Why Zhihu Is Essential for B2B and Professional Brands in China
Zhihu (知乎) is China’s Quora, a platform built on long-form questions and answers where professionals and experts share knowledge across topics ranging from artificial intelligence to investment strategy to skincare chemistry. With approximately 80 million monthly active users, Zhihu is smaller than China’s mainstream social platforms. But its audience is among the most valuable.
Zhihu users are disproportionately educated, professionally employed, and concentrated in decision-making roles within technology, finance, healthcare, education, and business sectors. For international brands that sell to business buyers, professional audiences, or educated consumers who research deeply before purchasing, Zhihu is a platform that delivers outsized impact relative to its user numbers.
Zhihu achieved its first profitable year in 2025, a milestone that suggests the platform has found a sustainable business model despite declining MAU (down from a peak of 103 million in 2021). The platform is smaller and more focused, but the audience that remains is intensely engaged.
The Audience: Small but Disproportionately Influential
Zhihu’s 80 million MAU represents roughly one-twentieth of WeChat’s user base. But raw reach is not the point. Zhihu’s audience consists of the people who influence purchase decisions in their organizations and social circles.
A Zhihu user researching enterprise software is likely a tech lead or CTO evaluating solutions. A user reading about investment strategies may be a fund manager or financial advisor. A user exploring skincare ingredients is the consumer who posts detailed reviews on Xiaohongshu that influence thousands of followers.
For B2B brands, this concentration of professional decision-makers makes Zhihu one of the most efficient channels in China. For B2C brands in research-intensive categories (skincare, health supplements, consumer electronics, education), Zhihu reaches the expert consumers whose opinions shape broader market sentiment.
Content Strategy on Zhihu
Zhihu rewards depth. The platform’s culture values well-researched, detailed, and honest content. Answers that demonstrate genuine expertise attract upvotes and gain visibility. Answers that read like marketing copy get downvoted and buried.
The most effective brand strategy on Zhihu involves three elements.
First, identify the questions that matter. Zhihu has accumulated millions of questions across every conceivable topic. Search for questions related to your product category, industry, and competitors. High-traffic questions with outdated or incomplete answers are your opportunity.
Second, produce genuinely useful answers. A Zhihu answer for a brand should read like expert advice, not an advertisement. Use data, cite sources, explain reasoning, and acknowledge limitations. If your skincare product contains niacinamide, explain the mechanism of action, reference clinical studies, compare concentrations, and then mention your product as one relevant option among others. This approach builds credibility far more effectively than promotional content.
Third, build a consistent presence over time. Zhihu’s algorithm surfaces content based on quality signals (upvotes, comments, shares) and account authority. Regular publishing of high-quality answers builds your account’s reputation score, which in turn boosts the visibility of future content.
Zhihu and Baidu: The SEO Connection
One of Zhihu’s most underappreciated values is its SEO relationship with Baidu. Zhihu answers frequently rank on the first page of Baidu search results for informational queries, professional topics, and product comparison searches.
When a Chinese business decision-maker searches Baidu for “best CRM software for manufacturing” or “comparison of cloud storage providers,” Zhihu answers often appear prominently in the results. By publishing quality content on Zhihu, you are simultaneously building visibility on China’s largest search engine.
This makes Zhihu content a dual-purpose investment: it reaches Zhihu’s native audience directly and captures additional traffic through Baidu organic search. We include Zhihu as a component of comprehensive Baidu SEO strategies for this reason.
Advertising on Zhihu
Zhihu’s advertising platform offers several formats, but the most valuable is the promoted answer. Promoted answers place your branded content in response to specific questions, appearing alongside organic answers in the feed. When executed well, promoted answers are indistinguishable from high-quality organic content and generate genuine engagement.
Feed ads and display placements are available for broader awareness campaigns. Search ads capture users actively looking for specific topics or products. The targeting options include interest categories, professional roles, education level, and geographic location.
Advertising costs on Zhihu are moderate compared to mainstream platforms. CPM rates are reasonable given the audience quality, and the long shelf life of Zhihu content (popular answers continue generating views for months or years) provides compounding value that short-form content on Douyin or Weibo does not.
Paid Content and Salt Select
Zhihu’s Salt Select membership program has approximately 12.2 million paying subscribers who access premium long-form content. Paid content has become Zhihu’s primary revenue source (51.8% of total revenue in 2025), surpassing advertising.
For brands, Salt Select represents an opportunity to create premium, in-depth content that reaches a self-selected audience of serious readers. The format works well for educational content, expert guides, and detailed industry analysis that positions your brand as a knowledge leader.
Who Should Prioritize Zhihu
Zhihu is a priority for B2B companies (technology, SaaS, professional services, industrial equipment), education and training providers, healthcare and pharmaceutical brands, financial services firms, and any consumer brand that competes on expertise and product knowledge rather than price or trend appeal.
Zhihu is not the right priority for mass-market consumer brands, impulse purchase products, or brands that cannot invest in producing genuinely expert-level content. The platform penalizes superficiality, so brands that commit to Zhihu must be prepared to produce content that genuinely informs rather than simply promotes.