How to Build Your Own Official Account from Scratch? (Basic Functions)
Yesterday, we discussed the registration considerations for WeChat Official Accounts and compared the differences between Subscription Accounts and Service Accounts. Interested readers can check out the previous article:
Today, we will briefly introduce several commonly used features within the Official Account.
Keyword reply means that when a user sends a message to the Official Account, if the message contains a keyword, the content we have preset will be replied to the user. It is worth mentioning that the matching methods include "partial match" and "exact match". Exact match means that the user's message must be exactly the same as the keyword set in the backend in order to receive the corresponding reply; any extra or missing word will result in no reply. This is commonly used for interactive activities such as quizzes and riddles. Partial match only requires the keyword to be included, and is often used for automatic replies to business inquiries.
"Message Received" reply refers to the situation when the message a user sends to the Official Account does not contain any keywords, and the backend will reply with the corresponding message. This message can be an image, text, voice, or video. Generally, small and medium-sized enterprises that lack customer service personnel will use this feature. However, fan inquiries still need to be answered promptly by backend management staff, because the customer is always right, after all!
"Followed" reply is used less frequently, but it should not be overlooked. When a user follows the Official Account for the first time, the account will automatically send a greeting to them. Of course, a warm follow-up reply can greatly enhance the user's overall favorable impression of the Official Account. The randomness of this message is relatively strong, and the content depends on the needs of the business at different stages. Generally, during promotional periods, enterprises or businesses will place activity-related links here to increase conversion rates and exposure.
Custom menus are equivalent to the menu of a corporate website, allowing the content the Official Account wishes to expose to be displayed to users in the form of a list. However, the difference is that this menu can have a maximum of only three first-level items, and each first-level item allows up to 5 second-level items. There are also character limits: first-level items allow up to four Chinese characters, and second-level items allow up to eight Chinese characters.
It should be noted that Subscription Accounts can add external links (such as official website links) only after authentication; otherwise, they can only add images or graphic messages. Service Accounts are not subject to this restriction.
Here you can see all messages sent by fans to the Official Account, and you can block spam messages and keywords. However, it should be reminded that messages here must be replied to promptly. If not replied to within 48 hours, you will not be able to send messages to the fan again, unless they proactively contact you again.
This should be the most important content within the Official Account. Whether it is a Subscription Account or a Service Account, this section is the foundation of its existence. Because currently, most Official Account interactions, article pushes, and activity promotions are initiated through graphic messages. Whether an Official Account is well-run, whether users have stickiness, and the quality of the pushed content all play a significant role.
Overall, a graphic message consists of 5 parts: title, cover image, summary, content, and original article link.
As the saying goes, a good title is half the battle. For Official Accounts, especially Subscription Accounts that are permanently folded inside a folder, an attractive title is extremely important. Therefore, during the early days of WeChat Official Accounts, many so-called "clickbait titles" were born. Here, we do not recommend overly exaggerated titles, or titles that seriously deviate from the content just to attract eyeballs. Because, as Official Accounts have developed to this day, readers' mindsets have become more rational. If you simply chase after titles, it may instead cause user backlash, resulting in the opposite of the desired effect.
The cover image is the second hurdle that directly reaches the user. If your title sparks user curiosity, or happens to be what your potential users need, they will click into the page and enter the article overview mode containing the cover image. It should be noted here that the resolution and size of the cover image are quite important, because the cover image display effects on Android and iOS are different. Cover images that are not uploaded according to the requirements are easily cropped, causing important content to be missing, greatly reducing users' favorable impression. Here, we recommend the 900*500 (pixels) resolution required by WeChat official.
Appearing together with the cover image is the text summary section below, which can be a summary of content highly relevant to the article, or can be left blank. If left blank, the platform will default to extracting the first 54 characters of the article body as the summary.
Content is the most important part of the entire graphic message. As for the source of materials for the body, everyone has their own approach—it can be personal unique insights, company product introductions, or reprinted articles. There is nothing particularly noteworthy here. However, for beginners new to WeChat Official Accounts, we need to remind you that after finishing writing the article, it is best to use a WeChat editor to format it, which will greatly improve the readability of the entire article. We suffered some setbacks in this area at first, and only later discovered such a great tool as an editor, which greatly improved layout efficiency. Personally, I recommend 96 Editor, 135 Editor, and iPaiban. The differences between these editors, if you are interested, we will introduce them separately later.
Alright, that concludes the introduction to some basic features of WeChat Official Accounts. Next, let's hurry up and try out these new features!
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