E-Ladies: Navigating the Wired World
Chapter 206: Episode 206 General Account yyds2

Chapter 206: Episode 206 General Account yyds2

The next day, just as Li Jiniang was about to post, Zhou Xueyin suddenly stopped her. "Wait a minute, I have a better idea!"

"Oh? What idea?" Li Jiniang asked again, puzzled.

Zhou Xueyin leaned in and whispered a few words to her, "Can do! I think it’s feasible! Let’s do it!"

Together, the two set to work, and then they sent the official release content to the group: [Ladies, share this one! Everyone share this! Make sure the copy includes ’green tea’ or ’steel-straight boyfriend’!]

A row of uniform [Received] followed, then came back the forwarded links.

To better keep track, Zhou Xueyin opened each address, took screenshots, and placed them in an Excel document.

Whether it was because people are overly gossipy nowadays or life is just too boring, as soon as everyone saw this Weibo post, it blew up.

It formed three different camps of opinions; one criticized the ’green tea’ women, another praised the ’straightforward boyfriend’, and another envied the female lead.

But not a single person realized that this plot was actually crafted and manipulated...

Li Jiniang also purposely left a follow-up: [I feel this girl won’t let it go just like that, if there’s a follow-up, I’ll post it. Keep tuned]

Because of this comment, what looked like a personal account gained nearly 2000 followers in just one hour, outpacing the growth of any media account.

"Yinyin! We made it! We’re on, we’re on!" Liu He excitedly exclaimed.

"We made it? Made it to what?" Zhou Xueyin was confused.

"We made it to the trending list!" Liu He sent a screenshot to the group.

"Holy cow! That’s awesome!" The entire office erupted in excitement.

An account that had been set up only half a month ago had overtaken a topic that seemed to come from a personal account and had even made it to the Weibo trending list. What a feat! Replicating this would be an incredibly hard milestone!

"Nicely done!" Zhou Xueyin patted Li Jiniang on the shoulder.

"I think, it was really your idea that saved this content!" Li Jiniang looked at Zhou Xueyin with admiration.

"What? What happened?" Everyone in the room was puzzled as they looked at them.

Originally, Li Jiniang had planned to post the content directly to their targeted account. But Zhou Xueyin suddenly felt that, upon consideration, the account, "Love Talks", seemed too much like a marketing account.

Rashly posting gossip directly would have surely raised suspicions among netizens. So instead, they renamed the "Love Talks" account to something that resembled a newly registered blogger’s ID, then published the content.

In this way, the gossipy netizens wouldn’t question the authenticity of the whole affair and would focus solely on the content being spread.

As a result, the content spread from one to ten, ten to a hundred, passed on in segments.

Moreover, curious netizens, wanting to follow up, followed the account, so just a follow-up post and a quiet name change later, most people wouldn’t even realize the account had changed its ID.

Even if the account posted other content later, people wouldn’t dig deeper into what had been posted before; they would only focus on the follow-up content.

"What a masterstroke! Yinyin, you’re incredible!" Liu He said admiringly.

"What’s incredible? This trick can only be used once! It won’t work a second time. It’s really all about the content... This was just a gimmick. It can’t be called a success story!" Zhou Xueyin humbly said.

No sooner had she finished speaking than Bai Luoran called, "That gossip on the trending list, that was your doing, right?"

"It seems I can’t escape Sister Bai’s notice... Yes, it was our doing," Zhou Xueyin replied, somewhat embarrassed.

"This strategy is quite innovative, nice, it’s worth promoting!" Bai Luoran commented with a tone of satisfaction.

"No, no, this is just a one-off..." Zhou Xueyin explained the reasons to Bai Luoran again, "So, it was just good luck that the netizens didn’t catch on..."

"No, no, no, don’t think netizens are that smart! They go online, browse Weibo, just to relax, not to think. When they see gossip, they all rush to share their views. They really don’t care who posted the content or why! They don’t think about that! You have to believe that!" Bai Luoran straightforwardly said.

"Really? I remember when I used to handle forums, those ads I ran, where they were placed, some users remember them better than I do..." Zhou Xueyin said with a mixture of laughter and tears.

"That was before. It’s really different now. Give it some time, you’ll see," Bai Luoran said with a resigned smile, "This content you guys created could go down in history! It could also be a successful example for business promotions; don’t be humble, it really could! Be confident!"

"Alright! With Sister Bai’s words backing me, I’ll boast this time!" Zhou Xueyin said proudly, "You go ahead and keep busy, let’s keep in touch!"

"Okay! Bye."

"Tell our account management group, today’s Weibo post can be included in our case studies as a very, very, very successful Weibo campaign!" Zhou Xueyin cheered excitedly, but then quickly sobered, "Of course, it would be perfect if we could incorporate commercial advertisements..."

"Speaking of which, having a generic account is necessary. Some business promotions really do need the lead of a generic account," Li Jiniang remarked thoughtfully.

Just how viral was this Weibo post? A week after its release, people were still sharing it, with the total number of shares nearing the 100,000 mark.

For Weibo in 2011, that was practically every user participating in sharing this post.

Although the number of followers finally settled at 5000, this far exceeded Zhou Xueyin and her team’s expectations for this account. They believed that a few more similar contents could soon lead to the birth of a high-quality general account.

Of course, there was no explicit rule saying this method couldn’t be used by others.

A month later, Weibo sprang up with numerous personal accounts seeking emotional comfort, but the dialogues were clearly written by the same group of people, with very similar content.

Of course, these didn’t achieve as many shares as the one orchestrated by Zhou Xueyin’s team, and some were even suspected to be fabrications of QQ dialogues.

After seeing this content, Zhou Xueyin had only one thought: you can treat netizens as fools, but you can’t actually treat them that way!

This kind of blatantly patronizing behavior is really a taboo in managing a Weibo account!

Luckily, Bai Luoran’s company’s accounts did not stoop to playing these low games, and for them, this was just a one-time thing. From then on, their task was to properly manage the account, reaching the standard where they could start taking orders.