How does Zhihu continue to accurately direct traffic to private domains?

More and more people in the market are beginning to pay attention to private domain traffic pools. We want to use public accounts to attract low-cost traffic, but going from 0 to 1 is a difficult gap to cross.

Good content cannot be seen, promotion cannot be done, and we don’t know where to find users. It takes a lot of time and effort, but we can’t attract our own private traffic.

Now I will teach you how to use vertical content layout to accurately attract traffic to Zhihu, and use private domain operation tools to trigger exponential growth.

1. Use vertical content to layout Zhihu

As a professional question-and-answer platform, Zhihu has gathered a large number of high-quality answers. The users who contribute these high-quality answers are high-net-worth individuals. The Zhihu community advocates learning, and the sharing atmosphere often attracts countless netizens to like and forward the answers, and finally become fans of the answerer.

These netizens have a strong desire for knowledge and are not averse to paying for knowledge. Such netizens have high stickiness and are easy to convert. There are many people who can attract thousands or even tens of thousands of fans to their private domain traffic by giving a high-quality answer, and earn an annual part-time income of RMB 100,000+. Therefore, Zhihu, as a gathering place for high-quality knowledge traffic, is the best choice for diverting traffic from the public domain to the private domain.

But many people who operate Zhihu will encounter the following problems:

• If you don’t know how to write highly praised answers, it will be difficult to get recommendations from the platform;
• The answered questions were deleted and folded, and the account was banned or even blocked;
• After the article was answered, it brought almost no accurate traffic or users;
• After Zhihu brought in some traffic, I didn’t know how to convert it.

Zhihu is a platform that requires perseverance to reap rewards. Being too eager for quick success will often backfire. Zhihu tends to prefer users who can contribute long-term value.

Before sharing the practical operation of traffic generation, let’s first understand Zhihu’s traffic generation thinking. Only when you have learned to think, no matter how the platform rules change, your thinking will be the same, and you will always be able to respond to changes with the same approach. This is the core.

I would like to ask everyone a question, are all industries suitable for Zhihu traffic diversion? The answer is of course no.

So how should we consider it? Then read on:

Traffic diversion thinking 1: Does the platform have target users?

When we do drainage, of course we do effective things. Therefore, when conducting traffic diversion, there needs to be a preliminary investigation, that is, whether the platform has enough target users.

How to determine whether Zhihu is a target user? In the early stage, we can search for some questions on Zhihu to see the number of followers, views, and topics to understand whether the target users are on this platform.

If there are few or almost no target users of yours on Zhihu, then the Zhihu platform is not very suitable for traffic generation. If your purpose is exposure, that's another story.

Traffic-driving thinking 2: Users follow accounts because of their value

Why do we follow an account? Of course it’s because this account can provide valuable things and is helpful to me.

Therefore, producing valuable content, whether for traffic generation or branding, is very important on any platform.

When doing Zhihu, you must focus on the areas you are best at, so that customers in need can find you immediately, while also allowing you to continuously reach potential students. For example, Qianliao has been offering beauty courses, but Zhihu will not answer life-related questions.

Therefore, for those questions that are not related to your own products and are clever questions, try to answer less or not answer them at all, and provide more content that is helpful to users.

Now we will enter the important practical part. How to attract traffic after joining Zhihu, here are 3 ready-to-use traffic-attraction techniques.

2. Dazhihu traffic diversion skills

1. Preliminary preparation for Zhihu traffic diversion

When registering on Zhihu, we must ensure that we have one device, one card and one number. Do not change numbers frequently, as frequent changes will reduce the account weight. The weight of Zhihu will be clearly displayed in numbers, which is the "salt value". Generally, our newly registered account will have a salt value of 300-400.

When it comes to filling in personal information, we must consciously shape an intellectual IP image from three aspects: avatar, one-sentence introduction, and user name.

1) Profile picture

Zhihu is a community for communication. Using character pictures will make it easier to gain users’ favor and make your account more trustworthy.

2) One sentence introduction

The key point here is that a one-sentence introduction is an advertising position recognized by Zhihu. Whether it is a WeChat account or a public account, you can leave it here. How to write highly convertible copy in just a dozen words? The answer is to throw bait and give users what they want.

The introduction part can be used to attract traffic by adding a sentence: For more XX information, please follow XX. Users who want to obtain useful information for the military exam will naturally search and follow the official account on WeChat.

3) Username

Try to make your personal account as lifelike and interesting as possible. Institutional accounts can directly use the institution name or brand name, which will give them more credibility and trust.

After completing the account registration, there is usually a maintenance period of about 2 months. During this period, we can study the answer structure of competitors, remove diversion information, and write original content as a preliminary vertical content layout.

4) Daily account maintenance process on Zhihu

The initial stage maintenance of Zhihu is also called account maintenance. Generally, this period is 15 days. Whether the account maintenance is effective depends mainly on the salt value. More than 600 is an ideal situation.

• Spend more than 2 hours on Zhihu every day
• Follow 2-3 industry influencers every day
• Like 3-5 answers every day. If you think they are good, you can thank them and collect them.
• 10-15 reports per day
• If you think the answer is good, give it 10-15 likes.
• It is best to find some big Vs in the same field to like and interact.
• Write three responses of 300 words or more each week.
• Write a high-quality answer of more than 1,500 words every two weeks. Publish articles simultaneously

2. Apply the highly praised answer structure and insert it into the drainage position

The core of Zhihu traffic generation is: good professional knowledge. This is beyond doubt, we can deconstruct the structure of the highly-rated answers.

1) Inventory-style answer structure

• What are the truths that you only understood after entering society?
• What free educational resources are available on the Internet?
• What are some books that can help improve emotional intelligence, judgment, and conversation skills?

By breaking down the process into points and explaining it with clear logic, users can quickly grasp the key points and absorb knowledge. It is also easier for them to like and follow professional and clear answers.

2) The answer structure of the reverse argument

Put forward a point of view that is different from most answerers, then cite extensive references to quickly grab the user's attention, output professional knowledge and provide an information package at the end of the article, guide users to read the personal introduction and follow the official account to receive the useful information package, and direct Zhihu users to the private domain traffic pool.

3) Story-based answers

Typical questions:

• How did you make the career change? Was it easy?
• What interesting things have you encountered when visiting relatives and friends?
• How are you doing three years after graduation?

Real experiences are more likely to impress others and thus receive high praise.

The first type of story: You should be someone that others envy, for example:

Changed career at 30, doubled monthly salary, became the operations director of a company——

(Telling about several setbacks in the early stage) + repenting halfway (realizing one's own shortcomings) + starting to work hard (the beginning of transformation) + many difficulties ahead (twists and turns in the plot) + finally reaching the peak of life (climax) + spreading one's own life philosophy.

The story also needs to pay attention to the description of the writing style, and use more scene substitution techniques. If it is not used well, then use pictures instead.

The second type of story: evokes emotions of emotion, awe, anger…

Key point: Pay attention to the creation of the storyline - don't write a bland story.

Create suspense - how you start, what happens, and the reader wants to see your next move.

There must be periodic climaxes rather than just narrative plots, and the focus should be on changes in the characters' emotions and thoughts.

3. Make good use of Zhihu hot list + vertical keyword ranking to continuously attract traffic

The method of chasing hot lists is suitable for partners who work in larger categories, such as workplace, makeup, games, and other big topics that many people pay attention to.

It is not difficult to get on the hot list. In the early stage, pay more attention to some KOLs and follow up on their answers. Use a table to record the number of views, attention, and answers of these questions, and update the data once a day.

When the number of views of this question within 24 hours is >= 10,000, the total number of answers is <= 50, and the incremental number of views is >= 1,000, we will immediately take a position to answer the question, use the traffic of Zhihu to increase the weight of the account, and quickly gain a large number of likes and fans.

Secondly, there are three locations that are more effective for vertical keyword diversion.

1) Baidu search terms

When you search for a question on Baidu, you will see many Zhihu answer links in the first few pages of Baidu, which is equivalent to Baidu bringing a lot of traffic to this answer.

The weight of Zhihu is very high. We often search for some words on Baidu and see the top-ranked Zhihu questions. These questions are where you want to output.

To find such problems, we need to find the keywords with the largest search volume and summarize them into a vertical keyword library. The 5118 tool can be used to mine keywords.

2) Search terms in Zhihu

Search for some words in Zhihu, and many related questions will appear below; if you answer these questions one by one, and try to rank high, you will also get a lot of traffic.

We can give high praise to the answers, and basically stick to the vertical keywords to layout and continuously divert traffic.

3) Discussion area and essence area below the topic

When we enter a specific topic, we will see the discussion area by default. The method is to focus on answering the questions under this topic and use the tags under this topic when writing articles.

Gradually, you will have a high weight in this field, and naturally you can rank at the front when you get very few approvals.

4) Operational observation of Zhihu answer rankings

The answer ranking determines the exposure of your answer to a certain extent. There are two indicators that have a greater impact on our answer recommendations: likes and dislikes, and account weight.

Compared with daily cold-start likes and operational observations, Zhihu's answer ranking algorithm has changed. Account weight is the main ranking factor. Gathering likes will cause the answer to fall in the ranking.

The weight will affect the ranking of answers with the same number of likes and dislikes. For answers with the same number of likes and dislikes, the higher the weight, the faster the likes ranking will rise, and the slower the dislike ranking will drop. Two important factors affecting the weight include: collection, thanks, etc.

At present, the official calculation formula for weight has not been announced. In addition to the influence of collections and thanks, a user's weight in a certain professional field may also be affected by becoming an excellent respondent, increasing the salt value, and real-name authentication.

Of course, this has little impact on the recommendation of questions. Even a small account without weight can still get high exposure and high praise under Zhihu's mechanism.

The most important thing to understand about this algorithm is that all algorithms are designed to help high-quality content gain more exposure, and the like rate is one of the indicators we should pay most attention to.

The correct approach is to try to occupy the first 50 answer positions, and then write a longer answer to avoid violations. In this way, due to the comprehensive evaluation of Zhihu accounts, Zhihu answers will naturally get a real ranking.

5) Output Zhihu hot list questions

In addition to chasing hot lists, you can also create your own hot lists and ask and answer your own questions. How to ask a "hot and good question"?

① Comply with the questioning standards of the Zhihu community

• Reality: Real doubts after thinking for yourself, not asking questions just for the sake of asking;
• Objectivity: Present issues and facts rationally and objectively, without bias;
• Concise: Use concise words to summarize the problem without going into details;
• Clear: clear and targeted;
• Standardization: Punctuation, words and sentence structures are rigorous and standardized.

② Basic elements of timely news events

• Write the time of the incident into the question, and state the question clearly and completely, such as "x month x day + question statement...";
• When there is no investigation result yet, use expressions such as "suspected" or "rumored on the Internet";
• When referring to the names of the parties involved in the case, please be sure to use "xx" to protect privacy.

③ The question structure is complete and the statement is clear

Bind five topics related to the question, and at least one topic must be specified for the activity.

A complete summary of the problem, including links to reports on the event, as well as relevant pictures and videos. It is best to bold the key information in the summary.

When modifying a question, you need to carefully evaluate whether you are modifying the original meaning of the question.

What are some “universal” and easy-to-use sentence patterns?

..., what kind of information is there?

..., what is the truth?

...What is the current progress? What are the legal bases to support this?

..., what does this mean?

..., what is the current progress?

How to analyze... from a xx professional perspective?

..., what information is worth paying attention to?

④ Vertical keyword matching formula

Keyword layout method: Baidu web/mobile ranking + main keyword + long tail keyword

Vertical keyword matching formula: marketing object (primary keyword) + secondary object (long-tail keyword) + 5W1H (super long-tail keyword) layout

Zhihu supports answering two similar questions with the same content, which allows institutional accounts to quickly expand their reach. However, it is recommended to adjust the beginning and some of the content in a targeted manner based on the specific description of each problem.

After we have completed the Zhihu traffic diversion and have stable and continuous vertical traffic, how can we use private domain operation tools to plan fission activities, continuously expand vertical traffic, and carry out subsequent monetization?

3. Use private domain tools to trigger fission monetization

Zhihu is responsible for traffic generation, and transactions are completed within the WeChat system. This method, especially for products with a relatively high average order value, is more about converting transactions by carrying traffic through Zhihu and the WeChat system.

WeChat can be used to reach users repeatedly. When users trust your product, it will affect their behavior and decisions. The essence of a transaction is trust, and only by resolving the trust issue can a transaction be completed.

Ways to get users to make deals: deals in friend circles, social networks, public accounts, service accounts, 1-on-1 private chats, repeat purchases, referrals, etc.

Each transaction method has different methods and techniques. The following introduces how to direct traffic to the company’s WeChat group.

The SOP framework is as follows:

• Drain traffic to private domain traffic pool
• Design of speech after customers come
• Private domain traffic operation-reaching customers through Moments and private messages
• Delivery Design

From traffic generation-operation-conversion-monetization, we utilized Zhihu + WeChat to complete a small business closed loop.

1. Attract users to follow the official account and push community live codes

Fans attracted from Zhihu enter the community through the live code of the community’s private domain tools (such as Yutang SCRM), quickly attracting and retaining fans. Manually creating a group can easily lead to a WeChat account being blocked. A safe and stable private domain operation backend saves time and effort.

During the process of joining a group, the active code will automatically switch to the next group. This way, there is no need to worry about the loss of fans attracted from Zhihu. You can follow the official account and be immediately imported into the learning community, killing two birds with one stone.

2. In-depth community operation and batch management and monetization

After entering the community, if there is no community management tool, every fan who comes in must manually forward the group announcement, such as sending a learning preview. Sometimes they forget to send it, or send it to the wrong group. This will slow down students' absorption of knowledge and is not conducive to subsequent payment conversion.

After using private domain operation tools, fans can be managed in batches, and the latest learning materials can be sent through group welcome messages, group announcements, scheduled group messages, etc., so that students can feel the value of the community and become loyal fans.

3. Send useful information packages, loyal students will be divided into old and new ones

After establishing a valuable community, fans will continue to actively invite friends in need to join the group to learn. Take advantage of this opportunity and sort out the complete information package.

Use the fission poster activity function of the private domain operation tool to package the information into holiday activity benefits, let fans forward it to their friends circle to receive the benefits, and gain more accurate fans at 0 cost.

Subsequently, you can also push mall links to continuously reach and convert potential users to purchase professional courses and achieve continuous monetization.

This set of "Zhihu-Private Domain" customer acquisition and monetization closed-loop tools and solutions can solve the problem of lack of traffic and low conversion for content operators.

Author: Xiaobing who loves to study

Source: Little Cake by Love Research