WeChat issued an announcement to regulate marketing content. Is this reasonable?

This article questions the recent release of WeChat’s regulations on official account-related marketing behaviors, analyzes WeChat’s current content production problems, points out its unreasonable aspects and proposes solutions.

Within one month, WeChat issued two consecutive announcements to regulate marketing content.

First, content creators are required to clearly mark advertising content when they publish it.

Second, brand owners are required to register on the Tencent advertising platform and publish advertising tasks.

Otherwise, WeChat will restrict the relevant permissions of authors and advertisers.

This seems like a regulatory move that can help some users reduce the impact of phishing, scam ads, etc., but WeChat's approach cannot solve the fundamental problem.

01 No clear standards

WeChat simply released two brief regulatory announcements, causing panic among advertisers and authors in the circle.

The boundary of what exactly counts as advertising has always been ambiguous.

For example, this sentence: The operator of the public account promotes goods or services through commercial cooperation with third parties.

So what does this third party refer to?

Can I use Youzan or Weidian to publish product links?

Can I use Fenchuan to publish circles and articles with paid content?

Can links to other products or event registration appear in my article?

02 What should players who rely on the WeChat ecosystem do?

Let’s assume the worst-case scenario, where QR codes and links from third-party platforms cannot appear in tweets.

As mentioned earlier, courses, consultations, registrations, voting, merchandise, etc., will be a huge blow to players who rely on the WeChat ecosystem.

Take Youzan and Weidian as examples. In the past, users scanned codes to go to their links and apps, but now the road is blocked.

So, what exactly is the so-called third party? Does it mean that H5 and apps are not allowed? Or even mini programs are not allowed?

WeChat itself has a function that supports jumping to external links. If it is really restricted, it means that the traffic of many products will be cut in half.

Of course, it is not ruled out that WeChat will create a whitelist and users will have no choice but to use them.

But this practice will undoubtedly stifle small and medium-sized entrepreneurs and restrict transactions and innovation.

03 For creators, the most important thing is that they have no money

WeChat official accounts have never figured out why many high-quality content creators have left and stopped updating.

Because I really update it with love. Nowadays, there are not many people around me who really make money from public accounts.

For example, WeChat public accounts support four monetization capabilities:

Paid reading, content rewards, product release, and traffic sharing.

However, it is difficult to make money with any of the above monetization capabilities.

For example, the author once wrote an article with over 100,000 views, but the traffic income did not exceed 10 yuan and the reward was 0.

WeChat revamped its public account push notifications, thinking it would increase traffic, but in fact the traffic has been getting worse.

04 Increasing followers and exposure is the first priority

While public accounts are thinking about regulation, they should also think about how to help many content creators increase their followers and exposure.

For example, the push mechanism is getting deeper and deeper into the dark, and even some accounts cannot receive push notifications even after they are released.

Secondly, in terms of recommendation mechanism , how to help authors gain exposure in terms of search, similar articles, take a look, hot lists, etc.

Thirdly, in terms of advertising revenue , the same exposure of public accounts is far less than that of headlines. The bloggers can only get a little money when users click on the advertisements of public accounts.

This little bit of money is just a few cents or dimes.

The vast majority of public account bloggers, even if they update their content every day, do not even have 50 yuan in traffic revenue a month.

Fourthly, in terms of activity income , other platforms can obtain some profit dividends by participating in some activities, but if the official account does not sell goods itself, the small author will have almost zero income.

The so-called small authors are those who have less than 50,000 or even 100,000 fans, because an article they publish may not even have 500 reads.

Fifth, in terms of traffic exposure , it is recommended that the official account can make the button for users to follow more obvious, so that when the author publishes content, there are some activity topics to choose from, so as to obtain some traffic recommendations.

Otherwise, blindly imposing restrictions will further dampen the enthusiasm of mid-level and lower-level content creators.

Since the official cannot give enough money, and I can’t use external free tools to monetize, isn’t this extremely difficult?

Author: Village Chief, WeChat public account: Shili Village