At present, WeChat public accounts are facing a development crisis. This article analyzes the internal and external troubles of public accounts, and provides insight into the new operation methods of three major HE Tuber types of public accounts from both the platform and industry aspects, providing a reference for public account operations. Let’s take a look at how public account operations can turn the corner.

Official accounts can still take off in 2024, do you believe it? It is really difficult to create a public account that is visible to the naked eye this year, especially for large sizes.

Does the official account still have a chance? Can it be done?

Before answering this question, let me recall the progress bar back to 11 years ago. On August 17, 2012, the public account was officially launched to keep pace with Weibo. The dual-micro operation opened the peak moment for graphic bloggers!

However, today, 11 years later, public accounts have lost a lot of attention. Comparing with the WeChat index, it is not difficult to find that the current favorites are no longer public accounts, but video accounts.

Today I want to review the public account for this friend of 11 years to see if there is still a chance to take off and how the platform can re-support it. If brands and individuals want to create public accounts, what can they do? It is divided into the following 3 parts:

Trend: What are the crises and turning points of public accounts?

Platform line: the models and playing methods of three major types of public accounts

Industry points: Operation opportunities for three types of public accounts

From surface to line, and then to points, let’s talk about the challenges, strategies and prospects for public account operations one by one:

As an operator who has accompanied the development of public accounts from entry to today, why are public accounts not popular? I use one word to describe it: external troubles and internal troubles.

1. External worries: Impact of new content media

The current iteration of content carriers is from pictures and texts to videos. Faced with competition in content forms and competition between content platforms, they are at a disadvantage in the battle for user content attention. This is actually in line with the development of the product life cycle.

The rise of short videos will bear the brunt of the impact on graphic and text-oriented public accounts. Users’ threshold for interested content is getting higher and higher, which mainly tests the bounce rate of a single piece of content in the first N seconds.

The form of graphic content is far less impactful than short videos. From exposure to reading the title, from opening to completion, there are too many levels in the user's attention funnel. Even before the text is seen, the bounce rate is already very high.

Even for informative graphic content, users’ search habits and attention are taken away a lot.

If you want to get professional Q&A, you may first think of going to Zhihu. When you have a question you want to ask, someone may have already asked it on Zhihu, and you can quickly get responses from different types of professionals; if For questions about life experience, commodities, and shopping and planting, Xiaohongshu will become a commonly used search platform;

There are Zhihu for Q&A, and Little Red Book for planting grass. In addition, don’t ignore Baidu, which is old and strong. In terms of search content, you can find that Baidu’s weight on self-media search content is getting higher and higher, and Baidu displays Baidu on search content. The content of Jiahao, Zhihu, and Xiaohongshu is becoming more and more popular, and the Baidu search platform is being integrated.

Therefore, in terms of search, users’ search minds are also seriously diverted. For the demand for search content, public accounts are often not among the first choices.

(3) Public domain recommended impact

There is another force that cannot be ignored regarding the impact of graphic and text types on public accounts, namely Toutiao. As a content model also based on long graphics and text, the reading model of content recommended by public domain algorithms has gradually developed a new reading model for users. Habit.

An interesting phenomenon is that even though the WeChat official account has become very powerful with pictures and texts, we still see many friends still reading various pictures and texts on Toutiao, and then happily sharing them in the WeChat community. The reason for this is that there are many People have developed the habit of chatting on WeChat and reading content on public platforms that are familiar to them or have been domesticated by you.

Under the impact of external worries, there are also factors such as the flight of users and creators due to the development of the platform, as well as the dilemma of platform supervision:

Official accounts have always been focused on in-depth article content. If you have started using official accounts relatively early, some fans have been following you for many years. No matter how good the content is, users will definitely get tired of reading it, and their interest will also decrease. They will like the new and be weary of the old. It is the underlying logic of human nature.

The aging of the platform will also discourage new creators, especially for new entrants. If they see that creators are no longer making money on this platform, their motivation will be greatly reduced, and it will become an important obstacle for newcomers to choose a platform. factor.

In addition, the overall advertising quotation of public accounts has dropped, which is one of the important signs that the platform is not popular. When the advertising price drops, the counter-effect is that platforms that use advertising as their profit model will post more frequently.

There is a product manager influencer I follow. In the past, I saw maybe one or two posts a week, but now every time I read the content, the soft articles are diverted to other cross-category posts. The overall content value and experience are both Dropped a lot.

How can product managers do a good job in B-end digitalization?

From the decrease in user interest > the decrease in fan traffic > the decrease in creator reading volume and the growth of new fans > the decrease in monetization income > the increase in advertising, the decline in content value and quality > the decrease in user interest...

Therefore, these internal troubles are connected one after another, and finally even the internal troubles have formed a closed loop. How can the creator not be autistic?