Teach you how to write hit copy with zero basic knowledge! (Down)

Part 2: Five common attributes of popular copywriting

Reference: Teach you how to write hit copy with zero basic knowledge! (superior)

1. Hitting the pain points

The first common attribute of popular copywriting is that it must hit the user’s pain points.

According to statistics, there were 1.2 million public accounts that pushed articles in March 2018. There are so many public accounts, each with its own positioning and each with its own target users . Only when your copy hits the target users' pain points and truly touches them, can this copy have the potential to become a hit.

Note, it is not certain, but possible. Why do you say that? Because pain points are also divided into different levels. Some pain points are small, and although they will hurt the user, it is not that painful; some pain points are large, and they will hurt the user so much that he or she will cry. Moreover, some pain points are only experienced by a small number of people, while others are experienced by almost everyone.

For example, for a college graduate who has just come to Beijing, renting a house is a bigger and more common pain point compared to where to go for weekend fun. Among the pain points of renting a house, paying one deposit and three payments is a bigger and more common pain point compared to sharing a house with the opposite sex.

So I wrote "Congratulations to those who haven’t bought a house in Beijing! Jack Ma has officially taken action, and you are going to save a lot of money! 》is over 100,000, and "What is it like to share a house with the opposite sex in Beijing? 》 has less than 60,000 views.

Therefore, you must have a very deep insight into your users’ pain points, and then when writing copy, give priority to writing about those larger and more widespread pain points.

2. Insight into human nature

The second common attribute of popular copywriting is a profound insight into human nature.

We all know that human nature manifests itself in many forms, but is it true that every form is very suitable for creating a hit article? No. So, which human nature is more suitable and which human nature is less suitable?

Teacher Su Xin proposed a concept called "common denominator of human nature", which has had a great influence and impact on me. I would like to share it with you today.

She believes that only content that satisfies the common denominator of human nature is more likely to become a hit. So, what is the common denominator of human nature? In fact, the meaning is easy to understand. The human nature that most people have is the common denominator of human nature, such as appetite, sexual desire, jealousy, gossip, showing off, etc. These human natures are more or less possessed by the vast majority of people, so they are the common denominator of human nature.

So here comes the question! Are all common denominators of human nature suitable for creating popular articles? The answer is “not necessarily”. Because the common denominators of human nature can also be classified. It is divided into two categories, one is private and the other is social .

The first category, such as lust, greed, laziness, jealousy, selfishness, self-interest, etc., although they are also common denominators of human nature, but because they are too private, most people are unwilling to put them on the table for communication and discussion, let alone actively spread them. After all, no one wants their friends in the circle of friends to think that they are greedy, lustful, selfish, right? Therefore, it is difficult to create a hit article based on the common denominator of human privacy.

As for the second category, such as appetite, emotion, showing off, curiosity, gossip, superiority, sympathy, herd mentality, etc., because they are inherently social, people are generally willing or proactive to communicate, discuss and even spread them.

Therefore, content that meets the common denominator of social humanity is more likely to become a popular article. This is also the reason why the previous gossip and entertainment accounts and the current emotional accounts are so popular, because they have a good insight into the social nature of human beings.

Therefore, you must have a deeper insight into human nature, and then when writing copy, try to stimulate those human characteristics with strong social attributes. Only in this way will it be easier for you to create a hit article.

3. Inciting Emotions

Knowing how to incite user emotions is also a common feature of popular articles.

If you carefully analyze those popular articles that are all over the screen, you will find that most of them are very inflammatory in terms of topic selection, title and wording of the article. I have listed several recent popular articles that have gone viral. Let’s take a look at them one by one.

Visual Magazine’s “Captain of Sichuan Airlines, you’re awesome!” ! ! 》With over 100,000 likes and views, it is definitely a hit in the visual magazine industry, inspiring a sense of pride, even national pride.

Youge's "21-year-old flight attendant was killed while taking a Didi taxi , her father burst into tears, what's wrong with this world? 》Break through 1 million+ in 20 hours, inciting anger. I checked the Youge account and found that the usual headlines only have 50,000 to 60,000 views, so this one is definitely a big hit.

Although there was nothing wrong with the content of the article, the subsequent group announcement to celebrate and ask for permission to post and repost, etc., showed that the values ​​were not quite right, so he was severely criticized in the end, and the article has now been deleted.

The headline reading volume of Socket Academy's " Mobike founder cashes out 1.5 billion: your peers are abandoning you" is usually only tens of thousands, but this article suddenly reached more than 100,000, inciting the anxiety of "your peers are abandoning you."

Beijing Weishiguang's article "Sorry, I advise you not to come to Beijing..." has been read over 1.48 million times and received over 20,000 likes. It also incites anger and hits the various pain points of people who have moved to Beijing, such as commuting, renting, and the various sorrows in work and life.

Now that the case analysis is over, the corresponding question arises: In your opinion, which emotions of users can be more likely to lead to popular articles?

In fact, our emotions can be mostly divided into four types. One is low-energy negative emotions, such as regret, annoyance, inferiority, and guilt; one is low-energy positive emotions, such as calmness, joy, calmness, and tranquility; one is high-energy negative emotions, such as anger, anxiety, sadness, and depression; and one is high-energy positive emotions, such as excitement, ecstasy, enthusiasm, and pride.

If you compare the popular articles you have read with the examples I gave earlier, you will find that: relatively speaking, high-energy negative emotions, such as anger, anxiety, etc., are more likely to contribute to popular articles. Of course, this is not to say that other emotions cannot contribute to popular articles, it’s just that they are relatively few in number, more difficult to create, and hard to come by, such as the Sichuan Airlines captain this time.

Many of today’s big names are well versed in inciting emotions. Let me give you two examples, one is Mimi Meng and the other is Muzhi. Everyone should be familiar with Mimi Meng. She is very good at using a lot of easy-to-understand and somewhat reasonable sentences to exaggerate your emotions, and ultimately make you deeply agree with her points of view and forward them involuntarily.

As for Mu Zhi, many people may not know much about her. She was born in the 2000s and earns 100,000 yuan a month by running a public account. She once wrote in one of her articles, "I have a twelve-word mantra about what makes a post go viral: scold the man, scold him to death, and scold him in all kinds of ways!" For example, why did he leave halfway through flirting with you? How many of the top ten characteristics of a scumbag do you know? Why does he, like Ying Qin, want to add me back as a friend? And so on, all of which are manipulating the anger of female users .

Therefore, when you write copy in the future, you can also selectively take the emotion factor into consideration according to the account type, topic selection and other relevant requirements. However, it is recommended not to incite emotions simply for the sake of traffic . You must have your own principles and stick to them, otherwise problems will easily arise in the end.

4. Keep up with the latest trends

Keeping up with hot topics is also one of the common attributes of many popular articles.

When writing copy and creating content, you must follow hot topics and be able to follow hot topics, because hot topics themselves are very good topics for popular articles. Because hot spots are the focus of topics and have traffic, if you follow the hot spots well, it will be easier to create a popular article than if there are no hot spots.

So, how much help do hot topics provide to popular articles? Mr. Zhou Zuoluo, vice president of the Chazuo Academy, once did a data statistics. He found that: Wang Baoqiang's divorce incident spawned 293 articles with more than 100,000 views in one day; the Wei Zexi incident spawned 110 articles with more than 100,000 views in three days; the Rio Olympics spawned 382 articles with more than 100,000 views in one week; " In the Name of People " spawned 55 articles with more than 100,000 views in one week; and "My First Half of Life" was even more impressive, spawning a total of 850 articles with more than 100,000 views during its broadcast period. Now you know how much help hot spots can have on making a post a hit, right?

So, the question is, since hot spots are so important, how should we follow them? First of all, you need to be clear about the positioning of your account. If this hot spot does not match your positioning, it is recommended that you do not pursue it. Even if you pursue it and the data is good, it will make your fans question your positioning, which is not worth the loss.

Second, you need to learn to judge whether the hotspot is big enough. How to judge? It is recommended to start from four aspects. First, check if it’s on the hot searches on Weibo; second, check if it’s on the hot searches on Sogou or WeChat ; third, check if it’s been flooding your Moments; fourth, ask your colleagues or friends who are not in new media positions to see if they know.

One thing we must note here is that we should never simply judge the size of a hot topic based on whether it has been flooding the friend circle. Why do I say so? Because your circle of friends is mostly made up of your peers or people working in similar industries, it is actually relatively one-sided.

Finally, regarding chasing hot topics, there is one more thing you must always keep in mind: chase what you can, and don’t chase what you can’t, and don’t do anything recklessly just for the sake of readership.

Let me give you an example that happened to me: In October 2016, I had just become an editor for less than two months. At that time, a female colleague from Shenzhen Chao Life wrote an article titled "Thousands of people in Shenzhen Shuibei Village are eating on the ruins! The scene was so grand that even overseas Chinese from Hong Kong came! 》article.

At the end of the article, in order to attract attention and increase the number of readers, she fabricated this sentence out of thin air: It is rumored that each household in Shuibei Village can receive an average of 200 million yuan in demolition compensation, while there are 83 girls in the village who have no boyfriends and 38 boys who have no girlfriends.

Then, the article was reported. Not only was her post deleted, but she was also criminally detained for five days for spreading rumors. You see, a girl, just for the sake of getting some page views, ended up putting herself in jail, how worthless is that? Relatively speaking, the dismissal of the editor of Ergeng Canteen was a good thing.

5. Eye-catching title

Another common attribute of popular articles is that they have an eye-catching title.

Everyone has only a very limited 24 hours a day. In this limited time, faced with such a large flow of information , why should users read your content instead of others? First of all, your title must be able to attract their attention.

I once saw a piece of data that said the user's eyes stay on your title for only 1 second, so you must grab the user's attention within this 1 second.

If the user cannot understand your title within 1 second, he will just scroll past your article and you will no longer have the chance to show it to the user.

How to catch the user's attention among the vast number of titles? Below I share 9 rules that I have summarized from practice.

1. The rule of leveraging momentum/holding on to someone’s thighs

It is mainly through leveraging well-known figures, place names, authoritative institutions, titles and hot spots.

I once wrote about a small park in Beijing that almost no one knows about. It is called Yushuzhuang Park. Because its style is similar to that of Suzhou Gardens, the title I chose at the time was "There is a Suzhou Garden hidden in Beijing. It's less crowded than the Summer Palace, more quiet than Beihai Park, and most importantly, it's free." I took advantage of the Suzhou Gardens, as well as the Summer Palace and Beihai Park, and at once I embraced three big things. So the final number of readings reached an astonishing 200,000, considering that this article was placed third. Afterwards, many accounts also began to follow suit and report on this small park, making it a hot topic.

So how can we take advantage of the situation? First, you need to see if there is any place in your article where you can take advantage of the situation. If there is, try to reflect it in the title; if not, think carefully about whether the main content of the article can be forcibly related to a certain big shot, and find a way to reflect it in the title.

For example, regional accounts often use “Don’t go to XXX”. Although the content may not be related to XXX, it can be used to forcefully attach importance to it.

2. The law of immersion

It mainly uses identity labels, emotional resonance, reading rewards, description of scenes and other methods to make users have a strong sense of immersion.

Most people like to take sides, label people, and form circles. This is true for the members of Luoji Siwei in previous years and the members of Fan Deng Reading Club now.

Last year, two articles went viral on WeChat Moments in Beijing: "People in Xi'erqi with a Monthly Income of 50,000 Teaches You How to Live Like They Earn 5,000" and "People in Guomao with a Monthly Income of 5,000 Teaches You How to Live Like They Earn a Million." Most people who work or live in Xi'erqi and Guomao click on the articles when they see them. Why? Because both titles have very strong tags, so both articles have been read hundreds of thousands of times.

The reason why the article "Sorry, I advise you not to come to Beijing..." planned by Beijing Weishiguang in March achieved such good results was largely because it had a title that resonated with users emotionally.

"Congratulations to those who haven’t bought a house in Beijing! Jack Ma has officially taken action, and you are going to save a lot of money! 》Read more than 100,000 times. Tell fans through the title that they can acquire a new skill and save a lot of money after watching it.

《Various sleeping positions during National Day, so hilarious!》 》Read more than 1.2 million times. The title is very situational, and users can immediately associate it with the sleeping positions they see on the train.

Let me say a little more about "reading returns". If you are writing sales copy, you can also borrow this model: first state what the fans' pain points are, and then propose solutions. This will often result in good click-through rates . For example, "You and your husband always have trouble saving money? CCTV financial experts give you 3 suggestions.”

3. The Law of Human Nature

There is a classic movie called "Seven Deadly Sins", which talks about the seven dark sides of human nature, namely: pride, jealousy, wrath, laziness, greed, lust and gluttony.

Because jealousy, rage and lust are less used, and gluttony is more suitable for food-related accounts, I will mainly talk about pride, laziness and greed here. If you can use these three well, the title will also be very eye-catching.

Arrogance: such as superiority, narcissism, vanity, showing off, etc., in fact, its essence is a sense of superiority. We usually post on WeChat Moments to show what movies we watched and what delicious food we ate, but in fact, many times it is just to show our sense of superiority.

"Most old Beijingers don’t know these Beijing secrets and little-known facts!" 》 has been read over 100,000 times. When users forward such articles to their friends’ circle, they are expressing a sense of superiority: Look, I know all these things that even the old Beijingers don’t know. Look how great I am.

Laziness: Many people think that laziness means getting something for nothing. In fact, laziness means getting more by doing less. Users tend to get all the information they want to know through an article. Therefore, practical titles tend to have good readership. For example, "The most complete address book in 2017, everyone should have a copy, it will definitely be useful, so save it quickly! ”, with a reading volume of over 100,000.

Greed: People are greedy, so when they see something free, discounted, preferential, or given away, they are willing to learn more about it. This area code is generally used more frequently, for example, as mentioned earlier, "There is a Suzhou Garden hidden in Beijing, which is less crowded than the Summer Palace, more quiet than Beihai Garden, and most importantly, it's free." Such a good place, and it's free, wouldn't you want to click in and take a look?

4. The Law of Emotion

Regarding the law of emotions, I have already talked about it in the section on inciting emotions, so I will not repeat it here.

5. The Law of Numbers

Use numbers in your titles, such as numbers that represent a person’s age, numbers that represent time, numbers related to money, etc.

Character age: "She took sexy photos at the age of 60, took maternity photos at the age of 63, and also raised a son worth 20 billion! This mom is a fucking superhero! 》60 and 63 years old.

Time: 5 minutes and 1 month in “Stand against the wall for 5 minutes every day after meals, and no one will recognize you after a month”.

Qian: The 50,000 and 5,000 in "A Xi'erqi resident with a monthly income of 50,000 teaches you how to live like you earn 5,000 a month."

One thing that needs to be noted here is: you must avoid using very vague words such as "these", "these few", "a large sum of money", etc. in the title, and you must use specific numbers instead. Moreover, the numbers in the title must be replaced by Arabic numerals instead of Chinese characters.

6. The Law of Contrast

The key point of this rule is to find the particularly contradictory and distinct points in the article and then make them form a strong contrast. Because this rule involves a lot of content, I will briefly give two examples:

The 50,000 and 5,000 in "A Xi'erqi resident earning 50,000 yuan a month teaches you how to live like you earn 5,000 yuan a month" are an obvious contrast, and fans will be eager to know the content after watching it;

"Most old Beijingers don’t know these Beijing secrets and little-known facts!" 》Old Beijingers and Don’t Know are a comparison. It is true that old Beijingers should be very familiar with the secrets of Beijing, but you say here that they don’t know either. After reading this, fans will have a strong curiosity and want to know what this little-known fact is.

It should be noted here that if you are writing sales copy, you can directly apply the following two methodologies.

Bad start + happy ending

First, the huge contrast between the previous and the next plot arouses the reader's curiosity and induces readers to click. Second, after seeing a bad start, many fans will have a sense of superiority, "He can do it with worse conditions than me, so I can do it too!" This will make them more trusting of the product, and this mentality is very beneficial for closing deals.

For example, “I have been a stutterer since I was a child, and last night 20,000 audience members listened to my speech and applauded for 5 minutes”, in which “I have been a stutterer since I was a child” is a bad start, and “20,000 audience members listened to my speech and applauded for 5 minutes” is a happy ending.

Entrepreneurial Stories + Creating Contrast

The contrast between the founders’ educational background and occupation: for example, “a top student from Peking University sells pork”, “a student returning from Silicon Valley sells crayfish”, and “a junior high school graduate becomes an e-commerce legend”.

The age contrast of founders: “84-year-old man creates his own beauty brand ” and “high school student receives tens of millions in financing ” etc.

The contrast in the founders’ circumstances: “A graphic designer became an internet celebrity ”, “An internet-addicted teenager turned into a multi-millionaire”, and “From working in a dilapidated temple to earning 1.3 billion a year”, etc.

Consumers responded in contrast: "Chinese online games have conquered the UAE's wealthy" and "made middle-aged women fall in love with street dancing", etc.

For example, the contrast of the career of the founder of "Mercedes-Benz car director quits his job to sell kebabs, and monthly sales increase from 60,000 to 100,000 in half a year" will make people want to click in and take a look.

7. Oral Law

Use more personal pronouns like "you" and "I" because fans always care most about themselves.

Change all written language into spoken language. When writing a title, you can imagine your fans as your good friends or girlfriends sitting next to you. Write the title according to how you usually chat with them.

For example, "He made 11.73 million yuan using WeChat soft articles, and is willing to teach you the secrets of copywriting - only this Saturday", the word "you" is used in the title, and many colloquial words are used, such as "made money", "step by step", and "teach you".

8. Symbol Law

It mainly refers to the use of some punctuation marks in the title.

Exclamation mark: expresses strong emotions; emphasizes something; psychological suggestion, etc. "Congratulations to those who haven’t bought a house in Beijing! Jack Ma has officially taken action, and you are going to save a lot of money! 》

Question mark: arouse doubts in fans' minds and make them read with the mentality of looking for answers. "These 12 century-old middle schools in Beijing will dazzle you with their history alone!" Is your alma mater on the list? 》200,000+, the question mark at the end guides users to click in to see if their alma mater is listed.

In addition, this article also uses a little trick to add a voting function. Generally, fans of these 12 schools mostly vote and then share with friends or friends circles.

Ellipsis: expresses a feeling of being left wanting more, of wanting to be said but not being said, and is used when an answer is revealed or something unexpected happens. 《Don’t take Beijing Subway Line 10 anymore! It’s not that I can’t squeeze in, but…”

9. The rule of highlighting

This rule is mainly used to add prefixes or suffixes at the beginning and end of the title. Among them, the commonly used prefixes include heavyweight, breaking news, just now, breaking news, subversive, inspirational, shocking, amazing, etc.

Suffixes have many functions, such as targeting groups of people (Beijingers, please take note!), strengthening recommendations (XXX recommendation), explaining, adding highlights, and providing benefits (benefits are at the end of the article), etc.

In addition to the 9 rules I have summarized, I believe there are more rules for writing titles. Moreover, the commonly used title rules for each type of public account are different. So you must read more, practice more, and then find your own set of methodologies.

Finally, I would like to share with you a quote from David Ogilvy ’s Confessions of an Advertising Man .

The title is an important element in most advertisers' minds and can determine whether readers will read the advertisement. Generally speaking, four times more people read headlines than read content. In other words, the value of the headline you write will be 80% of your entire advertising budget. If your title does not achieve sales results, then it can be said that you have wasted 80% of your client's advertising budget.

Finally, I hope everyone can write hit copy that sells products as soon as possible. Well, my sharing ends here. Thank you for your patience in listening to me nagging for so long, and thank you for your company for an hour. Thank you~

Author: Zhang Sanfeng D, authorized to publish by Qinggua Media .

Source: 51COO (ID: COO-51)