Title creation method: How to choose a title for a recommendation channel?

Regarding the skills of choosing titles , I think you may have seen some articles of this kind before, such as there must be a question or a number in the title, etc. In fact, these are just some small factors involved. Today Xiaoyu wants to share some experiences and insights on how our team chose titles when doing this.

At the beginning, it took our team half an hour or even longer to come up with a title. Gradually, through some methods and tools , we came up with some titles, and it could be done in about fifteen minutes. Moreover, we have a certain perception of each title. This sense of title requires a long time of trial and error. Today’s sharing is mainly to teach you an idea of ​​​​title selection to ensure that our videos have a basic number of clicks on a normal basis.

There are certain differences in the role played by titles on various platforms. From the perspective of the role of titles, platforms can be divided into recommendation platforms, fan platforms and video platforms. Among them, the titles of recommendation platforms have the greatest impact on the content. The titles of fan platforms should put user forwarding and clicks first. The recommendation position of video platforms still depends mainly on editor recommendations, so what I will share with you today is how to come up with titles for recommendation platforms.

How to choose a title for a recommended channel ?

Xiaoyu summarized seven steps for creating titles for recommendation platforms.

Determine the user behavior that the title can induce

In fact, a title can trigger quite a lot of user behaviors, such as the number of comments, number of collections, number of completed playbacks, etc. For example, in this title, "The 8 most popular beers among Chinese people, which one is your favorite?", the "you" is actually the "I" who is watching the video. This can give users a sense of dialogue, and question sentences can also increase viewers' desire to comment.

For life-related content like ours, we usually reflect practicality and quantity in the title, such as "Which method is quick and easy to use for beauties to remove hair in summer?" Users may have collected the video without having used a method mentioned in the video.

Look at these two titles again: "3 ways to peel a complete mantis shrimp, the last one only takes 5 seconds!" and "Is it difficult to peel mantis shrimp in summer? These three quick ways to peel shrimp can help you!". The first title can guide users to see the last one, which can invisibly increase the video's playback completion rate. Moreover, the playback completion rate is an important indicator for improving recommendations on recommendation platforms.

These three are some user behaviors that the title can cause. Before you come up with a title, you can actually look at several dimensions first. The first is the length of the video . If your video is relatively short, you can focus on the playback completion rate. For example, if you are a food account and you are doing a post about several ways to eat watermelon, you can focus on the number of collections, and your title can also be related to this point, but the main direction is to increase the number of collections. There can also be some other factors in your title, so you need to find a main direction before posting each video.

Determine the title’s purpose

The second step is to determine the purpose of your title, that is, to identify the user's pain points . I think every short video solves a problem for the user, no matter whether you are in the food, life, entertainment or comedy category, you can observe it from this point of view.

The high temperature has been going on for some time, so I wanted to make a short video about cooling down. Our intention is to compare some small methods of cooling down in summer, such as cooling patches, cooling clothes, sprays, etc. However, the feedback we got from searching for "cooling" on Baidu was that users were most concerned about how to cool down children with a fever, and the second was cooling mobile phones. We had not expected that cooling mobile phones in summer would be at the top of the list, but unfortunately we did not mention in the film whether cooling patches can cool down mobile phones, so there was no way to reflect it in the title.

Here I suggest that you can do the title selection and video planning at the same time. If you take the factor of mobile phone cooling into consideration during the planning, we can reflect it in the title, and perhaps get more clicks and recommendations.

Of course, in addition to going to Baidu to find pain points, you can also go to the search bar of Toutiao and Tiantian Kuaibao and enter keywords . The long-tail words displayed are all popular words searched by users. Of course, in addition to pain points, there are also curiosity points. Users have never heard of it or it subverts the original mindset. This is also a more kingly way to come up with a title. In this regard, Ergeng has done a great job and you can go and have a look.

The third idea is to find points of emotional resonance so that everyone can empathize with the person. The most typical examples are Papi Jiang and Mimi Meng . Content like complaints can speak for a certain group of people, so they can resonate with people. Inspirational stories can resonate with people who have the same or similar experiences. There are also common points of regional nature. Beijingers need to know XXX.

Determine the sentence structure of the title

After you complete the first two steps, the third step is to determine the sentence structure of the title. Currently, there are two main sentence structures for titles: two-paragraph structure and three-paragraph structure. Regardless of whether it is a two-paragraph structure or a three-paragraph structure, the first paragraph requires complete and fluent sentence structure, and the following parts are explanations of the previous ones. For example, "There are four ways to eat instant noodles that you probably don't know, but one of them will make you fall in love with it after trying it once!" "Three quick ways to peel walnuts! The last one, which takes 10 seconds, is the fastest!"

Of course, Xiaoyu is not saying that the one-paragraph format will not be popular, but the two-paragraph and three-paragraph formats are the safest ways, so it is recommended that everyone use this method as their most basic title method.

Don't add these to the title

• First of all, don’t add sensitive words. Clickbait will be prompted in the headlines.
• Political terms, nothing to say
• Try to avoid skirting the rules. Sometimes you may be given a limit but not the recommended amount.

Complete the basic title frame

In fact, the basic framework of a title is formed through the first four points. At this time, you just need to think about a few questions. For example, the film about beer review was planned to have three people drinking beer together and discussing which one tastes good and which one tastes bad. When planning, the framework of the title was the most common beer in life, which brand tastes the best? At this time, we will ask ourselves a few questions: Can the interaction be triggered? Do you know what common beers are? Are there any keywords with traffic here?

Optimize titles

After asking yourself, you should start optimizing your title:

• First, beer is both a keyword and a hot word and must exist;
• Secondly, we selected 8 types of beer for evaluation. Adding numbers to the title can give users a range of choices instead of divergent thinking, which helps to increase the number of clicks and collections of the video. Later we found that users would indeed choose from these eight types, and some users would even write down their favorite beer brand in their hometown;
• The third is how to target a relatively large group of people. Through tools, we found that the Chinese had a very large number of this word at that time, so we finally optimized the title to "The 8 most popular beers in China, which one do you like best?"

What should I do after publishing to ensure the number of views?

What I talked about earlier was the process of creating a title, which may be a little different from the dry goods you heard before. What I mainly want to share with you today is the process of title generation in our team, and secondly, you should get used to using some tools when creating titles, such as Baidu search , the title wizard in Meimiao short video assistant, and the hot word analysis of Toutiao. After you use some tools, you will have a clear idea when distributing it, and you will also have a preliminary judgment on the number of views of the film.

After publishing, you can actually do something to increase the number of views

• After the release is approved, click in to watch, comment, collect and forward to your friends as soon as possible;
• You can invite some friends or fans to help interact. Be careful not to forward with multiple people on the same network and make sure to read to the end.
• The main account can initiate some discussions and reply to some comments in the comment area;
• You can include some criticism in your comments.

To sum it up simply, before choosing a title, you must be clear about the result of the guidance, whether it is the number of collections or comments, etc., make clear the intention, whether it is to solve a problem or to express a curiosity or resonance, make clear a sentence pattern, and find some examples. Once the framework of the title comes out, you need to start optimizing it, such as how to make it a hot topic and how to add appropriate keywords. After the release, we will follow up with some operations, so that the overall operation can actually guarantee a certain amount.

How to choose titles from other channels

• Tiantian Express tries not to use sensitive words. Recently, any article containing the word "sexy" will definitely fail the review. But in fact, some titles that are considered clickbait by Toutiao are not so bad on Tiantian Express. Moreover, Tiantian Express may only start to gain volume after three days. Unlike Toutiao, if there is no volume within 24 hours, then the film is almost useless.
• Meipai no longer has a title item, so now the title is placed on the cover image. Unless your cover image is very clear and the cover image cannot be uploaded separately, it is best to add your cover image in the previous frame of the video.
• Because the quality of users on Bilibili is relatively good, the titles can be more casual, and extreme titles often get more views;
• Finally, let’s talk about the old video websites. I still recommend that you discuss cooperation with them. Maybe the title will have a smaller effect. Of course, if you have good experience or methods, you can also communicate with me. I am also thirsty for knowledge.

There are many techniques for naming videos. You just need to practice slowly and you will gain some experience over time. Different channels have different attributes. You can have an in-depth understanding of the user characteristics of some channels and choose some targeted titles, which will also play a big role in the video playback volume.