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Picture Source: Micro Jam

From the picture, we can see that in the message column of the subscription account, not only the official account and title of the push, but also “frequently read updates”, “subscription updates you missed”, and “more than 50 People like” and “Star Official Account Name”.

Not only that, WeChat also made the above-mentioned information bold to attract users’ attention to a greater extent; at the same time, after entering the information flow list, the recommended articles are also at the top.

However, this feature is still being tested in grayscale, and only small “lucky ones” can see it.

2. Why should the official account be changed like this?

Let’s take a look at the WeChat team’s three goals for the current official account in an interview in June this year:

The first is to make the plate bigger this year, that is to say, I want to make more people who didn’t browse the subscription account content before, like to read;

The second is to create richContent form, hope to attract more people to come in through different content forms;

The third is to optimize reading efficiency (smart sorting). The core point of this bottom thinking is “the logic of frequent readers “

Let me translate it for everyone:

The first goal means “increase the number of frequent readers”;

The second and third goals are basically “increase open rate” and “improve content reading efficiency”. They are all aimed at frequent readers of official accounts, that is, let them open more official accounts and help them filter better content .

It is not difficult to find that the revision of the official account this time or even this year is based on three goals:

First is the “strong reminder mechanism”, bolding content such as “frequently read updates”, “subscription updates you missed”, “more than 50 people like”, etc., which is equivalent to recommend users who they like to watch most. The content attracts users to click, which obviously corresponds to “increasing the number of frequent readers”.

Then “Cover display data”, which uses data to assist users in making “whether to read” judgments, coupled with the current WeChat information flow recommendation mechanism, is to help users faster Filter out articles worth reading.

Why do you want to do this?

Because in recent years, the opening rate of WeChat official accounts has declined year after year.

This is not only because of the impact of short videos and the increased user excitement threshold, but also because the reading efficiency of the official account itself is gradually decreasing.

On the one hand, users have changed.

The relationship between the account and the user is actually dynamic. The person is changing and the content of the account is also changing. Maybe the user liked you very much when they first followed, but over time they no longer watch it or even close it.

This requires the owner of the official account to have strong content iteration capabilities.

The official account has reached its eighth year. Up to now, the head accounts of the official account have almost been fixed. They have the most resources and are capable of updating and iterating content.

However, many medium and small accounts do not have such resources, or even such thinking.

The person has changed, but the account has not changed. This relationship is reflected in the data, that is, the overall plate of the official account has been larger, the number of fans of each account has also increased, but the opening rate has dropped.

On the other hand, it is getting harder and harder to find good official account content.

With the accumulation of time, more and more accounts are induced to pay attention, and low-quality content overwhelms the content that users really want to watch.

According to official statistics, in the past chronological order, most of the content that users see in the subscription account message list are accounts that they would never read at all.

The combination of these two aspects gives users the impression that “the quality of the articles on the official account has dropped overall.”

Actually, the quality of the articles on the official account has not deteriorated, but it has been diluted by too many and too complicated bad content, so that everyone does not know where the good content is.

Therefore, since this year, the official account has been revised several times to make content recommendations for users.

In essence, they are all “after the “traffic growth” dividend disappears, they begin to invest more in “traffic efficiency”. (The opinions in quotation marks are from @池骋)

3. After the revision, what impact will it have on us?

The specific impact of this revision on our practitioners is mainly reflected in the following two aspects:

1) The Matthew effect is intensified

Although the original intention is to help users filter high-quality content faster, “cover display data” is likely to further aggravate the Matthew effect in the industry.

Because, if you want to use this function to help users quickly filter high-quality content, you need such a premise:

Content with higher data must be more worth reading.

But is this really the case? not necessarily.

10w+ is everywhere in the industry now, but a lot of content is based on grandstanding to get data, not necessarily all content worth reading.

At the same time, this feature is likely to give birth to such a phenomenon:

When a large article with average content but reading 10w+ appears at the same time as a small article with high-quality content and only a few hundred readings, many users will choose to open the large article.

This will only make the tuba stronger and the trumpet weaker.

2) The content is more demanding

However, is there no way for small and medium sized players to break through?

Of course not. WeChat Dad still gave a chance, as can be seen from the “strong reminder mechanism”.

Let’s review the “strong reminder” recommendation mechanism again:

“Frequently read updates” “Subscription updates you missed” “More than 50 likes” “Star Official Account Name”…

In other words, your frequent readers and star users will be more likely to see your posts; the better the content and the more people who like it, the more likely it is to be recommended…< /p>

In this way, you can get more exposure and increase the content open rate.

This requires medium and small accounts to ensure long-term output of high-quality content, continuously improve users’ recognition of your content, and let him take the initiative to make star, frequent reading, and like actions, and continue to increase frequent readers.

At the same time, we must have “explosive style thinking”, don’t just keep outputting for a long time, learn more about user needs, explore more hot topics, suitable for you, write out hot styles as much as possible, and give the public account Rose powder.

High proportion of frequent readers × high open rate × There are popular accounts, enough to turn you into a high-value official account.

Four. Conclusion

In recent years, especially after the rise of short videos, there has always been such a view spreading:

The official account is about to become a “classical self-media” that no one sees.

Actually, as long as there is a WeChat basic disk, the WeChat official account will not end.

It’s just that the official account industry had a traffic bonus period for too long before, and at this time everyone’s “success cost” is very low; therefore, when the bonus period disappears and normal enters a stable period, many people don’t know how to deal with it.

The disappearance of dividends does not mean decline, let alone the end of the meeting. This week we will also give you a detailed disassembly on this topic. You can continue to pay attention to it~

This article is from WeChat official account:Operation Research Club (ID: U_quan), author: Wu Jingwen