A self-media from 0 to 1: How to operate a Toutiao account?

1. Have a clear and measurable goal

We all like to talk about goal orientation when doing things, but once we have a goal, we tend to make the mistake of "unclear and unmeasurable". For example, "we want to be an influential food self-media " is a goal, but what is "influential"? Everyone has a different understanding of this, and it cannot be measured. In actual work, then everyone may deal with problems from different perspectives. Everyone does what they want, and the result is predictable. Therefore we need to have a clear and measurable goal.

Although there are only two of us, if we are serious about doing this, we naturally have to set a clear and measurable goal. In the next month, our goal is to

1. Experiment with various media platforms and select three main platforms (two people have limited energy, so it is not necessary to fully cover all the large and small media platforms);
2. Expand the number of fans/subscriptions/followings, with the target number for the three main platforms tentatively set at 2,000;
3. To explore potential commercial opportunities, we must first obtain the advertising rights of Toutiao .

2. A preliminary study on Toutiao

2.1 Review and Improvement

In my opinion, Weibo, WeChat and Toutiao will be the three main distribution platforms. Our first article received 19,000 views on Toutiao, but the second article saw a sharp drop in views, with only 62 views. The previous article analyzed that it might be:

1. The title "Lazy Braised Pork" makes people feel that it has no focus;
2. The publishing time is in the afternoon on weekdays, which is a busy time for users;

The two articles published later paid attention to these two aspects . The titles highlighted the key points and the publishing time was unified at around 20:40 in the evening (17:54 of the first article was the operation time of the scheduled release, and the publishing time was still 20:45). The reading volume has returned to a relatively stable range.

2.2 Comparison between WeChat and Toutiao

A simple comparison between the two platforms will reveal that the relationship between authors and users (fans) is different.

WeChat official accounts are one-to-one relationships, requiring users to actively open the official account to read or interact;

The relationship between Toutiao and its users (fans) is mainly maintained by algorithms, which push suitable articles to suitable readers.

2.3 How to better operate Toutiao accounts

I personally think it is necessary to understand the recommendation mechanism and label mechanism of Toutiao:

The reading volume of headlines may be = clicking on the headline and completing the reading;

Toutiao’s recommendations should be made in batches. Users and articles have their own labels, and the two sets of labels have a mapping relationship. It is estimated that the algorithm will find the corresponding user tags based on the article tags, and then recommend it to some of the corresponding users first; if the rate of these users clicking and completing the reading is high, or there are many interactive behaviors such as likes, comments, and collections, then the article will be considered of good quality and the algorithm will recommend it to other users; by continuously recommending in batches and adjusting the recommendation weight, the article can be better recommended to the right readers;

Try to step on big tags as much as possible. You can try to step on multiple big tags, which may expand the recommendation scope. The main tags that male and female users of Toutiao follow are as follows:

We are in the food business, so can we write an article that combines food and entertainment, such as the cuisine in Korean dramas? Can we use the labels of food and entertainment to expand the readership? This needs to be verified further.

2.4 It is best to use three pictures as the cover

When publishing on Toutiao, the cover image can be one picture or three pictures. What is the difference? Look at the picture below and you will understand

Three pictures can attract more users' attention than one picture, and the click rate will be higher;

2.5 More interactions are important

Click-through rate, number of collections, number of comments, number of reposts, completion rate, page dwell time, etc., among which the click-through rate has the highest weight.

You need to find ways to guide users to comment, forward, and other behaviors. For example, if someone comments on you, you should reply as soon as possible, even if it is just a simple thank you for following. You can also use a small account to post comments and answer your own questions, which can create a good atmosphere for comments.

3. Try to broaden the content categories

We certainly can’t just stay at writing recipes forever, we have to expand the content categories. There have been calls from seed users to write about the options for cast iron pans, so we'd like to take this opportunity to try something other than recipes. So there was the movie "I'll take the blame!" "Kitchen shopaholics teach you how to buy an enameled cast iron pan."

Later we will also try to combine the selection of kitchen utensils with recipes to enrich the content format. But we will maintain a general direction: making simple and delicious quick dishes.