A social media account to popularize geographical and cultural knowledge was set up in 2016 by the Institute for Planets. It has more than 3.2 million followers on the video platform Bilibili and its 147 videos have garnered 8.8 million likes.
As its founder, Geng, a geography lover, knows how difficult it is for the account to grow from just himself to a team of over 100 members.
A graduate of Peking University's School of Journalism and Communication and working as an editor at the China Social Sciences Press, Geng discovered his interest in geography on campus when he read the magazine National Geographic.
Sensitive to words and noticing the popularity of smartphones, Geng decided to become a full-time blogger in 2016, opening the Institute for Planets official account on WeChat.
"At that time, I found the content about geography to be too academic and unsuitable for general readers. I wanted to build a geography platform that is both in-depth and suitable to popularize the topic," Geng says.
It didn't take long for Geng to publish his first hit article. In November 2016, the article What Would You See If You Made Your Way to Qomolangma's Summit? went viral online, which was read more than 4 million times and earned his account almost 60,000 followers. Before that, the account only had a few thousand subscribers.
