Tips for creating hot headlines for Toutiao today!

There is a sentence in the "Copywriting Training Manual": The first sentence in an advertisement is to get readers to read the second sentence. If we apply it to today's new media, we can think that the title is to encourage users to read the text. This shows the importance of the title.

Many new media operators will post articles on Toutiao simultaneously in addition to their main public accounts. So how do they do it? Often the entire article is copied, even the title is exactly the same. I used to do the same, but I didn’t realize that this is a big taboo. The popular headlines on Toutiao may be different from what we imagined.

Some time ago, I listened to a course on headlines from Toutiao. Although they were divided into different fields, I think the techniques always have something in common. I attended three classes in the fields of education, workplace and technology. After synthesizing them, I summarized some of my thoughts on the popular headlines on Toutiao!

1. The pitfalls of headlines on Toutiao

It may be because we have been operating WeChat official accounts for a long time, and we often make fixed thinking errors and copy and paste our experience on Toutiao. However, the push of official accounts relies on editors, and the recommendation of Toutiao relies on the system. Only after the system recommends, the article will appear in the user's information flow. Take a look at the 10 pitfalls below, how many of them have you fallen into?

1. Avoid using vague keywords

Keywords usually refer to nouns, and ambiguous reference is caused by excessive use of pronouns, which the system cannot distinguish. For example: Her legs...are they going to tire the photo retoucher to death? Among them, "she" and "photo retoucher" made the mistake of ambiguous reference. I will talk about how to avoid this problem in the following tips.

2. Traditional paper-style headlines

The titles of print media tend to be somewhat serious, with few highlights, and they summarize the entire text in one sentence. This is not suitable for new media! For example: The Bund: See the world from the vault!

3. Series and column titles

It mainly refers to a series of reports on special topics, such as: (one) (two), or (upper part) (lower part). Because of Toutiao’s recommendation mechanism, users cannot simply find the next article based on the previous one, which will instead ruin the reader’s experience. I have made this mistake before and wondered why the recommended amount was so low.

4. The title is narrow and contains many professional terms

The title is facing the general public. Once there are too many professional terms, users will not be able to understand them, and the audience will be small, which will affect the recommendation volume. For example: Very promising? Explore and create photonic inheritance circuits! Therefore, it is best not to use too profound professional terms in titles.

5. Exaggerated title

Title exaggeration can be divided into feeling exaggeration, scope exaggeration and degree exaggeration.

Feeling exaggeration refers to the exaggerated emotions and feelings involved in the title, such as the words we often use in the titles of public accounts: shocking, unexpectedly...

Exaggeration of scope refers to exaggeration of the region, scope of influence, and number of people involved. Typical representative titles include numerical titles, such as: All netizens in the country believe it; or 99% of people don’t know…

One type of exaggeration refers to the severity, urgency, and importance of a matter, such as words like "heavyweight, just now, and a big deal"; one type is the exaggeration of the value it brings to readers, such as words like "in-depth and good article, incisive"; the last type is that someone or something has reached the extreme in degree, like words like "biggest, worst, and number one".

6. Abuse of suspense

Abusing suspense means creating suspense and being mysterious! It mainly refers to the lack of definition explanation; vague reference, lack of subject, or deliberate non-naming of the subject. For example, the reason is actually... an inside story you don’t know!

7. Provocative guidance

Provocative and guiding titles are also called forced titles, which generally refer to titles that provoke and intimidate users, such as "You will regret it for the rest of your life if you don't read it" and "The timid should enter with caution". They also refer to titles that use strong imperative or commanding tones, such as "You must read it" and "You will regret it if you don't read it".

8. Ambiguous title

It refers to information that is easy to cause ambiguity but has no explanation or is not explained clearly. Here it mainly involves impersonating celebrities, such as "Jack Ma said, Wang Jianlin said", but in fact it was not said by them.

9. Titles containing insults

I believe everyone knows the abusive words. A certain emotional celebrity used to use these words frequently, such as "rotten unit, scumbag, scheming bitch, green tea", etc.

10. Improper use of punctuation in titles

When drafting the title of a public account, we like to add some punctuation marks at the end of the article to strengthen the tone, but this may not work on Toutiao. In the headlines, use Chinese symbols, do not abuse spaces, and do not use exclamation marks and meaningless numbers at the end.

2. Tips for drafting titles

So, besides avoiding the above 10 pitfalls, what other tips are there on Toutiao?

1. Use more buzzwords

Among the 10 pitfalls, we mentioned “stepping on keywords”. How to step on them? If we want our articles to appear in the user’s information flow, we need to increase the chances of system recommendations, so we have to use more hot words!

What are hot words? They are words that are very popular within a period of time. If you are not sure, you can select some keywords based on the content of the article and search. There are two channels for searching. One is the information flow of Toutiao client. For example, if we search for "Mid-Autumn Festival", we can see the results in the information flow:

If there are many popular articles in the information flow, or many topics that arouse discussion, then it is a hot word. You can discover writing trends by searching for hot words.

Another search channel is Toutiao’s backend function laboratory - hot word analysis, which allows you to enter different keywords and compare their popularity.

2. Highlights in the front

According to the primacy effect, when different information are combined, people always tend to pay more attention to the previous information.

In the first tip, we already know how to get hot words, so throwing out high-traffic keywords, hot spots, and insightful ideas at the beginning is the key to the success of the title. Perhaps, you can also call it taking advantage of the situation. For example, if "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World" is quite popular for a period of time, then putting it at the front of the title will get a high number of recommendations.

3. Five elements to attract attention

Next, let’s talk about the five eye-catching elements, namely: numbers, questions, contrast, details, and stories.

• number:

Short and concise numbers can reduce the cost of human brain thinking. Unlike the exaggerated proportion number such as 99% in the previous article, these numbers have specific references.

There are two ways here: numbers + contrast + suspense, "Why did Zuo Zongtang, who had only 60,000 troops at the time of Xizheng, defeat Yakub Beg's 200,000 elite troops in just one and a half years?" The other is numbers + endorsement + foil , such as "With only 2 million yuan, a real and tear-jerking Beijing was filmed, and 30,000 people on Douban gave it a full score."

• contrast:

By utilizing human cognitive psychology, things and phenomena are compared together to highlight the essential characteristics of the things being compared.

It is divided into the same level comparison, that is, the analogy of the event , such as "Gu Hye Sun's divorce incident is more exciting than the TV series". Here, "divorce incident" and "TV series" are a same level comparison;

Comparison of circumstances: similar people, events, brands, etc., with similar starting points but different endings . For example, "Uniqlo was snapped up, but Muji was out of business." Uniqlo and Muji are a comparison of circumstances.

There is also a time comparison , which is easier to understand, such as "it took only 27 years from discovery to extinction";

The last part is the comparison of positions. It can be the change of positions of the same person at different times, or it can be the comparison of positions of different people. For example, "Quanjian's believers and enemies" is a comparison of positions.

• detail:

We often say that details determine success or failure, and the same is true for titles! Adding details to the title can make the content more three-dimensional and more attractive.

You can use the "details + revealing tone + emotional resonance" mode , for example, "The decrypted photos of Qingdao a hundred years ago, the contrast between the Chinese and German soldiers is heartbreaking"; another example is "You only saw that Wu Yishu was admitted to Tsinghua University, but you didn't see that her father turned off his phone at 4:30", here "turning off the phone at 4:30" is the detail.

• Question:

It is often used to express emphasis, to deliberately ask a question first, to ask despite knowing the answer, and to answer one's own questions.

What needs attention here is that the questions should not be mysterious, but should be questions that concern the public, interesting and down-to-earth questions, and highly controversial questions.

For example, "A shortage of class teachers has hit primary and secondary schools. Why are many teachers unwilling to be class teachers?" This is a question that the public is concerned about. Another example is "What kind of noodles is in TVB's 'Are you hungry? I'll cook you a bowl of noodles'?" This is an interesting question. Correct use of rhetorical questions can inspire readers to think and add to the ups and downs of the title.

• story:

Visual effects and dramatic conflicts are elements that make a title more story-telling.

Linear description of the camera + opposing subjects + character language, such as "In 1950, the People's Liberation Army came here, and the Kuomintang soldiers said in tears..." Follow hot topics + drama + suspense, such as "Why is Qianlong the most miserable emperor in the Qing Dynasty?"

3. Four types of titles

Now that we have listed the tips, let’s take a look at the types of titles with high recommendations on Toutiao.

1. Resonance type

First person + emotional resonance, for example, "I earn 30,000 yuan a month, but I still have no passion for my job." Using the first person can bring you closer to the readers.

High-profile topics + resonance, such as "'All Is Well' reflects the pain of the original family."

2. Pain point type

The pain point is to work hard on the users' "urgent needs", first be attentive, then touch their hearts, dig out their most sensitive and vulnerable emotions, and then respond to readers' anxiety and help them release stress.

The model of "identity label + pain points of the group" is often used, such as "middle-aged mothers can no longer afford DIro, and the competition between women starts with their children's cram schools", revealing the pain points of middle-aged mothers as a group.

3. Practical seminal vesicle type

Focus on practicality and solve users' actual needs, which is what we often call strategies and techniques. Generally speaking, binding benefits + practical tips, pain points + solutions is practical value that can quickly attract users. For example, "How can I send my children to the best school if I don't have a house in a school district?"

4. Cognitive Upgrade

Here we use professionalism and authority as the entry point to help users resolve their doubts and upgrade their cognition. For example, "I don't dare let my 12-year-old child go to school independently. Am I raising my child into a giant baby?" It should be noted here that cognitive upgrading is close to subverting cognition. If the event is too ordinary, it is better not to use this type.

IV. Conclusion

The above is the general content of what I heard from Toutiao’s headline class. After my own understanding and organization, I would like to share it with you.

In the past, like everyone else, I studied the titles of public accounts for so long, thinking that I could just put them on Toutiao. But in fact, each platform has its own model and routine . I hope this will be helpful to everyone~

Author: Huahua Xiaomengzhu

Source: Huahua Xiaomengzhu