Why is it that no matter what you sell nowadays, everyone is shouting “We need to create some content”?

"Everyone is the director of his own life", "Everyone is a news reporter"... These words may sound familiar to you, but with the development of the Internet, we find that the world has become "everyone wants to create some content."

The complete statement should be this: Because the Internet is highly fragmented and the audience's attention is scattered, many people find that the original method of selling things directly is no longer viable, so they think of using some methods to gather the crowd first, and then find something to sell to this group of people.

"Creating content" has become the most popular term for "Internet operation " in 2016.

If you ask what exactly "creating content" means, I'm afraid no one can give a clear definition. However, this does not prevent people from mentioning various things when talking about it, such as Taobao's major columns including "Taobao Headlines", Xiaohongshu 's various "must-buy lists", various marketing public accounts of varying levels, and of course various videos (euphemistically called "life aesthetics"). In order to reach the audience faster, it is best to use Internet celebrities and KOLs - but no one has really calculated how much value they can bring.

Their common purpose is to attract the attention of consumers browsing the Internet. Therefore, it is inevitable that figuring out “how to create a hit” or using various methods to catch the attention of the public has become a common practice. When Wang Baoqiang's divorce case was making headlines, Taobao's stores selling everything from baby strollers to women's shoes quickly wrote posts on related topics. Taobao even piled them up and gave them a prominent entrance in the waterfall flow of users' subscribed stores.

Why are people flocking to this solution which is actually not very labor-saving? What other impact will it have besides creating the same old fake headlines?

A typical example of "creating content" abroad is Airbnb's "Pineapple" magazine, which contains content related to travel and lifestyle related to its business. The picture comes from quiet.ly

Speaking of which, "creating content" is actually an extremely old topic. Michelin, a company that sells tires, started doing brand marketing through the "Michelin Guide" 100 years ago. LV has been publishing its "City Guide" since 1998. And Red Bull, because of its good marketing, simply established an independent media company in 2007 to specialize in content. And Benetton, a clothing brand that many people don't know about, even created one of the coolest magazines in the world, COLORS (which was "rumored" to be discontinued in 2015 and has not published a new issue for nearly a year).

LV's annually updated "City Guide" travel publication, image from duccnguyen&co

The primary reason why this thing has become popular is that social networks have set a very low entry barrier for creating content, and more importantly, with the power of social networks themselves, the number of people that these contents can reach is unprecedented.

Let us briefly explain this using WeChat official account .

From a technical perspective, posting on WeChat public accounts is not much different from previous blogs. However, blogs do not have a snowball-like dissemination mechanism - if you want to continue to follow someone, you may need to use RSS tools . The emergence of public accounts has changed the situation of most people who "want to create content but have no platform". The existence of marketing tools such as " Guangdiantong " allows public accounts to complete the initial accumulation of users at a relatively low cost. At the same time, the gray area here is so large that the cost of fraud is also very low - the scandal of inflated traffic that broke out at the end of 2016 is the best proof of this.

But this only happens in the WeChat ecosystem. If all WeChat public accounts are uniformly regarded as "content", this content is just one of the ways for WeChat to maintain traffic. It has no real intention and responsibility to manage content, but instead hopes to win over all content providers as comprehensively as possible.

However, this method seems to be so effective on platforms such as Alipay , Taobao, Toutiao , Douban, and portals that everyone is scrambling to imitate it , hoping to replicate the same traffic boom, or at least divert users' attention.

This is also why you see so many different types of “ subscription accounts ” in 2016.

We found that although more and more people claim to be “creating content”, the amount of truly valuable content has not increased rapidly year-on-year. Consumers are still lost in the ocean of information and are far from finding a reasonable source of information. At the same time, "creating content" has changed from a marketing-oriented one to a more direct sales-oriented one - those who provide content are sales channels . If you don’t have content, you still need to create it.

There are two forces that have pushed "content creation" to the peak this year: one is Alibaba , and the other is a large fast-moving consumer goods company.

As the traffic center of China's Internet and one of the most vocal commercial companies, Alibaba's every move can easily become the center of discussion. Moreover, content production has been pushed to the level of "major strategic adjustment" by Alibaba; the fast-moving consumer goods industry, because it gathers the most marketing resources, is considered to be a weather vane for any disturbance in the marketing world.

Their practices can explain the second reason why “creating content” is popular: after attempts to replicate offline activities and introduce interpersonal relationships, e-commerce and fast-moving consumer goods are trying to “find new scenarios.”

Business is not so easy anymore.

After Alibaba entered the market, the "content creation" issue was finally pushed to a climax

We analyzed in the article "Taobao keeps saying it wants to create content, how did all this happen?" that this is the first time that Alibaba has changed its thinking after more than ten years of operation to consider "how to do e-commerce".

According to Alibaba Group CEO Zhang Yong, the reason why Taobao creates content is that "we hope that users can spend time here and have fun discovering. But how can we have fun discovering? The key is that this platform constantly creates new products, new consumer objects, and consumes new information and new content."

In essence, it is looking for a way to extend consumer stay time and increase consumption frequency. Therefore, Taobao's original industry-classified entrances such as men's wear, women's wear, luggage, and sports and outdoor have been replaced by "Good Goods", "Love Shopping", and "Must-Buy List". This year, Alibaba has also successively completed the revamp of Tmall Mobile (to highlight the display of content columns), held the offline event "Creation Festival", launched "Taobao Second Floor", and opened the " Live Broadcasting " column on Taobao Mobile and Tmall Mobile.

Taobao launched its content platform "Taobao Second Floor" in August this year. The first content it aired was the food-related video series "One Thousand and One Nights". The picture is from Taobao's Weibo account "One Thousand and One Nights".

At the same time, Alibaba claims that a funding pool of 2 billion yuan has been opened, and Taobao Mobile plans to use this money to recruit and reward content creators in the next three years. These content producers will produce "content" for merchants and products on Taobao in the form of pictures, texts or live broadcasts.

What makes Alibaba so urgent in creating content is that from 2013 to date, Alibaba's quarterly GMV (website transaction amount) growth rate has dropped from nearly 70% to less than 30%. The blame for the traffic dividend reaching its ceiling quickly spread and became an industry consensus. Statements like "the traffic dividend has ended and the battle for hard traffic has become difficult" were heard everywhere. But in fact, the so-called traffic dividend itself has the problem of invalid traffic, or fake traffic. A deeper issue is not about the size of the traffic itself, but the conversion rate of the traffic. In fact, during the same period when Alibaba's GMV growth rate slowed down, both Alibaba's total traffic and the number of registered users were actually increasing.

Alibaba believes that "contentization" can solve the problem of "conversion rate". The logic of one explanation is that Alibaba pushes "content" to consumers based on their product browsing data, and the relevant data of the "content" opened and read by consumers will be returned to Alibaba's database again. Through repeated data collection, Alibaba is able to deepen its understanding of consumer preferences, thereby completing more personalized and precise push, and ultimately achieving the goal of improving conversion rates.

Use "good stuff" and "must-buy list" to replace the traditional classification by category. In theory, the more "content" you look at, the more accurate the products pushed by Taobao will be and the more they will meet your potential purchasing needs.

Ultimately, it is actually to seize more consumers' time. From this perspective, Alibaba's competitors are not just JD.com or Amazon, but also social media such as WeChat and Weibo. JD.com launched a live streaming column in September and announced a strategic partnership with Toutiao in the same month, embedding products from JD.com in the latter's articles, including a fashion show called "Jing·Made" held in London. In fact, they all follow the same logic - hoping to gain more user attention and time with more content output.

When Alibaba started to create content, its diffusion effect as China's Internet traffic center quickly became apparent. It seemed that people all believed overnight that creating content was the right direction, and the speed at which various resources were mobilized was beyond imagination.

What Alibaba is doing now in terms of "contentization" is, to some extent, the operating model of former shopping guide websites such as Meilishuo , Mogujie, and Xiaohongshu. But the reason why the term "content e-commerce" has attracted so much attention this year, rather than in 2014 or 2015, is still related to the entry of Alibaba, a larger player. Its approach to this matter has made people believe that creating content may really be the future.

Another thing that is equally worthy of concern is that when more and more large Internet companies are involved in "contentization", how can some smaller e-commerce companies find their direction? Mitao.com, once considered one of the representatives of cross-border e-commerce, was officially closed this year. For more e-commerce websites, their biggest challenge will be how to maintain the platform's original users and content creators and prevent excellent content creators from being attracted away by Alibaba's "2 billion bonus".

In fact, similar stories have appeared in our previous reports, and the "content-e-commerce" integrated model provided by Alibaba after its content transformation has also begun to allow some content creators to transform into Taobao sellers.

FMCG companies create their own content and also try to find new consumption scenarios

Just as Alibaba has copied the offline model for so many years and tried to find new consumption scenarios by creating content, brand owners, or the most representative fast-moving consumer goods companies, are also trying to find new connection points with consumers in this way. Looking at the increasingly in-depth strategic cooperation between Alibaba and fast-moving consumer goods giants such as Procter & Gamble, Unilever, and L'Oréal, it is difficult to say whether these two major forces have boosted each other's trend of "creating content."

You may have heard a lot of news like this: Li Yuchun's live broadcast for L'Oreal in Cannes, France, directly led to the same product being sold out in L'Oreal's official online flagship store within 4 hours; Internet celebrity Zhang Dayi launched a live broadcast of "My Happy Wardrobe" on Taobao Live, and it is said that the transaction volume reached 20 million yuan within two hours...

But no one is discussing the cost behind this, and its sustainability is equally ignored. In the words of Adrien Koskas, general manager of L'Oréal UK, what brands are looking for now is "to establish special relationships with opinion leaders and use them to convey brand messages and create great content" because they have established an emotional connection with consumers that is difficult to replace. "This French cosmetics company has signed many "Internet celebrities" around the world in the past year.

L’Oréal UK collaborates with five influencers to create multimedia content on beauty and personal care. The five influencers have a combined social media following of 5 million. Image from CosmeticsBusiness

L'Oréal USA is even working with YouTube to produce a beauty reality show, claiming that it wants to cultivate the "next generation of internet celebrities"; in the past year alone, Procter & Gamble has held no less than ten live broadcasts for its brands; Unilever announced the establishment of U-Studio in September this year. This is another fast-moving consumer goods company dedicated to marketing its products through TV series, movies, games , music and other forms after PepsiCo officially opened its content studio Creators League to the public this year; British personal care brand Lush announced plans to establish a 24-hour TV channel at the end of this year. The company's chief digital officer Jack Constantine directly stated in an interview with the media, "Lush not only sells products, but can also be a reliable source of information." Mondelez directly proposed "product is content" at an advertising industry forum in Shanghai, China.

As we analyzed in the special series of articles on "What has changed the advertising industry", young people first moved from television to computers, and are now active in various apps. Mobile phones have become something that is tightly held in the hands, and are "portals" for accessing information everywhere. Time has become fragmented, information has become fragmented, and the audience's attention has also become fragmented.

In addition to not having the risk of being blocked, content (whether it is a picture, a video or a VR interactive experience) often contains richer information than display ads. It may take up more of consumers' time, which also means shortening the time consumers may spend on competitors.

In addition, the reason why content creation has become a marketing method that every brand is unwilling to lag behind, or has been placed in an extremely important position, is largely because social media has changed people’s response to information - marketers want to see more forwarding and sharing. "Creating content" itself is also an excellent way for brands to output their values, which is considered effective in attracting the younger generation who "consume for the same values."

However, Rob Norman, who has worked in the advertising industry for 25 years and is now the global chief digital officer of WPP's GroupM, commented on this: "I think they are making a bet, a bet against the entire industry."

Is this wave of “creating content” an end or a means?

The oldest form of “creating content” — it might be a book, a TV show, a magazine, a newspaper, or a news report. They are all essentially a "medium". In order to make a profit, these "media" must attract more advertisers by attracting more readers. In this process, "content" is just an intermediary and it is far from the final sales.

In such a context, the marketing path usually follows this process: media content (credible) - advertisers are attracted - advertisements are produced and published (back to the media) - (consumers) find purchasing channels - sales are completed.

However, this content trend in 2016 is fundamentally different from the old media. The content makers mentioned above, including Alibaba and large fast-moving consumer goods companies, are essentially sales-oriented companies whose ultimate mission is to sell, sell, and sell.

Another type of small companies that have joined the content trend, such as Wu Xiaobo Channel and video media "Yi Tiao", do just the opposite: they first launch content using their own resources, and then convert content consumers into product consumers, that is, ultimately using "e-commerce" as a business model . This model seems so inspiring because it meets almost all the trendy characteristics of online sales: precise marketing, complete ecosystem, and sometimes it can also take advantage of the popularity of the topic of " fan economy ".

Whether Alibaba or small companies, they have created a new process: people (whether they are trustworthy) - people publish opinions and information (so-called content) - people sell things (complete sales). Content becomes a means, not an end.

This can largely explain why there are so many "routines". On the one hand, it is because creators have not received reliable training (except for media transformation, but this will also have other problems). On the other hand, it is because content innovation seems to be very cost-effective because the most core requirements are speed and scale, not quality.

Live streaming is probably the most typical manifestation of this “new consumption scenario”. Consumption is often facilitated by the “person” who hosts the live streaming.

Everyone is creating content. Is it a good thing or a bad thing?

When content is produced simply to generate more transactions, it often leads to a content bubble.

Let’s take movie ticket O2O as an example. Companies including Maoyan, Gewara and Weipiaoer initially just wanted to sell movie tickets online, and they offered heavy subsidies and low discounts to attract users. Moreover, movie tickets are the easiest commodities to digitize. They do not involve any logistics costs. Apart from promotion, the investment of these companies is only the terminals in the cinemas.

Soon, these platforms entered the process of contentization - they were so close to the content that there was no reason not to occupy it. Products like Maoyan have invested a lot of money and energy to increase content investment, such as scoring mechanisms, content introductions, special reviews, and a large number of film reviews.

This area of ​​business soon reached a bottleneck. This is not only because the actual sales conversion rate brought by the content is uncontrollable and the total amount is not high, but also because the external environment is too competitive. There are countless people providing similar content, but the consumer's goal is only to quickly find a suitable show and location, buy a ticket and leave.

On the other hand, riding on hot topics to create a large amount of mediocre and harmless content, or creating hot topics without any bottom line and creating all kinds of sensational content to attract attention will only worsen the environment for information dissemination.

The essence of content is "value", which requires producers to spend considerable labor time, which is not only a kind of sincerity but also a kind of credibility.

What we want to say is: If a company cannot provide good products or services, after the enthusiasm for creating content fades, the company will not increase its core competitiveness and its audience will disperse. This is not a bad thing. The worse thing is that all the problems that are temporarily covered up under the enthusiasm for creating content will remain.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media information flow

The author of this article @徐婧艾 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!