Public accounts promote "fair" iterations, but instead enter an era of chaos

Although short videos, live broadcasts and other content formats are eroding the traffic of WeChat official accounts, it is undeniable that official accounts are still one of the most powerful and efficient content platforms for delivering information, knowledge and opinions. This article analyzes three ways to make official accounts successful. Those who are interested can take a look.

Before reading this article, I would like to ask you three questions:

First, how long has it been since you followed a new public account?

Second, how much time do you spend reading articles on public accounts?

Third, have you noticed that WeChat public account tweets can no longer be sorted by time?

If you haven't followed a new public account for a long time and don't spend too much time reading WeChat articles, then you won't notice that WeChat public account articles can no longer be sorted by one click on the icon in the upper right corner.

More importantly, the WeChat public account information flow will automatically fold the header images of public accounts that users do not read frequently into small images, and only retain the complete header images of a few public accounts that users read frequently. Regardless of whether it is folded or not, the public account can only display two push notifications. The push notifications after the second one can only be viewed in the information flow by clicking again...

Coupled with the information flow model of time disruption and interest recommendation that has been popularized by public accounts since 2018, accounts that insist on creating but are followed by users but not read frequently are becoming increasingly likely to be "hidden in the dust" by the iteration of public accounts.

What is even more worrying for the creators of the WeChat official account ecosystem is that the WeChat official account’s move to disrupt the chronological order of the revision caused a great discussion in the entire Internet industry. Today, even among Internet practitioners, few people seem to pay attention to this topic. Is this really the most dangerous moment for WeChat official account creators?

1. Times have changed

In summary, the biggest changes in the information flow of WeChat public accounts in recent years are mainly three aspects: videoization, interest-based, and "fairness".

Let’s talk about video first: Since WeChat launched video accounts and video account live broadcasts, the information flow of public accounts has begun to transform and shift resources to videos and live broadcasts in terms of products.

Videos are increasingly appearing in the information flow of public accounts: as long as users scroll down a few screens, they can see the video content; if they scroll down further, the video content will continue to appear. Not only that, when users click to enter the public account business card, a considerable number of times they will directly enter the public account's video account page, directly displaying the public account's video content.

Live content also appears in the public account information flow. If the public accounts that users often read are live, they will be placed on the left side of the first screen, which is the best position in the entire WeChat public account information flow. So we can see that many public accounts are live streaming for more than ten hours a day, just to "win" the best exposure position in the public account information flow ecosystem.

The latest "Statistical Report on the Development of China's Internet" shows that the number of short video users in my country has reached 962 million, accounting for 91.5% of the total number of netizens. In terms of user scale, it is the largest user group after instant messaging.

At the same time, short videos are also the product form with the longest usage time by Chinese netizens. In recent quarters, it has remained stable at around 33%, which is "far" higher than products such as instant messaging.

No product will choose to go against short videos. As a rising star in the video field, WeChat, the "hope of the whole village", cannot rely solely on the discovery page and the entrance of Moments to support itself. It must eat grass at night and make extra money. If the video account wants to accelerate further, it must "fleece the public account" and take advantage of the entrance of the public account information flow to increase exposure and traffic.

Not only that, most of the search results of WeChat searches, which used to only be able to search WeChat articles, are now also displayed in the form of video accounts.

Some video accounts have average content and even don’t quite match the search keywords, but they are still placed higher than WeChat articles that are better produced and have more matching results. As a key entry point for the long-tail dissemination of WeChat public account articles, WeChat search has also accounted for a considerable proportion of the exposure of video accounts.

Being forced by WeChat Video Account to make short videos and live broadcasts has become the new normal for WeChat public account creators.

But there are always more solutions than problems. Hedgehog Community found that some comic strip accounts that were once considered to be only capable of text and pictures have made pictures animated, started to make short videos, and even spread short videos to video platforms other than WeChat public accounts. For example, the workplace public account "Slot Logic" has achieved the transformation from text and pictures to short videos by using self-made commentary and comics.

Creators who stay at WeChat Official Account 1.0, that is, only produce pictures and texts, have to face less and less WeChat traffic. Once the content leaves the users, it will also lose its commercial value.

The second major change in the information flow of subscription accounts is interest-based.

At present, the chronological order of public accounts has been completely disrupted: Hedgehog Commune found that sometimes, articles published three days ago and articles published more than ten hours ago are adjacent to each other in the public account information flow; for public accounts that are frequently read, even if they publish articles multiple times a day, users will read them multiple times by just swiping the screen a few times, but for articles published by public accounts that are not frequently read, users may have to scroll down for a long time before they realize that they are following such an account.

When it comes to how to deal with interest recommendations, many public accounts are doing the same thing as they did in the past - posting an article with a title like "This may be the last time you see us" or "You may never see us again", and then begging readers to "add a star" in the article.

A speck of dust in the algorithm can be a mountain for creators who are not used to it. How to adapt to the changes in recommendation rules is an even more difficult problem for creators - it cannot be solved by the unilateral efforts of creators, but requires a combination of algorithms, hot topics and content.

The last thing I want to talk about is fairness. This is a recent change in WeChat’s information flow: no matter whether users read frequently or not, whether the header image is folded or not, they are all “equal”, and only two push notifications can be displayed at most. The remaining push notifications are folded, and users can only view them after clicking.

Some institutional public account creators, also known as "big accounts", often have relatively strong content production capacity and can push multiple pieces of content at the same time, ranging from 4 or 5 to 7 or 8. For users, long pushes take up most of the screen, which brings a bad experience.

In order to optimize the user experience, WeChat’s information flow has made an “equality for all” adjustment to the public account ecosystem, and only two push notifications can be displayed.

In the view of Hedgehog Commune, this is a good thing for small and medium-sized public accounts and small and medium-sized creators: creators who push out about two messages each time will hardly be affected by the folding policy. On the contrary, because the "big accounts" that push out multiple messages are folded, they will gain more equal user attention.

At the same time, Hedgehog Commune also observed that content teams whose main business is WeChat public accounts are mostly divided into three types: content-based, account-based, and traffic-based. These three types lead to the three company survival modes of creators, operators, and businessmen respectively.

The first and most obvious criterion for judging them is: which type of employees has the largest number of people; the second criterion is: which type of employees can make the most money for the company.

Under the "fair" changes, the official account operation team needs to consider more about what content users want to see, but because of frequent product changes and unpredictable product forms, they are more confused about data such as content dissemination scope, picture and text reading volume, picture and text reprinting and forwarding.

Therefore, this "equalization" reform of the public account information flow has brought both good and bad news to different creators. Those WeChat big accounts that are good at "permuting and combining" multiple push notifications and using push header images to convey information must also change their operating ideas and find ways to adapt to the rules of the game in the "equal" era.

2. Three ways to make the official account a success

Although the text and image content formats of public accounts are being eroded by short videos, live broadcasts and other content formats, and product functions such as video accounts and Kankan have divided the audience of subscription accounts, it is undeniable that public accounts are still one of the most powerful and efficient content platforms for delivering information, knowledge and opinions.

As long as WeChat’s position in the instant messaging field is unshakable, the status of public accounts will not change either.

An obvious phenomenon is that no matter it is a new brand or an influencer, once they become popular, they often open a public account on WeChat to disseminate content in the WeChat ecosystem.

It is obviously too early to start talking about "there is not much time left for public accounts" now. However, creators who stay in or join the public account ecosystem still have to face the reality that text and image traffic will compete with short videos and live broadcasts, and push rules are increasingly biased towards algorithms and interest recommendations. In other words, do public account creators still have a chance in the future?

In the view of Hedgehog Commune, in addition to following the trend and "joining if you can't beat them", relying on its own existing content capabilities and using short videos and live broadcasts to "feed back" graphic content, it can also make changes in the following three aspects:

The first is to further improve the operation of communities and friend circles.

Although the rules of public account information flow are always changing, the content rules of WeChat communities and Moments have basically not changed. Therefore, it is more necessary to do a good job in community operations and increase the exposure of tweets through community sharing.

Hedgehog Commune has found that recently many public account user communities have been trying to activate user connections and increase discussions.

Of course, most communities currently rely on the “dumb” method of manual operation to stimulate user discussion. If chatGPT and other AI-generated Q&A group chat robots can be connected in the future, it will surely improve the efficiency of community operation and significantly improve the quality of community operation.

Note: The proportion of Guokr public accounts that only push two messages has increased recently.

The second is to do subtraction appropriately, pay more attention to the quality of the headlines and second articles, and reduce the number of articles pushed at one time.

Under the "fairness" principle of WeChat public account information flow, regardless of whether the public account is frequently read by users, only two messages will be displayed directly. If you want to see the following messages, you have to click to expand.

There is a "70%" rule in the Internet industry, which means that for every additional operation given to users, about 70% of them will be lost. Pushing too many items is not cost-effective, so it is better to focus on the first and second items that are directly displayed in the information flow.

In addition, the position of the first and second articles of the official account content has also become very important. Once the official account is identified as a status that users do not read frequently by the information flow, the first and second articles of the official account will be displayed in the same small picture mode, becoming only two short articles in the information flow.

In this case, for users who do not read frequently, the difference between the first and second posts is not obvious, and they are quite equal. This makes the second post of the official account more important, and both the content quality and the small picture production need to be more refined.

Third, continue to maintain a stable update frequency.

Hedgehog Community found that public accounts that are updated regularly are more likely to be identified as frequently read by users than those that are updated irregularly. This has forced some public account creators to say goodbye to the Buddhist state of wanting to update longer and stop whenever they want, and become more aggressive.

But in front of algorithms, “human calculations are always inferior to algorithms”. No matter how talented the creators are, they can only follow the platform, constantly catching up and being late.

There is only one thing that is certain: after the official account was quietly updated, it is like an elephant squeezed into the room. If creators want to have more living space, they can only work harder than before, challenge more things from zero to one, or painfully return to zero from one.

Author: Director, Editor: Shi Can

Source: Hedgehog Commune (ID: ciweigongshe), observation and research on the Internet content industry.