New Media Operations: How to create content for Toutiao?

Toutiao is the first choice for many operators.

Operators here can not only gain their first batch of fans, but also earn considerable profits.

In June last year, Toutiao launched the "Qingyun Plan" to provide in-depth support to vertical content creators, delving into vertical fields such as food, travel, games, fitness, and agriculture, rural areas and farmers, to help high-quality vertical content creators grow into top creators in the field.

As long as the user's article hits the "Qingyun Plan", he will be rewarded with 300-1000 yuan.

So, how can we create popular articles on Toutiao and achieve both fans and revenue?

1. Understand the recommendation mechanism of Toutiao

Toutiao is an intelligent recommendation mechanism based on big data algorithms.

First, the intelligent algorithm will label the articles, and then recommend articles to readers based on their reading habits and preferences.

After the article has received initial clicks, the platform will re-evaluate the article based on readers’ click rate, reading completion rate, number of collections, number of reposts, and number of reviews.

If these data are good, the platform will push the content to more users, allowing more users to see the article and increase the number of article readers.

Therefore, if authors want to survive and develop on Toutiao, in addition to adapting to readers' reading needs, they must also fully learn to adapt to Toutiao's recommendation mechanism.

2. Article Writing

After we understand Toutiao's recommendation rules, the next step is to write articles that both comply with the platform rules and are popular with readers.

So, how do you write an article that will go viral?

1. Topic selection

The quality of an article is not only determined by its content, but also requires the author to have a precise grasp of the topic of the article. When choosing a topic for an article on Toutiao, you should consider at least three aspects:

• Toutiao account positioning field

Because Toutiao tends to recommend articles on vertical themes within a certain field, the topic of your article must first be related to the account positioning.

For example, if your account is positioned in the health field, your topic must be clearly defined as "health science" and "health knowledge" and cannot be other topics such as workplace, emotional psychology, etc.

• Platform User Attributes

This is because most of Toutiao users are in third- and fourth-tier cities, and their reading habits are somewhat different from those of users in first- and second-tier cities. If your topic is too professional and difficult to understand, it will be difficult to gain users' favor and you will not be able to get more recommendations.

Therefore, it is recommended that you write more content that suits the general public's taste and has a wider audience.

For example, if you want to write about a health topic, it is best to write about health science content rather than professional medical terms.

Take the Toutiao account "Dr. Zhao, Otologist" as an example. The topics of "Dr. Zhao, Otologist"'s articles are generally about a wide audience and topics that patients often want to know.

For example: "My ears are always itchy, but I can't do anything to get rid of them. Why is that? 》《How to deal with bugs in the ear canal》

• Hot Spots

When considering hot topics, we must first consider our own field and the angle of entry into the hot topics. We can select topics from channels such as "Baidu Hot List", "Weibo Hot Search" and "Tik Tok Hot Search". Of course, it is best not to touch topics that touch on political issues.

2. Title

On Toutiao, an important factor in increasing article reading volume is the “article opening rate”.

The higher the article opening rate, the easier it is for the article to be recommended by the system, and the key to determining the article opening rate is the title.

So how do you create an article title with a high opening rate on Toutiao?

• Create suspense

Creating suspense is an important method of writing headlines for Toutiao accounts.

As long as your title can quickly grab the user's attention, make the user curious, and want to click into the article to find out more, you can quickly increase the open rate.

How to create suspense? It's just to reveal the secret on purpose.

First, ask a question that hits the user's pain point, then deliberately leave suspense and don't directly tell the reader the answer to the question, allowing readers to click on the main text of the article to find the answer.

for example:

I saw a post titled by Mizijun titled "You're still not full after eating 3 servings of the Black Pearl Set Meal at RMB 660?" Big eater Mizijun: Miscalculated! 》

Or "When will there be income from Toutiao?" 3 secrets to increase your Toutiao revenue! 》

Among them, "A serving of black pearls for 660 yuan" and "3 secret ways to increase Toutiao revenue" do not directly tell readers the answers, but let readers click on the questions to find the answers in the text.

• Huge benefits for users

If the article is valuable to users, the value promise should be written into the title to tell readers what help the article can provide to users and what benefits users can gain.

Founder: One font costs 4,500 yuan, and only one picture can be designed.

Benefit-based titles are the key point in writing. Therefore, when choosing a title, the benefits should be closely related to the readers, and the more specific and clear the benefits are, the better.

When writing a profit-oriented title, you should pay attention to combining it with numbers. For example, the titles above, "4,000 words of practical information", "Gain 20,000 fans at 0 cost, and earn 5,600 yuan from 1 article" are all benefits that can be given to users.

• Emotional resonance

The title can trigger emotional changes in readers and increase the number of readers of the article.

For example, an article published on the Global Times online titled "'My left leg is gone!' A high school boy suddenly screamed in pain at home and fell into a coma! The test results were surprising.

For example, an article published by Beijing Evening News New Vision Network was titled "The rioters in Hong Kong are grasshoppers after autumn!" "News Broadcast": Resolutely eliminate the bad apples that anger heaven and people"

For emotional titles, you need to use some highly arousing emotional words, such as the words "screaming in pain" and "wrath of heaven and man" in the two titles above.

3. Main text

When writing the main text of a Toutiao account, try to include as many vertical keywords as possible.

For example, if your account is positioned as a parent-child account, try to include keywords such as mother, child, feeding, and baby in each of your articles.

This will not only allow the machine to quickly identify your keywords and tag your articles, but also recommend them to users who like such articles.

The logic of the article is best written according to the "general-specific" and "general-specific-general" structures.

Therefore, when we write the main text, we must enable readers to see it at a glance, clearly understand the entire logical structure of the article, and quickly understand the author's intentions and key points.

So, what is the overall writing logic of Toutiao?

1. Beginning

The beginning should arouse the reader's interest and quickly grab the reader's attention, so that after reading the first sentence, the reader will want to read the second sentence, and then the third sentence, as smoothly as riding a slide.

Share two methods:

• Story opening method

Andrew Stanton, the screenwriter of Toy Story, said: "We are hardwired to listen to stories. Stories can identify who we are."

Therefore, we can choose to use a short story at the beginning of the article to attract the user's attention.

When writing a story, the narrative should be as complete as possible, including the cause, process and result. At the same time, at the end of the story, the relationship between the story and the following text should be pointed out to lead to the following text.

When writing a story, you need to introduce the characters, background, time, weather, etc., and explain the background of the story clearly.

In daily life, we should also pay attention to the people around us, look at the personality traits and character roles of different people, write these characters into our own stories, and make the characters more three-dimensional and full.

For example, the following article:

• Suspense opening method

Starting with suspense is also a way to arouse users' curiosity and make them want to keep reading.

Many classic articles are good at creating suspense at the beginning of the work to attract readers.

For example, Mo Yan wrote this at the beginning of Sandalwood Death:

That morning, my father-in-law Zhao Jia never dreamed that he would die in my hands in seven days; his death would be worse than that of a loyal old dog.
I could never have imagined that a woman like me could kill my own father-in-law with a sharp knife. I could never have imagined that this father-in-law who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere half a year ago was actually a ruthless executioner.

After seeing such an opening, can you not help but want to know what happens next?

So, how to create suspense at the beginning?

The idea is to try to write a story with twists and turns, ups and downs, and to create suspense by creating contradictions without telling the readers the answers.

For example, the short story “The Value of $20”:

One day, Dad got home from get off work very late. He was very tired and a little annoyed. He found his five-year-old son leaning against the door waiting for him.

"Dad, can I ask you a question?"

“What’s the problem?”

"Dad, how much do you make an hour?"

""This has nothing to do with you, why are you asking this question"

"Father said angrily.

This is to create a story that is both reasonable and unexpected, making users want to know why the son asks his father this question, thus prompting readers to continue reading.

If you don’t know how to create suspense by writing a story, you can also point out the reader’s pain points directly at the beginning.

For example: "How to shoot a video promoting products on Douyin?" Master these 7 skills

2. Main text

When we write an article, if we want readers to be willing to read it sentence by sentence, we need to constantly implant reading hooks in the article to attract readers to continue reading. So, how do you create a reading hook?

• Keep asking questions and answering

Readers are all curious. If you want your text to arouse readers' curiosity, you need to constantly set up suspense hooks and then give the answer in the next sentence.

• The structure is clear and parallel

The main text is best written in a parallel structure, with each paragraph written according to the writing logic in the "Pyramid Principle".

First, write your conclusion and important points.

Secondly, classify and group the content on the same topic under the same title.

Finally, arrange them in logical order, following the important first and the secondary, summary first and the specifics, framework first and the details, conclusion first and the reasons, and results first and the process later.

• Simple words

When writing the main text, do not use overly professional words, but use words commonly used in some fields. For example, in the emotional field, you can use more words such as "mother-in-law", "husband", "love", "marriage" and "broken heart".

3. Conclusion

At the end, you should actively leave a question for readers to think about, and guide readers to comment in the comment section.

For example: What other ideas do you have about this issue? Welcome to leave comments in the message area.

Do you think the author’s point of view is correct? If you have any other suggestions, please leave a comment in the message area.

IV. 3 Tips to Increase Article Recommendations

1. Original article first release

When Toutiao recommends an article, the intelligent algorithm will first check for duplication across the entire network. If a high degree of similarity is found, it will affect the number of article recommendations, and the article may even not be approved for publication.

Therefore, it is best for our articles to be originally published on Toutiao. If you want to publish them on other platforms, you can publish them 3 hours after they are published on Toutiao.

2. The picture and text are consistent

The accompanying pictures should be consistent with the content of the article and cater to the readers' expectations. Otherwise, if readers see that the accompanying pictures do not match the text, the article bounce rate will increase, which will in turn affect the article's recommendation volume.

3. Expose articles on multiple platforms

In order to increase the weight of article recommendations, after sending an article each time, we can also forward the article to channels such as Moments, WeChat groups and QQ groups to increase the exposure of the article.

If you want to achieve fame and fortune by operating a Toutiao account, in addition to learning to use some skills, the most important thing is to win by high-quality "content".

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3. New Media Operation丨How to operate self-media platforms such as Toutiao and Baijiahao?

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5.How to operate Toutiao account? After reading this, you will be a master!

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7. Toutiao account operation: Here is a reusable methodology for increasing followers!

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Author: Operation Publicity Xiao Leilei

Source: Operation Publicity Xiao Leilei