The official account has modified its publishing rules, and non-mass articles also have the opportunity to obtain WeChat recommended traffic!

Recently, WeChat official accounts have introduced new rules. This time, the publishing function is upgraded. Newly published content will be displayed on the official account homepage and have the opportunity to be recommended by the platform. How exactly is it? Let's take a look at the analysis in this article.

The official account has made new moves again. This frequency makes it hard not to suspect that the WeChat team is rushing to meet its KPI.

This time, the publishing function is upgraded - newly released content will be displayed on the official account homepage and have the opportunity to be recommended by the platform.

The fewer words, the bigger the matter. The description of the new function this time is only about 20 words, but it is like a heavy depth bomb, splashing the creator.

01 Public account publishing function upgrade

As early as 2021, the official account launched a publishing function that can push multiple times a day. The advantage is that it does not occupy the number of group posts and can be published multiple times a day. Except that it will not be actively pushed to the official account fans and will not appear on the account homepage, other functions such as marking original, adding collections, and appreciation are the same as group posts.

Regarding this upgrade, it is very simple to explain. After the function upgrade, the restriction that articles pushed through the publishing function are not displayed on the account homepage has been lifted.

Coupled with WeChat’s additional explanation of “there is a chance to be recommended by the platform”, it seems that the publishing function is almost equivalent to the mass messaging function. Except that the historical message page is not open to it, the account homepage, information flow recommendations and other traffic entrances are all available at once, and multiple contents can be published every day, which suddenly raises its status.

However, there are two points to note about this feature upgrade:

1. Only newly published content is subject to the upgraded display rules

Content published before the official announcement of the feature upgrade will still not be shown to fans or displayed on the account homepage, and can only be viewed in the background.

2. Only content published on the web page is subject to the upgraded display rules

Only articles pushed using the web page backend publishing function will be displayed on the account homepage, while articles pushed using the subscription account assistant app's publishing function will not be displayed.

The content published using the Subscription Account Assistant App does not appear on the account homepage. In addition, based on Jam Girl’s current testing, the publishing function supports publishing multiple pieces of content per day, and the upper limit on the number is not yet clear.

After the experience, Jam Girl couldn't help but say "Wow", this style, which seems to be relaxed but not completely relaxed, is indeed very "WeChat", with the main feature of both updating and restraint.

02 Is this a good thing?

No matter which update is made, the official account will always escape "judgment", especially the pros and cons of the creators.

So, is the upgrade of the publishing function of the official account a good thing? Let’s look at it from two aspects.

On the one hand, this move undoubtedly breaks the limitation that public accounts can only publish once a day, which has been repeatedly complained about. Although this problem has been slightly alleviated after the release function was launched, the shortcomings of not being able to automatically reach fans and not being able to naturally enter the platform's traffic pool make this function seem useless and basically ineffective.

The title is wrong and cannot be changed, there are problems with the advertisement content, so the manuscript has to be deleted. You suddenly want to post some short content but can't bear to give up the precious opportunity to send it to a group of people. Which editor has not encountered these situations that make you want to cry but have no choice... In the final analysis, it is because the number of pushes is limited, and the inability to enter the public domain publishing function cannot solve the problem fundamentally.

This time the release function has been upgraded, and the content can appear on the account homepage and have the opportunity to obtain platform recommendation traffic, which is equivalent to enhancing the effectiveness of the published content, rather than relying solely on oneself to reach fans. This is of course a good thing.

The accounts that can benefit the most are information accounts and the majority of small and medium-sized accounts that mainly publish short, flat and fast content. Most of these accounts value timeliness and their content tends to be hot topics. After the release function is upgraded, they have the opportunity to gain traffic without limiting the number, giving them more opportunities to quickly produce explosive articles.

In the last article in the public account that supported identity change, we mentioned that the operation of the public domain needs to be put on the agenda. The release of this function upgrade verifies this trend conjecture.

On the other hand, the most direct trouble brought by the release function upgrade is the absence of the permanent preview link again. After the permanent preview function was offline, many operators used the release function as a substitute. As a result, the content released has now been made public, so it is no longer suitable for preview.

More importantly, the upgrade of publishing functions is actually another blow to high-quality content.

In the early days of public accounts, people could only publish content once a day. Marketing accounts were committed to publishing eight posts a day, while original accounts insisted on deeply polishing content. In short, everyone racked their brains to delve deeply into different fields.

From the time when the release frequency was relaxed to the time when traffic entrances were gradually opened, the lack of quality was made up for by quantity.

In the current AI era, the accumulation of content is effortless. With the help of AI large model tools such as ChatGPT, Wenxin Yiyan, and Spark, the speed of "Li Bai drinking and writing hundreds of poems" may not be enough. This will easily lead to a situation where bad money drives out good money, further undermining the enthusiasm for creating high-quality content.

In addition, published content has the opportunity to be recommended by the platform, which means further advancement of big data information flow. However, whether the platform foundation of the official account, "subscription", will be weakened again is a matter of opinion.

With the ability to publish articles and enter the public domain traffic pool, "subscription" seems to have become insignificant. However, it is not necessarily true that the subscription relationship between accounts and fans has become more fragile. Because published articles are only displayed on the account homepage, some content may become a "surprise" for loyal fans who follow the account when they click on the account homepage on a daily basis.

After all, the recommendation rules of the platform are still unknown. Compared with the illusory platform traffic, the stickiness of one's own fans is more reliable. For creators, guiding fans to follow and cultivating their habit of checking the account homepage, and even conducting long-tail traffic management to spread the same topic, may become the focus of the next stage of operations.

Since the upgraded release function still has many shortcomings, why does the official account need to make a solemn announcement?

We are currently in the era of big data, and public accounts that are still wavering between subscriptions and information flows need to face the impact. Douyin has risen at the speed of light by closely grasping user preferences and recommending content. Xiaohongshu has become the absolute king in the field of grass-growing by recommending content, not to mention that various content platforms are following suit and constantly dividing up user usage time.

Of course, the public accounts have seen it all and are anxious about it. They want to keep up with the times, but they are also afraid that a sudden change of direction will hurt the foundation, so they can only try to change step by step, which can be seen from the information flow of that year to the present. Today, the public accounts have opened up public domain traffic, including the construction of "Look", and naturally they need enough content to support the operation of the recommendation mechanism.

As a result, the publishing function that can break the restrictions was launched, and then the traffic entrance was opened. The entire public account platform needs to experience this change, and high-quality content has to face this round of reshuffle.

Some people say that the public account is preparing for users to post more "little green books". In my opinion, the public account is preparing for the growth of the amount of all content. As for whether the high-quality content will be diluted, this is a question after the great waves wash away the sand. What we can do is to reasonably use all favorable methods, such as using this to supplement content.

The only thing Jam Girl is worried about is that after the bosses know about this upgrade, will they ask the operators to write 300 articles a day... (bushi)

Author: Chen Chumu

Source public account: Weiguojiang (ID: wjam123456), focusing on the forefront of new media and insights into new consumer fields.