WeChat recently launched the “Ask the Host” function, which has attracted widespread attention, especially for traditional Q&A communities such as Zhihu and Baidu Zhi, which seems to have brought new competitive pressure. This article introduces in detail the specific usage of WeChat’s “Ask the Host” function, idealized application scenarios, and its comparative analysis with Zhihu and Baidu.
A few days ago, WeChat officially launched the “Ask the Host” function, and many official account authors said that they were pushed this function. On the discovery page of the WeChat App, there will be information prompts in the “Search” channel, and the “Ask the Host” function has been opened for you, and WeChat will also introduce the introduction and specific usage of “Ask the Host” to users, as well as how to insert questions in the official account article.
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When I saw the relevant document of WeChat’s “Ask the Host”, my first reaction was that it was similar to the Zhihu Roundtable, using the same way of asking questions by the host, and was also a Q&A community.
Introduction of Zhihu Roundtable: At Zhihu, we hope to break geographical restrictions and make traditional guest discussions better happen on the Internet in the form of “Zhihu Roundtable”.
To achieve these three challenges, product managers will only continue to appreciate
Good product managers are very scarce, and product managers who understand users, business, and data are still in demand when they go out of the Internet. On the contrary, if you only do simple communication, inefficient execution, and shallow thinking, I am afraid that you will not be able to go through the torrent of the next 3-5 years.
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Introduction to WeChat “Ask the Host”: “Ask the Host” is a private domain co-creation tool within WeChat, you can initiate a Ask a Ask discussion with fans and the community, invite them to co-create content, get rich exposure opportunities in various scenarios on WeChat, and amplify the influence of your account.
When the two product forms are similar, we can easily associate the relationship between the huge WeChat and other products, for example, Zhihu and Baidu know, are they panicking?
If you look at the product alone, the relationship between WeChat and Zhihu and Baidu knows belongs to “eight poles can’t be hit”, but WeChat’s “Ask a Question” belongs to the products below WeChat search, it is also a Q&A community, between the Q&A community and the Q&A community, isn’t that a competitive relationship? Thinking about the user base of WeChat, WeChat really can’t be underestimated.
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An author of a WeChat public account consulted me, and he was also given grayscale by the “WeChat Ask the Host” function, but how to play? He looked confused, and it can be seen from here that every time WeChat launches a new feature, some people will not know how to use it.
The specific usage of the WeChat “Ask the Host” function is:
The first step is to invite users to activate WeChat, and only after opening will they have the opportunity to use the function.
The second step is to open the “Search” channel on the WeChat discovery page, and you can see Ask a Question in the search channel.
Step 3: Click “Go to Ask” below.
Step 4, in the upper right corner of the Q&A channel, you can see “Go to publish”, click.
The fifth step is to edit questions, introductions, and pictures on the edit page, and you can also choose to participate in some activities recommended by the platform. Note: The title is limited to 30 words, the body text is limited to 100 words, the image is limited to 9 images, and you can also select the specific location information of the question.
Step 6: After the editing is completed, wait for the review to pass, if the question is not the same as the activity, the system will prompt the participation activity failure.
Step 7: Click the “Avatar” button in the upper right corner to enter the personal details page of the Ask a Question channel.
Step 8, in the “Creator Q&A” channel, click on your personal ID to view your posts, answers and initiated discussions, and in “Initiated Discussions”, you can view the questions just raised.
Step 9, after clicking on the question, you can see the corresponding question page, users can invite other friends to answer, they can also share it in the circle of friends, or they can answer it themselves, and they can also insert the question into the WeChat official account article page to interact and link more with fans.
Overall, the “Ask the Host” function is not complicated to use, but it can be a little overwhelming because of its entrance problem. In addition, the original intention of the product is to let more people discuss and interact through the form of a “round table”, so as to form an incremental content, so it is not the end of the user asking a question, but the questioner needs to solve the problem of “who will answer” and “who will discuss” by himself, because others don’t know the question you ask at all, you can only rely on WeChat public account fans, WeChat friends, etc. to get the answer.
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For example, at a certain meeting, there is a “host” who asks a question on the spot, and others can discuss the question; Or in a WeChat group, when the host throws out a related topic, the WeChat friends in the group will further discuss the topic, which seems to be very practical in online and offline “book clubs”.
WeChat Ask is very much in line with the shared spirit of the Internet and the “unpaid motivation” mentioned by Clay Shekey in “Cognitive Surplus”. The host asks meaningful and valuable questions, other friends share and discuss the questions in a common environment, and the content contributor’s answers are liked, shared, and commented on by others again, so that the value of the entire content community is maximized.
As for the original sharing spirit of the Internet industry, as well as the “unpaid motivation”, it has long been swept away from 108,000 miles away, and they have no intention of considering these “idealized” issues. In this regard, WeChat is quite ideal.
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The problems facing the domestic Internet industry now are:
First, there is too much information noise;
second, excessive short video;
Third, there are “psoriasis” advertisements everywhere;
fourth, everyone has no heart to do content community;
Fifth, strike a balance between traffic and making money.
The advantage of WeChat Ask over Zhihu and Baidu is that at least so far, it does not need to carry the KPI of “making money”, so it can think more confidently about how to do a good job.
Ask a question is only the most basic Q&A community form, and through the role of the “host”, WeChat Ask can further focus on related topics, so as to achieve in-depth.
In addition, in the current situation of AI flying all over the sky, the most important role of individuals is the ability to ask questions, and the WeChat “Ask the Host” function is also “anti-AI” to a certain extent, which not only tests the level and ability of the questioner itself, but also tests the author’s operational ability and community ability.
Ask questions manually, others answer manually, and then others manually like, comment, and share, all of which are “anti-AI”.
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Let’s talk about the shortcomings and shortcomings of the product:
First, the entrance is too deep;
second, the user popularity is insufficient;
Third, the title and body of the question are too limited;
Fourth, there are fewer “activity recommendations” and no search support.
Fifth, there is no quality content recommendation.
If you open the “Creator Center” of Qianqian, you can see more detailed content, and there will even be a “Creation Share” to create high-quality content and get advertising share revenue. But precisely because of the richness of the Ask a Ask function, or directly launching a “Ask a Question” mini program or an independent App is more suitable, otherwise, the whole embedded on the WeChat App, it seems very bloated, open WeChat → find → search→ ask, and then create/discuss, the whole process is very cumbersome, without an independent App or mini program, there are a lot of steps to operate, which is not conducive to creators asking questions, nor is it conducive to ordinary users answering, browsing, etc.
Baidu knows that it is following the “big and comprehensive” model, and there are all the problems above, but this also leads to the lack of depth of its own content; The problem with Zhihu is that after its Q&A community “breaks the circle”, the entire content also tends to be generalized, and it is very difficult to find valuable content. WeChat “Ask a Question” is similar to Zhihu and Baidu, but it has not yet “broken the circle” and has not spread to a larger user base.
The most practical point I can think of is the online and offline reading clubs, where users can discuss with each other on a certain basis. In fact, if it is between ordinary users and ordinary users, it is basically impossible to want to discuss each other like a “round table”, it is easy to play the piano to the cow, the bull’s head is not the horse’s mouth, and the reading club is different, at least it is the same book or the same theme, the scene is placed here, but it also depends on the theme of the person to operate, who will operate?
