Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Weixin Official Accounts also have growing pains.

author| Li Xiaolei Editor| Zheng Xuan

WeChat is filling the gap in short content, and a graphic release and display function similar to "Little Red Book" is online. This is also one of the biggest changes in the content release form of Weixin Official Accounts in recent years.

Note: WeChat on the left and Little Red Book on the right. WeChat's latest online graphic message function looks like a typical little red book note: at the top are up to 9 pictures that can slide horizontally and have a ratio of 3:2. The title is the first paragraph below the picture, and a text description is attached (and Emoji expression is added at the beginning of the paragraph). The message interface for this type of content is also raised from the end of the article to the lower left corner of the home page, which is more in line with the content interaction of the notes.

WeChat has changed the restriction that public accounts can only publish single pictures or articles for many years. It has a lighter multi-picture carrier, and the word limit has been expanded from 140 words to 1000 words.

This way of presenting content greatly lowers the user participation threshold, which brings the original advantage of Little Red Book, making the latter one of the most active content communities today, with nearly 100 million users opening and consuming content every day.

WeChat online picture message function, aiming at the same is such short content may bring vitality to the public account. In fact, the rapid growth and high activity of Little Red Book has aroused the vigilance of large domestic companies in recent years. Byte has a special group of small red books to develop Lemon8, a sea-going product similar to the small red book, and its chatter adds graphic release mode; starting from 2022, Fast Hand also begins to regard the small red book as a more direct competitor, paying more attention to its business and organizational structure.

WeChat should be even more so. At the moment when the public account is declining as a whole, the recommendation and presentation of content need to be upgraded once.

01."Little Green Book" complements WeChat short content, which is very cautious about any product adjustment. It is rare for WeChat to announce this upgrade through the official public account "WeChat School".

At present, it seems that this function only has the basic skeleton, which satisfies the display of multi-picture and long text, but the basic topic word function has not been connected yet, and the way of content presentation and the position within WeChat products may not be the final form.

However, this does not prevent users from calling it a "small green book" and making fun of the way its content is presented to the small red book.

The most direct change brought by the upgrading of graphic messages is the richness of WeChat short content ecology. In the WeChat open class in 2020, Zhang Xiaolong mentioned that short content is the direction that WeChat has always wanted to exert its strength_"The original idea of the public platform is to replace SMS as a group tool based on connecting brands and subscribers, and effectively avoid spam messages." Mass content is not the focus. It should be in all kinds of forms, such as text, pictures, videos, etc."

In 2020, the video number complements the short board of video content and becomes the fastest-growing business in WeChat's huge system. The graphic message upgrade in 2023 is an exploration of short content.

For a long time, WeChat's short content ecology has not been prominent, and public accounts have been shaped by user behavior into a channel for publishing articles rather than short content such as text or graphics. This brings the highest commercial value among all kinds of media. After all, most public accounts can only be published once a day, which has its scarcity, and articles can also carry more information.

However, the way of taking notes includes the display of physical objects and "seller shows", as well as text information as a supplement, which becomes a natural platform for commodity planting. Before the Little Red Book had built a commercial system, the creators in the platform had already made money, and naturally they were close to trading.

WeChat tried to build grass-growing product components as early as 2018, but failed. This time, planting grass was placed in Weixin Official Accounts.

It is an undeniable fact that the overall development of the public number is also gradually declining. According to the third-party Yizan big data, the overall opening rate of Weixin Official Accounts dropped from 2.3% in 2018 to 1.1% in 2020. Some media have conducted research on some public accounts of scientific and technological media, and found that the opening rate of public accounts is generally less than 1%.

Since 2018, the accelerated growth of chattering and fast hands has attracted most of the attention of users, and many creators have turned to Short Video and live broadcasts. The content community dominated by Little Red Book also diverts users 'attention.

In fact, WeChat is also improving the attractiveness of public account content to users in different ways.

From birth, WeChat has been a platform dominated by social distribution, as has the logic of public accounts. Earlier, WeChat was also trying to help users find good content through more dimensional social recommendations. First, there is a like, look at the function, and then differentiate into the "look" content plate, and then to prompt how many friends have browsed, collected articles, recommended content by friend relationship chain; then to disrupt the time sorting, introduce more algorithms to recommend content.

The change of graphic messages has become the largest variable in the content of Weixin Official Accounts. An Internet analyst mentioned that WeChat is testing all kinds of small functions this year, all kinds of connections should try, gray scale test may not be able to get out of the test suit. But there is no doubt that users are getting used to getting information in the form of little red book notes. After all, today's Little Red Book has become a content community that affects hundreds of millions of people's lifestyles and consumption decisions, and a content platform that many consumer brands have to lay out.

At a time when growth dividends peak, Internet platform companies compete more fiercely for traffic. Each of them is infiltrating each other's fields, looking for new business possibilities, and the multi-graphic form of "notes" is also something that the public number has not been able to absorb in the past.

A noteworthy phenomenon is that many creators are small red books and public accounts. However, limited by the product form, they must change the short content into an article before they can be published on the public account. Now, public accounts can become a new channel for note publishing. The diversity of content is complemented, which is a new opportunity for creators to rebrand their content and a challenge for content shuffling.

As early as 2018, WeChat was exploring the "planting grass" business. From the earliest "My Shopping List" to the "Good Things Circle" in 2019, it was renamed "WeChat Circle".

The WeChat team's thinking has undergone such a shift: from directly sharing product links, seeing what friends are buying, to finding people with common preferences through graphics and interest circles. This is also known as the "Little Red Book" created by WeChat in the ecology.

When WeChat Circle was launched, it appeared as an independent small component, which is in line with WeChat's consistent characteristics of large products and small components. The basic logic is to rely on interest circles to distribute content, from content-first logic to interest-circle priority. Originally,"WeChat Circle" was the best platform for connecting "content, social interaction and commodities" in WeChat ecosystem at that time, including fashion public numbers such as Rebecca and Simon sister-in-law, which also opened their own circles.

"WeChat circle" is displayed in the form of a small circle of interest. To obtain or publish content, you need to join the community first. The entrance is deep, and the attraction of the content is weakened. The operating mechanism of Little Red Book relies on the content of a single note to attract traffic, plus search and recommendation for information matching. The two present two completely different logics.

Due to the deep entrance, the community atmosphere has not been built up, but has become a micro-business, marketing content of the reserved land. At the end of 2021, the circle business was officially closed. WeChat's first content community exploration failed.

You know,"WeChat circle" has been searched for a recommended position, in WeChat search for a place name, the circle was ranked third. But as a result, WeChat failed to attract more users after many attempts.

A small red book MCN organization head recalled that WeChat had invited a group of small red book people, institutions settled in, pulled the recommendation group, they are more just publishing the content of the small red book synchronization to the "circle." However,"the volume is very small", praise is mostly in dozens, the more critical problem is that it cannot be realized.

However, the new version of graphic message products grown in the public number system is logically easier to solve the problem of flow and realization. WeChat's advantage is more than 1.3 billion ultra-high monthly activity and frequency of use, while the public account is the first gold mine mined by content creators on WeChat. Since the development of Wechat Official Account, there has been a mature commercial quotation system, and its commercial value has also been verified in the past.

Public accounts provide places for traffic, as well as possibilities based on basic subscriptions, WeChat search, and even social transformation. However, as a content platform, in Weixin Official Accounts, relying on recommended traffic, the opening rate has gradually become metaphysical today, and the attention received by content creators has become gradually uncertain. The graphic message upgrade has just been launched, and it is not known how to recommend and present future products.

In addition, the core of multi-graphic content lies in the content supply and interactive atmosphere, which is also the challenge that Weixin Official Accounts will face. Especially, when the user's newly registered public number cannot get the message function, and the message needs to rely on background review, the interactive effect will be greatly reduced. Be aware that in Little Red Book, the amount of interaction such as comments is one of the most important indicators of note quality.

The reason why Little Red Book can attract more and more users, even break through the original female circle, so that the platform users have 30% male users, depending on the supply and interactive atmosphere. For WeChat, which is trying to create a "little red book" again, the imitation of the form is very simple, but the construction of the community atmosphere and content pool is the most difficult part.

This article comes from Weixin Official Accounts: Geek Park (ID: geekpark), by Li Xiaolei

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