New media operations: 3 writing strategies used by big Vs! Don't ignore it!

Since 2013, every year, people would ask, “What is the prospect of the new media industry?” and “Is there still a way out for self-media?”

It’s quite interesting to say that it has been 6 or 7 years, and the problems are still the same, but the result is survival of the fittest. New media is always criticized, but there is always a group of people who come to 2019 with great success.

It will be like this later.

It is like this in every industry. There are always people who drop out midway, and there are always people who forge ahead bravely. Which year is not difficult, which year is not full of unknowns?

As an individual, instead of spending all day predicting the future and giving advice on how to deal with the world. It is better to think about how to consolidate your core competitiveness and how to stand out in the current situation!

The new media industry requires many skills, but writing ability is definitely a key competitive advantage. In this era, everyone can express their thoughts and opinions through writing, and even create a hit and influence countless people. This is indeed a very lucky thing.

More and more practitioners are starting to write for themselves or for companies, but although articles are easy to write, readers are indeed becoming more and more picky. It is difficult to get readers to see the article, it is difficult to get them to open it, it is difficult to get them to read the content carefully, and it is even more difficult to get them to agree and forward it after reading it.

Most of the time, the truth is often like this - after we carefully select the topic, plan, think, and rack our brains to write the article, the feedback we get may be:

Xiao Li, the way you write this article, readers simply can’t read it!

Xiao Wang, you have to put your heart into writing an article. I don’t feel anything after reading this one!

Xiao Zhang, didn’t I send you an article yesterday? Did you read it?

Jessica, you should read more about how other people write articles on their public accounts and learn from them.

…

In other words, most people don’t want to read this article, and can’t finish reading it, so they may turn around and read other people’s articles.

You must be helpless too, and you often encounter the same old thief.

Because we take writing articles seriously and everyone wants to write well. It is obvious that after receiving the topic, I thought about it seriously and collected a lot of information. When I was writing, my ideas flowed freely and I quoted a lot of classics. It felt good. How come I couldn't bear to watch it anymore in the end? What's wrong?

The old thief also often reflects on himself.

It is very likely that when we write, we pay too much attention to the writing of the content of the article, but often ignore some basic points of content creation.

Next, I will share with you 3 strategies that you need to always pay attention to when writing. They will make your articles more popular, and many big Vs are also using them.

A principle

Avoiding the Curse of Knowledge

In the book "Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die", there is a famous concept - "the curse of knowledge".

The so-called "curse of knowledge" means that once you gain a certain knowledge, it is difficult for you to imagine what it would be like if others did not know this knowledge.

This can easily cause cognitive and communication barriers between "people who possess certain knowledge" and "people who do not have this knowledge". When we explain what we know to others, it is difficult to fully explain what we know to the other party due to the asymmetry of information.

Just like when you go home for the Chinese New Year every year, it is difficult to explain to your aunts and uncles, as well as your grandparents what new media operations are.

Especially when we are writing articles, this "curse of knowledge" will manifest itself if we are not careful. We always think: readers should already know this common sense and there is no need to introduce it; readers should also understand that concept and it will not affect reading.

But the reality is, most readers really don’t know. You just think they understand. It may be those points that you think are meaningless that "kill" the readers.

Therefore, when writing articles, you must first avoid the curse of knowledge and always remind yourself to create and narrate from the user's perspective. Do not widen the cognitive gap between you and the reader, but narrow the knowledge asymmetry. Otherwise, no matter how good the content is, the reader may not be able to read it.

So how can you put yourself in the user’s perspective?

No matter how many methods you use, they cannot beat integrating yourself with your readers and becoming one of the users. Many big V operation teams attach great importance to this point, and their fan base is almost as important as their family.

In addition, internal audits and external testing are also commonly used by Lao Zei. The so-called internal review is self-examination. I often read the article several times after writing it, re-examine my own thinking logic and expression, and try to avoid falling into the self-satisfaction of knowledge. The external side is that you can pick some "reading experience officers" from among the readers and ask them to help you "eliminate" the useless information from your own perspective.

Three steps

1. Create a cognitive gap and stimulate interest

In the "Copywriting Training Manual" written by Joseph Sugarman, a legendary figure in the copywriting industry, there is a point that I have always regarded as a classic. Sugarman has always emphasized in the book:

All the elements in an advertisement exist primarily for one purpose: to get readers to read the first sentence of the copy—nothing more.

What's the meaning? That is to say, every element in an advertisement is first and foremost intended to guide readers to start watching the advertisement. This was for the advertising copy at the time, and it also applies to writing articles now.

What is the purpose of writing an article title? It is to let readers start reading the article, that is, to let readers start reading the first sentence.

So what is the purpose of the first sentence of the article? It just asks you to read the second sentence. What is the purpose of the second sentence? Yes, let the reader read the third sentence... and so on.

In fact, this is how writing an article works. Our content should constantly arouse readers' interest and continuously attract their attention, allowing them to slide down to the bottom like on a slide, reading every sentence until they finish reading your article.

So how do you keep readers reading?

Creating a cognitive gap is a good strategy.

If you want people to read your article, you must first make the readers interested in the following content, make them curious about what you are going to say, and then generate the desire to continue reading.

If you say everything in one sentence without any foreshadowing, readers will feel that it is optional to read it and will probably close it and move on to the next one.

If you want to sell rice, first create hunger.

For example, there was an article on Guokr.com’s official account called “How to cook a chicken with your bare hands? An article titled "Just pat the chicken continuously for 13 hours and 37 minutes".

First of all, the title arouses great interest in reading. Then look at the first three paragraphs, which continuously use question sentences to amplify your interest. The cognitive gap is completely opened, and you can't wait to read on. I guess if I asked you to give up reading at this time, you wouldn't agree.

In short, it is a terrible thing if readers lose the motivation and interest to continue reading. Create something that readers don’t know but want to know, and shape its importance. This is creating a cognitive gap, and it is also the first thing you need to do when writing an article.

Things that are novel, confusing, important, and urgent are often the best tools for creating cognitive gaps .

2. Reduce information density and improve readability

Why do readers read and like your article? Of course, your article contains information that interests him.

When readers read an article, what they like = familiarity + surprise.

What does it mean?

If you want an article to attract readers to the greatest extent possible, it is definitely not enough for it to consist entirely of information that readers are familiar with. You must provide familiar things while also creating some surprises. You want readers to have a sense of gain, but not to the point of looking down on them. In fact, it is a mixture of new and old information.

This is what we call the information density of an article, which you can understand as the amount of information in the article for the target readers. It is closely related to the readability of the article. Many readers cannot finish reading an article, not necessarily because of poor quality, but because it contains too much information.

When your article contains enough knowledge points and provides users with some new information, its readability is positively correlated with information density. But when your article has too many knowledge points, the content is too difficult to understand, the viewpoints are too difficult to comprehend, and the information density is too high, its readability will be very poor.

At this point, the target readers will find it difficult to understand and receive the content your article wants to express. It is difficult for them to read it and they will get a headache after reading it for a few more times, so how can they like it?

How many people can you expect to read a professional academic paper carefully?

So the question is, what should be the content ratio? A study from the University of Arizona and Brown University states:

When you train something, you should give it about 85% familiarity and 15% surprise.

Researchers call this conclusion the "85% rule," and we may as well call 15.87% the "optimal surprise rate." This value is the "sweet spot" of learning or writing.

This value can be used as a reference.

The most important thing is not to create too many points of information for readers to understand, and the language and sentence structures should not be too complex and obscure. Speak in plain language and do not complicate already complex information. When describing some vague information, try to describe more details rather than abstract concepts. At the same time, the interestingness of the text will greatly improve the readability of the content.

In this regard, you can read more articles by big Vs, look at their way of expression, look at the overall structure of their articles, and look at their content distribution. I believe this will be more useful than memorizing a few concepts.

Of course, the article creates cognitive gaps, stimulates readers and their interests, including improving the readability of the entire article, which mainly allows readers to have a better reading experience and be interested in reading the content of your article, but these alone are unlikely to make the article truly popular.

So point 3 is essential.

3. Create Wow Moments

Before talking about this, let’s talk about IKEA.

Have you noticed that although most people have positive comments about the shopping experience at IKEA, there are actually many unpleasant experiences when shopping at IKEA. For example, you have to walk through the entire mall to buy just one thing, or you want to find someone to ask about furniture but there is no staff around, or you have to remember the model number and find the product yourself, or even move the product from the shelf...and so on.

But often at the IKEA exit, ice cream for RMB 1 each or three skewers of Swedish meatballs for RMB 10 immediately dispels the customers’ unhappiness, allowing them to have a “peak experience” that earns them positive reviews.

Some pediatric hospitals will give gifts to children after the treatment, such as the most popular snacks among children. In this way, even if the medical treatment process is painful, the final result does not seem so unbearable, and parents will be willing to bring their children again next time.

So you see, user experience can actually be designed.

They all know that it is impossible to make every user experience link perfect in the user's full-cycle experience process, but it is necessary to create unforgettable moments and nodes for users in certain links and create a "peak experience", so that users will favor you more.

This is what has been said in the service industry: "Mostly forgettable, occasionally very beautiful."

The same principle actually applies to writing articles. You can’t keep your writing in a “stepping on chicken necks” state from beginning to end, with climaxes throughout the whole process.

The secret to making your articles truly popular with readers and receive positive reviews is to constantly create "Wow Moments" for readers, making them feel "So that's how it is", "I've learned a lot", and "Wow, that's great".

We have created a cognitive gap for readers and built up expectations for them, but in fact we are only trying to motivate readers to continue reading. Only by creating a "Wow Moment" from time to time in the article can we truly win applause.

A very good way is to bring different interpretations to familiar things, exceed expectations, bring new knowledge, and create emotional resonance.

What you thought was this turns out to be this or that. This kind of content is often popular with everyone and has amazing potential for dissemination.

Why? Because it constantly stimulates your brain, subverts your imagination, and brings you the pleasure of reading.

Just like "Detective Conan", every director of a suspense case will lead you to a certain murderer, but it is not until the end that you find out that "it turns out that the murderer is him". Then, after listening to "Mouri Kogoro's" analysis of the case, you slap your thigh and say, "So that's how it is." This kind of plot design allows you to get the "Wow Moment" again and again, so even though this cartoon has hundreds of episodes, many people have not missed a single one.

There are also articles on the public account Gu Ye, which I really like to read. Although the art content is originally very boring, Gu Ye is particularly good at creating this kind of "Wow Moment" for readers. Every time I feel like I have opened the door to a new world, and I am amazed that Gu Ye can interpret it in this way.

For example, this article "Why do people in Northeast China like bright red and green" opens up your mind from the very beginning.

In short, in this era of fragmented information explosion, user attention is extremely scarce. To a certain extent, new media pictures and texts are just like advertisements. No one likes to read them. If you want readers to continue reading your articles, you can’t rely on anyone.

The content of your article itself should be designed to give readers a "Wow Moment". This is the simplest way to keep people wanting more. Most are forgettable, but occasionally they must be extra beautiful.

You can give different interpretations to familiar things, exceed expectations, bring new knowledge to readers, and create emotional resonance; you can constantly build suspense, satisfy curiosity, and induce readers' excitement; you can also play jokes, reveal gags, add easter eggs, unexpected twists, etc., all of which belong to "Wow Moment".

There is nothing boring in the world, because everything we are familiar with can be reinterpreted by new discoveries and knowledge that we don’t know. If you add cognitive gaps and high readability, why worry about others not being able to finish reading?

Finally, I would like to share with you a quote from the famous American writer Maya Angelou:

People will forget what you said, forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.

Source: mumuseo