Play with Zhihu, all the Zhihu operation skills you don’t know are here

Growth is a hot topic . Who doesn’t want targeted users when doing business? Today, the guys selling grilled cold noodles have a community mindset and set up a group to maintain their customers.

Therefore, whether you are a public account creator, a professional in a vertical field, a micro-business owner, or have your own products, you need to promote them online.

So how do you continue to acquire new customers? Some people like to pay to purchase accurate traffic, which is simple, crude and efficient. But this is not friendly to fledgling startups, new brands and individual creators. With advertising costs and junk traffic continuing to rise, not everyone can choose paid traffic at will.

This article will give you a detailed analysis of a traffic pool that is overlooked by most people, and reveal a group of small-time celebrities who are making a fortune in silence!

This article will explain in detail the gameplay of Zhihu and the monetization logic behind it from five aspects:

1. Introduction to Zhihu content creation

How to play Zhihu? Why use Zhihu?

2. Knowledge-based sales: one account becomes a company

One article brought 22 million yuan of goods——Blue Immortal

3. About content monetization

A Zhihu account, attracting more than 100,000 fans

4. What is good content? Zhihu goes left, TikTok goes right

Light content, short and fast, understand users, and have a sense of the Internet

5. How should a newbie use Zhihu?

The biggest advantage of Zhihu is that it is extremely friendly to newcomers and has low creation costs.

The full text is 5633 words and takes 7 minutes to read.

01. Get to know Zhihu content creation and how to use Zhihu? Why use Zhihu?

I believe that you must be familiar with Zhihu today, but if I talk about Zhihu operations , you will definitely have a lot of question marks on your face? How else can Zhihu be operated? Isn’t it just to find questions and write answers?

This is indeed true for ordinary users, but for creators, you are still too young to think so. Because, several of my friends earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year just from Zhihu, and it’s not an isolated case. Next, I will show you in detail how those big guys who earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on Zhihu make their money.

First, we need to clarify a few points:

• Why Zhihu?

• A detailed overview of Zhihu users

Why Zhihu? In fact, the reason is very simple: poverty. The traffic of WeChat public accounts has reached its peak. No matter how others praise it, it is obvious that the number of fans can no longer increase. For every individual or company, without exposure and traffic, the product cannot be promoted, and what they face is the continuous loss of users. For individuals, it is the same. It is too, damn, difficult to increase the number of fans!

I believe that anyone who works in the operations circle must understand the difference between public domain traffic and private domain traffic. Public domain traffic means that the platform has the right to distribute traffic, and private domain traffic means users that can be reached repeatedly by individuals. For everyone, traffic generation has become a rigid demand.

Let’s take a look at the users and ecology of the Zhihu platform:

420 million registered users, 45 million DAU, 1.3 billion daily average PV, and the users of the entire platform meet the three high characteristics: high education, high income, and high consumption. There are not many apps in China that can do this.

Whether you want to promote your products through useful content, or want to be a Taobao customer and sell products directly, if this type of user meets the characteristics of your own product, then I think Zhihu is something you must do.

Detailed analysis of the overall picture of Zhihu users. After understanding Zhihu's basic information, we took a deep look at the overall picture of Zhihu users. All data comes from Zhihu's internal sources. What really surprised me was that the gender ratio on Zhihu is so balanced, covering almost all first-tier cities.

The previous joke on Zhihu was "Thanks for the invitation, I'm in the United States and just got off the plane." It does seem a bit pretentious, but it does reflect that the overall level of Zhihu users is indeed very high.

Secondly, Zhihu itself is very friendly to both individual and corporate creators, and provides a wealth of monetization methods for content creators.

• Recommended products

• Zhihu live courses

• Consultation fee

• Brand advertising tasks
• Advertisers accept orders, etc.

Why use Zhihu? In fact, the result of this is self-evident. From the perspective of product operation, your product promotion and marketing should be where the users are. This is very important.

02 Knowledge hardcore sales, one account has become a company, one article brings 22 million goods - Lan Daxianren

Today, whether online or offline, the core business is traffic. In the past, if you wanted to open a store or a company, you might have to hire a cook first, then find a few waiters, and then open the business as soon as the firecrackers went off. Whether the business was good or not, when would you be able to recoup your costs and make a positive profit? I guess he's really worried about everything.

For today's self-media creators, an account is a company, your product is your content, users consume content, content influences the mind, and thus generates consumption and action. Lan Daxianren should be a model of knowledge-based hardcore product promotion, and he was even reported by CCTV this year.

After researching all the platforms, I found that Zhihu is really one of the platforms that is extremely friendly to vertical content creators. Other platforms are really too krypton gold-intensive . It is said that the cost of following an ordinary public account has risen to more than 10 yuan. Individuals who play with public accounts really can't afford it, after all, they only have two kidneys.

We dug deep into the Zhihu account where Lan Daxianren sold 22 million products with one article. In fact, he only has more than 70,000 followers. Of course, it is not for other reasons. The core reason is that Zhihu users are really picky and will not follow others easily. For public domain traffic platforms such as Zhihu, the approval an account gets is far more important than the number of followers.

Up to now, Lan Daxianren has received a total of 2,626 consultations. Based on the charge of 30 yuan per consultation, it has achieved a revenue of 78,000 yuan. In addition, it can also offer various live courses.

A single article that sold 22 million products received 21,000 likes, which means that the exposure given by the Zhihu platform for free is over a million.

Knowledge is different from information. It is not easy to become outdated and can be viewed repeatedly. Therefore, the 22 million sales from a single article are data from December last year to June 18th, which also means that new revenue and profits will still be generated in the future. (As of now, the cumulative revenue has reached 36 million)

Most people who use Zhihu know that Zhihu's long-tail traffic is extremely high. As long as the content is high-quality enough, Zhihu can recommend your content for free for several years. Therefore, for creators, the creation cost is greatly reduced.

To be honest, those who have worked on traffic and growth all know the value of this. Free exposure to millions of traffic would cost hundreds of thousands on any platform, and it is likely to be inflated. So it really has to be said that Zhihu is super conscientious.

The core recommendation mechanism comes from Zhihu:

• Let high-quality questions and answers get great exposure
• 0 fans can also get great exposure
• Content distribution mechanism, long-tail traffic is extremely high

Zhihu uses the Wilson interval algorithm, and the platform also has complex weights. It is an extremely friendly platform for newcomers. In different fields, there are completely different answerers. There is no need to worry about the so-called platform big Vs. As long as the content is recognized by users, it can also get great exposure. Compared with other public domain traffic platforms, it is really amazing.

For Mr. Lan, going back to the previous example, one account brought in goods worth 22 million in half a year. I believe this is extremely difficult for an ordinary company or an offline electrical appliance store to achieve. One person, one account, built a company.

03. About content monetization: A Zhihu account attracted more than 100,000 fans

I believe that everyone has different starting points and purposes for creating content, but they will ultimately lead to the core goal, which is to increase followers and realize monetization . Next, I will show you how the current bigwigs on Zhihu generate traffic and realize monetization through Zhihu.

Case 1: Tang Hulu's Sleep Talk

0 cost Zhihu to attract 3000+ accurate fans

Brief background: His main business is the hairy crabs from Gucheng Lake in his hometown. In 2017, I started answering questions on Zhihu and outputting 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.

You know, the average customer spending on hairy crabs is not low, and the current traffic costs are getting higher and higher, so if we can acquire so many customers at zero cost and promote them through continuous operations and event benefits, there is no problem in achieving a million-level revenue a year.

Case 2: Engineer’s friend

Good product recommendation + Taobao Alliance, a single article has accumulated revenue of more than 100,000

If we say that Lan Daxian is a survivor of the bias and few people can be like him, it is true. However, for a big V, it is still very easy to write some content to bring in goods and conversions, and then take an advertisement to earn thousands or tens of thousands of yuan a month.

For example, this content received 38,000 likes, and the platform's exposure level was 1.5 million, which directly completed the conversion of tool sales and accumulated a cumulative revenue of more than 100,000 yuan. Moreover, the platform will continue to recommend it, which is really great.

Single-day income of more than 2,000 (taken from one of the days)

There are actually a lot of cases like this. I believe that as long as you pay attention, you can find a lot of cases, so I won’t go into details here.

Therefore, for Zhihu operations, the core difficulties are:

• Familiar with the rules of Zhihu platform (recommendation, anti-blocking, traffic diversion, etc.)
• How to find a potential problem?
• How to write a highly praised Q&A?
• Set up traffic and conversion mechanisms

This is the core of achieving continuous revenue. In fact, there are many rules to follow. I will explain this systematically in Chapter 5.

04. What is good content? Zhihu is on the left, Douyin is on the right. They are light on content, short and fast, understand users, and have a sense of the Internet.

Some time ago, I was discussing a topic with many friends, which is what is good content?

In fact, this seems to have no solution, because in the era of decentralized distribution, information is growing explosively, and it is difficult to define what is good. What is bad?

However, from another perspective, there seems to be a relatively objective answer, which is content that users like to watch. Then the definition of good content becomes content that has feelings, personality, attitude, understanding of users, and a sense of the Internet. Only good content is content that has feelings, personality, attitude, understanding of users, and a sense of the Internet .

Therefore, those who like to talk a lot of nonsense may not necessarily have a large audience. The key is to build your own charming personality, which is also the trend of the development of self-media in recent years.

So, whether it is Zhihu or Douyin, these are very obvious characteristics.

Let’s talk about content creation. For content creators, the cost of creation depends on the time invested and the output effect of the investment. These two are very critical. After all, no one can generate electricity with love, they still need to make a living.

This year, affected by the epidemic, short videos have indeed exploded rapidly. We have seen more and more companies and individuals flocking into the short video industry to shoot Douyin videos. So what are the real effects?

Traffic costs continue to rise, and there is also a large amount of invalid junk traffic, which greatly consumes the costs of advertisers. Of course, this is not absolute, and the top players still have huge dividends.

Douyin and Zhihu are two completely different platforms. Douyin is a general entertainment platform that helps people kill time during their boring leisure time, while Zhihu focuses on practical and in-depth content sharing, mainly through question search and recommendation, to solve problems encountered in work and life.

I think both categories are very valuable content platforms, and they will continue to coexist.

In terms of user verticality, Zhihu users are of higher quality, while Douyin users are larger in scale. In terms of operational difficulty, Douyin is not prepared with sufficient funds and personnel, so it is recommended to enter the market with caution.

In terms of creation costs, the cost of content creation for Douyin is several times that of Zhihu, although today, video shooting and editing have become necessary skills for everyone. However, it is quite difficult to shoot a beautiful video that can go viral, and it requires a lot of promotion. Most video content is created and generally only has a maximum of 3 days of recommendation. If the volume does not increase within 3 days, the content will die.

As for Zhihu, its advantages are highlighted by its long-tail effect and value, based on question-and-answer and knowledge-based content distribution. If content is continuously distributed based on the current user browsing volume and popularity, the creation cost will be much lower.

How to choose a suitable platform? I think everyone should think clearly. Video is indeed a major trend in the future. If you choose the one that suits you, the input-output ratio will be obvious.

Image source: The Last Journey

05. How should a newbie use Zhihu?

I believe that after understanding why we should create Zhihu and its value and significance, many people will definitely want to try it out.

Here we will directly give you practical tips and teach you how newbies can quickly get started and use Zhihu.

*Part of the following content is based on Tang Hulu Mengyi, please delete if it infringes!

There are four core steps for beginners to use Zhihu:

• Familiar with Zhihu environment
• Find potential problems
• Content Creation
• Promotion to improve ranking

Familiar with the Zhihu environment. To operate Zhihu, start by improving the homepage information. You need to treat your avatar, nickname, signature, profile and other aspects with care, so that users will easily build trust in you.

After registering an account, the key is to maintain the account and actively participate in community building, such as liking and collecting content that you are interested in, searching for topics and influencers related to your own positioning, etc.

If a newly registered account starts advertising right away, it faces a great risk of being blocked. I believe no platform would like such behavior.

Find potential problems. When operating on Zhihu, finding potential questions is basically half the battle. The platform's recommendation and distribution mechanism determines the level of exposure based on user behavior, the current popularity of the question, and the number of times it has been discussed and viewed.

In short, not every question will be viewed and exposed. Only by finding the hot topics at the moment can you write highly praised questions and answers.

For example, there are some keyword search techniques, related words, etc., to hit these long-tail or currently hot questions, plan the content in advance, and when the answers start to increase in volume, answer them immediately, and you can take advantage of the opportunity to get platform recommendations.

In the process of searching for problems, the core focuses on 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.

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.

Content creation. After finding a good question, the next core is content creation. However, the threshold for content creation is not that high and there are certain rules.

Here are some common ideas for content creation:

1. Create according to your actual situation. For example, what industry are you in, what do you do, and what are the pain points of consumers? The core is true feelings, and users can still perceive it.

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.

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.

5. Mobilize users' emotions. During the creative process, I consciously described some knowledge points in an interesting way so that they would resonate more easily with users.

For Zhihu, after the content creation is completed, it is not actually over, but just the beginning.

The next most critical step is to look at the data, that is, to improve the ranking. How can I make my own content be recommended by the platform and gain higher exposure?

Here are 4 ways:

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.

To sum up, the above is all our experience and analysis of Zhihu. We will give you a detailed analysis of the Zhihu ecosystem, as well as our thoughts and cognition. We hope it will be helpful to you.

Author: LZX's study notes

Source: LZX's study notes