How to keep up with the latest trends without becoming outdated?

The public relations departments of various companies will pay attention to changes in hot topics, and saying the right words at the right time can often achieve better results. When a hot topic is gaining a lot of attention, you can choose to strike while the iron is hot to increase user favorability, while for negative news, you can choose to stay out of the spotlight and respond in silence. Time can make things fade. No matter how big the impact of an event is, it will fade from the public's attention as time goes by.

The phenomenon of obsolescence is ubiquitous, and people, events, and topics are all under its control.

This article will focus on Internet hot spots, which are closely related to thousands of copywriters . Although personal skills are the basis of writing articles, choices are often more important than hard work. Following hot topics allows you to pick apples by standing on the shoulders of giants. Social attention provides sufficient publicity for the topic, and all followers are potential readers of the copy. It is equivalent to someone having already spent a huge amount of money on publicity for this topic, so success will naturally be much easier.

1. Why do hot topics become outdated?

1. Aesthetic fatigue

This is one of the main reasons for the decline.

No matter how hot a hot spot is, it will gradually decline after it appears for a long enough time, and the public's attention will gradually be distracted to other things, unless the hot spot can produce sufficiently good information every period of time.

The emergence of new hot spots often attracts widespread attention, and often even gives people the feeling that the world is about to change. In fact, most hot events start off well but then end up in vain.

For example, when shared bicycles first appeared, it seemed as if the door to a new world had been opened, and all investors and new media were competing for it. Topics related to it often appear in the public eye, and later there were shared electric vehicles and shared cars . But looking back on this matter after the hype has passed, shared bicycle-type products do have an influence, but it is very limited. Shared electric vehicles, on the other hand, have almost disappeared, are frequently regulated, and have difficulty making profits.

Data source : Baidu Index

The same goes for mini programs . That towering peak seems to define the future of applications. From now on, 90% of apps will become history. However, in reality, mini programs have achieved more success in products that have no user stickiness at all, and have truly become "use it and leave it". After the excitement has passed, I believe everyone will look at the significance of mini programs more rationally.

A notable feature of hot spots eliminated by aesthetic fatigue is that they can become phenomenal but not national level. Users consume out of curiosity, and when the novelty wears off, they naturally reach the end of their life cycle.

2. Hotspots are consumed

This is different from the first point and is often more difficult to recover from. The so-called hot spot has been consumed completely means that users have fully understood this hot spot, and the hot spot itself is unable to generate new attention points. Even if users are very curious about this hot topic, they don’t know where to start if they want to learn more.

A common example of this type is the hot topics on Baidu's hot searches, which can only maintain their popularity for about a day. The reason is that the content of the hot spot is limited. Although its content can quickly attract attention, the content is too small and an ordinary user can grasp all the content of the hot spot in a very short time. In addition, this type of hot spot often has no follow-up; it comes quickly and goes away quickly.

3. Photographed dead on the beach

Once an event becomes a hot topic, especially one related to business, many competitors will compete to imitate or improve it, so the original hot topic will inevitably be eliminated. This is a bit like the current phenomenon of things becoming more popular after plagiarizing, is it right to plagiarize? wrong. Will the plagiarized work be better than the original? Most of the time, yes. The reason is very simple. When plagiarizing, one will certainly plagiarize other people's excellent parts. In order to avoid being directly named, one will choose to plagiarize many works. In this way, it is equivalent to a culmination, which is of course much better than the original work.

Hot spots, like works of art, can be copied and improved. For example, after the NetEase Cloud Music subway advertisement became popular, various subway advertisements immediately emerged, and some were even more thorough. For example, the train can be completely transformed into an animated train, with a higher degree of transformation and more amazing content. H1Z1's game mode was popular, and soon PlayerUnknown 's Battlegrounds came out. Now PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is not doing well, but it doesn't matter, Tencent's Fortnite is ready to go. Hot topics come one after another, and it is difficult for the creators of hot topics to maintain sustained popularity.

In the Internet age, user traffic is the most important thing. As long as there are enough loyal users, the product will be successful. This is due to the low marginal cost of Internet products. The cost of a program is very low as the number of users increases, and profits have the potential to exceed linear growth. Some types of products can even achieve exponential growth in profits.

Such a hot spot is bound to be a battleground. Everyone is watching it. The ability of a hot spot maker is limited. Under siege, it is only a matter of time before he loses.

2. How to grasp the hot spots

1. For hotspot creators

When we talk about hotspot creators, we are of course referring to commercial hotspots. There are at least two completely different ideas here. One is to take advantage of the hot spots to make high profits and then withdraw. The other is to achieve user growth through hot spots, and then turn the phenomenal behavior into habits and transform it to the national level.

The behaviors mentioned here are all commercial behaviors, so how to choose needs to consider the actual situation in order to obtain the maximum profit. If the hot spot loses momentum in the later stage and the operator is unable to keep it developing, and the success this time is mostly due to luck, you can choose to do your best to cash out and then get out. There are many examples of this, such as entrepreneurs of phenomenal companies being unable to maintain continued popularity and simply selling the company when the company is developing smoothly. For example, when many products reach the end of their life cycle, considering that there is no hope for development, they will reduce manpower investment, increase charging models, and finally reap the benefits. This is the case with many gaming products. In the later period, updates slowed down, order became chaotic, management was lacking, users were lost quickly, and the platform quickly declined.

The best example of an app that chooses to achieve user growth is TikTok . After becoming a phenomenal work, it refused to join any company and started to build its own system, believing that it has the ability to maintain the popularity and gradually build its own empire.

There is no right or wrong in the above two options, it depends on the business situation and the plans of the person at the helm.

Data source: Baidu Index

From the above picture, we can see that the popularity of Tik Tok remains and there is no downward trend. It is expected to break through the shackles of phenomenal works and become a national-level work.

2. Chasing hot spots

Most of the people who follow hot topics are planners, operators and copywriters. The advantage of riding on a hot topic is to gain a sense of recognition, which is equivalent to the hot topic having already promoted your own content, and you can take advantage of the momentum. There are mainly the following ways to grasp it.

• Speed : This is the most important point. Many hot spots do not last long. If you take too long to prepare, you may miss them. Some foreseeable hot spots are prepared in advance. For example, if you are doing marketing , you can start preparing before holidays and then launch them on holidays.
• To the point : The principle of chasing hot spots is to obtain the traffic brought by hot spots. Naturally, the higher the degree of relevance to the hot spots, the easier it is to gain recognition. For example, if a postgraduate entrance examination institution offers discounts on Children's Day , it would seem strange, but if Disneyland offers discounts, it would seem more normal.
• Caution : When chasing hot topics, you must pay attention to the angle, especially some negative hot topics. If the angle you chase is wrong, not only will your image be greatly reduced, but you may also be punished;
• Novelty : There will be many people chasing hot spots, and a bland approach will make it difficult for users to notice them. Therefore, while meeting the above three points, try to make your approach to chasing hot spots more unique to attract users' attention.

Conclusion

A notable feature of the Internet is that it eliminates the constraints of geographical location and time, allowing people to obtain information at any time. This feature will inevitably give rise to hot spots because the Internet makes it possible for information to spread widely. When there is no Internet, the spread of an event is subject to many constraints, such as geographical location, timeliness, and difficulty in obtaining feedback.

The development of human civilization is inseparable from transforming the world, that is, transforming objective things into things that are beneficial to oneself. The existence of hot spots is an objective fact. What relevant practitioners need to do is to grasp it well and make it something beneficial to themselves.

Author: Ma Lu , authorized to be published by Qinggua Media .

Source: pmlu