Why do I say that most people who follow hot topics are unreliable?

Talking about hot topics and leveraging trends, it is basically one of the essential skills for new media operations of every company nowadays.

People like lively places. Hot spots can help content, activities, and products gain more attention and presence. They are also more in line with the psychology of the target audience and are more likely to be liked.

And most of the audience is not as sophisticated as you think, they really love hot spots.

Therefore, many companies basically chase after every trend, and do so one after another. Every time there is a festival, hot topic, event, entertainment news, disaster, movie release... there will be corresponding marketing .

However, chasing hot topics is interesting if you do it alone, but becomes vulgar if you do it with a group of people.

As a result, the current new media marketing has become a chaotic scene of one or two beautiful girls (such as Durex ) and a large group of ugly girls imitating others, which almost fills the entire social media and is impossible to escape.

When it comes to chasing hot topics and leveraging marketing momentum, I really have no objection and I support it very much. Mumu Laozei is originally engaged in marketing operations , so of course he knows the significance of chasing hot topics and leveraging momentum.

After all, this is a trend and a very demanding job. The big guys are doing it, so why can’t we?

capable! Of course you can do it!

It’s just that, just because everyone is capable, we should do it well and spend some time on it instead of just feeling high on ourselves! Otherwise, how do you stand out among so many people who are doing the same thing?

First of all, when a hot spot appears, we have to react immediately. This reaction does not mean doing it immediately, but we need to think about whether we should pursue this hot spot or not?

Yes, you can totally say NO! Not every hot spot needs to be chased. If the loss is higher than the gain, there is no need to pursue such a hot spot.

Just like what Durex social marketing planner Lao Jin said before in the Uniqlo incident :

In fact, you can simply judge: how is the topic of this hot topic, whether it has scalability, how spreadable it is, how popular it is, what is the development trend, how relevant it is, whether it is timely, what is the risk, will it affect the brand tone, etc.

These are probably some of the main criteria.

Previously, Mumu Laozei wrote about how to judge whether to follow a hot spot, so I won’t go into details here.

Let’s focus on this correlation below, because I have seen too many boring people chasing hot topics recently.

Too many people have misunderstandings about correlation and make mistakes on it!

Relevance is very simple to understand. It is just about the correlation between a hot topic and a brand/product. Basically everyone will talk about it. To go further, it is about whether it is relevant to your core user group and core business.

Everyone knows this, but this is often the point that is most easily overlooked.

For example, when Bao Bao got divorced, it was an overwhelming hot topic and it was everywhere.

I know a public account that deals with women's financial management and has also followed this hot topic. It basically reported the fact and pushed a piece of news. There was no packaging and the number of readers was average.

I asked him, is the news you pushed relevant to your official account?

He said it is strong, very strong. Our users are young mothers, and they are very interested in this matter.

Okay, here’s the problem! Yes, their target group is indeed young mothers.

However, they widened the scope and the user portrait was vague, or too general, which resulted in irrelevance in the end, or they misunderstood weak correlation as strong correlation.

Yes, young mothers are indeed interested in this hot topic, but you have to know that everyone has multiple identities in life, and each identity label is different.

For example, a young mother may be interested in celebrities, parenting, finance, and makeup, so she follows the following four types of public accounts at the same time to meet her needs.

So, for celebrity-related public accounts, she is a "young mother interested in celebrity news"; similarly, for parenting-related public accounts, she is a "young mother interested in parenting"; for financial management-related public accounts, she is a "young mother interested in financial management"; for makeup-related public accounts, she is a "young mother interested in makeup".

Looking back, the user group of this women's financial management public account is indeed young mothers, but in fact you will find that these four accounts are all corresponding to young mothers.

Does this mean that the user groups of these four accounts are exactly the same? Definitely not. Each of them has its own precise population positioning, rather than being generally referred to as "young mothers".

Under different needs, people’s identity attribute labels are different, and users’ demands for each public account are different. You must be clear about what your core business is? Why do users come to you?

For example, if a young mother wants to read this news, she can read it on the public account of the celebrity she follows. Is it necessary for her to read it here? You need to know which identity tag your user has in your official account. It is impossible for you to make content corresponding to all user tags, right?

Things that are big and comprehensive often have great ideals but are cruel in reality.

For the female financial management public account mentioned above, its user group is not simply a young mother, but a young mother who is interested in financial management and wants to improve her financial management skills from you. She follows your account more to learn about financial management and understand financial management information.

It’s just that she is also interested in celebrity news, parenting, and makeup. But the primary and secondary must be clearly distinguished.

So, let's take a look at this hot event again. Is your direct reporting of it highly relevant to young mothers who want to learn about financial management?

(Stealing the work of news media) Honestly, it’s not that strong. You can publish it, but it really has little to do with your core services and products.

If you insist on saying that this is a strong relationship, then children's information, celebrity gossip, and cosmetics and health care will also be strong relationships.

It's the same principle.
Of course, it’s not that you can’t follow this hot topic, but direct reporting is not suitable for you, and you need to find an entry point.

We can push content with user-attached tags, which is an extension of the main content and can be done.

If you simply publish a hot news report about this event, it will definitely be more relevant to the celebrity information account. However, if you publish an article combining this hot topic and talking about how babies can manage their finances well if they don't know how to manage their finances?

This way the relevance will increase immediately, and it will be obviously more relevant to you. Although the content audience will be narrowed, the user group will be more precise.

Therefore, when discussing relevance, you must not simply categorize your users, such as “a group of boys born in the 1980s”. Instead, you should say what their identities are under your official account and why they follow you.

For example, "a group of positive 80s boys who are interested in basketball (they may also be interested in playing games , but they follow your official account because of basketball)".

Another example is a public account that talks about new media operations . During the Olympic Games, it kept pushing various news about the Olympics.

How's this kind of hot topic chasing going?

Similarly, if you are targeting young people born in the 1990s, then there is definitely a strong correlation, but you have to know that young people born in the 1990s also have many identity labels.

Corresponding to different tags, he will have different demands, so he will follow different public accounts to meet the corresponding needs.

Paying attention to Olympic news is one demand, and paying attention to your new media operation public account is another demand. They must be separated.

Your core users are young people born in the 1990s who like new media operations and have a demand for new media knowledge, not just young people born in the 1990s.

To you, his core label is a new media operation enthusiast, and paying attention to the Olympics is just one of many additional labels.

You must distinguish the primary from the secondary, and judge the relevance of your users' main attribute tags with your hot spots, rather than looking at the relevance of other additional tags with hot spots.

This way you won’t go astray easily!

This is the easiest mistake to make, and the easiest to overlook.

Similarly, the correlation between the Olympics and new media operations can actually be improved. Simply publishing news is definitely just to entertain the public.

But if you could analyze each company’s new media Olympic marketing in conjunction with the Olympics, summarize how major brands leverage the Olympics, or launch a new media sports event… then wouldn’t the relevance of such hot topics be much stronger?

So, in general, there is nothing wrong with chasing hot topics, but you must consider whether it is worth chasing.

Especially on the point of relevance, do not misinterpret the relevance and do not automatically associate hot spots with the various additional identity tags of your users. This is not called chasing hot spots, but just looking for trouble.

In combination with hot topics, you should focus on your users and services, their core demands and your core content, so that the relevance is accurate.

It’s irrelevant. No matter how hot the topic is or how much exposure it gets, is it useful? It is said that Durex is good at following hot topics. Do they release a hot news every time? It must be relevant, truly relevant, remember!

The purpose of writing this article is not to preach, but to encourage each other!