How can new media operators correctly follow hot topics?

There is nothing wrong with chasing hot topics , but be sure not to misinterpret the relevance, and don’t automatically associate hot topics with various additional identity tags of your users. This is not called chasing hot topics, but just looking for trouble.

There is no doubt that this is an era where everyone is chasing hot topics.

Content creators need hot spots to bring more popular articles, and users also prefer to read and discuss hot topics, which is a perfect match.

If the content is not enough, we can make up for it with hot spots! Moreover, most of the audience are not as sophisticated as you think. They really like to see hot topics.

It can be said that following hot topics and taking advantage of trends have become a life-saving medicine for many creators today.

Many companies basically chase after every hot topic, one after another, whether it is a festival or a hot topic, a hot event, or entertainment news, disasters or accidents, movie releases... there will be corresponding opportunities to take advantage of the situation.

It can truly be described as a gas station for content creation and a beauty salon for operations.

However, chasing hot topics is fun when done alone, but it can easily become vulgar when done with a group of people.

Chasing hot topics requires a strong sense of the Internet. Either you have to be fast enough and have strong action ability to win in terms of time, or you have to have explosive content angles and be quick-witted to win in terms of craftsmanship.

It is easier said than done.

To the extent that nowadays, marketing by taking advantage of situations and chasing hot topics have become a chaotic scene of one or two beautiful women walking on the catwalk and a large group of ugly women imitating others, which almost fills the entire Internet.

I have no objection to chasing hot topics, and I support it very much. The reason why everyone is scrambling to get in is just a proof of its strong potential, isn't it? After all, this is a trend and a very demanding job.

Therefore, you should spend more time on following hot topics instead of just getting high on yourself! Otherwise, how can you stand out among so many hot topics?

First of all, when a hot spot appears, we have to react immediately. It doesn’t mean we should start working on it right away, but we need to think about whether we should pursue this hot spot or not?

When it comes to hot spots, you can totally say no! Not every hot spot needs to be chased. If the potential loss is higher than the gain, there is no need to pursue such a hot spot.

Just like what Lao Jin from Huanshi Interactive said before during the Uniqlo incident:

Secondly, what kind of hot spots can we pursue?

You can make a simple judgment on: how topical this is, whether it has scalability, how spreadable it is, how popular it is, how relevant it is, whether it is timely, what the risk is, will it affect the brand tone, etc.

These are probably some of the main criteria.

1) Heat – how popular or popular a hot topic is.

2) Spreadability - It is not enough for a hot spot to just be popular. It also needs to have a certain degree of spreadability, such as providing social currency, having incentives, having emotions, being public, having practical value, and having storytelling qualities, as mentioned in the book "Contagious".

3) Topicality - for example, controversial, flawed, group-oriented, emotional, open-ended, related to "me", extensible, etc.

4) Relevance - Relevance includes two aspects: one is industry/product relevance, and the other is relevance to target users. The hot spots you see may not be hot spots in the eyes of users, or they may not be interested in them at all, which means it is very weakly correlated.

5) Risk level - When chasing hot spots, you must consider the risks and maintain your bottom line and values.

The above are the five important criteria for chasing hot topics. “Timeliness” is not listed separately here because hot topics that are themselves topical have stronger timeliness.

With the indicators, you can score each evaluation criterion from 1 to 5 points:

5 points to 1 point correspond to: 5 points (high), 4 points (good), 3 points (average), 2 points (a little bit), 1 point (basically none).

The risk level is scored in the opposite way: 1 point (high), 2 points (good), 3 points (average), 4 points (a little bit), and 5 points (basically none). This is easy to understand, the lower the risk, the better!

Then you can simply make a table to score the current hot spots:

Finally, make a radar chart of each judgment standard and corresponding score in Excel, so that you can make a judgment intuitively. The more complete and uniform the radar chart is, the higher its value is, and the more worthwhile it is to spend time chasing it.

(Insert chart directly into Excel)

Previously, Lao Zei has written about how to judge whether to follow a hot spot, so I won’t go into details here.

Today, I want to focus on "relevance". Too many people have misunderstandings and often make mistakes on this point!

Relevance is very simple to understand. It refers to the association between the hot spot and the brand and target users. Basically everyone talks about it. To go further, it refers to whether the hot spot is relevant to its core user group and core positioning.

Everyone knows this, but this is the point that is often most easily overlooked or misunderstood. For example: the recent ban on the NBA was an overwhelming trend and was everywhere.

I know a public account that shares design and also followed this hot topic. It basically reported on the incident and called for patriotism. I asked him, is the news you wrote closely related to your official account?

He said it is strong, very strong. Our users are young boys and they are very interested in this.

Okay, here’s the problem! Yes, their target group is indeed young boys.

However, he widened the scope of positioning and blurred the user portrait, which ultimately resulted in irrelevance, or in other words, he misunderstood weak correlation as strong correlation.

What does it mean? The NBA is indeed a hot topic that interests many young boys, but you have to know that everyone has multiple identity labels in life, and each identity label is different.

For example, a young mother may be interested in celebrities, parenting, finance, and makeup, so she follows the following four types of public accounts at the same time to meet her needs.

So, for celebrity-related public accounts, she is a "young mother who is interested in celebrities"; for parenting-related public accounts, she is a "young mother who is interested in parenting"; similarly, for financial management-related public accounts, she is a "young mother who is interested in financial management"; for makeup-related public accounts, she is a "young mother who is interested in makeup."

You will find that these 4 categories of accounts all have corresponding young mothers. Does this mean that the user groups of these 4 categories of accounts are exactly the same? Definitely not. Each of them has its own precise population positioning, rather than being generally referred to as "young mothers".

Under different needs, people's identities will switch, and users' demands for each public account are different. You must be clear about what your core positioning is? Why do users come to you?

If a man who is interested in the NBA wants to read NBA-related news, he can do so on the sports public account he follows. Is it necessary for him to read it here? You need to know which identity tag your user has in your official account. It is impossible for you to make corresponding content for all user tags, right?

Things that are big and comprehensive often have great ideals but are cruel in reality.

Let’s look at the hot topic of banning NBA. Is your direct report highly relevant to the young boy who is interested in design?

To be honest, it’s not that strong. You can write it, but it is indeed not very relevant to your core services and products. (Taking the job of the news media)

Of course, this doesn’t mean that a design public account cannot follow the hot topic of NBA, but directly writing news is not suitable for you. You need to find a deeper entry point and find a real strong connection.

Simply publishing a hot news article about this event is definitely more relevant to the sports information account, but if you combine this hot topic, do some creative design, and express it in design language, it may be better.

This will immediately increase the relevance and make it more relevant to you. Although the audience range will be narrowed to a certain extent, it will be more targeted and more competitive.

After all, the core of a public account is not the number of readers, but the strengthening of the public account’s positioning and the establishment of user relationships. Don’t dilute the positioning of your official account easily.

Therefore, when discussing the "relevance" of hot topics, you must not simply categorize your users. For example, "a group of post-90s boys" is too general. Instead, you should say what their identities are under your official account and why they follow you.

That is, "a group of positive 90s boys who love design (they are also interested in playing games and sports, but they follow your official account because of design)."

To you, his core identity is a design enthusiast, and paying attention to sports is just one of his many identities.

You must distinguish the primary from the secondary, and judge the relevance of your user's main identity tag with you to the hot spots, rather than looking at the relevance of other additional tags with the hot spots.

This way you won’t go astray easily!

This is the easiest mistake to make and the easiest to overlook when chasing hot topics.

In general, there is nothing wrong with chasing hot topics, but be sure not to misinterpret the relevance, and don’t take it for granted to associate hot topics with the various additional identity tags of your users. This is not called chasing hot topics, but just looking for trouble.

Author: Mumu Old Thief

Source: Mumu Laozei