How to use Toutiao's recommendation rules to create a hit article with over 1 million readers? (10,000 words of dry goods)

Toutiao has been able to become a disruptor in the content distribution market, with a valuation of over 10 billion US dollars, thanks to its intelligent algorithm recommendations .

As an Internet professional, I certainly cannot remain calm when faced with such a huge emerging traffic pool.

Without further ado, I will tell you a secret trick to teach the readers who are lucky enough to read this article how to take a small step and get 100W+.

1. Overview of Toutiao

No matter which platform you go to, you must first understand its details.

According to Toutiao's official website, as of January 2017, there are nearly 700 million activated users, of which more than 175 million are monthly active users and more than 78 million are daily active users. A single user starts the app more than 9 times a day, with usage time exceeding 76 minutes.

What does it mean? There are a lot of people and enough traffic.

The biggest feature of Toutiao is its intelligent algorithm recommendation for content. The so-called intelligent algorithm recommendation is to push the right content to the right people, and the platform is equivalent to a traffic distribution machine.

Compare it with WeChat official accounts , which rely purely on subscribing users and their social relationship chains to distribute content, and the platform itself hardly participates in allocating traffic.

This means that even if you have no money or resources, as long as you can produce "suitable" content, the platform will give you traffic. At the same time, as the application threshold of Toutiao becomes lower and lower, Toutiao may be one of the best platforms (or even the only one) for individuals to enter the field of self-media .

What are the characteristics of Toutiao users? Only by understanding their characteristics can we know what they need and how to deal with them.

Let’s look at the picture above. 50% of Toutiao users are located in third-tier cities or below. I have written an article before called "From an intellectual perspective, it is not an elite market, but from the perspective of precise traffic or traffic library, it is a very good traffic pool."

Why? Because in terms of content, when a group of people go to vote, they won’t understand content that is too profound. Only simple, funny, and curious content with the widest audience can get the most votes and be recommended.

If you look at the demographics of Toutiao, third- and fourth-tier cities account for such a large proportion of its users, which means that their education level is limited, similar to " Kuaishou ", and their purchasing power is relatively low.

However, the characteristic of the Internet is that as long as the number of users is large, even the smallest profit point can be infinitely magnified. If you really want to write a popular article and earn advertising fees, then Toutiao is a good choice.

▲Original account number income

Another point to note is that Toutiao’s advertising revenue sharing system was only launched in 2014. In order to show off their qualifications, many people boast that they joined the platform in 2012.

2. Create a hot article production machine

To create a hit article, you need to address two main issues: platform and users.

The so-called mastering of the platform is mainly about understanding the core of intelligent algorithm recommendations and obtaining as many recommendations as possible from the platform.

1. What is the essence of recommendation algorithm?

Don't worry about fancy algorithms or seemingly complex codes. To be honest, the machine is still innocent and cute.

The machine's workflow is to label the content and users first, then cold-start content delivery, match content labels with audience labels through algorithms, and decide how many people to distribute to in the next step based on the level of audience interaction.

The hidden great piece of information here is that if you want your article to be recommended, it must be labeled with major categories. The machine cannot understand your article. It can only recognize the tags corresponding to the keywords , and behind the keyword tags are the corresponding user groups.

Some labels may correspond to 100 million people, while some labels may only correspond to thousands of people. Super popular articles must come from super tags! If you step on the right label, you will win at the starting line.

Let’s look at the top 15 reading tags for women and men. This means that if you want to create a popular article, you must start from these major tag categories.

If you write a very obscure category, it will be dead before it even starts. How to determine whether you have stepped on a tag? Just use the mobile client to read to the end of the article.

How to ensure you hit the mark? Distill the small and large keyword matrices of the industry to which your own account belongs. It is best to have a ready-made one, but if not, you can rely on accumulated experience.

2. What factors influence article recommendations?

Strictly speaking, the purpose of machine algorithms is to serve users well. The above part is singled out because the platform strategy of that part is somewhat far from the behavior of the audience itself.

After the intelligent recommendation algorithm delivers content to the audience for a cold start, how much traffic the article can ultimately gain depends entirely on how much of a stir your content can create in the audience pool. In other words, how many viewers "vote" for you? This vote is a series of interactive behaviors including clicks, completion rate, collections, likes, appreciation, comments, reposts, subscriptions, etc.

According to official data from Toutiao, the eight factors that influence article recommendations are:

1) Click-through rate + completion rate: The more people click on the title and finish reading the article, the higher the recommendation;

2) Clear classification: The more clear the article’s interest points are, the higher the recommendation;

3) Consistency between the title and the article: Make a proper title party ;

4) Content quality: high-quality content is fundamental;

5) Account positioning is clear: Accounts with random and broad article topics are less likely to be recommended;

6) Number of interactions and subscriptions: The more active the readers are, the more recommendations they will get;

7) Off-site popularity: The more attention a topic receives on the Internet, the more recommendations it receives;

8) Posting frequency: It is important to post frequently and stay active.

This kind of public stuff is not of much use to most people, like a fly on a glass window. It seems to have a bright future, but in fact it is impossible to achieve any substantial breakthrough. Let the old driver break this window paper for you.

3. How to get more recommendations for your articles?

1) Click-through rate plus completion rate

The more people click on the title and finish reading it, the higher the recommendation. The clearer the classification, the higher the recommendation.

Many people have a misunderstanding about this. It is true that the more people click on the title and read the article, the higher the recommendation. But if the number of people who have followed your tag is only 10,000, how do you get 1 million views? Therefore, the premise for making good use of a label is that there are enough people behind the label. Some strategies of the platform are encapsulated and will not tell you everything.

2) Clear classification

The clearer the article's points of interest, the higher the recommendation.

This just exposes the labeling strategy behind the platform. If you mess up, it will be difficult for the platform to label you. The so-called "the clearer the article's points of interest, the higher the recommendation" is a complete smokescreen, because the machine cannot recognize the meaning of the article at all, let alone whether the points of interest are clear or not. Therefore, it is recommended that you choose popular tags and popular categories when registering, such as entertainment, society, and comprehensive categories. At the same time, the content of the article hits the right keywords.

3) The title is consistent

Make the right headline.

What this means is that you shouldn’t be too low and don’t write things that would kill people without any compensation. For example, when the Wang Baoqiang incident came out, users complained that they had watched more than ten gigabytes of Calabash Brothers.

In addition, please read the platform rules carefully. Don't touch some obvious taboos. There are so many titles in the world, it's just a matter of changing the words. Don’t worry, I will teach you how to make a title later.

4) Content Quality

High-quality content is the foundation.

It actually gives readers what they want. As for what constitutes high-quality content, it all depends on the user's subjective judgment. Good content is what users say is good and feels stimulating.

5) Account positioning is clear

Accounts that write articles on random and broad topics are less likely to be recommended.

Same as the second element.

6) Number of interactions and subscriptions

The more active your readers are, the more recommendations you get.

As for the number of subscriptions, because Toutiao pays more and more attention to social networking, in addition to massive algorithm traffic, the influence of subscribed users is also growing. High-authority accounts even support article fan reach. With a large number of fans, the cold start effect will naturally be better.

7) Off-site popularity

The more popular a topic is on the Internet, the more recommendations it will receive.

When people see hot topics, they are instinctively more likely to interact, and the articles will also gain some form of "power enhancement".

The platform may give higher authority to content containing certain keywords based on public opinion inside and outside the site (this is not officially stated, but it is very likely). You can understand it as "hot topics can increase the weight of articles."

8) Posting frequency

It’s important to post frequently and stay active.

Maintain a certain frequency of updates and obtain higher permissions. The platform has different recommended support levels for accounts of different levels.

4. How to win over users?

When enemies come, we will fight them with our generals; when water comes, we will block it with earth. Fundamentally, we must also pay attention to the article and polish it as a product.

For articles that are used to earn advertising fees or become popular, their mission is to obtain the maximum amount of traffic and earn revenue. The so-called "maximum amount of traffic" actually means increasing the click-through rate, allowing users to interact more, and increasing the completion rate.

At present, the reasonable way to utilize Toutiao is to do long-term, refined and branded operation and maintenance, leave bait at the end of the article, obtain stable traffic, graft projects, and complete monetization.

As mentioned in the previous article, the most important thing for those who buy free stuff is the completion rate. Why is the completion rate so important?

Because the ads show! Headline ads are all CPM, which means pay-per-view. You will be paid a certain amount of money for every thousand impressions. This means that you will only get a share of the revenue if users see your ad, and the ads on the headlines are all at the end of the article. If the user only clicks on it but doesn't finish reading it, you don't get paid.

Everyone, remember, most super popular articles, that is, 1 million+, are mostly used to earn advertising fees. One of the most profound tricks is to try your best to get users to finish reading. In order to get users to finish reading, a clever method must be used - the article must be short.

Let me show you a picture.

As can be seen from the graph, the longer your article is, the more likely readers are to close the article and leave, which is fatal to advertising revenue.

Let me share my own experience. For a super popular article, 3 to 8 pictures and 500 to 800 words are enough (the number can be increased or decreased appropriately based on the platform strategy and the field it belongs to).

Xinbang sometimes counts the number of article readers, which can easily reach millions. In fact, many super popular articles (500w+) are not even published because they are too "simple" and the quality of the articles is so poor and stupid that you can't even imagine it.

To continue, just a few hundred words, accompanied by 3 to 8 pictures, will appear to take up about three or four screens, and because the pictures pass by quickly, it will not affect the reading rate. 500 to 800 words are enough. If the text is too long and boring, it would be a suicide ploy. Do you understand?

In addition, short articles make it convenient for users to comment or collect them, and it is also convenient to post comments, which promotes interaction.

3. Teach you how to write headline articles

1. Title

The party with the right title will win the world, and many people often have a headache about how to choose a title. It seems that other people’s titles are all so good, but they can’t think of a single one even if they rack their brains.

Here are a bunch of examples. Through these examples, I want to tell you that the essence of finding a title is actually finding an angle. If you don’t know how to make a title, you don’t know which angle to approach from.

Let’s first look at some of the headlines from last year’s Wang Baoqiang case:

Because the platform will reduce the weight of events on the same topic, the key to following hot topics is not to follow the trend blindly. For example, if he says Wang Baoqiang is divorced, and you also say Wang Baoqiang is divorced, and then you divorce Wang Baoqiang again, this will greatly reduce the weight. The real way to take advantage of a hot topic is to approach it from different angles.

History often repeats itself. Carefully dissecting a hot spot and collecting good angles can be used repeatedly. This year, Bai Baihe has come up with a similar hot spot again, and the angles she has collected can be used just right.

For the next example, let me show you a picture:

This is what is meant by “similar topics, weakened weight”. In addition, it is recommended that you first post on Toutiao and then send on WeChat , because Toutiao can use network-wide comparison to identify originality.

This means that after the Wang Baoqiang incident was exposed, most people would only follow the trend and say that he was divorced (same topic), without knowing that users already knew that he was divorced.

In fact, what users want to know more is what Baoqiang’s wife looks like, what Song Zhe looks like, what else Song Zhe has done, what the latest developments of the incident are, and even which celebrities have been cuckolded. All of these are “same hot spots, different angles”.

When writing articles, are there few angles like this? In the article, only the three names of Wang Baoqiang, Ma Rong, and Song Zhe hit the hot spots and big labels, and then by approaching the article from different angles, it is very likely to become a hit.

Let me teach you another trick - collect more good titles in your daily life. This time Wang Baoqiang got into trouble, and there may be other similar incidents in the future.

Another way to play is to collect the titles, extract the words in the titles, and store them in your own vocabulary bank. Next time you come up with a title, just assemble them together by combining nouns and verbs. That spells out a lot of headlines pretty quickly.

Many people don’t use clickbait titles because they only have single-minded thinking and don’t think that the world is so colorful. You can not only talk about Wang Baoqiang, you can also talk about Wang Baoqiang’s hat, clothes, and so on. These angles are more likely to arouse users than just sticking to the fact that he is divorced.

2. Illustrations

The title can serve as footnotes to the three thumbnails, and the title and pictures match each other, making it captivating.

When polishing your product, start with the title, then consider the thumbnail. Don’t use rigid pictures. Three pictures are definitely better than one picture, because three pictures are displayed on the client as three pictures under one title, while if only one picture is made, this picture will be placed on the right side of the title, which is not conducive to attracting readers' attention.

The article should not be too long. In addition to the completion rate and the convenience of others' comments, another reason is that it takes too much time and energy and is thankless. In fact, it is enough to just hit the keywords.

As for how to step on popular keywords, you can search Weibo hot searches, Baidu search rankings, and some of the more popular articles on Toutiao itself. Combined, you can improve your awareness of hot spots.

3. Comments

Many times, an article only needs to give the audience an introduction, a topic, to match the user's emotions and make the user want to do something.

A complete product must include reviews. Everyone must know that NetEase has built a variety of buildings. The key point is to understand user psychology.

One trick is to look at the popular comments on hot articles on platforms such as Toutiao and Yidian Zixun , and collect 3-5 of them. Each comment is a very good entry point. For example, if someone writes a post saying how capable Nicholas Tse’s father is, there will definitely be people who disagree and say that someone is more capable than him, so you should write about that person.

In short, you need to design content based on the user characteristics of this platform. The match that ignites their fire is actually in what they say, that is, those popular comments, which is their emotional G-spot.

Take the opinions from user comments. For example, if a user mentions a person, you can search his profile on Baidu and then find three or five of his opinions directly in the comments, and you can form the outline of an article.

Sometimes, users’ comments have already written a title for you, and there may be opinions in the following posts, so you just need to add pictures to match them.

Sometimes, when a celebrity posts a Weibo, you have countless angles to write about it. For example, look at Li Chen’s Weibo:

The general idea is that Fan Bingbing made a loving lotus seed soup for Li Chen. Look at the comments, countless netizens have used their intelligence and talents to pile up a large number of comments below.

These hot comments are all very concise opinions. You choose the angle and opinion, even the title, and then find a few specific opinions, and add pictures of Li Chen and Fan, and users will easily get excited.

In fact, the public will subconsciously expose their emotions, and those with the most likes already show that they are interested.

One thing to note is that what you write must not be sexually bland. You must fully mobilize the users' emotions and make them want to express something. Only in this way can there be interaction. The amount of user interaction is your traffic engine and traffic atomic bomb, which continuously distributes your content to more people.

In addition, the article itself should only be an introduction, and the comment section is an important part of the article. This can also lead to a very important gameplay, which is that you can collect a batch of popular comments.

When an article receives a relatively high recommendation volume or reading rate, you can post 5 to 10 classic comments, which in itself can guide users to like or express their ideas.

A more advanced level is to be able to touch users' emotions invisibly, which requires a certain level of content skills. The more articles you write, the better you will be able to predict what users will comment on and how to control the rhythm. Practice makes perfect.

4. What should I do if the user is not very willing to interact?

In fact, every article can convey something, and some commands can be mixed into the content to guide users to interact with you and drive them to like and comment. For example, the top ten people who like comments will receive rewards, and currently the platform officials encourage limited guidance of users.

Finally, a few words: although the platform is constantly adjusting its strategies, the essence remains unchanged. To sum up: a hit article = getting the platform + getting the users. According to this idea, completing the entire process cannot guarantee 100% success, but the probability of success will definitely be greatly increased.

The author of this article @徐戈 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

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