3 questions to ask new media public accounts to increase followers through content!

Speaking of increasing followers on public accounts. Let me first say something absolutely correct: all new followers must come from people who have not followed your official account yet, not from people who have already followed it.

What a boring sentence, right?

But there is an essential problem behind this: the new attention is all directed at external users.

If you want to increase your followers through content, you need to let external target users see your content and choose to follow you.

The reason is simple. Only when “people who have already followed” share the content and let “people who have not followed” see it, can it be spread and get more attention.

For example.

If your public account has 100,000 followers and a tweet is read by 40,000 people, that’s a pretty high opening rate.

But if it is only opened by old users and not spread to the outside, and only 100 external users read it, how many new attentions do you think such a wonderful content can bring?

Content with a high readership may not necessarily lead to an increase in followers!

First of all, the old users of your official account have to click on your article, and after reading it, they have to share it by forwarding it to their friends circle, forwarding it to WeChat groups, or clicking on "reading more". Then, external users can see your content, choose whether to follow it, and finally generate new followers.

Therefore, in order to increase followers of a public account, the content must be: spread outwards and tighten inwards.

If you think about it quietly, you will find that you have to think about at least 3 questions:

• 1. Why do old users open my article?
• 2. Why do readers share my articles?
• 3. Why are external users willing to follow me?

Think about these three questions repeatedly, and all content strategies should revolve around these three "whys". If you keep them in mind, there will be a response.

Below, I will share some thoughts on these three points to stimulate discussion.

01. Why do old users open my article?

The first is the topic, the second is the title.

The first thing is the content selection of the official account. Good topics directly determine whether old users will open the account and the upper limit of the article's dissemination.

"80% of the success of an article depends on the topic selection." It sounds exaggerated, but you will believe it when you do it!

When many people talk about the topic of article opening rate, they immediately bring up the title. In fact, relatively speaking, I think the topic is more important. If the topic is not right, the title cannot save it.

Your topic must first hit the user circle, which is related to the target audience positioning of the official account. Who is my target audience? What topics are they interested in? Is this the content of mine that he wants? This needs to be verified repeatedly.

Without the crowd, the public account is nothing.

There must be a reason why these old users followed you in the first place. It is probably because your account can help them solve a problem.

Every time you choose a topic and write content, you are providing users with valuable information to help them solve a problem. Is that right?

Then you can provide 3 valuable topics and solve 3 problems, and users will be more willing to open them.

1. Topics with valuable opinions and valuable information can provide skills guidance.
2. Topics related to emotional growth can help to comfort the soul.
3. News hot topics can alleviate information anxiety.

These 3 types of topics are basically what everyone needs!

To sum up, it is helping users solve the problems of "knowledge anxiety + emotional anxiety + information anxiety".

In addition, the topics should remain focused so that old users will become more accustomed to opening them.

The most frightening thing about running a public account is that there is no clear positioning. Today you choose one type of topic, tomorrow you choose another type of topic, and the direction of the topic selection is erratic.

I'm sorry, you are always messy and the love of fans will be fickle.

When a new user sees your article for the first time, he may think it is good and follow it, but this is temporary. He just wants to make it more convenient to read subsequent content.

When he reads your article for the second or third time and finds that the verticality is very high and continuous, the fan stickiness will be greatly improved and opening it will become a habit.

In addition, in addition to regular topics, leveraging hot topics will undoubtedly make the content more popular.

Finding hot spots requires a strong sense of the Internet. Either you need to be fast enough and have strong action ability to win in terms of time, or you need to have explosive topic selection angles and quick thinking to win in terms of craftsmanship.

Okay, after talking about topic selection, the next step is the title. A friend who works in the media once joked with me: "A person who can write a title is worth thousands of troops." It is an exaggeration but also the reality.

There are many techniques for choosing titles, such as creating suspense and curiosity, using numbers and symbols, relating to "I", creating conflicts, chasing hot topics and hanging out with wealthy people, quoting dialogues, stimulating pain points, directly highlighting benefits, creating an atmosphere of urgency, indicating the region, adding modifiers before and after, directly indicating the beneficiary... and so on.

These are all available on the Internet, and Lao Zei has shared a lot of them before, so I won’t go into details.

No matter how many skills you have, the key is to think more, summarize more, and do more practical tests on your own public account audience. I believe that a person who thinks of 100 or 1,000 titles for a topic is definitely better than a person who only chooses one title.

Although Mi Meng has been blocked, the Mi Meng team will select one topic from 50 and conduct four levels of interviews (first a group interview with a core fan group of 5,000 people, then interviews with more than three small groups, then interviews with 50 individual cases, and finally interviews with an expert advisory group). They will then select 100 headlines and vote with the 5,000-person group, and finally make a 10,000-word data analysis report for an article.

This process is worth learning for every new media person.

02. Why do readers share my articles?

The content should be good, have something stimulating to share, and not harm the interests of the sharer.

First of all, there is no need to say much about the content itself, which is the foundation of everything.

The content has no value at all, is difficult to read, and has no logic. Readers will immediately close it. How can it be shared?

Then, your content needs to be shareable. Just like selling a product, we need to have a clear selling point. If we want to spread an article, what is the "selling point" of this article for readers to share?

You can think carefully:

Does my content provide readers with something to talk about?
Can my content help readers express their thoughts and say what they want to say in their hearts? After sharing, can it express the thoughts that have been weighing on their hearts?
Can my content help readers shape and strengthen the social image they want after sharing it?
Can my content help readers’ friends, family, and colleagues after they share it, thus completing an altruistic act?
After sharing my content, can it make the reader look more prestigious, more stylish, and more wealthy... and can it allow him to participate in the social competition?

These are all effective means to induce social sharing and can help readers better establish their ideal image in social relationships.

Of course, you also need to have a good relationship with users and interact with them frequently; have text that encourages sharing; and initiate activities in the text that encourage sharing, such as sharing to get red envelopes, sharing to get information, sharing to join groups, etc. These are also points to stimulate sharing.

In addition, opinions and unique insights have always been the darlings of new media content dissemination and sharing.

The angles of many topics may be the same, the hot topics may be the same, and the stories may be the same, but the novel perspectives are unique.

When writing for new media, your content must have its own stance and point of view. No matter how good the content is, if it is of high quality, people will like it; but opinions with personal will are the tools to encourage readers to resonate and share, and opinions are often the triggering points.

Without opinions, moderation equals mediocrity.

Finally, I would like to emphasize one more point: forced sharing is definitely not as effective as actively inducing it, and sharing cannot harm the interests of readers.

For example, if you write an article called "The people in my circle of friends are all pigs", the content is very well written, but do you think readers will share it in their circle of friends?

Therefore, we also need to consider the positivity of the content, and the content itself cannot be too negative. Especially with titles, you need to manage user expectations.

If you only consider opening it, you will be unscrupulous in using clickbait titles. Your title gives users very high expectations. Even if the content itself is good, users will not share it if they think it is a clickbait title.

Because he doesn't want to be a disseminator of "clickbait", and he doesn't want to give his friends the same expected experience.

Your title should also be conducive to sharing. If sharing it on WeChat Moments will affect the user’s social image, he will not share it. The title should benefit yourself and the users.

03. Why are external users willing to follow me?

There are enough reasons to pay attention, calling for attention, and the threshold is super low.

Well, an old user on the official account clicked on and read your article, and after reading it, she took the initiative to share it.

Now, many “people who haven’t followed yet” have seen your article. The title is quite attractive. They opened your article, and then the question arises: Why should they follow you?

First, you have to give newcomers enough reasons to pay attention.

There is no need to talk about the content itself. As I said before, it must be solid.

Next is the verticality and continuity of the content of your official account. Generally, if a new user thinks your article is good, he will look at your previous articles. If he finds that your past content is messy and you only post once every few months, he will probably not pay attention.

You can also prepare some activities that reward followers with gifts, such as getting an information package/tool ​​kit/discount package/course package after following someone/joining a fan exchange group after following someone, etc.

Some public accounts often like to publish serialized articles, so that new users will naturally pay attention to an article if they are satisfied with it, and want to continue reading subsequent series of articles. Some public accounts will provide previews of the next issue, and the principle is the same.

Some will develop some public account functions and services to retain new users.

Some public accounts are very smart. They adhere to the concept of "I have what others don't, and I am better than others". They are always a little bit better than other public accounts. For example, the layout is more refined; for example, each article has an audio/video in addition to text; for example, each article is accompanied by a mind map; for example, each topic has discussion and interaction... These can effectively increase the attention rate.

Of course, you also need to guide people to follow the official account in the tweet. You should know that a small number of new readers will particularly want to follow you, while most readers are in a state of whether to follow you or not. At this time, an obvious reminder to follow will play the role of "psychological suggestion".

The difference between paying attention and not paying attention may be just "guidance".

In general, the more sufficient and tempting the reasons for attention provided, the lower the threshold, and the greater the volume.

Well, the above are the three core issues about how to increase followers of public accounts through content. I’m throwing some bricks at you, hoping to give you some inspiration.

More importantly, always think about:

• 1. Why do old users open my article?
• 2. Why do readers share my articles?
• 3. Why are external users willing to follow me?

All problems have their own process and logic. They are not chaotic and disorderly. To solve a problem, you cannot just hit it here and there.

Starting from the bottom and solving problems in an organized way may not necessarily lead to a complete victory, but it will not lead to being at a loss as to where to start and ending up with a blind cat catching a rat.

Related reading:

1. How do new media operators choose popular content?

3. Strategies for creating 10w+ article titles for new media operations!

4. Learn the skills and strategies for new media operations!

5. Practical examples of new media traffic acquisition methods!

6. How do new media operators build content skills from 0 to 1?

Author: Mumu Old Thief

Source: Mumu Laozei