WeChat Tips: From XX Challenge to XX Red Packet, the Next Hot Spot in WeChat Moments

In two months, the Chinese New Year will come, and it will be another harvest season. In 2014, there were several hot topics on WeChat and Weibo that were worth noting, from the ice bucket challenge to the smile challenge, from the New Year red envelopes to the Didi red envelopes and then to the JD red envelopes. Regardless of the origin of the hot topics and the commercial operations in the promotion process, they have continued to be popular in major media, WeChat Moments, the number of eyeballs attracted, and the user participation.

On Weibo, the "Ice Bucket Challenge" was a popular activity spread by IT tycoons and celebrities, while the "Smile Challenge" is a pure and simple form. You just need to put your own pictures and pictures of friends you share in the circle of friends, and spread and pass on the smiling pictures. In this way, the "Smile Challenge" spread in the circle of friends. The form is simple, but the participation rate is extremely high.

First of all, WeChat is a frequently used public platform, a mainstream of information distribution of public accounts and mobile social media for acquaintances. WeChat users spend a lot of time on WeChat every day sending and receiving messages, browsing Moments, and reading public account content. The "Smile Challenge" appears frequently in Moments, and when users pass it on and share it, it spreads the topic like a snowball, and the atmosphere effect it creates further fuels the flames.

Abandoning the celebrity mentality of the "Ice Bucket Challenge", the "Smile Challenge" appears in a more civilian way, with simple side photos and private Moments. It is obvious that modern people are not afraid of being challenged and actively show and initiate interaction in the mainstream society of the post-80s and 90s. Based on the information distribution rules of public accounts and Moments, 20% of users actively contribute the information they obtain to the rest of the silent readers. The "Smile Challenge" is like a depth charge, which stimulates the self-expression of diving users in the form of a show, thus completing the process of communication-participation and making many friends feel present.

Secondly, it is the power of the community. There are many communities in WeChat. Every time I attend a gathering of industry, hobbies, friends, etc., I will temporarily participate in one. The social foundation of Chinese people is circle social, and the form of social WeChat groups has ignited the market of various red envelopes. The sender gets sought after and vanity, and the red envelope grabber satisfies curiosity and interests. In turn, the circle of friends is far from meeting the needs of circle social. In the future, circle social, interest social, etc. will be a very likely direction. The WeChat public platform also opened and delegated many permissions yesterday, such as the group message interface, such as the certified public account multi-customer service interface.

Now let’s take a look at the hot topics and understandings that will be triggered by the WeChat public account circle of friends in the future.

The first is fun.

Whether it is an event or promotional marketing, fun is the first priority for users, compared to the ultimate benefits that users care about. Interesting participation, the most basic thing is to impress participants, so that they will have the urge to participate and the willingness to share. Whether it is the hot spots mentioned above or the popular Nervous Cat, 2048, fun is the foundation of the foundation. Participation in fun, even if there is no reward, people will participate. In addition to small games, there are also Microsoft Xiaobing's funny games. Although it was banned by Tencent, *** still brought WeChat robots such as Gongzhongbao to bring chat and various services to fans of public accounts. No matter how it evolves, fun will eventually have a place in communication.

The second is the user participation threshold.

In terms of the number of users participating and the threshold for participation, the "Smile Challenge" and various red envelopes are better than the "Ice Bucket Challenge". The latter requires venues, personnel, materials, preparation, radiation and dissemination, and is more suitable for eye-catching open platforms such as Weibo. The former is a popular activity for everyone in a relatively closed and private circle of friends, and the threshold for radiation participation is low and of course more down-to-earth. Just tap your fingers, scratch the red envelope, and experience simple participation intuitively.

The third is environment and promotion.

Learn to promote hot topics through multiple channels. Pay attention to hot topics. Enterprises cannot just wait for hot topics to come, but should learn to predict hot topics in advance. Prepare in advance for hot topics that will be encountered, such as the World Cup, APEC, etc. Enterprises use hot topics to improve content. If their own resources are insufficient, they should use more relevant channels to achieve marketing benefits. Since it is a hot topic in WeChat Moments, it is natural to find a group of WeChat big accounts, self-media people, Weibo big Vs, etc. to publish and promote it. This will have a high forwarding volume, easy to promote, and fully reach relatives, friends, colleagues and friends around you.

Only high-frequency WeChat platforms can promote faster and larger-scale dissemination. The same effect can be achieved on QQ Space, public accounts, etc. The timeliness of information and the atmosphere of explosion are difficult to create. As far as I know, professional new media operators are concerned, one of their daily routines is to process the daily social circle explosion points, monitor the detonation points, conduct complete event investigations, analyze the interest relationship and context, analyze the fan behavior and the overall environment, infer the intentions of the trigger and creator, and finally infer the cause and effect of the entire event and the core human thinking (such as the seven deadly sins).

*** Throw some cold water on this, bad news for marketers

A few days ago, a Weibo expert, Durex official, revealed a list of hidden rules in corporate information promotion, which directly pointed out the actual significance of WeChat marketing communication. For example, in social media communication, the influence of soft copywriting on users is lower than expected, close to a few ten-thousandths of attention; there are many fakes and watered-down data in Weibo and WeChat corporate promotions; the hot topics such as Weibo that we pay attention to every day are all manipulated by professional water armies; even the creativity of design communication experts, in terms of the final explosive effect, the success rate of high-quality works is only about 10% to 20%.

Perhaps the reality is much crueler than imagined. Even in many successful viral marketing cases, many dissemination information itself cannot be well combined with advertising, and the final conversion effect is lower than that of hard advertising. This is even more true for the information promotion effect of the official account itself. From the messages pushed by the official account to the explosion in the circle of friends, it is still difficult to reach the spread of advertising-related content among relatives and friends. Even if Durex’s Weibo looks attractive and is put on the push end, how many people are willing to share it with their own circle of friends to interact. Thinking well about your own official account and combining it with every possible hot spot is a more feasible solution after analyzing the pros and cons.