How to Get the First WeChat Official Account Followers | Cold Start Guide
Sayings：
The biggest difference between WeChat Official Accounts and other platforms is that content published on those other platforms receives algorithmic recommendation traffic, ensuring that it will definitely be seen by people.
But Official Accounts are based on closed follower networks. After you publish, only people who already follow you can see your content—it won’t be distributed by WeChat. If your Official Account has zero followers, you’re essentially looking at zero reads.
Without a base of followers to build on, gaining any kind of spread is basically impossible.
That’s why cold-starting your Official Account and acquiring that first batch of seed followers is so important.
Cold-Starting a WeChat Official Account | How to Get Your First Batch of Followers
Author: Li Xuehan
When I was running campus accounts, my cold start was simple: while handing out surveys, I’d casually invite classmates to follow the Official Account. In one day, I gathered about 50 baseline followers, then grew slowly to nearly 500 through content alone, after which I turned to other methods to drive further growth.
Now that I’m running a personal account, I mostly just share my articles on Moments now and then to pick up followers from my personal network.
Enough small talk—let’s get into it.
How do you get that first batch of seed followers for an Official Account?
Of course, by sharing your articles on Moments, QQ Zone, and Weibo to attract follows. I personally recommend this approach over begging friends in WeChat groups to follow you out of obligation.
People who actively choose to follow you will have far higher enthusiasm for reading your articles, commenting, and sharing them than people you pull in through social favors. Those engaged, active followers are the foundation for rapid follower growth later on.
The next step is expanding your distribution channels. The closed nature of Official Accounts means even great content can die unnoticed, which is why sharing on Moments and elsewhere exists. But that alone isn’t enough—you won’t reach enough traffic or attract sufficiently targeted followers. So next, you need to build out specific distribution channels.
It’s important to match your channel to your content. For film reviews and book reviews,文艺风向标 Douban and Zhihu’s film-review topics work well. For news and opinion pieces, Toutiao, Baijiahao, UC Daohao, and even forum posts on Tieba can drive traffic.
(Make sure you identify the user profile that matches your content, find where your target users congregate—interest-based Tieba groups, forums, and the like—and then participate in content creation there. Dropping a subtle引流 promo will go much further.)
Among these, the Penguin Account (now renamed the Tencent Content Open Platform) can be activated directly because it syncs with your WeChat Official Account posts. Once set up, you can largely leave it running on autopilot.
Finally, let me mention one more channel: email.
Draft an introductory email about your Official Account and blast it to your contacts—QQ friends, anyone who might be interested in your content. They’ll come follow you.
(I tried sending emails through QQ Mail. It caps bulk sends at around 10 per go, and the verification-code hassle is annoying—most people won’t power through it. You can switch to group emails instead, which makes life much easier. Anyway, hang in there and keep going.)
There are countless channels and tactics, but none of them create value until you actually execute.
I want to show you how beautiful the rest of my life can be.
Take my personal account, for example. It’s not really suited for aggressive promotion. One misstep and it turns into a diary—messy, unstructured, unfocused. I’m just writing down my own experiences, so maybe it’s better to keep it small and treat it like a blog.
After all, it’s been over two years, and I still only have 15 followers.
I’ve roughly mapped out the channels; how you operate them depends on your own tactics and copy. Good luck, everyone!
(If you wouldn’t even share your own article on Moments, it might be time to quit writing for Official Accounts—or at least sharpen your skills before trying to promote again.)
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