several times to make it more colloquial

But if we just have a character and write our own opinions and stories, then such copywriting can at most only attract likes and attention. As an emotional blogger, his dry goods are to convince the little girl of the value of happiness. For other types, we need to combine our own products, combining the practical part with the character story part, to create something that can not only attract readers, likes and attention, but also use the practical part to attract users to the pool we want to retain.

Here are some examples that show I have some real stuff:

Inserting links to previous answers in your answer will make the answer appear professional, but this operation requires a certain amount of answer accumulation, and the questions you answer must be systematic, so that your useful information will appear to be systematic. It is recommended that you put this part of the content at the top, so that you can establish a professional image from the beginning and let readers see your accumulation on Zhihu. At the same time, if you put it at the end, it will affect our traffic diversion operation.

Just like here, when we answer questions, we can find suitable questions based on a system. Even if the question does not have a large number of followers, but it belongs to the system, as long as you answer it carefully, it can serve as proof of your accumulation and output of valuable information on Zhihu.

▌Write your own story/your friend’s story

The story is related to the practical ideas you want to express. This type of copywriting requires you to have certain story materials. It is not recommended to make up the story yourself, because it is too difficult to compile the details of the story by yourself, and it is easy to appear unrealistic, which is a thankless task.

This example was written by the popular copywriter Guan Jianming. He wrote down his own story and transformation, combined with the questions, to tell the college students on Zhihu some truths. He also used his friends' stories to verify his own views. These verified views became useful information for readers to refresh their cognition and inspire themselves. If you are writing this kind of article, there is a simple way. Think about which of your friends are living a good life, talk to them to learn about their stories, retell their stories and make continuous adjustments.

How can young people effectively maintain self-discipline when living alone? – Guan Jianming’s answer – Zhihu

https://www.zhihu.com/question/48749292/answer/132386710

▌ Story-based content

Let me talk about the most difficult type of story-based answer to write. This type of answer will directly provide data to prove one's ability, and the big V who gives the answer is a big shot themselves, and the materials they can use to prove their abilities can be found everywhere. This type of character setting + practical answer is the most difficult for ordinary people to write.

This answer has also been recommended by Yiren, a big shot who is good at making money, which means that this answer is definitely full of practical information. The answerer posted a screenshot of his assets at the beginning, which is more authentic than many people on Zhihu who can only talk. He wrote about his experience from 0 to 1, and then from 1 to 10,000 and 10 million.

In fact, this answer can also become popular on other platforms if the writing style is changed. People are curious about other people's lives, and reading such stories is like reading novels. He has also posted long posts on the Fobu forum before, with content similar to this one, and he continued to direct traffic to his company's official website in the forum.

How to make a million from scratch? – MrHua’s answer – Zhihu. https://www.zhihu.com/question/22590902/answer/55182189

4. How to attract traffic to Zhihu

▌Homepage traffic

Background image: It is best to have the same color as the avatar. The display on mobile and computer is different.

Avatar: Portraits are associated with warmth, but most Zhihu users are college students, so using professional photos is not the best choice. The example I give here is that of Mr. Kunlong. The QR code on the right cannot be seen on a mobile phone, but you can scan it directly on a computer:

Introduction: This is an officially permitted traffic diversion location. A one-sentence introduction with less than 36 words will be displayed directly on the homepage. If it is less than 14 words, it will be displayed directly at the top of the answer. So the best way to attract traffic is: go to the official account: XXX, and give you XXX. That is to say, whether it is a public account or a personal account, Weibo, what value can it bring to users. Image: This function can be displayed directly on the mobile phone, allowing users to deepen their first impression of you.

Professional experience: You can put your public account/personal WeChat ID. Others can directly see your WeChat ID when they click on your personal profile. I won’t post the screenshots, lest the housekeeper ask me to change the information. Educational background: You can edit and create your own character, similar to Goudan above. He wrote that he is the director of the chicken soup department of Zhihu’s imperial kitchen.

Personal profile: At the bottom, those who can see this are either very interested in you or want to play a trick on you. No matter who pays so much attention to you, you must not waste this place. This is also the place where Zhihu allows traffic to be left, so you must be able to provide value and guide users to find you to receive it.

▌Answer traffic

Here I would like to show you the Zhihu answer traffic generation model that I compiled. These models are summarized from the knowledge of Zhihu marketing that can be purchased on the market.

There are a total of 8 sets of models here, which is a framework that can be given to interns to execute. It covers a complete summary from topic selection to clarifying the entry point for answers, to organizing materials and designing copywriting, and finally to the design of traffic-generating bait. These 8 models actually have something in common, and the commonality determines the drainage effect:

1. The topic you choose must be popular and in line with your positioning. This is also mentioned in the second point. This is why answers in vertical fields have higher weights.

I generally use these three methods to select questions:

Search for keywords, see if the number of people following the question is greater than 2,000, and then look at the comment time of the highest-ranked answer. If the comments do not show an old hot topic within the past few months, don't choose it. Follow the relevant big names in your niche who have been active in Zhihu for a long time, see what topics the big names are following, and then select questions from the topics, or directly follow the questions that the big names are following. If a question has a highly-rated answer within the past few months, then such a question can also be answered. Pay attention to the parent topic in positioning, and then filter the questions through the sub-topics under the parent topic.

2. The beginning must be attractive

Regarding the attractive beginning, I have summarized the following

This introduction first shows the relevance of the author to the problem in a logical and well-founded way, saying that the author loves reading, and then shows his or her own value: I have nearly 7,000 book resources. At the same time, it also lays the groundwork at the beginning and has a small surprise at the end of the article, guiding users to look for surprises at the end of the article.

002. Attract with strong correlation: State the relationship between your answer and the question directly, so that people who see the answer will pay attention to you. like:

I have received 2.3K likes on my answer to the sister question. After I started my own company, I also interviewed many people. So as long as you read this answer carefully, I believe that this type of question will only add points to your interview. This method was what I thought of at the time, because I had answered a sister question before, and my answer had more than 2,000 likes, so this question can be backed by a hot question, and at the same time, the answer to the sister question also proves my professionalism.

003. Use personal experience to attract readers: There should be details such as the time, place and what the characters did, what you want to give to readers, and what value you can provide to readers. For example: I graduated in 2016 and worked as an account manager for one year. I spent 6 hours over the weekend sorting out the blood and tears I went through this year to help you avoid detours. This is the same as the character story, but in addition to the story, you must also be able to tell the valuable information you can bring to the readers.

3. Remind users several times in your answers what value you can provide (or what you gave your friend and what results he gained), what he can get from you, and design a good drainage path. Generally, traffic is diverted through information packages, mind maps, and some self-made materials. The key is that what you see is what you get, and the value must be well packaged.

4. Finally, design the drainage path and prepare the drainage words.

1. You can use herd mentality, user testimonials and other texts to stimulate users and let them see the value you can provide. The formula for sales talk is: where + what to provide + what effect. For example: go to the official account [王六六说] and reply 666 to get a fission document, which allows you to copy the skill of increasing 500 followers per day. However, if you have just applied for an account, do not start to divert traffic too early, as this may lead to you being put in the black room. Example:

5. Use pictures to highlight value and attract traffic

Well, the above are the methods and techniques for the entire Zhihu platform.

Author: Wang Liuliu said

Source: Wang Liuliu said (ID: wx45147936)